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Knights Of The Teutonic Order



Considered as one of the greatest and most popular Polish films of all time, this epic is a spectacular historical romance and war film set in the Middle Ages. Based on the best-selling book by Nobel Prize winner Henryk Sienkiewicz (Quo Vadis), the epic scope of Knights compares with the best in Hollywood epics and is a film for viewers of all ages.

Special Features

• Digitally re-mastered with restored image and sound.
• Anamorphic 16:9 enhanced for widescreen televisions.
• New and improved English subtitle translation.
• Optimal quality dual-layer disc.
• Booklet featuring Essay on Aleksander Ford by scholar Anna Misiak.



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"An epic film and one of the best of its genre." - Kinema

Considered as one of the greatest and most popular Polish films of all time, this epic is a spectacular historical romance and war film set in the Middle Ages.

I'm going to count my chickens before they hatch and thank you for another stellar rediscovery. In fact, I distinctly remember looking into Alexander Ford after his name was mentioned in an interview for Criterion's Andrzej Wajda box, and after finding very little, I distinctly remember saying outloud that I would probably never see one of his films.

(But I'm still wondering what African, Iranian, Indian and South American films you have planned!

Never heard of it. Sounds great. Mieczyslaw Jahoda was the cinematographer and his work on The Saragossa Manuscript is awesome, so I am sure this will be a visual feast - this seems to be the first Polish film shot in anamorphic (Dyaliscope) and Eastmancolor to boot, which also may be a first, as previous Polish films were shot on Sovcolor or Agfa.

Yes, I'll definitely be buying this blind, I think.

Both The Passenger and this are listed as upcoming titles on the page now, both estimated as late May releases.

Every new release from Second Run seems to be a wonderful surprise! Like What a Disgrace, I thought I'd never have the opportunity to see an Aleksandr Ford film, and there you go and spoil it all for me.

Play.com gives both this and Passenger a June 5th release.

Great news, this should be a massive improvement on the Polish DVD from a few years back (under original titles Krzyzacy) which, though with welcome English subs, was an awful transfer and also only 1.78 aspect ration, rather than full 2.35 'Scope ratio. Let's hope Second Run do a proper job, Ford's film deserves it.

Itty bitty baby coverart.

That's a fantastic design. I really like how Second Run have been experimenting with their recent cover concepts.

EDIT: According to Play.com and Amazon, this release has been delayed until July 31.

Please accept our apologies but unfortunately the release of Knights of the Teutonic Order has had to be delayed whilst we resolve a certification issue. It will still be our next release and as soon as we have an exact revised release date we will let you know.

Delayed again until August 28.

It seems that Second Run is going to distribute their releases through Vital Distribution, as both Passenger and this are listed under such at Amazon.

Final details according to Amazon.

DVD Description
A spectacular historical romance and war film set in the Middle Ages. Compares with the best of Hollywood epics and is a must for fans of the likes of Spartacus.
•One of the greatest and most popular Polish films of all time.
•Over 750,000 Poles resident in the UK, all of whom will know the film (this is the Polish equivalent of Robin Hood or King Arthur). Second Run will be marketing direct to them as well as UK DVD buyers.

Special Features
•Digitally remastered and full audio restoration.
•New English subtitles
•Booklet features an essay on the director by Polish academic Anna Misiak.

And...according to Play.com, this has been pushed back further than ever before...October 9 is the newest release date.

Bikey, do I have any reason to be paranoid about your label's future? Your last releases were in early May, after all, and your next two have been delayed 3 1/2 and 4 1/2 months.

Knights of the Teutonic Order has been delayed because we have been asked to cut a few seconds out of the film's climatic battle scene - specifically to do with horse falls that contravene BBFC UK policy and guidelines and are compulsory on us under the Animal Cruelty Act.

Discussions, reviewings and alterations have meant that it has taken much longer to finalise than we had anticipated. UK bodies have been very understanding and supportive of the work we do but, in this case, it is a legal obligation on everyone to comply.

So apologies again for the delays to this release of Knights which have also had a knock-on impact on our regular plans. The release is being finalised now and full specs will be on our website soon.

With regards to our future - we have no intention of going anywhere (except maybe for a beer at 7pm). We have been working hard on a slate of films that we love which will continue to be released through 2007. Some may have been mentioned on this forum, some have not. We hope you will be pleasantly surprised.

Bikey wrote:Knights of the Teutonic Order has been delayed because we have been asked to cut a few seconds out of the film's climatic battle scene - specifically to do with horse falls that contravene BBFC UK policy and guidelines and are compulsory on us under the Animal Cruelty Act.

What year is this, 1950? The British state is perfectly happy to facilitate torture, wage illegal wars and shoot civilians at random, but decades-old celluloid footage of a poor little horse cannot be allowed to reach the public's delicate eyes. As is often remarked, animals have much better rights than humans in this country.

Before everyone jumps on the BBFC, it's worth emphasising that their hands are completely tied when it comes to animal cruelty.

They're required by law (the 1984 Video Recordings Act) to make sure that no video is passed that contains illegal material, and the 1937 Cinematograph Films (Animals) Act (full text here) is still very much in force today - and it's one of the few pieces of content-related legislation where artistic merit doesn't provide a legal defence. If a film contains genuine animal cruelty, and there's no contextual justification (for example, a documentary recording of an act that would have happened regardless of the cameras' presence, which is how Apocalypse Now got away with its buffalo-slaughtering climax), out it comes.

