According to US Copyright Law there is.
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#103

Read what it says. It actually proves me right by stating that infringing works are themselves copyrightable. By stating that there are limits on the protection for infringing works, it there must mean that such works have some level of copyright protection. What you quote then goes on to limit that copyright protection to the non-infringing elements (which is always the case with derivative works, anyway, infringing or not: the copyright in the derivative work does not extend to the non-original material - this is put forth in the (b) subsection of the section of the Copyright Act that you quoted). So, even in what you quote, infringing material is copyrightable. That copyright just doesn't cover elements that are already copyrighted by someone else. Infringement is not a bar to copyrightability, it's just a limit on the bounds of such a copyright.

Nosferatu has all sorts of elements within it that are non-infringing: the design of the title cards, the make up design, various cinematographic elements, etc. Each of these were entitled to copyright protection, even if other elements of the film were not because they infringed on Stoker's novel.

DJ

Exactly.

Regarding the framerate of Metropolis, all historical evidence I've come across suggests the film was meant to be projected in the neighborhood of 24-28 fps. For example, the city animation was done at 25 fps, and the score commissioned for the premiere has a notation on it that it was to be performed to coincide with a 28 fps projection.

20 fps may have a more "natural" look to it, but that's fairly irrelevant, as silent films were often meant to be projected at speeds much faster than those in which they were shot.

All historical data I've seen confirms a 24+ fps projection speed for the film, and David Shepard, for example, agrees with that assessment. All 20 fps has going for it is that some people think it "looks good." As compared to the actual contradictory evidence, what some people think "looks good" means little to me. The 24fps restoration and 25fps video transfer are fine by me.

DJ

Yeah, I typed up a pretty lengthy post back when the DVD came out, but I'm too lazy to search for it, and djtoell says pretty much everything I would... there's nothing 'wrong' with the frame rate of the current DVD and it may actually be more accurate that some of the alternatives.

I appreciate what Glenn Erickson wrote on the subject:

This makes sense to me and long films certainly have hurt many a fine director (ex. Tati's Playtime).

Perhaps we can only guess at Lang's specific intent, but if anyone has a great idea why Lang would want his film shown so that movement appears comical, let us know.

Otherwise, how about a little common sense?

No difference in the frame-rate on the two editions. I just had one of my typical brain farts - which seem to be increasing with age.
However the image on the eureka is much better than on the kino. For those with region free players, the eureka is the preferred edition.

Isn't that disc PAL? Doesn't PAL speedup just compound the problem?

I don't think the 25fps PAL version should be replaced (even though it has a lot of ghosting, DVNR artifacts, and off-greyscale discoloring...), but why not a slower version just as a companion?

After all, Warner and MK2 included both the 1925 and 1942 cuts of The Gold Rush, Criterion has both 1927 roadshow and 1928 general release cuts of The King of Kings, and Milestone released both the 1925 general release and 1930 international versions of Phantom of the Opera on DVD.

The frame-rate is the least of my issues with the current Kino DVD, though...

Check out the comparison between the R2 edition and Kino's:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCom...etropolis2.htm

Transit Film's is sharp as a tack while Kino's is really soft.

Why randomly modify the speed to what may have been a completely unknown framerate during its original release?

Those are all specific, known, and official variants. Do you know of a specific official exhibition of Metropolis run at a significantly slower framerate (random decisions of theatre owners and modern exhibitions aside)?

The idea of slowing down a silent film to appeal to modern viewers who have a problem with the faster historically acurate framerate just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

DJ

With all due respect to Mr. Erickson, his theory is completely his own speculation. There is nothing to indicate, beyond mere speculation, that the Berlin premiere was anything remotely like a cut-down version of Playtime. What benefit could UFA even get from speeding the film at the premiere? They couldn't've been trying to squeeze in additional screenings to make more money. Why do anything other than let Lang run the film at his desired speed?

Why? It was a completely common element of films of the time. Filmmakers did it on purpose. Audiences were used to it. It was not comical to them. It is only comical to modern viewers who expect natural movement and don't appreciate history. If anything, silent film viewers found sound films, shot and projected at natural speed, to be too slow.

See, for example, this article from film restoration legend Kevin Brownlow. He documents a virtual laundry list of films that were meant to be projected at a speed faster than that at which they were shot. Speeding up a film from 19 or 20 fps to 24 fps was hardly a rare occurrence. As Brownlow finds, based on supporting evidence from David Shepard in regard to Nanook of the North: "silent pictures were invariably shown slightly faster than they were shot."

See also: this 1955 article by James Card (original emphasis):

Contemporaneous evidence supports a faster-than-natural projection speed for the film. Why animate the city at 25 fps if it was meant to be projected slower? Why instruct the score to be performed with a 28 fps projection? And so forth. The historical data, combined with the completely normal practice of such sped-up projection of the period, makes such a faster projection speed being correct as the simplest and most logical explanation. No wild speculation about undocumented decision of UFA to speed up the film at its premiere is needed.

