Criterion Discussion and Random Speculation Volume 7

[dwk]

Just an observation... this year CC hasn't released a silent film. I believe a year hasn't gone by without at least one release. Perhaps we'll get one for Dec

Did we have one in 2025?

Return to Reason: Four Films by Man Ray

[Finch]

I'm wondering if they're saving Gold Rush for December. But I'd want So This Is Paris more, don't care if it's in a Eclipse box or a standalone.

[therewillbeblus]

Yes, it would be a lot cooler if they gave us a new silent film instead of merely upgrading one

[rrenault]

Come to think of it, Criterion have never released a silent-era Soviet montage film.

There are just the sound era Eisenstein films.

[captveg]

Just an observation... this year CC hasn't released a silent film. I believe a year hasn't gone by without at least one release. Perhaps we'll get one for Dec

Did we have one in 2025?

Return to Reason: Four Films by Man Ray

A Woman of Paris was also a 2025 release

[ianthemovie]

Just an observation... this year CC hasn't released a silent film. I believe a year hasn't gone by without at least one release. Perhaps we'll get one for Dec

2 of the greatest silents turn 100 next year and have just received new restorations for the occasion: Sunrise & Metropolis. It would be nice if Criterion picked up at least one of them.

chances are extremely, extremely slim. Criterion have really shown how disinterested they are with silents and when we have Kino and Flicker Alley delivering the goods stateside, it's fine that they aren't. I suspect Flicker Alley will do Sunrise and Kino will do Metropolis (like they did already), and both will be great editions, if not improved by potential Eureka editions of both.

To state the obvious we're also still waiting on Greed which has supposedly been in the pipeline for years, though I guess it's unclear at this point whether it's with Warner or Criterion.

Did Flicker Alley confirm that they are releasing The Crowd or did I only imagine that?

[denti alligator]

Passing up Sunrise is baffling. Especially considering the other silents they’ve released over the years.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Is there proof they passed on Sunrise? I agree that it would be exceptionally foolish to pass on that. Did Disney fund the new restoration or was it from another source considering it’s now public domain?

Where’s this info about So This is Paris being a potential release coming from? I’m not convinced that’s coming, but would love it if Flicker Alley had the chance to license silents from Warner Bros.

[domino harvey]

I suspect silent films do terrible numbers. If they didn’t, I’m sure they’d release more

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Is there proof they passed on Sunrise? I agree that it would be exceptionally foolish to pass on that. Did Disney fund the new restoration or was it from another source considering it’s now public domain?

AFAICT the new restoration (which is actually three restorations: the Movietone version, the Czechoslovak version, and the Dutch version) had no involvement from Disney. It was spearheaded by the San Francisco Film Preserve with funding from a Minnesota nonprofit aptly called the Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts. I imagine the film's public domain status is the reason this project happened in the first place.

[Lowry_Sam]

I imagine the film's public domain status is the reason this project happened in the first place.

Which raises the question of can anyone release a 100 year old film? I would imagine that that the work of a specific restoration could be copyrighted even though the film itself falls out of copyright & that that hinders the profitability of silent films on disc. However I think there's also enough people who want the best available/quality version of a movie to make it happen for higher profile titles.

I suspect silent films do terrible numbers. If they didn’t, I’m sure they’d release more

If there's one title that could generate sales it would have to be Metropolis (followed maybe by Greed, The Crowd & The Student Prince Of Old Heidelberg because of lack of availability).

So is it just a matter of who does the restoration gets the rights to release it (and hence Kino's relation to Murnau-Stiftung means they'll be the ones to release)...or can the restorers grant that right to anyone they want? (and maybe end up with multiple releases of Sunrise for the different restorations?)

[Matt]

Which raises the question of can anyone release a 100 year old film?

I sort of answered this question in a different thread:

Yes, and that's pretty much the case for all public domain films. You could release your own Blu-ray of Lubitsch's The Love Parade today, it's in the public domain. But where are you going to get the film elements to scan? Without the best elements available from the studio, you're at best going to be scanning a worn, decades-old 35mm release print.

This would go for new restorations as well. Those who paid for the restoration would defray their costs by licensing it out to partners for streaming or disc release. They might not own the film, but they own the restoration masters. Any new scores or intertitles would be copyrightable, but the underlying film would still be in the public domain. A straight silent restoration could be released by anyone: restoration work in itself is not copyrightable. Indeed, look on YouTube for "So This Is Paris 1080p" and you'll find the restored version without a score.

Organizations like Murnau-Stiftung could make exclusive deals with Kino to license several restorations or just one at a time, just like how any studio makes deals with a home video label.

