http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare10/spione_.htm
Newly restored to its original length, Fritz Lang's penultimate silent film, Spione...
Fantastic and exciting film, not showing its age - it came out in 1928 - at all. Good to be able to see it in such a good print.
Get it and watch it. You know it makes sense
Excellent musical accompaniment for it, too - that 5-note theme for Haghi and all his machinations is really exciting and adds to the suspense.
The story you are about to see is true. No names were changed because no one was innocent.
Excellent musical accompaniment for it, too...Absolutely. Fast and furious at times. Like the movie. I think I will watch it again soon. share
I watched it again last night - the Eureka version. I also have the Kino version, and I discovered that there's a stupid error on it. They missed out one of the intertitles, and repeated the one that had just appeared!
When Haghi is plotting the disaster on the train, his underling says to him, "It's the last car - and it will happen in the tunnel, if No. 369 falls into the trap." Then Sonja arrives, the guy leaves, and Haghi takes Sonja's hand in his. In the Eureka version, he says to her, "I told you, Sonja, that you would be free when one of us two men is the victor," and she pulls her hand away in fright, as he goes on, "I am the one who is conquered, because I need you!"
But in the Kino version, he takes her hand and says, "It's the last car - and it will happen in the tunnel, if No. 369 falls into the trap" - obviously just a repeat of the previous intertitle. Well, no wonder she was scared! But it made the whole rest of the scene ridiculous, because why would she believe anything Haghi said to her after he announced that he was setting a trap for #369? That never made any sense to me, but the rest of the film was so beautifully restored, I never imagined that they might have actually made a mistake - especially such a boneheaded one! I'm glad to know what it was really supposed to be.
The story you are about to see is true. No names were changed because no one was innocent.
...I discovered that there's a stupid error on it...Doh!
I haven't seen Eureka's DVD release, just the one released by Kino in region 1. As far as I can see both releases are top notch in terms of video and audio quality.
The transfer used in both versions is the same.
The main difference is that Kino removed the original german intertitles and Eureka did not.
Seems Eureka release is slightly better, though.
I realize that this is about a year later, but if you haven't seen the Eureka DVD, how do you know it's slightly better?
shareThe Kino has only English intertitles. I guess that's why. ;)
I actually bought the German Fritz Lang Collection from Transit. Looks fantastic from time to time, but they used some pixelated intertitels. I'm sure it's the same transfer as the Moc DVD, though it doesn't contain English subs (Not a problem for me since I'm Austrian).
hope they fixed the typos in aome of the dialogue: 25 mins. into the movie when she is told to take the documents to the owner of the opium den, "then you will get the the negatives"
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