64 / BD 70 Nosferatu

[Tommaso]

Feature list is announced now, see the top of this thread. This makes me pretty speechless. Audio commentary, 96 page book, documentary.... oh man....really f'cking GREAT!!!

[What A Disgrace]

It's magnificent and a must have, but... isn't it a little light for a double discer?

[Tommaso]

Okay, I honestly never understood why this should be a double disc. I fear that they will put the now somewhat useless earlier Eureka version with english titles on disc two, as they did with "Faust". Other possibility: having the film in its full glory on disc one (with then extremely high bit rate) and the documentary on disc two would be a fabulous way to do it.

[bollibasher]

Fuller information on the booklet:

A 96-page book containing articles by David Skal (author of Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen); Thomas Elsaesser (author of Weimar Cinema and After: Germany's Historical Imaginary); Gilberto Perez (author of The Material Ghost: Films and Their Medium); Enno Patalas (former director of the Münchner Stadtmuseum/Filmmuseum, where he was responsible for the restoration of many German classics, including Nosferatu); a newly translated archival piece on vampires by the film's producer Albin Grau; notes on the film's restoration; and archival imagery;

Chris xx

[jmj713]

And Kino's latest answer. Nice try, though

Is this the same trasfer-wise and as far as features? I'd pick up the R1 if it's really the definitive edition at last.

[arsonfilms]

I'm in the same bind. I'd prefer an NTSC copy, but I love MoC and their upcoming release sounds great. All of the existing editions are crap, and now all of a sudden there are two new options making big promises. As much as I like to pre-order and get my shit early, this is going to be one of those times I'll have to wait for Gary to look over both editions. Unless of course the decision gets easier when the features on the Kino are announced.

Really though, I love this kind of competitive release schedule where both editions are announced well in advance. Because who wins when companies do this? ME!

[peerpee]

The Nosferatu page has gone live. Trailer coming next week.

[Ledos]

First review of the Eureka/MoC release of Nosferatu

[jt]

That said, this transfer is quite, quite breath taking in its clarity. I have own this film on three different discs now and this one is by far the best. The Kino presentation I thought at the time couldn't be bettered, I'm glad I was wrong. The frame is held absolutely steady. The detail is outstanding with well defined edges way into the frame. The colour tints are strong and bold with the contrast and brightness levels set so that blacks are actually black. Yes there are instances when they take up the hue of the colour tints, but I'm pretty sure that would have happened on the original showing too. The damage has nearly been eradicated, there are no longer any serious flaws with this print, there are still the occasional tram line but even they are extremely light. The frame is wide, does not fade until right at the edge and is pretty much at constant brightness. I am stunned at how good this print has turned out, normally excessive digital clean up can lead to its own problems, but there are none here; no compression problems, no edge enhancement no softness to the edge. A quite astonishingly good picture.

I can really see why this reviewer then scored the picture only 7 out of 10 ?!?

[Caligula]

First up there is an audio commentary with Brad Stevens and R. Dixon Smith, two scholars that sit back and muse on the film in a pretty scene by scene basis. They discuss their subject matter with that ease that only comes from knowing it inside out. If you know much about the film and Murnau then there are patches of their talk that will go over old ground, however, much of what they have to say is very interesting and informative.

Next up is a German produced documentary on Murnau's early life, influences and films with particular attention to Nosferatu. Takes us to the surviving locations where the film was shot, amazing how much has changed and how much has stayed the same. It narrated in German and has various interviews with English subtitles. I found it a fascinating program.

Finally there is a 96 page booklet accompanying this set, unfortunately it was not supplied with the check discs so I can't comment on it, the following is direct from the publicity:

A 96-page book containing articles by David Skal (author of Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen); Thomas Elsaesser (author of Weimar Cinema and After: Germany's Historical Imaginary); Gilberto Perez (author of The Material Ghost: Films and Their Medium); Enno Patalas (former director of the Münchner Stadtmuseum/Filmmuseum, where he was responsible for the restoration of many German classics, including Nosferatu); a newly translated archival piece on vampires by the film's producer Albin Grau; notes on the film's restoration; and archival imagery.

Nevertheless the reviewer rates the extras at only 7/10. The mind boggles.

[Matt]

(7+7+7)/3=10?

[125100]

(7+7+7)/3=10?

No but (7+7+7) ÷ 3 + Tilt for it being an outstanding film = 10

Although the image quality is probably the best this film will get for a very long time, do remember it's still over 80 years old, in this guys defense to give it a 10 would really mean things like some of Criterion's more recent releases would deserve a 12-15/10.

Personally, I also think too many people place too much importance on commentaries and extras. I'm not saying they're pointless but they are supplementary, although in truth I've never listened to a commentary or watched an extra (besides a few of those "Warner's Night at the Movies" things) so I probably shouldn't write them off. Then again, equally I'd rather just spend my time watching a film I've never seen before than re-watch the same film with a commentary when I've already watched that film recently and formed my own opinions on it.

[MichaelB]

It really depends on whether you're rating the image quality in absolute or relative terms.

Certainly, relative to previous releases of Nosferatu, the picture quality is a very very obvious improvement - but relative to other DVDs (even other silent film DVDs) its merits are less clear.

This isn't remotely MoC's fault, as the source material problems with this film are all too well documented - but you're never going to get a perfect 10/10 picture out of this film without inventing a time machine and rescuing the original camera negative.

