672-675 3 Films by Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman

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bdsweeney
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#26 Post by bdsweeney » Mon Jun 17, 2013 8:14 pm

Having viewed the 'War Trilogy' box set for the first time over the Easter break (and loving it), I'm very tempted to buy this.

They were the first Rossellini's I'd ever viewed.

Plus, the passion with which Scorsese spoke about the films in My Voyage to Italy has always made me curious.

With the two alternate-language films, is either version seen as more 'definitive' than the other?

cinemartin

Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#27 Post by cinemartin » Mon Jun 17, 2013 8:30 pm

Agreed. Being upset about the lack of The Italian track for this is akin to being upset about the lack of the English dub for Contempt.

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knives
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#28 Post by knives » Mon Jun 17, 2013 8:33 pm

cinemartin wrote:Agreed. Being upset about the lack of The Italian track for this is akin to being upset about the lack of the English dub for Contempt.
Actually Contempt does come with the english dub.

cinemartin

Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#29 Post by cinemartin » Mon Jun 17, 2013 8:38 pm

Yet another reason to praise Contempt!

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knives
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#30 Post by knives » Mon Jun 17, 2013 8:54 pm

It clearly is only a curiosity, but just for those Moll scenes it is fun to play from time to time.

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krnash
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#31 Post by krnash » Mon Jun 17, 2013 8:56 pm

matrixschmatrix wrote:I could understand including both versions for all of them, or for none, or only for Stromboli (in which the Italian version is markedly different, and in which Bergman dubbed her own voice) but I'm not sure I understand the rationale behind leaving off the Italian version on just Journey to Italy. Perhaps it's just an oversight? It seems doubly odd to have only the English language version if it's missing the sequence that's not in the Viaggio cut, which is all I can think of to account for the running time discrepancy.
This is especially strange seeing how the version they are hosting on Hulu is the Italian version...

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krnash
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#32 Post by krnash » Mon Jun 17, 2013 9:12 pm

david hare wrote:The underlying prejudice for this nonsense, as has been discussed so amply elsewhere in the subtitle thread is the presumption of the innate cultural superiority of absolutely anything, Dahling, with subtitles to something in plain old English.

Pass the Chai Dahling!

(I guess it's the only print hulu has to play at the moment.)
Oh I'm not arguing that the Italian version is better. I prefer the English and I think it's the definitive version. It's just rather strange to have it, flaunt it and then not use it, even as a curio.

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CSM126
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#33 Post by CSM126 » Mon Jun 17, 2013 11:58 pm

david hare wrote:But the Le Mepris English collapses into complete absurdity every time Georgia Moll's interpreter character cross translates between the other four principle characters; OR, if you prefer the linguistic jabberwocky that ensues is really accidentally meta-Godardian (linguistic/visual disjunct etc... not meaning to sound like Laura Mulvey.)
This reminds me of the time a teacher showed an English-dubbed tape of The Emigrants in school and none of us kids could understand why the Americans were acting like they didn't understand the main characters when they were all speaking perfect english.

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Moe Dickstein
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#34 Post by Moe Dickstein » Tue Jun 18, 2013 12:29 am

Perhaps the contents may change before September - it's happened before.

I for one would love to see the Fleming/Wanger Joan of Arc put out, perhaps even both cuts for comparison

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TMDaines
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#35 Post by TMDaines » Tue Jun 18, 2013 2:43 am

Hate to say I told you so about the missing features, but this looks like a marvellous package nonetheless. Absolutely cannot wait to get hold of this, especially as it won't be badly hamstung by heavily pictureboxed DVD transfers (unlike the War Trilogy). The extras look like a marvellous bunch, even though many of us will have seen a lot of them before. Not sure how many of them are new: even some of the "new" stuff has been released elsewhere, I believe (the Degrada piece is in the Italian set for example).

I guess we get the Italian Stromboli and Europa since they played at festivals and the like. I can't be the only one who prefers the Italian Europa to an extent. Rossellini's lingual authenticity was usually good but in this film it's a real mess, as everyone speaks one language and understands one another. The scene with Masina in the English cut is one of the most excruciating in his entire oeuvre.

