The Upgrade Game

If you’re a subscriber to this newsletter – and if you’re not, you totally ought to be – you’re likely used to seeing me review a 4K release of a movie that’s already on Blu-ray and saying something like “Well, it doesn’t have any new special features, but I’m afraid you’re gonna have to buy it again.” And I get it! I do! I upgraded a few dozen discs to 4K once I got a player, and it sometimes felt frustrating to realize the only new element was the restoration.

It's become commonplace for most labels to release 4K editions of library titles that way, to the point that finding a new special feature is almost startling. MVD added a pretty great feature-length documentary to last month’s upgrade of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, for example, and Warner’s Rocky set – which, yes, I’m still going through – includes Sylvester Stallone’s recut version of Rocky IV, Rocky Vs. Drago, and a new documentary about its creation. But they’re the exceptions rather than the rule.

Over at Criterion, they’ve embarked on a program of releasing one or two 4K upgrades every month, adding an Ultra High Definition platter to their existing Blu-ray editions of strong sellers. You get a native 2160p/24 presentation with High Dynamic Range as well as the 2K SDR disc with all the extras: If you’ve never picked up the earlier release, it’s a no-brainer. But if you have, and there’s no sale on, it’s a pricey upgrade.

And the hits keep coming! April will bring 4K reissues of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and Gilliam’s The Fisher King, with Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness also entering the collection in UHD; Seijun Suzuki’s Branded to Kill and Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire will be upgraded in May, and just this afternoon Criterion scheduled Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits and Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game for the same treatment in June.

This month, there was only one such upgrade, but it’s a beauty: Michael Curtiz’ 1945 melodrama Mildred Pierce, previously released as a Criterion BD in 2017, rolled out in glorious 4K just last week.

If you’ve never seen Mildred Pierce, you may know it solely as the film which earned Joan Crawford her only Oscar. And it is. But it’s also a hell of a movie, one of the finest examples of a “woman’s picture” about a determined woman who devotes herself to ensuring her children have everything they need to succeed in life – only to see her efforts squandered by her eldest daughter (Ann Blyth), who embraces a life of petty and not-so-petty crime in order to stick to the mother she believes sold herself out for the illusion of status.

Adapting James M. Cain’s 1941 novel, Curtiz and screenwriter Ranald MacDougall added pulpy elements – like the murder inquiry that provides the movie’s framing device – that bring the story more into line with other Cain adaptations like Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. And cinematographer Ernest Haller’s mise-en-scene is even more noirish, with menacing shadows, symmetrical compositions and a handful of expressionistic moments that stand out in stark relief to the characters’ mundane habitats of cafes and bedrooms.

It’s a pleasure to watch Crawford’s Mildred stalk through its world, eyes blazing with barely suppressed rage as each slight piles upon the last, and the venom that Blyth brings to the role of the ungrateful Veda practically drips from the screen. And Cain’s curdled look at American prosperity gets even more interesting when one remembers audiences would have first encountered Mildred Pierce in the fall of 1945, while the country was still celebrating the end of World War II. Like I said: Hell of a movie.

And here we have our quandary: If you love Mildred Pierce, you probably already own Criterion’s Blu-ray, which has been out for about six years and is an excellent celebration of the film. Is it worth the upgrade?

Strangely, neither the Blu-ray nor the 4K edition includes this mesmerizing video of the Criterion team’s efforts to restore the film, working with the studio to track down the best possible elements and then embarking on a comprehensive frame-by-frame cleanup. And yes, Criterion does this with all of their restorations, but the case of Mildred Pierce is a fascinating one for a couple of reasons.

First, Curtiz and Haller was shot on nitrate film, as was the style of the time – resulting in a gorgeous but extremely volatile negative – and second, when it came time to scan that negative, the team discovered its last reel had been swapped out for one from a later film print, which meant hunting down a new source and working further post-production magic to match the sources. A fine-grain 35mm print from the Warner archives was also involved, and the whole thing is basically ASMR for film nerds so just watch it and be soothed.

Anyway, that’s the reason I am once again advising you to pick up the UHD release of a movie you probably already own. Because this 4K release of Mildred Pierce is a beauty, with additional resolution and HDR noticeably enhancing the presentation of the film. The Blu-ray was splendid, but the 4K disc is even better, adding new depths to the image’s deep shadows and a pearlescent luster to its grays and whites. Yes, that’s a flowery way to describe a monochromatic film. But good god is it gorgeous, and – yep – well worth the upgrade.

Besides, since that original Blu-ray is also included in the package, with all of its excellent supplements – television appearances by Crawford and Cain, a 2006 Q&A with Ann Blyth, a conversation about the film between critics Molly Haskell and Robert Polito and Peter Fitzgerald’s feature-length 2002 documentary Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Movie Star – it’s not like you’re losing anything. Give the old one away as a gift, or sell it used to offset the price of the 4K upgrade; everybody wins, really. Especially you, since you get to own the best version of Mildred Pierce I’ve ever seen.

In Sunday’s paid edition: Rocky throws down in UHD. Knockout or draw? Upgrade your subscription so you don’t miss the decision.