BD 274-276 Andrzej Żuławski: Three Films

[Finch]

An uncompromising visionary and a true maverick of European cinema, the Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present three films by Andrzej Żuławski, all making their UK debuts on Blu-ray from new 4K restorations.

Rich with multilayered symbolism and apocalyptic imagery, The Third Part of the Night is Żuławski’s highly influential debut feature film. After his whole family is slaughtered during the Nazi-occupation of Poland, Michal (Leszek Teleszyński) decides to join the resistance but descends into madness after encountering a doppelgänger of his murdered wife.

The Devil is a violent tale of Satanic seduction during the Prussian invasion of Poland in the 17th century, which proved so controversial upon release that it was banned for 16 years.

And finally, On the Silver Globe, Żuławski’s masterpiece about a team of astronauts who land on a desolate planet and start a new society. When filming was 80% complete, the Polish government ordered the production to be shut down and all the negatives be destroyed. Miraculously, the original film reels were preserved and ten years later the film was presented at the Cannes Film Festival to great acclaim.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Limited Edition Box Set [3000 Copies]
Limited Edition Hardbound Slipcase
All films presented in 1080p HD from definitive 4K restorations
Optional English Subtitles for all films, from translations by Daniel Bird and approved by director Andrzej Żuławski before his death in 2016
Escape to the Silver Globe (dir. Kuba Mikurda, 2021) – acclaimed documentary on the production history of On the Silver Globe
Brand new feature length audio commentary on On the Silver Globe by Daniel Bird
Michael Brooke on “The Third Part of the Night” – Brand new interview
Michael Brooke on “The Devil” – Brand new interview
Brand new video piece by Daniel Bird on the cinematography of On the Silver Globe
Brand new video piece by Daniel Bird on the costumes and props of On the Silver Globe
Brand new documentary short by Daniel Bird using previously unseen archival footage from the filming of On the Silver Globe
Brand new interview with Lukasz Żuławski
Brand new interview with Adam Żuławski
A Limited Edition 60-page collector’s book featuring new essays and archival material
**All Extras Subject to Change

[cowboydan]

Very excited for this. I'm so glad they included the "Escape to the Silver Globe" documentary. So many great special features, including audio commentary and video features by Daniel Bird.

In 2017 there was an episode of "The Projection Booth" podcast about On the Silver Globe, which includes an interview with Daniel Bird. I recommend it if you're interested on the history of the film https://www.blogtalkradio.com/projectio ... globe-1988 It's also on spotify

[mhofmann]

This is supposedly a 2-disc release instead of a 3-disc or 4-disc release (for the documentary) that it should have been. Very disappointing.

[feihong]

This is essentially my Japanese blu ray set--except that's a 3-disc set, one film per blu ray. The picture quality is usually better on the MOC discs than on equivalent discs from other places. I wonder how this'll shake out.

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Doesn't the Japanese disc for On the Silver Globe blur the genitalia? I remember seeing an HD stream where that was the case, and I don't know where else they would've sourced a version like that.

[feihong]

Doesn't the Japanese disc for On the Silver Globe blur the genitalia? I remember seeing an HD stream where that was the case, and I don't know where else they would've sourced a version like that.

That's right. I forgot all about that. I watch enough Japanese films that the fogging just slides off me like water off a duck's back.

[ikms]

I'm absolutely getting this (supplements) but it really deserved a few extra discs / an all-out 4K edition: I would gladly trade in my Caligari box! Hopefully somebody in Region A can do that part justice.

[EddieLarkin]

I fail to see what difference the disc count makes. The extras look great and if David M is doing the authoring then there should be no compromises on image quality. And the fact it's 2 discs obviously explains its surprisingly cheap price point.

[tenia]

To be fair : the movies, all 3 restored in 4K, are 396 minutes long in total, Escape to the Silver Globe is 94 min long, and then there are the 7 video extras. That means there is at least 8 hours of video plus these 7 video extras (I don't know how long they'll be, but if they are 10 minutes each, that's already 1h10 to add) to encode over 2 discs only. That's a lot, especially if the restorations have their high frequencies intact.

On The Silver Globe in particular is 166 min already and would legitimately warrant dedicating pretty much a whole BD-50 to it : at 30 Mbps AVB, it'd leave only 13% disc space available on this disc; 27% at 25 Mbps. I suppose Escape from the Silver Globe would be placed on the same disc than the movie : at 10 Mbps (and with a lossy track), it would just barely fit on the same disc if the main feature is encoded at 30 Mbps.
The Third Part of the Night is 105 min long, The Devil is 119 min long : both combined would only leave 4.5% of the 2nd BD-50 disc space left if encoded at 25 Mbps.