The Italian Journey, on the other hand, truly is just a dub for a foreign market. Criterion are really doing people a service by not including it to try and help clear up this situation once and for all.

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sorrysomehow
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#36 Post by sorrysomehow » Tue Jun 18, 2013 3:04 am

So is it officially Journey to Italy or Voyage to Italy?

Hulu has it titled Voyage to Italy, which took me way too long to realize when I was trying to search for it by name so I could watch it earlier today.

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Fred Holywell
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#37 Post by Fred Holywell » Tue Jun 18, 2013 3:28 am

sorrysomehow wrote:So is it officially Journey to Italy or Voyage to Italy?
According to Tag Gallagher, in the Roberto Rossellini thread:
The English version, which has an important scene deleted from Viaggio in Italia and which has those three actors speaking English with their own voices (in what often sounds to me like direct sound), has been titled variously: The Lonely Woman; Strangers; Journey to Italy; Voyage in Italy; Voyage en Italie, but never "Viaggio in Italia" except in a dvd cobbled together by -- you guessed it -- the BFI!
Lots more there from Tag on the dubbing and alternate versions of the Bergman/Rossellini films.

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lubitsch
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Re: 672-675 Three Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#38 Post by lubitsch » Tue Jun 18, 2013 5:08 am

zedz wrote:That said, does anybody have a good explanation exactly why Fear is a perpetual also-ran? For the life of me, I can't understand what separates it from the other three films in terms of quality or theme.
It's even worse when like me you consider Rossellini a shallow director and Fear one of his few worthwhile films. It cleverly reverses the "message" of Stefan Zweig's dubious story, but keeps the suspense and psychological power. For once he deals with sharply drawn characters and a gripping story not with people wandering through ruins or behaving like saints.

JonasEB
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#39 Post by JonasEB » Tue Jun 18, 2013 7:51 am

SpiderBaby wrote:Isn't the Italian cut 85 minutes, and the English version 97 minutes? Why is the English cut Criterion releasing 85 minutes (Janus has it around 85-86 minutes as well on their site)?
97 minutes is just a mistake that has been passed along, probably yet again due to IMDB.

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MichaelB
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#40 Post by MichaelB » Tue Jun 18, 2013 8:38 am

CSM126 wrote:This reminds me of the time a teacher showed an English-dubbed tape of The Emigrants in school and none of us kids could understand why the Americans were acting like they didn't understand the main characters when they were all speaking perfect english.
I inadvertently watched Truffaut's L'enfant sauvage (sorry, The Wild Child) in English for the first time, and vividly recall the title character looking completely bemused at someone writing 'LAIT' on a blackboard, pointing to it and saying "Milk!". As well he might have done.

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SpiderBaby
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#41 Post by SpiderBaby » Tue Jun 18, 2013 6:21 pm

JonasEB wrote:
SpiderBaby wrote:Isn't the Italian cut 85 minutes, and the English version 97 minutes? Why is the English cut Criterion releasing 85 minutes (Janus has it around 85-86 minutes as well on their site)?
97 minutes is just a mistake that has been passed along, probably yet again due to IMDB.
Thanks for clearing that up.

atcolomb
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#42 Post by atcolomb » Tue Jun 18, 2013 8:27 pm

I did compare the two versions of the movie I have on dvd, the Korean made English track version and then the TCM cable broadcast version with the Italian track. Both were fine with me and I always perfer the original soundtrack but seeing George Sanders speak excellent Italian was hard to get used too.

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TMDaines
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#43 Post by TMDaines » Wed Jun 19, 2013 1:48 am

But you are aware the original soundtrack is the "English" one i.e. the one where largely English is spoken and a little Italian? The Italian one isn't the "original": it's simply a dub made for a foreign market, in this case Italy's. There's even a short scene cut from it because it's rendered nonsense by the dubbing.

