266 Desire

[MichaelB]

DESIRE
(Frank Borzage, 1936)
Release date: 11 December 2023
Limited Edition Blu-ray (UK premiere)

Marlene Dietrich (The Scarlet Empress) and Gary Cooper (Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife) star in Desire, a romantic crime caper directed by Frank Borzage (A Farewell to Arms).

When jewel thief Madeleine (Dietrich) leaves Paris with a string of pearls, she conspires to smuggle them across the Spanish border with the unwitting assistance of American mechanic Tom (Cooper). But retrieving the jewels turns out to be harder than she thinks, and she finds herself falling for Tom.

Reuniting the leads of Josef von Sternberg’s smash hit Morocco, and co-produced by the great Ernst Lubitsch, Desire was acclaimed by author Graham Greene as the best of Dietrich’s American films.

INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES

• 2022 restoration from a 4K scan
• Original mono audio
• Audio commentary with writer and critic Nathaniel Bell and film historian David Del Valle (2021)
• Nathalie Morris on Gary Cooper (2023): the film historian and curator discusses the stardom and style of one of Hollywood’s most iconic actors
• Lux Radio Theatre: ‘Desire’ (1937): radio play adaptation of the film’s screenplay, starring Marlene Dietrich with Hebert Marshall in the Gary Cooper role
• Original theatrical trailer
• Image gallery: promotional and publicity materials
• New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Limited edition exclusive with a new essay by Christine Newland, archival interviews and articles, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits
• UK premiere on Blu-ray
• Limited edition of 3,000 copies for the UK

All extras subject to change

#PHILE266B
BBFC cert: U
REGION B
EAN: 5060697923711

[Finch]

Watched it last night and enjoyed it very much. Witty script and good chemistry between Dietrich and Cooper whom I seem to like better in his comedy roles than things like High Noon. Desire would make a great double bill of crime capers with Trouble in Paradise.

[MichaelB]

Final specs:

[Peacock]

Blu-Ray.com review

Seems they used a 4K master rather than the 2012 2K one that Kino used - however the review says the film is better encoded and a bit sharper on the Kino release (the Kino is dual layered versus the Indicator single layered and stacked with extras).

But then you’re missing out on lots of great extras on the Indicator with a Samm Deighan commentary the only exclusive extra on the Kino.

[Drucker]

Well older Universal masters tended to be too sharp. Charley Varrick is a great example where the older master on the Indicator release is certainly sharper but doesn't look as natural as the Kino. Also assuming David M did the encoding, I have a hard time believing he has been bested.

[Finch]

Peacock, that review is by Atanasov and therefore useless.

[Peacock]

Peacock, that review is by Atanasov and therefore useless.

Unfortunately Svet appears to be right this time.
Beaver The picture is cropped on all sides, lighter and features a low bitrate. A disaster.

Such a shame for those of us who held out getting the Kino for the Indicator.

[Tuppence]

"A disaster". Seriously? 28mbps is not low, it's perfectly adequate for slightly softer material like this.

Kino's transfers might look nice in screengrabs, but they're often pretty rough and ready in motion, including quite a bit of instability. The real-time side-by-sides of the Mae West transfers were very telling in this regard. If they had to crop in slightly to help digitally stabilise the image, I'm fine with that.

[Finch]

I don't see the need for the pitchforks either. The new 4k scan crops the image mostly on the right and a little at the top and bottom but if that was done to help stabilise the image, then that is an acceptable trade off for me. Contrast is a toss up between the two discs, I feel. Extras easily go to Indicator, for the book alone. So I'm good sticking with my pre-order.

[swo17]

The actual word Gary used to describe the image was "strong"

[Peacock]

We shouldn’t be afraid of criticising the labels we love when they mess up. Matt made some strong criticisms regarding Love Me Tonight over on that page and no rebuttal was made there.

The bottom line is - look at the images yourself. I point you all towards the closeup of Dietrich with the hat. The Kino is - just - correctly framed after stabilisation so that the top of the hat is still in shot. Indicator loses it. There’s significant cropping on three sides of that shot. Does that mean the image will be more stable than the Kino? Or does it mean a less refined stabilisation setting was used? Only a comparison in motion can say for sure.

Looking at the comparison full screen though it’s clear the significantly lower bitrate makes a difference to sharpness. Although I agree in motion it’s not going to be noticeable to the human eye.

Look, its likely the Indicator team did their sums and realised they couldn’t afford to put this particular film out on a dual layer disc, so it was single layer or nothing, I appreciate that, it’s a great film and the UK deserves their own edition.

