Pirating the Pirates

Pirating the Pirates / 盗版“海盗”

Notebook Feature 笔记专题

Home video release images from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966). Clockwise from top-left: Arrow Video (4K UHD, 2025), Kino Lorber (4K UHD, 2021), MGM (4K Blu-ray, 2014), MGM (DVD, 1998). 《黄金三镖客》（赛尔乔·莱昂内，1966年）的家庭影音发行版本截图。从左上角顺时针依次为：Arrow Video（4K UHD，2025年）、Kino Lorber（4K UHD，2021年）、米高梅（4K蓝光，2014年）、米高梅（DVD，1998年）。

“People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians, and if the laws of the United States continue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society.” —George Lucas, 1988 “那些为了牟利或行使权力而篡改、破坏艺术作品及文化遗产的人是野蛮人。如果美国的法律继续纵容这种行为，历史必将把我们归类为一个野蛮的社会。”——乔治·卢卡斯，1988年

“To me, it [the original Star Wars trilogy] doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it.” —George Lucas, 2004 “对我来说，它（《星球大战》原始三部曲）已经不存在了。现在的版本才是我心目中它该有的样子。很抱歉你们当年看到的是一部只完成了一半的电影，还爱上了它。”——乔治·卢卡斯，2004年

Vancouver, 2011: My then-roommate Willa Ross and I are at our wit’s end in one of Simon Fraser University’s characteristically antiseptic editing suites, having just spent the weekend hacking together three distinct copies of Sergio Leone’s 1966 western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, all illegally ripped. The film had fallen victim to an MGM “restoration” in the early 2000s: Scenes Leone cut were reinstated, inflating the English-language runtime from 161 to 179 minutes, with Eastwood and Wallach dubbing the missing dialogue and a soundalike standing in for the late Lee Van Cleef. The mono soundtrack, meanwhile, had been reworked into a surround mix with jarringly modern gunshot effects. This “extended” cut was the only version commercially available for nearly a decade, an all-too-common fate in an era of revisionist studio reworkings. 温哥华，2011年：我和当时的室友威拉·罗斯（Willa Ross）在西蒙菲莎大学一间典型的、毫无生气的剪辑室里束手无策。我们刚花了一个周末，试图将赛尔乔·莱昂内1966年的西部片《黄金三镖客》的三个不同版本拼凑在一起，这些素材全都是非法翻录的。这部电影在21世纪初沦为了米高梅“修复”的受害者：莱昂内当年剪掉的片段被强行加回，使英语版的时长从161分钟增加到了179分钟；伊斯特伍德和瓦拉赫为缺失的对白进行了配音，而已故的李·范·克里夫的角色则由一名声线相似的演员代配。与此同时，单声道音轨被重制成了环绕声混音，并加入了极其突兀的现代枪声效果。这个“加长版”在近十年里是市面上唯一能买到的版本，在那个制片厂热衷于“修正主义”重制的时代，这是一种太常见的命运。

Our goal was simple: undo this butchery. We planned to combine sound from an out-of-print 1998 DVD (an approximation of the 1967 international release) with video from a recently imported Blu-ray of the Italian cut. After successfully navigating the various pitfalls of late-2000s home video ripping, our hopes were dashed by a catastrophic realization: The Italian cut was even more dissimilar to the international cut than the extended cut, the infamous torture scene entirely restructured and various shots missing heads and tails. We gave up for nearly a decade. 我们的目标很简单：撤销这种粗暴的篡改。我们计划将一张已绝版的1998年DVD（接近1967年国际公映版）的音轨，与一张刚进口的意大利剪辑版蓝光碟的视频画面结合起来。在成功克服了2000年代末家庭影音翻录的各种陷阱后，一个灾难性的发现击碎了我们的希望：意大利剪辑版与国际版之间的差异甚至比加长版还要大，那场臭名昭著的拷问戏被完全重构，且多个镜头缺失了开头和结尾。我们放弃了，这一放弃就是近十年。

Publicly accessible versions of major works of cinema are often wholly inadequate for reasons as diverse as the resultant shortcomings. A major studio’s home video arm might “expand” a film, remix a monaural audio track, wipe away digital grain, oversaturate or oversharpen the image, or even change the aspect ratio for the sake of an attractive sticker promising a new-and-improved experience. 大众能接触到的主流电影版本往往存在严重缺陷，其原因和最终呈现出的瑕疵一样多种多样。大型制片厂的家庭影音部门可能会为了贴上“全新升级体验”的诱人标签，而对电影进行“扩充”、重混单声道音轨、抹除数字颗粒感、过度饱和或锐化画面，甚至改变长宽比。

