UK DVD Quality

As always, the Criterion box (essential for the restored CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA) has a fine, crisp print of MAJOR BARBARA, but inexcusably, it OMITS one of the most essential scenes which *was* in the previous Janus VHS release! The scene comes in the second half of the Act III scene in the Gallery of Undershaft's office immediately after "Dolly" has offered a solution for the "foundling" problem and before they adjourn to Undershaft's office to negotiate terms.

I inadvertently found the stunning stumble with my GBS Seminar at NJIT. We were looking at Shaw's screenplay (and resulting Pascal film) of MAJOR BARBARA filmed in 1940, so I broke out the Criterion copy (they are *usually* the best prints) to look at Act III, and I was stunned to find that the scene (the "faith of an armourer" scene where Undershaft - Robert Morley - tells Cusins - Rex Harrison - not only that to join the firm he must abide by the "faith of the armourer" but the slogans each of the previous "Andrew Undershaft's" had written over the door) WAS NOT THERE! It was particularly noticeable since we had just listened to Charles Laughton READING "the faith of an armourer scene" (which he had done on Broadway) on the Capitol STORY TELLER album posted online at archive.org! Naturally, I pulled out the previous VHS release (ALSO from Janus Films) and THERE IT WAS!

Since we had previously discussed the difference between the British print of the 1938 PYGMALION and the American print (never, to my knowledge, issued on VHS or DVD) in which Shaw himself had appeared in a prologue, we speculated for some time as to WHY this essential scene was missing from the Criterion release. The best speculation we could come up with was that Criterion had probably issued the earliest original British print they could find, while the earlier Janus release was an American print. In 1940/41, England was deeply in a life-or-death struggle with Hitler's Germany and the discussion of an Armourer's obligation to sell arms to ANYONE who could afford them would be particularly objectionable - while the U.S. was still a year from entering the war and Shaw's original screen text could be issued unaltered. Does anyone know the details of the original British release (specifically regarding this scene)?

The good folk at Criterion must know of the gaff by now - a sharp eyed IMDB reviewer mentioned it as early as March 28, 2011 (the astute reviewer even included the full missing text)! Good as the rest of the Box Set is, until this Bowdlerized ...BARBARA is fixed, I'd strongly recommend avoiding it and searching out the old VHS release with Shaw's complete vision of one of his five greatest plays intact (he wrote the screenplay and very carefully pruned a few arguably anti-semetic "jokes" about Undershaft's partner "Lazarus" for the screen - but he did NOT cut "The Faith of An Armourer"!).