Review Detail

A big Thank You to ParanoidAndroid for this great hybrid of the two versions of such a classic! It's not just 'more of a good thing' but a legit improvement in terms of seeing our detective do a lot of detecting and putting pieces together, but still not losing the great witty dialogue of some of the new '45 version scenes.

I'm not sure what the setup was that other reviewers were watching this on, but just on my laptop it was extremely obvious when the footage switched to a scene from the '45 version. I won't say it was "jarring", but I could easily tell every time it happened without seeing the cutlist (I checked after watching and was right). And even in the normal footage, it's not really "restored", it LOOKS like it's from '46. Some scenes are only partially in focus, or have degraded edges, and while the audio from the '46 scenes is pretty clear, there's a near-constant hiss in all of the '45 scenes. I'm not sure how bad the footage was before being edited, so even getting it to this level might have been a great achievement, but I will say that I never stopped noticing it while viewing. Thankfully, the film is so good that the A/V never pulled me out of it! (Thoughts on the movie as a whole here: https://boxd.it/5r8umP )

As far as the scenes being inserted though, you can't fault any of the editing here. This version flows like the story was meant to: still a complicated series of murders and double-crosses, but you follow Marlowe as he gradually figures out what questions to ask and then who to ask them to.... and eventually figures out all the answers. The narrative changes here make this a great detective story on top of being a great piece of Noir, and it's really a must-watch. Maybe you'll want to watch this first, maybe the theatrical release, I can see arguments for either way. But for me, this is a shelf-replacer. Thanks, PA!