Vampyr (Dreyer, 1932)

[Person]

€21.99 at Amazon.FR. Any lower prices online?

[HerrSchreck]

So what are your thoughts Dave concerning the AR (and re the AR notwithstanding comment) as compared to Tom, who seems to believe that the film is 1.37? I know your original inkling was that it was 1.37 as well.

Did Nick formally announce this film yet, and what makes you think it will be in 1.19? I unbfortunately havent heard back from the folks in Germany I contacted, so I can't comment one way or another whether I owe Denti a gratis evening at Moma (though I did see Kirsanoffs RAPT at Anthologyu last month-- eat yer heart out!).

[Kinsayder]

In case anyone's still wondering about the AR issue, here's a comparison between the MK2 and an Arte TV broadcast that used the same 1998 restoration, but with a different framing:

Arte:

MK2:

Arte:

MK2

[zedz]

Case closed. The precision of Dreyer's framing in that first shot says it all.

[Tommaso]

Well, there ARE some scenes in which I find the framing too tight with 1.33, but we don't have to bother about the relative merits of the MK2 any longer, with MoC's version hopefully coming soon. But nice to see the screen caps finally confirming what we've been missing.

As to "The Blue Light", it's certainly Madman's fault. The R2 Eureka (which I believe is a straight port of the German Transit) is definitely in 1.19. I guess it's safe to assume that almost any of these early sound films up until ca. 1932, not just from Germany, are in 1.19. And there are so many examples of discs even from good companies that aren't faithful to this. Out of my head I would name CC's René Clair films, and most disturbingly "Boudu", where you find a lot of chopped heads, and I really wonder why no reviewer found it worthy to point this out. These misframings are much more likely to irritate than dirt, scratches or tramlines on a print. I'm only happy that CC will release Pabst's "Threepenny Opera" in 1.19. So I guess they are now aware of that problem.

[Kinsayder]

David, you're probably thinking of my post over in the MoC Vampyr thread. It looks like MK2's hands were tied over this, as Koerber explains:

More difficulties were at hand when more substantial changes had to be made to the film, because the German censor demanded certain scenes to be cut. The censorship card B31508 states that the film was 2.271m long when approved on May 2, 1932, after two cuts had been made: The killing of the vampire had been abridged by 15m (it was forbidden to show how David and the servant drive the pole into the body), and the suffocation of the Doctor had been abridged by 39m. Assuming that the requirements of the German censor asked for a new mix of entire scenes, as it would have been impossible to pos-cut the images without destroying the music track, one may speculate that Dreyer and Falkenberg re-arranged reel 9 of the German version, after the prints for the other languages had already been struck. This is likely because the surviving prints of the French version have the scenes that never made it to the German screens, but it is impossible to re-insert them into the German version, because the continuity of images and sounds is different in the two versions. Thus it was decided to keep the versions as found, but to preserve the French ending on a separate reel, so that the differences can be studied.