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

Spies (1928)

After the financial disaster that was Metropolis (1927), UFA hung Fritz Lang out to dry. Unable to rid themselves of Lang for contractual reasons and with two more films left to direct, Lang responded by forming his own production company and returned — with Spies (1928) — to the familiar (and popular) territory of his early 1920s super crime/spy films.

Rudolph Klein-Rogge, of Rotwang-Metropolis infamy, portrays the criminal mastermind that seeks to disrupt a European-Japanese treaty (presumably for economic and anarchic reasons). The film begins with the theft of secret documents that change hands violently, and several secret agents have been murdered. Agent 326 (Willy Fritsch) — a master of disguise who doesn’t seem to fool the bad guys since they have pictures of him in disguise — is fighting to uncover the criminal organization but doesn’t count on falling mutually in love with a Russian-born spy, Sonja (Gerda Maurus, in her film debut). The loving pair have to wrestle with their feelings, à la Romeo and Juliet, as they are forced to perform their sworn tasks.

At times the Thea von Harbou scenario plays like a sappy love story, an aspect that is exacerbated in the shortened American-release version which excised a substantial amount of the espionage and retained nearly all of the love interaction. Lang’s film plays better in its restored form that contains more action sequences and stylish visuals. For example, we love the shot of the three dead couriers returning their treaty envelopes to Japanese agent Matsumoto (Lupu Pick), and the shot of Sonja seen behind the roses she has just received from 326.

Fritsch is charming as the versatile Agent 326, and Maurus engaging as Sonja. But, Klein-Rogge is the star of this production as the slick and conniving master criminal Haghi. We also love the character of traitorous Colonel Jellusic as portrayed to delicious effect by the great Fritz Rasp.

Incidently, we want to point out the similarity of the scene where the spy Kitty manipulates her way into Matsumoto’s apartment to the scene in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) where the Daryl Hannah character, Pris, manipulates her way into J.F. Sebastian’s home.

On the whole, Lang’s fascinating tale of super spy intrigue gets sidetracked by von Harbou’s love story but we still enjoy this film during multiple viewings.

— Carl Bennett

This remastered Blu-ray Disc edition from Kino Lorber has been mastered from the 2K digital restoration produced by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung. Given the slightly longer running time over the 2004 Kino edition, this edition should feature even more footage than other home video editions. We do not know whether the difference in running time is the result of additional footage or of a slightly slower video transfer speed. The 35mm source material features a broad range of greytones and very-good to excellent image detail, but the restoration team has chosen to allow some of the typical flaws of vintage film prints such as dust, speckling, exposure variations, fine vertical scratches and picture instability to remain.

While the restoration work is very-good, we still have a big problem with high-definition transfers that do not capture the picture with continuous greytones but with a field of pointilistic black dots that create the illusion of greytones based on the density of dots. Just about any still frame on an HD monitor will reveal the dots. The results do create a sharp image when the picture is in motion but, whether it is the effect of overemphasized film grain or a method of HD video transfer, we feel that a continuous tone transfer will render a slightly softer but more filmlike picture.

In this disc, we have noted that the dots are quite noticable in some shots when they are larger and coarser but less noticable when the dots are finer. Why there is such a mix of image dot resolutions is something we can’t answer. A close look at the inset shot of a letter that begins at 6:29 shows no sign of the dots and smooth greytones, yet the surrounding shots of Herr Jason (Craighall Sherry) are full of the swarming black dots. Another example of a far smoother image is seen in the inset shot of an alarm clock that begins at 28:14.

As with many of the high-definition home video editions of silent films that have been produced since Blu-ray Discs were introduced, we have challenged the pointilistic dot method of HD image delivery but we suspect that many viewers will not see what we see, think that we are nitpicking, and that they are satisfied with many of these Blu-ray Discs. We, however, feel that the goal of home video producers should be to render the most filmlike experience to home viewers.

This edition features a fine musical accompaniment performed on solo piano by Neil Brand.

The supplementary material includes a featurette “Spies: A Small Film with Lots of Action” (68 minutes); and the original German theatrical trailer (5 minutes).

Despite the reservations we have regarding the method of image capture and delivery, we still recommend this Blu-ray Disc as the best-looking home video edition of Spies that is available.

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.
This Region A Blu-ray Disc edition is also available directly from . . .

This Blu-ray Disc edition is identical to the Kino Classics edition noted above.

The film is accompanied by a piano music score composed and performed by Neil Brand.

The supplemental material includes a 32-page booklet featuring an essay by Tom Gunning.

We highly recommend this Blu-ray Disc boxset, especially if you would like to collect all of Fritz Lang’s silent films in one fell swoop.

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

This edition features a fine musical accompaniment performed on solo piano by Neil Brand.

The supplementary material includes a featurette “Spies: A Small Film with Lots of Action” (68 minutes); and the original German theatrical trailer (5 minutes).

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.
This Region 1 NTSC DVD edition is also available directly from . . .

This presentation features the original German language intertitles with optional English language subtitles, a new music score composed and performed by Neil Brand (BD only) and may include the music score composed and performed on digital piano and synthesizer by Donald Sosin in 2005 for Eureka (DVD only).

The supplemental material includes a 71-minute documentary (BD only), and a 52-page booklet with writings by critic Murielle Joudet and an essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum.

