Error in BFI archive print of BN
First, a bit of background:
In the "madness of Sister Ruth" sequence when she gets all
agitated when she & Mr Dean are shouting at each other she
famously "sees red" (and there's a wash of red across the screen)
and then she faints. But the BFI archive print goes to BLUE !!
Not just any blue but the bright blue of a blue screen.
I wrote to the BFI and told them that it should go to BLACK, not blue.
I said in the letter that I'd heard of people having a black-out but
never a blue-out :)
I also mentioned that I'd checked with Jack Cardiff and Ian
Christie and they both agreed that it should go to black not
to blue.
I suspect that it's because there was some modern electronic
kit in the process that saw "no light" and interpreted that
as "no signal" and modern kit often uses blue for "no signal".
The response from the BFI (March 2003) admitted that the fault was theirs and said that they would be looking to "have this section reprinted before we are able to allow it to be screened again". In the meantime the print will be withdrawn from circulation."
So if anyone was due to see BN they'd better check it's
still going to be shown if the BFI have "withdrawn from
circulation" all their prints - Sorry :)
But I'm still puzzled as to why Criterion's DVD goes to blue
whereas Carlton's correctly goes to black. I've sent an email
to Criterion but haven't had a reply yet. I also asked them
if they were planning on releasing the other P&P films they
did on laserdisk (49P, Blimp, ToH) on DVD and if they
were thinking about doing AMOLAD as well.
See
responses from Criterion.
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