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Thanks, I was hoping it would be like that,I've got the robbe grillet as well as the Kurosawa so will fit well with the collection :-)

Mine has arrived perfectly. Nice box.

After a rather roundabout route (UPS missorted & misdirected it along the way) have this set in hand... A complete game changer insofar as, apart from their copious excellent extras, it renders the Criterion set pretty much redundant feature-wise... The BFI BluRays present a positively visceral range of imagery that will be hard to beat...

Mine's 2695 - I don't think I pre-ordered it particularly early on in its availability, so they might be about out of them.

Looking forward to seeing all the films again - I saw the Open City resto theatrically in Paris last year and, while still retaining the source material's inherent roughness, it looked beautiful. And what a film!

I'm especially keen to see Germany Year Zero in halfway-decent shape.

david hare wrote:Absolute no brainer, even if you already have the Criterion box. This replicates essentially all the extras from that set including Tag's Video essay Into the Future, and the booklet essay material is equally copious.

I do not dispute that the BFI Blu-ray box by all accounts appears to be a great set, but it certainly does not replicate essentially all the extras. Here are the on-disc extras exclusive to Criterion:

• Video introductions by Roberto Rossellini to all three films, from 1963
• New video interviews with Rossellini scholar Adriano Aprà, film critic and Rossellini friend Father Virgilio Fantuzzi, and filmmakers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
• Audio commentary on Rome Open City by film scholar Peter Bondanella
• Once Upon a Time . . . “Rome Open City,” a 2006 documentary on the making of this historic film, featuring rare archival material and footage of Anna Magnani, Federico Fellini, Ingrid Bergman, and many others
• Rossellini and the City, a new visual essay by film scholar Mark Shiel on Rossellini’s use of the urban landscape in the War Trilogy
• Excerpts from rarely seen videotaped discussions Rossellini had in 1970 with faculty and students at Rice University about his craft
• Roberto Rossellini, a 2001 documentary by Carlo Lizzani, assistant director on Germany Year Zero, tracing Rossellini’s career through archival footage and interviews with family members and collaborators, with tributes by filmmakers François Truffaut and Martin Scorsese
• Letters from the Front: Carlo Lizzani on “Germany Year Zero,” a podium discussion with Lizzani from the 1987 Tutto Rossellini conference
• Roberto and Roswitha, a new illustrated essay by film scholar Thomas Meder on Rossellini’s relationship with his mistress Roswitha Schmidt

The numbers are no indication of remaining stock. I only ordered from Amazon yesterday, and received 0273 today.

Question: In "Paisan" during the scene 97 minutes in when the American Revered is defending the Jewish and Protestant chaplains, there seems to be a jump cut, with 2 background characters suddenly disappearing. Was this always present? Was it on the Criterion DVD or other previous editions?

manicsounds wrote:Question: In "Paisan" during the scene 97 minutes in when the American Revered is defending the Jewish and Protestant chaplains, there seems to be a jump cut, with 2 background characters suddenly disappearing. Was this always present? Was it on the Criterion DVD or other previous editions?

I just checked out my Criterion DVD and there was the jump cut. Doesn't seem like an "error" to me, just a possible mistake when making a movie with lots of improvisation and limited resources like Rossellini did.

The only lazy error I've noticed in an otherwise sterling release is the copy-pasting of subtitles from the restoration info preceding Rome, Open City onto the other films. Consequently, all the films in the set are stated as having been restored from the original picture and sound negatives, when the text on screen and in the booklet says otherwise. It wouldn't be a huge issue, except a number of reviewers (including both Gary at DVDBeaver and Dr. Svet at Blu-Ray.com) have quoted the incorrect titles directly when talking about the restorations.

blu-ray.com on "Germany Year Zero"
Seemily skipped over "Paisan" and went to disc three?

manicsounds wrote:blu-ray.com on "Germany Year Zero"
Seemily skipped over "Paisan" and went to disc three?

Maybe Svet had only time for the shorter movie ?

