Wake in Fright

[jah13]

Drafthouse Films has acquired the film for U.S. so you can probably count on an eventual Blu and DVD from them, which will likely be based on the Aussie restoration and, thus, look a lot like the Madman disc. I have that disc...it's certainly a lot brighter than the original negative (based on the restoration comparison on the disc), but it does not look very filmic. It has the green, pale tint over the whole film, which you can see in the caps on DVD Beaver's review. Skies that appear very blue on the original negative are pretty washed out and devoid of color in the restored version. In the booklet, one of the people who worked on the restoration remarks that they deliberately left the grain in the opening credits sequence...there is no mention about grain retention / removal for the rest of the feature, however.

The director, Ted Kotcheff, claims this is the best the film ever looked. As for me, I wasn't around to see the film in its original incarnation so I'm not exactly sure how it should really look, but I have mixed feelings on this restoration.