Anyone had a chance to take a look at the restored
Career Girls? It looks very nice, with far richer colors than the washed-out old master that has been streaming. But there are some brief color inconsistencies that stood out to me and I was wondering if anyone else noticed or had any insight into them.
The first one occurs pretty early in the film as Annie is walking through the station after exiting the train. There's a shot of her walking --> a POV shot of Hannah coming toward her --> a reaction shot of her smiling. Here are what the shots of Annie look like on the restoration (resized for convenience but otherwise unaltered):
The second shot is so much bluer than any other shot in the scene, almost like a few frames were outsourced to Eclair. Given the location, I thought perhaps it could simply be the result of some uncooperative natural light changing between shots. But for what it's worth, the old Amazon copy does not seem to display the same inconsistency:
(It's also worth nothing the film sets up a visual dichotomy between the brighter present and the bluer past, so a sudden shift like this would carry certain implications that might seem a bit out of place here, and occurs nowhere else).
The second instance I noticed also only lasts for a single shot, but it takes place indoors. In the famous "Mzzz Brontë" scene, there's a shot reverse shot sequence between Annie and Hannah. Annie asks her question ("Will I find a fella soon?") in close-up --> Cut to Hannah answering ("Must come!") --> Cut back to Annie, blushing.
Here are what the shots look like on the old Amazon copy:
This color is consistent across all the shots with the lighting in the scene, a dark room lit mostly by the lamp on Steadman's right just out of the frame. There's nothing that marks the third shot in any way. In the restored version however, the third shot is markedly different, tinted red:
Again that shot is the only one where this color deviation occurs; all the surrounding shots in the scene look normal. Is this an intentional expressionist flash, the lighting shifted to reflect Annie's momentary embarrassment? Or are these shots minor mistakes in the color timing?
As for the film itself, for me it's magnificent, one of Leigh's best. Warm, funny, wistful, maybe the closest he ever got to something like Rohmer's
A Tale of Autumn. And in a tragically truncated career full of memorable appearances, Katrin Cartlidge is perhaps at her very best here. Just an electrifying performance, witty and unpredictable, so carefully layered and modulated between two states.