The Rules of the Game 4K UHD (1939)

[MifuneFan]

The Rules of the Game 4K Blu-ray

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray of the film with special features
• Introduction to the film by director Jean Renoir
• Audio commentary written by film scholar Alexander Sesonske and read by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich
• Comparison of the film’s two endings
• Selected-scene analysis by Renoir historian Chris Faulkner
• Excerpts from a 1966 French television program by filmmaker Jacques Rivette
• Part one of Jean Renoir, a two-part 1993 documentary by film critic David Thompson
• Video essay about the film’s production, release, and 1959 reconstruction
• Interview with film critic Olivier Curchod
• Interview from a 1965 episode of the French television series Les écrans de la ville with Jean Gaborit and Jacques Durand
• Interviews with set designer Max Douy; Renoir’s son, Alain; and actor Mila Parély
• PLUS: An essay by Sesonske; writings by Jean Renoir, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bertrand Tavernier, and François Truffaut; and tributes to the film by J. Hoberman, Kent Jones, Paul Schrader, Wim Wenders, Robert Altman, and others

New cover by Raphael Geroni

https://www.criterion.com/films/295-...es-of-the-game.

[TheBondFan]

Already have the French one.

[Gacivory]

Kept almost importing! So this is exciting!

[mikesncc1701]

Incoming no HDR/DV comments...and I'll be the first one. In my opinion, those are a few of the main selling points of the format. I mean, even I own a couple titles like The Great Escape and In The Heat Of The Night but come on...

[captainjoe]

Does the other release feature HDR? If so why is Criterion dumbing down their own editions?

[MifuneFan]

Originally Posted by captainjoe

Does the other release feature HDR? If so why is Criterion dumbing down their own editions?

This is what professorwho said about it in the news announcement for BFI's upcoming Blu-ray only release of the title:

The 4K restoration was completed in SDR and forced into HDR by the authoring house who worked on the UHD, so perhaps the BFI felt that SDR wasn’t enough to justify a UHD (or more likely, perhaps that it wouldn’t sell enough to justify it).

https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=32273

[captainjoe]

Okay interesting. So it wouldn't actually be a true HDR presentation.

[MesaArchive]

Awful artwork

[dorian]

Originally Posted by captainjoe

Okay interesting. So it wouldn't actually be a true HDR presentation.

What is a "true HDR presentation"?

[captainjoe]

Anything that works off a scan before being graded. If someone is taking an SDR master and forcing it into HDR then you aren’t really getting extra dynamic range out of it so there’s very little point.

[professorwho]

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

This is what professorwho said about it in the news announcement for BFI's upcoming Blu-ray only release of the title:

Thanks for posting it before a ton of “why no HDR” comments began, MifuneFan (I was asleep) I was referencing this article here that a French friend of mine found, and was saving just in case someone announced it for either BD or UHD (I ended up posting this in the BFI thread when their BD was announced, and made reference to it in the aforementioned news post):

L’expertise que nous avons menée a révélé que lors de l’authoring, qui n’a pas été réalisé par Hiventy, le Blu-ray a été identifié comme HDR, alors que la restauration 4K de ce film s’est faite exclusivement en SDR.

Cette erreur d’identification conduit les lecteurs Blu-ray et les téléviseurs à récupérer cette information et à basculer automatiquement en mode HDR.
Pour traiter le signal identifié HDR mais qui en fait ne l’est pas, le téléviseur augmente fortement le contraste, ce qui provoque des noirs bouchés avec une perte d’information dans ces noirs.

DeepL:
Our investigation revealed that during authoring, which was not carried out by Hiventy, the Blu-ray was identified as HDR, whereas the 4K restoration of this film was done exclusively in SDR.

This misidentification leads Blu-ray players and TVs to recover this information and automatically switch to HDR mode.
To process the signal identified as HDR but which in fact is not, the TV set increases the contrast strongly, which causes blacks to be blocked with a loss of information in these blacks.

[vinvanveen]

I already own the French one. Curious whether there will be any differences.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by captainjoe

Anything that works off a scan before being graded. If someone is taking an SDR master and forcing it into HDR then you aren’t really getting extra dynamic range out of it so there’s very little point.

It's worse than that actually, in most cases it would result in incorrect picture levels being displayed. So if there is another version of this that is flagged as HDR, one should dump that version and get the new criterion if it is indeed SDR as the restoration was intended to be.

[Dubstar]

I saw the 4K DCP of the restoration last Friday and it was a mixed bag, there where a lot of instances where the image, whether it's characters or objects in the background where they go in and out of focus. It's very subtle, but I really noticed it.

