My
Shoah blu-ray arrived today, and as promised, I've compared the title and credit sequences to those on the Masters of Cinema DVD.
First, the running time of the MoC is actually 542m 29s by my count -- it's easy to miss that for some reason the end titles on First Era, Part Two have been authored as a separate title. So if we multiply *that* by 25/24, we get an expected running time for the blu of 565m 5s. Since the blu runs 567m 36s (Beaver's figures are correct, except they've mixed up the running times of the two Parts of the Second Era), we need to account for approximately 2 1/2 minutes. Here's what I found...
- The blu has ~50 seconds' worth of wacky C animation, other company logos, restoration credits, etc. at the start of First Era, Part One.
- The end credits on First Era, Part Two are ~20 seconds longer on the blu. (Probably the same text, but very obviously recreated digitally, as all scrolling text on the Criterion has been. I think they just run slower.)
- The opening titles on Second Era, Part One are about 10 seconds longer.
- Finally, at the end of Second Era, Part Two, there are an additional ~40 seconds of credits for Criterion staff, restoration credits reprised, etc.
50s + 20s + 10s + 40s is two minutes, which still leaves a half-minute discrepancy. So maybe the film on the blu is a different cut that runs 30 seconds longer? No! The thing is, we shouldn't have multiplied by 25/24 in the first place, because blu-rays don't actually run at 24 fps, they run at 23.976 fps. When a film is nine hours long, that makes a difference of... yes... half a minute!
Of course, people who own the MoC may still want to get the Criterion for the three additional Lanzmann films...
