Tweet Extra NIGHT AT THE OPERA scenes found in Hungary

[silentfilm]

http://www.marx-brothers.org/marxology/

Uncut scenes in Hungarian copy of "A Night at the Opera"!

Racz Tamas in Hungary has done it again! He has visited the Hungarian National Film Archive and unearthed an uncut print of A Night At the Opera! This is his own story:

"I watched the first reel of the print of the Hungarian National Film Archive, to find two additional shots, two additional sentences, and different angles of already known shots. The first thing that absolutely shocked me was that when Harpo and Chico are backstage, the music of the opera was loud, and instead of the shot of Lasparri singing in his white clothes, they showed a man singing who wasn't him, and he wore different clothes. Then Chico said to Allan Jones "Someday you're gonna be where Lasparri is", but the man who was singing wasn't Lasparri at all.

The other shock was when Kitty Carlisle was singing. It was her, but she sang a different part of the opera, and she was only shown above the waist, rather than what is in the DVD version, where she is standing, and we can see a man behind her. In the scene, when Groucho and Chico first meet, when they are standing on Lasparri, I found two additional sentences.

Chico: I'm a stranger here myself.
This line is in the DVD edition, but right after it you can see a jump cut.
Groucho: Aren't you an italian?
Chico: No, only my mama and papa is italian.
Groucho: What's his name? (referring to the tenor he wants to sign)
Chico : It's an italian name. (This was cut) I can't pronunce it.


As you can see references to Italy were indeed cut, but it still does not contain the 4 minute street singing intro that people were talking about. Unfortunately I could only watch the first reel, which ends in the middle of the contract scene. It was extremely expensive to do. It cost me two times more than to buy the DVD. I asked them about transferring this version to DVD just to preserve the film, and they told me that it would cost a lot of money, and that I have to speak to the owner of the rights of this film."

So far Racz Tamas. The existence of an uncut version of A Night at the Opera is of course big news in the Marxonian world and my opinion is that this is not just an Hungarian issue. Instead we should see an international effort to preserve this version. Also, I think the copyright-holder should be very interested in the possibility to restore this Marx Brothers classic.

Read more about A Night At The Opera at http://www.marx-brothers.org/marxology/opera.htm

Someone ask him to check the archives for a complete print of "Horsefeathers - (1932)."

Gary J.

Very cool! A pity that the street-singing sequence wasn't found, but it sure would be nice to have those dialogue bits restored.

This is interesting news but I haven't seen this story anywhere else but on that Marx Brothers fan website. So far no story on AP, UP, Reuters or in print.

Any new word on this?

Interesting. What else is in the Hungarian Film Archive that we don't know anything about?

Interesting. What else is in the Hungarian Film Archive that we don't know anything about?

I have mentioned this before. The official Magyar film archives were bombed in the closing days of WW2 in Budapest. The were, apparently, across the street from the Danube. A number of titles from 1939-1945 are listed as missing since this time but much earlier sound material has survived. I have heard soundtracks of some musicals but there are a lot of joins. After the war bank vault strongrooms were found to have been opened & boxes were all gone. Much stored Jewish-owned personal jewelry was, thus, missing forever.

It does amaze me what footage has been found in some of the most heavily destroyed areas of any war last century in Europe. I am at odds about the deliberate destruction of millions of feet of German nitrate in 1945 at Neubabelsberg by the Russians when they entered that city with a single match. I am more inclined to believe they took a lot back to Russia, some of which has been returned. This information had been read(destruction) in a German-language book on the German film industry to 1945 published in the 1960s. The text was in the opening pages of the book. What is one to believe?

[b]
It does amaze me what footage has been found in some of the most heavily destroyed areas of any war last century in Europe. I am at odds about the deliberate destruction of millions of feet of German nitrate in 1945 at Neubabelsberg by the Russians when they entered that city with a single match. I am more inclined to believe they took a lot back to Russia, some of which has been returned. This information had been read(destruction) in a German-language book on the German film industry to 1945 published in the 1960s. The text was in the opening pages of the book. What is one to believe?

Actually, there was very little film left at Ufa when the Russians arrived. Ufa realized early on that their studios would be targets (from the air, the sound stages resembled airplane hangars). Around 1943/44, they began moving their vault holdings to the AB Barrandov Studios in Prague, and within two years all Ufa productions were being shot in Czechoslovakia. So, yes, the bulk of Germany's sound films ended up behind the Iron Curtain; but those films have been returned and are now controlled by the F.W. Murnau Stiftung and Transit-Film.

Is Chico's 1951 TV series COLLEGE BOWL still around?

Here we are 5 years later...

What a shame this potentially exciting discovery hasn't resulted in any news. Does anyone know if Warners was ever informed and if they've ever commented?

So last night after writing the above post I contacted the guy who discovered the print (I found him on Facebook), here's what he said...

"Hi. I think you have some kind of a sixth sense for writing to me about it. Today is the day when I leave Hungary and go back to the USA. (I live there since 2011). And I will bring along the contacts and all the relevant information that the workers of the movie archives gave me. Their whole system changed, it is under new management, and hopefully this way I can succeed in my goal which is making the print I saw available to the public. Thankfully I have some good connections in the USA too.
So I am still working on it, hopefully this will be the right path."

[b]
It does amaze me what footage has been found in some of the most heavily destroyed areas of any war last century in Europe. I am at odds about the deliberate destruction of millions of feet of German nitrate in 1945 at Neubabelsberg by the Russians when they entered that city with a single match. I am more inclined to believe they took a lot back to Russia, some of which has been returned. This information had been read(destruction) in a German-language book on the German film industry to 1945 published in the 1960s. The text was in the opening pages of the book. What is one to believe?

Actually, there was very little film left at Ufa when the Russians arrived. Ufa realized early on that their studios would be targets (from the air, the sound stages resembled airplane hangars). Around 1943/44, they began moving their vault holdings to the AB Barrandov Studios in Prague, and within two years all Ufa productions were being shot in Czechoslovakia. So, yes, the bulk of Germany's sound films ended up behind the Iron Curtain; but those films have been returned and are now controlled by the F.W. Murnau Stiftung and Transit-Film.

Once I came accross a webpage by a man who had been part of the clean-up crews, who would search and destroy propaganda films in Italy and Germany. This was done by simply burning all German & Italian films. Imagine that.
(Note: I've never researched this properly but I'm assuming for now that his story was genuine.)