criterionforum.org

Hey, out of curiosity, is the BBFC X-cert card on the print?

McCrutchy wrote:I'm somewhat amused that this hasn't shipped out yet. Amazon usually ship these UK-->US orders as soon as they can even if that is the Thursday/Friday before release, but The Devils has been sitting as "Shipping Soon" since Friday morning and shows a dispatch estimate of 20 March (Tuesday).

It's almost like someone is waiting for that last-minute call from Warner to junk all the sets and refund the orders...

Mine arrived from HMV on Thursday, I stopped using Amazon for any BFI releases a while back, they always seem to dispatch BFI titles late.

McCrutchy wrote:Hey, out of curiosity, is the BBFC X-cert card on the print?

No X-cert card I'm afraid.

McCrutchy wrote:

tenia wrote:

MichaelB wrote:But I do think that actually watching them first should be a prerequisite, and I wish Amazon would make this a requirement - though I admit that it would be impossible to enforce, which is presumably why they invite us to rate the reviews.

They could start by blocking comment on a product not released yet...

Or at the very least, paring down the reviews by ASIN and not lumping the reviews of every edition in together, which often causes confusion for casual users...

I think that's a bigger problem.

Pre-release "reviews" can be helpful - I've posted some myself, offering complete listings of titles on, say, COI Collection volumes where they're not provided by the Amazon blurb, though I hate having to give them a compulsory star rating.

Incidentally, I had a run-in with Mr C. De Mello last year, which also ended in him deleting the review - that one was a one-star slating of L'âge d'or. Again sight unseen, of course - and again, it led to a rant about the BFI wasting money on things that he wasn't interested in.

Beautiful german display card:

Duncan Hopper wrote: Mine arrived from HMV on Thursday, I stopped using Amazon for any BFI releases a while back, they always seem to dispatch BFI titles late.

It did take Amazon longer than usual to dispatch the disc. I only received my copy this morning. Wonder why that is? Looking forward to it though, especially the delicious amount of extras.

j99 wrote:It did take Amazon longer than usual to dispatch the disc. I only received my copy this morning. Wonder why that is?

It's currently number one on at least one of their DVD charts and riding high in others, so they may have underestimated demand.

MichaelB wrote: It's currently number one on at least one of their DVD charts and riding high in others, so they may have underestimated demand.

You're right. No.1 in the Classics, no.11 in the Drama, and no.32 in the Top 100 Film and TV charts. A pretty good showing, especially in the latter, where it's up against the likes of Twilight and Tintin.

Any idea how many copies of The Devils the BFI would expect to sell?

j99 wrote:Any idea how many copies of The Devils the BFI would expect to sell?

You'll have to ask them! Though I'd be surprised if this wasn't one of their bigger 2012 hits - certainly, I can't think of another one that's generated anything like as much buzz on both sides of the Atlantic.

Saw it yesterday and as far as DVD goes, it looks superb. After years of dubious quality it was a delight to see the movie with such clarity and also the sound was a huge improvement - I heard sound effects and things in the score I had never heard before. The guy who made the subtitles fucked up a couple of times though. Most of it is pretty minor such as spelling errors (I think the word 'divine' is spelled as 'devine' at one point early in the movie), but the scene I described here was subtitled with the nun saying 'I am a travelling monkey'. Which not only makes no sense whatsoever, but also completely destroys a very funny moment and takes away its satirical edge. Quite frustrating and rather sloppy, especially because these things could and should easily have been avoided.

SternDiet wrote:Saw it yesterday and as far as DVD goes, it looks superb. After years of dubious quality it was a delight to see the movie with such clarity and also the sound was a huge improvement - I heard sound effects and things in the score I had never heard before.

I watched it this evening with the commentary, which was good, but did have a few extended silent pauses which always irritate me. Surprised Mark Kermode hadn't yet seen Mother, Joan Of Angels which, I feel, is a must see for every "Devils" devotee. It was refreshing to see a clear picture for a change after years of VHS viewing. The DVD really brings out the brilliance of the lighting, and the cinematography of David Watkin, which are both complimented in the commentary. All in all, a fantastic package from the BFI.

j99 wrote:Surprised Mark Kermode hadn't yet seen Mother, Joan Of Angels which, I feel, is a must see for every "Devils" devotee.