[NeilZ]

This thread really makes me think we should have a thread dedicated to listing all artificial HDR releases (as in HDR used for effect without an existing HDR pass). I know the two first Evil Dead movies use this too.

In my opinion SDR is arguably better than artificial HDR made for effect.

[All Darc]

Is this new digital restoration , now in 4K, made from a better film element discovered?

The blu ray was from 4th generation element, I presume a fine grain interpositive made from a internegative made from surviving prints (original premiere edition) discovered in the middle 1950's.

What hapenned to the original prints and the 3th generation internegative made from these prints?
Lack of care, even after the first restoration, I presume...

Anyway here some history of Critirion searching for the elements for the first digital restoration a decade ago:

"Rules of the Game opened at two theatres in Paris on July 7, 1939, following the enormously successful run of John Ford's Stagecoach. Before the feature started, there was a short documentary devoted to the glories of the French Empire, with waving flags and long lines of soldiers—a paean to the pride of the French nation. Perhaps this unfortunately-chosen short subject had something to do with audience reaction to the feature. At any rate, never has there been such an opening night! The audience began to whistle almost from the beginning of the picture, and the whistling changed little by little to angry shouting. Soon almost none of the dialogue could be heard in the uproar. Some of the spectators began to tear up the seats, others made torches of newspapers; at the end of the pictures, demonstrations almost turned into a riot. Although everyone realized there was little to be done to salvage the pictures, it was twice cut after Marguerite Renoir had sat through several showings to learn which scenes caused the worst reactions.

The critical reception was hardly better; most of the newspapers called the film a betrayal of the glory of France. It was a complete commercial disaster, and in October the government forbade its showing because of its demoralizing theme. The German and Vichy continued the ban. The original negative was destroyed by bombs, and at the end of the war only a few copies of the twice-cut version remained.

Rules of the Game was revived after the war, mainly in film societies. The New York premiere, during a particularly hot summer in a theatre without air-conditioning, had predictable results.

In 1956, two young French cinema enthusiasts, Jean Gaborit and Jacques Marechal, persuaded the owner of the rights to sell them the film and all remaining material. By a stroke of luck, they came across an old letter which led to 200 boxes of film in pieces in a warehouse, miraculously untouched. With infinite patience and several years of painstaking work, they managed to reconstitute the original version with only one small piece of less than a minute missing: a conversation between Octave and Jurieu in which the former explains that what attracts him to maids is their ability to make conversation.



Part II, 1959–2006

As digital technology has become more advanced over the last twenty years the possibilities for film preservation have increased manifold. For The Rules of the Game, which, thanks to the careful reconstruction in 1959 was now once again complete, the quality of the existing elements still posed a problem. The 1959 reconstruction was created from a patchwork of footage, meaning that all new 35mm prints made from the reconstruction in the last 50 years echo the same flaws as the original (murkiness, inconsistency, scratches).

Thanks to the boom of digital home video, the technology has now appeared to remove these flaws through a complete digital transfer, but for The Rules of the Game it was still important to start with the best possible elements.

In the mid-1980's, Criterion—which specializes in restoring classic films and lacing them with scholarly commentaries—put Rules of the Game out on laser disc. Its picture quality, though superior to the 16-millimeter reels that most people had seen at art houses or college film societies, was unacceptable by the standards of today's DVD's: soft-focused, murky and way too dark.

The laser disc was mastered from a print of the film's 1959 reissue.

Today, for anyone serious about making DVD's, a film print is an inadequate source. The ideal source is the original camera negative. But the negative for Rules of the Game was stored in a French warehouse that was bombed during World War II.

If the negative is unavailable, the next best source is the 35-millimeter "fine-grain master," which is processed straight from the negative. The next best after that is a duplicate negative, which is made from the fine-grain master. A print is made from the duplicate negative. That's three generations from the original camera negative—a copy of a copy of a copy of the real thing, each copy looking less pristine than the one before.

When Peter Becker, the president of Criterion, set out to make a DVD of Rules in the summer of 2001, he knew he had to find a better source than a mere print.

His executive producer in Paris, Fumiko Takagi, learned that a French film lab called GTC possessed a duplicate negative—one generation closer to the original. Examining the lab's records, she discovered that it also owned a fine-grain master, made from a negative for the 1959 reissue—another generation closer. But nobody at the lab could find it.

