I'm playing a checkdisc of the Blu-ray right now.
This is the first time I've ever seen the film, so I only have the
Beaver comparison to draw on - but I can confirm that the BFI transfer looks appreciably different from the three that Gary's compared.
Take the first grab, for instance, where Richard Harris says "Faenza isn't far away...". In terms of brightness and contrast, the new BFI disc is closest to the Image transfer (i.e. slightly darker than the Madman and Prestige DVDs), but the colours are quite different - the walls are properly grey (as opposed to the Image disc's quasi-beige), so Harris stands out against them much more noticeably. Also, the massive increase in definition means that the textural detail of the walls is much more pronounced.
With the shot of Monica Vitti against the backdrop of red pylons, the colours are closest to the Madman transfer, but the BFI picture is darker, making them look more oppressive. And with the shot of the glass bottles, the colours are closer to the Image (i.e. they're more blue than green), though the picture definition is infinitely superior, and there's more information on all four sides.
As for general comments on the picture, DNR fetishists will be disturbed to hear that a faint patina of grain is visible throughout, but I was delighted. The picture is generally very clean indeed for a colour film of this vintage, with only the occasional speck of damage. There are very occasional (and very slight) exposure fluctuations, almost certainly unavoidably inherent in the original negative (from which this new transfer was directly drawn).
I'm aware that other DVDs have controversial sound issues, but I can't draw a direct comparison, and it's hard to say if it sounds "correct" since it's a typical mid-1960s post-synched Italian dub - in other words, it sounds unnatural to begin with. But it definitely doesn't have the "hiss and whine" noted on the Image disc, and I'm not aware of any obtrusive digital artefacting of the type noted on the Madman disc - but I haven't watched the whole thing yet.
The disc extras consist of a trailer (also in hi-def, albeit in worse condition than the main feature - though it's been preserved surprisingly well for something so ephemeral) and a commentary by David Forgacs - I shall quote the opening:
I'm David Forgacs, and I'm going to be commenting on various aspects of this film. The Red Desert was Antonioni's ninth feature film and his first in colour. All his remaining films were to be in colour too, and one of them, The Oberwald Mystery, of 1980, was shot experimentally on videotape and then transferred to film. But none of these films would match The Red Desert's radical experimentation with colour, or, for that matter, its experiments with sound. Some writers on The Red Desert have suggested it's really mainly about colour and visual form. The film does pull in that abstract direction, but it has a social dimension too. It's about the new industrial Italy that had emerged since the 1950s and it's also a character film about a woman with an anxiety disorder. The objects in this title sequence are recognisable as bits of industrial plant but they're shot out of focus, the colours are muted, and they resemble paintings, in particular the urban landscapes of the Italian artists Mario Sironi and Giorgio Morandi...
...and so on. Subtitles (white and razor-sharp) are provided both for the main feature and the commentary, and can be switched on the fly - and switched off. I assume there'll also be a booklet. I can't comment on the region coding because this isn't a final production version and I don't want to mislead anyone.
All in all, though, this looks pretty definitive, and I'm greatly looking forward to exploring it in more depth when my wife lets me have the telly for a whole two hours. Talking of which, the running time is 1:56:46 - 26 seconds longer than the Image release for some reason. (No point comparing with the others as they've undergone PAL speedup, while the Blu-ray is at the correct 24fps).
