556 Senso

Discuss releases by Criterion and the films on them. Threads may contain spoilers!
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kaujot
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Re: 556 Senso

#26 Post by kaujot » Thu Feb 24, 2011 11:17 am

Added to Ebert's Great Movies series.

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Fred Holywell
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Re: 556 Senso

#27 Post by Fred Holywell » Tue Mar 08, 2011 3:54 am

Just got to watch the SENSO DVD on a rather small CRT, and was pleasantly surprised. Color was notably better than I expected after viewing many online screencaps (both BR and DVD). Those caps tended toward the overexposed and weakly colored, with inappropriate violet and yellow tinting. But the disc itself seemed to me something of a 'revelation'. Looked really nice -- almost, but not quite, duplicating the lush, velvety look of early-50s three-strip Technicolor. Not as rich and detailed as THE LEOPARD maybe, but what could be. I'm looking forward to watching SENSO on a bigger screen soon, and hope to report back with some more pleasant viewing impressions.

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ellipsis7
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Re: 556 Senso

#28 Post by ellipsis7 » Tue May 10, 2011 5:11 pm

The 1966 BBC Man of Three Worlds: Luchino Visconti extra is wonderful... Altogether a fantastic package...

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Taketori Washizu
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Re: 556 Senso

#29 Post by Taketori Washizu » Wed May 11, 2011 9:29 am

Anyone know if the Criterion edition of Senso is the same one currently streaming on Netflix? The quality looks pretty bad, so I'm guessing not.

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ellipsis7
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Re: 556 Senso

#30 Post by ellipsis7 » Wed May 11, 2011 11:55 am

Extremely unlikely, the Criterion is from the same source as the Studio Canal Blu (although they have graded the HD master differently - see Beaver review), the recent Cineteca di Bologna/Film Foundation restoration which is top quality altogether...

classic_movieguy
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Re: 556 Senso

#31 Post by classic_movieguy » Sun May 22, 2011 8:57 pm

On the DVD edition of the original language "Senso", has anybody else noticed that the image is ususually jittery?

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Fred Holywell
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Re: 556 Senso

#32 Post by Fred Holywell » Wed Jun 01, 2011 2:47 am

classic_movieguy wrote:On the DVD edition of the original language "Senso", has anybody else noticed that the image is ususually jittery?
I haven't noticed, or at least been bothered by, a jittery image on the Italian version -- on the American one, yes, but that goes with the source print. Strange -- perhaps it's your player?

Watching "Senso" again, I do wish the SD image were a bit sharper. Though I didn't find the tone as greenish as some of the caps I've seen, I wonder if the whites couldn't be purer. It seemed to bother me a bit more the second time around. The Studio Canal version, at least in the caps, looks more natural where whites and some skin tones are concerned.

I must admit the film has grown on me a bit. While not the biggest fan of either Granger or Valli, I think they're both very good in their roles. The dubbing probably helps where Granger is concerned, but he does seem rather well cast, considering how cruel and heartless his character really is. Granger actually had something of a track record with characters like Franz Mahler. He'd played duplicitous, untrustworthy, even murderous characters in films like "They Live by Night", "Side Street", "Strangers on a Train", and Edge of Doom". And though he tends to be thought of as a matinee idol, even his roles in musical comedies like "Small Town Girl" and "Hans Christian Andersen" were rats of a sort.

I wonder if Marlon Brando, as great as he was back in 1954, would have enacted the part as truthfully as Granger did. Mahler isn't exactly the type of character most movie stars of the fifties were eager to play. And knowing Brando, he probably would have wanted a final redemption scene before the big ending, if he could have wrangled it out of Visconti. But Granger seems to give the part everything he's got. Compared to Brando, it may not seem that much, but I've got to give the man credit. He acquits himself quite well, I think. It's too bad he didn't stay in Hollywood a little longer. He claimed his true love was the stage, but it's his movies that he'll be remembered for.
Last edited by Fred Holywell on Fri Jun 03, 2011 5:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Tommaso
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Re: 556 Senso

#33 Post by Tommaso » Thu Jun 02, 2011 7:22 pm

classic_movieguy wrote:On the DVD edition of the original language "Senso", has anybody else noticed that the image is ususually jittery?
Yes, I noticed that too, and while it doesn't make the film unwatchable, it can be pretty annoying in places. No idea how that could have happened, but I had a similar problem recently when I tried to pull down an HD-mkv of a TV broadcast to DVD/avi to make it watchable on my standalone; it worked, but there was a similar jerkiness that I couldn't get rid of. Sometimes it looks as if people were walking in slow motion... But I just tried this with some freeware programs; and I would certainly have expected the Criterion Collection to come up with better results when pulling down an HD-source to dvd. And of course they normally do, so I really wonder how this went through their quality control department. And additionally, we now see the side effects of all the review sites only looking at the blu versions and no longer having a look at the SD versions anymore; I would have liked to have been warned about this before buying the set (admittedly the extras are so great that there's probably no real alternative in the SD world).

