Fritz Lang on DVD/Blu-ray

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#1 Post by **matrixschmatrix** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 5:24 pm

The Spiders (1919) - Kino DVD
Harakiri (1919) - Kino DVD (in Fritz Lang: the Early Works box set)
Das Wandernde Bild/The Wandering Image (1920) - Kino DVD (in Fritz Lang: the Early Works box set)
Vier um die Frau/Four Around a Woman (1921) - Kino DVD (in Fritz Lang: the Early Works box set)
Der müde Tod/Destiny (1921) - Image DVD
Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922) - MoC Blu-ray
Die Nibelungen (1924) - MoC Blu-ray
Metropolis (1927) - MoC and Kino Blu-rays tie for PQ, but MoC has more extras
Spione (1928) - MoC Blu
Frau im Monde/Woman in the Moon (1929) - MoC Blu
M (1931) - Universum, Criterion and MoC Blu-rays tie
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) - MoC Blu-ray
Liliom (1934) - Extra on "Carousel" DVD
Fury (1936) - Warner DVD
You Only Live Once (1937) - Studio Canal DVD
You and Me (1938) - Koch Media DVD/TCM release (in Dark Crimes vol 2)
The Return of Frank James (1940) - Fox DVD
Western Union (1941) - Koch Media Blu
Man Hunt (1941) - French Sidonis Blu/ Twilight Time Blu
(Moontide) (1942) - Fox DVD
Hangmen Also Die (1943) - Cohen Blu
Ministry of Fear (1944) - Criterion Blu
The Woman in the Window (1945) - MGM DVD
Scarlet Street (1945) - Kino Blu-ray
Cloak and Dagger (1946) - Olive Blu
Secret Beyond the Door... (1948) - Olive Blu-ray/ Carlotta Blu
House by the River (1950) - Wild Side DVD
American Guerrilla in the Philippines (1950) - Fox Spain DVD/ Fox Archive DVD (the latter is MoD)
Rancho Notorious (1952) - Warner Archives DVD
Clash by Night (1952) - Warner DVD
The Blue Gardenia (1953) - Arthaus DVD
The Big Heat (1953) - Twilight Time Blu-ray
Human Desire (1954) - Sony DVD (only available in Film Noir box set)
Moonfleet (1955) - Warner France DVD
While the City Sleeps (1956) - Exposure DVD
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956) - Warner Archives DVD
The Indian Epic (1959) - MoC DVD
1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960) - MoC DVD (only in Mabuse box set)

Original post by BWilson

Simon · #2 Post by **Simon** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 5:44 pm

When you click on a person name on IMDB, you can see a list of DVDs for him:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000485/forsale#dvd

Checked very quickly and saw

The Blue Gardenia - Image
Hangmen Also Die - Kino
Cloak and Dagger - Lions Gate

tryavna · #3 Post by **tryavna** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 7:23 pm

Both of the following titles were released in R1 by Image, but are probably OOP at the moment -- though you can still find them pretty readily via Amazon and sometimes DVDEmpire:

The Spiders
Destiny

Both are silent, and both were restored by David Sheperd. Spiders probably looks about as good as it's every going to, but the framing of Destiny seems a bit off, which makes me wonder if Sheperd used a reissue print that had been cropped in the late 1920s or early 1930s to fit one of those early soundtracks.

Also, there are a couple of different releases of the now-PD Scarlet Street.

justeleblanc · #4 Post by **justeleblanc** » Tue Aug 16, 2005 7:46 pm

Warner just released Clash by Night.

BWilson · #5 Post by **BWilson** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 4:38 pm

Simon wrote:When you click on a person name on IMDB, you can see a list of DVDs for him:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000485/forsale#dvd

Checked very quickly and saw

The Blue Gardenia - Image
Hangmen Also Die - Kino
Cloak and Dagger - Lions Gate

Wow! I've been using IMDb for years and I never new that.

viciousliar · #6 Post by **viciousliar** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 6:17 pm

BWilson wrote:
Simon wrote:When you click on a person name on IMDB, you can see a list of DVDs for him:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000485/forsale#dvd

Checked very quickly and saw

The Blue Gardenia - Image
Hangmen Also Die - Kino
Cloak and Dagger - Lions Gate
Wow! I've been using IMDb for years and I never new that.

You should always take IMDb's info with a grain of salt, quite a few DVDs that have been released (especially outside the US) fail to show up. That notwithstanding, IMDb can be a very useful reference - just don't trust it blindly.

ben d banana · #7 Post by **ben d banana** » Thu Aug 18, 2005 2:10 am

New Rancho Notorious from the UK is apparently not so hot.

