A Criterion Bluray containing a slash-and-crop 1.85 to 1 version of Otto Preminger‘s Anatomy of a Murder will be out on 2.21. DVD Beaver has posted a review with screen captures comparing Sony Home Video’s exquisitely boxy 1.33 to 1 DVD version to the Criterion Bluray. I’m not saying the Criterion (which I haven’t yet seen) won’t have value. A Bluray of an excellent courtroom drama that shows 2/3 of what dp Sam Leavitt originally shot is better than nothing.

A visually compressed, jail-cell cropping, captured from Criterion Bluray.

I’ll allow that the Criterion Bluray seems to offer more visual information on the sides than the Sony Home Video 2000 DVD version. This is a good thing, but there’s still no excuse for whacking off a third of the originally photographed version — one that was seen during who-knows-how-many hundreds of TV airings during the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, and which was contained in the NTSC DVD version.

From the ample-head-space version provided by Sony Home Video in 2000.