This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 9, 2009 - The tinkerers are at it again. Last week I noted that two critical and financial disasters from the 1980s, Hal Ashby's "Lookin' to Get Out" and Hugh Hudson's "Revolution," were coming to DVD in revised versions.
Now, William Friedkin, who dismissed any suggestion that he insert previously deleted scenes in "The Exorcist" until 2000, when he changed his mind and released the awkwardly titled "The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen," has raised a few hackles with the new Blu-Ray edition of "The French Connection." One prominent movie blogger has called it "a rip-off, a descration and a five-alarm burn." Jeffrey Wells obviously has some strong feelings on the matter.
It's been more than 35 years since I've seen Friedkin's film, so I'll let Glenn Kenny address the issue instead. But regardless of the quality/desecration of this particular "restoration," it draws attention to a few issues that film historians - and responsible film studios - need to address: Is it reasonable to preserve a record of a film's original theatrical form (even if it doesn't represent the director's intentions)? And is there such a thing as a "final cut" anymore?
There are many valid reasons for providing alternate versions of a film: restoring material that was prepared without the filmmaker's consent, censored or, in the case of many foreign releases, simply snipped away by scissors-happy American distributors. Friedkin's revisionist "French Connection" comes closer to recent revisionist releases from Spielberg, Lucas, Peter Jackson and others, less a matter of preserving his already well-regarded work than of nervously second-guessing himself.
One impulse behind the rash of "extended," "uncut" or "director's" releases is purely commercial, of course. The studios have discovered that the market value of such things (in most cases neatly side-stepping the point that they were responsible for the presumably disavowed theatrical versions in the first place), and have made it almost a given:
- 20th Century Fox announced this week that "Notorious" - a film that premiered less than two months ago - will be available in April in both the original theatrical version and an "unrated director's edition," which is all of six minutes longer.
- "High School Musical 3" hit stores a week or so ago with similar treatment.
In neither case had it been announced that the directors had any disagreement with the theatrical version, but that doesn't seem to matter to the marketing departments and DVD producers; I've heard of a few cases where film directors expressed surprise at the existence of "Director's Editions" that were actually produced without their knowledge.
The Lens is the blog of Cinema St. Louis, hosted by the Beacon.