At other points, low budgets and corporate apathy lead to corners being cut. Spencer Draper—best known as the Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader on YouTube, where he reviews the technical and historical aspects of digital releases with a rigor usually reserved for scholarly peer review—characterized the attitudes of negligent studios harshly in my recent interview with him: “‘Oh, you got a problem? The Kino [an American boutique label] disc is defective? So what. So what if it uses a defective Paramount master with frozen grain and [has] problems throughout.’ [The studios] don’t care that any given audio file is 30 years old and the channels are reversed.” Sometimes, this persists for decades: Every copy of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) released since its 1984 reconstruction has featured a major soundtrack mistake during the end credits brought about by a botched attempt to fix another error introduced in 1970, one example that particularly rankles Draper. 在其他情况下，预算不足和公司层面的冷漠导致了偷工减料。斯宾塞·德雷珀（Spencer Draper）——他在YouTube上以“Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader”的网名而闻名，常以学术同行评审般的严谨态度审视数字发行的技术与历史细节——在最近的一次采访中严厉批评了这些疏忽大意的制片厂：“‘哦，你有问题？Kino（一家美国精品厂牌）的碟片有瑕疵？那又怎样。就算它用了派拉蒙那份带有冻结颗粒感且到处是问题的残缺母带又怎样。’（制片厂）根本不在乎某个音频文件是不是30年前的，也不在乎声道是否被反转了。”这种情况有时会持续数十年：自1984年重制版发行以来，每一版《西部往事》（1968）的片尾字幕音轨都存在一个重大错误，这是因为试图修复1970年引入的另一个错误时操作失误导致的，这让德雷珀感到格外恼火。

This is where boutique labels come in—companies that independently license and release archival titles, in something like the spirit of Criterion’s founding aim: to gather significant films from around the world and present them as close to a filmmaker’s intent as possible, in the best technical condition available. Outfits like Arrow, Kino, and Eureka operate on a version of that premise. What any given label actually restores versus what it merely receives is a separate question, running a wide spectrum. Sometimes a label might receive a fully mastered digital file and find themselves contractually obliged to release it as-is; at other times, they might receive raw digital scans with partial or no cleanup; or they might be required to source, scan, and restore a film by themselves. 这就是精品厂牌发挥作用的地方——这些公司独立获得版权并发行档案级影片，其精神类似于标准收藏（Criterion）的初衷：收集世界各地的重要电影，并在现有的最佳技术条件下，尽可能还原导演的创作意图。像Arrow、Kino和Eureka这样的机构都在某种程度上遵循这一前提。至于某个厂牌究竟是亲自修复还是仅仅接收现成素材，则是另一个问题，情况各不相同。有时厂牌可能收到一份已完成母带制作的数字文件，并受合同约束必须原样发行；有时他们收到的可能是未经处理或仅部分处理的原始数字扫描件；或者他们可能需要自行寻找素材、扫描并修复电影。

James Flower, director of production at Arrow Films, a British boutique label renowned for its rigorous approach to preservation, raises a different culprit for historical inaccuracies: living filmmakers. The revisionist impulse is nearly as old as cinema—from Charlie Chaplin modernizing his silent classics in later years to Wong Kar-wai radically altering the color grading, aspect ratios, and soundtracks of his back catalog for a 2021 Criterion box set. In his note accompanying this set, Wong Kar-wai justified his alterations with a simple philosophy: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” Arrow Films的制作总监詹姆斯·弗劳尔（James Flower）——这家英国精品厂牌以严谨的修复态度著称——指出了导致历史失真的另一个罪魁祸首：在世的电影制作人。这种修正主义冲动几乎与电影本身一样古老——从查理·卓别林晚年对其默片经典的现代化改造，到王家卫为2021年标准收藏套装而彻底改变其旧作的调色、长宽比和音轨。在随套装附带的说明中，王家卫用一种简单的哲学为自己的改动辩护：“人不能两次踏进同一条河流，因为河已不是那条河，人也不是那个人。”

However, this revisionist approach often leaves release-accurate versions unavailable to historians and audiences alike. In our interview, Flower recalled a director enamored with a digital aesthetic “wanting his films to look sleek and modern and degrained, with oversaturated colors that would not have been achievable photochemically.” Flower suggested including both the revised cut and a historically accurate version, but the director vehemently refused. Facing a deadline, Arrow acquiesced. “For me, he was vandalizing his own work,” says Flower. 然而，这种修正主义做法往往导致历史学家和观众都无法看到符合发行当时原貌的版本。在我们的采访中，弗劳尔回忆起一位沉迷于数字美学的导演，“希望他的电影看起来光滑、现代、没有颗粒感，并带有光化学工艺无法实现的过度饱和色彩。”弗劳尔建议同时收录修正版和符合历史原貌的版本，但该导演坚决拒绝。面对截止日期，Arrow只能妥协。“对我来说，他是在破坏自己的作品，”弗劳尔说。

Vancouver, July 2019. Radicalized by a disheartening screening of the official MGM masters of Leone’s Dollars trilogy at a local cinematheque, Willa and I resume work on our cobbled-together cut. We now have better raw materials: a new Blu-ray with far superior picture quality, and an old LaserDisc with 温哥华，2019年7月。在当地一家电影资料馆观看了一场令人沮丧的米高梅官方母带版莱昂内“镖客三部曲”放映后，我和威拉深受刺激，决定重启我们那个拼凑剪辑版的制作工作。我们现在有了更好的原始素材：一张画质远胜以往的新蓝光碟，以及一张旧的激光影碟（LaserDisc）……