Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Kameradschaft Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov February 22, 2018

G.W. Pabst's "Kameradschaft" a.k.a. "Comradeship" (1931) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Eureka Entertainment. The only bonus feature on the disc is a new video interview Jan-Christopher Horak from UCLA Film & Television Archive. The release also arrives with an illustrated booklet featuring a new essay by Philip Kemp, alongside rare archival imagery. In German, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-B "locked".

The shaft

I can’t even begin to imagine what it feels like if you know that you are trapped in a ‘pocket’ thousands of meters underground. As you are slowly running out of oxygen, you probably begin to wonder if this is how your life was meant to end. You try to stay calm and believe that someone will figure out your location and then pull you out, but deep inside you also fear that the inevitable rescue mission can easily fail. You wonder how much time you have left -- a few hours, minutes, or just a few more seconds. Your entire life probably flashes before your eyes and you begin to wonder if you could have made wiser choices to extend it. You probably begin to pray that God gives you one more chance, and then promise to Him that if you get out alive you will do better.

I am speculating, of course, because I don’t understand the courage that it takes to be a miner. I’ve never had it. All I know is that it is a special kind of courage and you need a lot of it to go deep underground and then do it again and again without thinking that something awful might happen and you could die alone in total darkness. As a miner you have to be really tough, physically and mentally, and know how to look death straight in the eyes and reject it with a smile.

G.W. Pabst’s film Kameradschaft, which was inspired by a true event, the Courrieres mining disaster, is about a group of French and German miners with that kind of special courage. The event occurred on March 10, 1906, in a big coal mine whose ground floor collapsed after a powerful gas explosion. The fire instantly killed hundreds of French miners and left many more trapped in scattered ‘pockets’ with a limited amount of oxygen. Rescue teams were immediately dispatched to locate and save the survivors, but in the days that followed well over 1,200 miners lost their lives. (The Courrieres disaster remains the deadliest mining disaster to occur in Europe).

In the film some major details of the disaster are intentionally altered so that Pabst can end it with a political message, but the intensity of the chaos that reportedly followed the explosion feels incredibly authentic. The most dramatic footage emerges after a large team of German miners volunteer to help and different units then enter the mine to look for survivors. The bulk of the rescue operation actually looks like it was extracted from a vintage TV program that uses plenty of archival footage that was captured by someone that was present at the mine. It is absolutely breathtaking.

Kameradshaft was apparently screened in two different versions, German and French, which incorporated different footage. Because the original negative for the German version no longer exists, the recent 2K restoration of the film that was completed by Deutsche Kinemathek uses some bits of footage from the French version, which means that the current presentation is a new reconstruction. (Towards the end, however, there are still a few seconds where a newspaper announcement was apparently used to describe the tragedy for which even in the new reconstruction there is only a text description). The original French title for the film was La tragedie de la mine.

Kameradschaft Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.19:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, G.W. Pabst's Kameradschaft arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Eureka Entertainment.

The release is sourced from the same 2K reconstruction that Deutsche Kinemathek completed in Germany and Criterion accessed when they prepared the recent U.S. release of the film. However, as it is the case with the technical presentation of Westfront 1918, here the black levels are also significantly elevated and as a result plenty of detail and a good range of nuances are lost. In fact, because there are far more obvious fluctuations and native limitations the discrepancy between the Region-B and Region-A releases is even bigger. For example during the second half after the action moves to the collapsed mine it becomes quite difficult to see details in the darkness; on the Region-A release the overall image balance is far superior (to get an idea what type of difference to expect, compare screencapture #16 with the corresponding screencapture from our review of the Region-A release). This being said, I still like a lot the basic characteristics of the reconstruction and believe that it will remain the definitive presentation of the film. Given its difficult history, I believe that the reconstruction offers the best overall end result that one could expect. (Note: This is a Region-B "locked" release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-B or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

Kameradschaft Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: German LPCM 1.0 (with small portions of French). Optional English subtitles are provided for the main feature.

The quality of the lossless audio track is identical to that of the lossless track from the U.S. release. So, dynamic intensity is limited, but clarity, balance, and especially overall stability are very, very good. There are no audio dropouts or digital distortions to report in our review.

Kameradschaft Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Introduction - in this video interview, Jan-Christopher Horak, director of UCLA Film & Television Archive, discusses G.W. Pabst's career and the important role that Kameradschaft occupies in his body of work. The interview was conducted in 2016 for Fiction Factory. In English, not subtitled. (15 min, 1080p).

• Booklet - an illustrated booklet featuring a new essay by Philip Kemp, alongside rare archival imagery.

Kameradschaft Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I thought that the 2K reconstruction of Kameradschaft is very good, but Criterion's technical presentation of it is very clearly superior. If you are interested in the film and would like to have a copy of it for your library, consider picking up the U.S. release. It also comes with a better selection of supplemental features.