For two years, she begged and cajoled them to look harder. Finally, she gave up. The duplicate negative looked pretty good—better than any existing copy, on video or film. So last June, Lee Kline, Criterion's technical director, flew to Paris to make a DVD from the dupe negative.

"It really bothered me that a fine-grain master existed someplace and we were going with something worse," Mr. Kline recalled. "But this was all we had."

Meanwhile, Ms. Takagi kept pestering GTC. Suddenly, last August, just after she'd given up all hope, the lab told her the fine-grain master had been found. Mr. Kline, who had finished his work and returned to New York, flew back to Paris to take a look.

"It wasn't awesomely better, like when they found the original camera negative for The Grand Illusion," he said, referring to another Renoir masterpiece on Criterion DVD. "But the difference was big enough to justify doing it over." "Hunting The Rules of the Game". -Fred Kaplan, NYT, 2004

After the release of The Rules of the Game on Criterion Collection DVD, the desire was still strong to see this film once again on celluloid and in theaters.

The Criterion Collection transferred the 35mm Fine Grain Composite Print that had been found in France to a high-definition (HD) digital video format called a D5. This D5 HD video was meticulously created on a system known as a Spirit Datacine at VDM laboratory in Paris, France. The audio source that was used was the original optical soundtrack. Full HD density correction was then completed at VDM to ensure that the film achieved a uniform clarity throughout, with Phillipe Reynaud, serving as Telecine operator (the individual who transfers film elements to video and performs color correction at that stage) and Maria Palazzola supervising the entire process. Then thousands of instances of dirt, debris, and scratches were removed using the MTI Digital Restoration System. Audio restoration tools were also used to reduce clicks, pops, hiss, and crackle in the soundtrack.

Those steps, however, only marked the first phase in the creation of the new print. In the summer of 2006, that same D5 HD master was subjected to three more months of careful digital restoration (to prepare for projection on larger screens) and used as the source to create a completely new 35mm film negative, the first in 50 years, by outputting the HD video master to projectable 35mm film. This painstaking, exacting work was completed at Post Logic Hollywood.

The new 35mm prints created from this negative are dramatically better than any existing copy of The Rules of the Game. The film has never looked as sparkling as it does today. -Cy Harvey, founder of Janus Films"

https://calgarycinema.org/2011-12

[Poya]

Very disappointing this won't have HDR. You'd think with all that gorgeous deep focus shots, it'd benefit much more than most B&W movies.

[Jim McGaw]

Originally Posted by TheBondFan

Already have the French one.

I have it too. What do you think? I am not impressed — way too much contrast.

[mande2013]

The French UHD uses the same restoration Criterion worked on themselves, so I wouldn't expect the Criterion to make a difference in the contrast department. The two releases will be sourced from the same master.

[Kyle15]

Originally Posted by All Darc

Is this new digital restoration , now in 4K, made from a better film element discovered?

The blu ray was from 4th generation element, I presume a fine grain interpositive made from a internegative made from surviving prints (original premiere edition) discovered in the middle 1950's.

What hapenned to the original prints and the 3th generation internegative made from these prints?
Lack of care, even after the first restoration, I presume...

Anyway here some history of Critirion searching for the elements for the first digital restoration a decade ago:

"Rules of the Game opened at two theatres in Paris on July 7, 1939, following the enormously successful run of John Ford's Stagecoach. Before the feature started, there was a short documentary devoted to the glories of the French Empire, with waving flags and long lines of soldiers—a paean to the pride of the French nation. Perhaps this unfortunately-chosen short subject had something to do with audience reaction to the feature. At any rate, never has there been such an opening night! The audience began to whistle almost from the beginning of the picture, and the whistling changed little by little to angry shouting. Soon almost none of the dialogue could be heard in the uproar. Some of the spectators began to tear up the seats, others made torches of newspapers; at the end of the pictures, demonstrations almost turned into a riot. Although everyone realized there was little to be done to salvage the pictures, it was twice cut after Marguerite Renoir had sat through several showings to learn which scenes caused the worst reactions.

The critical reception was hardly better; most of the newspapers called the film a betrayal of the glory of France. It was a complete commercial disaster, and in October the government forbade its showing because of its demoralizing theme. The German and Vichy continued the ban. The original negative was destroyed by bombs, and at the end of the war only a few copies of the twice-cut version remained.

Rules of the Game was revived after the war, mainly in film societies. The New York premiere, during a particularly hot summer in a theatre without air-conditioning, had predictable results.

