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Georges Méliès built the world's first movie studio in 1896 and from it cascaded many fantastic films, as featured on Flicker Alley’s monumental thirteen-hour, five-DVD box, Georges Méliès, First Wizard of the Cinema. Since it was published, an additional 26 films produced by Méliès between 1896 and 1911 have been found and made available for this single-disc, supplemental collection. They further support that Méliès was the most accomplished filmmaker in the world during the first years of cinema.

The films collected here are presented as in the earlier set, in chronological order with excellent new music. Although the print quality is variable, most look very nice; five boast beautiful, original hand-coloring, while another five have original English narrations written by Méliès. Two are fragments, as the complete films are lost. As a bonus, this collection also includes two films in the Méliès style by Segundo de Chomon, which for many years were misidentified as Georges Méliès’ own work.

MichaelB wrote:Flicker Alley sourced many of its masters from Lobster, so it may not be quite as straightforward as a direct port.

flicker alley's twitter feed wrote:Flicker Alley's Second 2010 Release: A fin de siècle comedy of manners

Anyway, I agree that "The Italian Straw Hat" truly sparkles. I've been spending a lot of time with it lately and the more I watch it, the better it gets.

Usually we do not disclose our DVD plans this far in advance, but I cannot resist reporting that later this year Flicker Alley will be releasing our fully complete version of "The Italian Straw Hat". It is mastered in HD from the original 35mm negative of the English-language release, and looks great; with the scenes originally cut from this version restored with footage from an original European print.

Ours will be the first really good US video edition of this film, since the nice-looking VHS from Connoisseur had completely inauthentic titles and inappropriate music, the VHS from Interama/Kino, although almost complete and with very good picture quality, runs both way too fast (at 24 fps) and way too slow (stretch printed for the equivalent of 16 fps), plus the English subtitles are out of synch; and the DVD from Grapevine is beneath serious consideration.

We hope to have a really astonishing score, but negotiations are not yet final with an Italian music publisher; and some yummy extras.

David Shepard
Film Presrvation Associates

Barrie Maxwell wrote:In fact, it looks as though the company will have more releases than in 2009. Melies Encore has already been announced and Rene Clair's Italian Straw Hat is definitely in the plans. There's also a box set coming and two or three other individual titles as well. One of those will be a silent that has not been previously released on home video and that the company is planning on mastering for Blu-ray in order to gauge the interest and viability of doing more in the future.