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As for BLOOD ON THE SUN, music and movie, here in Italy we were lucky to have a good vision of the US cinema panorama, as nearly anything was imported and dubbed when ME tracks were still available. Problems come in some WW2 propaganda films having sequences involving the national pride or military aspects heavily cut.
The same is true for us here in Germany. US films about WWII which portrayed Germans (or rather Nazis at that time) in a too much negative light, suffered from heavy cuts when they got released directly after the war during the late 40s or early 50s. Famous examples are CASABLANCA or even Hitchcock´s NOTORIOUS which were heavily cut and for which even parts of the plot and characters were changed. Totally crazy! So only later during the 70s new dubbings of the complete film were then made which restored the original meaning. And a few movies were just not imported after WWII as for example SAHARA.
BLOOD ON THE SUN did have a short theatrical release in 1950, but then during the later decades the film just disappeared and was not shown again. Certainly also because it had been a total commercial flop in Germany. So probably no 35mm prints of the German dubbed version from 1950 exist anymore.
This is of course another big problem we have here. Even though so many US films of all genres were imported during the late 40s and early 50s - with M&E tracks still intact at that time - many 35mm prints got destroyed during the 60s when the German distributor went either bankrupt or had no interest in the film anymore.
So when later on during the 70s/80s German TV wanted to show those old films which formerly had had a theatrical release it was always 50/50 if or not the first German dubbing from the 40s/50s had survived. If it had not survived, a new dubbing had of course to be made.
A good friend of mine in Italy who is also very much interested in Golden Age soundtracks has told me the same about Italian dubbings: So also in your country apparently new dubbings often had to be made during the 70s/80s because the old dubbing prints from the 40s/50s were not available anymore. And then of course the dubbing firms had to replace the original score with library music because they often didn´t get the M&E tracks from the US production companies anymore.
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Sadly I suspect that most of not all Friedhofer from the Fox vaults that can be released, has been released. Here’s hoping Bruce Kimmel of Kritzerland will prove me wrong, as he’s repeatedly said he would realize all Friedhofer he possibly can.
Yavar
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This is fascinating. Wasn't the German film industry censored under Allied Occupation in the immediate postwar years? And didn't the new German government adopt stringent laws against the expression of Nazi sentiments? I'm surprised that anyone could have softened the portrayal of movie Nazis. That kind of editing would indeed make hash of most wartime plots.
The situation in Germany during the first years after WWII was very complex and difficult. Of course, directly after the war in 1945 there were so-called re-education programs so that for example all Germans were forced to view documentary films about the atrocities which had happened in the concentration camps. But just a few years later the German people wanted to forget and to repress everything about the horrible deeds which had been done during the war and only wanted to look forward. Also the four allied powers had completely different views about the re-education of the Germans - for example the French miltary governemt didn´t want to show films with political themes in their occupation zone at all, they even prohibited it.
Then from about 1948 onwards - and above all after the famous Air Bridge in Berlin - a huge amount of new and older US films were imported, a lot of them also produced between 1939 and 1945. NOTORIOUS and CASABLANCA were released for the first time in German cinemas in 1951 and 1952 - and all scenes dealing with Nazism were cut or totally altered. This was probably done by the distribution companies themselves purely for diplomatic and commercial reasons. The distributors of the films were the German divisions of WB and RKO - and of course they knew very well that German people at that time during the early 50s didn´t want to be confronted anymore with all the horrible memories of WWII. The distributors also knew that if there was too much negativitiy about the Germans the films would be commercial flops in the cinemas as the German moviegoing-public would then stay away from these films. This was the general attitude at that time which you have to understand. Only later on - about 15-20 years later - when a new generaton with completely different attitudes had grown up in Germany these films could for the first time be shown without any cuts and alteraions because people then had much more open political views and were not repellled by the negativity with which the Germans had been portrayed in many of those US films.
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The negativity that Germans were portrayed with in American films during the period from 1939 to 1945 was mild compared to the human butchery that was going on in the camps. The barbarism wasn't really shown until Steven Spielberg gave the world a history lesson.
By the way, SCHINDLER´S LIST was a huge success in German cinemas during the 90s - but this was about four decades after the early 50s and therefore a completely different time. So you can´t compare those decades at all and also not the movie-going public during those totally different time periods.
But even earlier in 1985 the French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann had given the world an excellent history lesson with his 9-hour documentary SHOAH which was probably even more shocking than the Spielberg movie because it dealt with the REAL people - Lanzmann had in fact interviewed several of the survivors and the perpetrators of the Holocaust for his extraordinary documentary. If you have ever seen this movie, you will never forget it!
I fully agree with you: Of course the negativity that Germans were portrayed with in the WWI US films between 1939 and 1945 was mild compared to the real butchery in the camps. No question about that. But just a few years after WWII the movie business in Germany very quickly became a well- functioning entertainment industry again. At first there were some so-called "Trümmerfilme" made in Germany between 1945 and 1947 which wanted to come to terms with the recent past in an honest and realistic way, but most of the people didn´t want to see these depressing films at all and so all of them were commercial failures.