I watched through this whole set this weekend, my first time seeing any Rossellini film. Reading about the films afterwards, IMDb states that a longer, 134 minute version of Paisan was restored & screened in 1998. I found this article on Adriano Apra's website that details the differences and confirms the longer restoration played at the 1998 Venice Film Festival. He makes the case that the cuts to the 125 minute version were made by Rossellini, so I can understand maintaining that as the official version, but does anyone know why the longer version hasn't been included by Criterion or BFI as an additional, alternate version? Especially since between Criterion & BFI, we've been given alternate versions of all 3 of the major Bergman/Rossellini films.

Gamma looks off on "Rome Open City" but not the other two titles.

Was waiting for a Criterion blu-ray set of these but finally decided to buy the BFI set to replace my Criterion DVD set. Couldn't turn down the bargain price on Zavvi:
http://www.zavvi.com/blu-ray/the-rossel ... 40688.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


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PfR73 wrote:... does anyone know why the longer version hasn't been included by Criterion or BFI as an additional, alternate version? Especially since between Criterion & BFI, we've been given alternate versions of all 3 of the major Bergman/Rossellini films.

My understanding (someone please correct me if I'm wrong), is that, as you pointed out, the shorter 125-minute version of PAISA is Rossellini's "final cut" of the film; whereas the alternate versions of the Bergman titles are different cuts with different soundtracks (i.e Italian- and English-language versions) individually created for different markets.

PfR73, Tag Gallagher's "The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini: His Life and Films" is an excellent book in many ways. It is an particularly useful resource with regard to the issue you raise, namely the alternate versions of Rossellini's films. There are many! and Gallagher clarifies with specificity each distinction and its particular variations.

Elena Dagrada's LE VARIANTI TRASPARENTI is the comprehensive study & reference point (in 544 pages) for the various versions of the Rossellini-Bergman films...

Her DVD extra for Europa '51 is good. The only thing I know about the book is that Tag Gallagher felt that he was plagarised after assisting her, but not getting any mention.

Revisited Open City on this great set. I don't think I've ever seen it in better quality, which gave me a laugh. When I was a budding, teenage cinephile get acquainted with world cinema at the same time I was learning to drive, I was under the false impression that Open City had been shot only with discarded film stock that had been meant for the military (i.e. for combat and field photography, meaning something that had to be quick and easy to expose). With this in mind, I first saw this movie on a VHS tape from my high school library, one that undoubtedly had a terrible transfer from questionable sources, but interpreted it as the look of the original film. So the high contrast crushed blacks, gritty and crummy detail and texture, etc. all of these fed into a belief that this film had to be shot like a rough wartime documentary, and it wound up enhancing the experience to a large degree. I never thought a narrative film could be done like this! So this is realism! Well, no, because like Bicycle Thieves (which I also saw on a VHS tape from my high school library, this time videotaped from a 16mm film projection!), I eventually saw a good presentation and was startled by how "polished" they really looked. (For starters, the greater clarity made it obvious that so much was shot on studio sets.) Makes perfect sense now though - no way a theatrical distributor would've taken Open City if it looked that bad, and indeed in its true, not-as-rough-as-I-thought form, it had been rejected by a number of distributors for this very reason.

Roma città aperta probably as much bullshit surrounding its production than any film in history.

It appears that BFI is going to re-release this set on August 7, 2017. Same content, even with the "Fully illustrated booklet". Something must be different from the Limited Edition, so maybe it's gonna be in standart amaray case, as opposed to digipack?

Maybe it will feature Criterion's source for Germany Year Zero!

kompromiss wrote:It appears that BFI is going to re-release this set on August 7, 2017. Same content, even with the "Fully illustrated booklet". Something must be different from the Limited Edition, so maybe it's gonna be in standart amaray case, as opposed to digipack?

Could just be that it's not numbered this time? I assume they've decided to reissue it on Blu-ray as Criterion have since released a 'rival' edition. Bit cheeky though, calling it 'limited edition' and then reissuing the exact same product a couple of years on...