Cyrano de Bergerac (Jean-Paul Rappeneau - 1990)

[Pecker]

Coming to UK Blu-ray Disc from the BFI on 17th February.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cyrano-Berg...s=dvd&sr=1-146

I have the French import, which I've ripped and added subtitles from the UK DVD, but it's 1080i/50 (though this helped synch the subs), it is not the best-looking Blu-ray Disc in the world.

Here's hoping the BFI bring us something a little better. It's a cracking film.

[don3663]

Saw the Mcavoy play last month without knowing what its about. Was good. Saw Roxanne which wasn't good. Maybe I will check this out.

[mdicki02]

I've been waiting for a good release of this with English subtitles for years. This is a classic and Depardieu is brilliant.

Fingers crossed it's a proper release off of a new scan of good material.

And Roxanne (1987) was a good version, updating it to 80's rom-com stylings. That was quickly followed up by Ferrer's version as my introduction to the piece.

[Dougling]

Roxanne is an excellent film.

[Pecker]

Now put back a week to the 24th (next Monday).

[baloobas]

Has anyone got this?
How does it look?

[Bates_Motel]

Originally Posted by baloobas

Has anyone got this?
How does it look?

It looks incredible. From a restoration by Ritrovata, but it's thankfully not washed in green.

[johnpaul2]

You can still spot it in places and guess who did the grading but yes, it has not much in common with, say, Police Story.

[sjt]

I have this mad little fantasy that one day the head of grading at L'immagine ritrovata gets pulled over by the carabinieri for jumping the lights and, following an extended and very confusingly heated conversation of the "Oh no, I didn't. Oh, yes, you did" variety, it slowly dawns on the police that the man is completely colour-blind, red-green, blue-yellow, orange-purple, the lot. And then revoke his licence.

[johnpaul2]

I've read that Ritrovata are aware that they leave a visible color signature and have been reducing its intensity over the past months (years ?).
I suppose that Cyrano's grading reflects this adjustment.
I'm also surprised Svet didn't pick it up on The Specialists, which also has been graded by Ritrovata, but is far from their past gradings.

They're far from the only one to have a signature though. In Europe, there's Eclair metallic blue and Digimages-Hiventy at times leans towards Ritrovata's yellow.

I've recently seen Beverly Hills Cop and sure enough, it's a recognizable Paramount job overall (god, these blown highlights everywhere...). There's also the infamous Fox' Deluxe Blue, while Sony has a touch with how they're handling contrast and brightness too (especially in darker shots), so here you go for the US. I haven't dug much in the WAC/MPI catalogue, but I wouldn't be surprised to find a recognizable touch.

In the UK, Deluxe London also has a way to handle contrast that shows on many Arrow restorations. It's subtle but it's there and has been mentioned recently for The Thing and An American Werewolf in London for instance.

I'm not convinced by what I saw for Raining in the Mountain, which looks like an improperly color-corrected Ritrovata job, with overly pink and saturated skin tones and blown highlights. From what I read, it's an internal TFI job though, so nothing to do with Ritrovata.
In Japan, the B&W Imagica restorations also have a typical touch in terms of grain management and contrast handling (I haven't seen many of their color restorations so can't say for these). So here you go for Asia too.


Ritrovata has been picked on (legitimately) because their color signature is more intense hence more easy to notice, and because they're very active, including on some very high profile titles. But pretty much all labs have their own way to procede and they all leave signatures.
For instance, Ritrovata B&W gradings are easily recognizable too, but I almost never read anything about those despite their obvious signature.

[Pecker]

The booklet says “...restored in 4K by Legardere Studios.”

A little Googling shows that restoration was done in 2018, so it’s a more recent effort than the other Blu-ray Discs out there.

[kmhofmann]

Originally Posted by johnpaul2

I've read that Ritrovata are aware that they leave a visible color signature and have been reducing its intensity over the past months (years ?).

That would be fantastic; we just now need to build the time machine!

But more seriously, is there a good source for this information? I'm still very, very scared every time I hear the name L'Immagine Ritrovata, since they have ****ed up so many film restorations in the color grading stage, and so few of them had the chance to be redone. How on earth can their clients be happy with what they deliver(ed)?

[Sifox211]

I'd still love to know why they leave a yellow tint - shouldn't there be a quality checking stage where the colour timing is checked against some reference?

I work in software development and we have to use colours that comply with our corporate standards. If they weren't right the branding police would be on us like a ton of bricks. Of course, knowing what the correct colour is for a film restoration is nothing like as clear cut, but considering the expense of making a film you'd think there would be reference materials made. After all, they've long used colour references for printed material.

