Tweet Lonesome on August 28

The Criterion Collection just posted specs. Looks phenomenal:

http://www.criterion.com/films/28212-lonesome



SYNOPSIS: The early Hollywood gem Lonesome is the creation of a little-known but audacious and one-of-a-kind auteur, Paul Fejos (a filmmaker/explorer/anthropologist/doctor!), who bridged the gap between the silent and sound eras. Fejos pulled out all the stops for this lovely New York City symphony set in antic Coney Island during the Fourth of July weekend—employing color tinting, superimposition effects, experimental editing, and a roving camera (plus three dialogue scenes, added because of the craze for talkies). For years, Lonesome has been a rare treat for festival and cinematheque audiences; it’s only now coming to home video. Rarer still are the two other Fejos films included in this release: The Last Performance (featuring a new score by Donald Sosin) and a reconstruction of the previously incomplete sound version of Broadway, in its time the most expensive film ever produced at Universal.

DISC FEATURES

New digital restoration, featuring uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Audio commentary featuring film historian Richard Koszarski
The Last Performance, director Paul Fejos’s 1929 silent starring Conrad Veidt, with a new score by Donald Sosin
Reconstructed sound version of Broadway, Fejos’s 1929 musical
Fejos Memorial, a 1963 visual essay produced by Paul Falkenberg in collaboration with Fejos’s wife, Lita Binns Fejos, featuring Paul Fejos narrating the story of his life and career
Audio excerpts about Broadway from an interview with cinematographer Hal Mohr
PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critic Phillip Lopate and film historian Graham Petrie and an excerpt about Lonesome from Fejos’s autobiography

This looks nice. Too bad they didn't include "The Affair of Susan" as I would really love to see that.

Add Paul Leni's The Last Warning, please.

I am practically giddy about this. I loved LONESOME when I saw it this summer...but I think I'm even more excited to finally see BROADWAY. That's quite a bonus feature! I have been looking at stills from that movie for years and drooling....

Great news! I have no complaints. We're getting three for the price of one, which I didn't expect. Others will be released when they are released. For now, I'm satisfied.

Oh happy day! And Show People from Warner Archive...
http://www.wbshop.com/product/code/1000302262.do

Any word on the extent of the restoration? Like, does it attempt to incorporate the technicolor finale from the silent version into the sound?

And what are the sources for the restoration? The only copy I've seen was rather beaten up and dupy...looked rather like a 16mm reduction.

Any word on the extent of the restoration? Like, does it attempt to incorporate the technicolor finale from the silent version into the sound?

And what are the sources for the restoration? The only copy I've seen was rather beaten up and dupy...looked rather like a 16mm reduction.

I don't know anything about technicolor, but it's a George Eastman House restoration from a French 35mm print.

Here's a story in the LA Times about the October, 2010 premiere of the restoration:

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/25/entertainment/la-et-lonesome-20101025

it's a George Eastman House restoration from a French 35mm print.

I have been to a screening of the French Cinémathèque print last year. OMG...it was very dupy and grainy.

Any word on the extent of the restoration? Like, does it attempt to incorporate the technicolor finale from the silent version into the sound?

And what are the sources for the restoration? The only copy I've seen was rather beaten up and dupy...looked rather like a 16mm reduction.

I don't know anything about technicolor, but it's a George Eastman House restoration from a French 35mm print.

I believe Brian is asking about the restoration of BROADWAY, not of LONESOME.

Too bad they didn't include "The Affair of Susan" as I would really love to see that.

Me too. I've been trying for years to find a way to see that one (being a remake of LONESOME).
Now, if not included on this DVD set, when and where else will we ever see it?
If that recent DVD "Universal Rarites" wanted to include real rarities that have never been on TV or video they'd put out titles like this.

I wonder if all 3 films will be presented in HD on the BR version? I notice on the packaging that the BR edition is a single disc, the DVD version is only a double disc and there's no mention of HD mastering. I'll be waiting fo some reviews before ordering this one.

They are pretty short films...a dual layer blu ray holds 50gb, should be more than enough. Personally, I don't care. I'd have bought a decent copy of Lonesome on VHS if that was all that was available. I trust Criterion...my order is already in!

I know Warner Bros. and other studios have done the cheap thing by including SD special features on a Blu-Ray, but I can't imagine Criterion Collection would do that. I trust them too. This is going to be an astounding release.

[Christopher Jacobs]

I'm certainly hoping all three will be in HD. LONESOME is a very nice film and I'd buy it anyway, but I'm especially looking forward to the other two features, neither of which I can recall having seen before. Criterion often uses standard-def extras that they recycle from earlier editions, but seem to be doing as much as possible in HD (except old TV interviews taped before HD). The complete bonus films BUCKING BROADWAY (on STAGECOACH) and CROOK'S TOUR (on THE LADY VANISHES) are on the same discs in hi-def, and since BROADWAY and THE LAST PERFORMANCE are only about an hour each they should fit easily in HD on the same Blu-ray as LONESOME.

