Coming Soon: NOSFERATU (F. W. Murnau, 1922)

I have to be honest… I’ve been flirting with the idea of doing an F. W. Murnau commentary since I launched this little babbling project of mine. The problem was, I could never figure out which film to talk about.

I was always off-put by the fact that many of Murnau’s masterpieces have commentaries–not here in region 1 NTSC-land, but in Europe. I thought for quite awhile about doing a track for Murnau’s PHANTOM, but I’m not all that motivated to do so as, despite the amazing quality of its restoration, it’s far from my favorite Murnau.

Then, during my last commentary for Cavalcanti’s FUGITIVE, I found myself enjoying a moment taken aside speaking about some of the narrative contrasts utilized by Murnau in NOSFERATU, as well as talking about the incredible performance and makeup of Max Schreck. And in thinking about doing a track for this film, I recalled that there had been a release featuring a commentary put out on disc about a decade ago (2001 to be precise, the disc featuring the Shepard resto) by Image Entertainment. This commentary, which was gruelingly wrought in spots viz its heady and deep angle of approach, constitutes an entirely different manner of tackling the film versus what I have in mind.

So I thought- what the hell? Why not be like Count Orlok and just go for the throat? If I’m going to do a Murnau film, why not tackle his most famous title, the one which bears the character from which I tweezed my moniker?

Much has been said about this film and Murnau of course. But I’ve yet to hear a commentary of the kind that I would always like to have heard… not only about the film, but about its director, cast and crew.

Thus, Schreckbabble is proud to announce the granddaddy of all art/horror/fantastic titles… F.W. Murnau’s eerie masterpiece, NOSFERATU.

COMING SOON!***

HINTERTREPPE (Jessner, 1921)

After a couple of false starts (where I couldn’t manage to fit all that I wished to say on this fertile, but short, film) I am proud to present Schreckbabble’s commentary for Hintertreppe–or Backstairs– the fabulously gloomy forerunner to the series of kammerspielfilms which would move the vehicle of the Chamber Play from the world of the Berlin stage onto the silver screen of postwar Germany.  .  .  a movement almost singlehandedly wrought by the figure of Carl Mayer, the primary subject of this commentary.

This track uses as its source the 49-plus minute DVD made available by the fabulous little mail order video concern, Grapevine. Say what you’d like about the transfer and print quality of their product, but were it not for Grapevine I would not have been able to see films like this and VARIETÉ back during the VHS era. We owe a great debt to passionate, fanatical little companies like Grapevine and Video Yesteryear who have strained for years to get as many of these lost and hidden gems into the hands of cinephiles like us. To these obscure little longtime purveyors  of some of the world’s finest cinematic delicacies, I send up a formal rocket of salute:

Here’s to you!

Dropbox link–

http://db.tt/01OT6opE

ENJOY*

THE NEW YORK DRAG….

Well, Yours Truly has wrapped up the promised trip across the giant midworld lake to the incomprehensibly excellent Berlin.

As an American, one looks of course with relish to the prospect of travel to a European city, to the idea of soaking up these ancient human byways and way-stations against which in terms of history no town in the United States can possibly compare. But upon travel to Berlin a great melancholy overcomes the traveler as he realizes that more than 3 quarters of this grand city was obliterated via the Anglo American bombing campaign in world war 2.

Ah, but the citizens, and ah the spirit. I truly fell in love with this town, that which I’ve been seeing in my mind’s eye via voracious reading of European history, and –of course– the watching of so many films. I was very fortunate to meet Berlin via the good graces of lifelong Berliners, and thus see the city square on and not through the distorting lens of commercialized tourism. Those who facilitated this know how thankful I am to their time and effort.

Such a good time was had by all that I am back here in New York trying to overcome a hangover for the incredible blast that we all had. Thank you of course to David Hare for providing this enterprise of mine the rollicking good time on the commentary for von Sternberg’s The Scarlet Empress as well as the chief commentary we commiserated on, Gremillon’s Gueule d’Amour… this is going to be held back for a little bit while a custom DVD is put together by both Knappen and Serdar. They have created the most outrageously excellent set of subtitles for this film, and mine and David’s commentary will first be available only upon the sharing of this disc. Keep your eyes peeled for the appearance of this disc in the usual places… these new translations deliver to the non French speaker a whole new film of nuance and subtext.

In honor of my trip, my next commentary will be, rather than the Chaney/Worsley silent THE PENALTY, the longtime fave of mine from the German silent era, Leopold Jessner’s BACKSTAIRS/HINTERTREPPE. There is a quite serviceable disc of this title available from Grapevine video, paired with SAPPHO. Please do grab it prontissimo, not for the prospect of pairing it with my commentary, but to discover this strange and wonderful moody title.

CHEERS*

New Hosted Links for Menilmontant. . .

As promised, I’ll be uploading new links for the older commentaries that have been eradicated by the sale of the original hosting site I used, resulting in dead URLS. Over the course of the day, I hope to have the below three commentaries back up and live using the standard twin hosts that I’ve been using. When all else fails, use the Dropbox links . . . they’re not going anywhere.

