From Kenneth Turan’s February 14, 2020 Critics Choice column in the Times:
“Independent films were not an invention of Sundance, they existed in the golden age Hollywood as well, and one of the most unusual, and the most gorgeous, was 1951’s Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. It was directed by Albert Lewin and starred James Mason and, looking especially beautiful, Ava Gardner in a pleasantly surreal supernatural tale of a cursed sea captain and a heedless young woman who lives only for pleasure. Or so she thinks.
“Gardner looked as photogenic as she did because Pandora’s cinematographer was the great Jack Cardiff, famous for works like Black Narcissus, and because the film was shot in the knockout process known as three-strip Technicolor.
“Restoring Pandora to its original glory has taken more than a dozen years, with the Cohen Media Group ultimately funding a glorious 4K version, which included more than 700 hours of digital restoration lavished on 177,120 frames of the film. Was it worth it? Absolutely.
“Begins Feb. 21 at Laemmle Royal, West Los Angeles.”
Cohen commissioned several terrific new posters for Pandora by New York-based key art designer, illustrator, and art director Mark McGillivray:
Best news to come along on the movie front in quite a while. Our family went to see this movie when I was six years old–don’t think I’ve ever been out of love with Ava Gardner since. The perfect movie marriage was between Miss Gardner and Jack Cardiff’s camera, but the two blu rays I own (one of American, one of Spanish origin) have never done this picture justice. Hopefully, all of that has been remedied by this new restoration. “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman deserves nothing less because it is one of the few films to which the term “cinematic art” can be applied rather literally and without much fear of exaggeration. Ava Gardner, classical and more modern European mythology, and Omar Khayyam all in one movie. What better recipe for a “strange” and “wonderful” dream?