Kino: Mauritz Stiller films

[vogler]

They obviously ascertained the original tinting schematic via the existing tinted nitrate and the instructions on the dupe neg. The tints are therefore genuine tinted & toned nitrate. In fact Kino thankfully nowadays rarely use digitally generated tints on their silents anymore

Excellent, this sounds great. I seem to remember some less than perfect digital tints on the older releases and I'm glad things seem to have changed. It seems to me that sometimes with digital tints we never really get to see true blacks, they seem to turn the colour of the tint. With proper tinting, however, only the exposed parts of the film are tinted and blacks remain black. Would this be correct? I seem to remember the Kino dvd of Das Wachsfigurenkabinett having digital tints that were way overdone and all the black areas turned into thick digital looking areas of colour.
EDIT: I just had a look at the disc and it's only really the blue tints I'm thinking of.

With the recent and excellent Mauritz Stiller discs from Kino my only real disappointment was the lack of tints on Gösta Berlings saga. This was tinted originally was it not? I wonder why this version wasn't tinted like Erotikon and Sir Arne's Treasure.

Along those lines don't miss PHANTOM.

This is right at the top of my list of dvds to get. I have seen the film and I like it a lot - perhaps not quite up there with the greatest Murnau but not far off. The DVD sounds absolutely incredible.

One of the most beautifully unusual tinting schematics I've ever seen was-- speaking of Shepard/Image-- the original 1st generation tinted nitrate run thru telecine for the Image disc of Joe May's INDIAN TOMB. Have you seen this disc in particlar?-- I ask because the "official" archival materials on this title held in Germany look drab compared to the print held by a private collector in France who licensed his superior print of this fun-as-drugs film to Shepard for his disc. For a pretty early dvd (6 yrs old) he did a pretty nice job cramming those 212 interlaced minutes on a dual layer disc.

I have not seen Indian Tomb and know practically nothing about it so I'm going to look into that one. Actually I don't know how I managed to miss it.

[HerrSchreck]

Yeah that GOSTA BERLING disc is the only one of the three that didn't come from a brand new, recently funded restoration by the Swedish Film Inst. GOSTA is from the SFI restoration, if memory serves correctly, from back in the 1960's... so all we really have there is Kino getting out on dvd the basic print sitting in the SFI archives. My hunch is they heard of the restorations of EROTIKON & SIR ARNE (o man o man what a film that is), and, despite the lack of a recent restoration, asked to license GOSTA to make it a trilogy. The fact that it's the best known of the three (and not available on disc or "official" R1 vhs either), and the fact that it had Garbo I'm sure helped a lot too... tie Garbo in with Stiller via his discovery of her, and you have a theme running thru all three beyond the Stiller/Swedish angle, and a bit of marketing pizazz. To be totally honest I really don't know if GOSTA was tinted originally or not.

Yes youre sensing that those digital tints are laid over the digital image like a blanket, post telecine, therefore blocking out contrast in weaker sections of faded or generational prints. Whereas in a genuine tinted print it's part of the emulsion and almost appears "under" the b&w contrast-- especially nowadays as the technique they use now to create/expose new composite interpositives is they expose the blank film first to the the color tints required for each particular section (or rather expose needed lengths of each given color on corresponding lengths of blank stock to have on hand before they start printing the print), then, scene by scene as needed, expose the b&w image onto the colored stocks of required background tints.

I was always under the assumption that WAXWORKS were real tints.. that was another Bologna/Stiftung/Cinemateque cooperative resto, and two original release prints were used-- one badly faded nitrate element with english ttitles from the British Film Lib, and a nitrate from the cinemateque... and so much of the film looks passable in the reconstructed composite versus the strong contrast in the French print. But I think in the Ivan scenes, particularly the torture/poison chamber scenes where Ivan is underground, they had to revert to the british print which had faded quite a bit... as the French print was far worse with full blown decomposition.

Remeber the tinting is always brand new when they create these new restored prints, especially those with restored tints where they weren't copying from an actual tinted nitrate-- so the colors are very strong, fresh, and undegraded, and if you lay a film with blown out contrast via 80 years of storage over that, the tints are going to look overpowering at times. But I totally agree with you, I always, even during the strongly contrasted scenes, turn the color levels down on my screen when I watch not only WAXWORKS but most silent films with any kind of tints, electronic (i e HAXAN or DER MUDE TOD) or genuine.

The only discs where I tend to not touch the color are those rarities where all the archival stock has tints that seem to have survived en toto, like the Kino INTOLERANCE or BROKEN BLOSSOMS, or the Image INDIAN TOMB, some of the Kino pristine Fairbanks titles. I'd say SCHATTEN incidentally falls into this category. The strength of the tints varies slightly along with the contrast so I think it's the original tints we're seeing.

