Kino: Mauritz Stiller films

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#1 Post by **zedz** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 4:41 pm

matt wrote:Mauritz Stiller's Erotikon, The Saga of Gösta Berling, and Sir Arne's Treasure.

Fabulous news, and long overdue, even if I can't work up as much excitement for the likely presentation of these classics.

carax09 · #2 Post by **carax09** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 8:21 pm

Holy crap! Erotikon! Wasn't that the film that had a huge influence on Lubitsch? I seem to remember something about Cameron Crowe doing Billy Wilder's legwork in hunting this legendary lost film down. Can anyone help with details?

#3 Post by **zedz** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 8:54 pm

carax09 wrote:Holy crap! Erotikon! Wasn't that the film that had a huge influence on Lubitsch? I seem to remember something about Cameron Crowe doing Billy Wilder's legwork in hunting this legendary lost film down. Can anyone help with details?

I don't know about the Crowe story, but the film is brilliant, far more adult and sophisticated than virtually anything else being produced at the time (and Stiller was producing sophisticated comedies for adults as far back as Love and Journalism in the mid-teens), so definitely a key influence for Lubitsch. I find the modernity of these domestic comedies far more impressive than the (admittedly wonderful) spectacle of an epic like Sir Arne's Treasure. Now where are those Sjostroms?

Wittsdream · #4 Post by **Wittsdream** » Tue Nov 15, 2005 10:36 pm

Absolutely terrific news on the Stiller films as well as Ray's "Chess Players." I have been waiting on "Sir Arne's Treasure" to arrive in a superior format since the early days of laserdisc, as I already own Sjostrom's "The Wind" and "The Outlaw and His Wife" in nice editions on
that format.

The Saga of Gosta Berling is a nice addition, too. Now, how about the films of that other great Swede who wasn't even represented at all on laserdisc, let alone DVD - "Miss Julie"'s Alf Sjoberg.

Slowly but surely, every major work in film history will get released in nice condition somewhere around the world before we all croak.

Rufus T. Firefly · #5 Post by **Rufus T. Firefly** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 5:20 am

jonah.77 wrote:Out of curiousity: does anyone know what happened to the DVDs of Mauritz Stiller films that Kino had announced some time ago?

Jessica from Kino posted on the alt.movies.silent newsgroup recently that they would be out in the "first part of 2006".

HerrSchreck · #6 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Sat Dec 24, 2005 12:02 am

Rufus T. Firefly wrote:
jonah.77 wrote:Out of curiousity: does anyone know what happened to the DVDs of Mauritz Stiller films that Kino had announced some time ago?
Jessica from Kino posted on the alt.movies.silent newsgroup recently that they would be out in the "first part of 2006".

although I'm not at all happy about the disappearance from the new catalog of the previously promised SCARLET LETTER w Gish, newly restored & circulating art houses now.

HerrSchreck · #7 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 9:50 am

The Stillers are up on Kino @ http://www.kino.com/video/news.php

Looks like Peter Cowie is hustling "Film Expert" duties elsewhere as the well ran dry @ CC (as Peter "Special Features" Bogdonavich has taken up that post there)... he's been seen trembling & sweating staggering around Chelsea NYC begging looking terrible with a three day growth, importuning Swedish tourists with "L-let me p-please dispense w-wisdom in elegant t-tones... I'll only b-be a minute... please?"

Donald Trampoline · #8 Post by **Donald Trampoline** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 11:45 am

Wow, exciting! I hadn't heard about these. I've been trying to see a decent version of Gosta Berling for ages. (Couldn't make a screening of the restored version.) I watched a really crappy Video Yesteryear copy a long time ago.

At least the Cowie pieces are just intros. I think he works better in that kind of a situation, such as on the Bergman box set (Winter Light/Through a Glass Darkly/The Silence). It's on the commentaries that I start wanting to bang my head against a wall. (I think he has enough interesting comments, or info that I might not have already known, to fill an "intro," but when you only have a small amount of info to impart and you try to do it in a commentary, you end up with a lot of inane comments filling up the rest of the commentary. Such as his personal anecdotes that he thinks are so interesting! Aaah!!)

