david hare wrote:I think it would be safe to say, without having seen it yet that Tag's lengthy video essay will be far from a "low" presence on the set. As must be obvious Tag prefers video essaying to the intrusive practice of commentary tracks, so the essay format is precisely what he wanted to do. I think it's also true to say the version of Germany Year Zero would not have been the German soundtrack (correct) version without his involvement.
You are quite right to remind us of the excellent quality of Mr Gallagher's visual essays, at least the ones I have watched on Rossellini and Ophuls DVDs (Caught and Letter from an Unknown Woman specifically); others are waiting for their turn. I would suppose this coming one covering three films would be very substantial, both in length and content. So a single appearance in the extras might indeed be worth several of other types.
david hare wrote:I think anyone who's seen Tag's essay on Francesco will be holding their breath for this. It's one of the finest - no the finest addition to a masterpiece I've ever seen on DVD. Never seen anything so spritually attuned and in such thrall to the original work.
The one that you describe as amongst his finest is the one prepared for the trilogy or the one for Francesco? In that last case, M. Gallagher describes it as an "orphan" on this page. I suppose it has only been shown in festivals or repertory screenings of the film?
I just pulled my old abomination from 2005 out to look at it-- and it's the Arrow ed. I love the banner running up top of the box "DIGITALLY RESTORED", and the blurb on the back of the case-- "Due to the scarcities of war, scraps of film acquired from photographers had to be used, giving the film a uniquely gritty style. Now digitally restored, Rossellini's masterpiece appears as never before."
The sentence is incomplete: it should read:
"Now digitally restored, Rossellini's masterpiece appears as never before: in a transfer which accomplishes the previously impossible-- renders a great film completely unwatchable."
It's ONE TIME that a movie was completely ruined in this fashion by a transfer. I've never had to Not Watch a film before just because of the transfer. I guess my coming up age watching roof-antennae TV, as well as smaller TV's with tin-foily rabbit-ears, has left me very appreciative and tolerant of non-CC level quality. I can watch Alphas and be perfectly fine with them. This on the other hand was just too much to take.
david hare wrote:Sadly it never made it to either the MoC or the Criterion discs. I have it on a copy of numerous Tag intros/essays.
So I gather it was the Francesco essay you were referring to as showing TG so spiritually attuned to his subject. Too bad this visual essay (and some others by him) remain unavailable to most of us.
david hare wrote:Sadly it never made it to either the MoC or the Criterion discs. I have it on a copy of numerous Tag intros/essays.
So I gather it was the Francesco essay you were referring to as showing TG so spiritually attuned to his subject. Too bad this visual essay (and some others by him) remain unavailable to most of us.
We may be able to see some of these after all.
If someone knows how to convert a more-than-1GB VIDEO_TS file, with optional subtitles, to a subtitled avi or Quicktime movie that would be a smaller file, then pm me. It will come from Tag himself.
Since that's out of the bag I guess we can say the Cineteca LOST the new restoration!! I understand the whole project was delayed for months over this nonsense.
Now that the whatever's out of the bag, care to elaborate? I don't know the backstory, but a quick Google search shows me nothing but screenings of the Cineteca restoration, so I gather prints are still going around. You're saying that they lost the restored negative, or digital master (was it restored digitally?), or something along those lines?
Losing the best copy of a pivotal work of film history seems like a newsworthy item with a story worth telling.
Since that's out of the bag I guess we can say the Cineteca LOST the new restoration!! I understand the whole project was delayed for months over this nonsense.
Now that the whatever's out of the bag, care to elaborate? I don't know the backstory, but a quick Google search shows me nothing but screenings of the Cineteca restoration, so I gather prints are still going around. You're saying that they lost the restored negative, or digital master (was it restored digitally?), or something along those lines?
Losing the best copy of a pivotal work of film history seems like a newsworthy item with a story worth telling.
That's a strange story.
Cinecittà Holding, who made the 1995 restauration, owns film's copyright, so when Criterion bought rights also got the old print.
Cineteca Nazionale, instead, owns the new restauration, so Criterion had to talk with them in order to get the new video. At first the Cineteca men seemed very collaborative, but then they delayed and delayed...
