Polish Cinema on Disc

[bergelson]

Hello,

I have heard that three of Kawalerowicz best films (Mother Joan of Angels, Night Train and Austeria) are available in France in very good editions, far better than the atrocious Second Run and Facets releases.

No English subtitles though. Can anyone confirm it?

Thanks.

[posto]

I have heard that three of Kawalerowicz best films (Mother Joan of Angels, Night Train and Austeria) are available in France in very good editions, far better than the atrocious Second Run and Facets releases.

No English subtitles though. Can anyone confirm it?

While I do not know about the new DVD editions of any of the movies you mention it may interest you that they are being digitally restored and the first public showing of newly restored "Night Train" (Pociag) will take place Sept. 18 in Gdynia during Polish Film Festival. I'd wait as these restored versions will sooner or later be available on DVD or maybe even Bluray. (I wish!)

Here is info(in polish) and bad Google translation:

Television Movie Poland, together with the Film Studio Kadr joined in the reconstruction and produce copies of the digital format 2K of most important films of Jerzy Kawalerowicz: Night Train, Mother Joanna of the Angels and Austeria (The Inn).

The first show of digitally restored Night Train will be held during this year Polish Film Festival in Gdynia, on Thursday 18 September at. 2 PM, in a festival's cinema "Silver Screen" in room number 2. This will be the first screening of the digitally restored film in Polish cinema.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Polart are releasing Kawalerowicz's Shadowin R1 next week.

[MichaelB]

While I do not know about the new DVD editions of any of the movies you mention it may interest you that they are being digitally restored and the first public showing of newly restored "Night Train" (Pociag) will take place Sept. 18 in Gdynia during Polish Film Festival. I'd wait as these restored versions will sooner or later be available on DVD or maybe even Bluray. (I wish!)

Night Train is included in the second Polish Film School box, which I've just ordered. Best Film Co's website devoted to the series suggests that it's been restored.

Anyway, I'll report back when the box arrives (though I probably won't get my hands on it till Tuesday September 30, as I'm out of the office all next week).

[menthymenthy]

Does anyone know which other directors/films are planned for a set from Telewizja Kino Polska, which just released both Skolimowski and A. Holland sets?

I'm interested if they'll release a Kieslowski set with Kieslowski's unreleased-on-DVD TV Movies (The Calm, Short Working Day, Personnel) all which are amazing, even though I had to watch them with someone who could translate what they were saying for me.
If they do release these, I'm hoping English subtitles will be included - but I'm sure they will be.

EDIT:
Also, how much do they charge to watch a film from that Polish school website? And do they include English subtitles?

[eltopo]

50 Years of Polish Film School

Vol. 1
Kanal (1957 / Wajda)
Lotna (1959 / Wajda)
Popiol i diament (1958 / Wajda)
Do widzenia do jutra (1960 / Morgenstern)
Ostatni dzien lata (1958 / Konwicki)

Vol. 2
Eroica (1958 / Munk)
Zezowate szczescie (1960 / Munk)
Krzyz Walecznych (1959 / Kutz)
Nikt nie woła (1960 / Kutz)
Pociąg (1959 / Kawalerowicz)

Vol. 3
Ewa chce spac (1957 / Chmielewski)
Swiadectwo urodzenia (1961 / Rozewicz)
Zimowy zmierzch (1957 / Lenartowicz)
Pigulki dla Aurelii (1958 / Lenartowicz)
Zamach (1959 / Passendorfer)

Vol. 4
Matka Joanna od Aniolow (1961 / Kawalerowicz)
Kwiecien (1961 / Lesiewicz)
Jak byc kochana (1962 / W.J. Has)
Petla (1958 / W.J. Has)
Baza ludzi umarlych (1959 / Petelski)

Box Vol. 2:

[MichaelB]

Umm... why don't people actually read the thread before asking questions that have already been answered?

(And my list, unlike Eltopo's, had English title translations!)

Hopefully I'll get an actual box in my hands within the next week or so (I ordered volume two), so I'll report back on transfer quality then.

[menthymenthy]

why don't people actually read the thread before asking questions that have already been answered?

Was that towards me? If so, none of my questions have been answered.
There was no answer to which is the next in the series, that just released Holland and Skolimowski box sets.

Also, there weren't any posts about the price of watching a film off the 50-Years-Film-School website. Not only that, but it was never mentioned whether the downloaded versions will contain English subtitles.

[MichaelB]

Was that towards me?

Fair enough - I thought your first question was to do with the content of the box sets, given Eltopo's entirely redundant response.

