MovieChat Forums > Campanadas a medianoche (1967) Discussion > Ebert's 'Great Movies': Restoration?

Ebert's 'Great Movies': Restoration?


Ebert put this in his Great Movies series today. Hopefully this will attract new attention to the fact that this film has been cruely shunted away into an undeserved obscurity and must be restored and re-released.I hope SOMEBODY is listening.

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Can we do anything else to get this film available? If there's enough demand, there will be a supply.

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I demand it be restored. Now if Orson Welles' damned daughter would stop being so selfish about the films her father made, we might end up seeing it from criterion

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Is that the daughter who's in the film? And by the way, I'm not up to speed on this...how is she selfish with the films?

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Email Criterion. They respond to inquiries very quickly and honestly. They did a fine job with the Arkadin dvd. I think they can do the same with Chimes...

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I e-mailed Criterion about this film (and Othello) and they replied to the effect they do not have the rights and do not have any intention of ever acquiring the rights. In fact, the e-mail went so far as to say they have no intention of acquiring the rights to any other Orson Welles film in the forseeable future.

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Looks like the copy I've got (a second generation video) is the one I'll have to keep for a while longer.

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Suevia Films (a Spanish company) issue a multi-region DVD of Campanadas a Medianoche. Email [email protected] or do a google search and find a Spanish mail-order.

The film defaults to Spanish dubbing, but just have to remember to choose the English version before you start the film ("comenzar"). While I can manage to find my way around the menu, I have to confess that the extras largely have me baffled -- all but one are interviews of various members of the Spanish film crew, spoken of course in Spanish but without subtitles.

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I tried xploited cinema which is linked to Suevia films but they said the dvd is a PAL only so it will not play on an American DVD.

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I don't know about the States, but here in the UK multi-region, multi-type players are so ridiculously cheap that very many people have them. I wouldn't be able to play all those great US DVDs without mine. When I bought it, I wanted to use it to see some Preston Sturgess movies that were then available only on Region 1, and I soon found that there was a great deal more that I wanted to watch.

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Yikes.
What turned them off Welles?

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What you say about Beatrice is absolutely true.

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How pathetic that one of the greatest uses of Shakespeare on screen has no current Region 1 DVD in print. If ever they do release this film, they have to include accurate, legible English subtitles, since, as many of us who love this movie already know, the sound recording and editing of the original was atrocious due to budget constraints. There's no way to restore the sound when the original was never properly recorded, and this is a movie where you want to know what's being said at every possible moment because the language is beautiful in its vulgarity, in its jest, in its sentiment, and in its nobility.

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Yeah, let's just assault Criterion with e-mails :)
They went into such trouble to release the COMPLETE (very true) DVD of Mr. Arkadin, they released F for Fake...

EDIT: God, i just saw the post of the person who e-mail Criterion. What is their *beep* problem? I'd really like a restoration of Othello, too! WTF?

"You're not a real actor in this business until you've played a bitch. Or a psychopath killer."

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I'm guessing here, but I'd say Criterion had some dealings with Welles' daughter. As I understand, she can be quite tyrannical when it comes to her father's work. Maybe "protective" is a more cheritable word. :) Thus the rather pro-actively negative email reply.

All concerned should certainly get together and encourage the responsible parties to restore this masterpiece.

Despite over ten years of frequenting this website, this is the first film I've felt compelled to rate out of ten. Guess what I gave it. :\

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"And watch the use of deep focus when he begins a shot with Hal seated in the background and, as news of his father's death is conveyed, Hal stands and moves forward, finally looming over the camera in foreground. All one shot."

Is this talking about when the king dies on the throne? I don't see a shot like this. There is a shot that sounds like this description involving Falstaff. After Hal holds up the crown it cuts to a long shot with Falstaff with slight camera movements and Welles starting in the middle, then seated in the back, then moving back a little further than middle, then up close with the camera pointing up towards him.

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