Indeed. Common sense says that the historical evidence, combined with the prevalent practice of such faster-than-natural projection speeds, makes clear that 24-28 fps is the proper framerate for Metropolis.

I think Brownlow sums it up for me as to why I find the idea of a "companion" slowed-down release of Metropolis to be distasteful (emphasis mine):

DJ

I've watched both editions and the Eureka looks much better than the Kino to me. Artefacts like ghosting were created by the pal to ntsc transfer. But you can also check out the dvdbeaver comparison. There are some screenshots there showing the problems with the kino. Or even better, get a copy of the eureka and check it out for yourself.

Have you watched the Eureka version? I think you are confusing this with the kino ntsc version where all the artefacts you mention in your post show up.
The dvdbeaver site you link to actually talks a little about this.

Also, as you say, the image on the eureka is much better than the kino.

If any "new element"are located I'd love to see a newly remastered version of both movies.
Nosferatu is one of my all time favourites, and to think because of Bram Stokers widow we nearly never got a chance to see this great classic, as she demanded that ALL copies of Nosferatu be destroyed ( shades of Farenheit 451!! ) because of the copyright wrangle!

In England the BFI has brought out a DVD of Nosferatu with a new soundtrack by the late Hammer Dracula composer James Bernard!

The highly publicized and oft repeated legend of the existing prints destroyed by Bram Stoker's widow may not really hold water, according to recent research. Here's what Lokke Heiss (commentator on a number of DVDs) has to say, from alt.movies.silent:

There's no evidence that a SINGLE print or negative was destroyed from
the legal proceedings caused by Mrs. Stoker. Her case was against the
Deutsch-Amerikanisch Film Union, the receivership of the defunct Prana
company, and DAF eventually decided that the inherent value of the film
wasn't worth the money it would take the defend the case in court. So
they withdrew their appeal and in July 1925 the court ordered this
receivership to destroy all copies of the film, and although this might
have happened, there is no record of this actually having been done.

And this legal order was only to this one company in Germany. The film
had already spread around the world, and although the idea of a
Florence Stoker "Van Helsing" effort to rid the world of a new scourge
is attractive, the boring answer is that it probably suffered suffered
the same fate as most other films from the period, the various copies
disappearing from neglect or disinterest. Most of Murnau's early work
is lost, and we can't blame Florence for those losses.

There appear to be about four copies to survive from this time period,
and are archived at MOMA, the Munich Filmmuseum, and the Cinematheque
Francaise. There is a copy in the Spanish archive, but I don't know if
that is a dupe from perhaps the French archive, and I think there was a
South American partial print floating around somewhere. The MOMA print
is not especially a good one, and has English intertitles. I don't
remember exactly how and when they got their copy.

There is an alternate version of Nosferatu called the Twelfth Hour,
produced by 'Deutsch Film Production' so sharp that Lotte Eisner
describes it to be "cleary a copy from the original negative." Her
theory is that somebody sold the elements of the film to DFP. This
production company reedited the film, adding some ready-made peasant
scenes and putting in a musical soundtrack. The censor's certificate is
dated 1930, so the negative, or at least an excellent print from the
negative, existed in Germany at this time, five years after the court
order to destroy all copies.

I agree with Eisner that the film never was destroyed after the court
order. Instead they just stuck it away somewhere, then five years
later, sold it later for a few Deutsch Marks to DFP. So other than to
create a good story, there's no evidence that Florence Stoker's efforts
did anything at all.

Here's the problem, though... Enno Patalas says that 24fps is right. Martin Koerber says 20fps is right. The DVD is 25fps.

If 20 or 22 fps is heresy, at least we can get one notch slower at 24fps. Turner Classic Movies aired Metropolis from a 24fps source (looked like a 16mm print of the digital restoration, oddly enough). It looked just right... except for a few shots, mostly the bits with the False Maria dancing.

In other words, the PAL speedup doesn't fit in with either Patalas (a historian and reconstruction head for the film) nor Koerber (the restorer). Besides, having a fully progressive 24fps transfer without the ghosting and other nasty PAL conversion artifacts is worth the slight slow-down.

It depends on what you mean by "right". Even Koerber admits that the film premiered at 24-28fps (see this interview). He never suggests that the film was meant to be shown slower by Lang, he only believes that natural speed occurs at 20fps. This is simply his aesthetic opinion, and being unsupported by history, his status as a restorer in irrelevant in that regard. If anything, it's troubling. I haven't seen any serious historical account that places the film as running slower than 24fps, and often it is placed faster. All we've got to support a slower speed is aesthetic opinion (as with Koerber) or fantastical but unsupported theory (as with Erickson).

All that would require is a proper NTSC transfer of the restoration, which is fine by me.

DJ

One thread devoted to arguments over both the proper frame rate of "Metropolis" and "Nosferatu" copyright issues. You guys made my day.