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An
extract from the exclusive 007 MAGAZINE OnLine article
highlighting the changes made to the Bond films as a result of the
LOWRY restorations:
...
As a general rule the earlier films look much better than their
previous DVD release, but Thunderball, You Only Live Twice
and particularly On Her Majesty’s Secret Service suffer from
some unfortunate errors in judgement by the LDI technicians,
resulting in some unusual colour changes that do detract from
the director/cinematographers’ original intention. Thunderball
was the first film in the series to be shot in the widescreen format
of Panavision and in a gloriously saturated Technicolor process that
is sadly muted in this release. Ted Moore’s classy cinematography
was intended to display a heightened reality and should not look
like it was filmed yesterday as is claimed by many reviewers after
viewing this release. You Only Live Twice also suffers from a
toned down colour palette that leaves the film looking somewhat
flatter than before (albeit with a much higher level of background
detail). This was not the style of cinematographer Freddie Young
(perhaps the most accomplished cinematography in the series) who had
just won his third Oscar for Doctor Zhivago before starting
work on You Only Live Twice. Conversely, On Her Majesty’s
Secret Service was shot by Michael Reed in a style that was
meant to be more realistic than the previous films in the series,
resulting in a sharper more natural-looking colour scheme than the
saturated Technicolor look of the Connery films. Film stock had
vastly improved since the early Sixties, but it still took a lot of
skill to shoot ‘day for night’ scenes and early morning shots such
as the pre-credits beach fight, which are all but destroyed by the
blue-filtered haze that is now present on the DVD transfer. The
beach fight in particular is ruined by excessive tweaking by either
computers or humans (or both), and most certainly destroys Peter
Hunt and Michael Reed’s original intention. The scene now looks like
it takes place in the evening when clearly it’s shot (and meant to
look like it was shot) at dawn. All you need do is listen to the
film… George Lazenby’s very first words as 007 are “Good Morning!
- My name’s Bond, James Bond…Miss…er?”...
READ THE FULL 8-PAGE ARTICLE HERE
The
original Region 2 Ultimate Edition release of Thunderball is
missing the red wash of blood as Quist is thrown to the sharks which
was corrected for the later Region 1 release. Another colour anomaly
which was corrected for the Region 1 release is the opening shot of
Hong Kong harbour at the end of the main titles for You Only Live
Twice. The Region 2 disc opens with a pale washed-out grey shot
which has been changed to the warmer blue-hued shot more in keeping
with the original prints. It remains to be seen if any further
changes have been made for the Blu-ray releases in order to
replicate the original look of the films. When done correctly the
new masters do look stunning as was evidenced by the
UK digital screenings of Goldfinger in 2007 which used
the new LOWRY master. The Spy Who Loved Me was also given a
new lease of life when it was made available digitally via
Park Circus
following a special screening at The
Empire, Leicester Square. |
