Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927)

Our first encounter with this film of G.W. Pabst’s has, at times, been engaging at best and at worst tedious. This story from a novel by Ilya Ehrenberg begins in the Russian Crimea at the time of the Bolshevik revolution.

Alfred Ney, a French political observer (and spy), and his daughter Jeanne have spent several years living in Russia. He has been collecting evidence against the rising Bolshevik movement. A young leader of the movement, Andreas, confronts Ney about his espionage, and Ney is killed. It is revealed that Andreas and Ney’s daughter independently found each other and fell in love. The Bolsheviks takeover. Jeanne is tried, but shipped off to Paris through the intervention of a favor. She arrives in Paris to live with her detective uncle and her blind cousin. (Our introduction to the detective’s office is not unlike the beginning of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown.)

The montebank Khalibiev arrives in Paris. Andreas shortly follows. Khalibiev works his way into the Ney household and his impromptu plot to murder for money is revealed. The subplot focusing on the retrieval of a large lost diamond is comical. Detective Ney’s greed and oncoming dementia eventually ends in his being killed for the diamond. Khalibiev weaves back into the story to set up Andreas for the murder of Ney, using the blind girl as a ‘witness.’ Jeanne valiantly attempts to proves Andreas’ innocence. She seeks out Khalibiev who can substantiate Andreas’ whereabouts the night of the murder. During Khalibiev’s attempted rape of Jeanne, she discovers the stolen diamond in his possession and reveals him as the murderer.

This film plays to us as something less than Pabst’s earlier The Joyless Street (1925) and nothing close to the qualities of Pandora’s Box (1929). There is not even a spark to the love story, which is the point of the entire film. Certainly, Fritz Rasp’s delicious performance as the smarmy Khalibiev is among the best elements of this otherwise turgidly melodramatic film.

Pabst’s short-sighted skeet shooting at political trap misses the mark, and the studio imposed diamond subplot further serves to throw the film off focus. But that doesn’t mean that there is nothing worthwhile to be seen in the film. Metropolis’ Brigitte Helm turns in a good performance in the second film of her career as the blind cousin to Jeanne.

— Carl Bennett

This Blu-ray Disc edition has been mastered at 2K high-resolution from 35mm archival film elements held by the Museum of Modern Art. The MoMA print, acquired in the 1930s, was struck from the export version negative, which was used for European and world distribution (outside of Germany). Likely replaced at the time of acquision, the German language intertitles were replaced with English intertitles in this print. Neither of the original camera negatives is known to survive. For this edition, there has not been any digital stabilization or clean-up performed on the scan as there is a moderate amount of dust, speckling, scuffing, scratches and other minor flaws still visible. The grayscale range of the picture is well-balanced, with just-enough image detail in highlights and shadows. In comparison, it is the German language presentation on this disc that looks far better than the scan of the USA version that is also available in this edition.

On a side note, when preparing a digital restoration of a silent era film, we do not feel it is necessary to emulate the slight frame jitters such as you would see in a vintage film print in replacement intertitles. New intertitles created photochemically or digitally are what they are — not original to the source materials — and they should remain stable in the frame, be of the best visual quality (not slightly blurred or some other attempt to make them look vintage) and be true to their creation in time. Such decisions to emulate vintage film in digital restorations seems a wee bit like lying to us.

The film is accompanied by a music score adapted and orchestrated for a small orchestra by Bernd Thewes (German version) and a music score performed on piano by Andrew Earle Simpson (USA release version). We are happy to have new music accompany this film and really like the Thewes score.

Supplementary material includes audio commentary by film historian Eddy von Mueller, and a presentation of the USA release version of the film which was originally duplicated from the same ‘A’ camera negative as the original German release version, and was shortened (and possibly resequenced) for USA distribution. It is visually similar to but different from the German language version that is available on this disc. The HD scan of this version has been made from a very-good to excellent 35mm print held by Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv. Apparently, no digital clean-up has been done so there is visible dust, speckling, scuffing and other minor flaws in the picture. Also, as any still frame in the USA version will reveal, the scan renders a picture with over-emphasized film grain that appears as a pronounced swarm of coarse black dots in the middle and darker tones rather than as continuous greytones. This is a common rap we have on most home video editions of silent films presented on Blu-ray Disc. We feel that, despite the inevitable presence of film grain in vintage film prints, the goal should be to present the image of a silent era film as close as possible to a projected picture, with as much continuous greytone information as can be rendered from the source material.

Despite our picky criticisms above, we enthusiastically recommend this Blu-ray Disc of The Love of Jeanne Ney as the best edition available on home video.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region A Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

The film is accompanied by a music score adapted and orchestrated for a small orchestra by Bernd Thewes (German version) and a music score performed on piano by Andrew Earle Simpson (USA release version).

Supplementary material includes audio commentary by film historian Eddy von Mueller, and a presentation of the USA release version of the film which was originally duplicated from the same ‘A’ camera negative as the original German release version, and was shortened (and possibly resequenced) for USA distribution; a video essay by David Cairns and Fiona Watson; and an insert booklet with an article on the film by Philip Kemp.

Sight unseen, we recommend this edition for European collectors. North American collectors will need a region-free Blu-ray Disc player to view this edition.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region B Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.

There has not been any digital stabilization or clean-up performed on the scan as there is a moderate amount of dust, speckling, scuffing, scratches and other minor flaws still visible. The grayscale range of the picture is well-balanced, with just-enough image detail in highlights and shadows. In comparison, it is the German language presentation on this disc that looks far better than the scan of the USA version that is also available in this edition.

The film is accompanied by a music score adapted and orchestrated for a small orchestra by Bernd Thewes (German version) and a music score performed on piano by Andrew Earle Simpson (USA release version). We are happy to have new music accompany this film and really like the Thewes score.

The supplementary material includes audio commentary by film historian Eddy von Mueller, and a presentation of the USA release version of the film which was originally duplicated from the same ‘A’ camera negative as the original German release version, and was shortened (and possibly resequenced) for USA distribution. It is visually similar to but different from the German language version that is available on this disc. The HD scan of this version has been made from a very-good to excellent 35mm print held by Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv. Apparently, no digital clean-up has been done so there is visible dust, speckling, scuffing and other minor flaws in the picture.

Despite our picky criticisms above, we enthusiastically recommend this Blu-ray Disc of The Love of Jeanne Ney as the best edition available on home video.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

Other silent era FRITZ RASP films available on home video.