http://www.dvdsavant.com/s752parad.html

I'm assuming this has nothing to do with PAL speed. So, if true, does anyone know which scenes have been cut?

The running times listed there seem to be off. The R-1 NTSC release is 2:01:40 and the R-2 PAL release is 1:56:32. The time difference is solely due to PAL speed up. There are no cuts in either release.

According to DVDCompare, neither Amelie or Cinema Paradiso is cut (although, there is a director's cut of CP which may play into the different running times).

They don't have any information for Like Water For Chocolate.


Edit: More (somewhat condradictory) information from IMDB:

Amelie - "Runtime: 122 min / France:129 min / Germany:117 min"

Cinema Paradiso - "Runtime: 155 min / Italy:123 min (International version) / Italy:170 min (director's cut)"

Like Water For Chocolate - "Runtime: 123 min / Argentina:105 min / Australia:105 min / Germany:105 min"

Amelie wasn't cut. IMDb lists the wrong run-time for the movie and the Savant misinterpreted that.

The Region 1 disc has an authoring glitch where the running time jumps ahead about 2 minutes at the layer change. The movie's actual length is just under 122 minutes.

Then DVDCompare is wrong; there's a very lengthy section of the new book 'Down and Dirty Pictures' dealing with "Cinema Paradiso".

In a nutshell, Harvey Weinstein cut a lot out of it, but made it a huge international hit.

The IMDb is wrong:
"Originally released in Italy at 155 minutes; after a very poor box office performance, the film was pulled out of circulation and shortened to 123 minutes. After it won the Special Jury Prize at the 1989 Cannes festival and the Best Foreign Film Oscar, it was re-released in Italy on video first in its initial 155 minutes cut and then in a special 170-minutes director's cut."

The film was not "pulled out of circulation and shortened" exactly; it was pulled from theaters in Italy [in that it was doing badly, financially, and thus the distributors decided to "pull" it], but was released in America after the distributor (Miramax, which is to say, Weinstein) shortened it. It won the Special Jury Prize and Best Foreign Film because of the shortened version. Then, in Italy, they re-released the initial and pretended that they were on-the-ball foreigners who could look down on America for shorteneing their classic when, in fact, it was America who discovered that the movie was good in the first place.

If I had to guess, DVDCompare is misinterpreting data that they've received and considering the shortened version to be the initial theatrical cut (thus there would be "no cuts" in that the discs are either that version or the longer version; but, in fact, the longer version is the director's preferred cut, if nobody else's).

No. But there are several issues with the subtitles on this film. Probably a half dozen lines in the film make no sense at all, or differ from the theatrical release.

Miramax will not correct the errors in Amelie.

I believe they fixed the subtitles.

I hadn't heard that. Anybody got a link?

I will repurchase for correct subtitles. I watched the film 7 times in theatres (and own the book, La Fabuleux Album d'Amelie Poulain), but only once on DVD, because the subtitles bothered me so much.

I have both the R1 and R2 discs (the R2 has a DTS track) and have never noticed any differences between the films.

There are, what, three typos? Oh, the horror!

If you're really desperate, the R2 UK release has the original theatrical subtitles.

You're generalizing... Weinstein or Miramax isn't "America".