criterionforum.org

Isn't that from Milestone?

Anyhow, new silents are up:

The Hands of Orlac

Product Description
Reuniting the star and director of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, THE HANDS OF ORLAC (Orlacs Hände) is a deliciously twisted thriller that blends grand guignol thrills with the visual and performance styles of German Expressionism. Based on a novel by medical-horror novelist Maurice Renard, it charts the mental disintegration of a concert pianist (Conrad Veidt, The Man Who Laughs) whose hands are amputated after a train crash, and replaced with the hands of an executed murderer. When Orlac s father is murdered by the dead man s hands, Orlac begins a steady descent toward madness. Produced in Vienna, the hotbed of psychoanalysis, THE HANDS OF ORLAC is writhing with sexual innuendo and Freudian imagery. This Kino edition was mastered in HD from a 35mm print restored by the F.W. Murnau Foundation, supplemented with additional footage from the Raymond Rohauer Collection.

Secrets of a Soul

Product Description
A Psychoanalytic Thriller Restored by the Munich Film Museum and the F.W. Murnau Foundation. In the 1920s, film studios around the world sought to capitalize on the public s curiosity about the newborn science of psychoanalysis. In 1925, Hans Neumann (of Ufa s Kulturfilm office) contacted members of Sigmund Freud s inner circle with a plan to make a dramatic film that explores the mystifying process of the interpretation of dreams. With the help of noted psychologists Karl Abraham and Hanns Sachs, and under the direction of G.W. Pabst (Pandora s Box), SECRETS OF A SOUL was completed. Werner Krauss, who had played the deranged Dr. Caligari six years earlier, stars as a scientist who is tormented by an irrational fear of knives and the irresistible compulsion to murder his wife. Driven to the brink of madness by fantastic nightmares (designed by Ernö Metzner and photographed by Guido Seeber in a brilliant mix of expressionism and surrealism), he encounters a psychoanalyst who offers to treat the perplexing malady.

German Expressionism Collection

Product Description
Four German Silent Classics in a New Beautiful Thin-Pak Boxed Set. The Set Includes: Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) Directed by Robert Wiene, Starring Conrad Viedt and Werner Krauss - Warning Shadows (1923) Directed by Arthur Robison - The Hands of Orlac (1924) Directed by Robert Wiene, Starring Conrad Veidt - Secrets of a Soul (1926) Directed by G.W. Pabst, Starring Werner Krauss

THE HANDS OF ORLAC is writhing with sexual innuendo

Is Sid James in this one?

Called Carry On Double-Amputee (With The Trubble I Sew On Thee).

Previously Unreleased.

I guess it's safe to presume the Resnais titles will be boxed up by Kino in 6-9 months? I've just about had it, after being burnt with the Lubitsch, the noirs, the German silents etc. etc. If only they would give you the option to start with (as Warner does.)

You're drunk? I've just had cheap take-away while watching Curb (Kamikaze Bingo) and was laughing so hard I had no idea I had spilt the beer until the dog started lickin' my pants! Love these long Summer Fridays....

HerrSchreck wrote:THE PENALTY is a genuinely darkminded film, sick and furious and almost demented in the snarling intelligence of it's execution. ... Even the lily white girl is inexplicably obsessed with satan.

I rented this on HS, tryavna, little jesus, and others' recs and was blown away. The film seemed to me a prototype for much of what became, 75+ years later, David Lynch. [And unlike others - see the silent film music thread - I thought the score on the Kino disc understood that dark tone.] The intercutting early in the film between police inspector and his plant, on the one hand, and Chaney's torturing the "hatmakers" in the sweatshop, on the other, made me send the thing back to netflix and immediately order a copy from DDD. Genius!

More silents are coming in April.

4/8 - Houdini: The Movie Star Collection

By the year 1919, Harry Houdini was known throughout the world as a master magician and escape artist. Having conquered the stage, he set out to rule the screen, appearing in a series of thrillers built upon his almost supernatural powers. Culled from film archives and private collections, this Kino DVD set includes all of Houdini s suriving films as an actor, rare footage of actual handcuff and straitjacket escapes, and a wealth of historical information. Includes: THE MASTER MYSTERY (1919, 238m, Color Tinted) TERROR ISLAND (1920, 55m, B&W) THE MAN FROM BEYOND (1922, 68m, Color Tinted) HALDANE OF THE SECRET SERVICE (1923, 84m, Color Tinted) THE GRIM GAME (Fragment, 1919, 5m, Color Tinted) - SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE: Filmed records of Houdini escapes (ca. 1907-23) - Audio recording of Houdini speaking (1914) - Excerpts from the NY Censor Board files - Slippery Jim, a 1910 Houdini-inspired comedy - The illusion Metamorphosis performed by Houdini s brother Hardeen and others.

4/22
Before the Nickelodeon: The Cinema of Edwin S. Porter
Magic of Méliès
Hypocrites (1915) / Eleanor's Catch (1916)
The Ocean Waif (1916) / '49-'17 (1917)
Red Kimona

Nice to see more Lois Weber coming. I'll check out Hypocrites for sure.

dOc review of Hands of Orlac.