In 1956, two young French cinema enthusiasts, Jean Gaborit and Jacques Marechal, persuaded the owner of the rights to sell them the film and all remaining material. By a stroke of luck, they came across an old letter which led to 200 boxes of film in pieces in a warehouse, miraculously untouched. With infinite patience and several years of painstaking work, they managed to reconstitute the original version with only one small piece of less than a minute missing: a conversation between Octave and Jurieu in which the former explains that what attracts him to maids is their ability to make conversation.



Part II, 1959–2006

As digital technology has become more advanced over the last twenty years the possibilities for film preservation have increased manifold. For The Rules of the Game, which, thanks to the careful reconstruction in 1959 was now once again complete, the quality of the existing elements still posed a problem. The 1959 reconstruction was created from a patchwork of footage, meaning that all new 35mm prints made from the reconstruction in the last 50 years echo the same flaws as the original (murkiness, inconsistency, scratches).

Thanks to the boom of digital home video, the technology has now appeared to remove these flaws through a complete digital transfer, but for The Rules of the Game it was still important to start with the best possible elements.

In the mid-1980's, Criterion—which specializes in restoring classic films and lacing them with scholarly commentaries—put Rules of the Game out on laser disc. Its picture quality, though superior to the 16-millimeter reels that most people had seen at art houses or college film societies, was unacceptable by the standards of today's DVD's: soft-focused, murky and way too dark.

The laser disc was mastered from a print of the film's 1959 reissue.

Today, for anyone serious about making DVD's, a film print is an inadequate source. The ideal source is the original camera negative. But the negative for Rules of the Game was stored in a French warehouse that was bombed during World War II.

If the negative is unavailable, the next best source is the 35-millimeter "fine-grain master," which is processed straight from the negative. The next best after that is a duplicate negative, which is made from the fine-grain master. A print is made from the duplicate negative. That's three generations from the original camera negative—a copy of a copy of a copy of the real thing, each copy looking less pristine than the one before.

When Peter Becker, the president of Criterion, set out to make a DVD of Rules in the summer of 2001, he knew he had to find a better source than a mere print.

His executive producer in Paris, Fumiko Takagi, learned that a French film lab called GTC possessed a duplicate negative—one generation closer to the original. Examining the lab's records, she discovered that it also owned a fine-grain master, made from a negative for the 1959 reissue—another generation closer. But nobody at the lab could find it.

For two years, she begged and cajoled them to look harder. Finally, she gave up. The duplicate negative looked pretty good—better than any existing copy, on video or film. So last June, Lee Kline, Criterion's technical director, flew to Paris to make a DVD from the dupe negative.

"It really bothered me that a fine-grain master existed someplace and we were going with something worse," Mr. Kline recalled. "But this was all we had."

Meanwhile, Ms. Takagi kept pestering GTC. Suddenly, last August, just after she'd given up all hope, the lab told her the fine-grain master had been found. Mr. Kline, who had finished his work and returned to New York, flew back to Paris to take a look.

"It wasn't awesomely better, like when they found the original camera negative for The Grand Illusion," he said, referring to another Renoir masterpiece on Criterion DVD. "But the difference was big enough to justify doing it over." "Hunting The Rules of the Game". -Fred Kaplan, NYT, 2004

After the release of The Rules of the Game on Criterion Collection DVD, the desire was still strong to see this film once again on celluloid and in theaters.

The Criterion Collection transferred the 35mm Fine Grain Composite Print that had been found in France to a high-definition (HD) digital video format called a D5. This D5 HD video was meticulously created on a system known as a Spirit Datacine at VDM laboratory in Paris, France. The audio source that was used was the original optical soundtrack. Full HD density correction was then completed at VDM to ensure that the film achieved a uniform clarity throughout, with Phillipe Reynaud, serving as Telecine operator (the individual who transfers film elements to video and performs color correction at that stage) and Maria Palazzola supervising the entire process. Then thousands of instances of dirt, debris, and scratches were removed using the MTI Digital Restoration System. Audio restoration tools were also used to reduce clicks, pops, hiss, and crackle in the soundtrack.

Those steps, however, only marked the first phase in the creation of the new print. In the summer of 2006, that same D5 HD master was subjected to three more months of careful digital restoration (to prepare for projection on larger screens) and used as the source to create a completely new 35mm film negative, the first in 50 years, by outputting the HD video master to projectable 35mm film. This painstaking, exacting work was completed at Post Logic Hollywood.

The new 35mm prints created from this negative are dramatically better than any existing copy of The Rules of the Game. The film has never looked as sparkling as it does today. -Cy Harvey, founder of Janus Films"

https://calgarycinema.org/2011-12

Not reading all that xoxo