Remember that the commentary was recorded some time ago and before Second Run released the film onto DVD in the UK. Before then this wasn't the easiest of films to track down.

j99 wrote:Surprised Mark Kermode hadn't yet seen Mother, Joan Of Angels which, I feel, is a must see for every "Devils" devotee.

The commentary was recorded in 2004, when Mother Joan wasn't exactly easy to see. But as Kermode himself mentions in the booklet, the following year Second Run's DVD made it far more accessible.

That said, I've just looked up the specific section, and I think he's wrong to say that:

Aldous Huxley's 1952 classic The Devils of Loudun, a 'historical novel' which clearly laid the groundwork for Jerzy Kawalerowicz's respected Polish film Mother Joan of the Angels

To be fair to Kermode, he's not a scholar of Polish film, but I haven't been able to find any direct link between Huxley and Kawalerowicz, and no evidence that Huxley's book had been translated into Polish by 1960, when the film went into production. As far as I'm concerned, the film is a very close adaptation of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz's novella Mother Joan of the Angels, which was written nine years before Huxley's book and which appears to be the film's sole literary source.

Huxley is of course the source for John Whiting's play (1960), Krzysztof Penderecki's opera (1969) and Russell's film - but Kawalerowicz seems to have bypassed him.

antnield wrote: Remember that the commentary was recorded some time ago and before Second Run released the film onto DVD in the UK. Before then this wasn't the easiest of films to track down.

MichaelB wrote: The commentary was recorded in 2004, when Mother Joan wasn't exactly easy to see. But as Kermode himself mentions in the booklet, the following year Second Run's DVD made it far more accessible.

I wondered when the commentary was recorded, and vaguely remember now there was a DVD release scheduled for 2004 but was shelved. Ken did mention he had seen "Mother Joan", but after he filmed The Devils. He sounded lukewarm about it, saying it was "OK". Thanks for the clarification.

Mother Joan is a strikingly different film from The Devils, despite notionally being based on the same events. For starters, the politics that are central to Huxley/Whiting/Penderecki/Russell are almost wholly absent here - it focuses much more on the relationship between Matka Joanna (the same historical character as Sister Jeanne) and her would-be exorcist.

But according to that 1970 interview linked to a few posts back, Russell said that he'd seen Kawalerowicz's film before making The Devils, presumably as part of his research.

Alright, so mine finally came in the mail yesterday and I just had a quick question about the "Hell on Earth" documentary. I had seen it before on the bootleg that I recently trashed. I understand that the BFI were not able to show the "Rape of Christ" (although they did manage to show some clips from it), and as a result would have to edit it out. However, the entire documentary is very different from the one that I was familiar with. Notably there is much more footage with Ken and other moments are edited out/sequenced differently. This doesn't really matter, and I was just interested if WB also forced the BFI to do this, or if this was done to offer people who have seen the documentary before a new look at it.

Overall, this is an incredible release, the transfer is gorgeous, special features are great, and even the design of the package is very cool. I already read through the booklet, and the piece on the censorship of the film is very detailed. Despite the restrictions that WB had on the BFI, they still created an excellent release.

criterion10 wrote:Alright, so mine finally came in the mail yesterday and I just had a quick question about the "Hell on Earth" documentary. I had seen it before on the bootleg that I recently trashed. I understand that the BFI were not able to show the "Rape of Christ" (although they did manage to show some clips from it), and as a result would have to edit it out. However, the entire documentary is very different from the one that I was familiar with. Notably there is much more footage with Ken and other moments are edited out/sequenced differently. This doesn't really matter, and I was just interested if WB also forced the BFI to do this, or if this was done to offer people who have seen the documentary before a new look at it.

The only control Warner Bros had over this independently-produced documentary was the supply of the source footage - they had no say at all over the editing or presentation besides making it clear that the unbroken "rape of Christ" sequence could not be featured.

But since that footage had only ever been licensed for one-off broadcast back in 2002, director Paul Joyce had already prepared an alternative cut that incorporated previously unseen footage - and that's the one on this DVD.

