In his review of Criterion’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller Bluray, DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze, who always emphasizes the positive and almost always bends over backwards to minimize adverse judgment, seems to be expressing displeasure, at least as far as my understanding of the English language is concerned. He’s not exactly panning the Criterion Bluray but he’s certainly not jumping for joy. Be honest — how do you feel about buying a Bluray that makes a film look “occasionally greenish and sometimes very brown, flat, dull and thick“?

Tooze recalls that during a Toronto Bell Lightbox panel in 2014, McCabe dp Vilmos Zsigmond said that “if they had movies in [the frontier] days they would look faded away, scratchy, grainy and very soft and no contrast.” To achieve this look Zsigmond used flashing (exposing negative to light) to underexpose the film. And so, Tooze writes, “we have a brief understanding of how McCabe & Mrs. Miller was intended to visually appear. The final product, he acknowledges, is “probably wholly authentic to the filmmakers’ wishes.”

I get and respect the misty, somber, brownishly subdued, lantern-lit rainy thing, but “occasionally greenish”?