358 Pandora's Box

[Tribe]

(I really do love that VHS score... one of the small number of purely piano silent scores that I believe works absolutely perfect in terms of correspondence between the screen / music content)

Schreck man, I agree 100%... I loved that score on the VHS! Perhaps that's part of why I love this film so much, not sure...but I always thought that piano score was absolutely beautiful, and it was so synchronized to the movie. Too bad it won't be included...or are we sure that it won't?

Tribe

[HerrSchreck]

Well taking Neal's word on page two of this thread that the Janus/Kino VHS is Staurt Oderman (or is it oberman), and cross checking the scores on Gary's Beev review (he reproduces all four menu windows which name the composers for all four scores), I'm pretty much concluding that the VHS one was not included... unless the Oliva recording of "a pensive impressionistic piano score" is a re-recording of the old tape's score to bring it up to full digital fidelity of the other three......... but I really doubt it. My guess it we're going to be deprived of that most excellent piano accompaniment on the old VHS. I'm totally with you on that one, brother--it's that rare gem in the desert of silent film scoring for home vid:

it's so good that it actually makes the film seem better, increases it's impact and melancholy and trippiness in all the right places.

I won't be throwing out my old videotape. Or find someone who could merge the new image with the old score for me on a DVD-R as Matt mentioned above. I couldn't do it myself though, I'm a tech retard in that zone.

[hammock]

Got this:

Thanks for writing in. The version of Pandora's Box that is included in the Janus Films box set is based on the Munich Filmmuseum's 1997 restoration, with a Peer Raben score by ZDF. This is the version which currently appears in various European DVD releases.
Unfortunately Criterion's restoration, which features a new transfer from the Filmmuseum's element and includes our own digital restoration work, was not completed in time for the Janus box set.

We felt that it was an important enough film -- and important enough to the history of Janus -- to include in the box set as it was. The upcoming Criterion release should be much cleaner and have significantly better visual quality, however. It will also include 3 other scores in addition to the Raben one, plus a commentary, a second disk of extras and a book. You can find more info about that release on our website. Thanks again.

Issa Clubb
Producer
The Criterion Collection

[Cinesimilitude]

Thought so.

[Antoine Doinel]

An interview with Peter Cowie on Louise Brooks

[colinr0380]

That's a great article, it sounds a little like her most famous roles seem tied in with events of her life. Perhaps that is also what is meant by being one of the great 'personalities' - her filmic image is mixed up in the audience's mind with what they think she is really like as a person?

It sounds like Peter Cowie's book is worth a look at. The letters they exchanged sound very interesting.

...to my surprise she sent me back a long letter, typed, and we began to correspond. That lasted for seven or eight years and she would write every two or three weeks without fail, long gossipy letters and this book is partly based on those letters. I got to know her as a personality divorced from her image as that ‘20s movie star, she was a completely different woman altogether. She was a very well read woman, a remarkable historian of a certain kind of cinema and I think very perceptive in her comments on stars and directors.

I notice that Diary Of A Lost Girl is due from Masters of Cinema in the new year. What are the other members opinions of the three films talked about as her best in the article: Pandora, Diary and Prix de Beaute? Is it best to see Pandora's Box first due to it being the most famous film she made?

[Michael Kerpan]

Colin there's also Louise in A Girl in Every Port in which she's great, whenever she appears, although Hawks seems more interested in the sub-homoerotic relationship of the two guys.

How did you manage to see this?

[foggy eyes]

Prix de Beaute began as a Rene Clair project and probably should have remained one. I dont know Genina's other work but the movie has a clumsy screenplay which tries to reduce Louise to a girl next door role, and is burdened with a disembodied, tacked on sountrack for which she's obviously dubbed.

Pandora is the shining star - a movie entirely focussed on and in thrall to her.

This is very true. Prix de Beaute is clumsy and sags an awful lot in the middle. It is nicely photographed, though, and the climax is utterly sublime (and prescient: the film is so enthralled with Brooks that by the end it seems that the only way out is to destroy her). I was lucky to see the silent version of this, and it was in surprisingly good condition. Oddly though, the last reel of the silent version did have sound (in which Brooks again appeared to be dubbed). Very unusual. Recommended for Brooks completists, I guess.

