lubitsch wrote:
Well, they sell in Spain or France 5-6 times the amount of DVDs compared to Germany, where else should they be released? Surely not in their home country where you can't even buy CALIGARI ...
Yes, sigh... do you mean "5-6 times the amount" with reference to silent films or dvds in general, though? And if this only applies to silents, how come that the Spanish have such a huge interest. I mean, I've never seen a Spanish silent film, for instance, and wonder whether there are many of them. But of course anyone wanting to see these films desperately will buy them regardless where they come from, and so of course I could imagine divisa selling a lot of their discs abroad.
lubitsch wrote:
I somehow wonder if it wouldn't be possible to generate a European classics label funded by the EU to release less known classics selected by knowledgeable experts.
In a way, Edition Filmmuseum is such a label, though not EU funded, I believe. And of course they take ages to release the things they announce. ... sigh again...
Anyway, back to topic: Well, much as I hate that these Spanish e-tailers always send their stuff via courier (terribly expensive), at least it's fast, though this time even faster than Kimi Raikonen.... I received "Vogelöd" and "Großherzog" this afternoon, one day after ordering.
I have just finished watching "Vogelöd", and I have to agree with Lubitsch and Schreck on the merits of the film, i.e. it's not exactly great (to put it mildly), though if you for a moment forget this was made by Murnau, I can't really say that it didn't entertain me. Although it's completely conventional for the most part and is a typical 'Kolportage'-kind of film, I actually quite enjoyed a lot of it. Murnau already has a good sense of blocking and visual composition, and some few shots (like that creeping monster hand coming through the window) look terrific for the time. I also liked the slightly 'gothic' look (in the 80s sense!) of Olga Tschechowa, but that's hardly unusual, neither for me nor the time the film was made. The problem with the film seems to be that it can never really decide what it wants to be: is this a crime film, a horror story, a comedy spoof? It's all of these, of course, but the blending of themes and genres is far less successful than in "Cat and the Canary" indeed. Still, I have to repeat it, I found it well wortb seeing, and the pleasure was greatly helped by the glorious resto that FWMS have provided. Honestly, even if you look closely, you will have a hard time finding any significant nicks , dirt and other such usual abnormalities in this. Very natural looking tintings on top of it. This simply looks unbelievably good for a 1921 film, basically on a par with the new "Nosferatu" resto, and of course with a very servicable piano score by Neil Brandt.
As to the disc itself: MAN, HAVE DIVISA IMPROVED! I wasn't exactly happy with some of their earlier discs ("Frau im Mond" suffered from badly rendered grain and unsharpness compared to the MoC, and their "Nibelungen", while serviceable as the only version with German titles, could have been better as well), but here they delivered a truly fine job. The disc is double-layered (7,59 gigs) although the cover states otherwise, and the bitrate is extremely high (between 8.5 and 9.2. kbps in the few moments I checked), and it does full justice to the quality of the restoration. Extremely sharp and detailed image, no edge enhancement or other artefacting (though I spotted some very, very mild chroma in one or two shots, but this may well be due to my player, which seems to be prone to exhibit it more than other players). And it doesn't end here: whereas most of the older divisa discs only had meagre text screens in Spanish as extras, we here get another installment of the Luciano Beriatua docus on Murnau (two parts of which are on MoC's "Nosferatu" and "Tabu", of course), this time dealing with Murnau's early films in the usual highly informative manner (and the few excerpts from "Der brennende Acker" really made me wonder why divisa didn't release THAT one instead of this), including some stills from Murnau's lost film "Die Austreibung" (fascinating).
So, all in all: I'm really happy to have bought this, and can't imagine that anyone interested in German silents would not at least find something in it to enjoy (sorry, Lubitsch). The only shortcoming is that there are, as usual with divisa, no English subs. But if you understand either German, Spanish or Portuguese: highly recommended! I can't imagine that an MoC disc of this would be significantly better apart from the non-existing booklet here, and I'd say, that means something.
Finally, some scaled-down screen caps to give you an idea, though I find that the whole thing even looks better (much sharper!) in motion.
I'll report back on "Großherzog" soon.


