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swo17 wrote: Though by what measure is this "the first true horror film"? (Does "true" mean "released by Eureka"?) Ahem...

The first true spooky Halloween colors though

From what I understand CABINET is the first full-length horror film.
Shorts like Edison's FRANKENSTEIN came before.

Koukol wrote:From what I understand CABINET is the first full-length horror film.

It wasn't even Robert Wiene's first full-length horror film!

swo17 wrote:

Koukol wrote:From what I understand CABINET is the first full-length horror film.

It wasn't even Robert Wiene's first full-length horror film!

Does this one still exist - it has a review by F Gwymplaine Nutcase...

I wonder if this Caligari release will let us see all the surviving material from Genuine?

Orlac wrote: Does this one still exist - it has a review by F Gwymplaine Nutcase...

It does, I've seen it. Also, there's Richard Oswald's 1919 "Unheimliche Geschichten" (which is even available on DVD in Germany).

I wonder if The Golem (1920) could be upgraded to HD at some point. The contrast and tinting were a bit of a mess on the last DVD from 2003, and it'd also be a good opportunity to include the surviving fragments from the 1915 version.

Orlac wrote:Does this one still exist

Furcht (Robert Wiene, 1917)

htdm wrote:

Orlac wrote:Does this one still exist

Furcht (Robert Wiene, 1917)

That's the version my late friend Leslie Shepard re-titled in English and made available privately (and freely) on VHS about 15 years ago. He did the same thing with many European silents which were commercially unavailable then (and, in some cases, still are). While we'd frown on replaced intertitles now*, he used the domestic analogue technology he had access to at the time, all the time struggling with his cataracts around the age of eighty! His dedication was simply incredible and I'm rather moved to see that online, like several other films he worked on.

* Leslie actually disliked subtitling of silent film intertitles, even in professional editions, as he felt the simultaneous visual presence of two languages diminished the dramatic impact.

That looks amazing.

Officially announced
New blu-ray special features:

•New high-definition presentation, from the extensive FWMS restoration
•Audio commentary by film historian David Kalat
•New video essay by film critic David Cairns
•Caligari: How Horror Came to the Cinema: a new 52 Minute documentary on the film.
•Re-release trailer
•PLUS: A 56-page booklet with new writing, reprints and rare archival imagery

I hope/assume there'll be an Eisner essay/excerpt. I have yet to read Caligari To Hitler but assume there's something authoritative there!

Nothing's officially announced until they say who's doing the score.

Thank God these labels keep sending up the Kalat Signal!

I got it off bluray.com. Perhaps they accidentally left off score.

According to someone I asked at the German Stummfilmforum, the German release has a soundtrack for clarinet, trumpet, trombone, percussion. hurdy-gurdy and strings, composed by Cornelius Schwehr. I would very much assume that this will also be on the MoC version, though bypassing the In The Nursery score is almost criminal. But much worse is the inclusion of that horrible "How Horror came to the Cinema"- 'docu' (one really has to put it into inverted commas), which I had really hoped would be excluded for being such a blatant bit of entirely superficial misinformation on the Weimar film. Well, let's discuss this once you've seen it. But don't believe anything it says at the very end about "Die drei von der Tankstelle".

Tommaso wrote:According to someone I asked at the German Stummfilmforum, the German release has a soundtrack for clarinet, trumpet, trombone, percussion. hurdy-gurdy and strings, composed by Cornelius Schwehr. I would very much assume that this will also be on the MoC version, though bypassing the In The Nursery score is almost criminal.

In that case, I'll be keeping my ancient Image DVD for the Timothy Brock score. (Haven't heard ITN's.) I'll still get the MoC to check out the restoration/commentary, but any other time I watch the film, I'll be surprised if I want to watch anything other than the Image DVD.

Well, ideally they would be able to include a multiplicity of scores (there was also a good orchestral one on the old French disc from Film sans Frontieres), but the problem is of course that the older scores were made for older versions running at different speeds and perhaps being less complete, so it would be difficult to synchronise them to the new resto. In the case of ITN's electronic/sampled instruments score this might be easier, and I would suppose that the Sheffield duo would have been willing to cooperate in a slight adaptation of their music to the new version. Their score is appropriately eerie, but in a far more accessible way than John Zorn's score is.

swo17 wrote:In that case, I'll be keeping my ancient Image DVD for the Timothy Brock score. (Haven't heard ITN's.) I'll still get the MoC to check out the restoration/commentary, but any other time I watch the film, I'll be surprised if I want to watch anything other than the Image DVD.

Ditto. Though, I suppose owning multiple versions of silent films is part of the territory. I'll track down the Image DVD now (had held off, hoping MoC would use the Brock score). I suppose I've had to get multiple version in the past though: Nosferatu (Image DVD), Nibelungenlied (truly ancient Blackhawk VHS), and most recently: The Freshman (Carl Davis' Warner-era score is far superior to his new version, unfortunately). Oh well.

Quick correction to a comment above: "From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film" is by Siegfried Kracauer, not Lotte Eisner. Eisner wrote "The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt", "Murnau", and "Fritz Lang".

Minkin wrote: The Freshman (Carl Davis' Warner-era score is far superior to his new version, unfortunately). Oh well.

If you mean the score on the previous DVD set, that was by Robert Israel. I gather Davis did write a Jazz Sextet score for The Freshman in 1995, but as far as I know it hasn't ever been commercially released with the film.

DeprongMori wrote:Quick correction to a comment above: "From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film" is by Siegfried Kracauer, not Lotte Eisner. Eisner wrote "The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt", "Murnau", and "Fritz Lang".

Thanks!

Tommaso wrote:But much worse is the inclusion of that horrible "How Horror came to the Cinema"- 'docu' (one really has to put it into inverted commas), which I had really hoped would be excluded for being such a blatant bit of entirely superficial misinformation on the Weimar film. Well, let's discuss this once you've seen it. But don't believe anything it says at the very end about "Die drei von der Tankstelle".

This "docu" is essentially a filmed Kracauer thesis and is indeed one of the worst documentaries about film ever. Not to mention the already infamous ending which sends you right up the wall. It's hard to believe that any filmmaker would be so stupid to illustrate in 2014 uncritically the probably most completely disproved piece of film literature.

Kracauer, whatever one may rightly say against his book from today's point of view, at least remains readable and still offers some interesting overview about what was made at the time, even though of course it's hard to agree with his views and intentions nowadays. But this "documentary" even adds a lot of nonsense by declaring all sorts of things to be 'expressionist' which had not the slightest resemblance with that movement, and generally tries to cement a view of the Weimar cinema which is outdated at least since the 1980s when serious studies by the likes of Elsaesser and others began to appear. One could simply forget about it as the work of someone who is in the second semester of his studies (though I'm sure the filmmakers are grown-ups and have some credentials, all the worse for it), but what worries me is that a lot of people watching this thing now internationally because it is included in this release will actually believe that they get valid information.

I actually deleted my TV recording of it immediately after watching it, but once I have this MoC release, I feel very much inclined to give some specific examples in addition to the ending, on which I'll not comment further before people here have actually seen it. It's completely unbelievable.