Does anyone know?

I will stress again, if you have been hesitant on this, please get it so we can see more Ray.

I would guess that both Asphalt and Tartuffe are among the lowest sellers. Peerpee will have to confirm. I'd be curious to know what the top sellers are.

Aside from the recent reference to Abhijan, it was mentioned here that sales for Michael were 'dire'. Which is a shame as I rather enjoyed it, to my surprise.

George

Given the current retail price especially of "Tartuffe", you might be right, denti. Together with the apparently poor sales of "Michael", this doesn't bode well for more silents to be released, apart from such obvious household films as "Nosferatu" or "Nibelungen" or the forthcoming Lubitsch set. Which would be a real shame.

Nick has said that the presales for F For Fake have been very good, though I can't remember where.

I would guess one of the top sellers would be Metropolis, though I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't as Eureka put out such a great (basically the same) edition prior to MoC getting off the ground, I wouldn't be surprised if the big names held the position for best sellers, i.e. Murnau's Sunrise and Faust, Welles's F For Fake, perhaps the Kurosawa's have done well, I could imagine Renoir's Toni has sold well.

Then I expoect there is a mid level of stuff (i.e. the rest) then the poor sellers, Michael (which I own), Abhijan (which I will buy on Monday).

Then again I could be completely wrong. I doubt if Nick will shed any light on this, but it'd be nice if you did Nick, I think some of us would be very interested to hear, how about giving us the top and bottom three?

Yeah, it's pretty obvious really. You're all on the ball, except TONI hasn't done great.

Good: METROPOLIS, KWAIDAN, PUNISHMENT PARK, SUNRISE, F FOR FAKE

Not good: TARTUFFE, MICHAEL, ASPHALT, ABHIJAN

--

GREY GARDENS seems to be doing well, SALESMAN less so. Not sure what the picture is with SHOAH, but KEATON and NARUSE did okay in the first 2 months and then really slowed, which is the case with most things really.

Trying to keep all the releases ticking over is our main concern in order to keep releasing stuff.

I've not had a day off in the last 12 months, so I'm going to have a few weeks off now when I've finished LE SILENCE DE LA MER. This will mean we're not releasing anything in July or August, but we'll have a full slate of releases Sept-Dec.

Currently, it's looking like Visconti's BELLISSIMA, and Shinoda's SILENCE in Sept. FRAU IM MOND and two previously unannounced titles in October, then all eight Mizoguchi releases in early Nov, and early Dec.

Does this mean that the Murnaus are off the slate for this year??

No. The Murnaus are in the wings. We are ready to start work on one, waiting for a new HD master of another, and we have a technical problem with another. They could replace any of the aforementioned titles at any point over the next few months, and they could just as easily be released alongside them too. This is why it's so difficult to say what we're releasing over the next year, we're constantly working on 12 titles at a time, and some race to the finish before others.

A big stone loudly falling from my heart. Three Murnaus, then: is the third "Phantom", or just the MoC re-release of "Der letzte Mann"?

Call it four Murnaus then. NOSFERATU, PHANTOM, TABU, DER LETZTE MANN.

Great! Hopefully in this order

Aren't "Letze Mann" and "Phantom" already available in fine editions? (In Region 2 and Region 1 respectively)?

I must confess, although both are on my shelf, I still haven't watched either. But the reviews seemed to indicate that both had excellent transfers and considerable extras (The R1 Phantom is, unfortunately, in English, so there's one small improvement MoC can make, but not enough for anyone to upgrade.)

Nosferatu, however, is magnificient news. I bought a servicable copy years ago, shortly after I started collecting DVDs (apparently an Australian port of the Kino, with Vampyr as a double-feature,) but I've been anxiously waiting all this time for a 'definitive' edition.
Tabu is another one I'm looking forward to. Haven't seen that film at all but been hearing about it for years.

I guess that, if Ray doesn't do well, it's not too surprising that Renoir doesn't either, since they're so similar temperamentally. But really, what kind of a world do we live in where DVDs of Renoir and Ray do so poorly!

Indeed, I never really understood why there would be the need for releasing a new "Der letzte Mann" apart from the fact that it of course would fit much better under the MoC banner than under Eureka's. But the transfer is a joy to behold.


I may be somewhat picky about this point, but the fact that the R1 has English titles held me back for over a year now from buying it (although basically Peerpee is responsible, because he hinted at MoC doing it way back then). Whether you want to upgrade is really dependent on how well you can read German, but having a silent film (regardless of what language) with original intertitles is always a great improvement for me, personally.


Not my favourite Murnau, but also a wonderful film, especially now that it is fully restored and has some previously censored scenes back in. This is another one I kept myself from buying, although this new version is already available in Spain. That only goes to show how much I trust MoC to deliver a superior package. If it only didn't take so long until these things see the light of day..... but no complaints: Nick certainly deserves his holidays now.

I am surprised that the Renoir has not done well, I would have thought there were more Renoir fans, that is a real shame.

