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I have no idea if this is good news or bad, but Dreyer's Vampyr will apparently be released on DVD in the UK on January 23 by lesbian-vampire connoisseurs Redemption.
Amazon UK link

Does anyone know if they're likely to have access to the Koerber restoration? Are Redemption technically competent? Does this rule out a UK release from MoC or anyone else?

Oh, and do Redemption have a web site?

It's basically a shitty-shotty "PD" release. Not officially licensed (like most of their other discs from that era), and it is not Koerber's restoration.

Their discs come with heavy metal videos as extras. Terrible stuff.

Yeah, Redemption really makes a pig's arse of many great/interesting films. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. Any chance of Masters of Cinema wrestling that gem off Redemption's, Nick?

If only . . . I managed to catch the new restoration straight from the Cineteca di Bologna on the big screen a couple weeks ago at UCLA. It's a beauty, all right.

What are the rights issues behind the Koerber restoration? Anyone? Why is this remaining out of reach?

Fuck, Redemption are also releasing Lang's, M that day:

www.play.com/title=680825

The mind boggles.

denti alligator wrote:What are the rights issues behind the Koerber restoration? Anyone? Why is this remaining out of reach?

Something tells me Kino & Janus are wrestling over it. It's the one question I ask JM ("is this a battle between...?") that he never answers back on. I think they're a little embarassed for depriving us all due to such wrangling. Kino has traditionally handled Koerber's work for the FWMS, but the Becker's have invested a lot in Dreyer. Once I was up at Kino and rode down in the elevator with a Kino drone & he said Koerber was just up there (in NYC) with them that very day.

davidhare wrote:I received a recent TCM version of Vampyr a couple weeks ago. Apart from tragic English subs on a giant black block in the rare diaologue scenes, it has English language soundtrack (none of the German) and looks basically the same construction as the various extant versions.) With just as many second gen dupe shots and obscured opticals/double exposures, etc. Appalling.

This is a desparately needed restoration title.

Was it the same as the ever-infuriating, much-lambasted, Worst-Telecine-Gate-Cropping-Ever (20+%!!) David Shepard Kino/VHS - Image/DVD version?

Is TCM selling it? Or was it a tv videotape?

davidhare wrote:NO niether, it was directtoair. Acouple of months ago. And, for once it didn't look cropped. Some shots look like first gen, and this was intriguing, but frankly the Englishh language muttreings bother me (another dub) and the elisions and fog-laden shots are not good. And the black backed subs were Definitely not Shephard. (but WHAT?)
Obviously we need to wait for the real palooka.

I don't know if you know but the film had 3 versions dubbed in 3 languages-- German French & English. All dubbed later on in the studio. Nothing was recorded on location, so you probably heard the original Eng release dialog. The editing problems were legion: they created one master neg for images, then inserted shots of actors speaking their lines in 3 languages and constructed corresponding prints. But as there was one score with one length, which had to be synched to action on the screen (another challenge to the Steiner claim to 1932-Mickey Mousing fame)... problem was music & dialog were on the same optical track... the score was of one length... but speaking same lines in different languages takes different amount of tiime, which would cause music to run to different points within the same scene... causing music cues to arrive (shadows dancing, backwards digging, shadows creeping, simple sound effects) too soon, late, etc. Big problem. They even took to, on the French print, or post-prod edits, inserting black stock & empty spots because the score had been recorded & nothing else could be done to keep the thing in synch.

Dreyer apparently preferred the German over the other two, btw.

PS: there was a shooting of a cop here in NYC-- one of the suspects was the guy who played DeNiros son in A BRONX TALE. And the shooting took place right next door to the building where my brother lived for years here in the northeast bronx.

davidhare wrote:Do you carry a rod? Sounds like you need to.

Yes, my old lady is giving it a big mou- uh, #-o I mean hand =D> right now.

A poster at beaver listserv has reported MK2 will be releaseing a Dreyer box shortly, including the Cineteca Bologna resto of Vampyr. Other titles not specified and no info if these will be available separately.

Is this the restoration that is supposed to be the best?

Martin Koerber's notes on the 1998 restoration of the German version of Vampyr are posted at carldreyer.com. An excerpt:

After we had established what the best surviving elements were, the photographically best and most complete and undamaged versions of every shot were chosen, duplicated and assembled into a new image negative. Similarly for the sound: it was transferred from the various sources we had, and was newly assembled and treated on the digital level, than recorded back to film (sound negative) after restoration in the computer. Restoration in film almost always means duplication, of course, because what one has to do is to create a new element that can become the source for new prints.

