Anyway, would you say the projection was accurate to the old German DVD, the one that was transferred from a print?
No. The colours in that version are washed out, and it was not transferred digitally it was very obviously done by telecine which never produces a projection-accurate result regardless of whether you’re using a release print, a TV print, or whatever. I do not think it was even transferred for DVD - it looks like they used a broadcast tape literally transferred in the 1980’s for that release. It’s a full-screen transfer, outside of the US no one did full-screen transfers for DVD, even in 1997. And when they did the first digital restoration, and broadcast it, it was in widescreen.
The colors are definitely washed out, but the general color biases are what I’m referring to. I think that skin tones are too frequently pinkish, and some scenes seem very dark, but most of the scenes I’ve compared look somewhat similar to the Blu-ray, and match your description of the print you saw pretty well.
I posted in the fanres thread that I think it seems to be the most accurate (I meant generally, though I didn’t really specify what I thought was accurate about it in that post), and that it matches the dozens of 35mm frames posted online rather closely, so I would think that the biases introduced by the telecine were subtle. With the washed out contrast it wouldn’t be projection accurate of course, but a subtle regrade of the BD on a shot by shot basis to try and match the color consistency of the DVD seems like a worthy effort to me.
I think I’m going to try doing that with my updated regrade, and maybe those of us who are not quite satisfied with the BD will be happy with an alternative that isn’t far off from it. I’m curious, for everyone who has my regrade and enjoys it over the BD, would you guys be interested in something that stays closer to the BD and just makes subtle shot to shot changes?