By exclusive license with the Murnau Foundation and Transit Films Germany, Kino on Video is now releasing on DVD two masterworks by F.W. Murnau: Faust (1926) and The Last Laugh (1924), as well as a stunning drama of post-WWI Europe, The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927) by G.W. Pabst. These three films will be available on June 5, 2001.
Based on the great Goethe tale of an alchemist who sells his soul to the devil, Faust features a virtuoso performance by Emil Jannings as Mephistopheles. Murnau's Faust was a triumph of special effects and the most expensive production ever mounted in Germany up to that time.
Two years prior to Faust, Murnau and his favorite lead Jannings teamed up for The Last Laugh, a populist-expressionist fable of an aging doorman whose happiness crumbles when he is relieved of his uniform. A dramatization of the anguish of the working class, The Last Laugh tells the story entirely without intertitles.
The Love of Jeanne Ney is a departure from the formalism of the Expressionist movement. G.W. Pabst's film uses a subjective moving camera symbolically depicting the recent memory of World War I in the psyche of the German populace. A political love story of a young French womanıs struggle for happiness amidst the chaos of post-War Europe, The Love Jeanne Ney interweaves the story of Jeanne (Edith Jehanne), her love for Andreas, a Bolshevik revolutionary (Uno Henning), and the advances of the lecherous Khalibiev (Fritz Rasp).
All three films are accompanied by original orchestral scores composed and conducted by Timothy Brock and the Olympia Chamber Orchestra. Both Faust and The Last Laugh DVDs contain rare "making-of" on-set photography.
Web link
Kino International: www.kino.com
ARTICLE DATE: 5/20/01
