I am currently watching this movie on TCM and one thing I've noticed at once is the changes in film quality. Some sections are crisp and clear then there are other segments that are brittle and dark.
Doesn't matter. It's a wonderful film. Gish was superb in what I feel is one of her best silent films.
This is because the surviving elements are incomplete. The camera negative from much of the film has been found, but parts of the negative have, sadly, been lost--especially footage toward the end of the film. The new version has had to use mediocre surviving elements from 16 mm prints to fill in the gaps where the negative has been lost. Sadly, this may be the best version that can ever be shown anymore, unless the rest of the negative turns up somewhere.
shareI forgot exactly how this new ending went I saw it on TCM a couple of weeks ago. I taped this film about 4 or 5 years ago, and these extra pieces of film weren't added. The film was actually only an hour and a half, and ended at the part where Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale had confessed they had commited adultry. I guess to make it more clear, this is the scene where Arthur Dimmesdale dons the "A" on his chest. This shorter version had a better musical score too. I was a bit dissapointed with this new one I had heard in this konger version a couple of weeks back.
shareFilm Forum gave the first showing of a new print of the film last year. It was billed as the highest quality and the longest print of this film that has ever been shown (better and longer than the one shown on TCM). It was excellent, really stunning. The audience gasped at the beauty of the film. hopefully it will make its way to DVD soon.
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The one I was talking about with the "added scenes" ended up being about 2 hours long. When I taped it a few years back, it was about 90 minutes long. (This was around 1998/1999. And it had a different musical score than this 2 hour one. I think TCM has only shown this extended version once, which was a few months back.
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Or different prints could be transferred at different frame rates. The film is the same but the film's length will be shorter or longer depending on whether it is encoded at 29, 24, 21, or 19 fps.
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