Blu-ray disc | Silent London

Bonjour mes amis. Aimez-vous les films de Charlie Chaplin ? Are you wearing your pearls? Supping on truffle soup? Tooting your toy saxophone? Bien, alors nous pouvons commencer.

I bring some excellent news from the Criterion Collection and from the realm of Chaplinland. Charlie Chaplin’s game-changing melodrama A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923), starring his muse Edna Purviance, will be released on Blu-ray and DVD from the Criterion Collection on 18 March in the US and 7 April in the UK. Some of you will have been waiting for this news for a long time.

And here she is, my copies arrived yesterday!

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Faust (FW Murnau, 1926)

The news certainly caught my attention. Masters of Cinema has upgraded its DVD release of Murnau’s Faust: a German Folktale (1926) to a shiny new dual-format edition. All the beauty of Faust, but in high-definition Blu-ray glory: temptation itself. The even better news is that this is a very beautiful disc indeed.

Faust has always been a feast for the eyes, from the cutting-edge 1920s special effects to the gorgeously, painterly compositions, and the Blu-ray transfer here more than does the film justice. Compared to the DVD, this is just far, far more filmic. There are rich blacks and sumptuous detail, making the most of crowd scenes and shadowy landscapes. On a biggish screen, you’ll notice a texture of soft grain, not sharp pixels. As was familiar practice in the 1920s, Murnau shot Faust with two cameras – one each for the domestic and export versions of the film. His favourite takes remained in the German print, and that is what has been restored here (the grandly gothic German intertitles remain, so you’ll have to turn the subtitles on). This is the best Faust you can get – screening this at home is a seriously impressive movie experience.

Continue reading Faust: DVD and Blu-ray review →