Road to Salina (aka La route de Salina) Studio Canal 2020 Blu-ray Release

[FulciLives]

Road to Salina (aka La route de Salina)
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Road-...lu-ray/259213/

I love this movie. Simply adore it. So even though I don't know French in the least, I had to get this French BluRay release. I just had to see the movie in HD quality!

For those that don't know, and I don't pretend to be an expert on the film, but this movie was shot with mostly English speaking actors and so, as far as I am concerned, that is the correct language of the film. However, it was a French production (or maybe co-production) and so there has always existed French dubbed versions of the movie and the recent French BluRay is the French Dub with no English language Audio and no English language subtitles. I knew this going in so that is not my complaint.

My complaint is that this BluRay is missing footage! Footage that I've seen in the American released English language version and footage that I've seen in a French dubbed DVD release (all SD quality mind you). I mention this because when I first noticed the missing footage on the BluRay, I thought to myself that maybe the French dubbed version has always been a slightly different edit of the film. So I went back and watched the scene on the old French DVD release and, just like my well-watched English language version, the French DVD includes the footage that is missing from the French BluRay release. I can only assume then that this missing footage is somehow an error that is exclusive to this BluRay release, which to the best of my knowledge, is the only HD version of the movie available at this time.

So what is the missing footage you ask? Well, here is the spoiler-free version: approximately 4 seconds are missing from what is a very brief but key character reaction moment at the final moments of the film.

For those of you who want the in-depth version of the missing footage, I have put it below in SPOILER tags because it will spoiler the film if you are not familiar with it.

[Show spoiler]At the end when Jonas (played by Robert Walker) is leaving, Mara (played by Rita Hayworth) stops him and pleads with him to stay, saying that they will hide Billie (played by Mimsy Farmer) and tell people that she has gone away [at this point in the story Billie is dead, by Jonas' hands]. At the end of the scene, Mara says once again "I know where to hide her" and she looks to the right, off-camera. The film then cuts to a close up of Jonas turning and looking off-camera. Then the film cuts to a cement slab on the ground with a manhole type covering. We know from earlier in the film that this is where the gasoline is stored for Mara's gas station pumps and where Billie hid the dead body of her brother after accidentally killing him (she tells this to Jonas and as she does so we see footage of her by this cement hole in the ground with the manhole access covering open, her dead brother's body lying next to it). I mentioned all this just now as it explains why the film cuts to the cement slab on the ground. The film then cuts to a close up of Jonas, who makes a look that is difficult to describe. You can see in his face and eyes the realization of the horror and tragedy of it all, that Mara wants to dump Billie's body exactly where Billie dumped her brother's body. It is a short and fleeting moment in the film and yet it is so vital. The film then cuts from this close up of Jonas to a medium shot where he is already moving to the left, running away. All of what I just explained is the full uncut version. So to be clear, we cut from Mara to a close up of Jonas, then to a medium shot of the cement slab, back to a close up of Jonas and his reaction to this horror, then a cut to a medium shot of him where his body is already turning and moving off to the left of the screen. In the BluRay version, we instead go straight from Mara saying "I know where to hide her" to the medium shot of Jonas where his body is already turning to the left to run away. We miss the shot of him looking off-camera, the shot of the cement slab, the close up after that of his reaction to all this. I know it is not a lot of footage. In fact, I tried to count it and the missing footage can't be more than 4 seconds or so but it is missing footage that is sorely missed by me.

I wanted to point out this missing footage because I am hoping that the English language version comes out on BluRay now that this French BluRay shows that an HD master exists ... BUT ... I'm worried that the same master, with missing footage, will be used.

It is disheartening to wait so long for a beloved movie to come out in HD only to find it's not "perfect" (sigh).