In case the problem shouldn't be universal: I have a Pioneer player. What's yours, classic movieguy?

classic_movieguy
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Re: 556 Senso

#34 Post by classic_movieguy » Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:40 pm

Hi! Thanks for replying to my query. At the moment I only have a no-frills, region-free AWA DVD player, in addition to my Sony Blu-ray. Thanks for addressing the jerky problem. I didn't think it was an isolated problem, as the issue is still there even when I upscale the disc on my Blu-ray. I was just mystified why I haven't read of any reviewers mentioning the problem.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to get a Blu-ray copy one day. Perhaps Masters of Cinema or Optimum in the UK may decide to release it. The Criterion's Blu-ray is Region A, and I can't play it here in Australia without decoding my player, which is hard to do on Blu-ray machines, apparently.

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Tommaso
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Re: 556 Senso

#35 Post by Tommaso » Fri Jun 03, 2011 5:29 am

What is most irritating is that the excerpts of the film in the two CC-produced documentaries on the same disc don't have that jerkyness, although they clearly come from the same source.

Jonathan S
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Re: 556 Senso

#36 Post by Jonathan S » Sun Jun 05, 2011 6:45 am

Yes, I think something has gone seriously wrong with Criterion's DVD transfer of this fine restoration. I've tried it on two different set-ups and whenever there is a brisk lateral movement, by figures and/or the camera, a most unnatural jerkiness results. It's particularly obvious on panning shots in the battle scenes during the second half of the film. The problem is minimised by Visconti's relatively static, painterly style in this film; if it were, say, a Max Ophuls movie it would be totally unwatchable for me. When it does occur, the jerkiness is almost as bad as on some internet downloads people send me, or live news reports from overseas. I'm going to complain to Criterion, and would urge others to do the same, in the hope they'll remaster the DVD. If the Blu-ray were similarly affected, all hell would've broken loose!

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Fred Holywell
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Re: 556 Senso

#37 Post by Fred Holywell » Mon Jun 06, 2011 12:13 am

Checked my disc again tonight, and no problems with visual jerkiness or stuttering. Strange. Definitely let Criterion know about it; perhaps there's a bad batch of discs out there they don't know about. This may not be applicable, but I see that two of you are overseas customers... I'm wondering if there could be some type of U.S.- overseas formating problem. Way out of my field, but it did cross my mind.

Jonathan S
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Re: 556 Senso

#38 Post by Jonathan S » Mon Jun 06, 2011 5:41 am

Fred Holywell wrote:I'm wondering if there could be some type of U.S.- overseas formating problem. Way out of my field, but it did cross my mind.
It occurred to me that it might be exacerbated by watching on a PAL-based system, but I think the transfer must be largely to blame, given that I've never had this problem with other properly encoded NTSC releases - certainly not from Criterion - and that (as Tommaso noted) on the making-of documentary on the same disc the shots that look jerky in the main presentation now look perfectly smooth.

It isn't noticeable for probably 90% of the film but, as I suggested above, I believe that's only because of the lack of lateral movement. The first really glaring example is at 6m 16s when the camera pans right to Valli in the opera house box. The motion of the camera itself is not at all smooth there. I've e-mailed Criterion and will post any response.

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Tommaso
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Re: 556 Senso

#39 Post by Tommaso » Mon Jun 06, 2011 6:36 am

Thank you, Jonathan. I'm also watching in Europe, but both my player and my TV can play PAL and NTSC directly, no conversion involved: the TV automatically recognizes an NTSC signal and switches to that format. And indeed, something like this has never happened with any other dvd from a quality label to me, and certainly not with any other Criterion disc. I still somehow suspect the player, but unfortunately I only have one codefree player at the moment and can't check it with another one.

Jonathan S
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Re: 556 Senso

#40 Post by Jonathan S » Fri Jun 24, 2011 4:26 am

Re: the jerkiness at least three of us have found so distracting on the DVD edition:
I received no reply to my "Mulvaney" e-mail, so wrote directly to the producer of this release, who has kindly responded:
Issa Clubb wrote:I'm sorry you've had problems with the disc. Can you tell me a little bit more about the systems you are playing the disc on? We can't seem to reproduce the problem here. Also, we just looked at the video encode file used to make the DVDs, and it played fine at the scene point you mentioned. Needless to say our testing company didn't find this problem either. So I'm going to try to research it further.

