'Longest Day' DVD

[Mark Hone]

Has anyone else bought 'The Longest Day' DVD 'Special Edition'? I started to play it and suddenly realised that there were no subtitles for the German and French dialogue as on the cinema and video versions. This is a slight problem as there is a lot of German in particular spoken in the film! The only way I could get translations was to opt for 'subtitles' but this is for the hard of hearing and means you get all the English dialogue (and sound effects) subtitled as well. Am I going crackers or has 20th Century Fox made a boo-boo?

[armourersergeant]

It does make you wonder, surely they had to go out of there way to take the subtitles away from the original copy? Or perhaps it has something to do with putting subtitles for the hard of hearing.

Anyway Mark , your not seriously telling me that you dont know every line of the film having watched it so many times?

Glad you pointed this out as i have picked this up a few times and not bought it and probably will not this time!

regards
Arm.

[BeppoSapone]

Originally posted by Mark Hone@Jun 7 2004, 12:29 AM
Has anyone else bought 'The Longest Day' DVD 'Special Edition'? I started to play it and suddenly realised that there were no subtitles for the German and French dialogue as on the cinema and video versions. This is a slight problem as there is a lot of German in particular spoken in the film! The only way I could get translations was to opt for 'subtitles' but this is for the hard of hearing and means you get all the English dialogue (and sound effects) subtitled as well. Am I going crackers or has 20th Century Fox made a boo-boo?

Can't you opt for subtitles in a myriad of languages with DVDs? Unless I am cracking up you just need to press a few buttons.

[Mark Hone]

No, Beppo-there aren't many options on the 'main menu' (no Serbo-Croat or Hindi subtitles, for example) but the mystery deepens. I've taken the DVD to school and when you play it on my TV there-hey presto, the subtitles are there! I assume that it's something to do with my home DVD player and the fact that the disc is 'double-layered' whatever that means. Perhaps some technical whizz could enlighten me. Arm-You're quite right I do know all the dialogue off by heart (in fact I annoy my wife by intoning lines like 'The trouble with being one of The Few...' 'Wind and rain, wind and rain' and 'John has a long moustache' before the characters speak). Not all of my family or friends are so familiar with it, though,
Watching the 'hard of hearing' subtitles last night had its moments though. Whoever transcribed them (not very well in places) was totally baffled by Richard Todd's war cry at Pegasus Bridge and rendered it as 'Up the action, Bucks!' Mind you, what does that American cook keep shouting in the chow line scene at the beginning of the film? The subtitles render it as 'Jerk the lead'. What on earth does that mean?
It was interesting to see similar scenes in the Longest Day and the BBC Drama-Doc last night, e.g. where Rommel sets off for his wife's birthday. In the film he already has her present-shoes-but in the TV prog he announces he's stopping in Paris to buy them. I thought the BBC film was good, but why did they have British actors playing everyone, except the French, including the Germans speaking in German? I was astonished to see 'David Archer' playing General Spiedel! Eisenhower was particularly poor and kept losing his accent.

[Mark Hone]

Doh..I've solved the problem. Didn't realise there was a 'subtitle' button on my DVD handset. Shows how long I've had the thing. Now I don't have to read 'planes passing' and 'men mumbling' any more.

[Dpalme01]

We were visiting Germany this past week and The Longest Day was showing on June 5. It was all in German (even the americans) It was also color and it had more parts added to it. It definitely wasn't dubbed because you could tell by how the actors were moving their mouths that they were speaking german. You could also tell how some of the scenes were altered slightly (as in different views). It was rather interesting seeing it in german especially after seeing the original version too many times.