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I found the screwiest DVD ever...

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I found the screwiest DVD ever...

Old 03-02-05, 06:03 AM
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I found the screwiest DVD ever...

So I rented the Dario Argento classic "Deep Red" and it has to be the strangest DVD I have ever encountered. First of all, imdb notes that it is an Italian language film, but the actors lips reveal that they are clearly speaking their lines in English. But what makes it really odd is that the soundtrack goes back and forth between English and Italian (sometimes within the same monologue). Their lips are always speaking English, but occassionally the soundtrack seems to slip into dubbed Italian (the voices themselves not always matching because it's often two different people doing the English or Italian). When this occurs within the same monologue (or sentence) by a character, it is particularly jarring. Then to make matters even weirder, the optional English subtitle track sometimes has only English subtitles and other times has both English and Italian at the same time (the English translation on top, and the Italian beneath it). And to top it all off, the English subtitles are nowhere near accurate - not one single line matches the dialogue, as though the captioner was intentionally rewording all the dialogue. For instance when an actor says a line like "What's that supposed to mean," the subtitle says "What are you talking about?" There are also two English subtitle options and both are the same except that the second seems to omit entire lines of dialogue. Often a character will spit out several lines of dialogue without a single subtitle popping up. I can't make heads or tails of this DVD. I'm not sure if it's just this particular disc or all of them that are like this. It's the standard Anbor Bay edition, btw, not the double-feature DVD with Tenebre. I'm just curious if anyone else has discovered this anomaly besides me.
Old 03-02-05, 07:16 AM
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I know it's common for Italian giallos to have the actors speak their native tongue. Sometimes you'll have 3 or 4 different languages being spoken by various actors. It'll then get dubbed in Italian.

Or something to that effect
Old 03-02-05, 08:09 AM
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When Anchor Bay put together that DVD they wanted the longest cut possible, some of the scenes were only available in Italian as the English dub/soundtrack to them has been lost, so they cut in the scenes in Italian to fill in the gaps, which is why it switches back and forth between English and Italian, sometimes in the same scene, I didn't think it was too annoying.
Old 03-02-05, 04:41 PM
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Then why are their lips speaking English when the soundtrack goes into Italian? If the Englsih soundtrack is a dub and Italian was the language actually spoken on the set, wouldn't their lips always be speaking Italian then? Did they actually shoot the scenes two ways - one take where the actors spoke in Italian and one where they spoke in English? That seems very improbable especially if they knew they were going to dub everything anyway. And none of that explains the strange subtitles which don't match the dialogue or occassionally have both English and Italian captions at the same time.
Old 03-02-05, 04:49 PM
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the americans spoke english, the italians spoke italian. im pretty sure they didnt record any live sound, no audio, because all of the audio would be added later in whichever languages. very common back then.
Old 03-02-05, 04:51 PM
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With most films shot overseas that are meant for international release (e.g. release EVERYWHERE), NO AUDIO WILL BE RECORDED ON THE SET. As Tom Opus pointed out, all the actors are speaking their own native languages, and as Dario Argento films are concerned, there are usually a few English speaking actors thrown into the mix with the Italians (as is the case with Deep Red).

When Deep Red was originally dubbed for American release, American prints ran somewhere around 100 minutes. The studio who released the film at the time never did an English dubbing for the 20 minutes that was edited out of the film. When Anchor Bay was remastering the film, they knew the fans wanted the original 125 minute print of the film. However, no English dialog speaking track exists for the uncut version of the flick. So what one has is a tricky situation. Fans want both the English and Italian tracks, but in a way to present the fans with both tracks, Anchor Bay had to incorporate the Italian soundtrack into the footage that was never dubbed for the American release.

Yeah, it sucks, but Anchor Bay tried their best on the disc, and it damn well shows.
Old 03-02-05, 04:57 PM
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Originally Posted by joliom
And to top it all off, the English subtitles are nowhere near accurate - not one single line matches the dialogue, as though the captioner was intentionally rewording all the dialogue. For instance when an actor says a line like "What's that supposed to mean," the subtitle says "What are you talking about?"
Look, there's a fundamental difference between the written and the spoken word. What might work for the subtitles might not be as effective in a dub. The English subtitles are obviously a translation of the Italian language track, since they are meant to be used with that track.
Old 03-02-05, 07:07 PM
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The uncut (Profondo Rosso) version of Deep Red that Anchor Bay released is markedly inferior to the cut version. The expurgated incarnation, which is unfortunately only out on DVD on a poor-quality Brentwood collection, lops off all that silly extraneous stuff with the girlfriend, the cruising around in the Mini, and the gay friend, and distills the picture to its essentials.
Old 03-02-05, 09:02 PM
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It's nice that AB included the complete version of PROFONDO ROSSO for completists, but yes, it would have been nice to see the tighter US cut included as well (this could have been done with branching or such). Maybe when Blue Underground eventually gets the rights to the film, they can do something like that.

As has been said, Italian films of that vintage were shot MOS (without sound), so you had the American or British actors speaking English, Italian actors speaking Italian, French actors speaking French, etc. and then the entire film was dubbed in various languages for various territories. The film already had edits done to it before the English soundtrack was recorded, so those extra scenes just don't exist with an English soundtrack.
Old 03-02-05, 09:46 PM
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OK, that makes sense to me now. I realized none of the audio (whether English or Italian) would likely be recorded live, but I didn't know that it was common for all the actors to actually be speaking multiple languages during the filming; the fact that I could lip-read English was confusing me since I just assumed everybody would have been speaking Italian during production. But why didn't Anchor Bay do one of two things: Either present the uncut version in full Italian with English subtitles, or (albeit the more expensive route) redub the whole thing into English? It's obvious that the same people aren't always voicing the same characters depending on whether it's Italian or English being spoken - the detective and the gay lover characters, for instance, have two different voice actors for the English and the Italian tracks - so why not just re-dub the extra footage into English? I mean two slightly different sounding voices, but both in English, would seem like a better option than two different voices and in two different languages to boot. Personally, I would opt for a SE DVD with both cuts - the shorter American cut with English dubbing, and the longer cut in dubbed Italian with English subtitles. And thanks to everyone for explaining this to me; it had me really perplexed. Norm, now you and I can go back to arguing about American foreign policy in the political forum.
Old 03-02-05, 09:52 PM
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Originally Posted by joliom
But why didn't Anchor Bay do one of two things: Either present the uncut version in full Italian with English subtitles,
They did. You can choose to watch it that way on the current release.

or (albeit the more expensive route) redub the whole thing into English?
A terrible idea for my tastes. I'd rather have the film dump back to the Italian dub, knowing the circumstances in which the original dubs were recorded, than have to listen to someone doing a bad David Hemmings impersonation.

DJ
Old 03-05-05, 08:41 PM
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Originally Posted by joliom
Norm, now you and I can go back to arguing about American foreign policy in the political forum.
Oh, it's you! Naw, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.

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