But it’s a shame they agreed to use a compromised 4K master, although potentially they didn’t realise when they licensed it. Just means we are all going to have to double dip for the transfer of the Kino and the booklet and interview on the Indicator. £££!

[Finch]

More likely that whoever (Fidelity?) encoded the disc for Indicator suggested that the film didn't need a dual layer disc. I'm going to be honest and say that the cropping that presumably took place during the new scan doesn't bother me that much to shell out for the Kino disc. As for the screen caps, I've found Gary's methods unreliable in the past: maybe we'll get some from caps-a-holic who I trust the most but again, I'm good with the Indicator. I don't think they're above reproach but I appreciate you being disappointed with what you're seeing.

[Tuppence]

We shouldn’t be afraid of criticising the labels we love when they mess up. Matt made some strong criticisms regarding Love Me Tonight over on that page and no rebuttal was made there.

Indeed not, but these appear to be Matt's comments on Love Me Tonight:

I received my copy today. Marvelous disc with, at last, a good transfer of the film. To paraphrase our old friend Nick Wrigley, it pisses all over the Kino Blu-ray from a great height. I look forward to diving into the supplements and booklet soon.

It's a mild disappointment there's slightly less picture information on the Indicator here, but it's hardly panning-and-scanning, and the claim that "we are all going to have to double dip" is a bit much. I sometimes wonder how people making these complaints would respond to seeing these films theatrically - there's always some slight variation on framing, given how each projectionist lines things up.

[Matt]

We shouldn’t be afraid of criticising the labels we love when they mess up. Matt made some strong criticisms regarding Love Me Tonight over on that page and no rebuttal was made there.

Indeed not, but these appear to be Matt's comments on Love Me Tonight:

I received my copy today. Marvelous disc with, at last, a good transfer of the film. To paraphrase our old friend Nick Wrigley, it pisses all over the Kino Blu-ray from a great height. I look forward to diving into the supplements and booklet soon.

In light of the discussion above, I made a few quick screen captures from the Kino and Indicator discs of Love Me Tonight in that thread.

[TMDaines]

This reminds of when Kino and Eureka released Five Graves to Cairo from different masters and I could not for the life of me match up the criticism with the actual video on the two discs. None of the descriptors were really valid reflections of A-B video or screenshot comparisons.

[Peacock]

This reminds of when Kino and Eureka released Five Graves to Cairo from different masters and I could not for the life of me match up the criticism with the actual video on the two discs. None of the descriptors were really valid reflections of A-B video or screenshot comparisons.

I think ultimately it comes down to how sensitive people are to cropping; many people don’t notice when a film is cropped as they are just happy to be seeing the film at all while others try and hold labels to account to encourage them to maintain their usual high standards. Neither is bad, just different responses.

[tenia]

I certainly couldn't say about what's better in terms of framing - as I've absolutely never been a good "judge" for that - but I can't say I'm a fan of Indicator's overally look vs the Kino disc. What bothers me here is the lighter grading that made the disc looked dull and grey-ish (and when I looked at the Kino disc, it was even worse because that's not so much of an issue on the Kino disc), but I also prefer the texture and grain aspect of the Kino disc. I'm not a fan of these Universal restoration, whose grain look, I don't know how to write it, weirdly vertical looking, and that's not a problem the Kino disc has. Comparatively, it almost make the Indicator disc look slightly grain managed, and the frame still is shaking a lot on the Indicator disc. What's interesting is that both masters look to be sourced from the same element, as the same defects (scratches, dust, etc) can be found in the exact same spots, so it'd mean the differences between the 2 presentations are down to later in the restoration workflows.

From what I saw in the related thread, it looks like Love Me Tonight is in the same technical situation, but the roles are reversed (the Kino disc look to be the softer grayer one and the Indicator disc to be the more textured more contrasted one).

As for the bitrate though, 28 Mbps by FiM for this is plenty enough. I'm sure David M encoded this way because more would have been overkill anyway.

[TMDaines]

This reminds of when Kino and Eureka released Five Graves to Cairo from different masters and I could not for the life of me match up the criticism with the actual video on the two discs. None of the descriptors were really valid reflections of A-B video or screenshot comparisons.

I think ultimately it comes down to how sensitive people are to cropping; many people don’t notice when a film is cropped as they are just happy to be seeing the film at all while others try and hold labels to account to encourage them to maintain their usual high standards. Neither is bad, just different responses.

I think you are right about cropping. You can be a lot more objective when criticsing that.