This is one I've been planning to cover here for a long time, it's actually one of the discs that inspired me to make this site. But as you'll see, it required a lot of extra work, so I kept putting it off. Import Week 2025, Day 4's the day, though, so here we go! I'm talking about 2001's
Sword of Honour, an epic (in every sense of the word) television adaptation of
Evelyn Waugh's trilogy of novels:
Men at Arm,
Officers and Gentlemen and
Unconditional Surrender, published between 1952 and 1961.
It consists of two feature-length films made by Channel 4 in the UK,
recreating Waugh's harrowing, and sometimes bizarrely ironic,
experiences during WWII. It's shot in various countries with a massive
cast, exploding planes and tanks, etc. This is not your traditional
stage-bound
Masterpiece Theater, though its intelligence and
literary merits are just as strong. It blends Waugh's famous humor -
some scenes are truly wild - with a truly bleak examination of the
cruelty of war. It stars
Daniel Craig, who I haven't historically been a
huge fan of, but he's perfect here, as a sad, naive but never sentimental
idealist whose ideals are steadily rebuked by an endless procession of
absurd bureaucrats and an the desperate criminals who try to eke out a
life under their thumb.
So Acorn released this as a 2-disc DVD
set in 2006. It came as two amary cases in a nice little slipcase. But
the content of the discs themselves was a little underwhelming, so I
took to the internet to hunt for an international upgrade. And it turns
out this had been released on blu-ray in France! It was put out by a
smaller label called Fusion, which made the curious decision to change
the title to
Soldier of Honor (though it still says
Sword on-screen).
And while, as you'll see, this may not be the grand HD experience one
might be hoping for, it is an unqualified upgrade, and I'm glad I got
it.
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a scene only in the full-length French cut.
|
Especially since it turns out this is a longer cut! It's a good
nine to ten minutes longer, and no it's not a PAL vs. NTSC thing (both
discs are NTSC). I've synced them up and gone through them
simultaneously, and the US version is definitely missing footage that
appears on this French disc. I can only guess, but presumably what we
got here is a trimmed commercial television edit, cut down to
accommodate broadcast schedules and ads, in the same way some
Masterpiece Theater programs like the 2007
Northanger Abbey
got mistreated. Because I've itemized all the changes, and none of it
is for censorship reasons or anything. The bloodiest bits are all
intact, and neither cut has any nudity. Here's a full break-down of all
the differences so you can see for yourself.
The following time codes are based on the US DVD:
0:00 The
differences start right from the jump, with the blu-ray opening on
Craig in a hotel room, looking at a framed photograph and then bagging
it in a pre-credits scene excised from the DVD.
4:18
The DVD has on-screen text "Bellamy's Pall Mall" over the shot of a car
pulling up. The same shot is on the blu-ray but without this text
(presumably cutting down on foreign ext for French audiences). But then
the blu-ray has a whole series of shots where Craig gets out and
surveils the club, then goes inside and goes inside where he's stopped
by the doorman ("excuse me, sir, but are you a member?"). They have a
back and forth exchange, after which Craig goes upstairs, only then
cutting to the shot of Craig writing a letter which is what the DVD cut
to after the car.
4:47
Cuts out some of the dialogue with Craig and his father. They both
start with the father telling Craig "you're far too old" to join the
army, but the blu-ray has a bit where he asks him, "can you seriously
see yourself sprinting..." which the DVD clips out.
6:30 The DVD snips out some establishing footage of Craig and his father crossing the street and into the bar parking lot
7:30
Cuts out part of the conversation about how the captain's regiment
doesn't "do things in the ordinary army style," which is a pretty
important precursor of things to come. The DVD rejoins the blu when the
captain says, "if you're really serious, I'll see if the thing can be
managed."
16:40 Cuts out most of Virginia's reaction (i.e. putting her arm on the couch) when Craig leaves.
17:00 About half of the mugging rescue is cut, with the victim exclaiming "it's the second time I've been robbed this week" etc.
17:18 A
shot of the military vehicle being let through the gate has been cut.
On the other hand, the blu is missing the on-screen text,
"Southsand-On-Sea."
20:20 The
blu opens with the troupe wandering up the road, lost. The DVD only
cuts in when the dialogue starts. And it trims off the end of the shot,
too.
23:17 The DVD removes shots of the soldiers in the room exchanging glances after the Captain leaves the room.
26:56 Cuts out Craig's line, "very good of the Brigadiere, I thought."
27:57 A quick cut of Craig walking up the hotel hallway.
28:36
Removes a whole scene of Craig first walking into Virginia's room,
walking around, and exchanging dialogue. "I didn't join the army just
to become more attractive to women," etc.
30:27 Cuts out Apthorpe realizing Craig has hung up the phone on him.
