On its own it improves over Paramount’s old DVD significantly and there is no contest when comparing those two. Though some long shots aren’t as sharp as others (which is also the same on StudioCanal’s Blu-ray) the image delivers acrisp black-and-white picture loaded with fine-object detail, nicely rendered grain, and excellent textures, all leading to a very pleasant, film-like image. The good news is that Criterion’s high-def version is, at the very least, comparable to the standard Blu-ray found in StudioCanal’s release. If my praise towards this presentation comes off even a wee bit underwhelmed it’s only because I have already seen StudioCanal’s 4K UHD release of the title, which looks unbelievably good, just rich in texture and detail, and accompanied by gorgeous blacks and whites, superb grayscale, and excellent looking film grain. That picture looks incredible and it was always going to be hard for a high-def/1080 version to live up to it, which StudioCanal’s included (region B locked) Blu-ray showed itself. Criterion is using StudioCanal’s recent 4K restoration, which was in turn scanned from the 35mm original camera negative. Feeling like it has been a long time coming, The Criterion Collection gets around to releasing David Lynch’s The Elephant Man, presenting it on Blu-ray in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 on a dual-layer disc with a 1080p/24hz high-definition encode.
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