Sergio Leone Special Editions (1 Viewer)

[ArthurMy]

Having watched the supplements (simply done, but thank goodness none of the usual suspects in terms of participants - only Frayling and Eastwood, and very surprisingly, Monte Hellman, who charmingly recounts his participation in shooting the infamous network prologue), I can see now what a good job was done on the transfer - they didn't have the camera neg - they tried but it couldn't be gotten, so they went from two interpositives, if I remember correctly.

The one slightly strange thing to me is that, unless my eyes deceive me, either the shots for the extras are chosen very carefully, or they look a bit sharper than the actual DVD with the film. I have to go back and check some of the scenes to see if my eyes ARE deceiving me.

Anyway, bottom line - a pretty fantastic DVD all around. Congratulations to all who worked on it, and next up: For a Few Dollars More.

 

[Dale MA]

The "extended" fight sequence & extra dialogue that everyone here claims is "missing" from FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE is actually included, it is on Disc 2 -- they show clips of footage that was included (against Sergio's wishes) on another release of the movie, in the original Premiere cut of the movie that footage wasn't there.

So we ARE getting the full version of the film, as Sergio wanted us to see it...

 

[John Hodson]

That's interesting; what's your source for that info Dale? Which country's premiere are we talking about?

 

[Dale MA]

I can't quite remember John, I'm not at home at the moment either, so I can't double-check for you.

All I know is, the original shorter American version of the film actually had a few extended scenes in it & this scene was one of them, the "edited" scene that is IN the movie now is actually more violent than the version that includes the dialogue. All of this information is included on one of the bonus features on the second disc of the set, there's a couple more scenes that were actually extended in the shorter version of the movie also.

It's nice that they've included these little bits on the DVD though, they're pretty cool to see.

 

[Mark Anthony]

For A Few ...looks great, transferred from an interpositive with substantial clean-up it looks like it was shot within the last decade, not 40 years ago, there is barely a mark on the print, it is sharp, accurate in colour and overall v impressive.

The sound has it's up's and down's - as you'd expect from all that vocal dubbing, but sounds pretty good considering. A few new sound effects stand out due to their clarity in comparison to the rest of the effects, but the music, finally in original stereo, sounds amazing compared to the old release.

All in all a big recommendation and it's a shame that one of MGM's best ever classic dvd's in terms of quality comes at the end of the video department's reign, what a shame it took them so long to get to this standard.

The supplementals are a bit lacking in terms of length, but v interesting - a short interview with Eastwood and some of the producers, a Sir Chris Frayling interview about the film, a restoration featurette that could quite easily have run twice as long; as it barely scratched the surface of what was accomplished and how and a few deleted scenes are the main highlights of disc 2.

M

 

[ArthurMy]

I'll chime in on For a Few Dollars, and I'm glad someone has finally set the record straight that we've got the correct version.

Unless they did something different on FAFDM, I don't think there's any added SFX, at least there wasn't on Fistful - in the extras they say clearly that they had a dialogue/music/fx track (all married) and a separate music/fx track (also married) and that that's what was used to create the 5.1 mix.

 

[John Hodson]

Thank you Dale; it's damned hard to keep up with all these versions isn't it?

 

[ArthurMy]

It is hard to keep up, especially with the people on those Leone groups yammering that MGM screwed up when clearly they didn't.

 

[ArthurMy]

Watching For a Few Dollars More - wow is all I can say. Sharper and cleaner than Fistful of Dollars. In Leone heaven.

 

[ArthurMy]

Well, I've finished FAFDM and it, too, suffers from some mid and long-shot focus and definition. It's really fine for most of the film, but I don't see how anyone could miss this softness in those shots. Still, it's the best it's looked in ages and like Fistful, much better than the original DVD.

HOWEVER - while I really liked the DTS track on Fistful, I did not like this DTS track nearly as well - it's more along the lines of what they did with Good/Bad/Ugly - silly directional dialogue stuff that's just confusing, and a very "boomy" ambience that doesn't sound natural at all.

On to Duck, You Sucker.

 

[John Hodson]

Those with multi-region players might like to know that www.tle-films.com are prepping German R2 versions of A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More for Paramount (who now have the German Home Video rights apparently).

TLEFilms are promising all the extras of the UK R2s, restored mono soundtracks, fully 'English friendly' (even the menus will be in German and English) but are hinting that their transfers will be superior to the MGM/UAs. There's a little more info at the end of this post, but it does sound pretty good so far.

Sony should extract their digit, and get an announcement out now on what exactly their plans are for the R1s...

(BTW, re the prior posts in this thread, whatever happened to ArthurMy - anyone know?)

 

[RichardCrowther]

Except with regards to not including the original mono track (a remix of the original sound elements is fine, as long as the mono mix is also included for those who don't feel some need to fill every speaker with sound for every film they watch) and also with not including footage in the cut presented on the disc that always used to be included in most/all of the previous releases. I find it very hard to believe that Leone would assemble a film and allow through such a tardy edit as the one currently in FAFDM - I have more respect for him and his abilities than that. Despite what the documentary does or does not say, I have yet to see definitive proof that the "missing" footage was not and should not be in the film.

I also think it's wrong to say no-one has pointed out that the footage itself is included on the second disc. It's been mentioned here at least once, and I believe there has even been a quote from the man who put the documentary together, explaining why the full beating sequence is not in the actual movie, but instead included in the extras section - IIRC, something along the lines of there not being time to locate a decent enough copy of the footage in question, but he was determined to include it in some form somewhere on the disc. Which doesn't exactly tie-in with what the documentary says about it not being included in the film proper for this release, because it wasn't ever meant to be.

It sounds more like a simple case of there not being time to do a better job. Not unlike a similar situation with the full beating sequence in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, which MGM took it upon themselves to trim, not because it shouldn't be in there, but because they felt the footage wasn't up to scratch, despite other shots that were included in the DVD version looking a whole lot worse. Or when, after the release of the Special Edition of OUATITW, and it was discovered there were still one or two shots missing and that the end credit music was badly miscued/abridged, the people who worked on the restoration for Paramount had to hold up there hands and admit that they simply didn't know they'd got it wrong until it was pointed out to them (according to Video Watchdog anyway,IIRC).

 

[oscar_merkx]

John

Thank for the updates

 

[Jerome]

thank you John. The Video Watchdog article is a must read.

 

[Dale MA]

It was quite clear to me when I watched the restoration documentary on FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE that they had restored both FoD & FFDM to there original versions (the way Sergio wanted them to be seen). You have to understand that over the years many, many different versions of the "dollar" movies have been made -- but the MGM release has been restored to there "premiere" cut.

This German release sounds alright but if they add any new scenes into the movies then they're altering the original vision of the director IMO. The promise of a mono track on the German release sounds about the most interesting thing on the new DVDs but to be honest I was quite happy with the 5.1 remix on the R2 discs.

Just my two cents

You can now pick up the R2 SE DVDs for as little as £7.99 from play.com:

http://play.com/play247.asp?pa=searc...rs&page=search

 

[Porfirio]

Anyone know the R1 status for AFOD and FFDM special editions?

 

[MattMC]

I agree, after hearing about them, has there been any further announcement for R1 for these great movies???

 

[Fabien Renelli]

In France we had the SE for FAFDM and DYS!, but still waitin for AFOD...

 

[Jim Rykel]

Any news on these?

 

[John Hodson]

Nothing in R1, and nobody here would be interested in this I suppose...

...at Amazon Germany?

Nice isn't it?