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There is a more than adequate, and surprisingly cheap, German DVD of the full version of Until The End of the World.

Perkins Cobb wrote:There is a more than adequate, and surprisingly cheap, German DVD of the full version of Until The End of the World.

this?

That's the one ... the picture quality is pretty good; each of the three parts has its own disc. It's 25 pounds on Amazon UK right now, but it has dropped to 10 before.

I sent this email a while back and kind of forgot about it- but it was worth the wait!

------------

Hey Jon,

Is there any chance you guys will be releasing any more of Hitchcock's public domain catalogue, specifically the original The Man Who Knew Too Much? I have been knocked flat by your Blu-rays of both The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes.

---

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for your email. I'm glad you've enjoyed our recent Hitchcock
Blu-ray releases!

We license all of our films - even the ones that might be considered
public domain - directly from the original production companies or
their successors and representatives. By paying royalties to the
owners of the films, we can obtain access to the original and best
materials available and use those materials for our releases.

We'd love to have more Hitchcock films and I'm happy to say that we'll
be releasing THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH next year and it looks great.

Please let me know if you have any further questions, and thank you
for supporting Criterion.

Best,

Jon Mulvaney

Wow, nice, that one needs it. Wonder if that will be a standalone or some kind of Early Hitch box or Eclipse set.

I wondered that too. Could be a pretty impressive box of early works. It'd be so nice to have it after putting up with "definitive" cheap-o releases for so long. They certainly deserve some serious attention.

Is there a distributor for the BFI restorations of the silent stuff in the US yet?

Typically, I read this news less than two minutes after I received a shipping confirmation for the french release of MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH from Amazon France!

Wonderful news about 'Man Who Knew Too Much'; that made my day actually! Curiously, that's been one of the harder Hitchcocks to track down in a decent print. I hope Criterion considers taking a look at the woefully underrated 'Secret Agent' as well.

RobertAltman wrote:Typically, I read this news less than two minutes after I received a shipping confirmation for the french release of MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH from Amazon France!

That's why god created delivery refusal.

I think The Man Who Knew Too Much is a Paramount title, so it will be a standalone release.

Even though Criterion hasn't released it yet, I believe Secret Agent has been a Janus title since the laserdisc days.

ianungstad wrote:I think The Man Who Knew Too Much is a Paramount title

The '34? Did they buy the American rights when they did the remake? I would have assumed it was coming from Carlton/Rank like Criterion's other two Britcocks.

Edit: nevermind, public domain and such.

Jeff wrote:

ianungstad wrote:I think The Man Who Knew Too Much is a Paramount title

The '34? Did they buy the American rights when they did the remake? I would have assumed it was coming from Carlton/Rank like Criterion's other two Britcocks.

I guess?

I see The Man Who Knew Too Much, but I don't see a date on there, or anything to indicate the '34 version

It just takes a bit of common sense to figure out. The 1956 version is a Universal title. (though it's actually owned by the Hitchcock estate). Paramount distributed the '56 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, Rear Window, The Trouble with Harry, Vertigo, etc. but you'll notice none of those titles are on the Paramount website. They all went to Universal. The reason The Man Who Knew Too Much is still on the Paramount site, is as Jeff pointed out, it is likely they had to buy the rights to the original to get remake rights.

That's interesting! I'm more than a little surprised that Paramount's owned the movie all this time and has never done anything with it, as much as Hitchcock stuff seems to move units -- especially given how many times they've released To Catch a Thief in the DVD era. Then again, if the conditions of the copies I've seen are any indication, TMWKTM was in dire need of an extensive restoration, which might have been prohibitive I suppose.

I am puzzled - why would 'Jon Mulvaney' casually reveal in response to an email query that a specific title is being released next year, when Criterion always seem to go to so much effort to keep their forthcoming releases under wraps?

matrixschmatrix wrote:Wow, nice, that one needs it. Wonder if that will be a standalone or some kind of Early Hitch box or Eclipse set.

Criterion would most likely hear the most complaints since the blu-ray cardboard case fiasco if this happened.

I'm wondering what their plans are for Foreign Correspondent. Surely George Kap....err Jon Mulvaney would have mentioned it.

bugsy_pal wrote:I am puzzled - why would 'Jon Mulvaney' casually reveal in response to an email query that a specific title is being released next year, when Criterion always seem to go to so much effort to keep their forthcoming releases under wraps?

It used to happen a lot- I think they like having a little bit of commitment free information floating around, to keep people speculating and excited. Thus that picture of the things being worked on last year, the New Year's clues, this kind of thing, etc.

dustybooks wrote:That's interesting! I'm more than a little surprised that Paramount's owned the movie all this time and has never done anything with it, as much as Hitchcock stuff seems to move units -- especially given how many times they've released To Catch a Thief in the DVD era. Then again, if the conditions of the copies I've seen are any indication, TMWKTM was in dire need of an extensive restoration, which might have been prohibitive I suppose.

I have no idea how reliable any of this information is, but just because Paramount might have purchased the rights to the original film in order to secure the remake rights doesn't mean they ever had access to decent elements. If their commercial interest in the film was solely for the sake of the remake, they might never even have had distributions prints of the 1934 film, since distributing a film they were about to remake would be counter-productive.

I don't find this reliable. Why would Criterion go to mention about paying royalties and such in a email response?

That just sounds like a boilerplate response to questions about public domain materials. No reason to doubt the veracity of the entire email (but also no reason to invest heavily in it--Criterion's plans change all the time).

Cinephrenic wrote:I don't find this reliable. Why would Criterion go to mention about paying royalties and such in a email response?

The original email addressed being public domain, so Mulvaney's email was just addressing that it seems.

I was the one that got the email (so I guess I'm the only one who can believe entirely in its validity), but even I was baffled at first. I had to read it a few times. I've sent "Jon" lots of emails in the past and I usually get a pretty mechanical response- which this mostly is. But seeing that nugget at the end just threw me for a loop. I think it's an interesting way to put information into the public forum.