[Tribe]

What are the other members opinions of the three films talked about as her best in the article: Pandora, Diary and Prix de Beaute? Is it best to see Pandora's Box first due to it being the most famous film she made?

David Hare is on the money regarding Diary of a Lost Girl and Prix de Beaute. Although I've always wondered whether Diary has had things snipped that have been lost over the decades...

Tribe

[hammock]

Colin there's also Louise in A Girl in Every Port in which she's great, whenever she appears, although Hawks seems more interested in the sub-homoerotic relationship of the two guys.

How did you manage to see this?

You could spend $19 and own it on DVD if you buy it HERE
They have some really good rare stuff and you should spend a minute or two browsing their catalogue!

[HerrSchreck]

Package is in hand.

Yes, we are buying this for the extras--

as is typical for CC, this disc of a silent film is

I N T E R L A C E D.

Surprising, given the statements in ON FIVE about how this is perhaps the Becker's most long awaited-wanted disc.

I'm assuming the whole if-it's-interlaced-then-it-aint-a-good-silent-film-disc-presentation argument s/b put to bed.

[HerrSchreck]

I kid you not, my friend. Even Gary's review, though he's so hyperprotective of CC and doesn't say "interlaced", says (and give caps of) that the disc exhibits combing, and it aint due to preconversion issues. Munich sent the CC a fine grain of the resto, so they made their own NTSC tape I have no doubt. They ran their own telecine, we know that. There's no ghosting (ie progressive but w every 4th or 5th frame packed w two film frames)-- it's interlacing. I suspect these four fucking scores plus a commentary-- for a two hour plus film-- conked out the storage space necc to encode frame by frame.

[clownboy]

Package is in hand.

Yes, we are buying this for the extras--

as is typical for CC, this disc of a silent film is

I N T E R L A C E D.

Surprising, given the statements in ON FIVE about how this is perhaps the Becker's most long awaited-wanted disc.

I'm assuming the whole if-it's-interlaced-then-it-aint-a-good-silent-film-disc-presentation argument s/b put to bed.

sorry to sound ignorant, but what does "interlaced" mean?

[HerrSchreck]

Try here, or here just to get started in simple terms (and all I did was search google for interlaced vs progressive), rather than go on & on.

Simply put, progressive dvd's play back the film frame by frame, whereas interlaced playback does just that-- interlaces frames together, removing detail.

Always note-- you can play back a progressively encoded film interlaced, on an interlaced player setup, but you cannot make an interlaced-encoded film play back progressively, i e the reverse. Either each frame has been stored seperately, or they haven't.

Criterion is known for encoding the bulk of their films progressively-- i e at optimum levels of quality. But most silent films-- including those put out by CC-- are interlaced due to cost & return on investment projected. Thus the irony that CC-"snobs" (dumb word) like to crap on Kino, Milestone, etc, for putting out their films (mostly silents) nonprogressive... but whenever CC does a silent, they're almost never progressive either.. thus the silly debate running thru all this.

[denti alligator]

Try here, or here just to get started in simple terms (and all I did was search google for interlaced vs progressive), rather than go on & on.

Simply put, progressive dvd's play back the film frame by frame, whereas interlaced playback does just that-- interlaces frames together, removing detail.

Always note-- you can play back a progressively encoded film interlaced, on an interlaced player setup, but you cannot make an interlaced-encoded film play back progressively, i e the reverse. Either each frame has been stored seperately, or they haven't.

Criterion is known for encoding the bulk of their films progressively-- i e at optimum levels of quality. But most silent films-- including those put out by CC-- are interlaced due to cost & return on investment projected. Thus the irony that CC-"snobs" (dumb word) like to crap on Kino, Milestone, etc, for putting out their films (mostly silents) nonprogressive... but whenever CC does a silent, they're almost never progressive either.. thus the silly debate running thru all this.

Schreck, which of the CC silents is (are?) progressive?

Also, I don't understand why? Are silents harder to make progressive? Why? Why the extra cost?

[Tribe]

But what's the scoop, Shrekster? How's it look?

