Second Sight Films (UK)

[Adam X]

I guess I was thinking more in terms of colour, which I should’ve made clearer.
I also vaguely recall that there was some debate over the look of the film, or perhaps the resulting master, when Peter Weir first created his director’s cut, too.

[tenia]

Oh my bad then !
This being written though, while I do think the previous color-grading was way too neutral, the new one regularly feels like something purely obtained in the digital realm. It might be closer to the original intent in theory, but the execution also feels digitally obtained here, like the texture.

[MichaelB]

OK, I've done a bit of digging and it seems that there are three distinct "official" cuts of the film.

1. Original Australian theatrical, 119 mins
2. International, 115 mins
3. "Director's cut", 107 mins

So it seems that by "theatrical cut", Second Sight means the Australian theatrical cut. And it wasn't at all unusual for Australian films of that era to be trimmed or otherwise modified internationally - Age of Consent wasn't just cut but wholly rescored, and similarly Mad Max was both cut and dubbed into American English, and there are plenty of other examples - and until the coming of the interwebtubes we generally didn't know too much about this, because it wasn't especially heavily publicised. Indeed, until the premiere of the Film Foundation restoration of Age of Consent, was it especially common knowledge that the Stanley Myers score wasn't the original one?

[GaryC]

OK, I've done a bit of digging and it seems that there are three distinct "official" cuts of the film.

1. Original Australian theatrical, 119 mins
2. International, 115 mins
3. "Director's cut", 107 mins

So it seems that by "theatrical cut", Second Sight means the Australian theatrical cut. And it wasn't at all unusual for Australian films of that era to be trimmed or otherwise modified internationally - Age of Consent wasn't just cut but wholly rescored, and similarly Mad Max was both cut and dubbed into American English, and there are plenty of other examples - and until the coming of the interwebtubes we generally didn't know too much about this, because it wasn't especially heavily publicised. Indeed, until the premiere of the Film Foundation restoration of Age of Consent, was it especially common knowledge that the Stanley Myers score wasn't the original one?

Just to corroborate this (more or less) but the OFLC listed Picnic at 118 minutes when they passed it on 1 August 1975 on 35mm. The site gives running times in whole minutes rather than minutes or seconds, so the true running time might well have been 119 minutes if you rounded up instead of down. I would be interested to find out what was trimmed from the Australian cut to produce the international version.

The funny thing about Age of Consent is that because it was such a success in Australia, when reels of the prints in circulation were worn out, they were replaced by reels from the international version, which indicated that the reel changes were in the same places in both versions. So Australians who saw the film later in its run saw a hybrid version with a different score from one reel to the next.

Crocodile Dundee is another example of a film which played in a different version overseas (shortened and redubbed in places) to that at home. I've never seen the Australian cut, and on one of my visits to Oz, the international version seemed to be playing on TV one evening.

[Finch]

It's a testament to the power of Picnic at Hanging Rock that even the flawed presentation doesn't diminish its power. The more often I see the film, the more I love it. I'd never seen the Australian theatrical cut before and I haven't seen the international and director's cuts often enough to point out the differences easily. I do remember seeing the DC after the international TC and thinking the trims harm the film's flow more than improving it (like the Alien DC, incidentally). I could have watched another half hour or so of the Australian theatrical tonight and not minded, I was so spellbound by it.

I find that the new grading largely adds to the dream-like mood (and am only curious as to why Weir and Boyd haven't requested changes to previous restorations). This is not the first restoration of the film, right? Weir approved the Criterion BD a few years ago and that still had the old grade which, having seen the film again, strikes me as too neutral. I'm actually all the more disappointed in Weir for insisting that the restoration team apply DNR and either tone down or remove the grain. I could make it out in some outdoor shots and occasionally in darker interior shots but it didn't look like natural grain. The new grade feels better in almost all the outdoor scenes but I wish they had done more work on the interior shots. Those revised shots made me think of old, faded photographs, and I honestly like the idea if that was their intention, but it just makes everyone's skin tones look off. It's more distracting in some shots than in others. Still, I don't think I would watch the film with the old grading again.

But the grain reduction (or introduction of artificial grain) and the DNR is unfortunate. This should have been a 9 or 10 for the video but for me, this was more a 6, sometimes a 7. I watched the Blu-Ray as I'm not set up for 4k yet. I haven't dived into the essays or the novel or the on-disc extras yet but the packaging is superb.

[Peacock]

I do remember seeing the DC after the international TC and thinking the trims harm the film's flow more than improving it (like the Alien DC, incidentally).

