The Undesirable Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

The Undesirable Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 19, 2016

What’s your favorite Mihály Kertész film? If some of you are struggling to come up with a quick and savvy sounding answer, it might help if we were to Americanize the name the way the man himself chose to after matriculating to the United States from Hungary, becoming Michael Curtiz in the process. Curtiz’s filmography is one of the more impressive of the 20th century, including such legendary films as Doctor X, Mystery of the Wax Museum (available as a supplement on the House of Wax 3D blu-ray), Captain Blood , The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk, Yankee Doodle Dandy and the film for which he will probably forever be best remembered, Casablanca. Curtiz’s output took a bit of a downturn as the forties gave way to the fifties, but there were still interesting if flawed entries like The Egyptian, White Christmas and Kid Creole to come in the director’s waning years. On the other end of the time spectrum, though, Curtiz had a long and distinguished career in his native Hungary before he even came to the United States, and one of his early silent films, one long thought to be lost to the mists of time, is now being presented on Blu-ray for the first time. The Undesirable isn’t especially innovative in any way, but it provides a fascinating early glimpse at a filmmaker still honing his craft at an early point in what would turn out to be an iconic film career.

As with many silent film plot formulations, The Undesirable offers a basically simple story that nonetheless offers a fair number of sidebars to keep things interesting along the way. The underlying tension of the film results from the desire of the audience to see a young woman named Betty (Lili Berky) reunited with her long lost mother Sarah (Mari Jászai). In the film's opening moments, Betty is privy to a confession on the part of her dying Uncle, a man Betty has long believed is her birth father. Her Uncle reveals that in fact Betty is the daughter of his brother, and that Sarah has been imprisoned for many years after having killed the brute, who was evidently extremely abusive. The Uncle expires after this stunning revelation, leaving Betty to figure out how to move forward with this new "identity crisis".

Betty leaves for the “big city” (the film touts its use of Carpathian villages in an early text card), where she quickly finds work as a maid in a wealthy household, a house that just happens to have a dashing young bachelor named Nick (Victor Varconi) in residence, leading to some expected romantic sparks. In the meantime, Sarah gets out of stir and sets out on her own quest to find her long estranged daughter, someone she remembers in a couple of “special effects” sequences as a young tot.

That’s basically “it” from a plot perspective, though the film creates a number of obstacles that keep this “four act” drama from reuniting the long separated mother and daughter until the final few minutes. That includes Betty being falsely accused of theft, as well as at least one completely tangential character (ostensibly added for some comedy relief) taking up copious screen time.

There’s simply no denying the old fashioned quality of this now 100 year old film, from both the basic plot mechanics and also the somewhat florid, hyperbolic acting style that’s on display. There’s an inescapably tragic mien that pervades the story, especially in the climax, when happy endings are colored by more misery. The film does at least offer a brief coda claiming that “every cloud has a silver lining”. Curtiz keeps things moving well enough, and the film is notable for its nice use of locations, including what looks like some fairly rigorous mountainside sequences.

The Undesirable Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Undesirable is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. Information on the provenance of this film is given on the back cover of the Blu-ray:

The Undesirable, a silent film treasure thought to be lost forever, was recently discovered in the basement of the Hungarian House Cultural Center in New York and returned to Hungary for restoration. An eight month restoration and digitization process was completed by the Hungarian Filmlab, with support from the Hungarian National Digital Archive and Film Institute and the Hungarian National Film Fund, and funded by the Hungarian National Film Foundation.

Whether the elements were in relatively good shape due to having been sequestered in a basement for a century (!) or the Hungarian wizards who restored the elements worked a significant amount of magic, the result is largely great looking, albeit with a niggling qualm or two. There is very little in the way of the typical damage we often see in older films, especially archival silents, with barely any scratches or nicks and only a few issues revolving around shrinkage and occasional emulsion damage. The image looks largely organic, though it does appear that some high frequency filtering has been employed, something that gives a slightly smooth look to the proceedings. That said, grain is still visible, if perhaps minimized, and it spikes naturally in some of the double exposure "special effects" when Sarah is having visions of her once young daughter. One of the more striking things about this presentation is the incredibly vivid use of tinting, and as tends to be the case in these situations, at times detail and fine detail (as well as the visibility of the grain field) are mitigated by the various coloring schemes.

The Undesirable Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Undesirable features a rather boisterous sounding lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which presents a newly commissioned score composed by Attila Pacsay. The orchestral score is as histrionic as some of the on screen acting, with some pretty bombastic cues supporting some of the roiling emotions. Fidelity is excellent and the score wafts through the surround channels very evocatively.

The Undesirable Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Unfortunately, there are no supplements on this Blu-ray disc. This release could have used some kind of explanatory documentary giving more background on the rather astounding discovery of the elements and the restoration process.

The Undesirable Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Undesirable is one of the more fascinating historical finds in the recent annals of film. The film itself is frankly no great shakes, and some younger viewers will probably find it fairly turgid going, but the chance to see such an early piece by such an iconic filmmaker is certainly to be applauded and should be appreciated by devoted cineastes everywhere. While there does appear to have been some filtering applied to this release, video quality is still quite strong (especially considering the age of the film), and the newly commissioned score sounds fantastic. Recommended.