But I do think it's absurd to score the extras without actually exploring them all in depth - not least as I'm sure Nick would have been happy to send a PDF of the booklet if the reviewer had had the nous to ask.

[Lino]

Menu screens and sample frame grabs courtesy of Zeta Minor.

[Tommaso]

This isn't remotely MoC's fault, as the source material problems with this film are all too well documented - but you're never going to get a perfect 10/10 picture out of this film without inventing a time machine and rescuing the original camera negative.

You're quite right, of course, but as source material problems with silents are indeed not the dvd company's fault, I'm always somewhat irritated when a reviewer takes these into account when rating the image quality of a disc. They should simply rate the transfer itself, and I'm pretty sure this disc would deserve a 9.5 at the very least, judging from the caps presented here and elsewhre already.

[MichaelB]

You're quite right, of course, but as source material problems with silents are indeed not the dvd company's fault, I'm always somewhat irritated when a reviewer takes these into account when rating the image quality of a disc.

Well, I personally hate the whole marks-out-of-ten system to begin with (and consequently write for one of the very few mags that has no truck with it), but I do think it's unrealistically idealistic to expect critics to be sufficiently familiar with the source materials to be able to assess the transfer quality on its own.

What should be assessed is the quality of the final picture, as that's what the average punter cares about. And in this respect Nosferatu clearly falls short - and it's really not that relevant whether the shortcomings are the fault of MoC or Bram Stoker's estate.

(Don't get me wrong - this DVD looks absolutely magnificent given the unavoidable drawbacks, but you can't rewrite history and pretend that they're not an issue).

[HerrSchreck]

Am I the only one who disagrees here? I had, for the longest time, those same pd b&w television transfers of 16mm prints that MoMa made available for stations to show on the odd Halloween showing. Then I upgraded to the David SHepard material in the late 90's (perhaps the year 2000.. first I had the Kino vhs of that Shepard with "Silent Orchestra" scoring the film, then upgraded to the Image-Blackhawk disc with the tour of the films locations nowadays.. and that fucking ponderous psychosexual commentary by this Lokke Hiess) which is the genral equivalent of what circulated on dvd in region 1 and two for awhile. Even at this point, despite the cropping and grain buildup from the duping, and digital artifacts endemic to those earlier transfers, I swooned over the clarity of the image.

Then the restoration from the French nitrate prints and the rest of the german material combined came out, and Kino put out a great edition in 2001 or 2, and I absolutely couldn't believe how good this film looked. I'm talking in terms of the reels,post chemical restoration (not the Kino transfer). Clear, crisp, devoid of most projection damage and exhibiting no nitrate decomp whatsoever. I took a look at that disc and went pink and giggled and squirmed & creamed in my dry goods. It was absolutely amazing because it matched precisely the clips I'd seen of the original circulation print held by Universal in the early 30's (god knows what happened to it since), which they spliced into that (actually pretty funny) piece of short Horror/Comedy called BOO!. Whatever happened to that print, it probably went the way of the great mssing variation on Paul Leni's CAT AND CANARY called THE CAT CREEPS, also visible in clips in BOO!.

Now that restoration will be given the advantage of HD telecine, and the results will be a bit better. But the pont is this: compared to the surviving states of most silent films, even the best cared for ones (some look outrageously good like KING OF KINGS or DARTMOOR.. they look as good as well preserved early talkies), NOSFERATU, in the incarnations resident in the last two restos (if you'd call this last round a resto, even though no new elements have been discovered for insertion into the composite from which we get the neg/prints) look strikingly good.. certainly better than, say PANDORAS BOX, the Stillers, most Soviet material, many of the French masterpieces, the vast bulk of german material i e CALIGARI, GOLEM, most of the pre-1928 Lang (save METROPOLIS which had the shit restored out of it with full-blown MTI'ing), ASPHALT, WAXWORKS, PEOPLE ON SUNDAY, etc etc. Hell, better than most American silents. In terms of silent film, I'd say the materials that went into the NOSFERATU composite look relatively excellent... especially considering how lucky we are vis vis the fact that the film was supposed to be considered "Officially Destroyed".

Certainly not as nice as, say PHANTOM, however... and TABU, which I'm supposing is going to look stunning versus the old-- though absolutely wonderful for its time-- Milestone.

[glaswegian tome]

And Kino's latest answer. Nice try, though

Is this the same trasfer-wise and as far as features? I'd pick up the R1 if it's really the definitive edition at last.

I think we can expect that crappy ol' Kino will roll out their usual Pal->Ntsc tricks and it'll suffer from the same problems that Metropolis and many other releases do.

As far as features, I think I read somewhere that the Kino won't even include the 96 page booklet. No, for me, it's definitely the MoC edition.

[peerpee]

MoC NOSFERATU trailer here.

A better Quicktime version will be appearing at the MoC Series website soon!

[glaswegian tome]

good god. that looks amazing.

[blindside8zao]

doesn't look like a 1922 picture at all. I can't wait!

[peerpee]

Larger Quicktime trailer now at the MoC Series website (click "trailer").

[manicsounds]

MK2 review in French, with screencaps, from the same restoration

[MichaelB]

I'm writing a Sight & Sound review right now, and I don't think there's any question that this is now the definitive Nosferatu.

Tabu also looks absolutely gobsmacking.

[meanwhile]

I don't think there's any question that this is now the definitive Nosferatu.

Tabu also looks absolutely gobsmacking.

Seconded on both of MichaelB's comments.