4K Restoration/1966/Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo

2014 4K Restoration (MGM / Italian Rights Holders)

In 2014, MGM and the Italian rights holders jointly financed a full 4K digital restoration of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The work was performed by L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna. This project involved new 16-bit 4K scans of the original Techniscope camera negative and remains the foundational high-resolution source for all subsequent UHD editions.

Technically, the 2014 restoration represented a major improvement over previous home-video masters, with sharper detail, more consistent grain, and improved stabilization. However, its color grading quickly became controversial among fans and archival consultants.

Color Grading Issues (Ritrovata Aesthetic)

As described by Benji Heran and Jordan Krug on the Film Formally podcast, returning to the camera negative permitted Ritrovata to impose a fully new, subjective aesthetic. By the mid-2010s the facility had developed a recognizable grading profile, characterized by:

• yellow–orange shifted highlights
• cooler, sometimes teal-leaning mid-tones
• an overall warm/yellow push in daylight scenes
• sky tones drifting toward teal or cyan

These choices contrasted sharply with the film’s long-established neutral appearance on prints and earlier video masters, where:

• skies were blue
• teeth were white
• the overall look reflected a natural, dusty Techniscope Western palette

One frequently cited example is the scene where Tuco confronts Blondie as Shorty is about to be hanged. In the 2014 grade, Clint Eastwood’s teeth appear green because of the interaction between the teal mid-tones and the yellow-biased highlights—an artifact not present in historical reference materials.

2021 Kino Lorber 4K Edition

Kino Lorber’s 2021 UHD release reused the 2014 L’Immagine Ritrovata restoration rather than performing a new scan. According to a 2024 Blu-ray.com production account, Kino’s colorist sought to correct the heavily yellow cast of the earlier master but was limited to the already-graded 2014 files, as the original log-encoded scans had not been archived for external use. To refine accuracy, the colorist consulted Vancouver-based filmmakers Devan Scott and Will Ross, whose earlier fan reconstruction of the 1967 international cut had been profiled in the National Post (2019). Scott and Ross provided reference material from their own research, including data from a 35 mm IB Tech print and vintage mono audio sources. Despite these improvements, the Kino Lorber master remained constrained by the baked-in color and contrast of the Ritrovata grade, resulting in only a partial step forward from the 2014 version.

2025 Arrow Video Remaster

In 2025, Arrow Video released a new 4K UHD edition based not on a new scan but on the archived 16-bit log-encoded scans originally produced by L’Immagine Ritrovata in 2014. Filmmaker and colorist Devan Scott explained that these scans existed in three forms:

• Unrestored log transfers – direct digitizations of the camera negative
• Restored log transfers – cleaned and stabilized, but ungraded
• Color-graded masters – the SDR outputs used in earlier editions

Arrow obtained the restored log transfers, bypassing the color-graded masters entirely. Working with Silver Salt Restoration in London, they performed a new HDR color grade and digital master, independent of L’Immagine Ritrovata’s 2014 color science. This approach produced greater tonal depth, natural grain structure, and markedly improved detail over previous 4K editions derived from SDR masters.

Scott described this process on the Alternate Ending – Movie Review Podcast (“Fifth Tuesday: The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Film Restoration,” 29 July 2025), emphasizing that Arrow’s access to the preserved log scans enabled a full regrade separate from the 2014 color pass.

Production and Consultation Team

The remaster involved four independent consultants with deep archival and technical knowledge of Leone’s work:

• Devan Scott – Canadian filmmaker and post-production colorist; served as technical consultant to Arrow. Scott identified that the earlier Kino Lorber version lacked access to the log scans and assisted in supervising the neutral color regrade from those raw materials.
• Will Ross – Scott’s filmmaking collaborator, who co-authored prior research on Leone restorations. He helped ensure scene-to-scene continuity and historical fidelity in the revised master.
• Benji Heran – Audio preservation specialist who sourced and synchronized high-quality mono tracks from the 1990s MGM LaserDisc releases, used as the tonal benchmark for Arrow’s final mix.
• Jordan Krug – Film collector and preservation consultant who provided a 35 mm IB Technicolor dye-transfer print for reference. This print, scanned at 4K, guided the contrast, color density, and optical timing decisions in the new grade.

Post-Production and Mastering

Color grading was executed by Silver Salt Restoration in London, following the neutral reference derived from Krug’s IB Tech print and the log-encoded scans from Bologna. The process retained natural film grain, corrected previous cropping and geometry issues, and harmonized reel joins that had long been misaligned in earlier restorations.

Audio Reconstruction

Arrow rebuilt the film’s audio presentation from multiple analog and digital sources, prioritizing tonal consistency with the MGM LaserDisc mix. Heran’s transfers helped resolve anomalies in the optical soundtrack negatives (OSTN/OSTP) and avoided over-processed noise-reduction typical of previous home-video versions.