Idea: 'Rear Window' and 'Vertigo' preservations?

Is anyone interested in doing full justice to these classics? The current Blu-Rays by Universal, while nice, have a fair amount of issues.

Vertigo looks better than it has in years, though I can say, from having seen a dye-transfer print, that the Blu-Ray’s colors don’t fully emulate the grandeur of an original presentation. The end scenes suffer worst of all, without any regard to the subtle cyan hues that indicated night in the print I watched.

According to Robert Harris, Rear Window could look better. He cites Grace Kelly’s iconic introduction as one section that was superior in the earlier photochemical restoration. The opening credits of the Blu-Ray have also been noise-reduced.

That being said, I would propose the following preservations:

1. The Blu-Ray, which has a great amount of detail, should be color-corrected to match a dye-transfer print. While the colors of the Blu-Ray are lacking, I believe that a more accurate can be resolved with tweaking. There are quite a few people on this board capable of great-looking color correction. For this, I’d be more than happy to provide reference materials via PM. Just contact me.
2. Rear Window- This preservation is far more straightforward. Before the Blu-Ray was released, there was a 1080i HDTV-TS of the photochemical restoration floating around. Does anyone still have it, and, if so, could you please share? The links from tehparadox are dead, and I can’t find any torrents. Usenet may be the best place to look.

If anyone could help with the proper presentation of these classics, it would be much appreciated.

Is the dye-transfer print you saw an original, or a 70mm print of the 1995 restoration? I know that the Castro in San Francisco still runs the film in 70mm sometimes, and I presume it's the restoration (especially considering that said restoration's world premiere was at the Castro).

(And BTW: Have you ever seen the 70mm print at the Castro? And if so, does it have the infamous 5.1 remix that was on the original laserdisc/DVD?)

I'm referring to an original 1958 dye-transfer print. It had quite a bit of film artifacts, but the colors still looked absolutely fantastic. 

The 70mm print that runs at the Castro, which I have seen, is from the 1996 restoration. It was my first theatrical experience watching Vertigo, and it honestly looks quite nice. The superiority of 70mm over 35mm detail-wise is very evident. About 38 years younger than the dye-transfer print I saw, it was much cleaner, artifact-wise. Nevertheless, over time, it too has accumulated some dirt. 

The colors on the 70mm are more accurate than home video transfers based off of the 1996 restoration would have you think. The transfers are paler than the prints, and the grain structure is quite odd. I think, though I might be wrong, that Lowry Digital did the scan in 2004 when their process was still very imperfect. Strangely enough, the letter-writing scene looks terrible in the 70mm print, which was noted in contemporary reviews for the restoration. 

To answer your question, though, it unfortunately does have the infamous 5.1 remix, which, for my money, is the worst remixing job for a movie ever done. 

I saw Rear Window in the theater the other day.  The picture was bizarrely soft, but the AMC's around here seem to have that problem on just about everything, so it didn't surprise me that much.  I have no doubt it would have looked much better at Harkins, which consistently has superior projection quality.

I'd seen it before a few times, but never on the big screen, so it was a lot of fun to get to experience that.  The colors weren't as vibrant as I would have expected, but that might have more to do with the shortcomings of the theater than the master itself.  Still, I'd expect a proper Technicolor print to outperform it by a significant margin.

The Aluminium Falcon said:

To answer your question, though, it unfortunately does have the infamous 5.1 remix, which, for my money, is the worst remixing job for a movie ever done.

I think the 2004 remix of Star Wars would like to venture an opposing view . . .  ;)

Not sure it helps but here is what that 16mm print of Rear Window that was sold on ebay looked liked:

It looks like it had started going a little red.

Aluminum Falcon, I got a HDTV copy of Rear Window that is 4:3 and another that was 16:9. I believe both were off the "Russian Tracker". Let me check to see if they are actually different from the official BD. They may be the same master.

Scratch that, The HDTV copies I have are the same master as the BD

captainsolo said:

IMO I now think the best color-wise for both are the original DVDs because they struck a video master from the restored prints. Of course you then have to factor in the fluctuations caused by a 2000 era process but still at least for RW, the old DVD just has that spark that is lacking in even the new BD.

 Agreed. The first DVD release is closest to RAH's intentions, judging by its accuracy to the 70mm print I saw. I don't know why previous transfers tweaked the color away from this. 

That said, I'm vaguely curious to see the pre-restoration LDs of both films. Might be interesting. Rear Window looks like it was colored warmer before in the restoration comparison on the DVD. 

hairy_hen said:

I saw Rear Window in the theater the other day.  The picture was bizarrely soft, but the AMC's around here seem to have that problem on just about everything, so it didn't surprise me that much. 

 I've heard, though I might be incorrect that many theaters project Fathom events on the projectors they use for commercials before the movie and not their actual movie projectors. 

PDB said:

Aluminum Falcon, I got a HDTV copy of Rear Window that is 4:3 and another that was 16:9. I believe both were off the "Russian Tracker". Let me check to see if they are actually different from the official BD. They may be the same master.

A 4:3 copy? That's interesting. I can't find anything off of the Russian Tracker anymore. Even if the 4:3 is the BD master, it would be interesting if it was open matte, as the laser was. 

I have a 4.37 GB copy of the pre-BD Rear Window HDTV broadcast, though I know better quality (1080i) was floating around before. 

Hate to bump my own thread, but, no one kept the original 1080i Rear Window HDTV broadcast using the Harris Restoration that was floating around a couple of years ago?

I've tried to find it, but, sadly, to no avail.