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Preserving the "Italian" Original Trilogy (Released)

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 (Edited)

As you may have guessed by reading the thread title, this project aims to preserve the Italian version of the Original Trilogy, starting with Star Wars (I don’t have the other films at the moment),  and is directly inspired by the other foreign language projects “Preserving German Original Trilogy” and “Preserving French Original Trilogy” . As a matter of fact, much like those projects, this one features the work of Laserschwert, who has kindly done the opening sequence.  I will be handling the Greedo subtitles and end credits. The project will of course use Harmy’s STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD REMASTERED as a base for the video. The final product will be synced to the italian Gout and audio from ,^…^,'s  GUERRE STELLARI [OUT ruLes IT]: A NEW HOPE.

The reference for the italian title cards, crawl and end credits comes from a 1991 tape, which was donated by a very good friend of mine, whom has never seen any of the Star Wars movies, and as a birthday present he bought me the tape on Ebay.

Please forgive the badly photoshopped pics, as soon as I get my hands on a scanner I’ll release proper scans of the cover art and tape label.

 photo IMG_3878_zps0e36adf2.jpg

The tape itself was in excellent condition. I suspect it had only been played a few times, if at all.

The vcr I used to play it is an old piece of junk, and the usb stick I captured it with is a new piece of junk.

The transfer job is… questionable. After an initial Fox Video disclaimer, the movie starts with the 4:3 20th Century Fox logo, and then cuts to the italian title cards for “Lucasfilm LTD” and “A long, long time ago” and they are stretched to 4:3. The crawl is both stretched and cropped by a considerable amount, and I was able to measure it by overlaying the starfield and matching it to Harmy’s version. I then passed the resulting video to Laserschwert who was able to recreate the sequence in HD.

Back to the tape, as soon as the letters fade in the distance, before the pan down to Tatooine and in the middle of the flute solo, the video cuts abruptly to a letterboxed master with pitched down audio. It’s incredibly jarring.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3Wlp4clLq4da1FET1REMmxPakE/edit?pli=1

The rest of the movie is like that, and has <span style=“text-decoration: underline;”>no Greedo subtitles</span>. So I’ll just have to guess as to placement and timing, basing it solely on the english version.

The end credits have no iris transition. There’s a cut right after Chewie growls and the audio goes back to its proper “PAL” pitch. The original italian end credits have a typo, which will be preserved for autenticity’s sake. It says : “Musiche di JOHN WILLIAMS <span style=“text-decoration: underline;”>esegaite</span> dalla London Symphony Orchestra”. It should be “eseguite”, of course, “esegaite” is not a word.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3Wlp4clLq4dUjQwQkdVSmRMSlE/edit?pli=1

I’ll be posting Laserschwert’s excellent opening sequence recreation in a little while, as soon as it finishes uploading on my Google Drive thingy.

More updates as soon as they come, I guess. Keep watching this space.

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I "enjoy" how all these thread titles are constructed.  :p

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I think that Harmy's STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD !!!REMASTERED v2.1 AVCHD is now out!!! topic should be rename as Preserving "American" Original Trilogy.

By the way, it's nice to see another international project !

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Excellent my friend. I can't wait to have this version again, I stupidly got rid of my tapes when the 1997 SE came out. It's actually going to be better than anything we've ever seen in Italy.

I did remember no subtitles at all before 1997, you can imagine how confusing it was for us Italian to guess what Jabba was saying in the third movie!

By the way it was once released in Italy a widescreen version on VHS but only in something ridiculous like 100 copies only, these are so rare that I've only seen a picture on Internet once! So I'm glad you can work out the correct proportions from that shameful 1991 VHS.

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thxita said:

... So I'm glad you can work out the correct proportions from that shameful 1991 VHS.

That was the fun part! ;P

 

Start planning your May 4 screening/party!

If my calculations are correct, everything goes right and there's no delays, this is gonna hit the web sooner than expected.

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We need to do a screening!

Unfortunately the mkv file that our benefactor created does not play on any of my TVs, only on the computer. It would be nice to have a mkv file compatible with modern TVs.

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 (Edited)

Looking good, but MAN, this is a long one:

Edit: On second notice, the original subtitle isn't much shorter.

