The movie is great. But the picture has a lot of lines, scratches. I watched a lot of CC's blu ray. They all very clean, even Yojimbo, also an old movie. Looks like CC doesn't follow same standard.

Did you read the liner notes? They explain about it.

Yojimbo is from the 60's, Stagecoach is from the 30's.

That's what poster said. Both old movie! Why standards different?

It's funny. This reminds me I was watching Buster Keaton's The General which took place in the Civil War. The film is from 1920's. It just made me think that most wouldn't know any better and would think it's the same time.

Like people in the future will watch Saving Private Ryan and think it's the same time frame. Cause on a long enough timeline all these things run into each other.

As mentioned, the notes in the booklet explain that the original negative for Stagecoach is lost and they looked at something like 8 different prints and had to settle for the one that looked the best.

I watched the disc and outside of the first few minutes and a few transition shots here and there, I didn't notice many problems.

If something is old and abused, it is going to look worse than something that is also old but well cared for. Like cars, houses, women, and even film prints.

Make sense?

From the manual, reason is the original film is bad and CC can't spend any more money or time on it. So this is it.

What is the point of this thread, exactly?

what you may not understand is that CC..isn't fucking WB. They don't have pools of money to swim through so easily. It's a fucking miracle that we have them if you ask me. Releasing films that most people don't give a shit about except for the Cinephile (mostly us)

Um... the Criterion "Stagecoach" looks miles better than the Warner Brothers "Stagecoach"....

Of course it would. I'm just stating that Criterion using the elements it can will do the best it can. And it is the best.

Why did WB give it up, anyone know?

My guess is that Criterion approached WB about licensing it, WB looked into how much it would cost to do a search and restoration, decided against it for cost reasons and licensed the title to Criterion knowing that Criterion would do due diligence to the title.

Their license on the rights simply expired.

Stagecoach, Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent and Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be were part of the Walter Wanger estate. The distribution of those films is now held by the estate and UCLA.

^Thanks!