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The Marx Brothers: Swordfish Collection (a TM2YC FanEdit series)

TM2YC

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Got me some slow ass internet, but hopefully I'll still have the release ready for this weekend. In the meantime here is Harpo on 'I Love Lucy' in 1955. Including Lucy and Harpo recreating the classic false mirror gag from 'Duck Soup'...

 

TM2YC

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Okay 'Love Happy' the Swordfish cut is done and submitted. I'm very happy with this one as (For me at least) this is now a pleasure to watch, rather than a chore. :)

Here is a compilation I've made of some of my highlights from the movie...


...and here is the cutlist:

- Fixed all techinical problems with sounds, video and cutting where possible
- Cut scenes without the brothers down to the bare minimum while still leaving the plot intact
- Cut all musical numbers except the essential Harpo/Harp and Chico/Piano scenes

00.00.00 Added TM2YC and Swordfish idents
00.00.30 Fixed badly done necklace fade
00.00.56 Fixed bad jumpcut by creating a new Newspaper fade
00.01.15 Fixed 15 second dialogue audio dropout
00.03.07 Shortened Mike dancing and Shortened Maggie intro
00.03.15 Shortened Maggie outro and shortened more of Mike's dancing
00.03.28 Shortened more of Mike's dancing again
00.04.57 Removed a couple of unnecessary establishing shots of Madame Egelichi
00.08.03 Removed sequence of Throckmorton walking through his shop
00.09.00 Removed some of Madame Egelichi's gloating
00.09.40 Removed shot of Sardines being opened
00.09.41 Removed reaction shot of the DeSoto Brothers
00.09.46 Removed two more reaction shots
00.09.55 Shortened torture of Throckmorton and created new fade
00.11.03 Removed Throckmorton using the telephone
00.11.29 Shortened Mike ancing and created new fade
00.15.02 Shortened shot of theatre troup
00.16.22 Shortened Maggie dancing
00.16.44 Shortened Maggie dancing again
00.17.18 Shortened Maggie dancing again
00.17.23 Shortened Maggie dancing again
00.18.10 Removed 'Who Stole the Jam?' musical number an created new fade
00.19.27 Fixed terrible Throckmorton matchcut
00.19.51 Removed closeup of Madame Egelichi
00.20.08 Shortened Madame Egelichi walking
00.22.27 Fixed damaged frame
00.26.42 Removed 'Willow Weep for Me' musical number
00.39.26 Removed a chunk of Mike's speech and recut footage
00.39.35 Removed 'Old Thesp's' speech and recut footage
00.39.41 Removed the whole start of the dressing room scene
00.39.55 Removed a chunk of the chat between Maggie and Mike
00.40.40 Shortened Mike talking with Madame Egelichi
00.40.43 Shortened more of Mike talking with Madame Egelichi
00.40.45 Fixed mis-timed Sardines Tin sound FX
00.40.47 Fixed (Or at least improved) problem with the dialogue audio
00.41.00 Removed more of Mike talking with Madame Egelichi
00.41.02 Removed more of Mike talking with Madame Egelichi
00.41.03 Fixed mis-timed Madame Egelichi dialogue
00.41.05 Removed Bunny talking
00.41.48 Removed dressing room scene and created new fade
00.42.05 Shortened shot of Sardines and pushed back Mike and Maggie scene
00.42.15 Removed needless exposition dialogue between Madame Egelichi and Throckmorton
00.44.24 Created new fade into Throckmorton alley scene
00.49.55 Removed some of Maggie's hysterics
00.52.07 Removed shot of Maggie leaving
00.52.28 Cropped shot to remove empty park bench
00.52.41 Cropped and reframed shot to remove empty park bench
00.55.38 Cropped and reframed shot to remove empty park bench
00.54.00 Cropped and reframed shot to remove empty park bench
00.57.56 Fixed problem of badly timed establishing shot by omitting it
00.57.59 Removed two shots of Madame Egelichi and Throckmorton
00.58.36 Removed footage of Maggie leaving her dressing room
00.58.47 Removed start of Maggie and Mike scene
01.00.03 Removed scene of Mike being beaten
01.04.11 Removed shot of Maggie checking on Mike
01.05.16 Fixed obvious jumpcut
01.07.10 Fixed bad fade by bring Chico piano scene forward and removing applause
01.08.40 Removed original fade to black
01.09.29 Created new near seemless matchcut/fade to put the two halves of the smoking bird scene back together
01.14.01 Fixed bad fade to black
01.15.52 Fixed another bad fade to black
01.19.18 Added in a missing United Artist's logo (Thanks to Dwight Fry for finding that for me)

Original Length: 91 minutes
FanEdit Length: 79 minutes
Removed: 12 minutes

marx-brothers.jpg
 

wade1958

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Fantastic! Fantastic! Fantastic! What a marvelous job you did restoring this painful swan song to a joyful experience. I look forward to these releases so much. Whatever encouragement you need to continue this task, please know I'll be there to provide it. Love Happy really is a tour de force for Harpo - and now you've made that clear for anyone to see. Thank you so very much.
 