Tribe

[HerrSchreck]

Tribe: it looks like a hi-def scan of the exact print in the old Janus/Kino VHS, with the same focusing wobble in parts, but with a lot of damage marks cleaned up, and with more clearly translated versions of the intertitles on that tape, and with intertitles that were clearly not even on that tape inserted here and there (for example much more detailed convo between Schigolch & Lulu in Shoen's apartment in the beginning relating to their past together, Lulu being a dancer, and who Shoen is and why she's there in that modernist apt). You'll also note moments of extra footage inserted for a few seconds here & there, but nothing amounting to a reinserted "scene" for this resto.

I hafta say I'd never seen LOOKING FOR LULU before, and hadda confess watching it made me tear up at a certain point (of course I was inna middle of drinking a quart of 7.5% malt liquor at 8:30 am, after work ) where Brook's neice was talking about receiving a call from Aunt Louise during Louise's days of total alcoholic dissolution & isolation here in NYC in the east 50's; she teared up during the interview talking about the call from her aunt Louise who was weeping, and she-- the neice, as a then-little girl taking the call back in Kansas (the call meant for her mom, Louise's sister or brother, cant remember)-- asked her aunt why she was crying, and Louise answered "Because there is no one on this earth who loves me,"... and she teared up saying how she (as a little girl) said to Louise "But I always loved you auntie", whereas Louise started really bawling on the phone before being put on with the girls mom (or dad).

I had no idea Louise fell so far in life before being rediscovered by a new generation & moving to Rochester & writing. She was one hell of a fuckin woman, and beautiful untiil the day she died.

As to your question Dent-- I know telecine is superexpensive, thus the reason Kino doesn't run new transfers/create new beta's for their foreign silents-- totally cost prohibitive. As to the cost difference between progressive encoding vs interlaced, I'm not sure of the difference in costs, though obviously creating a progressive disc requires more time & space & expense.

[denti alligator]

As to your question Dent-- I know telecine is superexpensive, thus the reason Kino doesn't run new transfers/create new beta's for their foreign silents-- totally cost prohibitive. As to the cost difference between progressive encoding vs interlaced, I'm not sure of the difference in costs, though obviously creating a progressive disc requires more time & space & expense.

I still don't get it. Is it MORE expensive than with non-silents? I mean, are the silents getting interlaced transfers just because they think no one will care, is is the process more cumbersome?

[HerrSchreck]

Oh no-- no way (i e it's perhaps more expensive for silents... 35mm is 35mm). It's just that silents have a far smaller audience (even within the parameters of Art Films) and so get far fewer production investment dollars for disc preparation. That's a given.

[Greathinker]

DVD Savant: http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=25170

[hammock]

She was one hell of a fuckin woman

Ehhhh - what?

I always wondered what Interlaced meant - thanks for clearing that up.

Thanks for the detailed review - can't wait to watch this again.

[nick]

I also have a question that maybe Schreck or David can help with in regards to silents being interlaced. Could these be interlaced due to the fact that the speed of the film, ie frames per second is less on these old silents. Since we are dealing with a modern standard, NTSC 30 fps, PAL 25 fps, or the new HiDef 24 fps; is it true that every frame is interlaced, or is it scanned progressively with every fourth frame interlaced? Sorry if my terminology is incorrect.

[thomega]

According to About the Transfer, most of CC's recent HD transfers have been done on a Spirit Datacine. For Pandora's Box, the equipment is not mentioned. The same applies to Koko, which is also interlaced (according to the Beaver). Could it be that there is a problem with some film elements (silents with nonstandard speeds, 16mm, etc.), that prevents the use of the Spirit Datacine?

It would be very strange, if the CC deliberately used sup-par equipment for a high-profile release such as Pandora's Box. Has anybody asked JM and received a reply?

[denti alligator]

You see, Schreck, the reason I ask those questions is that it seems VERY unlikely to me that the only reason thsi release didn't get a progressive transfer is because it's low priority or something. This is a high-profile release. There must be a technical reason for this. They didn't just decide to not invest the extra money to do this progressively, especially after years of delaying the release.

[thomega]

not invest the extra money to do this progressively

Does anybody know for certain that progressive transfers are significantly more expensive? The most expensive factor must be expert labor (colorist) and that should be roughly the same for all methods. Not working in the field, I imagine that restoration work is actually more straightforward on a progressive master. The progressive transfer will use a little more storage, but that's a drop in the bucket when you release progressively scanned 50 films per year.

It's a mistery #-o