MovieChat Forums > Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (1977) Discussion > On the European DVD...

On the European DVD...

posted 18 years ago by devilsmercy03
6 replies | jump to latest

I just finished watching the film on the English (PAL) DVD. First of all, to all of those wanting to see this film, but only have a NTSC system, I would suggest you dish out the same amount of money you probably spent on your own American DVD player and just buy a region-free player (it is very useful and makes me question the process of region coding in the first place!).

The DVD transfer is just fine - No, it doesn't have the black prince scene, or the very short Chesty Morgan scene that is honestly not worth the wait. If you want to see the film, buy this print. The colors are vivid, and the picture, through grainy, surpasses that of other dull transfers.

Lastly, I watched the entire film with Italian dubbed audio and English subtitles (I asumed that the bad audio-sync was yett again part of Fellini's style - No!). If you want this to be a less frustrating and more enjoyable watch, watch it in English. Although, without the subtitles you might miss the Operetta lyrics and other small Italian phrases.

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[–] 18 years ago

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[–] 18 years ago

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[–] turkeycat 17 years ago

I just watched this European release (region 2). The transfer is very good, and I too began watching in Italian (with subtitles) to find that after 10 minutes I prefered switching to the English version instead, which was much better (the Italian synch being out of time).

I would also strongly recommend the 2 featurettes on disc 2 - the one I particularly enjoyed was the 45 minute discussion with Donald Sutherland about the making of Casanova and his relationship with the great director. Sutherland comes across as intelligent, erudite, and also humble. It was an interesting special feature.

[–] fredo-19 16 years ago

Just bought the British released DVD and, although the extra features on disc two are impressive, the overall look is really messy and lowres. Not horribly lowres... it's a bit better than the vhs tapes that were so dark you couldn't see anything. But here things tend to be over-exposed and look like they were pushed visually. It's very grainy and has the look of a tape master. A bit disappointed am I. The good thing though... my laptop didn't have to shift regions to play it!

I disagree about the dubbing, I prefer the English. I've seen the film a great many times in the theatre and on tape, and always find that Sutherland's performance is my fav, although it is indeed a bit awkward.

[–] rosabelverde_1127 16 years ago

To me the English language version is unbearable, simply because it's the wrong language. Also the Italian version has people talk with different accents, or Spanish sentences strewn in (the dinner party scene for instance), it's obviously done very meticulously. Of course all this gets lost if you don't understand Italian and have to rely on subtitles anyhow, in that case the English version may be preferable, but I rather go with wrong lip-synch than the wrong language

Regards, Rosabel

[–] El Bacho 16 years ago

The movie has just been released on Blu-ray in France. The version features the Italian, English and French dubs with only French subtitles. It's labelled as being Region B.