Now, if we could only get some damn Sjöstrom!! (Luckily, I have at least seen some of his screened and one on VHS. But I like him better than Stiller even.)

HerrSchreck · #9 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Wed May 10, 2006 9:28 am

SAGA OF GOSTA BERLING looking quite nice for an almost 90 year film. Kino put up a quicktime-driven clip from the film of a few minutes. Nice greyscale & blacks, and quite clean. Sad that the Swedish Film Institute (who Kino got their ditgital videotapes from) is so low on funds that Kino (notorious for shortcuts & shoestring budgets) wound up bringing it out first to DVD.

Clip link (I couldn't copy the link in a way that worked here on this page) 1/3 down the page here:
http://www.kino.com/video/

Speaking of Kino I finally picked up PRIX DE BEAUTE this past weekend, the last Louise Brooks starring feature. It's a very good film with some fascinating camerawork by Rudolph Mate. He pulls out all the stops, handheld (must have been using a Debrie as it's very fluid a la MAN W MOVIE CAMERA), long dolly tracking. Another beautiful thing is this is a film shot entirely on location, a snapshot of a disappeared age in Paris before the war. 1930 talkie! The sound is post-synched Tobis, and in very good condition, though as Lubitsch mentioned above, there are moments when the synching isn't exact (though Brooks is clearly speaking her lines in French). Also fascinating were the vintage instructions (included in the extras) to the projection staff in cinemas when this was first run, telling them how to run the film's sound (ie volume, splicing in case of breaks, etc) which was brand new then in France. The location exteriors reminded me somewhat of the beautiful Pabst silent LOVE OF JEANNE NEY. If you're a Mate or Brooks or Pabst (he had a large hand here though he didn't direct the film) fan, it wont disappoint.

HerrSchreck · #10 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Mon May 22, 2006 12:31 am

Got me-self some way advance copies of EROTIKON & SIR ARNE'S TREASURE. The Svensk FI-AB restorations are quite nice, though TREASURE in surprisingly cleaner shape than the 1 year newer EROT. Both notoriously difficult films to see, though.

I'm about to really get down into them now. EROT is on one DVD5 & appeared interlaced on first glance, and SAT is on a dual layer disc and is progre.. um improperly converted PAL digi beta master.

Otherwise tinted film (no Shepardian electronic tints) here, strong work by the SFI, and cheers to soup-kitcheny Kino for at least getting the restored editions out to the planet in otherwise "nice" editions. The worlds best catalog just keeps getting better.

PS: you all are gonna bust a gut when you see cowie sitting there in front of a table with a flatscreen nearby in a drab room looking quite squirmy & smiley.

HerrSchreck · #11 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Mon May 22, 2006 1:07 am

I take it all back-- Peter Cowie is absolutely fantastic, at least on EROTIKON.

ola t · #12 Post by **ola t** » Mon May 22, 2006 4:08 am

What are the intertitles like on the Stillers, Herr Schreck? English only?

HerrSchreck · #13 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Mon May 22, 2006 4:17 am

ola t wrote:What are the intertitles like on the Stillers, Herr Schreck? English only?

Yeah what they did Ola is they took the original hand paintings surrounding the text on each title card, left it in tact, and translated the dialog into english. Each intertitle has it's own little cartoony things outside the dialog square playing on the content in the corresponding scene. A la in EROTIKON, where the professor is lecturing about beetles monogamy/polygamy, there are cartoons w a beetle with his arms around two other girly beetles heading out for a date or something. Cute stuff.

All of that is preserved. Otherwise, particularly since I know you are a Swede, I'm sure it's a drag to see the original usages obliterated. I got a line into Bret Wood this past week and I'm going to see if there's any possibility of reversing this practice & going with the MoC/CC style of subbing. Not keeping my fingers crossed.

ASPHALT:

ola t · #14 Post by **ola t** » Mon May 22, 2006 4:42 am

Thanks, Schreck. I might still pick these up cheaply some day, but yeah, seeing all those double entendres in Erotikon in English would only make me long for the original.