I don't think they LOST the digital master... probably they simply don't care so much about having a good DVD version out there
(It's a shame, I know.)
I do wonder about Criterion sometimes. Naturally this will still be the first item in my basket in the next B&N sale but I'm disappointed by the pictureboxing (if it's like Berlin Alexanderplatz you lose 34 pixels vertically and horizontally). At least I can manually crop when watching with VLC.
This release looked great on paper alone. Beaver's comments confirm it will be absolutely indspendable.
Returning now to the topic of Tag Gallagher's "orphan" video essays:
GringoTex wrote:We may be able to see some of these after all.
If someone knows how to convert a more-than-1GB VIDEO_TS file, with optional subtitles, to a subtitled avi or Quicktime movie that would be a smaller file, then pm me. It will come from Tag himself.
The set looks absolutely stunning. . . and the pictureboxing issue is nothing compared to the extreme excellence of the fact of this box's existence, and the work that went into securing the proper-- and hugely restored-- versions of these films. I just can't wait to get my greezy niggling mitts on it.
i want to pre-order this SOOOOOOOOO bad, but my criterion budget is not large, and word is B&N will be doing another 50% off sale this spring some time, so i'll have to wait...it's just too good a deal to get this for $30 instead of $50+....but that beaver review has me salivating at the idea of it all. Amazing how they started the year off with perhaps their greatest accomplishment yet!
Have it in my hands and on the deck - it's a quite superb set - will take a while to absorb it all, especially the copious extras, but certainly the best these 3 films will ever look on DVD...
HerrSchreck wrote:I just pulled my old abomination from 2005 out to look at it-- and it's the Arrow ed. I love the banner running up top of the box "DIGITALLY RESTORED", and the blurb on the back of the case-- "Due to the scarcities of war, scraps of film acquired from photographers had to be used, giving the film a uniquely gritty style. Now digitally restored, Rossellini's masterpiece appears as never before."
Anytime anyone goes soft and starts thinking anything written in marketing or advertising to sell product to the hungry consumer might actually be true, they should read this quote.
Peacock wrote:So i'm guessing this will have the full torture scene in Roma, Citta Aperta and the italian title at the beginning? Unlike the terrible uk disk...
(Gotta have that torture)
I am sure that Dick Cheney has had this on his want list.
On both this set and Il Generale della Rovere I found Tag Gallagher's input invaluable but really had trouble understanding what he was saying sometimes. He seems to mumble a lot, at least to my ears.
Just finished Paisan, the only one of the set I hadn't seen.
A very interesting film, even if Marty Scorsese did kind of spoil it for me. I spent the first episode and a half wondering if I'd seen Paisan before. Then I remembered taking an Italian journey with Marty. Anyway, in Paisan, I liked the shifting/wavering focus from Americans to Italians. And Rossellini's structure is clever.
I'm looking forward to good quality Rome OC and Germany YZ, as I've only seen them on Chinese "public domain" editions, supposedly legit iffy editions sold in gov't bookstores for 50% more than the pristine pirate dvd's everywhere else.
At the very start of the video essay (Rome OC), Tag Gallagher does mumble quickly. For the first two sentences I wasn't sure if he spoke English. A couple of rewinds and I caught what he was saying.
After that it's much clearer and I got used to his rhythm and speech.
But they could have used a re-take on those first two sentences.
He does pack a lot in, and the pace felt rushed at times.
A simple example is some of the then and now photos of parts of Berlin. Just no time to take in anything really.
Yes, we all have pause buttons, but the pace could have been less moving-on-now hurry-up don't-dawdle.
Another example: "This is Giuletta Masina's staircase, and this is the first shot Fellini ever directed, and ..."
It's like they told Tag he had 20 minutes for the video essay and he said great 20 minutes on Rome Open City, and they said, well it's, uh, 20 minutes for all three films, so maybe you can just keep it moving and hit the highlights.
Last time I was rushed like that through through Italian culture was in the catacombs of Rome.
Last edited by Lemmy Caution on Tue Feb 16, 2010 12:00 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Lemmy Caution wrote:Just finished Paisan, the only one of the set I hadn't seen.
A very interesting film, even if Marty Scorsese did kind of soil it for me.
