NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Criterion Blu-ray (November 2019): Criterion have transferred Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World to Blu-ray. It is cited as a "New 4K digital restoration, commissioned by the Wim Wenders Foundation and supervised by director Wim Wenders". The 1080P presentation starts with the following text screens:

"Filming for UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD lasted from April 1990 to the beginning of 1991. A relatively small core team, working in 9 countries across 4 continents, was supported by large local crews in each new country.

The film was released in theaters in the fall of 1991, in a cut of just under 3 hours which, according to Wim Wenders, reduced the epic proportions of the undertaking to some sort of "Reader's Digest". For this reason, he presented in 1994 his Director's Cut of almost 5 hours that you are about to see, which represents for him the only valid form of this "ultimate road movie".

With a budget of well over 20 million dollars, the film was unusually expensive for an auteur film and certainly Wenders' most costly production by far. While the soundtrack achieved considerable success, the shortened version of the film performed far below commercial expectations.

UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD was shot on Super 35 mm Eastman color negative film. The digital restoration was done in 2014. For this purpose, the original negative was scanned, retouched and color-corrected in a resolution of 4K. The original negative had collected dirt, shrunk slightly over the years, and also exhibited flawed splices and light scratching on the emulsion and base sides.

All work was carried out at ARRI Film & TV Services Berlin, with the generous support of the CNC."

Here is a quote from the director:

"The Reader's Digest version I was forced to release at the time would have broken my heart if I had left it at that. I knew that. And I felt I owed it to my actors, to my crew and to the musicians who had worked on that fabulous score, to finish the real work we had done. It had epic proportions, that was for sure. Together with my editor, Peter Przygodda, we added another full year after the delivery of the commercial version at the time, at our own expense, and finished what I considered "the real film." Of five hours. Which exists since then and which hopefully will see not only the light of day in the form of DVD releases, but also a few theatrical screenings here or there. I have shown it four or five times already, and EVERYBODY who saw it had the same reaction. "Wow! Now we get it. That's a whole different ballgame!" At the time we had to condense the film so much that all the fun had gone out of it. The "message" had become very heavy, if not to say heavy-handed. The very narrator had become more or less a side character, for instance."

Wim Wender

So Criterion have transferred the, almost 5 hour film, on to two dual-layered Blu-rays with high bitrates (about 5X that of the DVDs). It looks stunning at times - especially the Australian Outback vistas, although there are beautiful sequences from Moscow, Russia to Paris, France to San Francisco to Tokyo, Japan. The image is darker than the, brightened, DVD and has none of its digitization and compression failings. The image has some blue-leaning but overall a fabulously impressive presentation in-motion. 

On their Blu-ray, Criterion use a robust DTS-HD Master 5,1 surround track (24-bit) in the original English language with some French, Italian, Japanese, German etc. There are some instances that the surround some into play and it has some keen separation with impressive bass. Until the End of the World is famous of the musical soundtrack of the film - score-wise credited to Graeme Revell (Out of Time, Street Kings, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Assault on Precinct 13, The Crow) but there is also Talking Heads, Neneh Cherry, Lou Reed, R.E.M., Elvis Costello, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Depeche Mode, Jane Siberry with k.d. lang, Robbie Robertson etc. - all sounding rich and deep in the lossless. Wonderful. Criterion offer optional English (SDH) subtitles for the entire presentation or a secondary option of just English for the non-English dialogue on their Region 'A' Blu-ray package.

Extras on the first Blu-ray start withy a new 14-minute introduction by Wim Wenders and the supplements include The Song, an 18-minute, 1991 documentary by Uli M Schueppel following the recording process over three days and nights of "(I'll Love You) Till the End of the World" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. There are thirty minutes of deleted scenes and alternate takes from Until the End of the World, assembled by director Wim Wenders as well as a new 1/4 hour interview with Wenders in which the director revisits Until the End of the World's soundtrack album, plus another 8-minutes with Wenders and musician David Byrne. On the second Blu-ray we get the 1990 Japanese that film follows director Wim Wenders and Sean Naughton, the high-definition-video designer on Until the End of the World, in Tokyo, and details the creation of the film's groundbreaking high-definition sequences. It runs over an hour. There is also a 1/2 hour interview with director Wim Wenders was conducted by journalist Roger Willemsen in 2001, Up-Down Under Roma, a 6.5-minute interview from 1993 with director Wim Wenders recounting his experiences visiting and working in Australia. Lastly, is a trailer but the package has a liner notes booklet with essays by critics Bilge Ebiri and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky on the film and its soundtrack.

Until the End of the World is many fans favorite Wim Wenders' film - it's travelogue qualities, realism, great performances and incredible scope make it extremely memorable. We all wanted this version on Blu-ray  and now we have it in a brilliant Criterion package. It's a must-own film for many and we give it our highest recommendation! 

Gary Tooze

ON THE DVD: The Director's Cut is presented as a trilogy. It is spread out over on three single layered DVD's, each part with its own opening credit sequence. Wenders claims that that he used the original Super-35mm negative for this version and that the theatrical cut was actually struck from a dupe of the original. As you can see from the stills the image looks very, very good. But, since each disc only holds around an hour and a half of material it is a shame coming from such a high quality source that the transfer's bitrate isn't higher.

Since the transfer is from a 1.33:1 Super-35 source not used for the theatrical release, it is not entirely inappropriate that the anamorphic image is presented at a full screen ratio of 1.78:1 instead of the theatrical ratio of 1.85:1.

I have only scanned through the supplements but I found the 40 minute interview with the director to be concise and highly informative. This is obviously the version Wim Wenders is most attached to. For fans of the original release it is a must-have. out of

 - Gregg Ferencz