[Michael Kerpan]

I wonder if anyone will EVER release a proper home video version of So, This Is Paris? (I do think that this ios one of those silents whose "implied score/soundtrack" might be better than whatever one might be added.

[therewillbeblus]

The Student Prince Of Old Heidelberg

This is my dream silent release, hopefully someone puts it out

[Matt]

A good example of this is Kino's series of Lubitsch films restored in collaboration with the George Eastman House. Three Women, to take just one title, is in the public domain, but GEH used archival preservation elements for a restoration, then added a new score, new intertitles, and a commentary. All that new stuff is copyrighted, so you couldn't just rip the disc and sell your own version. The film was originally released by Warner Bros., but they appear to have had no involvement with this release and couldn't have done anything to stop its release.

[Lowry_Sam]

So in theory we could have 3 separate releases of Napoleon in the US from 3 different labels at the same time: the Coppola, the Brownlow/Davis & the newest restoration?

[Matt]

I don't know the specifics of that film or its restorations, but nothing is stopping whoever owns the rights to the first two from releasing them on disc in the US (other than almost certainly losing money on them). I think the primary barrier to getting more silents on disc is low sales, not rights or restorations. Unless it's some sort of genre film like Nosferatu or Metropolis, the buying audience is very small.

[ethel]

Speaking of the new Cinemathèque Française restoration of Napoléon vu par Abel Gance (1927), the “Grande Version” (aka Apollo version) running 7 hours…

I couldn’t wait any longer to see it, being tortured by thoughts of possibly unsold copies of the superb BFI version and the now superseded Coppola short version with its utterly wretched score. My paranoid fantasies included its ongoing non-availability on physical media, owing to small demand, and to Netflix (major supporter), and to it being unlikely that enough people could grasp the fact that there are two versions - one long, and one very long, let alone that they’d commit to buying even one version, let alone two…

So when I found that the FNAC department store website is selling the blu ray (Region B locked) and dvd (Region 2 locked), I took the plunge.

It’s spectacular.

There are no English subtitles for anything (the end credits tantalisingly include presumably Netflix’ listing of subtitle writers for English,Chinese, etc).

And the music track is a let down after Carl Davis’ BFI masterpiece. (What wouldn’t be?) Plenty of musty misty orchestral obscurities, interspersed with well-known pieces of varying effectiveness. For classical fans, if I tell you that much of the triptych (now 24 minutes) is set to Elgar’s “Nimrod” from Enigma Variations, you’ll see how wrong headed the choice can be. To set the climax of the French national epic to the most English of elegies can only be distracting unless you’re completely unfamiliar with the music, but hey it’s the 21st century so whatever, dude. Likewise the use of Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony depicting the Nazi invasion of Russia - well, you get the idea, and no Gance wasn’t drawing a parallel, though someone else could be.

Special features (NOT including Brownlow’s Charm of Dynamite) run to 4h20m, on a third disc, all unsubtitled, but including a restoration demo including miles of battered footage which has been miraculously brought back from the brink. Other features include the 1926 Making Of, the 1984 Nelly Kaplan, the 2025 Restoration doc, a short thematic discussion, and an hour of interviews, one on Gance and one on Napoléon in the cinema.

You know you want it.

[olmo]

I’m not and will never be, so you’ll never be the last

I held off for quite a while, and herein lies the distinction with the other forum (the forum which bans posters who show solidarity with an invaded & systematically destroyed country) where there is the onus on PQ as opposed to the films themselves resulting in stultifying conversation. People referring to themselves a movie buffs (literally with their usernames on occasion) filling 4 or 5 pages of discussion with the topic of a slightly inferior encode or the colour teal.

Back to the 4k/UHD question and at the risk of contradicting myself on the above, the Damascene conversion were the Hitchcock UHD collections for me personally, whether or not I've given The Trouble With Harry it's due respect & time in the past is open to question but I was immediately immersed in the film with the opening shots of rural Vermont, all the reds & russet browns pulling me into the woods! It remains for me the most impressive example of the format - and I genuinely think that this brings the viewer deeper into a film and enhances the investment.

Haven't looked back since.

[Zot!]

I’m not and will never be, so you’ll never be the last

I held off for quite a while, and herein lies the distinction with the other forum (the forum which bans posters who show solidarity with a sovereign country's invasion & systematic destruction) where there is the onus on PQ as opposed to the films themselves resulting in stultifying conversation. People referring to themselves a movie buffs (literally with their usernames on occasion) filling 4 or 5 pages of discussion with the topic of a slightly inferior encode or the colour teal.

Wow...I missed the pixel peeping section of Project 2025. Man, there is literally nothing I can discuss at Thanksgiving anymore. I mean I know I have to avoid discussion of the color orange, but now teal is off the table as well. Um, um... how about them Bears?