Silent Film on DVD and BD

[Calvin]

As per DVDClassik, France's Lobster Films has a great lineup this year, including J'Accuse and a Dziga Vertov box with The Man with a Movie Camera on Blu-Ray.

[HerrSchreck]

Here's hoping that the Vertov finally gets its due at long last with a long overdue well executed HD restoration
I've been burning holes in my ancient Image/Alloy/Tsivian disc close to a decade now if not more.

[tenia]

The Man with a Camera is said to be arriving in a brand new HD restoration, taken from Vertov's own copy of the movie.
Also, they will release a Charlie Bowers boxset, including the 2nd part of Many a slip and of Whoozit.

[hearthesilence]

It WAS restored, I caught it at MoMA back in 2011.

And yes, it looked amazing, and the live score, inspired by original accompaniment notes left by Vertov himself (biggest revelation for me: Vertov was making a COMEDY) was superb.

[karlchuk]

Hi all,

I would like to say that the list of silents on blu-ray on this thread is an excellent resource, and many thanks to Eddie and all! How about adding Chaplin's 'A Woman of Paris', which is available on blu-ray in a number of countries, and also Madame Dubarry (Lubitsch 1922) will be released in September as part of the Masters of Cinema series?

Thanks again to Eddie and all contributors here.

[EddieLarkin]

Thanks for your updates (I should really check this thread more often). I've added Madam DuBarry and A Woman of Paris, along with Als ich tot war (included with the former), and the 1914 short The Lumberjack, featured on Flicker Alley's new Blu-ray We're in the Movies: Palace of Silents & Itinerant Filmmaking.

[domino harvey]

Is this Fatty Arbuckle set DVD-Rs or pressed DVDs? A lot of the reviews mention problems with the disc covers peeling off or blank discs, which makes me think it's a burned set, but it's still not clear whether it is pressed or DVD-R

[jheez]

My set is pressed, but the discs are next to the lowest quality discs I've seen. The back of the discs have a speckled haze.

[EddieLarkin]

It's worth pointing out that the set's producer, Paul E. Gierucki, is currently working on a new Blu-ray set, the Arbuckle Anthology. Details of which films will make up the 35 or so planned are due to be published soon, so it may be worth holding off in case many of them are the same.

[domino harvey]

Thank you both, I think I will hold off on the DVD set even at such a good price

[Drucker]

At this point, is there any sort of decent DVD release of either Joyless Street or DuPont's Variety available...at all? Is the latter lost or in desperate need of repair? It seems shocking that such a film that seems so revered in film history books has no release available. (though I'm sure you could say that about hundreds of films).

[swo17]

Joyless Street has a nice release from Edition Filmmuseum.

[L.A.]

Filmarchiv Austria in collaboration with Murnau-Stiftung, a restoration of Varieté (Ewald André Dupont, 1925) will be premiered at the 2015 Berlinale film festival.

[Drucker]

Wonderful on both fronts! Hopefully/presumably the latter comes to MOC!

[Tommaso]

Talking of which, the new restoration of Flaherty's "Moana" played a few days ago on arte TV, and it looked stunning. This MUST get an MoC release.

[Saturnome]

Wasn't there something about a Criterion Flaherty box set at some point?

Very excited for Variété! The instant this is on blu-ray I'll get it.

[hearthesilence]

Talking of which, the new restoration of Flaherty's "Moana" played a few days ago on arte TV, and it looked stunning. This MUST get an MoC release.

YES, this was actually screened at the NYFF, but I wasn't around to see it. They more or less took a restored version of the soundtrack from the 'sound version' created much later by Monica Flaherty and Ricky Leacock (between 1975 and 1980) and married it to a pristine picture transferred from the the best surviving materials. I think previously they had created the sound version with picture elements that were far from the best available, correct?

This absolutely screams for a BD release - viewable as Robert Flaherty originally finished it or with Monica Flaherty and Ricky Leacock's soundtrack.

[Tommaso]

Monica Flaherty's soundtrack consisting solely of (recreated) ambient noises, talking and occasional 'found music' from Polynesia is very effective and enhances the 'documentary' feeling which I'm sure was what Robert Flaherty was after. Still, I wouldn't mind having an alternative music score which would associate the film more with 'standard', less 'ethnographic' silent cinema perhaps. Not that I think this would be 'better', but it might open up a different way of perceiving those impressive visuals.

[rockysds]

Some quick notes on some recent Lobster Films dual format releases:

The Dziga Vertov set (containing Kino Eye, Kino Pravda no. 21, The Man with a Camera, Enthusiasm, Three Songs about Lenin) has a choice of English or French subtitles on the original Russian, except for The Man with a Camera, where the intro are new French titles with available English subs. Only spotchecked the transfers but they seem fine.

The Max Linder box has optional French subtitles on the English intertitles. I've only seen Seven Years Bad Luck so far, but it looks great.

J'accuse doesn't has English subtitles on either the main feature or the extra film: Mères francaise (1916).

[tenia]

Also, for people interested : J'accuse is using a restoration performed before 2011 and at 25 fps. It is thus encoded on the BD in 1080i50.

[EddieLarkin]

Lobster have also released a complete Blu-ray set of Charley Bowers' surviving works. Does anyone have it or aware of any reviews?

[zedz]

Lobster have also released a complete Blu-ray set of Charley Bowers' surviving works. Does anyone have it or aware of any reviews?

Note the perplexing credit for this French release of American films:
Audio : Serbe (Dolby Digital 2.0)
A claim reiterated in the product description.

[tenia]

I have the Lobster BD release from Q4 2015. I'll try to post reviews on Retro HD with discs scans and screenshots for : J'accuse, the Dziga Vertov set and the Bowers set. I dont know when though because I already have plenty of reviews to do for other stuff but still.

This being said, I shortly screened J'accuse and the Vertov set and most of the stuff look very very nice.

Note that J'accuse is in 1080i because the restoration had been performed at 25fps.

[EddieLarkin]

Thanks tenia

Note the perplexing credit for this French release of American films:
Audio : Serbe (Dolby Digital 2.0)
A claim reiterated in the product description.

I actually went and double checked that these didn't feature new music compositions by a Serbian composer...

Also perplexing is the fact this is not available to buy on Amazon despite being out for such a short time. Posts on Blu-ray.com suggest that it may never have been available to buy from Amazon directly since the listing went up, even though it has a price and everything.

[tenia]

Also perplexing is the fact this is not available to buy on Amazon despite being out for such a short time. Posts on Blu-ray.com suggest that it may never have been available to buy from Amazon directly since the listing went up, even though it has a price and everything.

There has been issues with supplying at Lobster from the pressing manufacturer, and then, I understood they had other issues. That's why the product pages have been very long to be uploaded, and now, it seems Amazon don't hold stock for now.