Yesterday Facebook‘s Mark Harris posted a well-written essay about Arthur Penn‘s Night Moves (’75) — an essay included in the just-released Night Moves 4k Bluray as well as posted on Criterion.com.
This morning I wrote the following to Harris: “You naturally don’t want to ruin your valued relationship with Criterion so you’re not going to mention the appalling orange-teal color scheme (primarily an aesthetic call pushed by Criterion’s Lee Kline* starting in the late teens) on Criterion’s just-released Night Moves 4K Bluray….a scheme that vandalizes the original look of Arthur Penn’s Watergate-era noir.
“I’m not exaggerating. This is apparently a consensus view. The proof is in the pudding, as a recent HE article shows.
“And not only Night Moves but Midnight Cowboy, Bull Durham, Teorema, Sisters — Kline and Criterion have created a cottage industry built upon uglifying the original color schemes of these films…vandalizing them by going way dark and imposing orange-teal hues.
“Orange-teal is nothing less than an obscenity. Criterion’s version of Night Moves isn’t a “distraction” from the horror, as you put it — it is its own brand of home-video horror, and one guaranteed to last.
“I own the 2017 Night Moves Bluray and it’s totally fine.”
* Kline was cut loose from Criterion in late 2022. I don’t know who the new Lee Kline is, or if Criterion’s Night Moves Bluray was mastered three or four years ago when Kline was still running the shop.
HE to Kline in 2018:
