Woman in the Dunes

[MileFilms@aol.com]

In a message dated 1/14/01 9:17:40 PM, mills at rain.org writes:

<< Dennis' comments on print status in Japan was interesting, particularly
because I'm debating about picking up the DVD of Woman in the Dunes. A few
reviews on the Amazon.com web site said that the print used was not as
sharp as the Criterion VHS and that the blacks were rather flat.

Should we hold out hope that Criterion will rerelease the film on DVD, and
how did it come to be that Criterion had a good print then some other
company puts out the DVD much later? The company (I think it's Image)
claims to have struck this print off the "original negative".

Comments? >>

Dear Ted,

Actually, we claimed to strike our 35mm print off of the original negative, 
because that's what Mr. Teshigahara did for our release. And Criterion, never 
put it out (I promise!) -- it was a Connoisseur public domain title before we 
acquired the rights and copyrighted the film under the GATT/Uruguay agreement 
for Teshigahara Productions.

Mr. Teshigahara created and approved the video transfer (also from the 
original materials) which IMHO is superior to the former Connoisseur version 
based on having inspected their materials they used. Connoisseur was using a 
dupe IP from 1967 that was in the possession of Bob Harris. When we acquired 
the rights, Bob kindly offered to lend us the IP but upon inspection, it had 
extensive scratches, warpage, distortion and inprinted dust. I never looked 
at the Connoisseur video version, but I assume it reflects this. We also 
found and acquired the original dupe negative used in the American release 
(which created the later IP) but decided to go with Mr. Teshigahara's master 
which I believed produced better results than we could have done with our 
material. I haven't heard any complaints about our video master and I think 
it looks great, but I'll certainly compare the two now.

As for a future Criterion release, we wanted to go with them initially, but 
it didn't work out so I can't say it will happen in the near future.

Dennis Doros
Milestone Film & Video
PO Box 128
Harrington Park, NJ 07640
Phone: (201) 767-3117 or (800) 603-1104
Fax: (201) 767-3035
Email: milefilms at aol.com
www.milestonefilms.com