Monday, June 1, 2009

Suspiria colour query

12:18 AM / Cinema / Comments3 Comments

Cinema
Blu-ray

Back on my previous site, I posted about my experience of seeing Dario Argento's Suspiria on the big screen and my observations about how closely the UK theatrical print I saw matched the overall colour, brightness and contrast balance of the North American Anchor Bay DVD from 2001. I assumed that what I had seen was an Eastmancolor print, given my somewhat pessimistic expectation that, as is so often the case, the UK had drawn the short straw and not received any of the three-strip IB Technicolor prints that supposed conform to Argento and cinematographer Luciano Tovoli's intentions as regards the film's colour palette. In that case, as Vincent Pereira correctly pointed out (comments #11 and #14), the colours of an Eastman print cannot be considered definitive. However, an anonymous visitor's comment (#16) suggests that, in actual fact, Suspiria's UK prints were IB Technicolor.

This is basically a general plea for information. Can anyone confirm or deny this? I would dearly love to know the answer to this question in order to get a better idea of what Argento and Tovoli actually had in mind for the film's visuals back in 1977. I can certainly state with some degree of certainty that, from a purely personal standpoint, the colours of the Anchor Bay DVD (and, by proxy, the print I saw projected last week) are by far the most appealing of all the iterations of the film I've come across. Certainly, the 2007 remaster that was the basis for the 2007 Italian and French DVD re-releases and the 2009 Italian Blu-ray Disc release is little more than an eyesore and it would frankly be something of a relief to have explicit confirmation once and for all that this is not representative of the look Argento and Tovoli were going for.

Any ideas?

 
3 Comments

1. Vincent Pereira said:

Michael-

If this is indeed the same print that's being screened in the U.S. in September- as it seems it will be- then yes, it WAS an I.B. Technicolor print you saw.

Also, I saw this comment on the Cinemageddon site regarding the Italian Blu-ray:

"It's a HD Master processed by Technicolor and yes, supervised by DP Luciano Tovoli, but on reliable and important forums of Italian Cinema is said that Tovoli himself is not quite satisfied and doesn't appreciate the color of this HD Master..."

Weird that he supervised it but "didn't like the color". I don't know what Italian Cinema forums this poster was referring to (and since I don't speak Italian I wouldn't be able to read them anyway), but my guess- and this goes back to something I've theorized since you first posted images from the DVD versions of this master- is that something went wrong during a conversion. If SUSPIRIA was an actual 2K scan with full film 4:4:4 color space (essentially, a Digital Intermediate), something could have gone wrong in the conversion to "standard" High-Definition 1080P 4:2:0 color space. We've seen similar issues on some Blu-rays of DI-sourced films already in terms of color values going out of whack. I can't imagine Tovoli sitting in that transfer suite, supervising something he didn't like all along. What I can imagine is Tovoli supervising something that looked right uncompressed with the full 4:4:4 color space, and then something went terribly wrong when it was downconverted to 4:2:0.

Vincent

(Posted on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 5:31 PM)

2. Author Profile Page Michael said:

Vincent:

Thanks very much for the information. The information that Tovoli isn't entirely happy with the colour actually alleviates my concerns somewhat, because (a) it's a relief to know that a multi-award-winning cinematographer didn't approve that mess and (b) it gives me more hope that, at some point in the future, the film will be revisited and the problems rectified.

I can't claim to have any knowledge of 4:4:4 to 4:2:0 conversion and precisely how much potential exists for the values to go awry during the process, but it does seem like a fairly credible explanation. I does, however, make me wonder just how bad the quality control must have been if whoever was responsible for the conversion didn't notice the discrepancies. Then again, this restoration seems to have had slack QC at many stages in the production chain, given the proliferation of noticeable DVNR glitches that I pointed out back in March.

That said, one issue that I doubt could be explained by an error in the conversion of the colour space is a bit of revisionism that occurs during the final shots, where Suzy exits the burning academy. On the Anchor Bay and older Eagle Pictures DVDs, not to mention the UK X-cert IB Technicolor print, the palette is fairly naturalistic. On the HD remaster, the whole thing is tints a very pronounced red (see the shots attached to this post). Assuming Tovoli did sit in on the restoration process, he presumably must have signed off on this little piece of revisionism.

In any event, I'll be very interested to hear your impressions of the September screening.

PS. I feel that the information you've conveyed here is important enough to warrant a news entry of its own. Any objections if I quote your above post?

(Posted on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at 6:40 PM)

3. Vincent Pereira said:

No problem- maybe somebody reading it will track down the posts from the Italian forums re: Tovoli and his unhappiness with the colors.

Vincent

(Posted on Thursday, July 16, 2009 at 12:07 AM)

 
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