rrenault
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#44 Post by rrenault » Wed Jun 19, 2013 10:02 am

david hare wrote:But the Le Mepris English collapses into complete absurdity every time Georgia Moll's interpreter character cross translates between the other four principle characters; OR, if you prefer the linguistic jabberwocky that ensues is really accidentally meta-Godardian (linguistic/visual disjunct etc... not meaning to sound like Laura Mulvey.)
I saw Contempt in a Paris movie theater about a year and a half ago. It was being screened with the 'French' track needless to say, but, for some reason, it switched to the 'English' track for about a minute or so during the projection scene, and I assumed this was due to some technical issue. Nobody else seemed to be phased by it. With that said, I was surprised they would have had both audio tracks on hand, as I'm certain audio tracks generally aren't embedded in the celluloid itself, although I could be wrong. There was a Q&A after the screening issue, and I raised this point, but the people leading the discussion just replied, "Bah, c'est Godard (en étant Godard)". I had my doubts, however. And literally nobody else who attended the showing was phased by this, but it still seems unlikely Godard initially intended for the audio track to switch purely over to English for a minute.

tag gallagher
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#45 Post by tag gallagher » Wed Jul 17, 2013 11:35 am

TMDaines wrote:I can't be the only one who prefers the Italian Europa to an extent. Rossellini's lingual authenticity was usually good but in this film it's a real mess, as everyone speaks one language and understands one another. The scene with Masina in the English cut is one of the most excruciating in his entire oeuvre.
Yes, the English dubbing of the supporting parts is atrocious. And it's kind of silly that all the Italian speak in English -- but no less silly than the foreign family all speaking Italian in the Italian dubbing (and my Italian isn't good enough to judge whether dubbing is also atrocious in the Italian version).

But Europe '51 is, after being a Rossellini, above all a tour de force for Ingrid Bergman. To watch the Italian version with her voice dubbed by someone else is basically to toss out the entire movie. (Not to mention Alexander Knox, also dubbed in Italian.) Of course, if you're not interested in human beings, this need not concern you.

Obviously, the Italian versions of the Rossellini-Bergman films exist only for Italian audiences (subtitling being unknown in Italy); elsewhere the English versions were the "original" "authentic" editions, exploiting English-speaking players for the most part.

The "excuse" for presenting Europa '51 (NOT the edition that Italians saw, BUT the preview print screened only at the Venice Festival) is that it contains a number of sequences subsequently deleted from Italian (and English) release prints. It's not clear to what degree Rossellini may have been responsible for these deletions. In contrast to his previous films, Europa/Europe '51 was not a Rossellini production, but a Carlo Ponti production; Rossellini was simply a hired employee -- which he monumentally resented, for which he daily tormented Ponti, and in whose profit he did not participate in (his only commercial success, though only in Italy, between Roma città aperta and Il general Della Rovere [1945-59]).
Last edited by tag gallagher on Wed Jul 17, 2013 7:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Moe Dickstein
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#46 Post by Moe Dickstein » Wed Jul 17, 2013 2:05 pm

My theory on this is that bad Italian dubbing is less offensive to some because if you don't speak the language you don't KNOW it's bad.

Sort of like listening to foreign pop music, you don't know the lyrics are inane.

I think some people have a bias to wanting to have any foreign film in the "original" language as we're so indoctrinated to subtitles. I actually think in this case it's good to have the real voice of the lead actors. Personally I really loved David Kalat's remarks on the Godzilla disc about how in the past dubbing was seen as "going the extra mile" for a film that indicated it was a special release, due to the extra time and expense taken. I always watch a film dubbed first when possible so I can just focus on the film itself without the step back I take as a viewer when I have to read what's happening. On a second view I would watch the original language with subs to get that perspective on the film, using the knowledge of the story gained in the dub, and also seeing the changes that were made in translations which are also interesting many times. Look at Rififi for example, you can tell what sections were edited out by American censors because that's where the english dub track goes silent.

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FrauBlucher
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#47 Post by FrauBlucher » Tue Sep 10, 2013 8:18 pm


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chatterjees
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#48 Post by chatterjees » Sun Sep 22, 2013 7:20 pm

If you don't want to wait till Nov BN sale, you can pick it up at amazon.com, for only 58.99 bucks.

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domino harvey
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#49 Post by domino harvey » Sun Sep 22, 2013 7:26 pm

Awesome, thanks for the heads-up

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knives
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Re: 672-675 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini...

#50 Post by knives » Sun Sep 22, 2013 7:48 pm

Thanks, now where to put it?

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