Eyes Without a Face (1960)

The Criterion, BFI, and Gaumont blu-rays are all from the 2010 Gaumont restoration. The Gaumont blu-ray, released first, is missing an 81-second scene about 48 minutes into the film (of the dogs being given to the professor), and its absence is given away by a very intrusive jump cut. However, it seems this scene is also inexplicably absent from the master Gaumont sent to Criterion and BFI.

Criterion spliced in the footage from another source, presumably the master they used for their first DVD. The BFI spliced in the missing footage from a different source, which is visible in the spectrals below.

The BFI used whatever audio track they were given by Gaumont, so both tracks have an extreme amount of noise reduction applied. You can see in the spectrals where the BFI spliced in the missing sequence, and the sound during this bit is MUCH less murky.

Criterion, though, must have realised that the audio from their old DVD master sounds better, so they used it instead. It has more high-end detail and is less muffled. Unfortunately, quite a bit of 'additional work' (i.e. noise reduction) was done to it for their blu-ray, so it's usually only modestly better. The Criterion DVD audio, however, sounds excellent. Its music, especially, sounds terrific. The track presents all the shortcomings that would have been heard theatrically in 1960--it's sibilant and rather harsh--but these 'distortions' shouldn't be removed simply by obliterating all the high frequencies.

Edit: Very interestingly, the final sound in the film, heard at the very end of the closing credits, has been edited on the Gaumont/BFI and Criterion BD audio tracks. On the Criterion DVD, the final thunderous piano note is repeated twelve times, decreasing in volume with each echo and ending well after "FIN" has faded to black. On the blu-rays, it's heard just once, as the first eleven have been cut. The one remaining note begins and ends with "FIN". The rest of the music in this sequence remains the same - it's definitely the same cue, just now edited.

If anyone's wondering, video-wise the BFI offers superior compression for the majority of the film, however the spliced-in dogs sequence seems to have been taken from a different source than whatever Criterion used (probably the master for their first DVD). During this sequence, the BFI is a bit dupey looking (dirty and unstable) compared to the Criterion, but at the end of the scene Criterion (mistakenly?) replaced some new/restoration footage with footage from their old master -- so the BFI looks much better for a couple shots. Anyway, this all amounts to very little in terms of runtime, so it's not really worth fretting over.