Adding to the soap opera like environment, is the fact that every family member is plotting against the others, with each trying to enlist Whity s aid in their schemes. Although released in 1970, the film element used for the transfer doesn t betray any signs of being that old. Perhaps the American Zoetrope DVD Lab, where this DVD was produced, worked some special form of digital magic on this release or perhaps there are still pristine materials on this film in Germany. Anyway, the transfer is great and it certainly shows cinematographer Michael Ballhaus work to the fullest. The image is sharp, clear and displays a solid level of detail.
Colors are clean and well saturated, without a sign of bleeding amongst the more intense hues.
Blacks are a beep black and the picture demonstrates very smooth contrast. Shadow detail is decent, but nowhere near the levels of new movies. The Dolby Digital monaural soundtrack has the limited fidelity of a 1970 film, but I didn t notice any severe distortions in the sound. The German language dialogue sounded fairly natural to my English trained ears. Subtitles are provided on the DVD in English.