My DVD copy of this movie is a really beautiful print - and in lustrous color I might add. A friend purchased it for me in Germany about ten or twelve years ago. The DVD caries no label at all, and, almost needless to say, with my customary dexterity, I mislaid it. It turned up last night when I was actually hunting for something else.
Don't get too excited! The frequent subtitles are in German and French. They are not plastered on the image but have frames to themselves, German on the top half of the screen, French on the bottom half.
Fortunately, I have a smattering of both German and French and the sub-titles were obviously designed to be read by people like me who have what I would describe as a tourist vocabulary. There is no way in the world that I could read "Mein Kampf" but I know enough words to book a room, order a meal and ask passers-by the way to the zoo or how to get back to my hotel.
So far, so good. The problem is that the titles don't stay on screen long enough to read both the French and the German. Unless you want to freeze-frame all the time - and as there are more than a hundred titles - you really need to pick French and ignore German, or vice versa. So I finally settled on French.
After going to all this trouble, I later discovered there was a synopsis of the story in English on the back cover of the DVD!
But it was all worth the trouble. A beautiful print and a certainly engaging if rather odd story that you would never associate with Fritz Lang. Filmed on real, snow-laden locations too!
Don't get too excited! The frequent subtitles are in German and French. They are not plastered on the image but have frames to themselves, German on the top half of the screen, French on the bottom half.
Fortunately, I have a smattering of both German and French and the sub-titles were obviously designed to be read by people like me who have what I would describe as a tourist vocabulary. There is no way in the world that I could read "Mein Kampf" but I know enough words to book a room, order a meal and ask passers-by the way to the zoo or how to get back to my hotel.
So far, so good. The problem is that the titles don't stay on screen long enough to read both the French and the German. Unless you want to freeze-frame all the time - and as there are more than a hundred titles - you really need to pick French and ignore German, or vice versa. So I finally settled on French.
After going to all this trouble, I later discovered there was a synopsis of the story in English on the back cover of the DVD!
But it was all worth the trouble. A beautiful print and a certainly engaging if rather odd story that you would never associate with Fritz Lang. Filmed on real, snow-laden locations too!