[LEN-E] Nosferatu (The Ultimate Two-Disc Edition)

[Ron Koster]

At 06:51 PM 2/29/2008 +0100, Thomas Köhler wrote:

>Ouiii,  what a flurry of mails crossing:-)


I know! Things have really picked up here since 
we stopped talking about Leni. ;)

(Incidentally, I now have a vision of Slim 
Pickens at the end of Dr. Strangelove, riding on 
top of the atomic bomb as it's dropped and 
yelling "Oooooooweeeeeee" -- except doing so with a French accent) ;D


>Yes, Murnau Stiftung are indeed doing a brand 

>new restoration of "Nibelungen", it's been in 

>the works for several years now, and apparently will be finished this year.


Well, *that's* very interesting! As I mentioned 
before, I already thought that the Kino version 
already *was* the "definitive" version, and I was 
already incredibly impressed with the restoration 
there, so it's almost hard to imagine what more 
they could do -- but I guess we'll certainly see!


>Perhaps Robert Flaherty's "Nanook of the North"? 

>That's the 'grandfather' of all these films 

>(made in 1922, and filmed even earlier).


Oh, yes, of course, but I guess I was thinking of 
purely fictional, more "adventure"-type films (as 
opposed to documentary or whatever).


>whereas with Trenker, well: Trenker is in the forefront :-)


And he wouldn't have it any other way. ;)


>German has changed much more in the last 100 

>years than English did, and sometimes these old 

>titles are not only typographically interesting, 

>but also languagewise. So one of the reasons why 

>I like silents so much in general is that they 

>work like a time-machine into an older culture, 

>and the older way of expressing things is a part of the fun.


Exactly. I'm not in a position to judge the 
differences between the present-day German and 
that German of the 1920s (or so), if only because 
I don't know the language very well, but I do 
know what you mean (to perhaps a smaller degree) 
because I've noticed the same sort of the thing 
in American early films (the use of completely 
out-dated -- sometimes entirely "foreign" 
sounding -- expressions, etc.). In fact, apart 
from the language itself, even the *typography* 
-- or, rather the use of punctuation, etc. -- is 
quite different (although not necessarily wrong, 
even by today's grammatical standards, but just "different")!


> >"Weaker" in what sense? Do you mean the 

> plastic that the discs are made out of?

>

>No no, the plastic is the same. They are weaker 

>in quality for money: often worse image, less 

>extras etc. That doesn't go for all discs, but 

>if you compare the Criterion Edition of 

>Fellini's "La Strada" to the German disc of that 

>same film, you'll see very quickly what I mean.


Well, I don't know if that's a European vs. 
American thing, but rather a manufacturer vs. 
manufacturer thing. After all, that's certainly 
true of all the Masters of Cinema series, which 
in my experience are *far* superior to anything 
put out here in North America -- indeed, in my 
own experience I would say that Masters of Cinema 
(Europe) and Criterion (North America) are both 
pretty well equal in the superior quality of 
their DVDs, with the only real difference being 
which films they choose to put out (for example, 
MoC put out "Diary of a Lost Girl", whereas Criterion put out "Pandora's Box").

Other than those two companies, though, every 
other company (whether American or European) is, 
well, not-quite-so-superior. I can't think of any 
other DVD-makers that put out products as nice as theirs, anyway.

Ron :?