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Post #893368

Author
marvins
Parent topic
Preserving "French" Original Trilogy - ANH V1.0 released - ESB in progress
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/893368/action/topic#893368
Date created
5-Jan-2016, 4:18 AM

Here is the translation :

    Considering the success met by the movie in the US, the French version of Star Wars will be exploited in stereo, but the installations of the SND allow only some mono mixing. Pierre Davanture puts immediately an option on the “Cathedral”, the biggest auditorium of the SIMO, in the studios of Boulogne-Billancourt. He wishes to join Jean Nény, who designed it. This outstanding technician makes only few dubbing, but agrees, for his friend Pierre Davanture, to attend Star Wars projection in Saint-Ouen. Jean Nény, impressed by the movie, is convinced and agrees to realize the mixing. In August 1977, he locks himself into the Cathedral to mix the various French voices with the international bands containing sound effects, extraterrestrial voices, as well as John William music. The American sound engineer Ben Burtt, the creator of Star Wars revolutionary sound universe, comes in Boulogne-Billancourt to oversee the final phase of the French version and so becomes the first spectator of La Guerre des étoiles.

    The work is not ended. The release prints are made in the United States and the sound is added in Saint-Cloud at LTC laboratories. The Dolby process not being used in France, the stereo mix of the French version is recorded on magnetic strips, 4 for 35mm and 6 for the 70mm. These magnetic strips are added to the film by LTC using a machine made by Pyral, company which participates, 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 of delay, Twentieh Century Fox France, associated with Gaumont, starts the exploitation. 23 copies go out in first exclusivity to Paris and its periphery. 13 are distributed in the capital, including three in original version. For the French version, are exploited two 70mm copies (6 tracks), one at “Le Grand Rex”, the other one at “Pathé Marignan”, two 35mm copies (4 magnetic tracks) and finally, six 35mm mono copies. On October 26th the movie goes out throughout the country, and so we discover La Guerre des étoiles… Il y a bien longtemps…


So there was 3 mixes : a 6 tracks mix (70mm) , a 4 tracks mix (35mm) and a mono mix. But it seems that there are all based on the same stereo mix.