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Release: October 22, 2024

$7.99

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In 1920, one brilliant movie jolted the postwar masses and catapulted the German Expressionist film movement into history. That movie was The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a plunge into the mind of insanity that severs all ties with the rational world. Director Robert Wiene and a team of visionary designers crafted a nightmare realm in which light, shadow and substance are abstracted, a world in which a demented doctor and a carnival sleepwalker perpetrate a series of ghastly murders in a small community. This authoritative edition presents the F. W. Murnau Stiftung's meticulous 4K restoration of the film, with a new orchestral score by Emmy-winning composer Jeff Beal (House of Cards), which had it's premiere performance at Carnegie Hall on June 3, 2024.

Release: July 20, 2021

$7.99

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Nana (1926) is Jean Renoir’s (The Rules of the Game) second feature, and one of his most ambitious productions, presented here in a new 4K restoration. It is an elaborately mounted adaptation of Émile Zola’s novel that tracks the doomed romances of its title character—an actress who would go on to be the most notorious courtesan of her era. When her father dies, a young girl is sent to live with her uncle. Mistreated, she runs away to lead a vagabond’s life in the forest. When she is found, she becomes Nana, a fashionable actress of loose morals, becoming first the mistress of a count, and then of the Emperor’s chamberlain. Nana’s love affairs are set against gorgeously mounted sets designed by Claude Autant-Lara. Special Features: -Audio commentary by film critic Nick Pinkerton -Before-and-After Restoration Comparison -Music composed and performed by Antonio Coppola

Release: June 30, 2020

$6.99

Description

A physician, alchemist, and spiritual guru, Paracelsus (1493-1541) was one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of science. And, like its subject, this 1943 film is shrouded in mystery, even though it was directed by one of the supreme stylists of the German cinema: G.W. Pabst. Werner Krauss (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) stars as the Swiss-born scientist, who faces the seemingly impossible task of protecting the German people from a coming plague, and calming a rising tide of mass hysteria. Despite being called “a remarkably interesting film” by The New York Times’s Vincent Canby (when it received its belated U.S. premiere in 1974), Paracelsus continues to be overlooked, along with most all of the films made in Germany during World War II. With fresh eyes, however, we can see that Paracelsus is not a propaganda film, but the work of an oppressed artist attempting to convey a humanist, possibly subersive message under the gaze of Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. Special Features: -Audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan Top About this item Similar From the Brand Reviews Paracelsus [Blu-ray]

Release: November 17, 2020

$7.99

Description

Waxworks (Das Wachsfigurenkabinett) was the final film Paul Leni directed in Germany before striking out for Hollywood, where he made such classic genre films as The Cat and the Canary, The Man Who Laughs, and The Last Warning. It's sophisticated medley of genres was in fact what inspired Universal's Carl Laemmle to invite Leni to come to Hollywood, as Laemmle was hoping to capitalize on the emerging comedy-horror craze of the 1920s. Stylistically, Waxworks was celebrated as a late example of German Expressionism. It's stylized sets (designed by Leni), fantastical costumes, chiaroscuro lighting, and startlingly bold performances are characteristic of that cinematic movement and contribute to the film's lasting appeal.The three episodes of Waxworks are united by the character of a young poet (William Dieterle), who is hired by the owner of a wax museum to create backstories for a trio of the museum's figures: Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid (Emil Jannings), Ivan the Terrible (Conrad Veidt), and Jack the Ripper (Werner Krauss). The stories with leading actors of Weimar cinema are depicted successively, the poet casting himself together with the daughter of the wax museum's owner at the center of each tale. Though the poet and the daughter play different characters every time, they are always lovers threatened by an animated wax figure tyrant.As the original German version of Waxworks has not survived, this newly restored English edition-a joint effort by the Deutsche Kinemathek and Cineteca di Bologna, L'Immagine Ritrovata (with funding from the German Commission for Culture and the Media)-is composed of vintage export prints and additional film materials from archives around the world. The elements, including English intertitles, were scanned in 4K resolution and then restored in 2K. Presented by Flicker Alley and Eureka Entertainment in a Blu-ray/DVD dual-format edition, there is an option of two scores to accompany the film: a new piano score by Richard Siedhoff and a new instrumental score by Bernd Schultheis, Olav Lervik and Jan Kohl, commissioned by ZDF/ARTE and performed by Ensemble Musikfabrik.