HerrSchreck · #15 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Tue May 23, 2006 5:25 am

Wow is all I can say.

SIR ARNES TREASURE is one of the most breathtaking, haunting, affecting, impressive silent films I've ever seen. I actually had a fucking lump in my throat as the young maids body is being borne across the ice on a funerary bier in the blowing storm.

Mauritz Stiller furchrissakes. I've had to readjust my whole understanding of how the more "modern" silent for which Murnau is so responsible evolved (and therefore cinema in sum). The moving camera, the relentless location work in blasting freezing storms, the fine fine fine acting (a lot of this has to do with amazingly sophisticated acting, Swedes should be quite proud) almost completely, even in bit parts, devoid of stagey artifice rampant in the teens, the beautiful cinematography in naturally medeival locations still totally intact in the teens-- this movie just took my breath away. Having seen EROTIKON (amazing performances in this as well), ARNE, and a somehwat atrophied BERLING years ago, one can say without hesitation this is the finest studio of the latter half of the teens.

Murnau-- in ARNE we see the real blueprint for his use of landscapes for haunting effect in NOSFERATU. Far more Swedish than expressionist.

The translation are sublime. Ola, I know its an irritant, but they are very very well done. Don't hold back because the discs are probably going to wind up indespensable if news lately about SFI are accurate (meaning no interest in releasing the silents of their own proud heritage); the restoration, the Cowie, the new swedish-Institute-commissioned score on ARNE is stunning, one of the best silent modern score I've ever ever heard.. it may be decades before any alternative version comes out. Let alone a better one.

Pure gold. Kudos to Kino for bringing these out at last. No one else is.

#16 Post by **zedz** » Tue May 23, 2006 11:28 pm

HerrSchreck wrote:Mauritz Stiller furchrissakes. I've had to readjust my whole understanding of how the more "modern" silent for which Murnau is so responsible evolved (and therefore cinema in sum). The moving camera, the relentless location work in blasting freezing storms, the fine fine fine acting (a lot of this has to do with amazingly sophisticated acting, Swedes should be quite proud) almost completely, even in bit parts, devoid of stagey artifice rampant in the teens, the beautiful cinematography in naturally medeival locations still totally intact in the teens-- this movie just took my breath away. Having seen EROTIKON (amazing performances in this as well), ARNE, and a somehwat atrophied BERLING years ago, one can say without hesitation this is the finest studio of the latter half of the teens.

Told ya so! Scandinavian silent cinema was so far ahead of the curve in the teens that most national cinemas NEVER caught up (i.e. not before they were swept away on waves of sound). I think this is most striking in the beautifully naturalistic screen acting you find in the films, even in big outdoor epics like Sir Arne or The Outlaw and His Wife. It's wonderful how early they realised that the secret power of acting for the screen is the capacity for conveying subtle emotions, glances and gestures.

It's great to hear Kino have done these movies proud. More please!

HerrSchreck · #17 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Thu May 25, 2006 12:07 pm

Does anyone know if the original release of the SAGA OF GOSTA BERLING was color tinted? For some reason (I acquired this Kino disc yesterday, the other two I got a week ago) this is the only one of the three fully restored Stillers that has not been tinted by the Swedish Film Institute. The other two-- EROTIKON & (the mind-boggling majestic) SIR ARNE'S TREASURE-- were fully restored with their original tints, with the film itself tinted, i e the colors are on the prints and not just added in the transfer electornically. So SFI deliberately left the tints out of this, thus I'm wondering if this is how GOSTA originally came out. Of course we know this was not unheard-of, as Lang released MABUSE DER SPIELER in straight b&w.

Anyone know? Ola?

Jean-Luc Garbo · #18 Post by **Jean-Luc Garbo** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 11:18 am

The Saga of Gosta Berling and Erotikon are on my wish list now after the recommendations of the latter I've read here and a notice about the former on TCM one night. However, I'd like to know if anyone here has seen these already. How are the transfers?

skuhn8 · #19 Post by **skuhn8** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 1:41 pm

I thought the transfers were quite beautiful. Especially Ghosta Berling--and of course that one's a few years younger. Definitely some fine restoration work there and Kino did a fine job mastering it. Erotikon was definitely worth a view but didn't blow me away like Berling did.

