Ah-well-a everybody’s heard about the bird…

6 Comments

• craig keller. says:

  October 21, 2008 at 10:16 am

  (I’m cross-posting this from the comments section over at The Auteurs’ Notebook…) —
  Glenn, the two minutes of “missing” footage are apparently nothing but some shots that Franju had later eliminated upon tightening up a reel, but which had remained on a print of the film that had somehow circulated for a spell and which had been telecined somewhere along the way. Jacques Champreux, grandson of Feuillade and scenarist of Franju’s ‘Judex’ (not to mention co-scenarist, and one of the stars, of Franju’s excellent ‘Nuits rouges’, which is also included in the MoC release) wrote Nick Wrigley a few weeks ago on the issue, saying he has no idea where that extra footage had come from, that it was indeed some excess fat on a reel and as such was not meant to be. There was discussion about this over at the Criterion Forum board, under the ‘Judex / Nuits rouges’ thread in the MoC section.
  Champreux’s letter in full:
  ===
  Dear Mr. Wrigley,
  I’m very surprised by your mail. I’ve never heard about another version of « JUDEX » with a different cut like this.
  I can affirm that the French DVD and MoC DVD is absolutely conformable to the original negative as cut by Georges Franju himself and Gilbert Natot and kept in the lab Eclair.
  The version of « JUDEX » you can see in the DVD is exactly the same as the one that Franju approved and saw in 1963 at the Cinémathèque Française, at the time of the first official screening in the world of that film.
  Since, nothing has been changed.
  I suppose that, before this official screening, a print was normally established and next after seeing it, a refining out of the cutting of some sequences was decided. And then that refused print has been commercially exploited, without Franju’s knowledge. There are no neglectable savings for the producers
  It seems to me that the result of the cuts you indicate is to improve the rhythm of the concerned sequences.
  With my best regards
  Jacques CHAMPREUX
  ===
  Could you let Tim Lucas know about this? I don’t have an email address for him, but Nick and I would like to make sure that the record is set straight on this, to avoid any confusion or misgivings, or doubt that the release is ‘not’ Franju’s integral version of the film.
  best,
  craig.

  Reply
• Glenn Kenny says:

  October 21, 2008 at 10:57 am

  Thanks for the update, Craig. Tim stops by here fairly regularly, so there’s a good chance he’ll see this. In the meantime, there are three e-mail adresses for him on the contact page of the Watchdog website, here: http://www.videowatchdog.com/home/home.html

  Reply
• bill says:

  October 21, 2008 at 12:52 pm

  I put up a comment over at “The Auteurs” about the Franju film, and after awaiting moderation for several hours, it was apparently rejected. I’ll admit it wasn’t any kind of intellectual barn-burner of a comment — I basically just stated my enthusiastic wish that more Franju would be released in the US — but jeez.

  Reply
• Glenn Kenny says:

  October 21, 2008 at 1:10 pm

  That’s weird. They’re really eager for comments over there—must have been some glitch. I’ll look into it when I get a minute.

  Reply
• bill says:

  October 21, 2008 at 1:24 pm

  Thanks, but don’t get your hopes up. It’s really not much of a comment to go to the mat for.

  Reply
• Glenn Kenny says:

  October 22, 2008 at 10:15 am

  The comment is up now, Bill.

  Reply