Carlotta Films, which did masterful releases of Orson Welles’ Macbeth and Othello several years back, is now tackling The Lady From Shanghai.
The French-based Carlotta tweeted several vintage publicity photos today from the 1948 thriller starring Welles, Rita Hayworth and Everett Sloane with a tantalizing message. “In the Columbia archives, looking for beautiful rare and unpublished photos of Orson Welles’ The Lady of Shanghai … for a future upcoming release on DVD/Blu-ray edition, 4k restoration.”
It would not be the first Blu-ray release of the film available in Europe.
Last year, Britain’s Powerhouse Films issued a region-free version of The Lady of Shanghai with commentary by Peter Bogdanovich and featurette with Simon Callow. The Powerhouse release was reportedly a 4k digital restoration from the original negative.
In the United States, the Film Foundation and Turner Classic Movies partnered with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment for the first-ever Blu-ray release of the film in January 2014. It boasted a 4k digital restoration from the original negative and plenty of extras.
Five months later, TCM released an upgraded version after buyers complained it had used VC-1 encoding instead of the superior MPEG-4 AVC; standard Dolby was employed rather than Dolby TrueHD; and the single layer disc disc offered a relatively small file size. However, the improved version was slightly darker than the initial Blu-ray release.
A value-priced, bare bones version was released by Mill Creek Entertainment in the U.S. in March 2015. Like the two TCM versions, it was reportedly region-free.
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