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

The Hands of Orlac (1924)

This infamous Austrian horror production, directed by Richard Wiene, stars Conrad Veidt as a concert pianist who loses his hands in a train accident, only to have them replaced by the transplanted hands of a criminal.

This DVD edition, which is the first quality DVD produced of The Hands of Orlac (1924), has been transferred in high-definition and mastered in standard definition from the 1995 35mm restoration print produced by Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung and the Deutsches Filminstitut, with additional footage from a 16mm reduction print in the Raymond Rohauer collection, now held by the Cohen Media Group. The results show a distracting amount of dust, with moderate amounts of speckling, emulsion chipping, and other print flaws. While we are leery of modern HDR video releases — with the market-driven preference for black blacks, white white highlights, and bright, oversaturated colors — we feel that the deepest shadows in this edition are a bit too grey and should have been pushed closer toward dark-grey blacks.

The film is accompanied by a music score composed and arranged by Paul Mercer and performed by a small ensemble of strings, piano and vocals.

Supplemental material includes example comparisons of the domestic German and international versions of the film; exerpts from Maurice Renard’s source novel; a stills gallery (13 images); an essay by Veidt author John Soister; and a trailer for Mad Love (1935), the remake starring Peter Lorre.

While we recommend this home video edition of the film, we hope that Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung is able to return to the earliest surviving material and, using modern tools, update their restoration of this film for theatrical and home video viewing.

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This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This DVD-R edition from public-domain home video company Grapevine Video has been transferred from a contrasty 16mm reduction print of good-to-very-good quality, but has been mastered from a videotape dub (videotape glitches and all!) of the original edition, which features German language intertitles and permanent Spanish subtitles. As is to be expected, some highlight details are blasted out and shadows are closed up.

The source video accompanies the film with a custom music score performed on piano, wind and reed instruments, and eerie (read: annoying) female vocals.

Production of this edition was discontinued in July 2006.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

Other silent era CONRAD VEIDT films available on home video.

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