CRITICAL EDITIONS OF FILMS IN DIGITAL FORMATS

by Natascha Drubek-Meyer and Nikolai Izvolov[1]

Since antiquity, critical editions of historical sources and literary texts have customarily been accompanied by editorial commentaries. In contrast, the public dissemination of cinema, whether in the form of a documentary, an acted film or historical footage, has been deprived of what might be termed scholarly critical editions. Indeed, the concept of an ‘edition’ is rarely applied to the cinema[2].

With the appearance of new formats (VHS cassettes, CD, DVD, the internet, and to these we can now add HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) in which a film may exist, anyone so wishing can study the history, culture and art of cinema on his or her own. Cinema history and theory have become part of our general education and, in the consciousness of an educated person, many films play as great a role as the classic works of literature. The release of a film on DVD is already redolent of the publication of a book, yet any serious discussion of the possibilities offered by a more technologically advanced scholarly commentary about cinema is only just beginning.

The main problem encountered in preparing a critical edition of a film is that there are still no academic standards in this area, although without them the discipline of film studies itself cannot properly function. Until such standards are established, this academic field will always be less highly regarded than one grounded in the study of a scholarly edition of a text prepared on the basis of a thorough textological[3] analysis.

THE CURRENT PRESENTATION OF FILMS ON DVD

The universal application of academic standards would address the most common weaknesses we have identified in current DVD releases. First, we have observed that there is often an attempt to present in a single space (i.e. the limited area represented by the screen) as much historical, technical or other information as possible. For example, some current releases have attempted to combine several moving objects (e.g., an extract from a film as a ‘PIP’ or a ‘Picture in Picture’) within a single frame. In some instances, subtitles with background information appear whilst a character in the film or the commentator is speaking (imitating the visual appearance of a footnote in an edition of a written text).

Second, our experience of often sophisticated audio commentaries on interactive DVDs would suggest that it is preferable for the content of an oral commentary also to be presented in writing so that it may subsequently be cited or referred to in written and other publications[4]. For a long time, technical difficulties hindered the development of commentaries on art forms which operate within the dimension of time, such as the cinema or theatre. Until the appearance of digital formats such as DVD, which allow us to use moving and static images equally freely, it was impossible for different types of commentary (textual and visual) to accompany a film as it was being shown. Until their appearance, the most frequent means of commenting on a film was the talking head of a film critic[5]. This archaic form of commentary has endured and even now oral commentary, albeit in a slightly different form, is the dominant form of commentary on DVDs. However, a written commentary is a very important element in a critical edition. It will help raise the cinema’s status to that of a subject worthy of such an edition and it is this ‘discursification’ of an audio-visual work that forms the basis for its further study[6].

Third, an editor’s or a publisher’s commentary always exists on a meta-level and is authoritative. Its inherent authority should never be abused, if a critical edition of a film is to be scholarly and truly objective. It is sometimes enhanced, however, by the use of very personal oral commentary. Here, one needs to be aware of what Patrick Vonderau has called the ‘emotional factor’ of a DVD. For example, classical cinema is usually made more accessible when it is personalised. Often it is a well-known film critic, the director himself or a film historian who is given the task of personalising a work. Although the emotional factor may attract a greater number of viewers (and purchasers of the DVD), such personal commentaries should not be the only form of commentary found in the academic presentation of a film.

THE METHODOLOGY FOR A CRITICAL EDITION

So, how might the approach taken in philological textology (textual criticism) and publishing be applied to a film?

In textual criticism, a manuscript text is traditionally analysed in terms of two distinct categories:

The textus – i.e., the text that is recognised as being ‘canonical’[7] with its variant readings. In editions which reflect current thinking, the central text has typically been supplemented by equally valuable variants comprising different authorisations and editions[8]; and
The apparatus – i.e., a commentary on the textus[9].

This distinction may be applied to an edition of a film, although we should note that the making of a film differs in certain important respects from the writing of a work of literature.

First, there are a huge number of factors influencing the final decisions taken in the production of a film. For example, the opinions of members of the film crew, the influence of the producer, the financial limitations and the technical problems that were encountered are all relevant. However significant a particular director might be, a film is rarely the creative product of an individual. Hence, a discussion of a director’s authorship (such as that encountered in literature) is perhaps not always appropriate. In a number of respects, a critical edition of a film would seem, in the absence of the documented authorship of an individual, to be more suggestive of a scholarly edition of ancient manuscripts than that of a literary text of a modern author. The question then arises as to whether a single canonical (authorised) version of a film is necessary. Such a canonical version is undoubtedly needed by film museums and by cinemas organising screenings of reconstructed films. However, now that film history is accessible digitally, there is no real need, outside cinema theatres, for a single canonical, ‘officially blessed’ version or reconstruction of a film. Instead, we need a carefully prepared edition of the textus, in its entirety, accompanied by an academic commentary.

The second difference between the making of a film and the writing of a text, especially a modern text, is that film-making is a highly structured affair. The life of a film is more determined by the manner in which it was produced than is the writing of a literary work. It is in this presence of a production scheme that we can identify one advantage of commentaries on films over commentaries on literary texts. While the history of the creation of a literary text can be traced, there is no such evolution in the case of the creation of a film. There is often only the history of its alterations.

In the course of its life (i.e., before it is archived), a film[10] goes through the following stages:

The idea - i.e, the proposal;
The script (and its variants);
The filming (with any variants of participants and scenes);
The editing process (with any variants, discarded and restored scenes);
The recording of the soundtrack (with any variants of the musical or voice accompaniment of silent films, any variants of sound films (the substitution of performers, the re-recording of the soundtrack, the loss of the physical soundtrack itself) and films released in both silent and sound versions);
The final cut of the negative (in sound films) of the version selected to be shown to cinemagoers - this is the point when work on the film is complete. In the case of silent cinema, the equivalent is the final cut of the positive. In other words, the original edited negative constitutes the starting point for a reading of a sound film, and the original edited positive (if it has survived) constitutes the same for a silent film. It is at this juncture that a ‘montage list’ is compiled – i.e., a detailed frame-by-frame description of the dialogue and shots of a film;
Distribution versions of a film - these depend on whether a film was reworked for its re-release or for its release abroad, e.g., changes of title, a re-recording of the soundtrack, cuts by the censor or editor or the inclusion of additional shots. Each new version would have its own montage list;
The distribution of a film and any accompanying materials – e.g., posters, leaflets, newspaper announcements, lists of titles, montage lists, advertising stills, trailers, press reviews or audio and video interviews;
The archive life of a film - here we should consider the extent to which a benchmark version was available when the film was archived, a description of the archival work and technical operations performed, the quality and condition of the colour, image and sound of the film and the celluloid; and
Variant copies in different archives – i.e., the potential for a reconstruction of a fuller version. Another consideration is the likelihood that a film will be transferred on to different formats.

Despite the above differences, the fundamental issue which arises with a film’s critical edition, as is the case with a literary text, is the analysis of what belongs to the textus and what belongs to the apparatus.

THE SCHEME FOR A CRITICAL EDITION

It is the editor of a DVD who selects the materials for inclusion on a disk. In making this selection, he needs to strike a difficult balance between what is ‘necessary’ and what is ‘sufficient’. This is a very important question even in such an advanced academic field as philology. We have outlined below our proposed universal scheme for a scholarly critical edition of a film which contains information not only for the uninitiated public, but also for the specialist.

The textus

In our understanding, the textus should consist of all the key versions of a film that might be considered complete. These include distribution versions, a ‘director’s cut’ (which might have been in his possession) or a version where the film’s production was completed by others (for example, after the dismissal or death of the director)[11]. Where required, subsequent reconstructions of a lost film or a director’s unrealised project might also form part of the textus. The range of versions available to a contemporary DVD ‘publisher’ may be endless. Here are only a few examples:

a. There are films which have survived in a single canonical version.

b. There are ‘lost’ films which have no historically authentic version - e.g., Lev Kuleshov’s Engineer Pright’s Project (Proekt inzhenera Praita,1918) – i.e., the official distribution version has not survived, or perhaps never existed at all[12].

c. There are films which have two or more versions. In such cases, it is possible to include on a DVD both a variant that existed prior to a reconstruction and one that existed afterwards.

· Sergei Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potemkin, 1925) - the original Soviet version shown at the film’s premiere in the Bolshoi Theatre has not survived. However, there are later versions in existence, such as the ‘Berlin version’ prepared in 1926 which was partly edited by Eisenstein himself.

· Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926) – there is the well-known attempt by Enno Patalas to assemble a benchmark version from the many distribution and censored copies available.

· There may be silent and sound versions of the same film - e.g., Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929).

· There may be multiple language versions or MLVs[13]. Well-known examples would be Alfred Hitchcock’s Mary (1930), a German-language version of Murder with a German cast, the English-language version of Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel (Der blaue Engel, 1930) or George Melford’s Spanish-language version of Dracula (1931) filmed contemporaneously with Tod Browning’s English-language version.

· Aleksandr Dovzhenko’s Michurin (1948) - the film was subject to a large number of alterations by the censor. These distorted the director’s original idea to such a degree that Dovzhenko refused to acknowledge the film as his work. Other notable instances of cuts imposed by the censor can be found in American cinema following the introduction of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America Inc.’s Motion Picture Production Code (the ‘Hayes Code’) in 1930 – e.g., the nude scenes cut from Cedric Gibbons and Jack Conway’s Tarzan and His Mate (1934).

· Marlen Khutsiev’s The Il´ich Gate (Zastava Il’icha, 1961) - certain scenes were re-filmed which gave the author the opportunity to finish the film as he had intended it, although this was done under the watchful eye of the censor. All the same, this later version remains authorial and was well known. For a long time, it existed under the title I Am Twenty (Mne dvadtsat’ let, 1965). This is partly also the case with Andrei Tarkovskii’s film The Passion of Andrei (Strast’ Andreia, 1966), an earlier variant of his Andrei Rublev (1969).

· There are films which exist in the form of a ‘director’s cut’[14] or in one or more studio cuts (especially cuts prepared for the re-release of the film) – e.g., George Cukor’s A Star is Born (1954)[15]. Perhaps the most notable example of studio interference is Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1981). The running time of the director’s original version was 5 hours and 25 minutes. Cimino’s recut version lasted 3 hours and 40 minutes but this was withdrawn from circulation after the first screening and the studio then cut a further 70 minutes. A director’s cut of Heaven’s Gate was released in Europe in 2004 and America in 2005. A recent example of a questionable director’s cut would be Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko (2001)[16].

· Orson Welles left behind a substantial number of unfinished projects which were abandoned at the stage of isolated takes of film scenes and edited versions which were never completed or distributed.

· Abel Gance’s Napoléon (1927) – this has been restored by Kevin Brownlow on three occasions – in 1980, 1983 and 2000. The 2000 reconstruction, lasting 5 hours and 31 minutes, included the celebrated triptych finale and involved authentic process dye bath colour tints and toning by the National Film and Television Archive in the UK.

· The films of Jacques Tati, George Lucas (see the special edition of his Star Wars series prepared in 1997) and Francis Ford Coppola (see the re-release of his 1979 film Apocalypse Now as Apocalypse Now Redux in 2001) – what is noteworthy here is that scenes were filmed many years later which were incorporated into an existing version which had already been in distribution. These are cases of an authorial reworking of a film, distributed as having the same value as the original version.

d. There are also digital releases which appeared shortly after the cinema distribution copies. For example, the DVD releases of Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye Lenin! and Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! were issued by the authors themselves or with their involvement.

e. Finally, pirate or bootleg video and DVD versions appearing before the official premiere of a film are a curious example. It is quite possible that they differ significantly from the official version.

The apparatus

The apparatus primarily includes everything that did not make the final version of the film or was cut from it. In addition, it would include documents and other materials relating to the history of a film and the annotations and commentaries of the film’s ‘publishers’.

A critical edition of a film requires a commentary comprised of indexed ‘footnotes’ having two forms. The first type of footnotes is textological and archeographic[17]. These are footnotes relating to the physical formats or copies of a film. Places requiring commentary are marked - for example, lacunae in a copy of a film, external marks on the celluloid which were the cause of a restorer’s work on a copy, technical additions made by a reconstruction specialist or those points in a film which were envisaged in the different variants of the author’s vision of a film or affected by distribution cuts and/or replacements. The second type of footnotes is conceptual. These comment on the meaning or the visual side of the textus. They could include background explanations as to the everyday life portrayed, fragments from other films commenting on the textus and an explanation of a film’s place in the creative life of its director and its evolution.

Regardless of their character, either of these two types of footnotes would consist of written text, video, audio or photo extracts in all possible combinations and could form large syntagmatic lines in the commentary similar to those in the director’s and cameraman’s storyboards which constitute the basis of a film.

The archeography and textology of a film

Of primary importance here, unquestionably, is the archive life of a film (e.g., the technical data relating to the original copy). Much depends on how detailed the archive catalogue is and how precise are the data contained therein. An archeographic description of a film must contain all the available information about its physical format. Such information should cover:

· The processing work carried out on a film in the archive and a description of the technical operations performed;

· An analysis of the condition of the colour, image and sound of the film and also of the celluloid; and

· A description and systemisation of any external markings and symbols on the celluloid: (a) start numbers and the numbers marking each foot of film, (b) notes made by the editors, (c) markings made by a film’s authors indicating the order in which the frames should be edited and their colouring, (d) any data as to the celluloid manufacturer, (e) any traces of the making of contratypes or the film’s transfer onto another format (for example, from nitrate to acetate), (f) title inserts for foreign distributors of silent cinema and (g) any traces of mechanical damage.

Without such a preparatory archeographic description, any textological analysis is impossible and, for a critical edition (i.e., the release) of a relatively ‘ancient’ film, a thorough textological study is the only means of demonstrating the validity of the steps taken by the DVD publisher.

Documents and materials relating to the history of a film

As a rule, the making of a film is documented at each stage of the process. It is these documentary stages that form the framework structure which may be completed with all types of surviving documentation of interest to historians. Amongst them, for example, could be the following (in square brackets we have indicated the possible ways in which these documents could be presented on a DVD):

· A script proposal (or libretto) and a contract with the authors [as a text or photograph];

· A literary script (if it is of key significance) [as a text];

· A director’s script, i.e., the director’s[18] or cameraman’s storyboard[19], if it existed (the differences between the storyboards and the final product can tell an attentive historian a great deal. They can be assembled to run more or less parallel to the film, enabling the viewer to study the extent to which the film corresponds to the initial concept) and a shooting plan (such as that sometimes used by Vertov and generally found in documentary cinema) [as photographs];

· Materials relating to the shooting of the film (test photos of different actors for the same role, variations of mise en scène, sketches for sets, costume drawings, behind the scenes footage, reports and interviews on the set and shooting diaries [as photographs, video and audio tracks or as a text];

· Differently edited versions of scenes and takes of episodes which the author did not intend to be included in the final cut [as a video track];

· The soundtrack -

a) In the case of a silent film:

Variations of the musical and/or vocal accompaniment for a film: e.g., a recording on gramophone records, a musical recording derived from the original score, notes, musical scores or scripts for the accompanying music.

b) In the case of a sound film:

Variations of the soundtrack (e.g., a replacement of the phonogram, a re-recording of the soundtrack, the loss of the physical soundtrack itself or the film’s dubbing into other languages) [as video tracks];

· A montage list [as a text or photographs];

· The distribution life of a film - e.g., posters, leaflets, announcements in periodicals, lists of titles, advertising photographs, press reviews and post-filming interviews [as photographs and video tracks]; and

· Literary memoirs, audio recordings, documentary and TV films [as text, audio and video tracks].

Biographies and Filmographies

Biographies and filmographies are only needed when the relevant data cannot be found in other reference works. Otherwise, it would seem sufficient to refer to bibliographies [as a text]. Information about changes made to a film’s name could also be included (e.g., variations of working titles in contemporary press coverage or a change to the title for foreign distribution) [as a text or photographs].

Hence, a film’s critical edition must, of necessity, be multi-layered. We have the film itself as an object (often itself already multi-layered) and the meta-level consisting of academic commentary. Between these layers there are materials concerning the history of the film demonstrating how it operated within the culture of its time and its place in history.

The relationship between these three, non-hierarchical levels will become clear and distinct only when linked by the unifying principles of indexing which create non-linear hypertexts out of the three levels. Curiously, this has been technically possible for several years already[20], but no one has, so far, applied this approach to the academic commentary of moving images.

FILM AS HYPERTEXTS. A NETWORK OF INDEXES

Despite the apparent variety of forms which the apparatus and the textus may take, they can, nonetheless, be condensed into a very simple and practical indexing scheme which will enable a viewer to navigate this sea of abundant information. If a simple, intuitive system of indexing and navigation is used, the abundance of documents will not be psychologically off-putting. Every DVD user, from the professional to the student, or simply an interested layman, can easily find in a critical edition whatever he needs.

We need to move away from the labyrinthine system in existence today for which a viewer needs a mnemonic ‘guiding light’ to recall the route taken from a DVD’s table of contents to a particular point in a film or a particular extra. The solution can be found in the system of indexed footnotes and cross references that has been established over centuries. These allow a reader easily and, importantly, visually to find his way through the diverse commentary.

Prepared in accordance with a film’s structural biography, indexed footnotes will be visually familiar to anyone who has seen an annotated book, and will enable the systematic, academic work of a commentator to be compatible with the need to search for information simply and quickly. Film viewers need a reconstructed film which is accompanied on a DVD by conclusive arguments of both a textual and conceptual nature. The question as to the limits of commentary then falls away, as everything that a publisher considers necessary may be included on a DVD. Furthermore, there is nothing preventing each footnote (a photograph or an audio, video or text extract) from having its own index allowing a DVD user to:

· Return to the film;

· Return to the main menu;

· Continue in a chosen syntagmatic sequence (or path); or

· Move to a different, yet semantically related, syntagmatic sequence in either the textus or the apparatus.

Obviously, a viewer (i.e., the user of a DVD) must independently be able to activate any block of information as and when he wishes or requires. Under no circumstances should any amount of information that is psychologically difficult to absorb be forced upon a viewer. The viewer must be able to choose.

THE PRINCIPLES OF INDEXING

It is interesting to note that the principles of indexing have, so far, never been applied to critical editions of film classics, although they have been actively employed in certain DVD releases of contemporary films on which the authors themselves – the director, the script writer or the cameraman - have been involved, rather than a third party publisher. For example, the German DVD release of Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! (2001) has a link in the form of a fairy on which a viewer may click to access behind the scenes footage of the same scene; and Becker’s Goodbye Lenin (2003) has links which appear on the screen as red stars. These lead the viewer to different types of ethnographic commentary informing him, slightly humorously, about the everyday realities of life in the former GDR.

Clearly, the use of an index is still perceived by DVD publishers as being part of a game, although an index is the most precise, economic and least troublesome way of annotating a particular aspect of a film (for example, a particular editing cut, a detail within a particular frame or the use of sound). The advantage of indexing lies in the fact that it links the ‘horizontal’ (temporal, syntagmatic) level of a film on a DVD with the ‘vertical’ (paradigmatic) commentary level, offering an endless variety and richness of content. It allows each DVD user to devise his own path through an interactive DVD. Furthermore, the footnotes on a DVD can themselves become a free standing text (resembling a coherent, logical commentary and constructing a spiders’ web of links between distant points in a film and its milieu) or a group of audio-visual annotations.

In such a case, the footnotes can operate without any need for the film itself to be watched at the same time. The footnotes will have their own numbering system, according to which a viewer, or rather the reader, can progress without any need to return to the film itself. If the reader works at a computer, he could export and copy these texts together with the illustrations and cite them, indicating the number of the particular footnote.

THE PRINCIPLES OF NAVIGATION

‘Indexing’ and ‘navigation’ are not interchangeable concepts. By indexing we mean that a DVD should show the viewer those places in the textus which require comment. Navigation is instead concerned with the general structure (or scheme) according to which a viewer may move around the textus and apparatus.

The conventional system of DVD navigation in use today follows the same principle as the table of contents of a book. At first this looks familiar, but it is an inconvenient method. We have only directions to the beginning of chapters (being rough sections or episodes, artificially imposed on the film by an often anonymous compiler). The principle of annotatory footnotes is not used at all. As a result, a DVD viewer must always return to the start when searching for a particular section. The resulting labyrinth, which recalls a computer’s filing system with an obligatory home directory, is of no use when a viewer needs to locate information quickly and accurately.

IN PLACE OF AN EPILOGUE

With the arrival of digital formats, it was widely thought that the CD or DVD would soon replace, for example, the publication of encyclopaedias in book format or even books themselves.

The compactness and speed with which one can search and other advantages of digital information formats are undoubtedly important. However, mankind has continually added to the variety of cultural forms in existence, and has not necessarily reduced their number for the sake of standardisation and unification. Only the technological parameters of cultural forms have been standardised and unified, something that has been necessary for the rapid expansion in their possible applications. Cinema did not kill off the theatre, television did not kill off cinematography and the internet did not kill off television. The forms in which these media are used are simply modified.

Electronic information formats will not replace the book. A cultural form’s application has a very important psychological aspect, namely the ability of its user to imagine the object or subject in its entirety. A book allows a reader to do this, but a text on the screen of a computer does not. Turning the pages of a book, a reader can grasp immediately the volume of text, the number of footnotes, the principle according to which they have been compiled and other features needed to work with the book. On a computer screen, none of these things are indicated. Any text is ‘one size only’. It stretches to infinity; its very presentation is not suggestive of a coherent whole. That is why an interactive DVD with a systematic navigation facility could combine the advantages of the prevailing book culture with the new opportunities offered by digital formats for the presentation of audio-visual material.

In addition, most modern formats for digital information revolve (i.e., they are disks). To use them, additional equipment is required. We need a means of transforming them into an optical state capable of being appreciated by the human eye.

The rapid development of non-rotating (immobile) formats, such as today’s memory cards or flash cards, might easily mean, in time, that it will be possible for a thin magnetic strip requiring no external energy source to be stored on any optical surface. Maybe there will then be books with moving illustrations or with an infinite volume of text. In any case, there will be objects of an optical nature needing no additional mechanisms or devices in order for them to be used, and which are instantly comprehensible.

DVD is far from being the evolutionary acme of audio-visual information storage. It is difficult to say now what will replace the DVD disk but, for the moment, there is nothing better.

In the critical editions of films on DVD that we have advocated, the most important element is the use of non-linear hypertexts permitting a viewer to work with marked (or indexed) sections of the linear textus. The chief distinction between the critical edition of a film on DVD and the search function capability of the internet is that, when using a hypertext on a DVD, we are not offered random information selected on the basis of a common factor. Instead, by adopting the rigorous approach outlined above, we will have information that has been carefully selected by the editor and commentator, has been academically argued and has the widest possible range of uses.

References

Likhachev, Dmitrii S (1983), Tekstologiia. Na materiale russkoi literatury X-XVIII vekov, Moscow - Leningrad.

Likhachev, Dmitrii S. (1964), Tekstologiia. Kratkii ocherk, Moscow/Leningrad, 1964.

Szczepanik, Petr (2004), ‘Undoing the National: Representing International Space in 1930s Czechoslovak MLVs’, Cinema & Cie. International Film Studies Journal. 4, pp. 55-65.

Vonderau, Patrick (2003) ‘The DVD - Study Centre of Today?’ in Martin Loiperdinger (ed), Celluloid Goes Digital. Approaches to Historical-Critical Film Editions on DVD, Trier: Wissenschaftsverlag, pp. 43-52.