I don't for one second imagine the government that passed the Act (presumably Stanley Baldwin's Conservative administration) imagined that it would be used to cut a few seconds out of a nearly 50-year-old film, but I doubt they'd have cared too much. Sadly, this law dates from the same year when BBFC head Lord Tyrell made the notorious comment "We may take pride in observing that there is not a single film showing in London today which deals with any of the burning issues of the day." - and while the BBFC has moved on dramatically and unrecognisably since then, we're still stuck with legislation from the same era.

Bikey wrote: With regards to our future - we have no intention of going anywhere (except maybe for a beer at 7pm). We have been working hard on a slate of films that we love which will continue to be released through 2007. Some may have been mentioned on this forum, some have not. We hope you will be pleasantly surprised.

Good to know. I must admit I too was getting concerned.

Thanks for your concern guys. It's nice to know someone out there cares...

Incidentally, Second Run isn't the only organisation to fall foul of the Animals Act in recent weeks - the Edinburgh Film Festival had to withdraw Monte Hellman's Cockfighter at the last minute for the same reason. I was amazed that it had even been scheduled, though the official EIFF defence pleads ignorance of the law.

(Needless to say, it's never been commercially distributed in the UK, and neither has Claire Denis S'en fout la mort, about the same subject - I know a distributor who was interested in handling the latter, until she found out that it was legally undistributable in its full form)

[quote="MichaelB"]Incidentally, Second Run isn't the only organisation to fall foul of the Animals Act in recent weeks - the Edinburgh Film Festival had to withdraw Monte Hellman's Cockfighter at the last minute for the same reason. I was amazed that it had even been scheduled, though the official EIFF defence pleads ignorance of the law.

As a footnote to this and someone who had bought a ticket I was particularly unimpressed with EIFF Artistic Director Shane Danielsen farewell eulogy praising the EIFF for having never bowed to pressure of any kind (political or economic) and would "never never pull a film". Admittedly he was directly referring to an Israeli film that had been programmed but maybe the end of festival celebration banquet had induced short term memory loss.

NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:As a footnote to this and someone who had bought a ticket I was particularly unimpressed with EIFF Artistic Director Shane Danielsen farewell eulogy praising the EIFF for having never bowed to pressure of any kind (political or economic) and would "never never pull a film". Admittedly he was directly referring to an Israeli film that had been programmed but maybe the end of festival celebration banquet had induced short term memory loss.

To be fair to Danielsen, pulling a film because screening it would contravene the law of the land (and jeopardise the cinema's operating licence as a not entirely insignificant side-effect) is a somewhat different issue from pulling a film as a result of political or economic pressure.

Legal pressure carries altogether greater weight - and, sadly, with films like these it's an open and shut case where the only solution is a change in the law. And I can't see too many Private Member's Bills taking this one on - "I demand the right to watch animals being slaughtered for real in the name of entertainment!"

Continuing the animal cruelty subject (but straying away from the Teutonic Knights), the other day I was watching Eisenstein's Strike, and there is a scene in that in which a woman throws a large boot at a kitten from some distance, causing the animal to recoil; it is clearly unsimulated: how come no-one ever bothered to censor it? Are films that predate the 1937 act exempt? More likely, the enforcement of this act has been capricious and inconsistent, like most legislation.

Gropius wrote:Continuing the animal cruelty subject (but straying away from the Teutonic Knights), the other day I was watching Eisenstein's Strike, and there is a scene in that in which a woman throws a large boot at a kitten from some distance, causing the animal to recoil; it is clearly unsimulated: how come no-one ever bothered to censor it? Are films that predate the 1937 act exempt? More likely, the enforcement of this act has been capricious and inconsistent, like most legislation.

Films predating the 1937 act certainly aren't exempt, but your description doesn't make it sound as though the kitten was physically harmed (and the slaughterhouse footage at the end would also have been OK, as the Act has a specific get-out clause for such imagery - unless of course Eisenstein built his own slaughterhouse especially for the film, but I think that's unlikely!).

In my experience, grey areas like this often get through the system - they're far more concerned with absolutely unarguable scenes of cruelty, which would lead to an open and shut case if anyone was minded to mount a private prosecution against the distributor, cinema or retailer.

Admittedly it was perhaps unfair to expect Danielson to add a whole paragraph on Cockfighter on what he otherwise intended as a flowing and modulated (self) eulogy upon his departure.
However it was also perhaps unnecessary to adamantly affirm that they would 'never never pull a film' given those recent circumstances. It was my own precis of the speech that added the "political and economic" reasons but they rarely go without the back up of the "law of the land" as you put it anyway.

You and Gropius are right to point to a bigger issue here which is the use of the act to allegedly counter cruelty to animals in film.

I am also one of the opinion that' for animals it is always Treblinka', and would add that they don't get SAG or Equity rates either.

Both positions on this are easy to satirise. I don't expect anyone seriously envisaged a rampant post screening Edinburgh audience combing the streets whooping for chicken on chicken violence, but it also doesn't have to be a plea through parliament for ' real slaughter please.'

Isn't there more an insidious danger of the denial of barbarity??
Having said all this I anxiously await the eradication of all evidence of the song 'Simon Smith and his Amazing dancing bear' that will usher in a new world of understanding and harmony with the lower mammals.