(Not to be pedantic but just so others are clear, the so-called director’s cut of Alien isn’t the preferred cut by Scott, the theatrical cut is his ‘director’s cut’, he only made the new edit as the special edition DVD set required two edits for each film as a bonus for fans.)

[Finch]

The book for Picnic at Hanging Rock didn't get off to a great start with the Kat Ellinger essay but all the other contributions were very good, and Lindsay's novel is hard to put down. So far I'm enjoying the limited edition content of Picnic more than Chainsaw's.

[Robin Davies]

The book for Picnic at Hanging Rock didn't get off to a great start with the Kat Ellinger essay

I'm curious to know about that, as I bought the basic Blu-ray which has no book.

[therewillbeblus]

It's a testament to the power of Picnic at Hanging Rock that even the flawed presentation doesn't diminish its power. The more often I see the film, the more I love it. I'd never seen the Australian theatrical cut before and I haven't seen the international and director's cuts often enough to point out the differences easily. I do remember seeing the DC after the international TC and thinking the trims harm the film's flow more than improving it (like the Alien DC, incidentally). I could have watched another half hour or so of the Australian theatrical tonight and not minded, I was so spellbound by it.

I find that the new grading largely adds to the dream-like mood (and am only curious as to why Weir and Boyd haven't requested changes to previous restorations). This is not the first restoration of the film, right? Weir approved the Criterion BD a few years ago and that still had the old grade which, having seen the film again, strikes me as too neutral. I'm actually all the more disappointed in Weir for insisting that the restoration team apply DNR and either tone down or remove the grain. I could make it out in some outdoor shots and occasionally in darker interior shots but it didn't look like natural grain. The new grade feels better in almost all the outdoor scenes but I wish they had done more work on the interior shots. Those revised shots made me think of old, faded photographs, and I honestly like the idea if that was their intention, but it just makes everyone's skin tones look off. It's more distracting in some shots than in others. Still, I don't think I would watch the film with the old grading again.

But the grain reduction (or introduction of artificial grain) and the DNR is unfortunate. This should have been a 9 or 10 for the video but for me, this was more a 6, sometimes a 7. I watched the Blu-Ray as I'm not set up for 4k yet. I haven't dived into the essays or the novel or the on-disc extras yet but the packaging is superb.

This is a really interesting take - I appreciate your analysis, which takes alternative subjective ideas into account even if this edition is placed in the "disappointing" category for objective reasons (similarly, I felt that the new grading on Le Cercle Rouge created a new path to access the film's ideas, and Basic Instinct's DNR only feeds into its thematically aesthetic irony, etc.)

I was going to pass on this, but I think you've convinced me to pick it up

[Finch]

I honestly think the Picnic LE is better value in spite of the frustrating restoration than the TCM LE. The packaging and the essay book are much better and the novel is an added bonus. I haven't had a chance to watch the new on-disc extras for Picnic yet but the Legacy documentary on the TCM disc is frankly unworthy of the film.

You could make an argument that both releases are equally disappointing. TCM looks amazing but the new extras are a big meh, Picnic has unnatural looking grain that is barely noticeable but apart from the pieces that I haven't watched yet and the Ellinger essay, everything else about the Picnic release strikes me as excellent. But I would like to slap whoever decided to repeat the same Romanian pan flute cue every time a new participant's name comes up in the Umbrella 2011 documentary with a wet towel. I've lost count of how often I had to hear that damn thing over and over again.

To be on the safe side, I would hold on to the Blu-ray of the DC you have from Criterion or Second Sight for now in case the new grade and the artificial grain makes the restoration intolerable to you.

[therewillbeblus]

That stuff usually doesn't bother me too much, as long as the quality is improved and it still contains the novel, I'm probably going to upgrade - but I need to take some time to read through these threads to gather other impressions

[therewillbeblus]

To be on the safe side, I would hold on to the Blu-ray of the DC you have from Criterion or Second Sight for now in case the new grade and the artificial grain makes the restoration intolerable to you.