Jean-Luc Garbo · #20 Post by **Jean-Luc Garbo** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 2:16 pm

Well, that's good news. What was it about Erotikon that struck you so?

skuhn8 · #21 Post by **skuhn8** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 2:23 pm

AMB wrote:Well, that's good news. What was it about Erotikon that struck you so?

It didn't. Ghosta did. And why? I'm afraid the painkillers I'm on have further handicapped an already impaired ability to elucidate my thoughts. But...epic sweep, powerful performances.

HerrSchreck · #22 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Tue Jul 04, 2006 12:18 am

I for one found GOSTA the least impressive restorationwise (untintinted restoration from decades ago) as well as storywise... wherease the restorations & mise en scene of EROTIKON & SIR ARNES TREASURE were far more beautiful-- brand new restorations by SFI w tinted film. SIR ARNE is, as I agree w Peter Cowie (rare event) on this, the absolute masterpiece of Stiller's career. DO NOT MISS SIR ARNE! It's now in my top ten favorite silents of all time. The other two don't even come close.

HerrSchreck · #23 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 9:03 am

re tints (not digital, which I haven't seen on FWMS resto's)

From DVD TALK:

Audio/Video:

This film has been restored by Cineteca del Comune di Bologna, the Cinematheque Francaise and the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Stiftung using two main sources, an original tinted French print from Cinematheque Francaise, and a dup negative held by the Museum of Modern Art. The editing of the film was based on an examination of all existing prints of the film. Though the French print had intertitles in the film itself, this restoration has left them out as the original German release was title-less.

The full frame black and white tinted image looks good, especially for a film this old. There is still a fair amount of print damage, scratches, spots, and dirt, but that isn't unusual. The contrast is pretty good overall, though some scenes are a bit too bright causing details to be lost in the highlights. The tinting scheme works well and isn't intrusive. Overall a very nice looking film.

The music for the soundtrack composed and performed by Donald Sosin. The track, piano with a few sound effects added, is scene specific and compliments the film very well.

They obviously ascertained the original tinting schematic via the existing tinted nitrate and the instructions on the dupe neg. The tints are therefore genuine tinted & toned nitrate. In fact Kino thankfully nowadays rarely use digitally generated tints on their silents anymore, most of which-- lately at least-- are coming from the most authoritative sources doing full blown hi-cost restos (as opposed to some of the older Shepard Image Ent. stuff which, obviously for reasons of early days/cost, used digital tinting a la MUDE TOD, his Image disc of NOSFERATU, etc).

Along those lines don't miss PHANTOM. One of the most beautifully unusual tinting schematics I've ever seen was-- speaking of Shepard/Image-- the original 1st generation tinted nitrate run thru telecine for the Image disc of Joe May's INDIAN TOMB. Have you seen this disc in particlar?-- I ask because the "official" archival materials on this title held in Germany look drab compared to the print held by a private collector in France who licensed his superior print of this fun-as-drugs film to Shepard for his disc. For a pretty early dvd (6 yrs old) he did a pretty nice job cramming those 212 interlaced minutes on a dual layer disc.

vogler · #24 Post by **vogler** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 10:02 am

HerrSchreck wrote:They obviously ascertained the original tinting schematic via the existing tinted nitrate and the instructions on the dupe neg. The tints are therefore genuine tinted & toned nitrate. In fact Kino thankfully nowadays rarely use digitally generated tints on their silents anymore

Excellent, this sounds great. I seem to remember some less than perfect digital tints on the older releases and I'm glad things seem to have changed. It seems to me that sometimes with digital tints we never really get to see true blacks, they seem to turn the colour of the tint. With proper tinting, however, only the exposed parts of the film are tinted and blacks remain black. Would this be correct? I seem to remember the Kino dvd of Das Wachsfigurenkabinett having digital tints that were way overdone and all the black areas turned into thick digital looking areas of colour.
EDIT: I just had a look at the disc and it's only really the blue tints I'm thinking of.