Just watched Hands of Orlac...what a bizarre little gem this is, even by Weimar Republic movie standards! This is the first time I've been impressed with a Conrad Veidt performance in a silent. While Mad Love (the talkie re-make) has its camp charm, Hands of Orlac takes itself seriously without being pretentious. Nice discovery for me.

And the transfer on this isn't half bad considering the condition of the original. Kudos to Kino for releasing this one.

Secrets of a Soul is next on the agenda.

Tribe

Tribe wrote:This is the first time I've been impressed with a Conrad Veidt performance in a silent.

Have you never seen him in May's Indian Tomb? If not, you must.

tryavna wrote:

Tribe wrote:This is the first time I've been impressed with a Conrad Veidt performance in a silent.

Have you never seen him in May's Indian Tomb? If not, you must.

The only May I've seen was Asphalt (another fantastic Kino release of a German silent). I had been under the impression that May didn't do much else of note aside from Asphalt....so thanks for the heads up, I'll be on the look out for Indian Tomb.

Tribe

I curiously find Veidt almost always great, also in his late roles for Powell, but especially in his silents. "Indian Tomb" of course, but also his performance in Oswald's "Anders als die anderen" and, my personal favorite, in Galeen's version of "The student of Prague". The man often combined an almost stubborn imposingness with a great dandyesque delicacy and for the time quite differentiated acting. Ivan the Terrible in "Waxworks" may be a little overdone, but still I can't imagine anyone playing that role better.

Yea I pretty much like Veidt in everything he did. From Caligari & Opium thru Orlac (still havent grabbed the Kino yet), thru The Man Who Laughs and all his talkies from Contraband, Thief of Badgad, thought he was great in Casablanca. Awesome dude.

And theres a whole buncha reasons to grab the Image/Shepard Indian Tomb by Joe May. A monstrously expansive (and expensive!) production, wonderful in every way. The print, with its rich original tints preserved, is just fantastic to look at, even in that early interlaced transfer. Grab it!

And as Lang wrote the script and was originally slated to direct (but was bumped by May just as production was to get underway), its infinitely fun to compare the May silent version with Langs late 50s production in color when he retruned to Germany... pure eye candy and tons of fun (not to mention one of the finest technicolr transfers EVER-- of totally stunning elements-- by the Fantoma label). Stuffed tigers and snakes on a string-- what else do you need?

I don't mind Veidt at all in his talkies. But his silent work in Caligari and Man Who Laughs he just seemed not to overcome the gimmicks inherent in the roles he played in those two silents (sleepwalker and pasted smile). In Orlac, on the other hand, he puts on quite a performance...on a par with Chaney in The Penalty (another Kino release and which Brother Schreck turned me on to). He says more with those wild eyes of his in Orlac than many an actor with lines later.

I had always thought Indian Tomb was a Lang film, and it appears it was initially, at least. I take it this has nothing of Lang left and is all May? Did Joe May do anything else of merit aside from Asphalt and Indian Tomb?

Tribe

Like I said, the script was Lang's: this was very early (20-21) in his directorial career (he got his start by writing scripts & selling them). Joe May's production co picked it up, and Lang was originally going to direct (probably on the strength of the 2-part Spinnen). But just as it was to go off May thought it was too expensive a production to be put in the hands of a relative directorial newcomer, so he wound up directing it himself. Langs immediate move into superexpensive, twoparters (and Mays slow wane) seems almost like revenge. Certainly Lang never forgot it, as even in his twilight years he put everything he had into the '59 version.

Tribe wrote: Did Joe May do anything else of merit aside from Asphalt and Indian Tomb?

May, for instance, directed a serial called "Die Herrin der Welt", a sort of fantastic spy adventure in the vein of Lang's "Spinnen". I think at least some of it still exists somewhere. It was remade by Wilhelm Dieterle, another 'homecomer', in the early 60s, and that version is out on disc in Germany, though I haven't seen that one (I think I once saw it on TV when I was a youth, but really can't remember much about it). The Dieterle version is often dismissed as pure schlock, though.

I'm pretty much in agreement with everything Schreck said in his post about the merits of Veidt and about May's "Indian Tomb", but I would rate the May film much higher than Lang's version, which although it is great fun at least in the first half, ultimately strikes me as a failure. Yes, nice girls and great colours, but the acting (Paul Hubschmidt!) is as stiff as you can possibly imagine, and the second half never really is able to maintain suspense. Give me Korda's "Jungle Book" any time over it, not to speak of "Thief of Baghdad" of course.

Tribe, I tend to agree with Tommaso and Schreck in general about Veidt, but I singled out his performance in Indian Tomb because it seems to be the one that most anticipates his later talkie performances as an arch-villain, especially in Thief of Bagdad. (I mean, the man gets off his royal barge in one scene by walking on the backs of his genuflecting vassels, for goodness sake. It doesn't get much better than that!)