[eltopo]

Nachtzug

[menthymenthy]

My order arrived of the Skolimowski, Holland, TV Version of Ziemia Obiecana, The Noose, and Kieslowski shorts. It took about 13 days to arrive from Poland to Australia.

The Agn. Holland set is bare bones, as you would expect. Same with the Skolimowski set. But both contain a nice booklet, but unfort. it's only in Polish. Menus are easy to navigate with, with an English menu option.

All the movies on the Agn. Holland set are alike in quality, and actually look pretty darn good, considering the age of the films. Not as good as the picture quality of Dekalog, but not too far off. All 4:3-1.33:1.

The sound and picture on the Rysopis isn't the greatest, and there's a noise in the sound. But it's watchable. It's in widescreen, but it's only 4:3.

Walkower is in Widescreen 4:3 also, but the picture quality is very clear and very nice to look at.

Barrier is also widescreen-4:3, but the picture quality is pretty much awful. Probably from a VHS. It's watchable though.

Hand's Up is like the Holland films, and is very good quality. I've only skipped through it, to check the quality, and there's some kind of suspence here. Can't wait to watch it.

EDIT:
Walkower is actually in Open Matte - which is just a small line on the top and bottom.

The really bad thing about this set, and I've seen only Rysopis and Walkower, but I'm guessing the same problem is with the others too, is the subtitles. Out of all the DVDs I've gotten from Poland, none are this awful. Spelling mistakes, sentences that don't make sense, etc. Of course, the Skolimowski movies have a lot of chatter, so it would be hard to subtitle it, but I'm hoping the Holland films have less talk, and maybe the subtitles will be a little better.
Otherwise, worthy for the films. Rysopis is incredible.

Because Screen Tests doesn't contain as much dialogue as the Skolimowski films, the subtitles are alittle easier to take. But they are still very poor. Watchable, but almost Facets-quality subtitles.

[MichaelB]

Thanks for that - I was going to post my own findings, but you've saved me the trouble!

But I also received Best Film Co's 50 Years of the Polish Film School volume 2 set, and I may rethink my decision not to buy volume 1 (on the grounds that I had all the films already), as the production values are phenomenal. The set comes in a really thick cardboard sleeve (just about the thickest I've encountered for a DVD box set), in which sits a holder containing the five features, each with their own foldout Digipak.

And it gets better - each film gets its own booklet (the one for Eroica is 36 pages), fully bilingual in Polish and English, with essays, a Munk biography, full credits and some high-quality stills. It's also printed on high-quality paper that's a good bit thicker than many such efforts.

That said, the Eroica disc itself doesn't match up to the anticipation. A quick spin suggests that it hasn't been clearned up too much - it's got quite a contrasty picture, badly lacking shadow detail, with plenty of surface damage, and the definition is somewhere between VHS and DVD - it's like one of Second Run's more mediocre efforts. Worse, the booklet says that Munk filmed in 1.66:1, yet the film is much closer to 4:3, with only a thin black bar at the top of the picture. Sound options are Dolby 5.1 (why?) and Dolby 2.0 (presumably the original mono).

The only on-disc extra is a short (6-minute) documentary about the film, in unsubtitled Polish - which is a shame, as the deleted third part of Eroica still survives, and while it's certainly inferior to the other two episodes (I've seen it myself), this is exactly the sort of thing DVD extras were invented for. The style of the animated menus suggests that the Wajda films in box one will indeed be exactly the same discs that the same company has already released both separately and in a four-disc Wajda set - though if you haven't already bought one of those, it's probably worth going for the new box for the English-language booklets.

Details on the other discs to follow - and I'll try to get full reviews up on my blog in due course.

[Perkins Cobb]

Thanks for the notes, guys. Please keep 'em coming on the Film School set, Michael. Those are going to eat up a lot of my DVD bucks over the next few months, or not.

[Stefan Andersson]

Does anybody know anything about this DVD of Wajda´s POPIOLY (ASHES)?

It says 16:9 and no English subs. Is it letterboxed?

[menthymenthy]

Some screen captures of the Skolimowski films.

RYSOPIS (1964):



WALKOWER (1965):



BARIER (1966):



HANDS UP! (1967/1981):
Screenshot from Scenes Filmed in 1981...


Screenshot from Scenes Filmed in 1967...


Hand's Up has clearly the best transfer, and Barier has the worst. Subtitles on all four films are confusing, but still watchable.
Rysopsis is the best film on the set, IMO. It's actually the second best Skolimowski, first is Moonlighting. Deep End is third best.

[eltopo]

Does anybody know anything about this DVD of Wajda´s POPIOLY (ASHES)?

It says 16:9 and no English subs. Is it letterboxed?

