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HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME from Image (1 Viewer)

Jack Theakston

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No. I believe Image just withheld it from the list accidentally. It will still be on there.

The footage count is still the same as all the rest, because it's made from the same material. But there are the original opening titles which haven't been made common, as well as the film's correct tinting scheme. The image quality and soundtrack will be far better than anything seen before.
 

Jack Theakston

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FYI, I just spoke with Image and the short is still included.

For those interested, it's 1915's ALAS AND ALACK, a fantasy film by Joseph De Grasse and Ida May Park (the couple at Universal that encouraged Chaney to continue his career in bigger ways). In it, Chaney plays a dual role of a fisherman, and during a fantasy sequence--- A hunchback!

This short has never been released on home video and will feature a brand new score.
 

Jeffrey Nelson

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I just picked this up, and boy am I disappointed. Not because of the scratchy print -- the print is indeed better than anything else we've seen. BUT...the transfer is effed up. It's all strobey-jerky, and this is not related to the running speed. It is reminiscent of a rotten PAL-to-NTSC transfer (I'm not saying that's what it is, just that it reminds me of it). Look at the shots of the bells ringing...you can really tell then. Not quite as bad as Milestone's release of the Photoplay PHANTOM (which is worth it for the original 1925 version), but bad enough. What a waste. The best available film print, fabulous extras, nice jacket art...and a thoroughly botched transfer. Just wonderful. We'll never see a definitive version of this film, methinks.
 

baracine

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I was disappointed by the commentary which could have been a little more informative about the changes made to Hugo's original story and a little less about what the stagehands had for lunch. (The only truly "faithful" version is the French film of 1954). The speed was 18 fps and "natural". The print and detail were the best they could be. The print was tinted and really looks like 35 mm despite its scratchy condition. (Couldn't they do a wet transfer?) The image was windowboxed, which is a very big plus in my book, when you consider that this film has been cropped enough in past incarnations. The unstable luminosity already alluded to is part of the "charm" of this rare surviving print and couldn't have been corrected without an expensive digital reatoration. The music went from acceptable to rousing. The image was semi-stabilized for a film that age. The transfer was interlaced but I saw no ghosting, which makes it far superior to the latest "Phantom". The 3D pictures were cute. The film itself was a major disappointment for me for its staginess, already old-fashioned for 1922, melodramatic effects and its multiple instances of bowdlerizing and obvious religious censorship, the "happy ending" being particularly objectionable, but maybe not as bad, in its way, as the 1940 version (I won't even mention Disney).
 

Jeffrey Nelson

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I'm totally fine with the print quality, the 18fps speed, the scratches, and the unstable luminosity. But something wrong happened somewhere. The strobing has nothing to do with the age of the film. There was a mistake made in the authoring perhaps. The US version of SUDS in the Milestone DVD looks to have a similar mastering/authoring defect. All I know is, the film should not be like that. Hundreds of other video transfers of films of that vintage do not have that problem. Somebody effed up this transfer, though doubtless this will never be acknowledged by anyone having anything to do with this release. I think I'll seek out the old DVD.
 

Jim Peavy

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"Strobey-jerky"? Can you post some frame grabs?

"Interesting" that DVD Beaver didn't mention anything about this...
 

IanD

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Could this strobing be merely how one's player interprets non-progressive video?
 

MielR

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The progressive vs interlaced subject never ceases to confuse me. :P
I can't seem to find a straight answer as to whether or not DVDs are inherently progressive (with or without progressive "flags"), and if not, why would any company still be producing interlaced DVDs?
 

Tim Tucker

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If the source was originally shot on videotape, then it is an interlaced source and should be transfered that way to DVD. Interlacing is what gives video its "video look."

Also I understand that for silent films that run at speeds different than 24 fps, an interlaced transfer is better for showing it at its correct speed.
 

Mike Frezon

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I watched the film a couple of nights ago.

Frankly, I was disappointed the film wasn't in better shape. But please bear in mind as I make these remarks that I am no film expert. I understand this is an 84 year old film, but I guess I have been spoiled by some of the wonderful restorations of recent years of older films.

The film itself was an interesting lesson in techniques of the day. The sets were amazing (it's easy to see why they endured for so long on the back lots). It was also apparent how the Disney animators must have paid special attention to this version of the film for much of their inspiration in their version.

There were some edits which bugged me. One, in particular, was an edit of a shot which lasted maybe 1.5 seconds and basically looked as if it was the result of a bad splice made on-the-fly by a projectionist. I'm sure it was not an edit which existed in the original print and could easily have been removed for this edition.

Can someone enlighten me about the music? I understand this score was written specifically for this release. Why? Wasn't there an original score which could have been used/re-recorded? Thanks.
 

Jack Theakston

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The score was compiled of period pieces by Donald Hunsberger, who has been the head conductor at the Eastman School of Music for decades. Each cue is authentic to what you could have heard at any given theater in 1923, as they were all written before 1923. The arrangement was by Robert Israel.