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Yeah, I noticed, but it does give you the time to read.

Incidentally, as I said I never found any reference for these subtitles, but every srt file I've found since way back when seems to agree on the wording, so this is supposedly the original translation, at least.

I have no idea what's on the SE releases...

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I'm curious to check the 1997 edition again about the wording but I don't have a VHS player anymore. However I remember the original was changed so the Italian version surely reflects the SE changes too and can't be used for reference.

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My only worry is if we actually inherited this text from the 1997 version.

Again, unless we find actual film proof we'll never know.
Which reminds me, some days ago I actually saw a blog post where it said the blogger had just* sold a 16 mm full lenght italian print. I would give my right kidney just to look at it.

 

*JEDIT: I mean at the time the post was written, a couple of years ago at least.

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Leonardo said:

My only worry is if we actually inherited this text from the 1997 version.

Again, unless we find actual film proof we'll never know.
Which reminds me, some days ago I actually saw a blog post where it said the blogger had just* sold a 16 mm full lenght italian print. I would give my right kidney just to look at it.

 

*JEDIT: I mean at the time the post was written, a couple of years ago at least.

More than likely, if you think that nobody saw the subs until 1997 (except in the theatrical version of 1977)

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thxita said:

Leonardo said:

My only worry is if we actually inherited this text from the 1997 version.

More than likely, if you think that nobody saw the subs until 1997 (except in the theatrical version of 1977)

If we have, we can at least hope not much of it was changed. Remember the 1997 crawl? There ILM reused the same text, and just changed "aeronave stellare" to "aeronave spaziale".

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True, true.

They really liked the "stellar" word in Italy in the 70s didn't they?

Are you fixing the typo in the end credits or are you preserving it? I don't mind if it gets fixed since it clearly wasn't meant to be there to start with.

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Leonardo, here you are the Greedo subtitles for the scene you posted before, according to the italian 1995 THX VHS - the top of the subtitles are in pictures, just some scan lines:

Jabba ha messo una taglia
sulla tua testa

Tutti nella galassia ti
inseguiranno.

Per mia fortuna ti ho trovato
per primo.

while in the 1997 SE VHS, the first two lines appear together in the same scene; the subtitles have smaller fonts, condensed, and they are all out of pictures.

If you need some screenshots, let me know.

Sadly my projects are lost due to an HDD crash… 😦 | [Fundamental Collection] thread | blog.spoRv.com | fan preservation forum: fanres.com

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Hmm never imagined they'd be different. Yes, I'd like to see the whole scene, please. Can you post them here?

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Here you are a comparison clip of Greedo scene - note that the SE has different subtitles at the end.

SENDSPACE

Sadly my projects are lost due to an HDD crash… 😦 | [Fundamental Collection] thread | blog.spoRv.com | fan preservation forum: fanres.com

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Mille grazie Andrea.

BEWARE: skip to the bottom of this post for the english part.

 

Sapete che vi dico, ragazzi? Quelli che ho trovato io devono essere gli originali. Sono molto più sicuro di prima, e sapete perché? I dialoghi li ha curati Roberto DeLeonardis, non Pinco Pallino, e se mettete insieme le due battute

- Dove stai andando, Solo?

- Eh, sì, infatti, per essere esatti stavo andando a trovare il tuo capo...

la cosa non ha alcun senso. Non collimano, è come una conversazione tra due anziani duri d'orecchio. Invece:

- Vai da qualche parte, Solo?

dà modo alla battuta di Harrison Ford di funzionare grammaticalmente e nel suo giusto contesto. Allo stesso modo le battute sono tradotte troppo sommariamente in queste vhs, sicuramente dagli stessi che fecero poi le didascalie per i famosi dvd (qui dò di gomito a thxita che me ne informò tempo fa). L'effetto è quello, le traduzioni sono fatte male e travisando il senso della battuta. L'errore più grosso è "Questa è la sua intenzione." No! Questa è l'intenzione di Greedo, non di Jabba come vorrebbe far intendere il sottotitolo. Jabba vuole i soldi, Greedo vuole invece prendere i soldi della taglia più tutto quello che riesce ad arraffare uccidendo Han.

