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Re: Universal's recently butchered "restoration" of Shakedown (1929) on Kino or Eureka Blu-Ray

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weary flake

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Apr 21, 2022, 5:05:06 PM4/21/22
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adding alt.movies.silent instead of "rec.movies.silent" which doesn't exist

On 4/17/22 10:01 PM, weary flake wrote:
> Looking at the reviews for the recent Blu-Ray releases of Shakedown (1929) on
> Kino in the USA or Eureka in the UK, I saw only two that mentioned the
> grotesque gaps in the film and only one mentioned that it is the fault of
> Universal's "4000K restoration". On Amazon a user review for the Kino says:
>
> "I was disappointed with this release. I saw this movie on youtube
> before this release came out. The one on youtube is an Italian
> release which has English subtitles and also includes a score
> which sounds like it must have been the original. After seeing
> that version, I pre-ordered the movie on Amazon because it seemed
> like it was decent enough to own in my silent film collection.
> This new 2020 release from Kino is a disappointment. The movie is
> over 7 minutes shorter than the one I saw and it shows. There are
> a multitude of spots where the film is cut out, almost to the
> point where it is unbearable. Too many times in the film did I
> have to tell my wife what happened because many important scenes
> in the movie are cut out, but I saw them on the complete version
> so I knew what happened. There are scenes where people are
> interacting and then all of a sudden someone is missing or
> someone is reacting to something that happened, but you have no
> idea what happened. Too many key scenes - even in the final
> climax - there are parts cut out that simply ruin the film and
> the experience. I am not a fan of the score either, it feels
> detached from the movie at times. I don't know who is to blame
> for this, but from the looks of the film before and after the
> cuts it just can't be possible that the film is so damaged in
> those areas that they had to cut them out. What's wrong with a
> little film damage if it allows you to see what is happening in
> the movie? It is also cut in far too many places to simply be
> missing footage, as it appears to me at least. I love silent
> films and own most of the best ones that are available to us
> today. I would not recommend buying this new 2020 Kino release,
> it is no good. We need a good complete version with the original
> score or at least a better one. I think that companies who
> release old films should be more real and open about the results
> of their restoration and not try to keep you in the dark just to
> trick you and make a buck. Most people who buy these old films
> have no chance of seeing them in the first place as it is, so
> they could be spending their hard earn money on a movie that
> isn't any good. That is why I mostly only buy old films if I have
> seen them before, either on VHS, TV, or on the internet. You
> can't blame Kino because they hardly ever give you any info at
> all about most of their releases (I'm still trying to find out
> whether their updated release of The Blue Angel has new improved
> subtitles which I believe is the most important element needed
> for a new release of that film), but Universal did the
> restoration of this one."
>
> I disagree with that reviewer about complaining about the score
> to silent movies, I feel they should not be judged because whatever the
> original score is, it either never was recorded or in this case the
> recorded score with effects and additional dialog was lost. So any
> included score is going to be some anonymous music that doesn't match
> the picture anyway, so I listen to my CD player when watching silents.
> I also strongly disagree that product-makers can't be blamed when they
> are secretive about the products they sell.
>
> The pre-restoration of the youtube video of the movie:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zRicDEHx20
>
> The reviewer did not reveal the specifics on what was cut by
> Universal, but the most glaring one on the Blu-ray is in the
> beginning where the boxer barely moves his arm to start a punch at 4:53
> then jump cuts to the boxer sitting on the ground and looking up angry.
> Listening to the commentary on the Blu-ray at this point he mentions the
> obvious cut, and suggests that it is the movies fault or because of it's
> difficult journey to the 21st century. But the jump cut wasn't there
> before "restoration"! It is a defect caused by restoration and the
> expert didn't know it.
>
> This jump cut doesn't exist on the six year old youtube video where at 4:49
> the boxer throws a punch and then receives a punch and is then knocked
> backwards through the crowd to flat on the ground, then a different
> camera view, then the boxer sits up and then we are at what Kino is
> at 4:53 on the Blu-ray. Universal's restoration cut 7 seconds from the
> action. I haven't watched the full youtube yet, and even then I might
> not remember exactly which scenes didn't appear on the Blu-ray.
>
> The word "restoration" is often thrown around when revisionism is actually
> what is meant, like when mono is "restored" to fake surround or black and
> white is "restored" to fake color or original footage is re-filmed or
> re-animated, re-dubbed with current actors, etc. A less professional
> more common sense meaning of the term restoration would suggest a film
> must be as complete as possible and not to introduce jump cuts, and not
> suggest that a film is "restored" merely because the surviving 16mm original
> film is scanned in 4000K, and a new score slapped on a shortened film.
>
> The Eureka Region B release as Early Universal Vol. 1 is the same as Kino
> as suggested by this review:
>
> https://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/2021/09/early-universal-vol-1-1926-1927-1929/
>
> "It looks there's a shot or two missing where Roff knocks Dave down,"
>
> but Roff doesn't knock down Dave, Roff misses his punch and Dave knocks him
> down, but it's easy to see how the Blu-Ray can mislead someone because
> of it's jump cut.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zRicDEHx20
>
> I wonder if Universal will "respond" to the revealing fact of it's bad
> restoration by getting the un-restored video banned!

