Rick Z.
Stunt Coordinator
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2004
- Messages
- 86
- Real Name
- Ricardo
A while ago I found in some other website that two criterion releases of the Hitchcock films The Lady Vanishes and Spellbound are missing some footage.
The Lady Vanishes:
When the two men who are always hanging around together enter their room in the hotel, a moment later a maid comes in with some cloth and puts it in the closet, and later kneels down to get a hat from under the bed.. Well, in the DVD we just see the maid enter the room and we immediately cut to see her gettting the hat from under the bed (without having even seen her getting down to the floor). This creates a slightly awkward continuity error in which we never get to see what happens to the cloth. And the distance in which the men are standing when she first enters is changed. We see them distant to each other at first and standing next to each other in the next shot. It appears that the cheap DVD editions of the film in the U.S. (Laserlight and all the others) omit this brief segment as well, therefore I don't think that the folks at Criterion are to blame for it, since they haven't been the ones that performed the cut... but still... considering the price they ask for this they should have looked for better elements to make the DVD especially when there are two R2 editions containing the scene intact (which means there are uncut prints in store somewhere). The thread is located at daveyp.com and someone posted a link there from which you can download this missing segment.
As for Spellbound:
74 minutes into the film we get a shot of J.B. (Gregory Peck) holding a razor blade, whilst hearing Brulov's (Michael Checkov's) line off screen "Is that you Mr Brown?"
We then cut to Brulov for his next line "Oh I thought it was you". Simple, no? Well, the Criterion DVD cuts away from the razor blade too soon, and then
has the footage of Brulov mouthing his 2nd line, whilst overdubbing his first! Then we get the 2nd line properly. In other words, the footage of Brulov's line
"Oh I thought it was you" is spliced together twice!!
At the thread where I found this information (again from daveyp.com) there was a person who confirmed the alteration by comparing the Criterion disc with his old VHS tape. It also appears that the Anchor Bay DVD is free of this problem, which means that, in this case Criterion could be responsible for this strange modification.
This thread is also at daveyp.com
The Lady Vanishes:
When the two men who are always hanging around together enter their room in the hotel, a moment later a maid comes in with some cloth and puts it in the closet, and later kneels down to get a hat from under the bed.. Well, in the DVD we just see the maid enter the room and we immediately cut to see her gettting the hat from under the bed (without having even seen her getting down to the floor). This creates a slightly awkward continuity error in which we never get to see what happens to the cloth. And the distance in which the men are standing when she first enters is changed. We see them distant to each other at first and standing next to each other in the next shot. It appears that the cheap DVD editions of the film in the U.S. (Laserlight and all the others) omit this brief segment as well, therefore I don't think that the folks at Criterion are to blame for it, since they haven't been the ones that performed the cut... but still... considering the price they ask for this they should have looked for better elements to make the DVD especially when there are two R2 editions containing the scene intact (which means there are uncut prints in store somewhere). The thread is located at daveyp.com and someone posted a link there from which you can download this missing segment.
As for Spellbound:
74 minutes into the film we get a shot of J.B. (Gregory Peck) holding a razor blade, whilst hearing Brulov's (Michael Checkov's) line off screen "Is that you Mr Brown?"
We then cut to Brulov for his next line "Oh I thought it was you". Simple, no? Well, the Criterion DVD cuts away from the razor blade too soon, and then
has the footage of Brulov mouthing his 2nd line, whilst overdubbing his first! Then we get the 2nd line properly. In other words, the footage of Brulov's line
"Oh I thought it was you" is spliced together twice!!
At the thread where I found this information (again from daveyp.com) there was a person who confirmed the alteration by comparing the Criterion disc with his old VHS tape. It also appears that the Anchor Bay DVD is free of this problem, which means that, in this case Criterion could be responsible for this strange modification.
This thread is also at daveyp.com
