Satantango (Artificial Eye & Facets)

[GaryC]

I meant the afternoon and evening of two consecutive Sundays, in the interests of pedantry...but no, it doesn't change your point.

[John Cope]

Armond's assessment. A couple things here I don't get:

Fact is, Raoul Walsh’s 1959 Day of the Outlaw hits every deep thought in Satantango (including the dancehall scene) in a 90-minute western.

I've never seen this. For those who have, is this an accurate correlation?

Also...

By emphasizing thingness—what’s least important about Satantango—Sontag’s endorsement threatened to exclude Tarr’s art from popular impact (as did Lars Von Trier’s rip-off Breaking the Waves). Such isolationism eventually ruined Abbas Kiarostami.

I'm tempted to just say WTF but I will assume that he's trying to suggest that the form is being unnecessarily elevated over the function. But to elevate purposiveness over expression seems equally wrong headed. But I am ultimately a modernist at heart.

[tryavna]

Armond's assessment. A couple things here I don't get:

Fact is, Raoul Walsh’s 1959 Day of the Outlaw hits every deep thought in Satantango (including the dancehall scene) in a 90-minute western.

I've never seen this. For those who have, is this an accurate correlation?

I'm not sure about a correlation existing, but it sure as hell ain't accurate. Andre de Toth directed Day of the Outlaw, not Raoul Walsh.

Why am I not surprised that Armond doesn't fact-check?

[miless]

You'd think that with imdb, these mistakes wouldn't happen anymore.

and White's assertion that the length is (essentially) elitist is absurd. The length is completely necessary for full impact of the disgustingly transcendent imagery and subject matter.

Had the film been 90 minutes, Sátántangó would lose whatever power it now has.

[zedz]

You'd think that with imdb, these mistakes wouldn't happen anymore.

and White's assertion that the length is (essentially) elitist is absurd. The length is completely necessary for full impact of the disgustingly transcendent imagery and subject matter.

Had the film been 90 minutes, Sátántangó would lose whatever power it now has.

One of my pet hates is people who can only see films as narrative delivery mechanisms. Sure, Tarr could have told his story in 90 minutes, but who'd want to see that movie? Hey, you could cut a good half hour out of Ordet and not lose any plot, too, and let's reduce Goodbye, Dragon Inn to trailer length while we're at it.

Why doesn't White give up watching films and just read cocktail napkins instead?

[Gregory]

I was just looking at the Facets website, and saw that they're claiming that their release of Sátántangó is "receiving stellar marks across the board." We know they know about the DVD Beaver review, as they emailed Gary to accuse him of never having had the set in his possession (which raises the question of where they think the screen caps in his comparison came from).
The link takes one to a list of blurbs from sources that are all generally uncritical of DVD quality. Most of them simply express excitement that the set is finally out after numerous delays. One that goes further is from something called L Magazine, "New York City's event guide" (actually a blog which is chock full of things that have nothing to do with NYC or events therein). Their review claims that the set "Surpass[es] the high-standards set by the Criterion Collection and Masters of Cinema," but never elaborates on this. I know this release doesn't need much further criticism -- I just found this bit of promotion on their part amusing.

[tomfromgermany]

Hi everyone, glad to join this forum:

According to this website:

Satantango will be released in Hungary in anamorphic widescreen but it doesn't seem to have any subtitles. Damn!! Maybe they update it, all the other Bela Tarr releases in Hungary did have subtitles. And I don't know any hungarian online stores that ships outside Hungary....

[MichaelB]

Well, the same site claims that the same label's Family Nest also doesn't have English subtitles, and I'm happy to confirm that that isn't true.

On the other hand, I'd be really surprised if Sátántangó was actually anamorphic. For starters, Hungarian DVDs often aren't - I have DVDs of very recent releases that aren't anamorphic (for instance, Mansfeld, made in 2006, though the site you link to claims otherwise). Secondly, there's a perfectly good letterboxed master already available (the basis of the Artificial Eye and Facets releases), and telecineing the whole seven-hour film again from scratch would cost a fortune - for no particular benefit if the Hungarians aren't that bothered.

It's also worth noting that the masters behind the Mokep and Facets DVDs of Family Nest appear to be identical - the only reason for favouring the Hungarian release is that it has a much higher bitrate and is native PAL. So my guess is that this will essentially be the Artificial Eye DVD with a different cover - but I'll be happy to be proved wrong.

[skuhn8]

I'm quite certain that this will have English subs; I'm quite certain that it will NOT be anamorphic. You will never truly know the aspect ration of a Hungarian-made DVD until you actually pop it into your player. Labeling here can be quite random. For a year I held off on buying the Hungarian edition of Fritz Lang's 1937 You Only Live Once because the box claimed anamorphic widescreen. When I saw it in a bargain bin for $3 I took the plunge--direct Studio Canal port in OAR (immediately seized the day and picked up their Port of Shadows which had the same mislabeling). It goes both ways--no sense of quality assurance here.

[tomfromgermany]

Ok, it does have english and german subtitles...what I don't know yet is whether it has anamorphic picture but my disc will arrive next week.

[tomfromgermany]

NO anamorphic picture! quality is pretty good though.

[MichaelB]

NO anamorphic picture! quality is pretty good though.

I'm willing to bet this is from exactly the same Digibeta master that was used for the Artificial Eye and Facets DVDs - though, like the Artificial Eye, it'll be native PAL, so won't have the conversion drawbacks of the Facets.

And the Artificial Eye is indeed pretty good, so if you've got a clone of that (more or less), that's really nothing to complain about.

[TheDoman]

Is anyone else able to confirm that the Mokep Hungarian edition is the same as the Aeye, as judging from the comments above it seems likely it is a clone. The Artificial Eye is now out of print, so I'm hoping to pick up the Mokep. Which probably won't cost much more than the AEye did.

Thanks

[rattlebag]

It seems that Amazon have copies of the Artificial Eye version in stock at the moment. Maybe more have been sent into the wild following the response to the Turin Horse.