From today's capture, I'd say that again, this scene was graded TOO DARK in the "Blu Ray" iteration. I remember being able to see Jeff's face on previous viewings. Though I think the last time I watched this movie was nearly a decade ago, and memory does cheat.
It's really odd to be complaining that I can't see Roger Davis's face. *tired laugh* It brings back memories of a screening I attended at the Brattle theatre a couple of years ago of the HORROR OF DRACULA Blu-Ray. That had been graded so dark--with the trademark BD slightly bluish tinge to many scenes--that half the movie was nearly invisible, since a lot of it was shot day for night. In the sequences where the image was clear, the lighting had been graded very cold with a very muted, slightly blue color palette. Given how so many film critics made Hammer's "garish" use of Technicolor/Eastmancolor such a talking point over many decades of discussion and review, it's been curious to see fans arguing that the recent "restoration" was "exactly the way Jack Asher wanted the movie to look."
For anyone still following along at home, apparently one can correct this problem if one owns equipment that has a "sports" setting for the display. It pops it up in some fashion so that it actually looks the way it is supposed to. This seems to have created a lot of tension in fandom in recent years, since people with this type of equipment and display insist that the BD "looks great" while the rest of the population complain that it's too dark in all the nocturnal scenes.
To quote Hermione Gingold on her infamous LP, "isn't technology ghastly?" A fact of which the Xmas smilies remind me, poignantly, whenever I attempt to post here now...
G.