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The 35mm release prints from 1962 were missing the left side of the image to make room for the soundtrack.
They derived from a full-aperture dupe neg of Rohauer’s dupe neg
of the 12 November 1926 preview print shown at the Alex in Glendale.
The lab that made the 35mm prints in 1962 was Beta Technik of Munich.
The technicians created a submaster on a misaligned machine
and printed in a new translucent frameline near the top of the image.
They also caused other damage.
Cinemas then cropped off the top and bottom, as cinemas always do
(except for that brief time when I was a projectionist —
and my bosses had NO IDEA what on earth I was doing or why;
they just thought I was crazy, dangerously so).
Beta Technik made the 35mm prints via A/B roll.
The A roll was the cropped dupe neg.
The B roll consisted of the titles, which had been shot to fit through the Academy aperture
and which included a cropped dupe of the first shot of the train.
It was necessary to include that first shot in the B roll since the opening credits wipe into that shot.
Ouch!
I just decided to check that first shot against the Kino K669
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The German lab created a 16mm A roll by misprinting the cropped 35mm dupe
through the Academy aperture, without readjustments.
That is why the left side was lopped off.
Further, the film was run out of frame, with the image too high,
resulting in the loss of much more of the top of the image than of the bottom.
To compound the errors, the image was enlarged to lose all four sides.
The lab also copied the 35mm B roll titles to create a 16mm B roll.
The degradation of the opening shot of the train
is so severe that it is blatantly apparent even to those who are oblivious to technical problems.
The German lab also enlarged the B roll, losing the top, right, and bottom of the image.
The remainder of the film looks mediocre at best, with poor contrast and flicker throughout.
The scenes are severely cropped on all four sides, by close to 50%,
which renders some moments utterly senseless.
Which German lab was responsible for this, I do not know.
The whereabouts of the 35mm German fine-grains are unknown.
The whereabouts of the 35mm German dupe negs are unknown.
The whereabouts of any remaining 35mm German prints in usable condition are unknown. (Update: One such print still survives at Jupiter-Film GmbH in Vienna.)
The whereabouts of the negatives or fine-grains of the German titles are unknown.
The whereabouts of the audio negative are unknown.
The whereabouts of the original magnetic tapes are unknown.
The whereabouts of the written score and parts are unknown.
The whereabouts of the earlier score, also by Konrad Elfers, which Buster approved but which the distributor rejected, are unknown.
The whereabouts of the studio and distributor documents pertaining to this edition are unknown.
Most likely, all the above items were destroyed in the 1970’s.
If, perchance, a few of these items survived beyond the 1970’s,
then they almost certainly perished when KirchMedia folded in 2002.
The DFF (Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum) in Wiesbaden
has a single 35mm print, but it is too shrunken and damaged to be of much use anymore.
Jupiter-Film GmbH of Vienna, as mentioned above, also has a single print,
but the rights have lapsed and so it would be illegal to make any use of it.
Those might be the only survivors.
Thanks to a colleague, I learned that a 16mm print was listed on German eBay.
I placed a bankrupting bid, with no expectation and no hope that I would win.
I placed the bid only so that I would not have to kick myself later for not having placed a bid.
I won.
 
    Why did they change her name to Mary?                    
Once I can afford to digitize the print, I shall not need it anymore.
Here is the bid history.
These seven other bidders and I all have the same interests.
Rather than compete, we should collaborate.
I would be happy to hear from any of these bidders,
who should feel free to contact me.
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| Bieter / Bewertungspunktestand | Gebotsbetrag | Zeitpunkt des Gebots |
| 5***i (558) | EUR 261,00 | 14 Dez 2023, 16:48:50 MEZ |
| 8***n (450) | EUR 169,05 | 14 Dez 2023, 15:13:45 MEZ |
| 8***n (450) | EUR 135,05 | 14 Dez 2023, 5:10:17 MEZ |
| r***5 (222) | EUR 130,00 | 13 Dez 2023, 20:40:47 MEZ |
| i***d (1105) | EUR 122,89 | 5 Dez 2023, 16:06:13 MEZ |
| 8***n (450) | EUR 119,05 | 12 Dez 2023, 9:07:05 MEZ |
| 5***4 (1635) | EUR 113,67 | 8 Dez 2023, 17:24:55 MEZ |
| 9***8 (331) | EUR 111,00 | 4 Dez 2023, 20:49:35 MEZ |
| 5***o (352) | EUR 100,00 | 4 Dez 2023, 17:50:38 MEZ |
| Startpreis | EUR 1,00 | 4 Dez 2023, 16:49:00 MEZ |
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imineo,
Buster Keaton vol.8 - Film 2
https://dai.ly/x3uftfs, Friday, February 26, 2016 at 5:00 AM
Here we have the German 16mm edition as exported to England.
As we can infer, the original English titles had been discarded
and were thus replaced by mistranslations of the German mistranslations.
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