I started looking for DVDs as soon as I got home from New York . . . I was glad to see this one exists in a pinch, but if Criterion has just done a restoration of the original print (postdating this transfer, which looks from comments as though it is not of the best), I'm willing to hold out for their version.

That's reasonable. A lot of the really surreal sequences would probably benefit from a good restore. Though I did notice that this version is available as an Amazon 'rental' so there would be a way to quantify how bad the print is before making an investment.