Warners may be great about getting beautiful HD transfers of their major classics onto Blu-ray, but they usually reuse the same old SD transfers of bonus items from DVD versions, rather than remastering them in HD, and in the case of THE WIZARD OF OZ they had all the silent Oz films in SD so they'd fit onto one disc. Fox will sometimes have rare old newsreels and vintage featurettes in HD and other times in SD. Paramount, on the few classics they've ever put onto Blu-ray themselves, often has HD bonus features (including the complete silent version of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS). Slowly but surely, more Blu-rays seem to be including more HD content as bonus features. Criterion is one of the best for this in the US, with the BFI and Eureka in Britain.

Criterion is one of the best for this in the US, with the BFI and Eureka in Britain.
Which is why I like to support their releases as best I can.

LONESOME doesn't have scenes in natural color, but it does feature the usual tints, and hand-coloring during the initial Coney Island montage.

I know Warner Bros. and other studios have done the cheap thing by including SD special features on a Blu-Ray, but I can't imagine Criterion Collection would do that.

Criterion did just that with their BDs of M and The Leopard. I bought those specifically for the alternate versions, which were merely SD transfers upscaled to HD.

[Christopher Jacobs]

I know Warner Bros. and other studios have done the cheap thing by including SD special features on a Blu-Ray, but I can't imagine Criterion Collection would do that.

Criterion did just that with their BDs of M and The Leopard. I bought those specifically for the alternate versions, which were merely SD transfers upscaled to HD.

As I recall, the English-language version of M was an SD copy with the HD Blu-ray of the German version, but THE LEOPARD was in HD for both the restored (and gorgeous-looking) full-length Italian version and the unrestored and substantially shortened US release version. The US version looked so poor by comparison because it was from a print rather than the negative, was unrestored, and showed plenty of wear on the negative. The Blu-ray was still a very sharp transfer, however, revealing the film print flaws all the more. I think the same thing happened with Criterion's Blu-ray of SENSO (with the two different cuts), but it's been awhile since I've looked at any of these.

I am really looking forward to finally getting a good copy of this film - actually 3 films for the price of one.
An important ones at that.

Even allowing for a mere scan of a worn 35mm print, the American Leopard is way too fuzzy and smeary to call it HD. If it were scanned in HD, it would look reasonably sharp, not like an upscaled DVD, and there wouldn't be such a shocking difference in clarity between the feature and menu.

So the American Senso is SD? That's a shame...

[Christopher Jacobs]

Even allowing for a mere scan of a worn 35mm print, the American Leopard is way too fuzzy and smeary to call it HD. If it were scanned in HD, it would look reasonably sharp, not like an upscaled DVD, and there wouldn't be such a shocking difference in clarity between the feature and menu.

So the American Senso is SD? That's a shame...

Criterion's THE LEOPARD is 1080p from the 35mm horizontal double-frame-size negative for the 185-min Italian version, but only 1080i from an unrestored 35mm "scope" reduction print for the 161-min English language version. The difference in quality is striking, but both are in HD. Whether the 1080i is upscaled from an SD master, I don't know, but I recall it looking sharper than a DVD would be. Here is an excerpt from the Blu-ray.com review:

The American version of The Leopard is encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080i transfer. Unlike the Italian version, the American version has a fairly inconsistent color-scheme and is plagued by a variety of minor flecks, stains, marks, scratches, and cuts. Its contrast levels are also quite shaky. Optional English subtitles are not provided for it.

Criterion's SENSO is 1080p HD for both the 118-min. Italian version (from the 3-strip B&W negatives) and for the 94-min. English version (but I think is from a print).

In both cases, the longer version of the film makes far more sense than the abridged versions, which are more of a curiosity and should not be one's first exposure to the films, despite their English audio spoken by the stars.

Apparently the new Criterion Blu-ray of THE GOLD RUSH has both the reconstructed 1925 cut and the 1942 cut in full 1080p HD. There's a good chance that LONESOME, THE LAST PERFORMANCE, and BROADWAY will all be in HD, but we'll have to wait until it comes out to be sure (unless someone from Criterion is reading this forum).

I watched the three films on my Blu-ray review copy last night.

According to Dan Wagner, Head of Preservation at the George Eastman House, "The restoration of "Lonesome" was made possible through a single nitrate print initially conserved by the Cinematheque francaise in PAris. Henry Langlois, the mythic head of the Cinematheque, gave this surviving print to the also legendary James Card at George Eastman House, in Rochester, New York in the mid-1960's. Shortly after arriving there, "Lonesome" went through its first preservation, with the gorgeous tinted and hand-colored film being transferred to black and white. "

"As for the audio, in 2008, with the 1994 print long past its best days and the original nitrate print beginning to decompose, an effort was undertaken to finally complete the restoration of "Lonesome". The problem with the soundtrack had always been that modern playback equipment rendered it with brutal honesty. The hiss, pops, and crackles accrued over a long life blared with stunning clarity over these amplifiers and speakers. George Eastman House worked with the technicians at Chace Audio by Deluxe, in Burbank, California, to remove this white-noise wear and tear, while taking care to retain the quality of Hollywood's earliest experiment in sound. Now, instead of being ad in of often indistinguishable noise, the music and sound effects support the film with a cacophony of the clang and clatter of Coney Island's midway and dance halls."

