The Magnificent Ambersons will be released November 20 on Blu-ray and DVD.
DVD Beaver has given a glowing review to The Criterion Collection‘s upcoming Blu-ray and DVD release of The Magnificent Ambersons.
DVD Beaver, which had a chance to see the Blu-ray before its November 20 release, praised the 4K restoration, calling it “THE most highly anticipated release of this year and beyond.”
“It has lived up to its deserved masterpiece film status with a stellar, complete, Blu-ray package from Criterion sporting a gorgeous new 4K-restored transfer and stacked with relevant, insightful extras including two commentaries! It will get plenty of votes in our year-end Poll. This has our absolute highest recommendation. Incredible,” DVD Beaver wrote.
The website added, “The new Criterion is described as ‘New 4K digital restoration’ and certainly has given new life to the richness of the film’s cinematography through deeper black levels and a higher degree of detail. This is a significant advancement over anything that home cinema fans have had access to in the past, including the Japanese Blu-ray that showed, distracting, rounded corners. The Criterion, on a dual-layered disc with a very high bitrate, is tighter, has far superior contrast in the 1.37:1 frame and the visuals carry a pleasing, heavy, texture. The video presentation is marvelous in-motion with the contrast being the most impressive attribute. This really looks more like film than you could hope to see outside of the theater.”
The features on the upcoming Criterion release include:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Two audio commentaries, featuring scholars Robert L. Carringer; and James Naremore and critic Jonathan Rosenbaum
- New interviews with film historians Simon Callow (25:58) and Joseph McBride (28:54)
- New video essay on the film’s cinematographers by scholar François Thomas (15:40)
- New video essays by scholars François Thomas and Christopher Husted (18:47)
- Director Orson Welles on The Dick Cavett Show in 1970 (36:34)
- Segment from a 1925 silent adaptation of The Magnificent Ambersons (28:05)
- Audio from a 1978 AFI symposium on Welles (29:36), and audio interviews with Welles conducted by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich (36:00)
- Two Mercury Theatre radio plays: Seventeen (60:05) from 1938, an adaptation of another Booth Tarkington novel by Welles, and The Magnificent Ambersons (55:42) from 1939
- Trailer (2:06)
- PLUS: An essay by critic Molly Haskell and (Blu-ray only) essays by authors and critics Luc Sante, Geoffrey O’Brien, Farran Smith Nehme, and Jonathan Lethem, and excerpts from an unfinished 1982 memoir by Welles
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