ADDITION: Legend Films (Colorized and black and white) - April 07': Easily I would put this in my personal Top 100 films.

There was a flicker of hope for a decent English subbed version here, but the entire package amounts to nothing more than a curiosity. The dual-layered DVD offers a new colorized, progressive (and shorter) version of the film that is dubbed into English. There is also the complete original version (interlaced) in a despairingly weak transfer, black and white all right, but burnt-in subs and it may be the worst image yet. So I was interested to see this 'shorter' version with about 45 minutes cut but overall this is truly a bastardized rendition with a DUB and of course the colorization of a film that should only be seen in black and white. The color does look good - bringing up detail a shade in spots. I'm sure that some will suggest to me in email that it should be destroyed. I don't feel quite that strongly and for $10 it does have some value as a comparative piece of manipulated modern digitization but I think that some things shouldn't be messed with... but regardless the reality is that they are.

One day some production company will create a DVD of this film that looks as good as the Kinowelt but has optional English subtitles. Criterion - are you listening?

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ADDITION- GCTHV (France) + Kinowelt (German) - both region 2 - PAL - January 2005 - Okay, before we get started - both French and German editions do NOT have English subtitles, which will remove them from consideration immediately for many. It should also be noted that because of the complexity of obtaining information for this comparison we were not able to ensure that all screen captures are matching frames, but our contributors did the best they can and have adhered to our standards of technical generation of those images. We apologize that there are some minor discrepancies in exact frames. We are fairly certain the first and last set of large captures are accurately imitated. Some points:

1) The Kinowelt image is the brightest, yet I cannot find example of digital boosting, but feel it MUST be there. Regardless I like this image very much - it looks exceptionally clean.

2) The Tartan has the best subtitles, although they are non-removable - an almost unforgivable mistake.

3) We can through the old Image Entertainment and Water Bearer out of contention as their image quality is far too poor - showing damage and looking to come from an analog source or having a very poor bitrate transfer. They both have burnt-in subtitles.

4)The Tartan and Gaumont look very similar in image quality with the Gaumont being slightly sharper.

5) The Kinowelt has consistent damage on the left edge.

6) All editions are cropped to varying degrees.

Final comments: As with our Persona comparison, I am uncharacteristically going with the brighter image. This is very rare as, in almost every case of a brighter image, it has digital manipulation in the form of brightness/contrast boosting. Defending myself here, I still suspect that the Gaumont is the most accurate image, but I figured why not indulge myself and admit I like the brighter better in this case, especially since neither have English subtitles - and it doesn't matter to most surfers to this page. Bottom line about image: the Gaumont is better, but I prefer the Kinowelt. This comparison on DVDDuel will bear that out - CLICK HERE.

The film is so important in cinema in general, that it is hard to believe that there is not an edition with removable English subtitles in existence. We still rate the Tartan - but lets have some extras and removable subtitles. Where the heck is Criterion?

NOTE: The Water Bearer has a good documentary as an extra.

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The print for the Water Bearer version is from "The Pier Paolo Pasolini Foundation, Rome" as stated on the back of the Water Bearer DVD case. It shows a lot of good film grain, but I do notice the contrast level flickers and some damage, although less than the Image Entertainment DVD. I am also disappointed that no distributor has yet put in removable subs. Compared to the Tartan PAL DVD the subs are very poor and the picture quality is inferior. The Tartan is cropped on the top and bottom but the Water Bearer is cropped on both sides, which you notice very much at the opening credits as they unreadable. The sound is also poor on the Water Bearer. It does however show that the Image Entertainment disc has had manipulation on the aspect ratio.

The Image Entertainment has compressed the aspect ratio so that everyone looks squished. There is visible print damage in spots on the Out Of Print Image Entertainment disc. We can now verify some issues of aspect ratio and cropping while looking at the Water Bearer print. The Tartan disc has some visible digital manipulation and has taken some grain from the original image. It also has some contrast boosting. There are no excessive scratches or dirt on either the Tartan or Water Bearer print. Although hazy at times, the quality of both are still much better than the  'Out of Print' version. There is no longer a reason to pay an arm and a leg on EBay for the Image Disc in Region 1 now that Water Bearer have put this out.