[kmhofmann]

Originally Posted by Sifox211

I'd still love to know why they leave a yellow tint - shouldn't there be a quality checking stage where the colour timing is checked against some reference?

One possible explanation was given by member 2-perf here:
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...7#post12947807

[johnpaul2]

Originally Posted by Sifox211

After all, they've long used colour references for printed material.

Many of the older HD masters were graded in ways more in line with what customers were expected to like to see more on their CRT sets than what was the original photography, hence the tons of magenta-pushed overly-contrasted HD masters we got, especially from studios (and even more especially from Universal and MGM).

I don't doubt those were graded however with some color references anyway, but still, that's what we got for more than a decade.

The main specificity of Ritrovata is their over-reliance on LUT, especially some that seemingly applies some kind of "vintage" aspect to the photo (hence the warmer yellower aspect of their gradings).

From what I read, and from what I saw from them, 2-perf's explanation looks about right : that's what they feel replicate the original look of a movie. The issue however is that their LUT tends to give some kind of blanket color-signature to their gradings. It's not refined enough. I've seen numerous archive copies this past year projected during retrospectives, and none have this kind of blanket yellow dull aspect. They ARE kind of yellower and warmer, but even when this happens, you'll still find pure whites and pure blacks within the frames. You can't find that in these Ritrovata gradings. Instead, what you get is a color signature way too recognizable.

Originally Posted by kmhofmann

But more seriously, is there a good source for this information? I'm still very, very scared every time I hear the name L'Immagine Ritrovata, since they have ****ed up so many film restorations in the color grading stage, and so few of them had the chance to be redone. How on earth can their clients be happy with what they deliver(ed)?

This French DVD Classik member visited their Paris lab to discuss their gradings. They told him they agreed some of their past restorations were too "yellow" and if redone today, they would dial it down and that, as a whole, they have been toning down the intensity of this specificity of their gradings.

[kmhofmann]

Originally Posted by johnpaul2

The main specificity of Ritrovata is their over-reliance on LUT, especially some that seemingly applies some kind of "vintage" aspect to the photo (hence the warmer yellower aspect of their gradings).

From what I read, and from what I saw from them, 2-perf's explanation looks about right : that's what they feel replicate the original look of a movie. The issue however is that their LUT tends to give some kind of blanket color-signature to their gradings. It's not refined enough. I've seen numerous archive copies this past year projected during retrospectives, and none have this kind of blanket yellow dull aspect. They ARE kind of yellower and warmer, but even when this happens, you'll still find pure whites and pure blacks within the frames. You can't find that in these Ritrovata gradings. Instead, what you get is a color signature way too recognizable.

Indeed. I don't mind a bit of a warmer vintage look. I'm sure many of the HD masters in the 2000s were too magenta, and I'm sure a somewhat warmer look is in line with the proper theatrical appearance or the intentions of the filmmakers.
But Ritrovata have been constantly overdoing their yellow grading that it's not funny anymore.

I watched Rivette's 'The Nun' last night, and while I found the look of the picture to be stunning in a certain way, at pretty much every moment in the film I was thinking "this cannot be how the film is supposed to look!" In this case they actually heavily tealed the whole damn movie so you'd think it was Eclair (

THE NUN - Official Trailer - From director Jacques Rivette - YouTube

). All the highlights were green and muted -- not a single pure white to be found! On production photos from the period the actors' costumes have very nice shades of blue... nope, all green-gray here.

Originally Posted by johnpaul2

This French DVD Classik member visited their Paris lab to discuss their gradings. They told him they agreed some of their past restorations were too "yellow" and if redone today, they would dial it down and that, as a whole, they have been toning down the intensity of this specificity of their gradings.

Interesting forum posts, thanks!
While it may be unrealistic, I do hope that they will revisit some of their past yellow/teal disasters again and re-work them into something more faithful to the different cinematographers' visions, removing their infamously recognizable blanket tint.
Guess someone needs to pay them for it, but this should be relatively cost-effective given that all other restoration work has already been done. And they're pretty good at restoration in general... if they didn't mess up most of their color grading choices so badly.

[Edgar_in_Indy]

Has anybody been able to confirm that this disc won't play in Region A?

[fatboyslim142]

Originally Posted by Edgar_in_Indy

Has anybody been able to confirm that this disc won't play in Region A?

DVDcompare:

http://dvdcompare.net/review.php?rid=6246