L'Inferno (1911) aka Dante's Inferno coming from Terror Vision

[whiteberry]

Inferno, directed by Italian filmmakers Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan, and Giuseppe de Liguorois (contemporaries of pioneer filmmakers Méliès and Segundo de Chomón), was one of the first feature-length films ever created. This is especially significant to us because it was one of the first horror films ever shown on the big screen. Made over the course of 3 years, from 1908 to 1911, what they were able to do in those early years with special effects and very few rules is remarkable. Dante's Inferno, aka L'inferno aka Inferno, is loosely based on Alighieri's poem of the same name. Our lead, Dante (played by Salvatore Papa), is guided through the Nine Circles Of Hell, an allegory for the sins committed by humanity on Earth.

Terror Vision is presenting a new 4K restoration from surviving elements of an over 100-year-old film that was one of the first of its kind and inspired countless filmmakers through the ages.... giving us what we know and love today. This release includes a new commentary and 3 new scores created specifically for this release! The film is presented in B&W but also we have a "Red Tint" version, giving it a more hellish look. Red tints were used at the beginning of the 20th century as an anti-copy system. Red colors were more difficult to shoot and couldn’t be printed on film. This never-seen-before version was a copy of the international English version used across the world after the release of the movie in 1911. Therefore, the intertitles are in English.

Special Features:

New Score by Graveface Recording Artist HALEY

New Score by Michael Kiker

New Score by Laurent Pigeolet

New Commentary by Film Historian James L Neibaur

https://www.terror-vision.com/store/dantes-inferno

Inferno Trailer - YouTube

Past Updates:

Featuring a 4K restoration with two different ways to watch the movie: black & white or black & red. It will have also multiple scores to choose from.

It might use the same 4K restoration from last year:
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=351963
https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=33176

[bigshot]

I bet this is the same transfer as the problematic European one. If it's the restoration that's tinted red, I'd recommend passing on it.

[Kakihara]

Originally Posted by bigshot

I bet this is the same transfer as the problematic European one. If it's the restoration that's tinted red, I'd recommend passing on it.

What’s wrong with it? The fact that there’s a red tint option is what intrigues me about it.

[Erasmus Craven]

Originally Posted by Kakihara

What’s wrong with it? The fact that there’s a red tint option is what intrigues me about it.

Seems like EVERYTHING is wrong with it...
The thread in the French sub-forum:
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=351963

[Mr. Thomsen]

Originally Posted by whiteberry

Featuring a 4K restoration with two different ways to watch the movie: black & white or black & red. It will have also multiple scores to choose from.

It might use the same 4K restoration from last year:

Oh, FFS! Please, don't use that horrible, horrible amateur "restoration" from Redwood Creek ...

If you want to do it, get hold of the 2021 restoration from Cineteca di Bologna. It is the definitive restoration, based on several surviving prints, and it is tined, like the film was originally.

All tinted copies uploaded on YouTube are actually from Cineteca di Bologna's previous restoration from the 00s, and the new one builds upon that.

[Mr. Thomsen]

Originally Posted by bigshot

I bet this is the same transfer as the problematic European one. If it's the restoration that's tinted red, I'd recommend passing on it.

Same here. Don't support shoddy amateurs playing film preservationist (= Redwood Creek)!

The red print is an anomaly, which may be interesting to watch, if you have access to a real print, but definitely does not work well digitally.

The film was not supposed to be watched in red or in black and white, but should be watched tinted, like the majority of silent films. For that, there is only one source - the recent Cineteca di Bologna restoration. Cineteca di Bologna even had a couple of new scores made for their previous restoration, which are also available for the new one.

I can't think of a single silent film fan who will buy this release, given the abysmal reception of the Redwood Creek "restoration".

I have to say, if this is indeed just the Redwood Creek version coupled with a random black and white print, Terror Vision's reputation just got a HUGE hole in it, in my book.

[MifuneFan]

It will be sourced from that same 4K restoration from Redwood Creek. In the video last night, Justin Beahm of Terror-Vision talks about Fabian Delage, of Redwood, scouring the world for years for the best prints to do the restoration, etc... and he sounded pleased about how it looks. He says it'll be an expanded release, by which he means more scores, and different ways to view the film.

[WaverBoy]

This sounds like an instant fail then. Nope.

[cakefactory]

Originally Posted by Mr. Thomsen

Same here. Don't support shoddy amateurs playing film preservationist (= Redwood Creek)!

The red print is an anomaly, which may be interesting to watch, if you have access to a real print, but definitely does not work well digitally.