The "originals" remained unchanged and went back to the various archives which made them available. A restoration log documents where every shot of the restored version came from, as well as the algorhythms and filters used for the treatment of the sound. Thus this restoration is - at least theoretically - transparent and reversible, as any restoration should be without question.

As far as what survives on film, we have done the best one can do until further footage turns up, which seems unlikely taking into account the amount of work that the major archives have been putting in researching and restoring this film over the past decades.

Martin Koerber's notes on the 1998 restoration of the German version of Vampyr are posted at carldreyer.com.

I saw the Koerber/Bologna print last fall and was extremely impressed. Phenomenally improved. If you're a fan of the film, the DVD will be a must have, with or without subtitles.

Incidentally, we just posted this link at MoC yesterday.

Incidentally, we just posted this link at MoC yesterday.

That link seems to say the box will be coming out next week. Did I read that right?

denti alligator wrote:

Incidentally, we just posted this link at MoC yesterday.

That link seems to say the box will be coming out next week. Did I read that right?

It has apparently been delayed, but it's listed as Coming Soon in the latest MK2 catalogue included with Vèronique, too, so it's not an illusion.

It has apparently been delayed, but it's listed as Coming Soon in the latest MK2 catalogue included with Vèronique, too, so it's not an illusion.

Great news greets me after a respite!

The big question is who will do the honors for r1, Kino or CC. Cine Bologna/LImmagine Ritrovata usually do not fuck around with anything but "definitive" elements, usually viz Berraitua or Koerber on Lang Murnau Pabst Chaplin Leni (the Paul kind, but Reifenstahl too no doubt with the Transit-Films Fanck's) etc.

Great news greets me after a respite!

Glorious news. I have delayed my viewing of this film, in anticipation of seeing the Koerber restoration and this looks like it. Which language is the restored version in - French? Is it likely that MK2 will include english subtitles, like their recent Double Life of Veronique?

Oh, how I have longed to see the Allan Grey funeral dream...

Gordon McMurphy wrote:Glorious news. I have delayed my viewing of this film, in anticipation of seeing the Koerber restoration and this looks like it. Which language is the restored version in - French? Is it likely that MK2 will include english subtitles, like their recent Double Life of Veronique?

Oh, how I have longed to see the Allan Grey funeral dream...

Wow Gordon... holding back on VAMPYR in any form! I hereby nominate you for the Extreme Discipline Award.

Wow Gordon... holding back on VAMPYR in any form! I hereby nominate you for the Extreme Discipline Award.

Oh, dear S. how many silent films and films from the 30s I have had to abstain from due to poor film elements and video transfers.

Thank The Great Nothingness of the Universe for the recent develpments in restoration, high-definition and digitally clean-up tools.

Any word on whether this wonderful box will be English-friendly?

I have read somewhere that Vampyr will be released separately, may be in the recent MK2 catalogue.

Does anybody yet know what the other titles in the box are going to be-- is it going to be the usuals (DAY OF WRATH, ORDET, GETRUD) plus VAMPYR? In that caseI would really pray they release them individually, as I've had the CC Dreyer box since it came out and can't imagine better-- save the OAR correction on GERTRUD-- transfers/source elements.

It would actually be far more interesting if they threw in the rarely seen TWO PEOPLE, maybe MASTER OF THE HOUSE (I know the bfi just released it in a sad looking edition), perhaps LEAVES FROM SATANS BOOK from that beautiful Danish print shown in MY METIER so I can toss the horrid horrid Image Entertainmanet disc that Shepard put out last year. Maybe the PRESIDENT too, his first film.

Incidentally Monseiur Hare-- I gave GERTRUD another look... and well, it did in fact do a bit more for me this time. I'm becoming a bit more amenable to the stylization which in the past didn't send me into cartwheels.

Looks like 4 films and two documentaries.

Master of the House (1925)
Vampyr (1932)
Day of Wrath (1943)
Gertrude (1966)
Carl Th. Dryer (1965)
My Metier (1995)

Oh, and I love Gertrude. It grabbed and held me tight the whole way through.

Outline :

Coffret 5 DVD et 1 Documentaire :
- Ordet (Lion d'or Festival de Venise, 1955, 120', VO danois)
- Gertrud (Festival de Venise - Prix Fipresci, 1965, 133', VO danois)
- Le maître du logis (1925, 107', muet)
- Vampyr (1932, 70', VO allemand)
- Jour de colère (1943, 93', VO danois)
- Carl Theodor Dreyer : Mon métier (Torben Skjødt Jensen, 1995, 93', VO danois)

Straight from the MK2 website. No mention of anything but that box.

Interesting that they keep the Danish title for THE WORD, but adopt French titles for Master of The House & Day of Wrath...