The Seven Year Itch Blu-ray

The Seven Year Itch Blu-ray, Video Quality

From the Saul Bass title sequence to the madcap conclusion, The Seven Year Itch looks fantastic on Blu-ray, with a 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer of a restored print that's now almost entirely free of specks, other age-related issues, or compression concerns. The integrity of the image is untouched by excessive digital noise reduction or edge enhancement, and the picture quality improvement over DVD is apparent from the first frames. Though perhaps not quite as breathtaking as Technicolor, the film has that inimitable mid-century Deluxe look, a melange of vivid, eye-catching hues, creamy highlights and soft neutrals. There are some minor color/brightness/grain fluctuations here and there, but otherwise the print is very stable, with strong blacks and good contrast. While overall clarity isn't sharp sharp by modern standards, it is consistent with other Cinemascope pictures from the '50s available on Blu-ray; everything—from facial features and clothing to sets and props—looks tighter and more refined here compared to standard definition editions. If you're fond of the film and looking forward to a visual upgrade, you should be pleased by Fox's remastering efforts.

The Seven Year Itch Blu-ray, Audio Quality

The Seven Year Itch's original sound design has been given a slight multi-channel expansion, by way of a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track.nothing extraneous has been added to the mix—no goofy new sound effects—and the rear channels are only used for quiet New York City ambience and bleeding room for the score. Alfred Newman's music sounds great considering when it was recorded —there's no shrillness in the highs, and the bottom-end is relatively rich—but the mix is really all about the dialogue, which is always cleanly recorded and clearly reproduced. As you'd hope, there are no distracting hisses, pops, crackles, or other audio anomalies. A perfectly functional vintage soundtrack. The disc includes a Dolby Digital 3.0 track for comparison, along with a large assortment of dub and subtitle options.blu-ray.com