TM2YC

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wade1958 said:
Fantastic! Fantastic! Fantastic! What a marvelous job you did restoring this painful swan song to a joyful experience. I look forward to these releases so much. Whatever encouragement you need to continue this task, please know I'll be there to provide it. Love Happy really is a tour de force for Harpo - and now you've made that clear for anyone to see. Thank you so very much.

:)

Happy to hear it! Leave a review if you can. Next up a light edit of Monkey Business.
 

TM2YC

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Thanks for the review of 'Animal Crackers' ShadowIruni

ShadowIruni said:
Having not seen this Marx Brothers film in particular, this seemed like a great opportunity to do so.
I can't actually tell that anything has been edited so you've clearly done a good and seamless job.
The audio and video are clear and it sounds and looks good so what you did must have worked.
This feels very professional and nothing feels missing and the film flowed naturally.
You've clearly taken a lot of time and care to editing this film and I hope you do more of these,
as it's the best quality version of their films we'll probably ever see.
I eagerly wait the rest of the collection.

Can't remember but after 8 months you might be the first person to view this edit, so glad it was enjoyed :). It was a fairly light edit with only one song removed, a few transitions improved and a couple of scenes swapped around but still good to hear you didn't notice anything. There are two others films in the edit series that are much more heavily edited (Particulaly 'Love Happy') that you could check out.

Maybe I'll do another of these at some point soon. One of the later flawed films probably.
 

TM2YC

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Thanks Linten1 for reviewing my first two Marx Brothers edits. I'm glad you liked them and glad there is another MB fan on here :).

Re: the "production quality" of the original films - I think a lot of it is down to these being very poorly transfered, badly treated and often cutup versions of the movies. There are always rumours of restorations but nothing ever seems to happen. I still can't quite believe that after a decade of Blu-Rays not a single MB film has ever been released/remastered in HD. 4 of their films are in the AFI's top 100 comedies and 'Duck Soup' is at number 5 for goodness sake.

There's no reason in the world why we couldn't have Blu-Rays looking as sharp as this...

marx-brothers-animal-crackers-2.jpg


marx-bros-monkey-biz.jpg


Annex%20-%20Marx%20Brothers%20%28A%20Night%20at%20the%20Opera%29_NRFPT_05.jpg


Rant over ;-).

Be sure to also check out my edit of their final film 'Love Happy', as that really was a turkey and I think at least I've made it quite watchable now (Plus nobody has reviewed that yet and I'd like to hear what somebody thought of it).
 

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I never understood the popularity of Duck Soup either. I do believe it's an important American movie, I'm just not as entertained by that title as I am other Marx Brothers movies.

For my money I could watch Day at the Races and Night at the Opera day after day. Those are their two most coherent stories and more in the vein of straight comedy's rather than a series of comedic skits with a very loose story line to hold them together.

I am also a fan of Go West which no one else seems to enjoy. So stick that in your back pocket.

I freaked out when I saw Vol 1 and 2 on .info. I was surprised to say the least to find them and very happy I did so. I watched them both several times before I wrote my reviews. I didn't even realize you had a Vol. 3 until I went to write my reviews. I'm going to watch it later this week.
 

TM2YC

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For a bit of quick fun this week, I've finished up film 12 in this series 'A Night In Casablanca'. Dodgy internet connection allowing (It's almost back to the dial-up days :x) it might be available this weekend?

casablanca_3Dview.jpg


Original Length: 85 Minutes
Fanedit Length: 78 Minutes
Time Cut: 7
 

TM2YC

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My edit of 'A Night in Casablanca' is uploaded and out there to watch as of now (The IFDB listing will be up tomorrow).

Here is probably my favourite scene (Which I've moved around in the narrative btw) as way of a sampler...