I'm not that concerned about the restoration, but Megan Abbott's essay is one of the most interesting and strong pieces from any booklet in the collection, especially her analysis of how the film subverts and denies the audience's "desires" to know what awful things must've happened to the girls, essentially shoving a mirror for us to examine how we use the medium in the process (you know, like a kinder, G-rated Haneke). I hope there's at least some piece in the SS booklet that touches on this idea, since it's not exactly a left-field reading

[vsski]

I’m still a bit torn on whether to get the new SS 4k or not even after reading all of this.
It’s clear the extras are great from Finch’s report and it sounds that the presentation is not as bad as it first sounded, but that is exactly the point I’m struggling with. If I buy this for the 3rd time, it really should be significantly better than anything that came before and I’m not sure that this is the take away I’m getting from these posts.
Many discs have DNR applied and are decried in reviews and then I watch them and didn’t feel the fuzz was warranted. But then you have CC’s Children of Paradise which to my eyes is unwatchable.
I’m also wondering what the application of fake grain really means.
The best edition I currently own is the CC BD, so for those who have seen the SS 4k version in motion, how do they feel about it in comparison to the CC?

[GaryC]

I honestly think the Picnic LE is better value in spite of the frustrating restoration than the TCM LE. The packaging and the essay book are much better and the novel is an added bonus. I haven't had a chance to watch the new on-disc extras for Picnic yet but the Legacy documentary on the TCM disc is frankly unworthy of the film.

You could make an argument that both releases are equally disappointing. TCM looks amazing but the new extras are a big meh, Picnic has unnatural looking grain that is barely noticeable but apart from the pieces that I haven't watched yet and the Ellinger essay, everything else about the Picnic release strikes me as excellent.

I agree with you about the essays. However, I did spot a factual error in Rebecca Harkins-Cross's piece (which is a reprint, not new to the set). John Jarratt's name is misspelled "Jarrett" (though his name is also misspelled in the film credits) and it's not correct that Picnic was his first film. He played the lead role in The Great MacArthy, which was made the year before and released earlier the same year.

[MichaelB]

On a film that I’m subtitling right now, I’m faced with the dilemma that the people who did the credits and the people who created a prop letter seen in close-up clearly didn’t get together beforehand to discuss the spelling of the lead female character’s name!

Fortunately, consistent pronunciation unambiguously favours the letter, but this means that the subtitles don’t match the opening credits. But there’s not a lot I can do about that.

[tenia]

as long as the quality is improved

I'd argue the new restoration is actually so filtered it offers close to no improvement over a decade-old overly-neutralised HD Telecined master made from an IP, which is quite symbolic of how it managed to dumb down all the improvements it should have brought.
Not only it only leaves a few marginal extra details on very fine clothing delineation (and that's pretty much it), but while the overall texture / grain-field is finer, it actually looks noisy rather than naturally grainy, and is not pretty to look at. It also doesn't entirely hide how plastic-y faces and elements can be... where there's any fake grain to hide this since many (especially darker) scenes are smooth as hell.
And that's not taking into account the color grading : while there is no doubt the older master (despite also being approved by Weir) is overly neutralised and the new golden solar hues are probably closer to the original intentions, it's applied there in such a digital way that it seems like somebody did a shot-for-shot remake of the movie on digital and that's what we're getting here. So on top of the DNR/fake grain attempt to reproduce (in a bad manner) the original soft look of the movie, the color grading also attempt in a bad too-digitally-looking manner to reproduce the original color grading of the movie.

I probably would have preferred it to be Ritrovata'd than this, because at least, Ritrovata's gradings don't look that digital-originating.

So in short : it's not so much an improvement than a different poison.

[therewillbeblus]

I’m still a bit torn on whether to get the new SS 4k or not even after reading all of this.
It’s clear the extras are great from Finch’s report and it sounds that the presentation is not as bad as it first sounded, but that is exactly the point I’m struggling with. If I buy this for the 3rd time, it really should be significantly better than anything that came before and I’m not sure that this is the take away I’m getting from these posts.
Many discs have DNR applied and are decried in reviews and then I watch them and didn’t feel the fuzz was warranted. But then you have CC’s Children of Paradise which to my eyes is unwatchable.
I’m also wondering what the application of fake grain really means.
The best edition I currently own is the CC BD, so for those who have seen the SS 4k version in motion, how do they feel about it in comparison to the CC?

I'm not an expert on this technical stuff, and I didn't compare this image with the CC in motion, but I thought the new restoration felt appropriately dreamy as Michael B suggested from his screening. I don't know what the application of fake grain means or looks like either, because I didn't notice it, but the DNR was there, most noticeable for me on Michael's boyish face. I'll concede that it's a bit irritating, looking like a half-animated humanoid from Polar Express. But it also suits his character, if you, like me, see him as this kind of vapid voyeur who dreams himself from his dull existence into the role of a prince. The expressions work coming from this kind of empty vessel, perpetually dissatisfied but unable to birth himself into becoming as interesting as he wants to be; reflecting the limits of actualizing perspective under a domineering Victorian culture, channeled through artificial technological imposition. The same goes for the maligned indoor scenes, which didn't bother me much because they helped the film play more like a fairy tale this time around. I wonder if I'd read these moments so strongly in this direction if watching the more neutralized colorization again, but I think the new grading lifts us just enough into this dreamscape to hold both realist and imaginary angles closely together. They were both always there if you blinked each eye back and froth, but never so harmoniously when looking straight ahead.