If you could mention make and model of player and display, and also whether the players are deinterlacing or up-res'ing the output, that would be very helpful. Have you seen this problem on any other discs? Have you tried a computer's disc player too? Again, I'm sorry you're experiencing this, and would like to get to the bottom of the problem.
If Tommaso and classic movieguy would like to provide any more of the requested details (by PM if you wish), I'll forward them with my reply.

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Fred Holywell
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Re: 556 Senso

#41 Post by Fred Holywell » Thu Dec 22, 2011 2:04 am

The Italian trailer for "Senso" is posted on YouTube, if you're curious to see it. It's in pretty rough shape (dark and murky) -- probably why Criterion didn't include it in their set. Interesting though to see how the film was sold to Italian audiences in 1954.
Last edited by Fred Holywell on Sun Aug 09, 2015 4:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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SamLowry
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Re: 556 Senso

#42 Post by SamLowry » Sat Dec 24, 2011 1:28 pm

Fred Holywell wrote:The Italian trailer for "Senso" is posted on YouTube, if you're curious to see it. It's in pretty rough shape (dark and murky) -- probably why Criterion didn't include it in their set.
I've seen much worse trailers make it onto Criterion discs. The trailer is 3.30 minutes long with almost nonstop dramatic Italian voiceover... a bit tiresome perhaps.

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Fred Holywell
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Re: 556 Senso

#43 Post by Fred Holywell » Tue Jan 03, 2012 5:51 am

The section of the 'Opera' sequence cut from "The Wanton Countess" (Granger & Valli in box, etc.) survives in an alternate English-language version entitled "Livia". It's been uploaded to YouTube.

EDIT: Updated YouTube link.
Last edited by Fred Holywell on Sun Aug 09, 2015 4:36 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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zedz
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Re: 556 Senso

#44 Post by zedz » Tue Jan 03, 2012 7:16 pm

I can't imagine somebody's found a pristine visual source for the obscure Livia that happens to have rough sound - has somebody just synced up the English soundtrack for this scene with the Italian visuals?

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Fred Holywell
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Re: 556 Senso

#45 Post by Fred Holywell » Tue Jan 03, 2012 10:47 pm

From what I've been able to learn, "Senso" was shot with live sound for virtually all of Farley Granger's scenes, and likely for some other scenes, as well. How many others, I don't know, but there is at least one photo of Valli with a boom mic over her head during a scene that Granger's not in. Most of Granger's dialogue sounds live to me, as do the few German lines. There are some 'wild lines' where Granger's character is obviously voiced by another actor, probably because he'd returned to the U.S before dubbing was done. Most, if not all, of Valli's English dialogue -- in scenes without Granger -- sounds (and looks) dubbed to me.

As for "Livia", I saw part of it on VHS a long time ago (10+ years), and I remember it looking almost as good as the Criterion "Senso". Strong, true colors, much better than the brown print of "Senso" that used to run in rep houses. It seemed to be transferred from an original Technicolor print. The front titles were all in English, including the text that detailed the set-up of the story. Unfortunately, the quality of the tape was poor, and the sound and image deteriorated as it went along (snow, noise, etc.), so I saw no more than half of it, if that. But it wasn't a reshoot of "Senso", it was clearly an edited, English-language version. (To clarify, when I wrote 'alternate' in my previous post, I simply meant an alternate English-language cut, not an alternate filming or restaging.)

Criterion should have released "Livia" on disc, rather than the faded Eastmancolor "TWC", in my opinion. The fact that they didn't probably means they couldn't get the rights to it, or didn't want to pay the money the rights holder wanted. I can't remember the name of the company that put out the VHS, but it was a no-name brand I didn't recognize, and it was American (NTSC). I do remember that the tape label had the "The Wanton Countess" written on it. That was the weird thing -- when the title "Livia" came up on the screen. It's what set me off researching the film a bit, trying to find out how many versions of the thing there were, etc.

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Fred Holywell
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Re: 556 Senso

#46 Post by Fred Holywell » Wed Jan 04, 2012 9:19 am

"The Wanton Countess" in IB Technicolor? I haven't heard of it, but maybe...

According to Farley Granger, "The Wanton Countess" was a version concocted by a west coast TV syndicator back in the late-1960s. They cut the English-language edition down to just over 90 minutes to fit into a 2-hour time slot. I'd expect it to have been printed in some version of Eastmancolor, rather than IB Tech, but it's a possibility -- the company did make prints for television at the time, as I recall.

"Livia" is definitely a different version, though. There are scenes in one, that aren't in the other, and "Livia" runs about 10 minutes longer than "TWC". From what I've learned, "Livia" was released in the mid-1950s. It would be logical that Technicolor handled the printing on it just as they did on "Senso". The VHS version I saw certainly looked like IB Tech.

