A question about grain

[Bruce Morrison]

Some time ago I bought the Region 1 DVD of 'Becket', and I'm considering upgrading to the recently released Blu-ray edition.

My concern relates to the amount of grain evident in the DVD. I know this is a pretty old film (it was released in 1964) and I don't have a problem with film grain in general. However, in some parts of the 'Becket' DVD (particularly on the many interior scenes), the image is not only very grainy but appears to exhibit slight (and quite rapid) fluctuations in either the brightness or the colour intensity, to the point where it becomes a visual distraction. I can't quite decide whether these fluctuations are affecting the brightness or the colour intensity, but it's certainly one of them!

Does this make sense - I'm not sure how to best describe the effect, but I hope other readers will recognise what I'm saying! Is this kind of instability in the image an inevitable effect when particularly heavy grain is present? It certainly hasn't been evident on most other DVDs of old films that I own.

I'm wondering whether I should expect this same degree of grain and occasional instability in brightness/colour intensity to be evident on the BD. Any thoughts?