Sources seem to indicate that this new 80th anniversary 4K restoration was taken from a 1942 fine grain master positive due to the destruction of the original camera negative some time ago. Several other sources were used to supplement this, all of which were scanned and fully restored at the now ubiquitous 4K resolution. It delivers a native 3840 x 2160p resolution image in the original aspect ratio of 1.37:1, which is faithfully preserved using a 10-bit video depth. In addition, a WCG and HDR10 only colour pass (no Dolby Vision layer is included) is applied and the entire film is encoded using the HEVC (H.265) codec.
And it delivers a simply stunning black and white image.
Immediately as Curtiz takes us into the bustling streets of the Moroccan town, the fine detail on show is staggering. Lines are razor sharp, textures are deep and piercing, and the depth of the image almost has us falling into the screen. Fine lines in everything from hair to clothing weaves to the wisp of smoke in Rick’s Café are clearly delineated and defined and as the camera zooms into those wonderful faces, every weathered line on Bogarts face and every supple contour of Bergman’s visage, these prove to be the final example needed of the quality of the restoration work applied here.
This detail uptick over the previous 70th anniversary edition is helped no doubt by this releases much better handling of the inherent grain field. Very fine it may be, but its constant, its even, it moves naturally and there’s not one instance of it looking like there’s anything amiss with it, either due to the application of any digital tools or the mis-encoding of the film to disc.
...absolutely as perfect an image as we could have hoped for...
And yet the disc still has more wonderful sights to show us – the greyscale is huge, with blacks plunging to the depths of the surrounding black bars and the bright highlights most noticeable on the shimmering jewels of the many patrons of Ricks’ costumes shining far brighter than the 39 nits Max Frame Average Light Levels of the disc would have us believe possible. And yet every shade in between is delivered with equal exquisite precision – as Bergman sneaks into Bogert’s back room to plead with him for the tickets, the noir-ish shadows of the slatted blind behind her cast a rich and complex series of shadows behind her, each one pristine in its colouring, with no banding or smearing apparent at all. And when the next scene shows Bergman’s profile highlighted by the lights outside the window, there’s absolutely none of the harsh ringing of the extreme bright areas that can occur. It’s a sublime colour grading and if anyone ever questions the benefit of WCG and HDR on a black and white film, just show them this and prepare to watch humble pie be scoffed at a furious rate…
It's obviously also been fully cleaned up so is free from any dirt or debris in the source and any telecine judder or wobble is also notably absent. Compression is consistent and is applied at an average bit rate in the low 70s mbps throughout and there are no problems noted from the encode at all.
It’s easy to see that the film does have a certain degree of fluctuations – optical fades are prevalent and the restoration chooses to keep the second-generation images throughout the shot of the fade, meaning there are times when the picture softens up. As it does when Curtiz deploys the trademark soft filters used for Bergman…but none of that should take away from how sublime this looks.
Neither is Chariots.