 

Menilmontant: standard hosted link: http://www.freefilehosting.net/menilmontant

                                       Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/s/f8lk5u84nvcqyzq/Menilmontant.mp3

NEW LINK FOR ARNES TREASURE

Sorry for the initial difficulty in getting up a functioning link, it’s a very very large mp3 file that I’ve created here and presented upload problems.

I’ve created a dropbox account and it appears that I’ve uploaded the file successfully with a functional share link which is going to be one of the following DEPENDING ON THE LINK USED, ONE MAY GET A DL LINK OR AN MP3 PLAYER MAY AUTOLAUNCH.. BUT ONE SHOULD WORK:
http://db.tt/1ofCHl0I
or

If anyone still has any problems please let me know.

Menilmontant (Kirsanoff, 1925)

While preparing some notes to make sure I don’t make a total fool of myself when talking about Josef von Sterberg’s THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN, I caught– it’s a semi-annual thing– my usual bug for Dmitry Kirsanoff’s killing masterwork MENILMONTANT.

An eternal heartbreaker which lays the heart of every viewer on a smoking board, MENILMONTANT is an astonishing work of art, a completely original work made entirely outside of the French and Russian-emigre film communities as they stood at the time in Paris. Conceieved and photographed almost entirely by Kirsanoff himself, MENILMONTANT was the second film made by the young lad from Estonia, shot in and around the Parisian slum quarter of Menilmontant… and as an illustration of the superior value that an excess quantity of ambition, originality, depth of feeling, and youthful sense of immortality present versus access to large budgets, studio artifice, and vetted union crews, MENILMONTANT reigns supreme.

A beautiful example of the power of ambiguity, and the ability of narrative vagueries to pull the viewer deeper into– rather than evict from– the unfoldings, owing to the contribution of the viewer’s imagination to the narrative to flesh out the unspecified zones, thus personalizing the proceedings, MENILMONTANT has been claimed as a favorite by many a sophisticated cineaste, and the film tops Best Of lists today, as it has yesterday, and as it will continue to do on into the future.

Some films are so good that they nearly reject compliments from us mere mortals… certainly MENILMONTANT is up there in that lofty high castle. But as so little is known, to this day, about the film, and as I have gleaned some nuggets along the years of my fanatic love of this film that may not be so widely available to the devoted cineaste, I am formally choosing to risk embarassing myself by heaping praise upon the film and the person of Dmitry Kirsanoff. I merely pray it comes off, if only moderately successful, and on the lighter side of Embarassing.

Enjoy, and salud to MENILMONTANT.

***Link: EDIT: see new links above, created July 19th 2012

(SEE Usher FOR DL INSTRUCTIONS if you have trouble)

La Chute de la maison Usher (Jean Epstein, 1928)

BIG SURPISE!!

What would be more fitting to kick off this hodgepodge of psychobabble than the film which has, as some may know already, held a steady #1 position in my All Time Favorites list? Jean Epstein’s silent version of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher is an undisputed masterpiece that has, despite being rather obscure when it comes to the mainstream audience, been a favorite of many a director, hardcore amateur cinephile, and film scholar. It presents the viewer with a hugely affecting narrative rendered via a tour de force melding of then-contemporary cinematic techniques– a breathtaking stew consisting of French Impressionism, German Expressionism, and the Soviet Avant Garde… but in the overall this is pure Jean Epstein, the work of a master filmmaker at the very peak of his powers. The film in its great power and impact seems to constitute the flagship expression of all the classic elements of the Avant Garde both in France and later in America: autumnal dreariness, fog, loss, decay… key atmospheric elements in the short story by Poe that the film extrapolates upon. It became evident– via Eisenstein’s Romance Sentimentale, Weinberg’s Autumn Fire, Kirsanoff’s Brumes de Automnes, Dreyer’s Vampyr, Carne’s Quai de Brumes— that a  recreation of the gloomy, haunted dampness, the chilly feeling of loss and decay in November, the pictorial depiction of a mood of reclusiveness and dissolution became extremely fashionable, if for no other reason that to recreate the magical effect of Epstein’s one of a kind images. Occasionally, an artistic statement appears which is so profound, so hugely affecting to other artists– so powerful within peers is the “I wish I created that” effect– that they cannot move forward with their own work until suitable tribute has been paid. In the case of Epstein’s Usher, the effect on his most talented contemporaries was seemingly all-pervading… at least until it was cleansed from their systems via the creation of their own work in the same vein, in this case in the form of the above-mentioned films which appeared in the years immediately following Usher’s initial theatrical run.

 The film remains a singular masterpiece… haunting, deeply affecting, profoundly moving and deep, impossibly unqiue in its conception and execution, and–in sum– simply breathtaking to this day.  

USHER, incidentally, was the only Jean Epstein film which enjoyed distribution– successful distribution at that– in the United States. 

Thanks for the eyes and ears!

HerrSchreck*****

Audio Synchronization: With each MP3 audio file will be a pause point, meant to coincide with a pause/start point within the DVD… whereby both will be loosed at the same time to keep the commentary running approximately in synch with the film.

MP3 UPLOADED! Click the following link to download the audio file: LINK IS DEAD< NEW LINK COMING (may record a new commentary)