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The Cabinet of Dr. CaligariRating:
Release Date: 04 June, 2002 Retail Price: $7.98 OUR Price: $7.98 You SAVE: $0.00! Cast: Complete Cast (9 total) |
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Reviews
Great art: KINO or IMAGE DVD?
Everything has already been said about this amazing, brilliant 1920 expressionist film. What remains is to distinguish between the only two decent DVD versions available: the 2002 KINO "official restored version" or the 1997 IMAGE version. Neither is entirely faultless.
The newer KINO DVD was transferred from an excellent 35mm German archival print and correctly tinted/toned according to the original textual sources. The picture is very crisp if perhaps a bit bright; the colored expressionistic inter-titles scroll in imitation of the original hand-colored inter-titles of the earliest prints (a novel feature changed in prints made from 1923 onward to conform to ordinary stationary black and white titles); it also preserves the original six-act structure of the initial release that was later suppressed. The KINO edition has two musical scores, one an unsuitable modern orchestral score, the other a synthesized score by Donald Sosin more in keeping with the mood, but neither is stylish. There are generous bonuses: a 43-minute condensation of the same director's 1920 "Genuine: The Tale of A Vampire" (or perhaps that's all that survives), a huge number of publicity photos, and even footage of director Robert Wiene at work.
The 1997 IMAGE version was transferred from a 35mm Russian print of the 1923 German reissue, and correctly tinted. The picture isn't as immediately clean as KINO but somehow more honest and detailed; the inter-titles, while they are colored to reproduce the expressionist style of the originals, do *not* scroll like them: it is possible that no original prints with the scrolling were known to the restorers at the time of the transfer, and the division into six acts is not preserved. There is one musical score but is is far superior to either of KINO's: Timothy Brock composed a wonderful string ensemble accompaniment in exactly the post-Romantic German style of the period (not dissimilar from early Schoenberg, though by 1920, the music of the greatest German composers--Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern--would have been atonal). Bonuses include a sparse 3-minute excerpt from "Genuine..." compared to KINO's 43 minutes, a few publicity posters, and a fascinating and informative audio commentary by film scholar Mike Budd. Curiously, the package refers to two commentaries, but that may simply refer to the two subjects with which the commentator deals: the specifics of the film and the historical background.
Both versions are projected at the correct frame rate of 18 frames-per-second. A choice between the two is virtually impossible, as both have serious drawbacks: between minutes 2:00 and 5:08 in the KINO version, the blue tinting bleaches out the black level, making the result look like experimental video. The telecine colorist was apparently asleep at the switch; it's very unsettling. The IMAGE version has a translucent dark line near the top of the picture which IMAGE assures us is in the print; they felt it was better to leave it rather than crop the frame. I agree that cropping the frame would have been a bad idea but why select a print with such an annoying problem? IMAGE slightly shrinks and "windowboxes" the frame so that no edge information is lost to TV overscanning. KINO is not "windowboxed" and there is a tiny amount at three of the four edges lost to TV overscanning. Curiously, when played on a monitor that does not overscan like a computer, or when using the "shrink" feature on some DVD players, the full KINO frame appears to have more at the edges than the full IMAGE print.
If you are a connoiseur of great early cinema art, you will need both IMAGE and KINO editions: the IMAGE for the correctly transferred opening minutes, the great Timothy Brock score, and illuminating commentary; the KINO for a picture undisturbed by a translucent line, scrolling inter-titles, division into the original six acts, and more generous extras.
Edition selection tips
I'm not going to spend time raving about the movie, because I'm going to assume that if you've got this far you already know how wonderful it is. What I think could be far more useful (as this is an area where I have been burned) is some comparison between the two DVD editions I know of.
I have copies of both the Kino Video edition and the Image Entertainment edition. My preference is for Image Entertainment for the following reasons:
(1) The print seems slightly cleaner (and most helpfully, the DVD packaging warns you about the horizontal line across the top of some scenes which is a defect on the original film)
(2) The intertitles on Image use the correct expressionistic style as per the 1920 release. from what I recall, Kino's are the 'normalised' printed intertitles from 1923.
(3) The Kino version has possibly the most insensitive layer transition location I have ever come across. For reasons of their own Kino put an intertitle before the final sequence in the asylum, and it would have been a natural place for a layer transition. Instead they put it a few seconds into the final sequence (and only a couple of minutes before the end of the film!). Image has no layer transition.
(4) Both scores on the Kino version are dreadful. One consists of strange electronic noises, while the 'orchestral' one is pretty inappropriate. Instead Image chose a very nice specially composed score by Timothy Brock which is a remarkably effective pastiche in the style of Alban Berg (very appropriate for an expressionist film).
(5) Image has a commentary track; it's not clear that Kino does (I can't remember, but certainly it isn't mentioned in the blurb on the back).
Just about the only plus of Kino is that there is considerably more bonus material (43 minutes from 'Genuine: the tale of a vampire' as compared to about 3 on Image). However, if the price for that is the awful layer transition, then I know which I prefer.
So that's why I prefer the Image version and wish I hadn't bought the Kino version.
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