Like almost all silent films, HUNCHBACK had no "original score," per se. At its opening engagement, a score was compiled for it with some original themes-- documentation of exactly what does not exist. However, even if it did, the score would be substantially different as the film was much longer in its opening roadshow engagement.

There are two cue sheets extant for the film. Cue sheets, which were the more common "score" to the film, were listings of all of the mood changes in the films, and then a suggestion piece to use (which could be interchangeable with any other piece of the same mood). Some theaters reproduced this "score" verbatim. Others threw the cue sheet out the window and did it their own way. If you went to 100 different theaters, you'd hear 100 different scores, I could assure you. The Hunsberger score is just as valid, if not moreso because it followed certain "rules" (sticking to pre-'23 songs, compilation score), as any score you would have heard in 1923.

It should also be noted that just because a piece was listed in a cue sheet doesn't mean that it was a good selection or a selection that could be easily had. I find, more often than not, that many cue sheets contain wildly inappropriate selections, and depending on who performed the compilation, are usually just advertisements for the music companies that published them (ie. it's typical to see a cue sheet from Belwin Inc. that uses ALL Belwin pieces). Some pieces are still under copyright, and to copy them exactly would mean to license the music at exorbitant feel incapable on the meek budget this release had. Likewise, some music is lost for the ages-- the mass printings in collections wer simply thrown out after sound came in. In many cases, they're rarer than the films themselves.

I think, however, we should all count our blessings that there's a new, custom tailored score as performed by a 50-piece European orchestra conducted by one of the most eminent film score conductors of our time, Dr. Robert Israel, and not a rehash of the same old Blackhawk score we've heard for decades.
 

Mike Frezon

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Damn, Jack. That is one excellent post/answer to my rather feeble criticism of the release.

When I get the chance I will see if I can get a time reference for the edit to which I'm referring.

That info about the music is really enlightening. I appreciated some of the rather obvious cues (organ music during cathedral interiors, etc)...some of the others "seemed" (to me) to be out of place...but from your description I guess that "goes with the territory." I definitely have a newfound appreciation of that part of the release. Thank you.

Let me post this question I had during viewing: if the blue tinting was removed from the evening scenes, would those scenes appear as if they took place during the day? Was that the filmmakers' device, back in the day, to shoot a night scene during the day, but then tint it to give the appearance of night. Or, were they shot during dusk/evening and still tinted to exaggerate the difference?
 

Jack Theakston

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Thanks for the kind comments, Mike. Of course, the beauty of ANY silent film is that you can always turn the sound off an put whatever other music you'd like on. There are lots of films where I didn't care for the score, so I simply made up several CDs worth of mood music that fill in quite well.

The thing about night scenes and tinting entirely depends on the film and the budget. Cheaper budgets couldn't allow the powerful on-set lighting that was necessary at night or the time for setting the lights up, so often you'll find that it's daytime with a night blue tint (which is pretty effective yet). In HUNCHBACK's case, there's a pretty extensive tint scheme that's there for effect, but if you turned off the color, you'd probably find the lighting just as satisfying, although there might be some discrepancies as the decrease or increase in contrast was compensated for in tinting during the printing stages, a luxury that you have with a camera negative, but not necessarily a projection print.
 

baracine

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Night scenes:

The commentary on the disc insists on the long nights spent filming the... night scenes in sometimes very cold weather (as well as telling us at length what the extras actually did to keep warm - groan!).

In other films, like the German Nosferatu, the night scenes were strictly day-for-night, which means that without blue tinting the vampire actually went around carrying his coffin in broad daylight.

Awkward edits:

I notice they happen everytime something gruesome happens, like the hunchback throwing something from the cathedral on the crowd below and the image cutting immediately to that thing (beam, masonry block, etc.) already landed on neatly arranged supine extras. I can only suppose that there never were shots showing the objects actually crushing the stuntmen; therefore what you see is what was intended, the quickness of the cut (if you'll pardon the expression) acting in itself to create shock value - especially at speeded-up 24 fps. Also, as Jack says, with a film that age, there are many missing frames.

The music:

Some prestige films - but very few - had their own full-length score, which involved the repetition of certain themes anyway at certain moments (e.g. Nosferatu, whose Hans Erdmann score was criticized for being "too highbrow" and therefore not used very often). Films like Ben-Hur (1925), and Phantom of the Opera had original, suggested cues for particularly tricky scenes(e.g.: the chariot race or Christine going through the mirror) that were invariably mixed in with more generic stuff, when they were used at all. When Valentino's The Sheik inspired the popular song The Sheik of Araby, theatre owners were of course encouraged to incorporate it somehow in their presentation and they probably felt obligated to do so in order to please their audience of "sheiks" and "shebas". But these were the exceptions. The surviving Vitaphone score to a film like Murnau's Sunrise shows us exactly how a typical score was assembled from stock cues and sentimental light classics. The surviving Vitaphone score to Evangeline shows us the same thing mixed in with one or two original songs for the main characters and French-Canadian folk songs for local flavour.
 

Mark Zimmer

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If you look at the program facsimile, at the back there's a reproduction of the music for the love theme. Whether that was incorporated into the new score, I don't know--I ran across it after I'd already watched the movie.
 

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