The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938)
Yesterday I was talking to Suie about technical failures in the cinema. Like when I saw American Gangster (2007) and the projectionist didn’t mask the frame and the boom mic was visible for the whole picture. Or when, for The Darjeeling Ltd (2007) the first 10 minutes were marred and stretched because the projector was set to the wrong aspect ratio. “This would never happen fifteen years ago,” she said, “when the projectionists were all licensed and unionized.” But another factor, apart from labour, has also come in to mess up the flow of some of the best films ever made: digital. I went to the Bloor cinema to see this Hitchcock classic and the film was shown on DVD. The only other time that I saw a film shown on DVD that was a non-avant garde or activist space screening was at the Canadian Film Institute in Ottawa during their Buñuel retrospective. Although the non-member price there can be pretty steep at $10, I didn’t really mind too much because the film was thoroughly watchable. The screening of The Lady Vanishes, however, was a disaster.
To begin with the audio was seriously messed up. Between the echo and the accents it was virtually impossible to understand 80% of the spoken dialogue in the film. Secondly, about 1/3 into the film, it began to slow almost to a pause, and then skip. This happened about three times. Even after moving from the balcony to the many area (and I almost never move or get out of my seat during a movie) it was still impossible to understand.
So we fell asleep.
I’ve seen some pretty stellar stuff at the Bloor. Was this a back up for a damaged print?
Thinking of other weird happenings at the cinema - of the analog variety - I recall that time we saw the movie Romance (1999) - a French art film with some pretty explicit depictions of sexuality throughout - and someone in the cinema had a seizure. The house lights were brought up and it’s the first time in real life I heard someone utter the phrase, “Is there a doctor in the house?” “I’m a nurse!” someone called up and came down to assist.
That’s all I can think of aside from projector fuckups in smaller, avant garde showings which, somehow, occasionally add to the experience. Like when you could hear 16mm reels crashing to the floor and cursing in the back of the gallery followed by, “we’re going to take a 10 minute break!” and smoking cigarettes in the winter night the patrons discuss the upcoming program and their mutual admiration of rockers like Jem Cohen and Joyce Wieland. What a rush.
To begin with the audio was seriously messed up. Between the echo and the accents it was virtually impossible to understand 80% of the spoken dialogue in the film. Secondly, about 1/3 into the film, it began to slow almost to a pause, and then skip. This happened about three times. Even after moving from the balcony to the many area (and I almost never move or get out of my seat during a movie) it was still impossible to understand.
So we fell asleep.
I’ve seen some pretty stellar stuff at the Bloor. Was this a back up for a damaged print?
Thinking of other weird happenings at the cinema - of the analog variety - I recall that time we saw the movie Romance (1999) - a French art film with some pretty explicit depictions of sexuality throughout - and someone in the cinema had a seizure. The house lights were brought up and it’s the first time in real life I heard someone utter the phrase, “Is there a doctor in the house?” “I’m a nurse!” someone called up and came down to assist.
That’s all I can think of aside from projector fuckups in smaller, avant garde showings which, somehow, occasionally add to the experience. Like when you could hear 16mm reels crashing to the floor and cursing in the back of the gallery followed by, “we’re going to take a 10 minute break!” and smoking cigarettes in the winter night the patrons discuss the upcoming program and their mutual admiration of rockers like Jem Cohen and Joyce Wieland. What a rush.