Satantango (Artificial Eye & Facets)

[jsteffe]

I own the AE Satantango, but know 'Damnation' and 'Werckmeister Harmonies' only through the Facet releases. Are the AE versions appreciably better, and if so how?

I have not seen the Facets release of WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES, so I can't comment on it. Here's a couple relevant paragraphs from my review on the Turner Classic Movies website:

The Facets DVD of Damnation is part of their ongoing series of Bela Tarr films. Letterboxed at roughly 1.66:1 or slightly less, the black-and-white image looks a little dark. By comparison, the British PAL DVD distributed by Artificial Eye is brighter and has sharper detail. The Artificial Eye DVD is also presented full frame at 1.33:1, and thus has more space on the top and the bottom of the frame. Master's of Cinema's Nick Wrigley, whom I consider a knowledgeable source, cites a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. However, comparing both DVDs closely, I'm at a loss to say which of the two really is preferable--in some shots the framing of the Facets DVD definitely looks more dynamic, but in other places it feels a little tight, cutting off the very tops of the characters' heads. IMDb lists the aspect ratio as an even wider 1.85:1, but that seems most unlikely. Whatever proves correct, the framing of the Facets DVD works for the most part and won't spoil your appreciation of the film's unique visual style.

On the downside, the Facets transfer has a significant amount of digital artifacting in the darker portion of certain shots. Because so much of the film's effect depends on subtle visual textures, Facets should have compressed the 2-hour film at a higher bit rate and mastered it as a dual layer rather than single layer disc. To sum up, the Facets transfer is not stellar but it's certainly acceptable, nothing to prevent me from recommending the disc as a whole. The mono soundtrack is clear and does a good job of conveying Tarr's layered, atmospheric approach to sound design.

I'd also be curious to hear what other folks say about THE WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES, though I can't imagine that it tops the corrected Artificial Eye release.

Addendum: I just borrowed the Facets DVD of WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES from someone, and here's the skinny. It's 1.66:1 and has optical subtitles on the film print itself (rather than electronic subtitles). It's taken from a PAL source--perhaps supplied direct from Hungary--and thus has 4% speedup, combing, and slight (but not overly bad) motion blurring associated with the PAL-NTSC conversion. It looks OK--but then again the Artifical Eye disc, which I own, looks very nice.

[Gary Tooze]

Frankly, I'm at a loss to ascertain the what the controversy here is. Now Facets themselves are sending me emails - asking if I even own the DVD set because 'they never sent it to me'.

Whether Facets had the resources, money, or contacts to produce or obtain an entire a new telecine to create an anamorphic video master is really not my concern. I am simply reporting that their DVD transfer, of a 1.66:1 ratio film, is non-anamorphic. Simply put this is not an improvement, in this specific area, over the existing Artificial Eye release. We also indicated the Facets was from a PAL source (see the running times) yet is housed on NTSC discs. This creates certain artefacts as well as 'ghosting/combing/trailing' anomalies. We showed a screen capture example of this and many others comparing the two editions.

The bottom line is that the AE, with the superior image quality, is almost half the price of the Facets. If the poorly encoded 4th Facet disc is worth the $25+ difference to you then it might be worth obtaining. I happened to think it's not. My opinion.

Best,
Gary

[Oedipax]

Frankly, I'm at a loss to ascertain the what the controversy here is. Now Facets themselves are sending me emails - asking if I even own the DVD set because 'they never sent it to me'.

Amazing. Facets is such an easy company to hate.

[zedz]

Frankly, I'm at a loss to ascertain the what the controversy here is. Now Facets themselves are sending me emails - asking if I even own the DVD set because 'they never sent it to me'.

Amazing. Facets is such an easy company to hate.

They've got that magic combo of disgruntlement, entitlement and incompetence all sewn up. What did they think Gary did, painstakingly fake screencaps on Photoshop?

[mteller]

The ghosting on the Facets set is truly abominable. Gary's screenshots don't do it justice, it's all over the place. This release is the disappointment of the year.