And then, there are the 7 video extras to place somewhere (though if we imagine they're all quite short at 10 min each, encoding them with lossy sound and at 5 Mbps would make them smaller than 3 Gb).

I guess it's feasible to push the 2 BD-50s to their limits in order to fit everything in, but it still remains quite constrained, including for the main features. Le chat qui fume are going to use 4 discs despite less content : it might be a bit on the opposite side of the spectrum (I wouldn't be surprised if 2 of them are BD-25), but I'd have supposed going with 3 BD-50 to be the most balanced choice.

[EddieLarkin]

Your calculations seem off, there are 8 bits for every byte of space, so a 166 minute film running at 30Mbps AVB would take up 37.35GB. Similarly, 224 minutes at 25Mbps AVB would take up 42GB. So across both discs that leaves 20GB of space for all of the extras.

[tenia]

Your calculations seem off, there are 8 bits for every byte of space, so a 166 minute film running at 30Mbps AVB would take up 37.35GB.

I had placed the soundtracks at 3 Mbps (LPCM 2.0 48/24 + the audio commentary in lossy DD 2.0). A 166min movie at 30+3 Mbps would thus weighs 40.12 Gb, ie 86.2% of a full BD-50 (49 950 000 000 bytes), roughly 13% disc space left.
If the main soundtrack is instead 1.0, one could place the whole sound part at 2 Mbps instead, which would give 16% disc space left.

Similarly, 224 minutes at 25Mbps AVB would take up 42GB. So across both discs that leaves 20GB of space for all of the extras.

I placed those movies with 2 Mbps dedicated for soundtracks, hence 27 Mbps --> 44.3 Gb taken.

The total disc space left would be between 8.6 Gb and 9.8 Gb, to handle the 94 minutes doc + the 7 video extras.

I'm not sure how you found 20 Gb left : using 37.35 Gb and 42 Gb (ie 40 104 257 126 and 45 097 156 608 bytes respectively), that only leaves 13.69 Gb left.

[EddieLarkin]

Still, that's 2 DVDs worth of space available for all of the extras. Naturally I'd be very worried if anyone but David was handling this, so hopefully Eureka have engaged him.

[tenia]

With the soundtracks factored in, it's actually closer to 1 DVD-9 disc space ! (7.92 Gb)

But yes, as I wrote, it's indeed feasible, but I don't know how Escape from the Silver Globe looks (if it looks like film scanned in 2K and not digital HD, then it'd require more than 10 Mbps), nor do I know how long are the other extras, but it's a configuration that not only requires the extras to be very compressed, but it'd also require 2 of the 3 main movies to be encoded at 25 Mbps, which is Ok but nothing particularly high. I just think that's a lot of constraints to have to work around.
And indeed, it's probably too much for a lot of authoring houses save for ones like David's.

Anyway, all this was just to say I understand some people can think "hey, wouldn't it way easier but also lighter on compression - including main features' - with at least just 1 more BD-50 ?"

[J Wilson]

Camera Obscura announced their German release of these and stated when asked about it that Eureka’s claim of Third Part of the Night and The Devil being from 4K restorations is false advertising as no such versions exist. Camera Obscura’s set details list 2K sources for those films.

[rapta]

Still, that's 2 DVDs worth of space available for all of the extras. Naturally I'd be very worried if anyone but David was handling this, so hopefully Eureka have engaged him.

I would be very, very surprised if they didn't use FiM for this release, especially with the news it's only a 2-discer (I had assumed it'd be 3-disc, at least). But seeing as this seems to be one of the most anticipated MoC releases, if David Mackenzie does recommend they spread across to a third disc (or even third and fourth disc), I'm sure Eureka will end up doing that. Labels don't often do that these days but occasionally they're forced to, and this could be one of those rare cases where they might have to consider it.

Then again, they wouldn't have announced it as 2-disc if they didn't think it was possible, so maybe they already consulted FiM/David M. It looks like The Third Part of the Night/The Devil and On the Silver Globe are in separate cases, so perhaps they're considering releasing them as standalone editions when this set eventually goes OOP, hence the need for just two discs.

