"New" restoration of Murnau's Nosferatu? (1 Viewer)

[Kevin M]

I plan on also getting the Image disc as it does have some good extras but if you look at the linked comparisons I feel the KINO disc has better PQ....if only DeepDiscountDVD would send me the damn thing I could verify this!

 

[Tim_P_76]

I love the Image release but its a tough call especially if you read the review at DVDBeaver. The Kino has better PQ, longer cut almost to original running time, supposedly better music tracks although one of them does have a female vocalist( which I just cant get use to), and no extras. One drawback to the Kino version is that the bottom and right of the sreen are usually cropped off in every shot.

 

[Kevin M]

Well it finally arrived (too late for Halloween

) and I have watched the entire disc...the transfer PQ is definitely crisper than the Image disc however there is a awful lot of print damage and unstable image in the KINO release...it says on the package that this print is "mastered from a color-tinted 35mm negative restored by the Cineteca del Comune die Bologna at the laboratories of L'Immagine Ritrovata. It is licensed by Transit Films on behalf of the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau-Stiftung, Wiesbaden, Germany." however considering the damage and unstable image was there any digital clean up done to this at all? It's true that the Image release is rather soft because of the digital work done to it but it has a much cleaner image and the frame doesn't jump around nearly as much as the KINO print.

Nonetheless the KINO print is sharp and much more detail is revealed...I just wish the had done at least a little clean up to it.



The music...yeah, well...I miss the organ score of the Image release, the two Kino scores are on either end of the spectrum, the Gerard Hourbette and Thierry Zabiotzeff score (performed by Art Floyd...whoever that is) is the better of the two but is overly heavyhanded all the way through...even so it is serviceable and is much better than the 5.1 electronic score on the Image disc, the other score is by Donald Sosis with vocals by Greta Schroder and is entirely too light for the film...how many synth pan flutes can a person take in a horror film...hell, how many pan flutes can a person take at all?

The extras are light on the disc but the scenes from other F. W. Murnau films - Journey Into the Night (1920), The Haunted Castle (1921), Phantom (1922), The Last Laugh (1924), Faust (1926) & Tabu (1931) - are really interesting & make me want to see them in their entirety, particularly Faust.



There are some hidden easter eggs on the disc as well, in the scene comparison of novel, screenplay and film section if you "arrow right" you will see trailers for both Dracula (1931) & Mark of the Vampire (1935).



All in all not a bad disc but not without it's problems, I'll be getting the Image release as well.

 

[Patrick McCart]

The Image/Film Preservation Associates DVD looks like it has a lot of DVNR since there's a lot of "still" grain.

Judging from DVD Beaver's comparisons, if the Murnau Foundation and Transit Film let Alpha-Omega digitally restore the film like they did with Metropolis (or even LDI), it could look almost new.

What I'd give to see a silent film in mediocre condition get a digital restoration from Lowry Digital...

 

[Jack Theakston]

The question being: would it pay off? NOSFERATU is across the board in public domain, and there's still much speculation as to if restorations can be considered copyrightable. NOSFERATU is a wonderful film, but being that it would be very easy to pirate, I would think that the film is lower on the list of considerations for a digital restoration; the photochemical jobs of the past are quite good enough, in my opinion, and if you've ever seen a good 35mm film, it puts pretty much all of the video editions to shame..

 

[Damin J Toell]

quote:The question being: would it pay off?

The way to make a disc of such a restoration marketable and secure (enough) from piracy would be to load it with extras. At the point, however, any company seeking to do such a release would be facing a rather saturated market in which many fans of the film have already purchased a version that has an appetizing selection of extras. Nosferatu is perhaps a unique PD silent film in this regard; I think this tactic would work quite well for the vast majority of such films for which no SEs yet exist. Still, with proper marketing, I think such a Nosferatu release could be viable, if its picture quality and extras made it the de facto DVD release of choice; a significant number of fans would double- (triple-, etc.) dip and all potential viewers wishing to check out the film down the road would be pointed towards that release. If the transfer were done in HD, it would also leave that company poised to beat all others to the punch by porting over their version to whatever HD home format takes hold later on.



DJ

 

[Kevin M]

I know this is said overkill here at HTF, but I think Criterion would be the perfect house to do this, they have contacts around the world to acquire quality extras - such as the 240 min 1995 documentary by Luciano Berriatúa on Murnau's life and work - plus they have several digital restoration houses that they use which do quite good work. If they could licence the 1995 restoration and get a local house to clean it up...boy that would be something wouldn't it? I know I would pay for it.

 

[MichaelSloan]

The version with the James Bernard score is on Turner Classic Movies sometimes.

 

[MichaelSloan]

Oh, and I might as well add I bug the F.W. Murnau foundation by email sometimes. I'm worried If i say straight out what they've got planned they'll stop doing, but let's just say next year is a good one for F.W. Murnau fans, though maybe more so in some regions then others.