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B. Davis vol 3: "Watch On The Rhine" Question

#1
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4/2/08 at 7:38am
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I just watched this disc last night, and the newsreel was silent. There was sound on all other "Warner Night At The Movies" items, just not the newsreel. And it clearly was a sound newsreel. There are no title cards at all, and it's pretty obvious that there is narration telling you what happening.

Does anyone think this could be a mastering error? It just seems odd that with all the newsreels to pick from, they'd choose one where the audio has been lost.
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#2
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4/2/08 at 8:05am
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Re: B. Davis vol 3: "Watch On The Rhine" Question

I'm quite sure it's not a mastering error as many of the newsreels on these Warners packages have long stretches of no sound at all or terribly distorted sound. It's obvious that these newsreels were never preserved with an eye toward history any more than modern era TV news reports from the field are probably being preserved. They were just meant to be seen in theatres for a very few days or weeks at the most.

As another example from the new Bette Davis box, one of the films has a newsreel with all but unintelligible sound. The footage looks raw rather from a finished newsreel, with abrupt edits and wild camera movement. But it affords rare glimpses of Laurel and Hardy, Claudette Colbert, a young Desi Arnaz, Charlotte Greenwood without any makeup, Eleanor Powell and, I believe, Rise Stevens, among many others, gathered for a WWII tour or bond rally or some such event. There are no titles and no voice-over and anyone not into vintage film would be hard-pressed to identify anybody, but it's fascinating stuff for us old-time movie buffs and I applaud Warners for including it, however raw the source material may be.
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#3
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4/2/08 at 3:42pm
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Re: B. Davis vol 3: "Watch On The Rhine" Question

Thanks, Rob. Good to know. At least the other newsreel has footage of stars. The one on "Watch On the Rhine" just shows planes flying around in the air. Not much purpose or use to it all without the sound. And certainly no real connection to the film it shares the disc with..
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