Ashirg · #8 Post by **Ashirg** » Thu Aug 18, 2005 2:18 am

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought decent print of Liliom doesn't exist.

Rufus T. Firefly · #9 Post by **Rufus T. Firefly** » Thu Aug 18, 2005 5:48 am

Ashirg wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought decent print of Liliom doesn't exist.

A print was shown in Sydney about 4-5 years ago courtesy of the Goethe Institute IIRC which was excellent in quality for the first 10 minutes. It wasn't subtitled, and was dismally dubbed live by a non-actor reading all the parts from a written translation. I left in disgust after 10 minutes, but my recollection is that the print quality was miles better than that Kino crap.

mingus · #10 Post by **mingus** » Thu Aug 18, 2005 6:38 am

Ashirg wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought decent print of Liliom doesn't exist.

In 2002 the Vienna International Film Festival (VIENNALE) showed a print of Liliom which was in excellent shape for a 1933 movie and indeed much better than the print Kino used for their DVD.

The film distribution is stated as:
Twentieth Century Fox
c/o Hollywood Classics
8 Cleveland Gardens
London W2 6HA, Great Britain
T 20 7262 46 46
Mandy@HollywoodClassics.com

35mm/1:1,37/Black And White
OmdU (german subtitles burnt in ?

)
120 Minutes

BWilson · #11 Post by **BWilson** » Thu Aug 18, 2005 12:03 pm

flixyflox wrote: You Only Live Once (Also in need of a re-issue)

So You Only Live Once is in bad shape. Is it as bad as Liliom?

viciousliar · #12 Post by **viciousliar** » Thu Aug 18, 2005 1:11 pm

Now, let's see - these titles have been issued exclusively in Spain:

Human Desire
Woman in the Window

Also, there is in existence Spanish editions of

You Only Live Once
&
Rancho Notorious

http://www.dvdgo.com

I can't comment on the quality of any of these, unfortunately.

BTW, thanks to Ashirg for providing a link to this dealer some time ago.
Does anyone know if they're reliable and if their shipping charges are on the reasonable side? (The shipping charges link is unavailable at the moment - )

OT - Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda's first screwball pairing, The Mad Miss Manton is also available. The same goes for Stanwyck's classic tearjerker The Other Love.

viciousliar · #13 Post by **viciousliar** » Fri Aug 19, 2005 7:58 pm

Please, Flixy, would you be so kind as to check when your DVD of Secret Beyond the Door was released in France? Apparently(according to amazon.fr) there are at least three reissues available from Wild Side (in all likelyhood sporting the same transfer), but I'd like to milk my Internet contacts as much as I can, so that I can be assured I get the best available transfer there is.

In an-ti-ci-pation,
Vicious

viciousliar · #14 Post by **viciousliar** » Sun Aug 21, 2005 4:53 am

flixyflox wrote:I can only find two - they're the same transfer, just different packaging and price. In case you didn't know there are "forced" French Subs which in fact are easily removeable if you have a ripping program on your computer (just rip the title, entering "English" for language and don't tick the subtitle option.) Same goes for the gorgeous Wildside Letter from an Unknown Woman and Caught.

Thank you so much for your responding, flixy, you know I appreciate it!

viciousliar · #15 Post by **viciousliar** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 11:15 am

Thanks yet again, Flixy. You're always courteous and willing to share. =D>

viciousliar · #16 Post by **viciousliar** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 6:45 am

flixyflox wrote:Vicious I was just looking at our avatars and realized we both need a trip to the hairdresser!

Seems like we most certainly do, Flixy!

tryavna · #17 Post by **tryavna** » Tue Feb 21, 2006 5:44 pm

The DVDTalk forums have finally proven useful again. Apparently, Fox is going to (re)release 2-disc editions of some of the Rogers & Hammerstein musicals, and Liliom is scheduled for inclusion as an extra on the Carousel release. Let's all hope that this will be the clean print that Mingus refers to above. (Hell, it couldn't possibly be worse than the Kino release!)

Here's the relevant link. (So far, it's only been officially announced for R2-land.)

Tim · #18 Post by **Tim** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 7:30 am

Has anybody seen the Spanish editions of these? I haven't been able to find a review anywhere.

viciousliar · #19 Post by **viciousliar** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 9:34 am

Tim wrote:Has anybody seen the Spanish editions of these? I haven't been able to find a review anywhere.

I can certainly vouch for the Spanish edition of Human Desire, even if it's non-anamorphic - it's by far the best incarnation of the film I've seen on home video thus far, Tim.

http://www.dvdgo.com/ is a reliable source, and they ship fast!

