Over at The Auteurs’, some reflections on one of the biggest DVD events of the year: Eureka!/Masters of Cinema’s epic boxset of all of Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse films. A spectacular achievement, just a top-notch presentation of timeless, ever-galvanic cinema. The ornate clock above is from the first film of the series, the nearly-five-hour Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, as mind-blowing an epic at the 1920s ever produced. More images, and more of my jabbering, in today’s Foreign Region DVD Report.
UPDATE: My friend Ed Hulse asks in comments whether the Eureka!/MOC disc of Spieler represents an improvement over the 2006 domestic Kino release. I say yes, and provide competing screen caps below the fold.
Here’s a screen cap from the 2006 Kino release:
and here’s its Eureka!/Masters of Cinema counterpart:
As George Harrison says at the end of “Piggies,” “One more time…”; Kino first…
and now Eureka!/Masters of Cinema…
…I’d call it a distinct improvement in sharpness and grey scale. And no interlaced combing, either. I’m not getting rid of anything, mind you, but I do find the new version a much more satisfying viewing experience.
If the first and third films could be released separately, that would be super. I don’t foresee that happening any time soon, though.
Glad to see that I’m not the only one who prefers Testament to the first film, Glenn. I finally caught up with all three Mabuse installments last year in the midst of trying to cover all of Lang’s work, and Testament may be for me his crowning achievement.
Also, while this won’t sound like much of a revelation, I was completely unprepared for how ahead of its time the film was, and though I knew many of the audio and transitional innovations in Citizen Kane were not done first by Welles, I wasn’t aware how truly sophisticated Lang was with in only his second sound film. Not to mention several scenes that could stand alongside any suspenseful ones orchestrated by Hitchcock.
TESTAMENT is a masterpiece.
I think most cinephiles prefer TESTAMENT to the earlier Mabuse opus, don’t they?
Glenn, is the transfer of the 1922 film significantly better than that used in Kino’s 2006 release?
Des Testament des Dr. Mabuse is also the film which so impressed Arthur Miller that years later when asked where he got the name for Willy Loman of DEATH OF A SALESMAN cited the Lang and the scene where one of the characters talks on the phone asking for Inspector Lohmann as a possible influence.
You don’t mention whether this release continues Kino’s obnoxious habit of scrapping the original intertitles and just showing phony English ones in some bad imitation of a 20s typeface, instead of having subtitles beneath the real intertitles. I’d be really interested in the answer.
Sorry about that, Asher. The intertitles in the silent “Mabuse” are in German, with boxed subtitles running below them.
Thanks. I really need to purchase a region-free DVD player. Did you ever do a Foreign DVD column on the Second Sight release of Lola Montes?