MovieChat Forums > Forbidden Planet (1958) Discussion > "Tonalities" added to scene

"Tonalities" added to scene

posted 9 years ago by hobnob53
12 replies | jump to latest

Watching FP yesterday I suddenly heard the film's "electronic tonalities" used in a place where they hadn't existed before.

It was in the scene where Adams and Ostrow are arguing with Morbius in his study, following their tour of the Krell machine. Adams gets the call about the Chief's murder, stares at Morbius and leaves.

Now in every print I've ever seen of this movie (going back over 50 years), there are no "tonalities" (music if you will) in this scene until it starts to fade to the next scene -- just very, very briefly at the end. But in the print TCM ran yesterday, a tonalities track suddenly begins when Adams gets his call. It's part of the track from the opening credits, so nothing new or not heard elsewhere, but where did this suddenly come from? Are there yet other prints of the film that deviate from the original one? I don't get why would anyone add, change or remix the soundtrack from how it was made and intended to be.

This isn't the first time I've encountered new or substituted tonalities from the standard version of the film. Many years ago I saw a print that altered the tonalities in the last 20 seconds or so of the opening credits. This was around for maybe a year or so (on broadcast TV, back then) before the original one resurfaced. Pointless and bizarre.

Anybody else notice this?

[–] ewaf58 9 years ago

I would have to watch the film again - but I have complained to TCM regarding their treatment of films in the past - and got no reply.

TCM and along with many other digital channels often butcher films to fit in with their schedules. These versions then get circulated and taken as the original as the people who review the film before broadcast (if they even bother - I'll come to that in a minute) probably don't even know what the original looks like.

So therefore any new audience will be unaware of this and could well be watching an inferior version of the film.

Examples : Quatermass and the Pit. A frightening scene was heavily edited massively reducing its impact. Yet when I pointed this out on here I got a reply saying that the Horror channel's version was the correct one. Well no it wasn't.

Halloween: Season of the Witch - two horror scenes were so heavily edited that the scenes themselves no longer made any sense.

Airforce one. A short sequence of Harrison Ford looking tense after he left the escape pod was shown before he was actually led to it.

So with your example you probably were watching a version which had been edited at some point and some hapless person had stuck on part of the soundtrack where it shouldn't have been. Or perhaps there actually were two versions on its cinematic release.

[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

No, the film, including this scene, wasn't edited. It was intact. All that was done was the addition of this "tonality" soundtrack.

As I said I once saw a version that had different tonalities in the last portion of the opening credits. That there are other prints out there is certain, but where this one surfaced from I have no idea. It's not unheard-of to find a soundtrack altered in one print of a film from another. But it's weird to find one I've never heard before, after as I said over 50 years of watching this movie.

The problem you mention, of actual cuts to a film, is unfortunately quite common, and the fact that the channels deny doing it typical. TCM from what I hear always denies any wrongdoing on its site, though I've never bothered to go there as it seems pointless.

[–] ewaf58 9 years ago

I can then only assume that two versions were produced but this fact has been long forgotten. Perhaps they were destined for different World markets although why they'd want to add more soundtrack is unclear.

Or more likely is that they produced the original master cut for distribution - needed more copies and the producers decided on an 'improvement' or just realised that a part had been missed off.

[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

Video technicians and the people in charge of supervising creating new masters for home release been known to screw around with prints of films in some way that they think "improves" the original. They should just leave the damn things alone.

[–] ewaf58 9 years ago

Agreed and as per my previous posts goodness knows how many duff copies are floating around.

I think there should be certified masters (including agreed director's cuts) which are the only versions that can be shown.

Any TV company that cuts them to fit into their schedules should be heavily fined.

TCM actually stands for Turner Cut Movies

[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

Actually I'll defend TCM on the cutting business. Once in a while you'll find the sort of cuts you're talking about, but they're nothing remotely like AMC, which routinely cuts everything -- language, nudity, violence, all of it. (Plus ads, edits for time and time-compressed -- that's the channel that's sunk into the dregs since its glory days of the 90s.)

But I agree with you about the idea of certified masters, based on the complete film as originally shown theatrically. I don't want some idiot technician deciding to change films by cutting, colorizing, adding, altering or deleting music or sound, substituting other footage, and all the rest.

Still, things are better than they once were. There was a time, when there was only broadcast TV, when cutting movies was normal, as were breaks for commercials. We never thought it could be any different. Compared to what existed in the 50s, 60s, 70s and into the 80s, today's cable nets (plus various forms of home video) are terrific.

