DVD details for for
Notti di Cabiria, Le (1957)

Michel Hafner (26 September 1999):
This DVD by Criterion of Federico Fellini's masterpiece Notti di Cabiria, Le (1957) has been mastered from a newly restored 35 mm duplicate negative. It's the restored director's cut and a breathtaking new transfer, says Criterion. It's indeed the director's cut with an additional 7 minutes of footage (basically the "Man with the Sack" sequence). But I can't quite agree with the breathtaking new transfer statement. The DVD also contains before/after restoration examples (with comb filter artifacts courtesy of a composite master). The difference is indeed huge, but not so much because the new transfer is so good, than because the old home cinema versions were incredibly bad. Absolutely awful, in fact. Not that the new transfer is not a big step forward, but it has its share of problems, too.
The film element used is above mentioned restored duplicate negative. Why this negative was used and not the interpositive it was made from I don't know. I would have preferred the interpositive since the amount of grain and noise would have been lower. This negative is not as clean as it should be. Speckles and other minor image defects are not rare. The DVD and booklet does not mention any digital clean up efforts with a paint box, as was done for Sjunde inseglet, Det (1957). This is a pity, since it would have been useful in a couple of instances. For example some shots are affected by hairs sticking to the negative. Obviously the film elements and/or the teleciné were not all properly cleaned before use. Rather sloppy. From a "breathtaking" new transfer by Criterion I expect more. Image steadiness is not great either, but ok.
Contrast rendition is good, a lot better than it was before. But not as good as it could be. Occasionally there is a distracting loss of shading detail due to the level of grain, noise processing and compression artifacts. An example is in chapter 9 at 2:36-2:37. Here Cabiria's right cheek (from our viewpoint) turns into plastic and looks rather unnatural. Sharpness is very good, would have also benefitted from less grain and noise processing, though. Yes, the level of grain is too high and sometimes distracting on a high resolution display. It also creates problems with the compression and calls for digital noise removal which in turn has left its marks on this DVD. There are several instances of distracting problems in this area. In some scenes Cabiria wears a blouse with black and white stripes and in others a jacket with a checkerboard-like pattern. These are pure poison for digital noise processing if not great care is taken. It was not.
Here are a couple of examples: In chapter 9 Cabiria's blouse is wildly flickering from 5:52-5:57. In the same scene there is a waiter. His jacket is losing image detail when in motion (starting at 3:55). The stripes get smeared. In chapter 17 Cabiria's jacket is flickering again in an ugly way (9:43-9:51). There are many instances where fine image detail is flickering or removed due to this careless noise processing. Once the damage has been done at the teleciné the best post processing and compression can not undo it. The master is screwed for good. On the other hand there are no overenhanced edges and aliasing is no problem either. Neither is the compression which is very good. I have seen no glitches. The grain is slightly distorted by the compression, but that's unavoidable given the limited bit rate DVD offers.
This new DVD edition of Fellini's classic film is a big step forward compared to earlier efforts. It will look good on all kinds of displays. It has a couple of problems, which are well visible on high resolution systems. The grain level is too high and noise suppression artifacts are frequent, mostly slight, but a few times obvious and distracting. The supplemental material is of pretty good quality and a big asset, especially the detailed interview with Dominique Delouche. The soundtracks (Italian and English) are both of good quality. Overall impression is positive. A must buy for Fellini fans and serious collectors of world cinema alike.