Michel Hafner (26 September 2002):
The Hitchcock classic North by Northwest (1959) is in need of restoration just like Vertigo (1958) and Rear Window (1954) were. Watching this DVD you would never guess it, though.
It takes a few minutes at most to see that this DVD is very unusual. The film on it does not look like a ~40 years old film. I'm not sure it even looks like genuine film. More like a cross of hyperclean video and film. Why?
Because it has been digitally cleaned up to an extent I have not seen before, and on a quality level I have not seen before as well. The digital magicians reside at Lowry Digital Images in Burbank, California. And they operate a large array of fast computers that process each digitized film frame with powerful software, removing grain, scratches, dust, speckles etc. without leaving a trace behind, well, almost.
Digital noise and grain reduction is a very complicated matter indeed, if you aim for perfection. The people at Lowry seem to do so and the results are quite impressive. More later.
The film master used is, hm, clean? Who knows. It certainly
is very clean now as it presents itself on the DVD, and steady as well. You really have to go hunting for the usual speckles etc. And with such a clear view you suddenly notice such peculiar problems as a fingerprint in the crop duster scene that was left untouched for whatever reasons.
Color and contrast rendition are remarkable for such material.
Image sharpness is often on the same level as very current films. The noise and grain level? Low, low, low.
Compression is fine. Remains the image quality stepping stone of some many DVDs, video artifacts.
And here too the DVD shines. It has none of the obvious and annoying kind. The digital clean up has left some minor artifacts behind. Sometimes there is a bit of flicker visible that messes with highlights or eats into letters (opening credits). Textures in fast motion are noticeably noisier/grainier than the rest of the picture. Understandably so as perfect noise reduction within complex fast moving image parts is not much different from asking for the perpetuum mobile. There is a bit of edge enhancement visible as well. But this can not really spoil an overall dazzling look.
If I have to criticise something it's the recording level of the new 5.1 mix. The loudest sounds are nowhere near 0db and dialogue is mixed too low.
The supplemental documentary offers good image quality as well.
This is a first rate presentation of an old classic film. Purists might object to the almost total removal of film grain which goes beyond what release prints can offer. Film does not look so clean under normal circumstances. This approach forbids itself in cases where film grain is an integral part of the film's look and explicitly intended by the film makers to be visible and give texture to the film, as opposed to being an unwanted or irrelevant byproduct of printing the negative to an interpositive, this to a duplicate negative and this to the release prints. Is this film a case that needs visible grain? I leave it up to you to decide that.
As far as I'm concerned it's two thumbs up, way up. Highly recommended.
