SncDthMnky wrote:golgothicon wrote:kevyip1 wrote:I guess I can live with 11 seconds of misplaced dialogs.
Wrong attitude. I for my part won't buy the DVD until there is a statement.
Good work Hofmeister.
Thanks for proving my point. #-o
Of course we can all "live with 11 seconds of misplaced dialogs", but why should we? Especially since the defect lies not in the source material and no other release shares it. It's particularly sad because Criterion's edition is easily as much of an improvement over the Eureka as the Eureka was over the UFA/Transit disc.
What happened here is that a fault has been added to the film, and this
is problematic. After all, Criterion exists precisely
because they cater to people who care passionately about films. Therefore it affects Criterion's basics when a mistake such as this eludes them -- or, quite possibly, when such a mistake may even have been induced while the material was in their hands.
I'm not all that certain that this is a minor or negligable issue. This is not about 'perfection'; nobody's reproaching Criterion with anything worse than negligence. But negligence does count in Criterion's field of activity. This concerns the integrity of the presentation, the very basis of Criterion's reputation.
Let's forget even that the mistake affects a major turning point of the plot in
M. Think of a film that you care about, any film. Pick any spot, then imagine you're being denied the dialogue of this passage and being fed text from a different passage. In
Videodrome, would you mind it if you saw Brian O'Blivion but heard Barry Convex instead? In
A Matter of Life and Death, would you mind it if you saw Peter Carter in his burning plane but heard a piece of the opening narration again? Conversely, is it minor or negligable in
M because it's not in English?
I agree wholeheartedly that it's not a catastrophe and that it's only a movie. Less than that, it's merely one of several DVD editions of
M. But the scene we're talking about is no longer a scene from
M.
SncDthMnky, is there nothing in this you can relate to?