Theo Angelopoulos on DVD

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

I just finished watching The Dust of Time for the first time, and I was quite apalled by how weak, sometimes even cringeworthy boardering on self-parody, it was. It is easily his worst film after Reconstruction. It makes me kind of sad that this was to be his final film as I would have liked a great ending to his legacy.

Anyways, I'm sure it didn't help that the Artificial Eye transfer is beyond horrible. Very digital look, no grain and loads of edge enhancement. Really disappointing considering they could've made the ultimate collection. First The Hunters-gate, now this. Actually, I own the Greek "Audio Visual Entertainment" release of the film, however it doesn't have English subtitles, so count that as a mistake. BUT now I'll definitely backup the disc and add the subtitles from the AE release...

Below is a comparison (with screenshots from the DVDBeaver review) of the two DVDs, and of course you'll notice that the color scheme is very different (the AE has a drab greenish tinge that none of Angelopoulos' others film feature, so I believe the AVE to be more true to the cinematic presentation). Plus the AE is cropped badly. It it cannot be seen on the stills but in motion, grain is visible on the AVE. But the worst has got to be the edge enhancment which has a very digital and artificial look to it. In the screenshots below the AE looks sharper, but I believe that this to be artificially applied sharpening, as all of Angelopoulos' previous films, including The Weeping Meadow have had somewhat soft looks. I am very baffled as to why such a new movie can look so different, and AE's answer here should NOT be that they weren't able to find the film undamaged. To me their release looks like a bad digital SD transfer.

Can anybody who has seen this in the cinema confirm which of the color scheme is more correct? When I have the time I'll make a screen comparison in native resolution (the images below have been resized to 800px wide as the ones on Beaver), if anyone's interested.

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[Sanjuro]

A poster on the Angelopoulos thread on MUBI has commented on a 2004 Japanese DVD of The Hunters (Japanese subs only). According to him the DVD runs 172 mins. He checked it himself, didn´t just quote the DVD box. It´s maybe the DVD included in the box set here:
http://www.jpophelp.com/scripts/newsite ... showname=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So now we have a Japanese DVD, plus the Chinese bootleg with (I assume) Chinese subs. I suppose the Japanese DVD might be identical to the Chinese. But the clips on YouTube lack subs, so maybe there are two sources.

That's the one (altough quite a bit cheaper on Amazon I think).
The Hunters screened in 35mm last month (as part of a bunch of Angelopolous retrospectives which are playng here and there around Tokyo). That was also advertised as 172 min. Missed it, but did manage to catch Alexander the Great instead.

[sidetracked]

According to the Trigon website, the 168 minute version on "The Hunters" was the version shown
only at Cannes, the 144 minute version was re-cut by Angelopoulos later, and was his preferred
cut. No idea if this is true, but if so, then I'm less frustrated at my inability to find the longer cut.

Here's the not very good google translation from the site;

http://www.trigon-film.org/de/movies/Hunter" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"There are circulating around various lengths of this film. Those with 167 minutes duration affects the version that ran in 1977 in the Cannes competition. This release was followed by Theo Angelopoulos shortened to 144 minutes, so that the 144-minute version of the trigon-film DVD corresponds to the final assembly of the filmmaker. It is his own favorite version, the "director's cut" if you want Sun - Theo Angelopoulos has worked on all of his films on the respective premieres at major festivals further and made minor changes, mostly related to the visual melody in the rhythm Fine. In the case of THE HUNTER its cuts were at their highest, because it is not just the length of individual settings easily adapting, but a shorter passage summed up, because it seemed to him more clearly and better. He said that the removed scenes have contributed nothing additional, what had already been in the film or in the figures."

[Stefan Andersson]

Thanks very much for the update, sidetracked!

[James43]

According to the Trigon website, the 168 minute version on "The Hunters" was the version shown
only at Cannes, the 144 minute version was re-cut by Angelopoulos later, and was his preferred
cut. No idea if this is true, but if so, then I'm less frustrated at my inability to find the longer cut.

Here's the not very good google translation from the site;

http://www.trigon-film.org/de/movies/Hunter" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"There are circulating around various lengths of this film. Those with 167 minutes duration affects the version that ran in 1977 in the Cannes competition. This release was followed by Theo Angelopoulos shortened to 144 minutes, so that the 144-minute version of the trigon-film DVD corresponds to the final assembly of the filmmaker. It is his own favorite version, the "director's cut" if you want Sun - Theo Angelopoulos has worked on all of his films on the respective premieres at major festivals further and made minor changes, mostly related to the visual melody in the rhythm Fine. In the case of THE HUNTER its cuts were at their highest, because it is not just the length of individual settings easily adapting, but a shorter passage summed up, because it seemed to him more clearly and better. He said that the removed scenes have contributed nothing additional, what had already been in the film or in the figures."

This information comes from Walter Ruggle, a German-speaking expert on Angelopoulos who also knew him well and was responsible for the booklet and the interviews in the trigon set. He e-mailed me exactly that (in German) when I asked them about the length of The Hunter.

[knives]

A bit morbid, but has there been any word on that film Angelopoulos was working on before he was killed? If I remember rightly it was halfway through production.

[zedz]

Then I guess it's probably still halfway through production.

[knives]

I guess I deserved that. I meant was anybody involved with the film editing it to give some form to it for a public release?

