Screenbound - Region FREE - Blu-ray - September 2017: This is also available in Screenbound's Roman Polanski Blu-ray boxset with Repulsion, Cul De Sac and Knife in the Water.

The Screenbound transfer has some questionable visuals in the beginning 5 minutes with some minor edge-enhancement (which may very well be on the source) but soon settles into being a decent 1080P - in advance of the 14-year old DVDs. It is on a single-layered disc and not a high bitrate but the source density seems adequately supported by the HD. I think it's imperfect but detail rises, contrast is more layered and there is frequent depth. Grain is a bit blotchy but exists. There are a very few speckles but the image quality is passable with only dual-layering and a digital restoration advancing beyond this Blu-ray's home theater presentation.

Jazz pianist Krzysztof Komeda's score is brilliant - relaxing, hyper cool and brooding it gains some notable prominence with a lossless linear PCM mono track at 1536 kbps (16-bit). It is an atmospheric part of the presentation and comes across authentically flat but with some perceived depth in uncompressed. One other issues; the optional English subtitles sometimes leave gaps (mostly at the beginning) and seem incomplete at times. It was only for short or repeated dialogue and it didn't effect following the film. It didn't appear to be anything important that was missed. This has been tested and is a Region FREE Blu-ray disc.

Re: The subtitle gaps: From our FB Group Michael Brooke tells us "If they’re at the start, this may well be at Polanski’s own request: the Polish censors forced him to add some additional dialogue, and in revenge he asked for it not to be subtitled in English. There is at least one Polanski-authorised version of 'Knife in the Water' that deliberately doesn't subtitle dialogue that he originally had to include under duress. If I remember rightly, this is mostly at the beginning in the car, but there may be other examples later on....

Although the biggest loss for English-speakers is that no English-friendly edition of 'Knife in the Water' has done anything close to justice to the radio sports commentary, scripted and performed by Jerzy Skolimowski but apparently pretty much untranslatable beyond its basic factual essence - but Polish friends tell me that it's crammed with elaborate wordplay and references that non-Poles are most unlikely ever to get.....

...sounds like the Polanski-approved version. He didn't want you to understand that dialogue, because he didn't want to include it in the first place.

It's not often that filmmakers themselves ask for a less than full translation, but another example is Danièle Huillet, who specifically requested that the subtitles on 'Class Relations' were minimal to the point of only conveying absolute essentials, her theory being that this would force us to listen to and process the original German even if we didn't fully understand it.

And virtually all the German dialogue at the end of 'Diamonds of the Night' is left unsubtitled at Jan Němec's request - he pointed out that his Czech protagonists wouldn't be able to understand what their German captors were saying, so the viewer shouldn't either. (Unless they understand German, of course, but that's a risk that he had to take.)." (Thanks Michael!)

Extras vault this Blu-ray to a higher level. Like the Criterion DVD, there are some Polanski Short films from the late 50s. The eight selections ranging from tghe dialogue-less Murder and Teethful Smile running less than 2-minutes each to Ticket to the West running 1/2 hour (NOT on the Criterion). In total about 1 hour 20-minutes worth. Most be more appreciative of the three interviews - 42-minutes on The Southbank Show, with Russell Harty for 1/2 hour, and a 3/4 hour piece entitled Clive James Meets Polanski where they dine together and chat. There is a Repulsion and Cul-De-Sac original theatrical trailers.

I'll eventually cover the other Blu-ray titles in this boxset, but as a stand-alone release (making the assumption most Polanski fans already own the Criterion's Cul-de-sac Blu-ray that is available in both the US and UK). Pleasing HD video, uncompressed audio,  great extras here - still a great film!

P.S. BTW, How about Polanski's The Tenant on Blu-ray?

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- Gary W. Tooze