Besides Indian Tomb and Asphalt, I haven't seen much other May. I have seen one of his Hollywood efforts, and although I remember it contained some courtroom scenes, it didn't make much of an impression on me. (Was it Confession?) But Indian Tomb is first-rate stuff all the way.

Tommaso wrote:[I'm pretty much in agreement with everything Schreck said in his post about the merits of Veidt and about May's "Indian Tomb", but I would rate the May film much higher than Lang's version, which although it is great fun at least in the first half, ultimately strikes me as a failure. Yes, nice girls and great colours, but the acting (Paul Hubschmidt!) is as stiff as you can possibly imagine, and the second half never really is able to maintain suspense. ...

Well, I think they both suffer equally in this dept. Germans for some reason are the only folks I ever hear who have a real hangup with Lang's 59 version, and perhaps this line delivery problem comes thru when you're able to understand what it is the folks are saying. Maybe our American ignorance is bliss (I never listen to the English dub). I find the two films pretty much on a par, considering in the May version Joe deploys his wife Mia in the lead-- a plump, lifeless, uncompelling frumpy hump of anticamera in love handles-- who manages to lay down one of the most uninteresting female leads in the whole silent cinema. She makes Whatserface in the original 1919 Feyder LAtalantide look like fucking Dorothy Stratten.

This is not deep stuff, just pure fun adventure & eye candy. Both are definitely worth owning. Check out Gary's caps for the 59 lang, and see how beautiful a vintage color transfer from the beautifully painstaking Munich restoration can look on dvd. The bitrates hover around 9 (and occasionally sit at 10) thru the whole films. Awesome!

You may be right with the reason you give for Germans not liking the Lang version, indeed the line delivery IS the greatest problem I have with the film. But this, then, can't be helped, obviously. Curiously, I always forgave May that he used his wife in that part, although you're right there, too. Perhaps because the film is so visually striking for the time, whereas Lang's, good-looking as it is, falls somewhat behind in comparison what Lang was able to do in the 20s.

I actually envy you for having the US discs of the Lang films, as the German discs are rather mediocre..well, Pt.1. looks good, but Pt.2. has gotten the technicolour (or whatever they used) completely wrong. A faded, off-toned mess with lots of print damage...

Theres a syndrome where you just have to pull out a disc youve just been talking about... so I went and pulled out the May silent version, and was reminded how I once thought it funny how Olivier cast a woman I believe was the same age or younger to play his mother in Hamlet.

Check out the dude whos supposed to be Mia Mays father in TOMB. Any other director would have cast her as his sister.

HerrSchreck wrote:Check out the dude whos supposed to be Mia Mays father in TOMB. Any other director would have cast her as his sister.

LOL. Yeah, right you are. This reminds me of one of those crap history films (I don't remember which one that was, "Kingdom of Heaven", "Troja", "Alexander", they're all alike and a bunch of shit) in which Angelina Jolie (aged 28 or so) was cast as the mother of the male lead although she was clearly only one or two years older than the guy....

I was also reminded of a picture of Mia May in Joe's "Herrin der Welt". She is photographed there in a stately posture, obviously intended to signify the powerful spiritual leader, somewhat like a mixture of Queen Victoria and Haggard's She. But she looks even looks more like a matron there than in "Tomb".

That picture is in a gorgeous 1935 book called "Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst" by Oskar Kalbus, do you know it? This was a two-part book of so-called "cigarette pictures", i.e obviously some cigarette company put images into their packets which had to be collected and then glued into the books. The books are a wonderful account of the beginnings of German cinema up to 1935, and the whole first book is about silents. It's very easily available on German ebay, as apparently they made more than 100.000 copies of them. And even if you can't read German, I'm sure you will rave about these books simply for the images from films that I'm sure not even you have seen. A must have, really. Just make sure that all the images are in (most copies on sale seem to be complete, though).

Critic's Choice: New DVDs on Kino's German Expressionism set.

Dave Kehr wrote:The four features are available individually and in a boxed “German Expressionism Collection.” But “Warning Shadows” aside (its promising title masks a tedious period melodrama), these films converse between themselves in illuminating ways and reward a sequential viewing.

Poor Dave Kehr is missing quite a party in this case.

Wittsdream wrote:Beaver announces Kino will release four Alain Resnais titles on DVD in March 2008:

Melo (one of my 3 or 4 favorite Resnais films)
Life is a Bed of Roses
Love Unto Death
I Want to go Home

They are being presented under the Kimstim Collection banner, and are more than likely a direct port of the R2 Mk2 French releases from a few years back. A couple of the titles were already subtitled in English for those Mk2 releases, but not all of them.

This is great news, though I'm really waiting for Providence!

I like Resnais a lot but knowing Kino I wanted to see the transfers on these first before I bought them unseen. Well I just saw La Vie Est Un Roman via Netflix and I would recommend anyone contemplating a blind buy watch the film first. Not because of the quality of the Kino disc but because of the quality of the film itself. It is so bad that I'm sure there's a faction of people convinced that it's a masterpiece just because nothing could be this bad accidentally. But let me preemptively say no amount of revisionism could save this astonishingly awful film.