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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Arrrrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhh!!!, Aug 31 2003
By A Customer
I know -- this is a classic of world cinema, and it's seven hours of heaven to people who love film. Which is what makes this review so frustrating. When I opened this, I noticed that all seven hours is contained on one disc. The DVD is two-sided, which is technically brilliant, and not something I'm that familiar with seeing. Unfortunately, someone should have told the distributor about it, because when you order from amazon, you will receive your DVD with a great big sensor tag smack in the middle of what someone obviously thought was the blank side of the DVD. Removing it ruins the film. Oh, and opening the box to see if your tag is on there violates amazon's returns policy. Amazon, I love you guys, you're the best game in town, but this is a bit of a hiccup. Maybe the sensor tag only went on a couple of these suckers -- I dunno. I'd like to get the film but ordering it again will be a gamble -- a sensor tag this time or not?
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Newer issue has Two DVD, Mar 13 2009
While I have never received a DVD from Amazon (.de, .fr, .jp, c.o.uk, or .ca) that had a tag ON the DVD - in 10 years of buying from amazon, I bought this twice, once for a friend and much later, after having seen it, also for myself.
Both Sets contained two single-sided DVD.
This is to encourage other would-be buyers to ignore the 1 Star reviews.
Also a tag ON the DVD could ruin a single-sided DVD just the same, as the reflector side under the paint is needed for properly playing the DVD.
As for the contents, it is a great saga and really worth watching. There is another french film which ties in with it, altough totally different and much newer: Irma Veep (1996). It tells the story of trying to remake Les Vampires.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
some poor acting and constant awareness of the camera but overall an interesting silent, Jan 2 2009
I took the two 1 star reviews to heart and bought a second hand copy instead. It came perfect. (I would give this movie a 3 1/2 stars rather then the full four stars)
As for the movie. To me any silent movie is pretty cool, but now having over 150 of them I could see this with a more critical eye.
There were some very cool shades of toning on the various scenes. I have seen old movies where the outside scenes are in blue tint and the interior shots are in sepia (Broken Blossems is and example) , but this movie had at least five tints! blue, sepia, dark sepia (interior dark) green, and red and seemingly endless varieties of shades.
The acting by the main charachter was above par for the period, but his friend (Mamzette) and many supporting male actors was often terrible...though the female actors didn't seem to fall into the trap the men fell into so often. Mamzette should have been in a comedy or something as he constantly kept looking at the camera as though we were there, but often he was simply peeking or looking for cues or who knows what, or just hamming it up. He got a little better near the end, but overall he was quite distracting. His looking at the camera seemed to be for a variety of reasons, some of it to include the viewer, but that was only part of it. He was constantly aware of the camera and kept playing to it...almost as if he wanted to be sure he was being filmed. It was often very silly or distracting. Other players in the movie also had this habbit for looking at the camera so it got a bit silly at times as it was pretty clear they were following coaching, often in mid "act".
One thing that really bothered me was the complete destruction of the original parts you read. One reason I like the old silents is the ornateness of the talking boards. Obviously they had to translate the text to English but they completly obliterated the original boards. Instead of period talking boards there was very new typing and bright yellow backdrops for the script. This did improve about half way through the movie when they apparently realized they were destroying some of the flavour of the 1915 period peice. Later on you got to see the original talk or writing text then they overlaid them with the English translation, though the black boards were still missing.
Furthermore the longer reading parts you invariably had to pause the picture to be able to read them as they just didn't allow you enough time to read them.
Often there seemed to be missing dialogue, that or they expected you to know what they were talking about, as boards for these bits were either not included or they assume we would understand. Most of the time we do, but it does stand out as a flaw. There seemed to be some "pretend" dialogue to facilitate "acting".
One thing that failed in this peice was the apparent reason for the vampires existance! I sort of asumed this would become clear as the movie went on until I realized we were well into the movie and their only reason for exsistance seemed to be to thwart attempts to undo them. I Suppose it is actualy quite obvious: they were just an organized theft ring, but in our current expectations this seems so simple we seem to miss it. Perhaps it was clear in the earliest episodes but after watching this over a couple weeks the intent of the Vampires seemed to fade, and perhaps a reminder of their purpose might have been included in the later episodes to remind the viewers just what the heroes were fighting.
The exposure of the film varies quite a bit so I found myself occasionaly readjusting the contrast and the brightness.
Thankfully the music was reasonably period. All too often people record really stupid music with silents...that is occasionaly so distracting you actualy have to turn the sound off!. This had good music that fit the picture.
Overall it was an interesting peice but the story at times was a bit weak...and occasionaly drawn out for no apparent reason other than to make another episode. Occasionaly a long shot would have been just watch ing a person climb down the side of a building, rather then editing it...but then since this was the days of no stunt doubles I guess at the time these were pretty fascinating feats.
The interior shots were interesting but there were too few exterior shots to really get a sence of the France during the period. I figured in a 6 hour movie there would be lots of exterior shots to get a real sence of the period, but they were just too few. Lots of neat car shots though, and even a car chase!...of sorts.
The segments were of unequal length so you just weren't sure if you could watch one or two segments at a time. I ended up watching the last divisions of a each of the ten chapters before watching the new chapter just to remind me of what was going on. There's really no way to watch this all in one sitting being 6 1/2 hours long. But for your money this is a pretty good deal...one of the longer silent films...so you get some milage out of your money.
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