If you’re in the market for Cross of Iron on 4K Blu-ray, you won’t need much exposition from me. You know that it is a bleak story of rank, class and grinding warfare during the German retreat of 1943. What you don’t know is whether Studiocanal has managed a quality 4K transfer. Or rather Silver Salt Restoration, the specialist firm Studiocanal hired to scan, nip and tuck Sam Peckinpah’s film from 1977.
The short answer is yes, and it has awakened the physical media evangelist in me. I’m no stranger to this stuff. I own many pounds and stones of DVDs, Blu-rays and 4K UHD
material. But over the last few years, I have allowed streaming to wash over me with its
convenience and value. This is a shame, because neglecting physical media means neglecting yourself, because the best transfers hold many small moments of pleasure, and
this new Cross of Iron release is one of them.
After you get past a wimpy notice about how this film may be offensive — yeah, the eastern front was definitely problematic — another message appears detailing Silver Salt’s extensive restoration of the original 35mm negative, which involved some 240 hours’ work removing dirt, scratches and other distortions.
The reward of these efforts is immediately apparent. The 4K image is clean, sharp and
beautifully fluid. This is what I mean by small pleasures — frames, scenes and whole
sequences are just a pleasure to behold, even within the miserable confines of timber
framed dugouts, where much of Cross of Iron takes place. You see tiny grains of dust and
soil falling from the rafters and drifting through the air, clinging to the characters’ clothes and skin. The resolution’s impressive density makes this possible and so does the lighting, which hits objects and subjects (and James Coburn’s teeth) with striking naturalism.
All of this is brilliant for Cross of Iron enthusiasts, whose numbers, admittedly, cannot be
high. After all, this is neither Pekinpah’s best film nor his worst. Bloody Sam could hardly be called an uplifting director, but Cross of Iron is a particularly grey and dour experience, one that pummels sentiment and humanity with greed, egotism and relentless artillery. It has an appropriately grimy aesthetic and there are numerous memorable performances — Coburn, Schell, Mason, Warner — but it does, for better or worse, leave you feeling a little… barren.
It’s a testament to Studiocanal and Silver Salt Restoration, then, that this new transfer
makes Cross of Iron feel so alive.
