7.4 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 5.0 | |
Overall | 5.0 |
As a young couple stops and rests in a small village inn, the man is abducted by Death and is sequestered behind a huge doorless, windowless wall. The woman finds a mystic entrance and is met by Death, who tells her three separate stories set in exotic locales, all involving circumstances similar to hers. In each story, a woman, trying to save her lover from his ultimate tragic fate, fails. The young lady realizes the meaning of the tales and takes the only step she can to reunite herself with her lover...
Starring: Lil Dagover, Walter Janssen, Bernhard Goetzke, Hans Sternberg, Karl RückertForeign | 100% |
Surreal | 9% |
Mystery | 2% |
Fantasy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Music: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English
Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (1 BD, 1 DVD)
DVD copy
Region B (A, C untested)
Movie | 5.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 5.0 |
When video essayist David Cairns and commentator Tim Lucas offer a truly incredible list of films (and even television series) that were influenced by Fritz Lang’s Der müde Tod (also known as Destiny), it may be time to really sit up and pay attention to a film that, while legendary among a certain class of cineastes, may still be generally unknown to the public at large. Der müde Tod has a fascinating history, which both Cairns and Lucas delve into in their own ways, but it’s the film’s legacy which may resonate most strongly with modern day viewers. Ask many film lovers to name a movie that features a doleful, sad eyed Death clad in black and engaging in a “game” of sorts with a potential “victim”, and there’s little doubt that many, maybe even most, respondents would almost immediately come up with The Seventh Seal, the iconic Ingmar Bergman film that stormed the global cinematic gates in 1957. Well, guess what? Lang got there first with Der müde Tod , by over 35 years! But that’s just one salient example of the prescience Lang had, and as both Cairns and Lucas detail, there are numerous other examples of Lang’s visionary proclivities which other filmmakers obviously learned from, and in some cases, more or less stole from.
Note: Eureka Entertainment provided a check disc for the purposes of this review.
Der müde Tod is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Eureka Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. The presentation
begins with some text discussing the provenance of the elements and subsequent restoration work. I'll offer them as originally presented, below,
though with a forewarning that I find some statements confusing, as I'll discuss later:
For Destiny, three camera negatives were used in editing. These negatives and tinted copies from 1921 were lost. Black and white prints and dupes created since the 1930s were made from two export negatives. One duplicate negative from MoMA, New York was used for the 2016 digital restoration of the Murnau Foundation, Wiesbaden. Selected shots came from a black and white print at the Cinémathčque de Toulouse. For the intertitles reconstructions from the Munich Film Museum were used, based on flash titles from the Gosfilmofond, Moscow. Missing titles were reconstructed from the Nįrodnķ Filmovż archives, Prague and the Cinémathčque Royale, Brussels. Newly created titles are marked FWMS. The lost tinting was simulated using contemporary release prints of other Decla productions. The digital image restoration in 2K was done by L'Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna.Those who peruse Stephen's Destiny Blu-ray review of the Kino Lorber release will note that he repeats much the same verbiage, though with some subtle variations, in his accounting of a statement from Berlinale Classics about that release. My personal confusion may come from some inadequate translations above, since the Berlinale Classics "version" is a bit clearer about which elements were used. One way or the other, based on the more or less same "history" as above and a cursory screenshot comparison, this bears obvious similarities to the Kino Lorber release in many (probably most) aspects, but to my eyes the Eureka release just looks very slightly darker, something that's perhaps most evident in the most heavily tinted scenes, especially the blues. Otherwise, as Stephen notes in his review, there's still pretty copious damage on evidence here that has to be accepted on its own terms, with manifest vertical (and occasional horizontal) scratches, speckling and even some slight emulsion bubbling. As Stephen also notes in his review, clarity is much improved when compared to the old DVD from Image*.
Der müde Tod features an LPCM 2.0 track offering a new orchestra score by Cornelius Schwehr, performed by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of conductor Frank Strobel. This is a very colorful score, one which may harken back to the Orientalism of folks like Ketelby at times, but which offers nice blends of orchestral forces in a typically very warm and balanced sounding track.
For some kind of head scratching reason Der müde Tod hasn't really penetrated into mass public consciousness the way, say, Metropolis has, but this Eureka release may help to ameliorate that issue. Technically this is near identical to the Kino Lorber release, but the supplements are slightly different, meaning those in Region B with region free trailers might do well to contrast and compare to see which release they prefer. One way or the other, Eureka's release of Der müde Tod comes Highly recommended.
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