SternDiet wrote: The guy who made the subtitles fucked up a couple of times though. Most of it is pretty minor such as spelling errors (I think the word 'divine' is spelled as 'devine' at one point early in the movie), but the scene I described here was subtitled with the nun saying 'I am a travelling monkey'. Which not only makes no sense whatsoever, but also completely destroys a very funny moment and takes away its satirical edge. Quite frustrating and rather sloppy, especially because these things could and should easily have been avoided.

I’ve only dipped into the DVD, but even a cursory viewing has thrown up a surprising number of mistakes in the subtitles. The second line of dialogue, “How they pale beside the radiance of His Majesty”, becomes “I pale beside…” Jeanne’s “Unhand me, you Christ-loving runt” bizarrely morphs into plural “runts”. I was fairly certain the subtitler would get the crabwalking Jeanne's “I haven’t travelled much” wrong, and I suppose we should applaud his/her creativity in coming up with “I am a travelling monkey”! (To be fair, the line is quite hard to hear. It took me a few viewings to work it out, and had I not read Whiting’s play beforehand, I might still be guessing what Jeanne said to this day. First time around, I thought Jeanne was saying “I am the Antichrist”.)

If you’re right about "devine", then that is pretty shocking. All subtitling software systems these days come with spell check. Mishearings and misunderstandings are irritating but excusable; spelling mistakes, especially with such a common word as divine, are inexcusable.

Almost every film available from a major studio comes with a "dialogue list" which should be used for SDH so that the subtitler isn't trying to guess what's being said.

Presumedly this release was pretty rushed as they had been trying so long to get the rights, hence the subtitling mistakes. And hopefully BFI will offer repressed disks for those people who rely on subtitles as if the above examples of mistakes are correct, and spread throughout the film, that isn't acceptable, certainly not for such a popular film and what will no doubt remain a big seller for BFI. Hopefully they'll do the right thing.

Russellfan wrote: I was fairly certain the subtitler would get the crabwalking Jeanne's “I haven’t travelled much” wrong, and I suppose we should applaud his/her creativity in coming up with “I am a travelling monkey”! (To be fair, the line is quite hard to hear. It took me a few viewings to work it out.

I'm glad you cleared that one up because I watched the scene a few times after reading about it here and couldn't figure out what the phrase was.

The Spectator (by Catholic blogger Caroline Farrow):

The film’s focus is not faith, but its abuse by men of power. The Devils makes a powerful case for the separation of Church and state. Its main theme is how religious belief and dogma may be distorted and used to advance personal or political power by either individuals or the state. The Devils shows what happens to those who stand up for their beliefs against intolerance. It is highly ironic, then, that the authorities thought it fit to keep Ken Russell’s masterpiece under wraps for so long.

Plutonium Shores:

Blu-Ray aside, the 2-disc BFI edition is about as definitive as it gets. The film itself looks stunning - it's been years since I've seen it in its original 2.35 aspect ratio, not since the Warners VHS edition released in the UK in the late '90's (as part of their Mavericks series). The DVD was sourced from an excellent print and restores some quick shots of gore during the torture sequences. Simply put The Devils has never looked and sounded so sumptuous.

Since we've been discussing Mother Joan of the Angels in this thread, it's probably appropriate to flag up that Second Run will be reissuing it on May 28th - but replacing their notorious VHS-quality transfer with the recent restoration.

(And yes, this is a shameless bit of Devils-related opportunism, but what the hell - they still own the rights, a vastly superior master was available, and I know for a fact that it comes with BFI DVD Publishing's warm encouragement!)

Wayward wrote:Leeds had a magnificent screen in the Merrion Centre, built so it could show cinerama, and there I saw The Devils projected from an immaculate print in the proper scope ratio, in all its glory.

OT I know, but you're the first person I've come across who saw anything there! Growing up in Leeds, none of us had any idea that this screen even existed (and apparently it still does exist, hidden away in the bowels of the Merrion Centre somewhere) and it was quite a revelation when someone discovered it on some 'secret Leeds' type website. I didn't know it was cinerama-capable either.