The film was not supposed to be watched in red or in black and white, but should be watched tinted, like the majority of silent films. For that, there is only one source - the recent Cineteca di Bologna restoration. Cineteca di Bologna even had a couple of new scores made for their previous restoration, which are also available for the new one.

I can't think of a single silent film fan who will buy this release, given the abysmal reception of the Redwood Creek "restoration".

I have to say, if this is indeed just the Redwood Creek version coupled with a random black and white print, Terror Vision's reputation just got a HUGE hole in it, in my book.

Is this correct restoration just not available for home viewing, then? Are they asking too much for licensing rights or something?

[Vanguard]

Originally Posted by cakefactory

Is this correct restoration just not available for home viewing, then? Are they asking too much for licensing rights or something?

Cineteca di Bologna did release their earlier restoration on DVD in 2011, but that particular release is extremely hard to find.

I'd be surprised if they did not release their newer 2021 restoration on some type of home media. As to when and with whom, is a complete unknown.

[MifuneFan]

Is there actually a 2021 restoration from Ritrovata? So many sources point to it being a restoration from 2007, with only an audio restoration done in 2021 by Edison studio.

[Mr. Thomsen]

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

Is there actually a 2021 restoration from Ritrovata? So many sources point to it being a restoration from 2007, with only an audio restoration done in 2021 by Edison studio.

The 2021 restoration was a digital restoration. Supposedly because the 2007 restoration was either not digitized properly or digitized in too low a resolution. I can't remember where I read about it, might have been in a post by Nazca, or it might have been on Nitrateville or CHFB.

Some say they also changed some of the tints, so it now emulates hand coloring in segments. But I have not been able to find any conformation of this.

This program from a screening at Brown University last year confirms that the film was "[d]igitally restored in 2021 at L‘Immagine Ritrovata laboratory."

- https://events.brown.edu/italian/eve...dantes-inferno

[bigshot]

Originally Posted by Kakihara

What’s wrong with it? The fact that there’s a red tint option is what intrigues me about it.

The red tint was a huge problem. It reduced the contrast to the point that it made the film look like a bad dupe. But that wasn't the only problem. The interlacing was messed up, there were artifacts all over the place, and the restoration of the scenes was wildly inconsistent. Nothing matched well.

I tried ripping the disk and bringing it into Premiere and fixing it. I succeeded in making it almost as good as a fairly decent DVD. It sounds like they followed my settings and they will include a B&W version on the upcoming disc too.

Here's my report from a few months back on my attempt to get the disc to a watchable state...

I made a clip of a short bit of what I ended up with... https://animationresources.org/stuff/infernoclip.mp4

This is compressed to stream and it's mono sound, but it will give you an idea of what is buried under all the red tint and sloppy digital processing on this disc.

Here is an outline of my process in case anyone wants to do this themselves...

1) Rip the disk to MKV. (I am the director of a non-profit digital archive and can do this legally.)

2) In Handbrake, export an HD m4v with the following settings: FILTERS: Detelecine Default, Interlace Detection Default, Interlace Yadif Bob, Colorspace Off, Color Grayscale checked. VIDEO: 25fps, Peak Framerate (VFR) Constant Quality 12 The rest of the settings are pretty standard.

3) Take that export from Handbrake into Premiere Pro and apply the following settings: Lumetri color > basic correction > light > Exposure 2.0, Contrast -50, Highlights, 75 Shadows -100, Whites 37.5, Blacks -25. Export.

4) Take that export back into Handbrake and export to normal 25fps PAL DVD quality.

I couldn't figure out what frame rate this was intended to be, but it would have looked much better if they had run it at 15fps encoded 30 or 12fps encoded 24. If they had done that, they wouldn't have even needed to interlace. At the time this was shot, cameras were hand cranked, so speed varied, and it varied again depending on how theater owners projected it. So there is no excuse for locking it into a frame rate that doesn't work well with blu-ray specs. There's still some combing, but no setting I found eliminated all of that.

Likewise, the red tint was a huge mistake. It muddies up the picture and makes it look fuzzy. Red is the most difficult color to work with in video, and it is different than yellow or green in that if you dial it back, it stops looking red and begins looking pink. There was enough latitude to force it to B&W and rebalance the contrast levels, but if they had done that before authoring the disc, it would have been cleaner and would have maintained more detail.

