This is the first full-length online review of the BFI’s new triple-disc Jan Švankmajer: The Complete Short Films. Actually, that’s a bit of an understatement – with 5,000 words spread over four pages, it must be one of the longest reviews ever posted on DVD Times. Believe me, that’s not a complaint!
It’s officially released next Monday, but it’s already available in the BFI Filmstore on the South Bank and I hear some people who ordered it online have already received their copies too. And that’s not a complaint either.
And while I’m in such an uncomplaining mood, I’d also like to highlight the Czech DVDFreak site’s obsessively in-depth comparison between the new BFI box and other Švankmajer DVDs in the US, France, Britain and Japan. As you’ll see from this page, the BFI’s transfer of Jabberwocky is miles ahead of the competition, and while that’s an extreme example (that particular film was sourced from the original negative and digitally restored), the BFI set seems to be coming out ahead on all the other comparison pages too.
Which is something of a relief – I was acutely conscious that on my first DVD project, Quay Brothers: The Short Films 1979-2003, I was spoilt by not only having direct access to the original negatives and magnetic sound masters but I also had the (native English-speaking) filmmakers on hand throughout to offer definitive advice. But I knew at the time that it would be hard to match those perfect working conditions on subsequent projects.
While a handful of Švankmajer transfers were sourced from original film materials, in most cases we had to rely on exactly the same Prague-sourced Digibeta masters that were supplied to all the other DVD distributors. But by keeping them in their native PAL video format and applying extensive digital restoration, we were hoping to wring more detail out of them than other labels had been able to manage – and it looks as though this has been achieved in practice. So, once again, no complaints.
I just received my copy today from play.com…well done! I’m particularly looking forward to the extras disc.
I’m very proud of the extras disc – especially the two documentaries: they complement each other beautifully. I’m also intrigued by the fact that they each have their own proprietary animated sequences, almost as though it’s impossible to do Švankmajer justice without them!
When I gave him a quick demo three weeks ago, Švankmajer raised eyebrows at the inclusion of Johanes doktor Faust, which he obviously didn’t direct – but I explained that this was pure opportunism on my part: I’d wanted to see it for ages, and there was precious little chance of anyone else releasing it in an English-friendly version. And it’s not completely tenuous – when I interviewed Švankmajer a few months ago, he told me that his input into the film was rather greater than the credits suggest, and there are loads of fascinating parallels with his own work (especially but not exclusively Faust).