The US military government and also the major US distribution companies in the occupied zones soon had to consider similar things: Why should they import anti-nazi war films from the early 40s like for example DESPERATE JOURNEY, EDGE OF DARKNESS or PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE at that time around 1950 when the German cinemas then would be almost empty if they were shown? So the main question for them was which US films and which genres would be a commercial success in this country or not. This was the difficult situation with which they got confronted at that time. What else should they have done?
Just to be clear: All of this has nothing to do with my own opinion about all of these films, this was just the course of events during those post-war years in Germany and nobody could change it.
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Posted: |
Feb 11, 2019 - 8:48 AM
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By: |
finder4545
(Member)
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...
A good friend of mine in Italy who is also very much interested in Golden Age soundtracks has told me the same about Italian dubbings: So also in your country apparently new dubbings often had to be made during the 70s/80s because the old dubbing prints from the 40s/50s were not available anymore. And then of course the dubbing firms had to replace the original score with library music because they often didn´t get the M&E tracks from the US production companies anymore. (Stefan Schlegel)
Stefan no wonder cinema required US products to be adjusted to serve the needs of the time, after a war that involved every aspect of society in Europe. So, in Germany in one way, and in Italy in another, the adjustment of certain movies, just after the conflict and in the following longer period of Reconstruction, were the result of those needs, and it's interesting to note that authors were still living to see how their creations were being adjusted to serve local purposes.
But what started here in Italy in the 70s, viz the re-dubbing of old movies missing the original sound-elements, really had nothing to do with a movement of restoration of those works and had a much less noble reason than regain an integrity.
The "re-dubbing operation" was pure vandalism, here, literally invented by programmers of Italian Television to create a false need and put the old movies in the hands of dubbing external companies not to restore but only to do business. In fact they declared "lost and requiring a new dubbing" Italian composite tracks that were well known and already broadcasted many times, notoriously still existing and obtainable through the simple research in libraries or by previous suppliers.
At that time I myself engaged a personal battle against that kind of programmers, but those guys insisted in their intentions and within some years they changed aspect to old movies, ruining lots of US classics bought from Warner, Goldwyn, RKO, MGM, Columbia etc. such as Magnificent Ambersons, Barbary Coast, These Three, Dodsworth, Stella Dallas, Hurricane, The Rains Came, Drums Along the Mohawk, Dragonwyck, Down to the Sea in Ships, Gilda, Gaslight, Prince and the Pauper, Adventures of Robin Hood, Black Swan, Son of Fury, Forever Amber, That Hamilton Woman, Jungle Book, Macomber Affair, Command Decision, Cat People, all Greta Garbo and Tarzan movies and tons of others.
Nearly none had an ME-track, except a fistful (luckily Wuthering Heights and Best Years), and all them were re-dubbed with alien music and horrible sound effects, becoming Frankenstein's movies absolutely unsuitable for any study or analysis.
In some cases strange things happened and we made open reproach to RAI in official conferences in Rome: so to say, the entire lot of the Max Brothers movies was sent to a company that knew nothing at all and applied dialogues even to the mute brother Harpo! In another case resulted dubbed even an all Italian movie of 1949, AL DIAVOLO LA CELEBRITA', obviously known and still existing!
Such kind of re-dubbing continued as a habit for years and at last was applied even to titles having an available legitimate composite track widely acquired to the common knowledge, such as Gone with the Wind, Four Feathers, The Drum, The Yearling, Blood on the Sun, Salome, McLintock, Raiders of lost Ark, Towering Inferno and hundreds of others; last but not least, for those who don't know, even the last big work of Sergio Leone, ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, whose original sound structure and voices had been carefully planned by director in person.
The advent of the digital market increased confusion, offering the same titles in different forms on different discs - "legitimate tracks with artistic Italian dubbing" on one, "alien tracks with new unfit voices" on another - so that nobody was able to link the credits with the real sound heard.
All this has been a true epochal distorsion of the knowledge in film music, an immense cultural damage, and only in the last decade a strong recovery movement has been born to re-establish the memory of old legitimate editions, the greater part being released on disc on a continuous basis by small specialized labels devolving attention to this aspect, often expressly declaring "vintage dubbing" on the cover of their products.
Alas these are not certified ones and often the quality is not professional, as for a RED HOUSE 16mm print rediscovered by collectors but badly extracted by telecine.
BLOOD ON THE SUN, subject of this thread, was imported here in Italy in November 1946 and had a superlative legitimate edition in Italian language, before being poorly re-dubbed and released on dvd in 2012, without the music of Rozsa on the IT track. SAHARA was imported in 1946 but was rejected two times by our Government, in May 1946 and June 1949, before obtaining the permission for public release in March 1950. The cause of rejection? Hear, PFK: "because it contained the sequence of an Italian prisoner apt to offend Italian people's sensibilities"! Just that with J.Carroll Naish and the powerful Rozsa on the score! I think a pair of these two titles on disc would be really a resounding tribute to the Rozsa of the wartime.
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Thanks. 
