criterionforum.org

• Brand new high-definition restoration by Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung
• Two audio commentaries: one newly recorded by film historian David Kalat; the second by historian R. Dixon Smith and critic Brad Stevens
• The Language of Shadows, a 53-minute documentary on Murnau's early years and the filming of Nosferatu
• New video interview with BFI Film Classics Nosferatu author Kevin Jackson
• Newly translated English subtitles with original German intertitles
• More surprises to be revealed closer to release date!
• PLUS: a 56-page booklet featuring writings and rare imagery

EddieLarkin wrote:Whilst listening to Christopher Frayling talk about The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, I decided to switch over to the alternate Richard Schickel commentary to compare. During the 3-way Mexican standoff scene, Schickel said little more than that the leads form a triangle, that the title is triangular too, and that Clint was the Good, Wallach the Ugly and Van Cleef the Bad (I would never have guessed). Frayling on the other hand is talking at lightning speed, clearly in awe of the scene, describing what makes it so amazing.

I hope to have similar fun times with the Kalat/Smith-Stevens tracks.

EddieLarkin wrote:Well that's precisely my point. Like the GBU tracks, I'll have "fun" comparing how one track is so unbelievably poor compared to the other.

Drucker wrote:

EddieLarkin wrote:Whilst listening to Christopher Frayling talk about The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, I decided to switch over to the alternate Richard Schickel commentary to compare. During the 3-way Mexican standoff scene, Schickel said little more than that the leads form a triangle, that the title is triangular too, and that Clint was the Good, Wallach the Ugly and Van Cleef the Bad (I would never have guessed). Frayling on the other hand is talking at lightning speed, clearly in awe of the scene, describing what makes it so amazing.

I hope to have similar fun times with the Kalat/Smith-Stevens tracks.

Count me in amongst those awaiting the Kalat track. Though, sorry to burst your bubble Eddie, but the original Smith-Stevens track has a pretty negative reputation, and you can count me in among the people that thought it was pretty dull/full of on-screen narration.

eerik wrote:18th November is the release date according to Zavvi.
Special features...

MoC Twitter wrote:As previously announced we will be releasing Blu-ray and DVD editions of a new 2013 restoration, + new supplements, of Murnau's NOSFERATU.

videozor wrote:

eerik wrote:18th November is the release date according to Zavvi.
Special features...

So, will it be a Blu-ray only, or Blu-ray and DVD re-issue, the way they did Tabu?

MoC Newsletter wrote:Our Nosferatu SteelBook will now be a Dual-Format release containing both Blu-ray and DVD

David Kalat wrote:OK, obviously F.W. Murnau is the director of this acclaimed work. Murnau is himself a once-in-a-generation talent who worked in an institutional environment where the director had a substantially higher degree of authority and creative latitude than anywhere else. As a result, it’s an easy trap to fall into to think of Murnau’s films as wholly auterist creations, in which he and he alone was responsible for all the creative decisions.

But thinking about Nosferatu in these terms does a disservice to the film and leads us down some false trails—one of which is missing the contribution of Albin Grau.


Grau’s credit on Nosferatu is for “costumes and sets,” and he is often referred to as the designer. But as we shall see, that’s a gross misrepresentation.

In preparing my track I took the opportunity to challenge some of the received wisdom (ON TCM.COM) about the authorship of this film—but one disadvantage of the audio commentary format as a vehicle for that kind of (TCM.COM) discussion is that I was limited to the visual examples presented by the film itself. To really make my case (ON TCM.COM) I wanted to be able to show some other film clips or stills—which is best suited to a blog! So here we go—into the mad world of Nosferatu’s creator, F.W. Murnau Albin Grau!