Well, many of them, most of the time.

[–] ewaf58 9 years ago

Well I will say one thing about TCM here in the UK in that they often show poor quality prints which are a long way from being High definition.

I've actually been unable to watch some films.

AMC isn't available in the UK as far as I know but I used to have a friend living in New York. The amount of adverts that split up some programs is unbelievable and render them unwatchable.

[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

Ah, I didn't realize you were in the UK. My wife is English so I've been there often, but have never seen British TCM, which I understand from many friends in Britain who know both TCMs is quite inferior to the US one. So all you say jibes with my previous information. TCM here is generally very good, though with occasional problems.

Yes, American Movie Classics (AMC) was in the 90s the TCM of its day, no ads (adverts to you!), showing recently rediscovered or restored film classics, pioneering the use of widescreen on television (it was there I first saw so many 50s films in their original w/s format, as opposed to pan & scan prints), and so forth. But starting in 1999 they began running ads, first one per film, then rapidly more and more, then largely abandoning classic films and showing only stuff made in the last 10 or 15 years, all of it censored, cut, compressed, with improper aspect ratios, which is what it remains today: junk.

Fortunately, I grew up in and around New York City back in the 50s and 60s, and since this area had the largest number of TV stations in the country (tied with Los Angeles at 7, with more years later), they filled their time slots with lots of great films. My movie education began early, but we had to put up with cuts and commercials until the advent of cable and VHS in the 1980s. When that happened, it was like seeing everything for the first time. Yet even today quality, as we've discussed, is still sometimes an issue.

[–] ewaf58 9 years ago

Well I'm happy that your version of TCM is better. Quite frankly they have a cheek describing them as HD.

I don't know where they source their films from but they are generally poor. Almost unbelievably our SyFy channel which is well known for showing abysmal low budget films actually always shows major films in the correct aspect and their copies are pristine.

Going back to TCM you may be aware that the USA and UK televisions systems are different. Back in the 60's and 80's when we watched an American show shot on the video the colours looked terrible and the action was blurry. Star Trek TNG was edited on video and the original version shown on British TV in 1990 was so awful that the BBC almost refused to broadcast it.

So now imagine a program shot on American video - converted to the British standard - then converted back again while finally being committed to film by a camera pointing at the TV screen.

That is what some films look like - you could almost get motion sickness watching them.

It's a pity about the demise in quality of your AMC channel.

On a final note of censorship many years ago there was a late night showing of the cult classic 'The Thing' They cut out the scene where one of the technicians says 'You've got to be *beep* kidding' (in response to a head sprouting legs and walking away like a spider)

Quite frankly I don't know what else he could have said - although I suppose the cut was better than an overdub to 'Well you don't see that everyday do you'

[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

Oh, I do indeed know that our TV systems are different. But your description of how this affected the quality of what's broadcast is something I never thought about. This problem seems mostly fixed today, though, is it not?

On a slightly related aspect, I've been surprised at how few people realize there's a difference between the video standards of, say, North America and Western Europe (and from other global regions as well, of course). On DVD, for instance, few people in either the US or UK know there's a Region 1 and Region 2 (let alone the rest), or that an NTSC disc won't play in a PAL player, and vice-versa. I've also seen some people in Britain wonder why the movie they've seen on DVD has a shorter running time than listed in guides or on IMDb. That entails an explanation about how PAL's 25 FPS standard speeds up (and hence shortens) a film's running time from the normal 24 FPS, as seen theatrically and in most regional home video areas.

As to an overdub vs. a cut, I also prefer the latter. I'd rather "hear" the naughty word simply cut than replaced by "fudge" or "frickin'" or "freakin'" and other very realistic, everyday substitutes.

[–] ewaf58 9 years ago

Yes the problems in conversion have now been fixed - in fact I'm amazed at the quality of pictures now from the States - if not the content.

Regarding the overdubbing of course the 'expletive' 'Frak' widely used in Battlestar Galactica has now become synonymous with the extraction of oil and gas so perhaps - in some people's view - it now not only describes the process but how people feel about it.

Now going back to Forbidden planet I have written another post concerning a prequel in which I've given some information about the Bellerophon.

Can you let me know of you knew this - my take on the psychological aspects are my own although they could have been discussed elsewhere with the same conclusion.

[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

I just replied to your thread on the prequel project, ewaf. Neat idea, as you'll see from my comments there.