So yeah, I see what people are complaining about, and I can totally understand why someone would be annoyed and discredit this print, but it works to enhance the film's feel for me, and when it looks great it's really spectacular. I've never felt so riveted by those outdoors set pieces on the rock. Plus having both cuts is really cool - I'll have to revisit the DC at some point, but this was my first time seeing the theatrical cut and found it extremely effective. I don't necessarily think you need to shave material to get at a more mysterious vibe when the film already operates like an ambiguous fairy tale whenever the narrative is populated with straightforward information. Obfuscation is trifling under such an aesthetic spell. The cut material in the side romance feels worthwhile in this realm of surreal vehicles fluidly moving in and out of this world, and one of my favorite shots (which must have been absent from the DC, since it slides right into that cut material) is of Michael leading two girls, including Irma, up a grassy path from afar, right after Albert connects with her with an implicit romantic pass.. and then we fade to Mlle. de Poitiers confusingly wandering around and passing Michael and Irma talking above her - they look down, exchanging uncomfortable, segregating glances, and she continues on. These scenes strung together are so incredibly eerie and alienating, because they destroy the rules of a typical internal logic, disinviting the audience with manipulated film grammar. They also demonstrate how overpopulating a film with more 'information', bent slightly off, can actually make the film more mysterious.

To this viewer, these scenes function well in the flow of the tension-building too, and even feel integral to what comes in the last act. We literally get 'more' time with Irma but nothing to detail her 'character', obstructing a tangible handle on her personality, which makes her presence more unsettling (less screen time doesn't incite disturbance, but more without development does) and probes us to erupt with an urgent demand for some kind of 'answer' right with the rest of the schoolchildren. So in the next scene, during Michael's boat ride with her, he finally breaks from a faux-participatory prince role in a romance and attacks her with questioning as a feeble observer. And then, in the next scene, we arrive in the classroom as Irma's classmates do the exact same thing, exploding in unison to grab at her, pining for catharsis to cope with the very thing that unifies us but which is intolerable in a culture that offers simple answers and disinvites skills to sit with the broad questions: the mystery of it all.

[vsski]

Thanks TWBB for putting the new scan in context of the movie and how it helps to enhance many of the atmospheric shots and dream sequences of the movie. After reading tenia’s comments I had pretty much given up on the release.

However, this discussion now reminds me a bit of similar ones here on the forum about filmmakers who use the new technical means available today to revisit their films and start changing them. And from what I read Weir was involved in this version, so it seems that the choices made were done on his behest. While it seems that for some scenes of the movie it does indeed serve the narrative and atmosphere of the picture well, I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that it is no longer the film that was originally made.

Obviously this is not another Wong Kar Wai moment, but I guess my preference will always be to have a film presented as close to how it originally was conceived and screened in theaters from color grading to grain mastering. Of course there have plenty of examples of labels, restoration houses and mastering facilities wittingly or unwittingly altering things and sometimes the movies may have benefitted, but overall it still leaves a questionable taste in my mouth.

For now I guess I’ll pass on this version hoping that it’s not the last version of this movie that will see a physical release in 4K.

[tenia]

This is a discussion we had already in the past, and that I disagree with. I understand how/why it can be an appealing way to do with bad fortune good heart (not sure if that's the proper translation of this french expression), but I think that's just that. It won't change a restoration being technically debatable and in this case, it'd be nightmarish if the industry was to massively start to work this way.
This isn't a 75 movie anymore but a 2022 tentative of redoing it.

[senseabove]

Lucky McKee's May coming in July in SE and standard editions:

[therewillbeblus]

Excellent news! Blu or 4K?

[swo17]

Only BD

[therewillbeblus]

Of course I went to their site and only looked at the first page assuming this wasn’t officially listed yet.. Thanks

[swo17]

Oh, that's interesting that it shows up on their "Pre-Orders & Latest Releases" page but not in the "Pre-Orders & Latest Releases" section of their homepage

[therewillbeblus]

Can't fault the instinct to try to protect the public from May