Jeff Heinrich

An archetype of criminal sociopathy, "Dr. Mabuse" began life a century ago as a popular character in the bestselling novels of Luxembourg writer Norbert Jacques and went on to fame in the cinema in two contemporary adaptations by German director Fritz Lang: Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922) and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933). After his emigration to America and rebirth as a Hollywood director, in 1960 Lang returned to Germany and made his final film, completing his Mabuse trilogy with The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, once again starring Rudolf Klein-Rogge in the title role of the arch-villain and master of disguise, but to diminishing returns. Over the next half-decade, some lesser German directors took up the Mabuse mantle with equally B-movie results: five "krimis" (crime thrillers) in four years, each starring Wolfgang Preiss. Pumped out by Artur Brauner's CCC Film studios, these five have now been restored in 2K and collected, along with Lang's third Mabuse film, in a Blu-ray boxset by British distributor Eureka! Masters of Cinema: they are The Return of Dr. Mabuse (1961), The Invisible Dr. Mabuse (1962), the remake The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1962), Scotland Yard Hunts Dr. Mabuse (1963), and The Death Ray of Dr. Mabuse (1964). In each, Mabuse sows chaos wherever he goes: brainwashing prison inmates to commit crimes, plotting to steal a secret "invisibility" device, masterminding evil deeds from within an insane asylum, spreading his mayhem across the English Channel (Klaus Kinski plays a Scotland Yard inspector in that one), and lastly, striking out to a remote island to get his hands on a weapon that could destroy the world. In the Masters of Cinema set, all six films come with optional English dub tracks and optional English subtitles; the discs are code-locked to regions A and B (North America and Europe, essentially). For extras, you get audio commentaries new and old, interviews new and old as well (including one with Brauner's daughter Alice, his heir to CCC, and another with Preiss, from 2002), new introductions to each film (by Tim Lucas), a video essay on "krimis", an alternate Italian cut of Death Ray, an alternate French ending to Thousand Eyes, and trailers. A 60-page book completes the package, featuring new writings by journalist Holger Haase and German film scholar Tim Bergfelder, an archival essay by David Cairns, archival writing by Lang, and notes by Lotte Eisner on the great director’s final unreleased projects.

Playing in an orchestra was a civic duty for many a classical musician in communist Czechoslovakia, but finding the time to rehearse properly was always a struggle. Everyone from cellists to timpanists had to juggle their official duties as musicians with a bevy of civilian functions: participating in workers' committee meetings, showing up for mandatory fitness classes, attending receptions for the party brass. At least, that's the picture painted in Slovak director Peter Solan's dark comedy The Barnabáš Kos Case. Released near the start of the Czech New Wave in cinema, the movie charts the rise and fall of the titular hero Kos (played by sad-eyed Josef Kemr), a lowly member of a state orchestra occasionally called upon to play his percussive instrument: the triangle. Avoiding the limelight is his chief quality, and yet when the management go looking for someone to take over the directorship of the orchestra, running its day-to-day affairs and planning new concerts, for some reason they choose him. At first Kos declines, but then he sees an advantage: he'll use his new position to raise the status of his cherished instrument in the eyes of his fellow musicians. Soon enough, he has moved the triangle to centre stage and commissioned a composer to write a new work especially for him, which he premieres at a gala concert attended by throngs of the party faithful and hoi polloi. It's then that everyone sees that the new emperor has no clothes. The concert is a disaster – as a featured solo instrument, the triangle falls on deaf ears, the audience left simply dumbfounded – and Kos's power trip comes to a humilating end. A satire of a state system that rewarded mediocrity with all-too-predictable results, The Barnabáš Kos Case is also inventive filmmaking, with a touch of Tati in its sight-and-sound gags (cigarette lighters play a music-box tune when lit, everyone bumps their head on the same construction beam backstage, a voluble party boss is seen and heard only through a half-open door while he takes a bath), and when he's not focused on the players themselves cinematographer Tibor Biath's eye is drawn to semi-abstract compositions of wall fixtures, spreads of food and shadows on pavement. Briskly paced, its absurdist humor ringing true, in normal times the movie would have been a surefire arthouse hit, but since its release it has been little seen outside its native land. Now comes a crisp new restoration in 2K by the Slovak Film Institute (SFI), rendered onto region-free, newly English-subtitled Blu-ray by the U.K. boutique distributor Second Run. Extras include a short introduction to the film by SFI director Rastislav Steranka (his English is thickly accented and isn't subtitled, alas), and three short Slovak films. Made between 1968 and 1974, these range from a Solan documentary about an infamous Nazi massacre that happened at the end of the Second World War, a fly-on-the-wall portrait of a popular Slovak actress rushing between public appearences, and an animated short by Viktor Kubal that mirrors Barnabáš Kos in its depiction of a ladder-climbing everyman who takes a tumble. Completing the package is a 32-page booklet with a new essay by Czechoslovak film expert Jonathan Owen and director Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio).