Why did they show this with an English soundtrack? The voice actors were terrible. Also, about 35 min. into the film, right after Marcello is telling the priest his story, why did the sound go out? It was silent for the entire party scene and the sound came back in the train scene. Was this intended, was it TCM's fault, or was I the only person who experienced this?
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I was also confused by this silent part. I think it may have been intentional though. If you click "alternate versions" on the side menu it refers to a "dance of the blind" scene that was cut from the original American release so I'm guessing that that was probably it. Also, I was also dismayed at the English soundtrack at first but it actually looked like all of the actors were speaking English in the film, not Italian. The actors' lips generally seemed to match the soundtrack, of course not perfectly, but it seemed that they were saying the same words. Many early Italian films had all audio recorded during post-production and it was still a somewhat common practice up until the time this film was made. It's possible that because of the international cast, the dialogue was actually spoken in English during the filming.
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i meant the side menu of its IMDB page where it will tell you about alternate versions. i don't think the film is available at all on DVD yet, unfortunately.
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Cinematographer Storaro explains the sequence with no sound.
http://www.cameraguild.com/interviews/chat_storaro/storaro_interview.htm
STORARO: Most of my early films were never released around the world. One exception is The Conformist, which is probably the early movie everyone knows best. There was one tape made a long time ago, but it was very bad. Paramount re-did it with (colorist) Lou Levinson working with me on the transfer. That was five or six years ago. It was a wonderful gift because it includes a sequence that was cut out of the original picture. It’s the sequence where the protagonist is going to be married. His blind friends make a little party for him. We lit this sequence with Chinese lanterns using different colors in an incredible, almost grotesque, but very dramatic way. At that time, we were using the Technicolor dye transfer system and that sequence was cut only in the matrixes. When we were re-mastering the pictures for Paramount, we discovered the original negative for the sequence was still alive. It was six to nine minutes long. I called Bertolucci and he was very happy that we were doing that. The problem was that sequence was never dubbed in English. I suggested to Garrett Smith (at Paramount) that we just use subtitles. We did a beautiful transfer but it still hasn’t been released. Maybe it will happen someday in DVD.
well it was dumb to not have subtitles on the scene or something but at least TCM included it, even without sound. It was a really beautiful looking scene. I cant understand why it would've been cut.
Oh and I found out that apparently it's just about impossible to find The Conformist with its original Italian audio track. So it isn't really an error we can blame TCM for. Hopefully Criterion will give the film a proper DVD release some day soon.
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The version playing at Film Forum in New York this week has this scene in the original Italian with English subtitles. If this version plays near you, try to see it.
shareyes ive seen this movie at a revival theater in the original italian with english subtitles... i do speak italian and french so the subtitles dont matter for me but for people that dont speak the language...it is i think in my opinion to see this movie as well as other foreign language film in there original format w/subtitles....as for the conformist they speak Italian and french...theres a scene in the movie where Manganiello is in a park in france talking to himself in Italian and a woman walks by and tells him the birds dont speak Italian...its a funny scene but when dubbed you lose the joke.
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