Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

Se trata del recuento de la
restauración de Erase una vez, película
realizada por Carl Th. Dreyer en 1922 y
de la descripción de las opciones y
decisiones tomadas en el transcurso
de este proceso. La restauración está
basada en la lista de títulos de la
censura Sueca, en la obra original de
Drachmann, en el libreto de Dreyer y
en los fragmentos subsistentes de la
película.
El material de las secciones de la
película corresponde a un acto o a
una escena de la pieza de Drachmann,
con excepción de dos escenas del
cuarto acto, que han sido
comprimidas en una sección de la
película.
El material de las secciones 1, 2, 4 y 5
se encuentra en relativamente buen
estado. De las secciones 3 y 6
subsisten fragmentos. La sección del
final, la 7, está perdida. El material
proviene de dos fuentes diferentes:
fragmentos conservados por el Danish
Film Museum anteriormente a 1955 y
una copia incompleta descubierta en
un depósito del cine Palads de
Copenhague en 1958. Estos dos
elementos dieron origen a un dupnegativo
en 1964, del que fueron
tiradas dos matrices de grano fino.
Algunas fotografías aún subsisten, en
particular de la escena nupcial final, y
sirvieron a la reconstrucción de la
sección 7 de la película.
El propósito principal de la
reconstrucción fue de restablecer los
intertítulos y completarlos con títulos
explicativos que facilitaran al
espectador la comprensión de la
estructura y la línea narrativa de le
película original.
La ampliación se obtuvo por el
proceso intermediario numerizado.
Un scan de alta definición efectuada
mediante un data cine Spirit fue
transferido y editado digitalmente;
luego copiado a un negativo 35 mm
b/n (2238) por medio de un Arrilaser.
Del negativo obtenido, fueron tiradas
varias copias 35 mm (5302) para
exhibición en sala. Una matriz en Digi
Beta fue producida a partir del
material intermediario y un
videomaster de 17 ips fue creado para
la edición en DVD.
as: “Från den fjärran Norden kom en kungason till Illyriens kust för att
vinna den skönaste av prinsessor.” The program booklet, beneath a
close-up of the Prince, has: “Højt oppe fra det høje Nord var en
Kongesøn stævnet mod Illyriens Kyster for at vinde den skønneste af
alle - Prinsessen.” While these two texts are very similar, there are slight
differences in emphasis. The wordings of these program booklet
captions have been preferred to exact translations of the Swedish titles
in the six cases where they have been available.
Also, at the end of section 4, there is a scene in the hut where the
Princess prays before a little religious image. For this scene, there are no
titles in the Swedish list, but no less than seven titles are listed as
“omitted” at the end of section 4, two of which are said to have been
“omitted because of cuts.” Since there was a further caption in the
program booklet supplying a much-needed explanation for this scene,
it seemed reasonable to use the caption text at this point.
The program booklet also contains a plot summary, and it contains
several sentences that correspond closely to some of the Swedish titles.
Where this is the case, the Danish translation is based on the wording
of the booklet summary.
Finally, there are some of the Swedish titles (though fewer than one
might perhaps expect) that appear to be based on lines from the play,
and here, the new titles follow Drachmann’s words. A total of twentyeight
titles are, wholly or in part, phrased identically to lines in the play.
Dreyer’s personal copy of the screenplay, with many handwritten notes,
survives in the collections of the Danish Film Institute. It does not,
however, contain very many lines of dialogue, and the intertitles have
not been written out, as they sometimes are in screenplays of the time.
Furthermore, we cannot rely on the screenplay to tell us what the
completed film looked like; there is at least one clear instance - the potsmashing
scene, mentioned previously - where the finished film is
completely different from the screenplay. It is not just the fact that a
spectacular scene with lots of extras and a large set of a medieval town
has been dropped; the change also affects our understanding of the
two main characters. In the finished film, the foresters who accost the
Princess on the road and smash the pots may have been ordered to do
so by their master the Prince, but this is nowhere stated explicitly, and
it is easy to interpret as misfortune. The point of the market-place
scene, as conceived by Drachmann and described in Dreyer’s screenplay,
is that it is the Prince himself, disguised (again) as a swaggering manat-arms,
who smashes the pots as part of his shrew-taming scheme.
The screenplay has been used for some of the descriptive titles in
section 7. With only one exception, the very first title of the section, all
the titles on the list are dialogue titles. In order to clarify the action,
some descriptive titles have been added. The four that follow the first,
written in a rather grand, romantic style, have been taken directly from
the plot summary in the program booklet. The rest of the descriptions
(which follow after the stills of the wedding in the restored print)
adhere closely to the screenplay.
The Intertitles: Placement and Design
The German title numbers follow the Swedish list closely, but not
34 Journal of Film Preservation / 67 / 2004