[ryannichols7]

Still, that's 2 DVDs worth of space available for all of the extras. Naturally I'd be very worried if anyone but David was handling this, so hopefully Eureka have engaged him.

Then again, they wouldn't have announced it as 2-disc if they didn't think it was possible, so maybe they already consulted FiM/David M. It looks like The Third Part of the Night/The Devil and On the Silver Globe are in separate cases, so perhaps they're considering releasing them as standalone editions when this set eventually goes OOP, hence the need for just two discs.

I thought this for the Early Murnau set since The Last Laugh has its own case, but that's remained in print for years

glad to see Daniel Bird and MichaelB all over this set, as one would expect. are these as violent as Possession?

[feihong]

The films are quite different, and Possession is meant to be really in-your-face with the violence and gore, but the grotesquerie you see in Possession isn't out-of-step with the other movies. Zulawski is pretty in-your-face, all the time. Even when the film is demonstrably less violent––as in the remarkable L'important C'est D'Aimer..., the film still feels just as violent. Silver Globe, for example, features

Spoiler

a huge collection of anal impalings.

[beamish14]

I don’t think any of them are nearly as graphic and disturbing as Szamanka, which is fairly hard to tolerate in a few spots

[ikms]

I thought this for the Early Murnau set since The Last Laugh has its own case, but that's remained in print for years

That and Lubitsch In Berlin were the two I thought of when Zulawski was announced: both were cheaper and yet managed to include three BDs. Disc count is less meaningful to the bottom line than say the inclusion of a printed book, so not sure why the crown-jewel set feels so cramped, but I have a guess. At four discs perhaps the thought of spreading Silver Globe and doc across two seemed excessive. At three discs pairing the Globe documentary with one of the shorter films might look messy especially if they repress these as standalones, at which point (with the Silver Globe disc already four hours +) why not bundle the other two? Even if Criterion were to release some configuration of these in the US they would miss some of the best supplements and I doubt they would improve on picture quality given... things, yet a 4K release where Zulawski remasters deserve it is something I hope to see someday. It is probably close to a decade since MoC debuted an English-friendly international film boxed set of this caliber. Even more "box" than "set", this release should easily top my list for best of the year.

[Calvin]

Camera Obscura will be releasing it in the German market and will be utilising original poster art:



They also note:

Those who are surprised that THE DEVIL and THIRD PART OF THE NIGHT are not announced as 4K restorations like elsewhere: That's because there are only 2K restorations for these two titles.
In addition, we will of course give each of the not exactly short films a separate Blu-ray with maximum bitrate to ensure perfect picture quality.

[yoloswegmaster]

Already posted here a couple of days ago:

Camera Obscura announced their German release of these and stated when asked about it that Eureka’s claim of Third Part of the Night and The Devil being from 4K restorations is false advertising as no such versions exist. Camera Obscura’s set details list 2K sources for those films.

[feihong]

Camera Obscura will be releasing it in the German market and will be utilising original poster art:



They also note:

Those who are surprised that THE DEVIL and THIRD PART OF THE NIGHT are not announced as 4K restorations like elsewhere: That's because there are only 2K restorations for these two titles.
In addition, we will of course give each of the not exactly short films a separate Blu-ray with maximum bitrate to ensure perfect picture quality.

Gorgeous packaging. That's so exciting to see.

[pzadvance]

Not English friendly, for the record

[Finch]

I get the sense that MoC's design is meant to be consistent with the other director box sets they've done (the Fuller set even uses the same font, I think?) but this does feel like a missed opportunity using the Polish posters or some of the most striking images from any of the three films. Jared A of Mondo Macabro did imply on the Zulawski thread on BR that a US release from Mondo Vision isn't going to happen soon though he did not expand on why. But they still have the US license for those films.

[feihong]

Agreed. The design of the Eureka set is meant to induct the films into the academy, so to speak. The covers look like stills you might find in one of the cooler textbooks on film out there. The stillness of the images there run counter to the experience of watching a Zulawski movie, but this is how you might present a study of the films, stripping them to their image essentials in order to identify them as part of a tradition of films.

The Polish posters, meanwhile, come from an era where design itself was an engaging, creative experience, and where the poster embodies the experience of the film in a way reminiscent of Grotowski's plastiques. It's a much more involving look, to my mind, but I think for MOC the identity of the collection supersedes the individual identities of the films, in most cases.

Love the Hand of Glory with the open eye on the cover, also. Another wonderful embodiment of what it's like to watch a Zulawski picture.