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Post #893488

Author
Mavimao
Parent topic
Preserving "French" Original Trilogy - ANH V1.0 released - ESB in progress
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/893488/action/topic#893488
Date created
5-Jan-2016, 3:38 PM

I corrected a few mistakes, Marvins. Hope you don’t mind.

Considering the success met by the movie in the US, the French version of Star Wars will be released in stereo, but SND* theaters only allow mono mixes. Pierre Davanture immediately reserved the “Cathedral”, the biggest auditorium of the SIMO, in the studios of Boulogne-Billancourt. He wished to include Jean Nény, who designed it. This outstanding technician only does a few dubbings, but he agreed to attend a projection of Star Wars in Saint-Ouen for his friend Pierre Davanture. Impressed by the movie, Jean Nény was convinced and agreed to do the mix. In August 1977, he locked himself into the Cathedral to mix the various French voices with the international tracks containing sound effects, extraterrestrial voices, as well as John Williams’ music. The American sound engineer Ben Burtt, the creator of Star Wars’ revolutionary sound universe, came to Boulogne-Billancourt to oversee the final phase of the French version and therefore became the first spectator of La Guerre des étoiles.
    The work did not end there. The release prints were made in the United States and the sound was added in Saint-Cloud at LTC laboratories. Because the Dolby process is not currently used in France, the stereo mix of the French version was recorded on magnetic strips: 4 for 35mm and 6 for 70mm. These magnetic strips were added to the film by LTC using a machine made by Pyral, a company which is also involved, at the same time and with the same process, in the manufacturing of the tickets of the Parisian subway.
    On Wednesday, October 19th, 1977, with a week’s delay, Twentieth Century Fox France, associated with Gaumont, began distribution. 23 copies premiered exclusively in Paris and its periphery. 13 were distributed in the capital, including three in its original English version. For the French version, two 70mm copies (6 tracks) were distributed: one at “Le Grand Rex”, the other one at “Pathé Marignan” along with two 35mm copies (4 magnetic tracks) and finally, six 35mm mono copies. On October 26th the movie was released throughout the country, and this is how we will discover La Guerre des étoiles… A long time ago…

*SND: Société Nouvelle de Distrubution. A French film distributer now owned by M6