With the recent and excellent Mauritz Stiller discs from Kino my only real disappointment was the lack of tints on Gösta Berlings saga. This was tinted originally was it not? I wonder why this version wasn't tinted like Erotikon and Sir Arne's Treasure.

HerrSchreck wrote:Along those lines don't miss PHANTOM.

This is right at the top of my list of dvds to get. I have seen the film and I like it a lot - perhaps not quite up there with the greatest Murnau but not far off. The DVD sounds absolutely incredible.

HerrSchreck wrote:One of the most beautifully unusual tinting schematics I've ever seen was-- speaking of Shepard/Image-- the original 1st generation tinted nitrate run thru telecine for the Image disc of Joe May's INDIAN TOMB. Have you seen this disc in particlar?-- I ask because the "official" archival materials on this title held in Germany look drab compared to the print held by a private collector in France who licensed his superior print of this fun-as-drugs film to Shepard for his disc. For a pretty early dvd (6 yrs old) he did a pretty nice job cramming those 212 interlaced minutes on a dual layer disc.

I have not seen Indian Tomb and know practically nothing about it so I'm going to look into that one. Actually I don't know how I managed to miss it.

HerrSchreck · #25 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Sat Oct 14, 2006 11:09 am

Yeah that GOSTA BERLING disc is the only one of the three that didn't come from a brand new, recently funded restoration by the Swedish Film Inst. GOSTA is from the SFI restoration, if memory serves correctly, from back in the 1960's... so all we really have there is Kino getting out on dvd the basic print sitting in the SFI archives. My hunch is they heard of the restorations of EROTIKON & SIR ARNE (o man o man what a film that is), and, despite the lack of a recent restoration, asked to license GOSTA to make it a trilogy. The fact that it's the best known of the three (and not available on disc or "official" R1 vhs either), and the fact that it had Garbo I'm sure helped a lot too... tie Garbo in with Stiller via his discovery of her, and you have a theme running thru all three beyond the Stiller/Swedish angle, and a bit of marketing pizazz. To be totally honest I really don't know if GOSTA was tinted originally or not.

Yes youre sensing that those digital tints are laid over the digital image like a blanket, post telecine, therefore blocking out contrast in weaker sections of faded or generational prints. Whereas in a genuine tinted print it's part of the emulsion and almost appears "under" the b&w contrast-- especially nowadays as the technique they use now to create/expose new composite interpositives is they expose the blank film first to the the color tints required for each particular section (or rather expose needed lengths of each given color on corresponding lengths of blank stock to have on hand before they start printing the print), then, scene by scene as needed, expose the b&w image onto the colored stocks of required background tints.

I was always under the assumption that WAXWORKS were real tints.. that was another Bologna/Stiftung/Cinemateque cooperative resto, and two original release prints were used-- one badly faded nitrate element with english ttitles from the British Film Lib, and a nitrate from the cinemateque... and so much of the film looks passable in the reconstructed composite versus the strong contrast in the French print. But I think in the Ivan scenes, particularly the torture/poison chamber scenes where Ivan is underground, they had to revert to the british print which had faded quite a bit... as the French print was far worse with full blown decomposition.

Remeber the tinting is always brand new when they create these new restored prints, especially those with restored tints where they weren't copying from an actual tinted nitrate-- so the colors are very strong, fresh, and undegraded, and if you lay a film with blown out contrast via 80 years of storage over that, the tints are going to look overpowering at times. But I totally agree with you, I always, even during the strongly contrasted scenes, turn the color levels down on my screen when I watch not only WAXWORKS but most silent films with any kind of tints, electronic (i e HAXAN or DER MUDE TOD) or genuine.

The only discs where I tend to not touch the color are those rarities where all the archival stock has tints that seem to have survived en toto, like the Kino INTOLERANCE or BROKEN BLOSSOMS, or the Image INDIAN TOMB, some of the Kino pristine Fairbanks titles. I'd say SCHATTEN incidentally falls into this category. The strength of the tints varies slightly along with the contrast so I think it's the original tints we're seeing.