[vogler]

To be totally honest I really don't know if GOSTA was tinted originally or not.

All I have to go on is the fact that the excerpts featured in the Cinema Europe documentary series were tinted and looked rather nice. Sunrise silents have a tinted version of The Saga of Gosta Berling available here (Not that this means anything). I really enjoyed the Cinema Europe series but the downside was that for every film featured the narration is full of spoilers and basically gives away the whole plot including the ending. Not good if they are films you have not yet seen.

Yes youre sensing that those digital tints are laid over the digital image like a blanket, post telecine, therefore blocking out contrast in weaker sections of faded or generational prints. Whereas in a genuine tinted print it's part of the emulsion and almost appears "under" the b&w contrast

That's exactly it - it feels like the actual film is being obscured and I find that this can quite badly ruin the experience. I sometimes turn down the colour as well and this usually helps but there are a few instances where much of the film information appears to have been lost.

Incidentally, on the subject of Stiller, I wonder if there is any chance we will see any more of his films on DVD in the foreseeable future. It's fantastic that these three are finally available but it's such a small niche area that I'm afraid we might not see any more. I really would like to see Johan and Gunnar Hedes saga released because I think those, along with Sir Arne's Treasure, are his best films. I've already said this before but I'll keep saying it until it actually happens.

[Ornette]

Yeah that GOSTA BERLING disc is the only one of the three that didn't come from a brand new, recently funded restoration by the Swedish Film Inst. GOSTA is from the SFI restoration, if memory serves correctly, from back in the 1960's... so all we really have there is Kino getting out on dvd the basic print sitting in the SFI archives. My hunch is they heard of the restorations of EROTIKON & SIR ARNE (o man o man what a film that is), and, despite the lack of a recent restoration, asked to license GOSTA to make it a trilogy.

Actually there's a newly restored version of Gösta Berlings Saga. I don't have a specific year though, but I'd guess it was around the same time as the other two. I've also found out that this movie wasn't originally tinted.
Such a pity Kino couldn't get hold of the new restoration, for whatever reason that was.

[HerrSchreck]

Could you post a link to some info? The other two were just done within the past 2-3 yrs if memory serves, whereas the GOSTA I believe is from '75.

[Ornette]

Here's a list over silent movies that's been restored, unfortuatley this list is missing information about when these were done. The only movie I'd find out when the restoration took place was Herr Arnes Pengar, which was done in 2001. I've, however sent an e-mail to a person over at SFI regarding the other two.
I found the information about the new restoration of Gösta Berlings saga, at a Swedish film forum where they were talking about how unfortunate it was that SVT (a Swedish Public Service channel) didn't show the newly restored print -- which some of the people had recently seen in a cinema -- instead of the old TV version, last Monday.

I'll let you know when I receive an answer from the person at SFI.

[HerrSchreck]

Much obliged. It sounds like it may be only recently completed.. or at least recently enough to where a digital videotape hadn't been created, or been resto-rights-registered, etc, for TV, let alone distribution in the USA via Kino. Too bad too, as GOSTA sticks out like a sore thumb in the Kino trilogy via the sharpness, & black levels. I have to laugh each time I read Kino's wording (as if it were as fresh as the other two Stillers) on the GOSTA disc along the lines of from brand new restoration by the SFI!

[Ornette]

Today I received an answer from Jon Wengström at SFI about the restorations of Gösta Berlings saga and Erotikon. This is what he wrote (translated from Swedish):

Gösta Berlings saga (Stiller, 1924)

A restored black and white negative was created in 1975 from a positive black and white master copy, which had been sourced from an incomplete duplicate negative on nitrate film base.

The new negative was later completed with scenes that had been cut from the original negative when the movie become a part of Svensk Filmindustri's school distribution at the end of the 1920s.

The last time that a new copy was made from the restored negative was in 2005.

Erotikon (Stiller, 1920)

A restored black and white negative was created in 1969 from an incomplete release print in colour on nitrate film base.

Release prints in colour from the restored negative were first made in 1982.

The colouring was remade when a new copy in colour was created in 2001. A new copy with the same colouring was made in 2005.

So, with the exception of the newly remade colouring of Erotikon, the only one of the three Stiller's that's been treated with a new restoration is Herr Arnes pengar.

[HerrSchreck]

Didn't you say there was a new resto for GOSTA that you or somebody else saw either on Swedish TV or cinema? (I knew that despite Kino's claims about a new restoration, this disc used a print of this film which was the only one out of the three Stillers which hadn't had some work done on it over the past few yrs.)

Do you know if GOSTA was tinted when originally released?

[Ornette]

Yes, a person on a Swedish film forum who had recently seen Gösta Berlings saga in a cinema stated that this was a newly restored print. Apparently he was wrong then.

Gösta Berlings saga was not tinted when released originally.