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I got the impression with the old dvd that the translation was lacking, I have no way to prove this given that I don't speak french but I would like to see a revised translation on the madman.

Just to clarify that: I don't speak french, so couldn't say for sure but there were many instances where I felt like I wasn't catching the meaning of a line simply because it wasn't translated properly. It felt even more opaque than godard usually is.

I think the issue with the subtitles for this film is that the films' text(s) are so heavily layered that standard, conscientious subtitling practice can't handle the amount of language that breezes by simultaneously. I've only got the French edition which, as I recall, opted to focus on the narration, leaving untranslated most of the on-screen texts and the dialogue in the film extracts.

I believe the Artificial Eye set offers a much more comprehensive set of subtitles, and the old Japanese set was supposed to be a kind of Holy Grail (if you speak Japanese) which offered on-screen annotations identifying all of the film extracts and providing sources for quotations - quite a feat of scholarship that it would be great to have access to in English.

The speculation around the Australian set is all about how its subtitles will stack up against the rival releases. If I recall correctly, they've promised that they'd be the most comprehensive set to date in English, so there's even the vain hope that we might finally get an English version of the Japanese annotations.

Personally, this seems to me like a golden opportunity to actually use DVD technology creatively, with separate sets of subs for the different layers of the text (narration, film dialogue, on-screen texts), another one for annotations, and a combined edit of the 'most important' bits for the first-time viewer. I know that sounds anally academic, but who's the audience for this film, after all?

Really looking forward to this even though i have the French set already!

Newly-created subtitles identifying each of the image, music, text and narration tracks

Does this mean it's more of the Japanese-style subtitling?

Is anyone planning on picking this up? I'm curious about the new subtitles identifying sources. I've emailed Olive Films to try and find out if there is any chance they will be picking up this feature from Madman through a license.

I got this dvd. I haven't made my way through it but from what I've seen it's very good. You have the option of watching the film with subtitles for the audio and onscreen text, which at first look is much more comprehensive than the Gaumont dvd. The second option is with a subtitle track identifying the what films are being used. This track is especially useful when there is a film clip that is only up for a brief amount of time (I forget what clip it was that I'm referring to but I remember not even noticing it before). Lastly, on the first disc there is a sort of visual essay by Adrian Martin in the style of Tag Gallagher. If you're familiar with Martin's writings or commentaries, this is up to his usual thoughtful and well researched standards.

It lacks the extras the french disc has but makes up for it with the Martin piece and the film identifying subtitle track. It easily beats the Artificial Eye as the English language set to own, and may be worth a double dip if you already have the Gaumont.

Does anyone know how they legally get away with releasing this when things like Los Angeles Plays Itself and Hollywood cant pull it off.

Does anybody have any news about the version to be released by Olive Films in December? Will they use the same subtitles as the Australian version?

lastrade wrote:Does anybody have any news about the version to be released by Olive Films in December? Will they use the same subtitles as the Australian version?

Just sent them an email regarding this and they replied that "brand new" subtitles were created for the upcoming release.

This is getting frustrating - I don't relish the thought of buying 3 sets of dvds to figure out which set of English subtitles are the 'definitive' ones. Looks like in terms of practical value the Australian version might be the best bet, but what about the accuracy of the translation?

from the reviews on amazon it seems like the american subtitles are inferior to the australian ones, can anyone confirm this?

The great value of the Australian DVD release is that it contains 2 separate sets of subtitles. One a translation in line with the French Gaumont release and, I presume, the American Olive release. The second set of subtitles identifies all the films from which clips are taken, the artworks used and identifies people shown in stills. These new subtitles identifying each of the visual elements used were created by Adrian Martin and Felicity Chaplin, Monash University in Melbourne.
This Australian Madman release has rendered my Gaumont set obsolete! The bad news is that with the Australian Dollars being so strong that it is a considerably more expensive purchase than the Olive

swo17 wrote:Looking to add to my order to save on shipping--is 48 AUD a good/fair/amazing price for Histoire(s) du Cinema?

If it's no improvement on Olive's edition, I'd so no way. I just checked, and DeepDiscount still has it for $32 US with free shipping.

It's my understanding that the Madman is a vast improvement over the Olive, i.e. instead of burnt-in subtitles, you get numerous subtitle options, including ones identifying all of the film clips. Are you saying that the Olive has been on sale for $30? I'm interested in what price the Madman edition has been at.