[video=youtube_share;tmWZAAbvwgM]

(4 M.B. films down, 9 more to go :))
 

TM2YC

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Thanks for the review of 'Love Happy' Dwight Fry. Glad you liked it :). You mentioned...

I would have left "Who Stole the Jam" in, not only because it's a pity to lose any footage of the Brothers but because its removal creates a continuity error: one moment Harpo is enjoying a nice lunch with Maggie, the next he's running up the aisles for no apparent reason. I won't miss any of the other removed scenes, though.

I agree about not wanting to lose anything (This is the only time so far in these edits where I have), so I agonised over that cut but in the end I decided I hated the song more than I liked the shots of Harpo. Maybe I made the wrong choice and should have just made a skippable chapter.

Editing itself is well done, other than a stray audio bit from the removed Throckmorton torture. One of the "agh's" happens during the dissolve in low volume and calls distracting attention to itself as digitally edited. The rest has nothing to fault, and the technical audio/video quality is fine.

I think you mean the dissolve at about 00.10.04? as I'm not hearing anything out of place. Could you post the time-code below please? I've blended the sound of screaming when they start torturing Throckmorton "seemlessly" into the sound of them finishing torturing Throckmorton as one audio sequence but it isn't anything you aren't supposed to hear. Maybe it just sounds odd because you know (From being a fan) that one of the screams that plays over the end, originally was from the beginning... or maybe I just ballsed it all up :-D.

It makes me really happy that there are at least few MB fans on this site, to enjoy these. Thanks again for the review :).

By the way, you also mentioned...

Love Happy is the worst Marx Brothers movie

...so what is your second worst/least-best? Because I'm wondering what needs tackling next, maybe 'Go West', 'At The Circus' or possibly 'Room Service'.
 

Dwight Fry

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TM2YC said:
I agree about not wanting to lose anything (This is the only time so far in these edits where I have), so I agonised over that cut but in the end I decided I hated the song more than I liked the shots of Harpo. Maybe I made the wrong choice and should have just made a skippable chapter.

It's not the loss of the song that bothers me (it's kind of uncomfortable with its child abuse implications) but the continuity goof it creates. I just think the narrative flows better with the song left in, despite itself.

TM2YC said:
I think you mean the dissolve at about 00.10.04? as I'm not hearing anything out of place. Could you post the time-code below please? I've blended the sound of screaming when they start torturing Throckmorton "seemlessly" into the sound of them finishing torturing Throckmorton as one audio sequence but it isn't anything you aren't supposed to hear. Maybe it just sounds odd because you know (From being a fan) that one of the screams that plays over the end, originally was from the beginning... or maybe I just ballsed it all up :-D.

That's the spot. Right in the middle of the dissolve there's a "aghh!" that sounds digitally faded in. Either removing it or having it without the fadein effect would make it sound better.


TM2YC said:
...so what is your second worst/least-best? Because I'm wondering what needs tackling next, maybe 'Go West', 'At The Circus' or possibly 'Room Service'.

It's hard for me to choose least favorite Marx Brothers films. Love Happy is a clear bottom because of the severe lack of Groucho and of real interaction between the Brothers, but the fact is I love them all dearly. Still, from that list I think Room Service would be least favorite, but the thing is that you can hardly cut anything from it due to the Brothers being in almost every scene, and that's the case with Go West as well, with them even participating in all the musical numbers. My suggestion would be doing At the Circus. It holds a special place in my heart because it's the first MB movie I ever watched, but it has a LOT of awful filler. "Two Blind Loves", kill that with fire! And don't get me started on that number near the end in which the romantic lead LITERALLY treats his girl like a horse! :oops:
 

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Marx Brothers restorations.  Article from DVD Savant (June 21, 2016) -

5150marx32.jpg


Savant correspondent and advisor Gary Teetzel attended several nights of screenings of newly restored Universal Marx Bros Movies and sent little reports over on what he saw. I've put them together here. I don't remember the history of the problems with the movies; I just know that when Universal took possession of the pre-1948 Paramount library, they received a very limited selection of printing materials. And the studio print of my favorite Marx movie Horse Feathers had a number of jump cuts in a scene with Thelma Todd. I thought they were simply unrepaired breaks, but it appears that they were the result of Production Code censorship. Here are Gary's observations . . .
http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/
 

TM2YC

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Fantastic news on these restorations, thanks @"Vultural" . It's a shame that they mention 'Horse Feathers' still being censored, as that is heavily mutilated in places.
 
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