The other problem here is the noise reduction. Some scenes look like the film is being projected underwater and other look way over sharpened with every pebble on the ground being over defined. There is no consistent look. Knocking it down to 480i PAL evens all that out, and not much is lost, but this sure isn't the 4K look that they advertised. If they had left some grain and applied noise reduction with an eye to the scenes around the scene they are working on, instead of doing each one separately, there would have been more detail and more of a unified look. You don't have to remove all grain and noise- just pare it back to where there aren't jarring jumps in grain and noise.

The scanning looks great. The speckles and dirt are super sharp HD, so I'm sure the scan got everything there was to get out of the film element. But it looks like this project was rushed at the end and the digital cleanup and disc authoring weren't done properly. It's a shame because the film element they used was pretty good. Maybe the 4K transfer can be reapproached in the future. For now, at least I got a good DVD out of it.

[bigshot]

Originally Posted by whiteberry

Inferno Trailer - YouTube

This is NOT the trailer for the restoration of the film we're talking about. This is an earlier DVD release.

[WaverBoy]

Yeah, I think I’ll wait until the proper 2021 restoration hits Blu.

[edwardiii]

a lot of hand-wringing going on in here, just wanted to point out two things:

1) redwood creek’s first two releases (haxan, l’inferno) suffered from poor encoding. their subsequent releases (the magician, warning shadows) were greatly improved.

2) a restoration and an encoding are two different things. terror vision could be using redwood creek’s restoration, but doing their own encoding, which would likely (hopefully) correct the issues with redwood’s original release.

so maybe give terror vision the benefit of the doubt here and wait until the disc is actually released before condemning it?

[MifuneFan]

Originally Posted by edwardiii

a lot of hand-wringing going on in here, just wanted to point out two things:

1) redwood creek’s first two releases (haxan, l’inferno) suffered from poor encoding. their subsequent releases (the magician, warning shadows) were greatly improved.

2) a restoration and an encoding are two different things. terror vision could be using redwood creek’s restoration, but doing their own encoding, which would likely (hopefully) correct the issues with redwood’s original release.

so maybe give terror vision the benefit of the doubt here and wait until the disc is actually released before condemning it?

The restoration is the issue being discussed here, not the encoding.

[bigshot]

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

The restoration is the issue being discussed here, not the encoding.

No, that isn't true. The main problem was the interlacing mistakes, which falls under the category of encoding. The other problem with it was the choice of only including a red tint, which they can correct by going back to the raw scan and dialing out all the color to bring it back to B&W.

There were sequence to sequence inconsistencies, but I think that is a problem with the source material. Every home video release of this film has had that problem. It remains to be seen what the noise reduction looks like once it's interlaced properly and the red tint is removed.

The fact remains that this is the oldest existing feature film. It isn't ever going to look perfect. All we can hope for is that the restoration and encoding don't add noise.

They sold few enough of these disks through the kickstarter, and they charged enough money that if Redwood is willing to correct the encoding errors, they should be able to supply replacement discs to the people who supported their kickstarter. If they did that, I would give them a chance again, but as it stands, I feel stung by my experience with their release of Inferno.

[MifuneFan]

Originally Posted by bigshot

No, that isn't true. The main problem was the interlacing mistakes, which falls under the category of encoding. The other problem with it was the choice of only including a red tint, which they can correct by going back to the raw scan and dialing out all the color to bring it back to B&W.

There were sequence to sequence inconsistencies, but I think that is a problem with the source material. Every home video release of this film has had that problem. It remains to be seen what the noise reduction looks like once it's interlaced properly and the red tint is removed.

The fact remains that this is the oldest existing feature film. It isn't ever going to look perfect. All we can hope for is that the restoration and encoding don't add noise.

They sold few enough of these disks through the kickstarter, and they charged enough money that if Redwood is willing to correct the encoding errors, they should be able to supply replacement discs to the people who supported their kickstarter. If they did that, I would give them a chance again, but as it stands, I feel stung by my experience with their release of Inferno.

So you believe the underlying restoration work they did is fine? From the way Mr. Thomsen has spoken of Redwood and their work here, the restoration itself seems to be problematic. Mr. Thomsen's other argument is that there is a superior restoration out there.

[edwardiii]

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

The restoration is the issue being discussed here, not the encoding.

it’s tough to judge the quality of a scan/restoration based on a botched encoding, and I doubt anyone here has access to the original scan file to determine whether a decent encoding could be made from it.

I’m just happy someone’s willing to take another crack at encoding a scan of an incredibly rare print, I’ll withhold judgment until the final results are in.

it would be great if the cineteca di bologna restoration saw a home video release as well, but even if I end up owning three copies of l’inferno it’ll still be nowhere near the number of copies I have of nosferatu or pandora’s box…