Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		5.0

Der müde Tod Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 18, 2020

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.

There’s some fascinating information, along with a plot summary, in my colleague Dr. Stephen Larson’s Destiny Blu-ray review of the North American release put out by Kino Lorber, a review which should also serve as a good resource for screenshot comparisons. I’d only add to Stephen’s thoughts that for some younger viewers in particular, the trials and tribulations of the film’s unnamed heroine (Lili Dagover) might be thought of as three separate attempts to get through the same level of a videogame, albeit with elements in the background changing each time, making the quest even more difficult. Der müde Tod features the famous sobriquet A German Folk Song in Six Verses, and Tim Lucas has some interesting thoughts to offer in that regard in his commentary, though (as someone who sings quite loudly in the shower), I'm not sure I totally buy his thesis that folk song is used instead of folk tale because of the presumed communal quality of something being sung as opposed to being read or told to. There is a weirdly almost trance like feeling to the imagery here, aided and abetted by a really expansive physical production. In that regard, anyone only familiar with Lang through his film from a bit later in his career, Metropolis, may find Der müde Tod as visually arresting in its own way. While this may strike some as sacrilege, I wondered what a soundtrack of Electronic Dance and/or Chill Music under the aforementioned trance like visuals of Der müde Tod might end up playing like, a la the Giorgio Moroder version of Metropolis.

Der müde Tod Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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 Cinémathèque 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 Národní Filmový archives, Prague and the Cinémathèque 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*.

*I was pleased to see David Shepard mentioned in Stephen's review. David was, like I am, an Oregonian, and perhaps for that reason he started reaching out to me regularly after my The Phantom of the Opera Blu-ray review was published. While David's version of Der müde Tod may not have been entirely optimal, we silent film lovers still owe a huge debt of gratitude to pioneers like David (who sadly passed in 2017) who so carefully sought to curate silent classics.

Der müde Tod Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.

Der müde Tod Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Death Goes to Work (1080p; 15:27) is a video essay by David Cairns, which gets into the rather vast set of connections Cairns sees between Der müde Tod and other properties. Cairns also gets into some of the almost soap operatic history of the various creatives, including the famously odd relationship between Lang, Thea von Harbou and Rudolf Klein-Rogge.


• Commentary by Tim Lucas

While they weren't with the check disc sent for review purposes, Eureka's press release states the release also features a 44 page booklet with a new essay by Philip Kemp and a 1921 review of the film.

Der müde Tod Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.