Women In Love 4K UHD (1969) (BFI)

[JackyJacquard]

Has anyone grabbed this from Rarewaves recently? Did it still come with a booklet?

Iirc it was out of stock on their site for a while, I’m on the fence about paying nearly RRP if I might get a 2nd pressing

[Jorvic]

Originally Posted by JackyJacquard

Has anyone grabbed this from Rarewaves recently? Did it still come with a booklet?

Iirc it was out of stock on their site for a while, I’m on the fence about paying nearly RRP if I might get a 2nd pressing

Got mine from Rarewaves a couple of weeks ago and it has the booklet. Nice slipcover too. Gorgeous transfer on the disc with abundant but well-refined grain. A truly lovely edition.

Originally Posted by nicwood

The master is excellent. Beautifully graded, HDR is tasteful and encoding by FiM shows no issues. This is clearly one of the best remasters of a color film released this year.

Hope this does well for the BFI.

Agree that it looks great. From about 50:06 (viewing in DV) I noticed – about two or three times and appearing only very briefly – some white speckles at the top right-hand side of the frame. More evident because it's a night scene (Rupert Birkin and Ursula Brangwen talking). I would think this is source-related?

Only a minor point to mention because overall this is so nice to watch.

[McCrutchy]

I watched this for the first time yesterday. I own the BFI Blu-ray, but, to my shame, I've never watched it and like most of my collection, it's been packed away.

In Dolby Vision, this is an absolutely gorgeous presentation. I did notice the very minor damage on the right hand side at times, while there also seems to be a small staining on the right edge during some shots in the Switzerland sequence, but I assume that these issues are inherent since, according to the booklet, this is from a new scan of the negative, as nicwood noted above. The remaster is superb with the film looking fresh and clean, but while some scenes look as though they could have been shot today, the presentation retains a beautiful grain structure. The LPCM Mono sounds nice and clear to me.

I dug through most of the extras and they're generally excellent. I watched the film with both audio commentaries (originally released on the MGM US DVD in 2003) and it was great to hear from Ken Russell, who mainly talks about the actors and how to achieve shots, while Larry Kramer talks more about the production and the novel (which he seemed to adore) as well as specifically about "the censor", i.e. John Trevelyan, and which scenes they were forced to trim. Kramer does take a dig at Glenda Jackson's appearance, while also commenting on the large size of her and Jennie Linden's breasts (Jackson was pregnant and Linden had recently given birth), which is pretty funny, considering he was a gay man. Both men also relate pretty amusing stories about the famous nude wrestling scene. Incidentally, both tracks are solo, but based on some muffled background noise and giggling, Russell seems to be talking to a younger woman, so it wouldn't surprise me if MGM provided people to sit with the two men and prompt them for their commentaries, as both are more or less constant. If you like the film a lot, I think you should listen to both, especially because...

Right out of the gate in the new interview with Alexander Verney-Elliott (AKA Alexander Russell), he contradicts something about the nature of Kramer's role in his father's film, which Kramer doesn't bother to mention at all. I don't know who is telling the truth and ultimately it doesn't matter, but it's still funny.

The other extras were found on previous releases, but BFI have added some of the ones that were only on the Criterion Blu-ray (which I don't currently own and haven't seen), including vintage on-location interviews with Larry Kramer, Alan Bates and Jennie Linden from ATV Today and of course, Russell's medium-length autobiographical documentary A British Picture: Portrait of an Enfant Terrible (1989) which has been nicely upscaled and runs slightly longer than on the Criterion, for some reason. This features Russell's family (including what must be his young grandson, Rupert, as him), along with clips from his music videos and a few of his films like Mahler, Clouds of Glory and the then-upcoming The Rainbow. Most importantly, it's insightful and pretty hilarious, too. I watched Second Best (which doesn't have the interview with Alan Bates, but unlike the Criterion, is in full 1080p) and all the other extras, except for the NFT audio interview with Glenda Jackson. All of the video extras are either native or upscaled to 1080p24.

The Criterion still has unique extras, including then-new 2017 interviews with Billy Williams and Michael Bradsell and archival interviews with Ken Russell and Glenda Jackson, while oddly, the isolated score option from the BFI Blu-ray has been dropped (perhaps a licensing issue?), but the BSC interview with Billy Williams from 2015 is great. Perhaps one day, I'll grab the Criterion for the additional extras, though I may wait for their own 4K UHD edition. Regardless, I don't feel a strong need to own another copy of the film, as the BFI 4K UHD release seems pretty definitive.

Incidentally, the booklet (which I haven't read yet) is dedicated to Billy Williams, who passed away only a couple of months ago in late May, aged 95. Full disclosure: I didn't notice this myself, but first saw it in the review of this 4K UHD disc at Rewind and then confirmed it with my own copy once I had it. Their review also helped some with identifying what extras were not on the BFI Blu-ray, since, as I said, I can't get to my own copy of that release.

I think the film is absolutely wonderful and now I'd really like to read the novel, but I'll probably start with The Rainbow, which is an earlier novel about the same characters.

[UnionJackMix]

Does this come with a slipcover?

[dallywhitty]

Originally Posted by UnionJackMix

Does this come with a slipcover?

Yup.

[UnionJackMix]

Originally Posted by dallywhitty

Yup.

Thanks for the confirmation, hopefully hmv online still has them.