And housing a non-anamorphic DVD in a box where the accompanying booklet stresses the importance of watching the film on a big screen... that's a rather cruel joke.

[MichaelB]

And housing a non-anamorphic DVD in a box where the accompanying booklet stresses the importance of watching the film on a big screen... that's a rather cruel joke.

Not necessarily - my biggest domestic screen is a 43" 4:3 rear-projection CRT, and so a film like Satantango actually produces a bigger image if it's non-anamorphic. I only get slight black bars at the top and bottom, whereas an anamorphic transfer would produce a smaller image and thin black bars all around. True, the latter would have slightly more detail, but it would be at the expense of overall shrinkage.

But I'm quite happy to concede that I may be in a minority on this one.

Incidentally, I'm finding the correspondence between Facets and Gary to be absolutely hilarious. Unless they're claiming that Gary got it wrong - which is unlikely, as his claims are corroborated by other independent witnesses - what exactly is their problem? They produce substandard discs, they get bad reviews. End of story.

[swo17]

my biggest domestic screen is a 43" 4:3 rear-projection CRT, and so a film like Satantango actually produces a bigger image if it's non-anamorphic.

I'm confused. I always thought that the basic idea of an anamorphic image was that it took the pure image (no hard matting) and fit it to as large a possible space as your screen will allow. Whereas a non-anamorphic image is hard matted to fit to a standard 4:3 screen. (Granted, I am basing this assumption on personal experience, and not too much other research into the matter.) But this would mean that an anamorphic image is always at least as large as a non-anamorphic image. So what am I missing here?

[Rich Malloy]

A non-anamorphic image is reproduced as "window-boxed" on my 16x9 TV, meaning that there are pillar bars running up the sides to create a 4x3 frame in the middle of the screen where the image is placed. It uses a very small percentage of available screen space to display, and of course is inherently of lower resolution.

Given that Facets doesn't do its own transfers - and I think we all knew this - it's not surprising that its release is the non-anamorphic transfer utilized by AE (unless Facets had suggested otherwise at some point). What makes this release inferior to AE's is the improper standards conversion from PAL to NTSC that introduces those most bothersome of artifacts, ghosting, and the concomitant softening of the image.

In short, it's the exact same story as with all of Facets other releases. Inferior, substandard transfers. So, purchase the AE if you want the best quality release.

[chaddoli]

But there's no reason why AE's transfer shouldn't have been anamorphic.

I won't be buying either release. I've lived in New York for a little over three years and have already seen it projected twice. I doubt I'll really want to sit down and watch it again at home. I'll just wait for another screening.

[Rich Malloy]

But there's no reason why AE's transfer shouldn't have been anamorphic.

I agree. But it's the best version out there.

[denti alligator]

But there's no reason why AE's transfer shouldn't have been anamorphic.

I won't be buying either release. I've lived in New York for a little over three years and have already seen it projected twice. I doubt I'll really want to sit down and watch it again at home. I'll just wait for another screening.

I thought we covered that. There is a reason, and it's better they left it non-anamorphic that create a fake anamorphic version that ends up looking soft.

[MichaelB]

I'm confused. I always thought that the basic idea of an anamorphic image was that it took the pure image (no hard matting) and fit it to as large a possible space as your screen will allow.

Whereas a non-anamorphic image is hard matted to fit to a standard 4:3 screen. (Granted, I am basing this assumption on personal experience, and not too much other research into the matter.) But this would mean that an anamorphic image is always at least as large as a non-anamorphic image. So what am I missing here?

The fact that my 4:3 TV has a 16:9 mode, which gives me the advantages of anamorphic enhancement, but fits the picture within a 16:9 frame within the 4:3 one. With material that's 16:9 or wider, this effectively makes no difference, but if it's narrower, it means that the picture will be smaller than a non-anamorphic one.

The reason being that the height is fixed to within the confines of the 16:9 frame, so you effectively get black bars all the way around the image (albeit relatively thin at the sides). By contrast, the non-anamorphic image goes right to the edges of the 4:3 frame, and is taller than the 16:9 frame - so the overall image is bigger. Granted, the anamorphic image will contain slightly more detail, but for my money this is offset by the conspicuously bigger image - and with this film I think you need the biggest screen you can get.