Se poi vogliamo essere sicuri al 1000 per 1000, si va tutti a Ravenna il 4 Maggio, perché il buon thxita mi ha segnalato questo:

http://maythefourth.empira.it/

 

For the english speaking people, all that jibber jabber was: I'm keeping the current subtitles, and there's going to be a screening of the italian versions of the films on May 4th in Ravenna.

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Leonardo said:

- Dove stai andando, Solo?

in english: "Where are you going, Solo?"

- Vai da qualche parte, Solo?

in english: "Going somewhere, Solo?"

...obviously, the former is wrong, while the latter is right - infact, I decided to correct this line in my literal subtitles.

L'errore più grosso è "Questa è la sua intenzione." No! Questa è l'intenzione di Greedo, non di Jabba come vorrebbe far intendere il sottotitolo. Jabba vuole i soldi, Greedo vuole invece prendere i soldi della taglia più tutto quello che riesce ad arraffare uccidendo Han.

in english: "The biggest error is "This is his intention" No! This is the intention of Greedo, not Jabba's...

Leonardo, I agree with you that Greedo may think he could kill Solo and take the reward, but I think that the subtitles could be also right, following Solo dialog, instead the first line that is surely wrong... I mean, if Jabba put a big reward on Solo, don't you think that it should be higher is Solo it taken to him alive? And, following Jabba's dialog (that, it's true, we could listen only 20 years later on the SE), he said "why you fried the poor Greedo", so it means (to me, at least) that Greedo was not a "freelance", but one of the Jabba's "men"...

Well, those are only speculations, becasue, as you wrote in this thread at the beginning, there were no subtitles for Greedo at theaters in 1977!

At the end, you could always use literal translation from english sub "That's the idea" = "È questa l'idea" - sound good, don't you think?

Sadly my projects are lost due to an HDD crash… 😦 | [Fundamental Collection] thread | blog.spoRv.com | fan preservation forum: fanres.com

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_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

Leonardo, I agree with you that Greedo may think he could kill Solo and take the reward, but I think that the subtitles could be also right, following Solo dialog, instead the first line that is surely wrong... I mean, if Jabba put a big reward on Solo, don't you think that it should be higher is Solo it taken to him alive?

Apparently Greedo doesn't think so, seeing he wants to kill Solo. "That's the idea. I've been looking forward to this for a long time." That was his intention all along, coming into the cantina.

 

And, following Jabba's dialog (that, it's true, we could listen only 20 years later on the SE), he said "why you fried the poor Greedo", so it means (to me, at least) that Greedo was not a "freelance", but one of the Jabba's "men"...

of course, "I was just going to see your boss."

Well, those are only speculations, becasue, as you wrote in this thread at the beginning, there were no subtitles for Greedo at theaters in 1977!

Wait, wait, hold your horses, where did I say that? I don't think I've said anything of the kind.

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Leonardo said:

Wait, wait, hold your horses, where did I say that? I don't think I've said anything of the kind.

Sorry, I was wrong, you were talking about video releases... the subtitles were present on theaters, right? But unfortunately I was not present there at the time, so I can't remember...

Sadly my projects are lost due to an HDD crash… 😦 | [Fundamental Collection] thread | blog.spoRv.com | fan preservation forum: fanres.com

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I think it's only logical, man. I mean, they did the crawl, they did the end credits, why not the Greedo scene?
Then why isn't it in my tape, you'd say? Money. It would've cost more to scan the whole print. It's more financially sound to scan just the very start of the first reel of the italian print, and just the end of the last reel, and use the [1985?] IP sans-subs for the rest of the movie. Which is what they did for this 1991 VHS release.  And it's half assed, too, cause the parts that belong to the italian film print are correctly speeded up, while the international master is 25 fps with pitched down audio.

Now, thxita told me there was an earlier release, the CBS FOX 1986 tape, was this an italian tape, Erri?
If it was I'm going to bet that was probably a pan/scan or most probably squeezed telecine of the italian print.

However, as I said, let's go to Ravenna and actually see for ourselves. The more I think about this, the more I want to go. I missed Magical Mystery Tour, but fuck it, I'm not gonna miss this!