Tim · #20 Post by **Tim** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 4:23 am

I've just received Human Desire and Woman in the Window from dvdgo and had a fast look at their quality without sitting down to play them right through. As Vicious says, Human Desire is a sound transfer, though it is unrestored. I could see the film going past on my TV, which must mean a reasonable degree of surface damage. A bit of a pity, since I saw what I took to be a restored print at the NFT in London a couple of years ago and thought it was beautiful. On the other hand, Woman in the Window is very murky, though not as bad as the old editions of Scarlet Street.

justeleblanc · #21 Post by **justeleblanc** » Fri May 19, 2006 9:57 am

chris.h wrote:Just bought the German "Carousel" dvd purely for the bonus "Liliom" and was pleasantly surprised. I haven't seen the Kino edition (only Beaver's screencaps) but I can assure you this print is miles ahead. Sure, there's a bit of softness here and there but it looks and sounds mighty fine to me. This was my first viewing of the missing link between Lang's German and US films and I was so impressed. The opening credit sequence is sublime! Indeed, the whole film is full of wonderful moments. I tried watching the musical remake but gave up after 15 minutes of turgid cinemascope hokery.
Now, any news on what happened to "Secret Beyond the Door"? I could have sworn it was getting a May release in region 1.

Carousel is probably the weakest film adaptation of an R&H musical, though the songs are maybe R&H's best. Probably my favorite musical adaptation from a Lang film is Metropolis, simply for its camp value. The show is just wrong.

Scharphedin2 · #22 Post by **Scharphedin2** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 10:49 am

Elsewhere in the forum a new DVD release is listed of DR. MABUSE - THE GAMBLER with a run time of 270 minutes.

The Blackhawk/Image DVD edition, which at the time I thought was a really awesome presentation of the film, runs 229 minutes.

In Lotte Eisner's book on Fritz Lang, the film is consistently listed as being 190 minutes (having been written many years ago, I can understand that new material could have been discovered, but still, a full 80 minutes... I am surprised that no real mention is made of such extensive re-editing -- Eisner's only comment along such lines amount to a prologue having been removed after the initial run of the film).

Does anyone have any insight on the differences between these various "versions" of the film?

HerrSchreck · #23 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 10:53 am

They're all just "attempts". Attempts getting closer & closer, working upward to eventually create the original release version of the two films which together amounted to the full length released by Eureka in R2, and now by Kino in R1. I'd have to get home to my bookcase to check Lotte Eisner, but if she lists that as the length for the two combined films, then obviously we're talking about the severely truncated versions of the two combined which floated around thru the 50's-80's, or some bastard version for the US where the two films were edited together to make one for attention-deficited American audiences.

Scharphedin2 · #24 Post by **Scharphedin2** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 2:30 pm

I found an interesting exchange of letters between Lang and Erwin Leiser (a journalist and later director of the German Film Academy) dating from 1964, when a retrospective of Lang's work was being planned in Germany. The letters are reproduced in a book published by Deutsche Kinemathek to celebrate the life and work of Fritz Lang in images and documents.

My German is only fair, but clearly Leiser is asking Lang's advise on the presentation of DR. MABUSE. He presents Lang with several options -- to screen the two parts on two consecutive nights, or with a lapse of a week, or in edited form in one single evening. Between the lines, Leiser appears to be in favor of the latter option, as he is worried about the patience of an audience not accustomed to viewing silent films, let alone silent films of epic length like MABUSE.

Lang's reply is curiously resigned on the matter. He places the decision completely in Leiser's hands, commenting that he wants the film to be presented in the manner most conducive to a contemporary audience, which in Lang's words translates into a 3 1/2 hour edit of the film.

In light of this exhange, the original run time being 4 1/2 hours would sound right, if 3 1/2 hour represents an edit to allow the film to be shown in a single evening.

As far as I can discern, Lotte Eisner's book on Lang was originally published in 1976. In the filmography: "Original legnth: (MABUSE) 95 minutes, (INFERNO) 100 minutes." It is surprising to me that this respected film historian, who enjoyed a very close relationship to Lang for many years, should almost completely omit mention of the re-editing of the film.

In any event I look forward to seeing the 270 minute version.

justeleblanc · #25 Post by **justeleblanc** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 4:08 pm

I'm also interested in the music they use. I guess it will be original music, like Spies, which is sort of a shame since the Image discs used a lot of Schoenberg's piano music, which worked perfectly in the scenes, especially during one of the death scenes.