The new Criterion Bluray of John Frankenheimer‘s The Manchurian Candidate (’62) is 90% to 95% glorious. Lionel Lindon‘s black-and-white cinematography has never looked so rich and crisp and fully harvested. Time and again as I sat on a footstool in front of the Sony 65″ 4K I was going “wow…wow!” And yet the other 5% to 10%, oddly, looks soft or fuzzy at times. Lindon’s work, I mean — shots with soft-focus foregrounds in favor of sharp backgrounds. Odd. Weak tea. I guess I never realized how underwhelming this 5% to 10% looks because for the first time the other 90% looks so stand-out great. Smooth and detailed, serious celluloid textures but clean as a hound’s tooth.
