SilentsPlease wrote:I just came back from the NY Film Festival's showing, and I didn't notice any new footage compared to the Criterion DVD.
This page says the latest version runs at 19 fps, slower than the 20 fps used by Criterion. So that may explain the time difference, since 133 min (Criterion's run time) x 20 / 19 = 140 min. Longer credit sequences and intertitles here and there would yield 143 min.
The picture quality isn't a whole lot better compared to the high-definition streaming at Filmstruck (which is a HD version of the Criterion DVD). So I don't know what exactly is different and new about this latest version other than the slower frame rate. Yes, the live score was terrific, but we most likely won't get that put on home video.
The live score tonight was totally devoid of the kind of "cliche" silent score composition that we have often heard. Every instance of emotion, seductiveness, humor, sadness, anger, nuance, etc., was done with great creativity, In a good way. At times it was almost avant-garde, making me feel like I was listening to the Alloy Orchestra instead. What was lacking was a good motif, though. The 1983 score by Stuart Oderman, which is a piano solo, has an effectively foreboding motif that is played throughout.
I saw the film last night, too, and was surprised at how relatively ill-attended it was. Plenty of empty seats. The score was pretty good, but did some over-reaching, going for more when less would have been more effective. Very early in the film, Lulu is encouraged to dance by Schigolch, her old pimp, who accompanies her on harmonica, and the score just went berserk -- a blast of dissonant craziness that felt way out of place. Some of the sound effects were effective, though, but I wanted to tell the percussionist to stop waving that rag around during the final section, apparently to create the sound of a piece of fabric nailed over a window: no sound managed to get past the plastic baffle he was standing behind anyway, and it just wound up being a serious distraction, this guy waving a rag just barely in the corner of my vision. The score did settle down after a while, managing some fine moments, but overall I still prefer the Matti Bye score heard in San Francisco a few years back.
New footage-wise -- I didn't really spot anything, but I did feel like two little scenes, very brief in themselves, felt more prolonged than they had before. Specifically, Lulu's interaction with the meter reader in the film's very first scene felt more detailed than it had before, it seemed there was more interplay between them than I'd noticed before, and the later scene backstage during the revue, in the prop-room where Dr. Schon grabs Lulu and just shakes the living daylights out of her went on longer than I'd thought possible, long enough to actually produce some giggles from someone behind me. Later, when I got home, I dug out the Criterion DVD and found that both of those moments were much shorter on the DVD than in what I remember from a couple of hours before. Hard to say for sure, without some kind of real straight up comparison between the two. Maybe some shots were trimmed of Lulu really charming the meter reader, and of the attack in the prop room. Who knows. It's unlikely that anything really significant was restored, certainly nothing like what was restored to METROPOLIS where entire subplots were put back.
I haven't checked the version of the film streaming on FilmStruck, but the picture in this restoration is a hell of a lot better than the version on the Criterion DVD, which has lots of scratches and even hairs in the gate in certain shots. The opening titles mentioned that the new version was meant to be projected at 20 fps, whatever that means, I'm afraid I can never keep that straight. It certainly felt a lot more leisurely overall, as opposed to the Criterion DVD that just flew by on my TV in comparison.
And I'll note that the gentleman who introduced the film specifically thanked both Criterion and Janus -- my fingers remain crossed about a possible Blu-Ray upgrade.
And the film itself -- there's just nothing better. Few movies or works of art pack the wallop that PANDORA'S BOX packs. I'm always bowled over by it. Louise Brooks's staggering beauty always knocks me for a loop -- she's the one femme fatale where I see why people are falling over themselves, even unto death, to get their hands on her. Louise Brooks is the most dangerous drug of all.