So here's what I see:



...but this is what I'd see if it was anamorphic:



(The difference is obviously far more marked on a 43" screen!)

But there's no reason why AE's transfer shouldn't have been anamorphic.

...aside from massive extra cost. Think about it: you're a DVD distributor, and you have the choice between:

1) pulling an existing Digibeta telecine off the shelf that happens to be non-anamorphic;
2) making a brand new anamorphic telecine of a seven-hour film, which might well entail the creation of a new clean unsubtitled 35mm interpositive.

...what are you seriously going to go for?

It's all very well being purist, but you're already talking about a box set with three dual-layer discs (i.e. more expensive to produce per unit than a normal arthouse release) for a film with no commercial track record or critical reputation in Britain - I think it's had one, maybe two screenings in toto - and therefore a huge commercial risk to begin with.

It's a bit like people going "why oh why couldn't Second Run have restored Marketa Lazarová from the original negative?" - desirable though it might have been, it's just not financially feasible in an environment where margins are wafer-thin even on well-known titles, let alone Eastern European films that are effectively unknown to the wider public.

Of course, there's also an ultra-cynical option (3), which is "take the non-anamorphic Digibeta and fake anamorphic enhancement from that", but I think we're probably all glad they didn't go down that route!

[chaddoli]

Thanks for the further explanation, Michael.

I'm certainly not suggesting they fake an anamorphic transfer. Not being in the DVD business myself, I overlooked the massive cost a new telecine. Suffice to say though, they lost costumers by not doing this.

[MichaelB]

Suffice to say though, they lost costumers by not doing this.

I seriously doubt the lost sales amounted to even the merest fraction of covering the additional cost of a new anamorphic transfer from scratch.

Bear in mind that AE's primary market is in Britain, where Satantango has had precisely one screening in London ever (I think there may have been another screening in Edinburgh, but I'm pretty sure that's it).

So if you're based there and want to watch the film, the DVD is your only realistic option - and under those circumstances, I'm hardly going to quibble about whether or not it's anamorphic, especially as a 1.66:1 picture isn't going to lose anything like as much information as, say, a 2.35:1 one. Hell, I buy Facets discs knowing exactly what I'm in for (i.e. something far, far worse than AE's Satantango, which is pretty good overall), because the alternative is not seeing the film at all!

[zedz]

the alternative is not seeing the film at all!

This seems to me the crux of the matter. There is no anamorphic release of the film anywhere, and none is likely to happen in the foreseeable future. 35mm screenings (for non-NY residents) are similarly unlikely, so boycotting AE's good release of the film seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

If somebody really has that little interest in seeing Tarr's magnum opus, I doubt that an anamorphic option would have made the difference of a sale. And such hardcore boycottery is surely the best thing an individual can do to ensure that AE will never risk doing an anamorphic transfer of this film. It's also a great way to discourage other risky, marginal releases. Cheers to this Pyrrhic victory! That'll show 'em!

[colinr0380]

We should really be lobbying AE to see if they might release more of Tarr's work (maybe those films on the fourth disc of the Facets edition? ) - didn't they say when they released Satantango in late 2006 that the sales figures would decide whether they would consider doing any more Tarr?

[domino harvey]

That's assuming the set has sold well though

[miless]

I had read somewhere that AE was working on a Tarr boxed set that would include The Man From London (so this would obviously be next year) and a CD of Mihály Vig's music for the films.
My hope would be a full Tarr set (with everything including those shorts not found on any current release), but that seems highly unlikely.

[Elephant]

What I have yet to see anybody address is the issue of the extra films. Will this be enough of a draw to take the plunge regardless of quality for the set as a whole? I certainly see no alternative to picking this up unless somebody knows of plans to release Macbeth and Journey on the Plain elsewhere.

