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Yeah, the Faust looks like a wash to me. But I will say that, looking at the caps between the Kino & the MoC side by side for the first time in detail--

the MoC of course has deeper contrast and the old print has been processed into pure deep b&w. But I can see for the first time that the jags on the MoC are hugely mitigated on the Kino-- and I think the reason for this was that Nick did something viz the pulldown to get his master to encode progressively, which resulted in the jags.

The Kino is interlaced... so it has the drawback of being interlaced.. but at the same time if you look in particular at the last two caps-- the shot at the crossroads, look at the little tree branches, etc, between the two caps.. the MoC is far more jaggy while the Kino is smoother...... same goes for the last cap: look at the top of Janning's/Mephisto's cap.. you can see the Kino is smoother where the MoC is jag-haunted. So the progressive encode comes at a price, it seems.

In the end, I'd say it's all a wash. They're all very good and each have their own little needling definciencies and strengths vs one another. If you have one there's probably no need to upgrade with another.

HerrSchreck wrote:Imho the Kino has the better image (the tinting looks more authentic too) and is the only disc so far to present the uncorrupted surviving print. Its an english language market release, so there's no reason to marry it with the german intertitles, whose corresponding print may have been edited differently.

Yes, I too have always preferred the Kino Tartuffe as an authentic record of how US audiences at least saw the film. Although the domestic edition doesn't survive in complete form, I have a version taped from German TV which includes shots like the prayerbook close-ups that are missing (presumably censored) from the US print, but featured in the MoC/Berriatua doc.

Nick argued in the MoC Tartuffe thread that editing all the surviving material together would result in "a hybrid mess" but I'd argue that adding German intertitles to the US print results in a hybrid anyway. In the absence of an authentic domestic print, I personally would like to see a composite version (similar to the German TV print) as an alternative on any future releases - rather like Criterion did with Mr Arkadin.

In the meantime, though, I'm glad to own both Kino and MoC editions for the different extras and the digital clean-up on the MoC.