I suspect that the real problem is that the film has almost no critical profile in English language markets. Unfortunately, I think that the bulk of the dvd market--even for arthouse fare--is reactive: they buy things that they've already seen or have heard are good, but rarely take chances on unknowns, even from major directors. I think the middlebrow consensus on Renoir is that he made a few (2-3) masterpieces and a bunch of films which can be safely ignored (I would be surprised if Rules of the Game and Grand Illusion don't outsell all the other Renoirs on dvd by at least a 2:1 margin). Which is why releases like this one are are so crucial and I hope MoC can continue to put out films like Toni and Abhijan and not just already canonized classics.

yeah, what fred said. It's a shame that Abhijan's sales are possibly preventing Eureka from releasing more Ray because it's really just a matter of it being a movie that no one has heard of, relatively speaking. Question: I know AE has released the Apu trilogy, are JALSAGHAR and CHARULATA up for grabs in the UK market? Those would do pretty well I would hope.

It's sad but not a mystery about Toni. Think of this - there's never been, to my knowledge any DVD or VHS of it in France. And of course it has no big name stars like Gabin or Simon to give it a built-in Francophile audience. So it falls into that little pool of work that seemingly remains the domain of the Renoir specialist/completist. This is probably the fate that would also befall the miraculous La Nuit du Carrefour. IF anyone ever found a decent print and the rights to release it.

I do take great pleasure in the fact Toni was released at all, and the fact that it's OUT THERE in the marketplace for people to newly discover. Of course this is at the expense of MoC's budget strategy. Apropos of this, I hope the sensational (literally) cover for Idi Amin sells hotcakes worth of this disc. (I was going to say, but won't, "if this is racist I'm a monkey's uncle" - of course the amazon poster is a twit.)

I suspect that you are right about the middlebrow consensus, I have heard in many places that Renoir made a couple of masterpieces, namely La Regle du Jeu and La Grande Illusion. I have also heard people say that Renoir made only masterpieces up to The River. But I am fairly sure (and I have read from reliable authors) that basically, Renoir only made masterpieces. I think this was my reasoning as to why the Renoir hasn't done well. If not well, then at least not badly. I would have thought that the Renoir would be an easy blind buy for many World Cinema consumers. However, in light of your comments I now think that you are probably very close when you say that the Rules of the Game and Grand Illusion don't outsell all the other Renoirs on dvd by at least a 2:1 margin. It does make sense in a horrible way, it is just an incredible shame it makes sense.

TONI is one of Renoir's lead-pipe-cinch masterpieces, imho.

It's a shame the disc hasn't moved better, but I am deeply grateful to MoC for putting it out in the first place!

It is very sad that these titles don't sell better. What respectable cinephile doesn't want more Ray and Renoir titles? I'll admit that I haven't bought them and that I don't have any intention of buying them in the near future and this is because of the online rental situation. I'm wondering how many of these types of titles; ones that have had no exposure in the UK before, are selling poorly because of poor people like me (or cautious ones more likely) who decide to rent instead.

I hope the rental companies have to pay an obscene amount of money to be able to rent out these discs. God knows they can probably afford it. Whereas being a student, I can't. Where are the patrons and philanthropists of yore, who gave abhorrent sums of money to the arts? I suppose they're all chasing "worthy" causes now (damn you Bono et al!). There was a news item on today about a guy who has decided to sell his £5 million stamp collection and give the proceeds to Medecins Sans Frontieres. Ah well, he's probably right. Could have given 50k to MoC, maybe.....

I'm surprised that Toni hasn't sold better. I even saw it for sale at two different record & video stores in San Francisco--the only R2 DVD I can say that for (that I didn't see in Japantown, anyways).

That's a real shame, Tartuffe and Asphalt are two of my favourite MoC films. Heres hoping that the new Murnau and Lang discs do well enough to convince Nick to release more silents...

Much seconded, of course. The great thing about "Michael" and "Asphalt", just as with Fanck's "The Holy Mountain" (how did that one do?), is of course that these are still the only versions worldwide that have the original titles and are not PAL/NTSC-converted. There's no German edition of these, nor are they in the Spanish divisared series. And STILL they did not sell well...hmm... The Murnau and Lang discs, on the other hand, will all be released - except "Phantom", perhaps - at least by Transit. "Frau im Mond" is already out, although in a rip-off 6-disc box with "Mabuse" and "Spione", and can't be bought on its own. It will be very important for MoC to get their "Nosferatu" and "Nibelungen" out before the Transit releases. Otherwise they will lose most of their German-speaking buyers on these ones, which would be a shame. I'm not even sure whether I would double-dip on an MoC "Vampyr" now that the Mk2 is out.

But it seems that still these 'doublettes' will sell better than their 'exclusive' silent product, and it makes me wonder what decisions potential buyers make to choose a particular film? Is it that the director is relatively more famous than that of another film? If that was true, the Renoir would have sold much better. Is it a received 'mythical' status some films, like "Nosferatu", have?