1,78:1 (anamorph / 16:9) (Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 !)
No English subs

[MichaelB]

Also, there weren't any posts about the price of watching a film off the 50-Years-Film-School website. Not only that, but it was never mentioned whether the downloaded versions will contain English subtitles.

I haven't tested this myself, but according to my contact at the Polish Cultural Centre in London the downloads do have English subtitles and expire 72 hours after downloading. I don't know the price, but it's in the very low single figures.

I'll report back when I've had a chance to check out the service myself.

[MichaelB]

While I do not know about the new DVD editions of any of the movies you mention it may interest you that they are being digitally restored and the first public showing of newly restored "Night Train" (Pociag) will take place Sept. 18 in Gdynia during Polish Film Festival. I'd wait as these restored versions will sooner or later be available on DVD or maybe even Bluray. (I wish!)

I've just watched the version of Night Train included in the Polish Film School box, and I devoutly hope it's not the restored version if that's the best they can do!

The source print isn't too bad for a 50-year-old film, albeit speckled with white dust spots and occasionally more serious damage - but the biggest problem is that shadow detail is pretty much nonexistent.

This doesn't matter too much with the scenes on the train itself, as the high-contrast lighting is clearly deliberate, and faces are always perfectly clear - but when the passengers disembark en masse from the train in the early morning light in a crucial mid-point scene, it's all but impossible to work out what's going on from the images alone - below the horizon, only the occasional glimpse of detail can be made out, and it took me some time to work out who was doing what to whom from the context.

It's a real shame, because the presentation is otherwise excellent - the subtitles have the odd typo but are always perfectly clear (both in content and general readability), and the accompanying 36-page booklet (bilingual in English and Polish) is flat-out superb - though the quality of reproduction of the stills puts the DVD transfer to shame.

UPDATE: I've now written a full review.

[MichaelB]

I've just watched the DVD of Kazimierz Kutz' Cross of Valour from the Polish Film School box set...

...and it's broadly on a par with Second Run's Mother Joan of the Angels - in other words, an analogue source that's VHS quality at best (and I think that might be a tad generous, as it also has some of the worst chroma noise I've seen on a black and white picture).

That said, it never plumbs the depths of Facets at their worst - it is at least a native PAL transfer, and the subtitles are both optional and in sync (and generally OK, the odd typo - "concentrated camp" - aside), so once I'd tuned out the surface glitches I found it perfectly watchable. But the gulf between the quality of the disc and the quality of the packaging (yet again, there's another superb 36-page book whose velvety stills put the DVD picture to shame) is even wider than it was with Eroica and Night Train.

But to end on a positive note, I dipped into Nobody's Calling, the second Kutz film in the box, and it looks markedly better - still an analogue source (I think), but an altogether sharper, clearer, more 35mm-like image. I'll report back when I've watched the whole thing.

[MichaelB]

But to end on a positive note, I dipped into Nobody's Calling, the second Kutz film in the box, and it looks markedly better - still an analogue source (I think), but an altogether sharper, clearer, more 35mm-like image. I'll report back when I've watched the whole thing.

I've now watched the whole thing, and have to add several caveats to the above.

The transfer is indeed pretty good - comfortably the best one I've seen in the box so far. I also take back what I said about it being an analogue source: there's no real evidence for this, and it comes across as a nice sharp transfer...

...of a pretty dreadful print. The biggest problem is the sheer amount of splices - there's a particularly bad outcrop around the 35-minute mark, but plenty of other examples elsewhere. There's also lots of damage around reel changes (clearly marked, suggesting a well-worn theatrical print as the source), and plenty of visible damage - especially tramlines - more or less throughout.

That said, despite all this it's still the best picture I've seen in the second Polish Film School box, having neither the contrast problems of Night Train nor the sub-VHS quality of Cross of Valour. But by normal standards it's ropey in the extreme.

[eltopo]

Polish Film School box, vol. 2

Pociag:


Nikt nie wola:


Eroica:

[menthymenthy]

Thanks El Topo. Night Train looks pretty darn good, with the two looking quite "VHS" standard.

I guess it's all better than Facets, so I'll be getting this set soon. (Australian dollar is at a 20-year low, so I may wait a few weeks )

[MichaelB]

Night Train looks pretty darn good

Er... no it doesn't! Too dark, too contrasty, and one absolutely crucial scene is rendered borderline incomprehensible by making it impossible to make out who's doing what to whom.

That said, I don't have any regrets about buying this set - the two Kazimierz Kutz films aren't available anywhere else with English subtitles, and the booklets are excellent.

[Telstar]

Any reviews yet on the Agnieszka Holland set?

[GHal]

Sorry to intrude.