North American collectors will need a region-free Blu-ray Disc player or a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

United Kingdom: Click to purchase this Region B Blu-ray Disc / Region 2 PAL DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.

This quality DVD edition from Kino International has been mastered from the excellent 2004 35mm restoration materials from the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, differing greatly from the truncated American version of the film, and released for the first time on home video. The reconstruction effort began with an excellent original nitrate print of significant length from the Národni Filmovy Archiv in Prague, with missing footage inserted from nitrate prints held by Filmarchiv Austria, Screensound Australia, Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek, and the UCLA Film and Television Archive, with reconstruction assistance from La Cinémathèque française. The reconstruction was compiled from several 35mm prints held by world film archives. The results are spectacular. Nearly free of print flaws such as dust and speckling, the full-frame slightly-faster-than-natural-speed video transfer holds the fine image details and broad greyscale range of the restoration print. We are pleased to see footage here that was not retained in the shortened American-release edition. As would be expected, the storyline’s tangents make sense and the narrative flow is much improved.

This edition features a dynamic new musical accompaniment performed on digital piano and synthesizer by Donald Sosin.

This 2004 home video edition still looks good on a high-definition system with line-doubling capabilities but it is clear that the disc could look better.

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.
This Region 1 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This gorgeous Region 2 PAL DVD edition is based on the same 2004 restoration materials from the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung as the Kino International edition noted above. The reconstruction effort began with an excellent original nitrate print of significant length from the Národni Filmovy Archiv in Prague, with missing footage inserted from nitrate prints held by Filmarchiv Austria, Screensound Australia, Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek, and the UCLA Film and Television Archive, with reconstruction assistance from La Cinémathèque française. The original German language intertitles were restored from flash titles in a duplicate negative held by Gosfilmofond. The results are very-good. Nearly free of print flaws such as dust and speckling, the full-frame slightly-faster-than-natural-speed video transfer holds the fine image details and broad greyscale range of the restoration print. We are pleased to see footage here that was not retained in the shortened American-release edition. As would be expected, the storyline’s tangents make sense and the narrative flow is much improved.

That being said, we have a problem with the low-resolution DVD encoding that produces a far coarser picture than the 2004 Kino edition does. Fat lines of horizontal, interlaced image resolution are readily seen on today’s high-definition systems. We have lowered our initial rating of the video quality because of this.

This presentation features the original German language intertitles with optional English language subtitles, a new music score composed and performed on digital piano and synthesizer by Donald Sosin, a stills gallery containing rare promotional material, and a 20-page booklet with a new essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum.

We have previously recommended this edition for collectors with a PAL format DVD player, but we are now likely to recommend the remastered dual-disc Eureka edition that is noted above (once we have actually viewed it). North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 2 PAL DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 2 PAL DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

It is certainly a relief to see two Fritz Lang films on one DVD for less than $20. But we asked, will the films look better than The Spiders (1919-1920) on DVD? Or will they look as horrible as the low-budget editions of Metropolis (1927)? It would be a collector’s dream to acquire Lang’s silent era action drama of international spies and his tour-de-force early sound film starring Peter Lorre as a sinister child murderer, both for less than a Jackson.

From the opening titles (and they are not the original main titles) we know that the source print for the video transfer of Spies was a 35mm print from the Blackhawk Films collection, prepared from an abridged American release of the film. All insert shots of letters, newspaper articles, handwritten notes, etc., are in English and are contemporary to the 1920s. We are familiar with the print from the early 1990s laserdisc edition, but were unable to confirm our suspicion that this was the same video transfer. This DVD features the same theater-organ score, as performed by the great Gaylord Carter, as was available on laserdisc.

Despite the fact that the American release of Spies was shorter than the German release, the print (and thus the story) seems to be relatively intact. The print is in very good condition, with moderate speckling, occasional print scratches and some print damage. The transfer is at correct running speed and holds a broad range of greytones. But we would have liked to have seen this in a windowboxed transfer. The letter to Jason of the Secret Service will be cut off on the left and right sides on most television monitors. On some occasions, the tops of heads are cropped off as well. While we respect and admire his performances, Carter’s organ score lends more than a Pickford-romance touch to the presentation of an action-thriller.

The DVD is supplemented nicely with Lang’s great early sound film, M, starring the equally great Peter Lorre. The soundtrack of this early sound film is noisy (and we can only assume that it is from being manufactured originally on a disc-based sound system?) but can be cleared up some by an adjustment to the viewer’s sound system. The good video transfer is of a moderately speckled 35mm print, with video master glitches to be seen at 4:01 into the film. The picture also has a case of minor twitches on the edits between shots for about 4-6 minutes, which appears to be in the video master as well. The subtitles in M have occasional spelling errors and have an annoying double-line to the vertical strokes of their typeface, possibly from being rendered on PC-based video. The subtitles are also part of the video transfer and cannot be turned off. The disc also features a Felix the Cat cartoon, 1923’s All Puzzled, transferred from a blurry and washed-out 16mm print which has fared better on other home video releases.

Despite our quality pickiness, this DVD was a good value for the moderate cost. But, the film M is available in a far superior presentation on DVD from Criterion, and this version of Spies is surpassed by the 2016 Kino Blu-ray Disc edition noted above. This disc is of value only for a record of the edited American release version, and is now out-of-print.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

Other GERMAN FILMS of the silent era available on home video.

Other CRIME FILMS of the silent era available on home video.