To be honest I was quite surprised, and I don't know if I should really trust the review. Certainly this is no Casablanca, but 1.5? That seems particularly harsh since this reviewer has been giving out 4.5 and 5's left and right.
Pictures can obviously not tell the whole story, but just looking at them it doesn't seem any worse than the Movietone version of Sunrise (see the last five captures
here) and that got a 5 for video. The score was perhaps mostly for the version from the Czech print, but the reviewer raved about the Movietone version as well.