DVDOrchard and DVDPlaza sell the Madman for $43 plus shipping.

It's worth noting that Olive's set is listed as a two DVD set. The Australian DVD is three discs. There seems to be a number of different transfers, and given the nature of this material (i.e. mostly copyrighted footage), there could be a huge difference in quality from one DVD set to another.

swo17 wrote:It's my understanding that the Madman is a vast improvement over the Olive, i.e. instead of burnt-in subtitles, you get numerous subtitle options, including ones identifying all of the film clips. Are you saying that the Olive has been on sale for $30? I'm interested in what price the Madman edition has been at.

Sorry, missed this post, but I looked into the Madman DVD, and it's definitely better. That's the same price offered on Madman's website - not sure what that tells you, but FWIW, before I found this other site, Madman's site seemed to have the best price for their Leopard reissue.

FWIW, Madman's set is Region 4, PAL, and has:

New subtitles identifying each of the visual elements used, created by Dr Adrian Martin and Felicity Chaplin, Monash University

An Introduction by Dr Adrian Martin, Associate Professor and Head of Film & Television Studies at Monash University and Co-editor of ROUGE Magazine http://www.rouge.com.au" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Also, found this:

The great value of the Australian DVD release is that it contains 2 separate sets of subtitles. One a translation in line with the French Gaumont release. The second set of subtitles identifies all the films from which clips are taken, the artworks used and identifies people shown in stills.

And here’s Jonathan Rosenbaum on the English subtitles included on the French edition by Gaumont:

I think they did it the right way. Admittedly the translation’s only partial, but for a work that’s already so dense and literally multilayered, it would have been an overload if they’d attempted to translate most of the intertitles as well, not to mention the verbal portions of certain movie soundtracks. And sometimes you can figure out what some of the titles are saying anyway.

If you check out the audio version of this released several years back by ECM on CDs, with books containing translations in English and German of the “texts,” you’ll see that they basically selected the same passages to be translated, and the same goes for the books that have come out in French with texts taken from various Godard films and videos. In all these cases, what gets selected from the soundtracks and the actual shots is partial, and I’d be very surprised if anyone other than Godard made the actual selections. So I think an aesthetic decision is being made about this, and I believe it’s the right decision (as well as, most likely, Godard’s decision).

Sometimes subtitles can actually be a distortion: famously, some of the English-subtitled versions of Godard’s 60s films make more of the soundtrack legible than would be understood by any fluent French person. Similarly, we’re not necessarily or invariably supposed to “get” or “understand” everything that’s thrown at us in Histoire(s) du Cinema, in my opinion. From this standpoint, publishing a skeleton key consisting of identifications of all the film clips and art works—identifications that were made by Bernard Eisenschitz for Gaumont, with Godard’s assistance, in the late 90s—would probably be even more valuable than translating all of the soundtrack and/or the onscreen texts, but not as part of the text—rather, as useful backup.

The Madman edition is far far superior

Subtitle options/quality have been compared, but what about image/sound quality? Dvdbeaver only has the Gaumont release. Are all (Gaumont, AE, Madman, Olive) roughly comparable? I am particularly interested in the Madman version, since it appears to come out ahead in other categories.

Also, what is the packaging for the Madman like?

Alan Smithee wrote:Does anyone know how they legally get away with releasing this when things like Los Angeles Plays Itself and Hollywood cant pull it off.

Pure guess: possibly Godard leased the clips 'in perpetuity' to enable international sales. Maybe Hollywood was licenced mainly for a UK/US TV showing, making it difficult and expensive to clear for DVD.

Wasn't the first DVD release massively delayed by copyright issues?

This article from 2005 claims that:

Also involved was the large cinema chain Gaumont, which won Godard a rare and privileged copyright clearance – very few audiovisual artists could get away with the wholesale larceny of samples (or quotations) that comprise this work.

For those of you in US and interested, the Madman edition is available from DVD Planet and ImportCDs for great prices shipped.

They're not in stock. 'Ships in 5-10' days on ImportCDs means 'we'll probably never get more copies of this.'

Mine shipped yesterday with that 5-10 day shipping quote, but maybe I was lucky.

Thanks for the tip! Trying my luck at DVD Planet.

I've only seen this on YouTube (and it has since been taken down). How do the video clips look on DVD, particularly the Madman DVD? Did they try to use the best available video transfers, or does it look like Godard grabbed whatever video copy was lying around (i.e. uneven quality from clip to clip)?