There are other blatantly bad Kino releases like Blackmail (1929), that's
supposed to be both the silent and the sound version, but only the silent
version is viewable: the sound version is presented twice, on the same disc as
the silent stretched from 1.20 to 1.33 and also a separate disc squished from
1.20 to 1.10. There's a spinning wheel near the beginning of the movie
that naturally should look round: for the sound version Kino only gives you a
choice of an oval, horizontal or vertigo.

I've seen the Universal region 2 DVD (discs set to region 2 are to try to keep
Americans from seeing it) that has both the silent and sound versions on
it and it is, unlike the Kino Blu-Ray, proper, with the silent version at 1.33
and the sound version at 1.20, which is better than what the DVD said it
would be: 1.33. Every review I saw of this all blandly repeated what the
packaging for the DVD saying it's 1.33 for the sound version and not the
1.20 ratio it is and should be. This foreign DVD is yet another reason to have a
multi-region player, to see this movie, the sound version of which is denied to
Americans by Kino.

Another Kino defective by design release is the blu-ray of Nosferatu (1922).
Kino deleted %12 of the movie frames and tried to make up for it by using
some inexplicable pattern of repeated frames, ruining the motion, according to
reviews. This is the Region A (blu-ray discs are set to Region A to try to keep
non-Americans from seeing it) release palmed off to Americans while the Region B
(discs are set to region B in an effort to keep Americans from seeing it)
released on Eureka doesn't impose monkey editing of the frames. But I've seen
pictures from both editions, and they both impose tinting and the Eureka may
be slightly worse, but I haven't seen either yet. Why impose tinting anyway?
If the film already has tint than so be it, but what I suppose happens with most
tinting (a modern fad in reissues of silents) is the film source either doesn't
have it or only suggestions of a tint and the excuse is then used to tint the film
with a computer, making the result look gaudy. Revisionist "restorers" will
always claim that any alteration of the original is always more authentic than the
original and no questions about the authenticity of these computer tints
is even open to consideration; this attitude alone makes it questionable.


weary flake

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Apr 25, 2022, 5:27:57 PM4/25/22
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I've noticed the youtube version has wrong words for the closed captions
at 8:42:

https://youtu.be/_zRicDEHx20?t=522

With an Italian title card and showing with the English closed captions as
"Thank God for that quarrel. We made a tidy sum! It made the whole town
talk about it!"

That's wrong and doesn't match what's on the film. The Kino title card
at 8:50 matches the film as "You're lucky to get that much. The town was so
cold on you, we could hardly get a bet."

So the youtube version has a glaring error in the title card for this scene.

The Kino booklet is a generic essay about the film because it doesn't
refer to what is actually on the disc. The essay goes on about it
being separately issued as a silent and as a part-talking movie with added
scenes, music, spoken dialog, etc. But I read elsewhere that the
part-talking version has been lost and only the silent version survives,
though you wouldn't find that out from the essay. The only clue that
it is silent is the back cover that says it's Silent with Score.
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