Midnight Cowboy (1969)

[JohnCarpenterFan]

Originally Posted by captainjoe

Looks beautiful as I expected. And before anyone starts to cry teal, remember that florescent lighting gives off a green colour temperature.

Old:
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/scree...737&position=6
New:
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/scree...410&position=7

Except the standard at the time was to photochemicallly time out the green so the image would have a more neutral appearance. Of course, I can think of a few exceptions but I've seen some Blu-rays that didn't time out the green when on the original prints they did.

Whether Midnight Cowboy did this or not, I don't know. Also fluorescent lighting doesn't account for the other screenshots which also have a green hue with no fluorescent lighting so it's clearly not a result of that, but rather the result of color timing or use of camera filters.

Originally Posted by Markgway

Judging by the DVD Beaver caps, the new master has been heavily tealed. The MGM maybe less sharp, but it's a much more natural looking transfer. And it's not just the interiors that are affected. Look at the skies (teal vs blue). If people like the new master, that's fine, but calling other people out for being critical of it isn't on.

Colors may be more lifelike on the MGM, but that doesn't make it more accurate. Virtually all of MGM's older masters look the same, with heavily stylized films being stripped of their unique appearance so that they'd look "natural", so it should be no surprise that the colors look more "natural" on the MGM, although from what I'm seeing, the Criterion looks more natural in the sense that it looks more like what you'd expect to see on film.

The MGM disc should not be held as some sort of reference given their history with older masters. I'm much more inclined to believe that their latest effort is much more accurate since their modern 4K remasters have been and it also has the involvement of the cinematographer.

This is just like when people criticized MGM's remastered Rain Man for not having more "natural" colors and for being "cropped" compared to the older disc. Turned out that the remaster looked like how it did originally on 35mm and the "cropping" was nothing of the sort, it was just that the older edition was badly misframed and showed much more information than intended which ruined the compositions.