[zedz]

I get the sense that a half-finished Angelopoulos film isn't really the same thing as a half-finished film by most other directors. He's pretty inimitable, so unless somebody is going to take an academic (e.g. Clouzot's Inferno) or stylistically radical (e.g. Munk's Passenger) approach, I wouldn't be surprised if there's not much that can be done with the shot footage. I honestly don't even know how closely he cleaved to a script or whether his collaborators even know what the final shape of the film was supposed to be.

[swo17]

This reminds me that rewatching Landscape in the Mist recently, I might have been even more choked up by all the motorcycles than by what happens to the kids in the film.

[knives]

That's incredibly unfortunate. I was watching Ulysses' Gaze and was saddened at the thought of being one step closer to not being able to experience new Angelopoulos and so was holding out hope that something, even a Kafka's The Castle type editing job, could surface. Obviously nothing could replace the intended article, but that he was planning it as his final film only makes it crueler.

[Ntina]

Actually his daughter who was working as an assistant director on his film was working on finishing it after her father's death. It had been announced on Greek media after his death but has gone quiet recently, I presume she is still working on it though

[J Adams]

To resurrect a rather ancient discussion.

The 35mm screening of "The Hunters" at the Museum of the Moving Image, using a print purportedly sourced from the Greek Film Centre, was roughly 150 minutes (although the film notes said 168 minutes). I suspect it is the same print that toured the US 25 years ago. It seems unlikely that a 168 minute 35mm print will surface.

It is unfortunate that these 35mm prints aren't circulated more frequently. Given TA's general use of long shots, these films don't work well on small screens.

[famous]

As some of you might know there have been some releases of Angelopoulos' movies in Blu-ray that unfortunately suffer from censorship. Apart from these releases are few and kinda hard to get, not impossible just not readily available.

Well today there was a screening of Beekeeper to debut a film festival that bears the director's name. Nothing special here as well, since many 35mm films are in circulation and there have been many screenings on previous dates of this festival. However this time was different, and as the director's lifelong partner informed as before the start of the film in some opening remarks, this was actually a digitally restored version of the film.

She also mentioned that this was the first theatrical release of the now restored version and that it was the third to be made so. In addition she said that it was restored on their own efforts and that it was expensive.

Now I don't think that those are the same versions that appear on the japanese blu-rays since there are four of them and she mentioned three. Even if she did not phrase it correctly when we add them all up we get five, since the Beekeeper is not available in those blurays, which most likely means that these restoration projects are separate.

Now I don't know which the other two are since this time we didn't get a chance to ask questions, but she mentioned that they have more 10 to go which sounds promising.

[Stefan Andersson]

The book "The Cinema of Theo Angelopoulos" by Angelos Koutsorakis offers interesting reading about TA´s unfinished last film "The Other Sea" (pp. 275-292). I know of no other detailed English-language source.


Update, July 2019:
A review of the book:
http://filmiconjournal.com/journal/article/2017/4/13

[Big Ben]

Surreal to see you folks mentioning me above as a poster on another forum before I joined here.

Anyway thank you for the information about the film Stefan. After Angelopoulos died any and all information appeared to have fallen into a black hole.

[Stefan Andersson]

Rich online collection of press clippings about TA´s films:
http://www.theoangelopoulos.gr/movies.p ... RhbGlhbg==

Click on a film title
On next screen, click on "Pubblicazioni" for a clickable list of photos of press clippings, in various languages.

I just chanced on this update to TA´s official site. The Italian-language version of the site seems to give the most detailed listing of specific press clippings (name of writer, article, magazine, year etc). The English-language version of the site, under "Publications", just turns up a clickable list of numbered archived items, but no bibliographical data.

Earlier this Summer, news items reported that TA´s personal archive had been destroyed in a forest fire:
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/ ... -0025.html

[Stefan Andersson]

Photos from the set of The Other Sea:
http://www.iliasbourgiotis.com/1/projec ... rnity.html

Interview with Elodie Lelu, friend of and assistant to Angelopoulos; director of Lettre à Theo:
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/9b7a6a_5 ... 26620b.pdf - contains info about the pre-production and production of The Other Sea

Some info on the storyline of the film:
https://cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/212418/

[Fsolano80]

Does anyone have any clues on whether this Japanese bluray of Landscape in the Mist is a bootleg or if it even has English subtitles?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/TOPIO-STIN-OMI ... Sw31pdHxVh

[htdm]

I don't know this seller personally but it appears to be the legitimate Japanese BD that was just released last week. (Amazon Japan listing here: https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B07QVZ9FXP)
That disc is not English friendly.

[Fsolano80]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Dammit. I was hoping i’d found myself a deal there.
Oh well.
Guess i’ll have to wait until Criterion gets their shit together.

[htdm]

Or learn Greek and/or Japanese

[Ovader]

Angelopoulos nor any other Greek filmmakers were mentioned during the HTF podcast (54:53 mark) but there is an affirmative to some Greek Cinema in the future.

[jaffe1234]

It's truly a travesty that such an acclaimed film like The Travelling Players has never been released on Blu-ray. And all that while Criterion keeps releasing Netflix films and films with pre-existing good releases, very frustrating. At least some other Angelopoulos films have had japanese (?) blu-rays so they are out there as pirated copies at least. Butt all his films should be widely released, The Travelling Players' lack of blu-ray is just more surprising given how highly it usually ranks on lists like Sight & Sound 250 etc.

[Michael Kerpan]

Did Traveling Players even get a decent US DVD release?