Talk:The Chess Players (film)

Running length

I checked out a copy of the Kino International DVD from the local library.

At the beginning of the film is a notice from India's Central Board of Film Censors. It says the film is 33mm gauge and 3434.18 meters long (14 reels). Date of issue 3-10-1977, date of expiry 2-10-1987. I'm guessing that's in d-m-yyyy format. IMDB reports the release date as 3 October 1977 (India). I have not done the math to translate from meters into minutes/seconds.

The DVD extras has a Production Note that states

The Kino DVD release of Satyajit Ray's The

Chess Players runs 115 minutes, which is in

conflict with other sources (including IMDB

and Vincent Canby's New York Times review)

that state the original or "festival" length

as 129 minutes.

Through research, Kino discovered defini-

tively that Ray himself cut the film to 124

minutes after its festival screenings in 1977.

Of less certainty is when additional edits

were made, but it is possible that, due to

criticism by Indian distributors in 1978, Ray

made further cuts.

Suresh Jindal, the producer of The Chess

Players, states with certainty that there was

only one cut "115 to 120 minutes long."

Kino is confident that this DVD represents

the version of The Chess Players that was

shown in its theatrical release in 1978.

The DVD itself has

0:00:00 Kino International logo

0:00:12 "Films Sans Frontières" / présente

0:00:22 visa d'exploitation n° 57.803

0:00:25 Notice from "Central Board of Film Censors"

0:00:31 Start of film

1:54:01 Start of ending credits - the film continues behind the credits

1:55:05 the background action freezes while the credits continue to scroll

1:55:44 the last of the credits is scrolling off with about 1/4th of the screen left. A fade to black starts.

1:55:46 fade to black completed

1:55:48 end of film

The film on this DVD is a few seconds over 115 minutes. IMDB still reports 129 minutes. This IMDB thread talks about the length - nothing conclusive other than another company, Artificial Eye, also made a DVD and it's 115 minutes long. --Marc Kupper|talk 04:48, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

A film length issue came up for another article and so I did the math here too. 3434.18 meters translates into 125 minutes, 11 seconds. Here's the math using Excel:

Field	Formula	Value
Frames per foot	16	16
Frames per second	24	24
Feet/second	=B2/B1	1.50
Meters	3434.18	3,434.18
Feet/meter	3.2808399	3.2808399
total feet	=B4*B5	11,267
Seconds	=B6/B3	7,511
Minutes	=B7/60	125.2
time	=B7/(24*3600)	2:05:11

At least, we now have a source for 125 minutes and an explanation for why the videos we are ever likely to see are all 115 minutes. --Marc Kupper|talk 04:20, 27 June 2013 (UTC)