I rented the fourth disc from Netflix. Both Macbeth and Journey on the Plain are shot on video, so they look and sound terrible--Macbeth especially, with totally washed-out colors. (I suspect the source materials are to blame here and these aren't totally Facets' fault, but based on other releases of theirs that I've seen, I'm not really ready to let them off the hook.) Journey on the Plain is the weakest of Tarr's work--even at half an hour, I don't see sitting through it again. Prologue is magnificent, but at four minutes it's not really worth picking up the Facets set to own it--not to mention that since it's not anamorphic, when I zoom to make it fill my 16x9 screen, you can see all sorts of combing and ghosting. It's on youtube, anyway.

However, the subtitles are fairly typo-free, small, white, and removable.

[MichaelB]

(I suspect the source materials are to blame here and these aren't totally Facets' fault, but based on other releases of theirs that I've seen, I'm not really ready to let them off the hook.)

They'll definitely be PAL originals - it's not credible that somewhat elderly Hungarian TV productions would have been shot to any other standard - so the Facets will have undergone NTSC conversion, with all that that implies.

[peerpee]

It's possible to do a great NTSC conversion from a PAL master. It involves two steps, sometimes three (and knowing what you're doing), instead of one. All the bad conversions are the one-step process.

Many authoring houses put one tape in one machine, one in another, press play and record, like they're dubbing a mixtape - and hope for the best. The resulting tape plays (relatively) okay for TV broadcast (as SD TV is interlaced) but when you come to DVD encoding, it's a mess.

There's no excuse for the Facets SATANTANGO ghosting/interlacing. Especially when you read something like this.

[MichaelB]

It's possible to do a great NTSC conversion from a PAL master. It involves two steps, sometimes three (and knowing what you're doing), instead of one.

Indeed, and while I'm honour-bound not to reveal the title, I have a DVD in my collection that I'd have sworn was native PAL until the person responsible for the authoring revealed otherwise.

He was rightly very proud of his achievement, because you really wouldn't know it was from an NTSC source. If I remember rightly, he extracted the original frames from the NTSC master (i.e. jettisoning the interpolated additional frames created as a by-product of upping the frame rate from 24 to 29.97fps) and then used that as the basis of a new PAL encode. Result: 25fps playback with no ghosting, frame judder, 3:2 pulldown or any of the other NTSC-PAL conversion issues. The only potential problem was that the picture had to be artificially enlarged to cope with PAL's higher resolution, but the end result didn't look unduly soft to me.

But it obviously took much longer to do than the standard tape-to-tape conversion (and clearly cost a fair bit more in machine time), so I'm not surprised most labels don't make the effort.

[Oedipax]

It's possible to do a great NTSC conversion from a PAL master. It involves two steps, sometimes three (and knowing what you're doing), instead of one. All the bad conversions are the one-step process.

Are you referring to the DGPulldown method? Details about it here.

[GaryC]

Suffice to say though, they lost costumers by not doing this.

Bear in mind that AE's primary market is in Britain, where Satantango has had precisely one screening in London ever (I think there may have been another screening in Edinburgh, but I'm pretty sure that's it).

Can't comment on Edinburgh, but the total for London is actually two - consecutive Sunday afternoon/evenings during the NFT's Tarr retrospective. I remember missing both of them - they were in NFT2 which then (before they did it up) was a cinema I found very uncomfortable, overly warm and claustrophobic. And as I wasn't especially well at the time, I thought that trying to sit through a seven-hour film in that auditorium was a bad idea!

I watched the film on DVD during one Saturday last year. Quite an experience.

[MichaelB]

Can't comment on Edinburgh, but the total for London is actually two - consecutive Sunday afternoon/evenings during the NFT's Tarr retrospective. I remember missing both of them - they were in NFT2 which then (before they did it up) was a cinema I found very uncomfortable, overly warm and claustrophobic.

That doesn't really change my point, though, does it? If you weren't in London that single weekend, you wouldn't have got to see it.

(I've managed to miss it twice on the big screen thanks to family commitments - my brother's wedding clashed with the London weekend, and I had to fly home early from the Sarajevo Film Festival a couple of years ago to attend my grandmother's funeral... on the very day of a Tarr retrospective screening!)