Wagner continued, "The titles also received a dramatic facelift. Extensive research was done on Universal titles of the period. And a bit of good fortune came with a single frame of an English intertitle left behind when the translation to French was done in the late twenties. Thus, the Silentina Film Font was chosen for the intertitles. The main titles are a combination of the fonts Broadway and Ultramodern Classic."

"The restoration lab Cinetech, in Valencia, California, brought together image, audio and intertitles, producing a new 35 mm preservation negative and prints - and a definitive restoration of Lonesome."

According to the Criterion Collection, the new digital transfer was created in 2K resolution on a Spirit 4K Datacine from the 35 mm restoration black-and-white and color duplicate negatives, which were assembled digitally. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches, splices, warps, jitter and flicker were manually removed using MTI's DRS and Pixel Farm's PFClean, while Image Systems' Phoenix was used for small, dirt, grain and noise reduction.

The original monaural soundtrack was remastered at 24-bit from an optical track print. Clicks, thumps, hiss, and hum were manually removed using Pro Tools HD. Crackle was attenuated using AudioCube's integrated workstation.

[Christopher Jacobs]

Yeah, but... how did they all look to YOU? (I haven't gotten around to ordering this yet -- too many Blu-rays of obscure, rare, and/or classic films from Olive and Twilight Time lately -- but should have it within a month or less). I've seen LONESOME several times in 35mm (in various stages of restoration), so I'm especially looking forward to the other two films, which I've never seen.

I've kept missing Lonesome at every festival I've gone to. It's always the great film they ran last year! I'm really looking forward to seeing it. Maybe someone will have it for sale at Cinecon this weekend.

Watched all three today. I can confirm they are all HD transfers.

Lonesome looked very good considering its source material. Obviously it shows its wear, but the image is very sharp with great detail. I was very pleased with it. While there are a few moments of distortion in the audio during some musical cues, the audio was quite clear and easy to understand during the talking sequences.

The Last Performance is sourced from a Danish print and, other than being in HD, has no additional work done. Unlike Lonesome, the intertitles and title credits are all in Danish with English subtitle translations of the intertitles provided by Criterion. The image was overall good.

Braoadway looked and sounded great. The source print (if not the OCN) looks very clean and sharp through the majority of the film. There is occasional dirt/debris a few instances of nitrate damage, but otherwise looks great. The final reel was apparently restored using silent footage and a privately owned soundtrack. The closing footage does appear to have been from the Technicolor print, but looks very rough. Good enough to give a vague idea on what the color looked like though, but it's one of those instances in which beggars can't be choosers and I was very thankful the final reel was restored to the extent that it was.

Really enjoyed this release very much. However I have a few questions. This was all sourced from a nitrate print however during the 'talkie' dialog scenes the image clarity and quality jumps up considerably. Anyone know a explanation for this?
I thought maybe Universal could have possibly shot these seqments after the film was complete and inserted them into the original print and they were higher quality for some reason. Which really doesn't make sense, but I can't think of a more plausible reason for it.

Either way this is another great release. Really enjoyed The Last Performance. I only wish Conrad Veidt would get some more HD releases. Such a great actor forgotten by so many people.

**edit** I think I found my own answer. These segments were later shot in a studio in order to record the sound elements,. Which is why they don't match up entirely with the shots on location. I'm assuming this comes down to having a more controlled environment which created a better exposure and a clearer image.

[Mike Gebert]

We watched Lonesome tonight; the kids are not particularly interested in romance but they went "Ick! Gross!" less than with most such things, a tribute to the film's intimacy and directness of emotion, I think. They were entirely engaged with the characters even though they found the talkie dialogue laughable.

One of them guessed the twist out loud halfway through, alas.

My wife cried out at one point: "This is as bad as Sunrise!" Which is to say, she was as emotionally caught up and hoping for a happy ending.

She knew nothing of Fejos, never heard of him, so afterwards we watched the 15 min. or so memorial documentary about his life and I have to say, as someone who often blows off the supplements, that this is the unsung gem in the set. Fejos' narration (taken from an oral history) is droll as he tells how he went from Hollywood, to European films, to anthropology and becoming a major figure, even without serious academic qualifications, within the field as a sort of facilitator of communication and cross-pollination. It's too easy to say Lonesome is anthropological in some ways, he was also someone smitten with the theater and it mainly comes from that side of his personality; but what it does come from is the same urbane, humane man. I would have loved to know him, something I know better than to say about most directors.

Put this on for a few minutes yesterday just to see how the picture quality was, and wound up watching the whole darn thing from start to finish. A wonderful film, with two delightful leads, although I kept getting distracted by how much Glenn Tryon looked like a young Jack Lemmon. Anybody else get that impression?

Put this on for a few minutes yesterday just to see how the picture quality was, and wound up watching the whole darn thing from start to finish. A wonderful film, with two delightful leads, although I kept getting distracted by how much Glenn Tryon looked like a young Jack Lemmon. Anybody else get that impression?

Actually, I kept thinking that he looked like a 1920's version of Bob Cummings.

(And I agree, this film is an absolute delight.)