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zedz wrote:Congratulations, but I really have to take issue with the assertion that:

Outstanding films rarely slip entirely under the critical radar

How on earth would you know?

And doesn't half of Second Run's catalogue disprove this assumption?

I completely agree - take pretty much any country (especially one with a strong film culture like Hungary) and you're guaranteed to find dozens of outstanding films that are unknown in the English-speaking world purely due to accidents of distribution (or lack of it).

As demonstrated above, the Hungarians seem to rate Zoltán Fábri above all their better-known directors, yet I'm willing to bet that very very few UK or US-based critics have even heard of him, let alone seen anything with his name on. Same goes for František Vláčil prior to 2007, and even arguably Andrzej Munk - I first heard of Munk when I read Polanski's autobiography in the 1980s (Polanski was his former AD, and clearly revered him both personally and creatively), but it was at least another two decades before I saw any of his films and realised why he was regarded as one of the country's all-time greats.

(Talking of which, I've heard rumours that Second Run may have another go at producing a decent edition of Munk's Eroica - if you remember, they scrapped their original plans despite announcing a release date after being unable to secure a master that wasn't battered, horrendously contrasty and VHS-quality. A far superior unsubtitled edition has just come out in Poland, so enquiries are being made).

Just to provide a bit of closure on the little tangent about Merry-Go-Round:

MichaelB wrote:Hopefully it's framed correctly - my Hungarian disc was cropped to 16:9, and it's painfully obvious. Historically, it's wildly unlikely that a 1955 Hungarian film would be anything other than 1.33:1, and YouTube clips seem to bear this out.

I haven't watched the film yet, but just popped the DVD in for a couple minutes to check this. The OOP French edition that can be ordered from Amazon marketplace is in fact shown in 16:9. It's unfortunate, but probably the only way that I'm likely to see the movie at all for the foreseeable future.

Thanks for that - I was tempted to track down the French edition on the off-chance that it was an improvement on the Hungarian, but from what you say it sounds as though both came from the same master.

All my efforts to get the word out on Szindbad...and Zavvi can't send me a copy. Oh the irony

skuhn8 wrote:All my efforts to get the word out on Szindbad...and Zavvi can't send me a copy. Oh the irony

Let us know if you continue to have any problems with Zavvi, and we'll get a copy of Szindbád to you. We're keen to know your thoughts on our release, skuhn8.

Bikey wrote:

skuhn8 wrote:All my efforts to get the word out on Szindbad...and Zavvi can't send me a copy. Oh the irony

Let us know if you continue to have any problems with Zavvi, and we'll get a copy of Szindbád to you. We're keen to know your thoughts on our release, skuhn8.

Thanks, canceled with Zavvi and moved on to Amazon.co.uk. I'm sure whatever I'm going to say has already been said more eloquently in the glowing reviews. Really great that you folks along with Michael Brooke have helped make this little gem more readily accessible.

Credit where it's very much due - if you hadn't sent me the Hungarian DVD back in 2006/7, it wouldn't have featured in Sight & Sound's '75 Hidden Gems' feature, so Peter Strickland wouldn't have gone out of his way to track it down shortly afterwards, etc. etc.

Both of us might well have eventually seen it at Wrocław's Hungarian New Wave retrospective in 2009, as we were both there (and I was trying to see as many films in that strand as I possibly could) - but you were very much the catalyst for us discovering it four years ago.

This was a wonderful find indeed and definitely needs another viewing at some point.I tried to follow the waiters story about his wife during the dining sequence but found myself concentrating so much on the visuals that I didn't notice if he ever finished his story!

"An unexpectedly wonderful surprise" : The Arts Desk

"Stupefyingly beautiful... the most carefully crafted color design I ever recall seeing in a film; the gorgeousness simply never lets up, and that includes remarkable, painterly landscapes shot in difficult light. All in all, a phenomenal release": Bright Lights Film Journal

MichaelB wrote:"Stupefyingly beautiful... the most carefully crafted color design I ever recall seeing in a film; the gorgeousness simply never lets up, and that includes remarkable, painterly landscapes shot in difficult light. All in all, a phenomenal release": Bright Lights Film Journal

There's another sentence in the review that I thought was very true:

Szindbád would have made a fine candidate for Blu-ray, but Second Run's standard disc is so lovely that I wasn't missing the HD.

I'm genuinely impressed with how solid the transfer is in every respect, especially the vibrant color and film-like texture. The Hungarian digital restoration turned out very nicely. The DVD also upscaled beautifully on my 46" TV. It's a stunner.

jsteffe wrote:I'm genuinely impressed with how solid the transfer is in every respect, especially the vibrant color and film-like texture. The Hungarian digital restoration turned out very nicely. The DVD also upscaled beautifully on my 46" TV. It's a stunner.

We are really very happy to read your exemplary comments and the wonderful reviews which the DVD has received so far. A film as beautiful as Szindbád deserved the very best presentation we could do.

Nearly everything that can be said by me has been said better already, but I thought complimenting the great score for this film is also something owed. The music really brought everything together for me and kept the pacing smooth.

Jonathan Rosenbaum finds Szindbád "dazzling" (and discusses Second Run) at #23 in his latest Global Discoveries on DVD: Subjects for Further Research column.

Indeed, although anytime Rosenbaum writes something like "most of us knew absolutely nothing" about a movie, he really means "I personally knew absolutely nothing" about it. Because, for instance, many of us here (thanks partly to skuhn8) discovered Szindbad years ago via the English-friendly Hungarian DVD. I love the guy's criticism but he always gets one or two things (at least) in every "Global Discoveries" column totally wrong, and I wish he would fact-check the thing, or at least open it to comments so that one could point out, also for instance (to cite an example from this particular column), that the $9.99 DVD of Cockfighter on Amazon is a PD/bootleg and that the only good version is an OOP Anchor Bay that sells for quite a bit more. Sigh.

To be fair to Rosenbaum, I don't think "most of us" = "most members of criterionforum.org." I could be utterly wrong about this, but I'm guessing the average American cinephile doesn't have a skuhn8 to fill them in on what they're missing in Hungarian cinema.

Listen to Graeme Hobbs' ecstatic new podcast on Szindbád at MovieMail

Bikey wrote:Listen to Graeme Hobbs' ecstatic new podcast on Szindbád at MovieMail

Ecstatic is the word! I don't know what effect it would have on someone who hasn't seen the film already, but for me it brought countless memories flooding back.

Suddenly I'm disappointed with Second Run's cover of Szinbad.

I'm normally the first to praise Polish posters, but I don't think that quite catches the mood.

Champagne Supernova--Szindbad's Psychedelic Sex Voyage

In parallel universe Preminger remade Szindbad as his followup to the immensely popular Skidoo; this poster is just proof that there is some crossover between our worlds.

Really a remarkably beautiful film. The fragmentary structure made the plot a little hard to follow, but I was so entranced by the imagery that I didn't mind one bit, and moreover, I look forward to repeat viewings in which all that will sink in. I've said this numerous times before, but it's fantastic that SR is around to make these East-Central European cinematic treasures available in the anglophone world.

Thrilling news: Huszárik's Capriccio, my favourite of his shorts, has just appeared on YouTube in its entirety.

The timing could hardly be more seasonally appropriate, what with it being undoubtedly the best snowman film ever.