34:34
Cuts out a the end of Craig on the train and beginning of him driving
up to the house. More noticeably, it also cuts out most of the
conversation between Craig and the operator over the phone. Then it
trims a couple seconds of him and Apthorne running through the woods and
walking up the road.
50:45 Another slug, this one reading "H.O.O. HQ London" is only on the DVD.
52:22 Cuts
out Craig saluting after receiving his orders, and also trims a handful
of frames off various shots of Craig exploring his new base.
56:30 Another title card: "Station Hotel Glasgow."
56:59 Cuts out a moment where Gustav teases the bartender about his tip.
1:01:20 Trims a second or two off the guests walking into the hotel.
1:03:35 Cuts
out Craig's reaction before cutting to the troops in the stream. Then
cuts out a shot of the officers waving to the troops after the line, "I
think plan B is called for, sir."
1:07:50 Cuts out two shots of Craig and McTavish after Craig's warning about him is ignored.
1:12:25
Cuts the opening couple of seconds off the shot of the boats paddling
up to shore and then a lot more at the end, with the soldier trying to
get his flashlight to work. And then a few more frames are trimmed off
them walking through the field.
1:15:15 Cuts the one soldier helping the other get up off the tracks.
1:16:44
Cuts out some of the article being read aloud about the soldiers'
bungled operation being misreported, and some of the dialogue that
follows (for example, "well, hairdresser's assistant" and "carried out
one of the most daring exploits in military history).
1:17:13 Another DVD-only title card: "Ford Sidi Bishir HQ Egypt."
1:24:00 Cuts two seconds or so from the shot of the battleship.
1:25:45 Several of the orders being given after the commander has broken his leg have been cut.
1.27:00 The "Crete" title card is missing from the blu.
1:30:00 The DVD's closing credits play at double time.Surprisingly,
after all those edit in the first film, there are none in the second,
despite the fact that the second is the longer of the two. The closing
credits even play at the same speed. The only difference is that the
DVD is missing another label: "Croatia" at the 1:05:21 mark. All told,
most of the cuts are minor, and you can tell someone was trying to cut
for time while doing as little damage as possible. But a few of the
bigger cuts are detractions, sometimes cutting the humor or emotion out
of a scene, even if it leaves all the necessary story points intact. As
for the on-screen titles, I have to
say, after living with
the BD version for years now, and watching it with family, we had no
trouble following the story without
them. The ideal version would be the fuller
BD cut with these labels intact, sure, but since we have to choose,
this international cut is hands down the way to go. Especially since
the BD has other advantages.
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| US Acorn DVD top; FR Fusion BD bottom. |
I
wanted to get at least one post into this Import Week that wasn't just
comparing the same master appearing on a standard and high definition
disc, and here we go. The DVD is 1.81:1, while the BD is 1.83:1, but
you can see the framing has been shifted a little bit more than that.
For example, in the first set of shots, the DVD has a little more on the
right side of the picture, and the BD has a bit more on the left. It's
hard to say which looks better, is more technically correct, but it is
the first of several distinctions. The color-timing is similar on both
releases, but the DVD has that reddish orange hue that tends to plague
older DVDs, which the blu-ray cleans up. They're both anamorphic, but in terms of resolution and
general image quality, while the BD is technically in true 1080p (and a
proper BD50), it looks like a soft-ass, edge enhanced upconvert. There's no real gains in that
regard, disappointingly.
But there is a substantial benefit in
the interlacing. As you can see in the first set of shots, both discs
suffer from it (for an older TV broadcast, you'd have to expect it,
unless someone were to go back to the original film elements and conduct
a full-blown restoration). But it's so much worse on the DVD. It
almost looks like Acorn acquired an interlaced master and then
introduced worse interlacing when converting it to NTSC. Or that's just
a very extreme example of the benefits of HD on interlacing. Either
way, it looks decidedly better on the blu. It's like those Llamentol /
Mapetac blu-rays from Spain I
covered before:
they look like DVD transfers. But superior DVD transfers compared to
the original DVDs, so still a reasonable upgrade, just not terribly
impressive looking.
Both discs just feature the original lossy
Dolby stereo audio track. The French blu also includes a stereo French
dub, and the US DVD has one thing going for it: optional English
subtitles. The French disc doesn't have any subtitles at all, so at
least you don't have to worry about any forced foreign ones. neither
release has any kind of special feature at all, not even a bonus
trailer.
Sword of Honour is brilliant, and you should
definitely see it if you haven't already. And the French blu is the way
to go, especially since I really don't hold out any hope for a future
upgrade for this title, sadly. There's a sort of adult, high-brow market that contemporary home video seems afraid to touch anymore. If it's some "pure cinema"
Ozu, sure, Criterion and them will swoop it up. But who's going to tackle legends like
Elizabeth R and
I, Claudius? Come on, you cowards! If Terror Vision can put out
Nail Gun Massacre in 4k, somebody can give us
The Six Wives of Henry VIII on BD.