Of course, it's entirely possible that the English-language version I know as "Livia" was titled "The Wanton Countess" in some markets. I don't remember seeing anything suggesting that, but it's a sensible theory. And it would be an additional reason to think that there were some IB Tech prints of "TWC" in circulation at one time.
Last edited by Fred Holywell on Thu Jan 05, 2012 7:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Jonathan S
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Re: 556 Senso

#47 Post by Jonathan S » Thu Jan 05, 2012 3:15 am

If it's of any help, the print I saw theatrically in the UK (probably London) in May 1987 definitely had English dialogue - I noted it down at the time, commenting on the obvious English dubbing even of Granger for some lines, though unfortunately I didn't record if the print had any title other than Senso. Judging from the comments I noted about the colour, it must have been quite vivid, but I don't know what kind of print it was.

The first time I saw the Italian version was on the BBC's Film Club a few years later, introduced by John Francis Lane who apologised for the quality of the print with burned-in subs, though it was actually a bit better than the UK video issue a decade or so later!

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Fred Holywell
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Re: 556 Senso

#48 Post by Fred Holywell » Fri Jan 06, 2012 3:15 am

David, I've got to track down Elaine Mancini's excellent resource on Visconti to provide some specifics on "Livia" for you; that may take a few days. I'm also hoping to unearth the VHS I mentioned to fashion some screencaps of the title cards. No guarantee it will even play in the machine but, if i find it, I'll try my best. Until then, here's a jpg of an original "Livia" one-sheet, Argentinian to be specific (likely a Spanish-language print). Doesn't have a date on it, that I can see, but looks similar to the 1954 promo art, so probably close to, if not actually from, that year (the seller says it is).

Image

Regarding
Dennis Lim and another American I know definitely saw TWC in New York during the sixties in IB prints
they say that the English-language prints they saw had the title "The Wanton Countess" on them, and not something else, even "Senso"? I'm curious, as I haven't been able to find any evidence (posters, reviews, newspaper ads, etc.) of the title existing before 1968, and then only as a distributed-to-TV entity (Granger's autobiography; a 1968 review by Andrew Sarris in "The Village Voice"; some promotional material). Even the HFA print has the title "Senso" on it (the one in the Criterion set). And, as I said, the video I saw was packaged as "TWC", but surprisingly had the title "Livia" on screen. This is interesting; I had figured the title (such a lousy one) was dreamed up mainly to appeal to a TV soap-opera viewing crowd.
Last edited by Fred Holywell on Sat May 26, 2018 11:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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ellipsis7
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Re: 556 Senso

#49 Post by ellipsis7 » Fri Jan 06, 2012 5:19 am

Sight and Sound review entitled "SENSO (THE WANTON COUNTESS)" by Alain Tanner from 1957 (Sight & Sound XXVII:2, 1957, pp.92-93) appears to be the first mention of the English language version under that title for theatrical release....
It is extremely difficult to arrive at any final conclusion about a work like Senso (Archway) after only one viewing. In the first place Senso is not an easy film to grasp... ...The version shown in this country [UK], however (under the title The Wanton Countess), adds immeasurably to the difficulties of a fair consideration of the film. The dubbing is terrible; and even in the scenes which were shot in English specially for this version, half the dialogue is unintelligible. Even before the film reached this country, the Italian censor had insisted on alterations in the script and the removal of several scenes. Since then there have been further extensive cuts, amounting to some minutes' running time, and as inexplicable as they seem unjustified. Inevitably the structure of the film has been irreparably damaged; and the movement is jerky and often apparently inconsequential.
...giving a pretty decent account of the genesis of WANTON COUNTESS...

BBFC confirm this release...
Type: Film ~ Date: 23/08/1957 ~ Company: Archway Film Dist Ltd ~ Cuts: Yes, passed with cuts ~ Title: THE WANTON COUNTESS
According to Geoffrey Nowell-Smith in the filmography appended to his LUCHINO VISCONTI (BFI) book, 'a print of the English language version is preserved in the [BFI] National Film Archive in London. The film was released in Britain in a shortened English-language version (91 minutes) under the title THE WANTON COUNTESS.' He has SENSO running at 121 minutes..

CRITERION has SENSO running at 123 minutes, and THE WANTON COUNTESS at 93 minutes which fits... TWC is 3/4 the length of SENSO!...

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zedz
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Re: 556 Senso

#50 Post by zedz » Fri Jan 06, 2012 3:54 pm

Curiouser and curiouser - that poster for the (supposedly English language) Livia is in Italian. Was Livia an alternative release title for Senso in more than one language / market?

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