Term of Trial

[Keif Howard]

I wonder if the claims for this film to be either 130 or 138 minutes are a myth? If not, somebody must know why there is such a discrepency!

[D Cairns]

By chance, I'm just reading Dream Repairman, the autobiography of the film's editor. Alas, he doesn't mention alternate cuts or censor trouble or anything that would explain this. But that does add slight weight to the theory that there only was one cut and a typo as to running time has been repeated. Maybe somebody misheard 130 for 113 and wrote it down that way.

Although, any home video will be slightly shorter than the original cinema running time, won't it? Or did that only apply to VHS?

[Moor Larkin]

By chance, I'm just reading Dream Repairman, the autobiography of the film's editor. Alas, he doesn't mention alternate cuts or censor trouble

Difficult to see why it would have hit "censor trouble" as the award it got at Venice was worded as some kind of "Catholic Award", despite being an X-Cert.

..TERM OF TRIAL", the British film which won the International Catholic Film Office award at the Venice Festival this year, was screened at the Cork International Film Festival last week where it won the two top acting awards for its stars Sir Laurence Olivier and I9-year-old Sarah Miles.
http://archive.catholicherald.co.uk/...m-wins-in-cork

[filmman79th]

113 vs. 130 does seem like the kind of typograhical mistake that could develop over time. Easy for someone to mishear or transpose in their head.

[Moor Larkin]

This Swedish database has it as 3,105 metres long and 113 minutes....... Does this tally I wonder ? .........
http://www.sfi.se/en-GB/Swedish-film...OVIE&iv=PdfGen

Just noticed that on the British Board of Film Censors site, the film is listed as 12,462 feet and 138mins & 28secs
http://www.bbfc.co.uk/AFF013596/
Any techie movie experts out there know if 12,462 feet of celluloid passing through a projector matches up with that running time?

[will.15]

10,188 feet is 3105 meters.

If the Swedish database is accurate, approximately 300 feet per 10 minutes.

So the British Board of Censors saw a movie more than 200 feet longer.

But 138 minutes would be more than 600 feet longer.

I am no math whiz, I'm just guessing in my head, but it sounds to me the British film Board saw if these numbers are correct, a cut about eight minutes longer than 113 minutes.

So maybe they cut eight minutes from a roughly 121 minute movie to avoid the X getting to 113 minutes.