It's 1h 28m long. That's not enough time for nothing. And it was too long? "All Through the Night" starring Humphrey Bogart came out the same year, it is 1h 47m long. "Captains of the Clouds" starring James Cagney 1h 54m long. One of the most famous films of all time "Casablanca" 1h 42m long. Another big movie that year was "Mrs. Miniver" starring Walter Pidgeon and Greer Garson and it was 2h 13m long. "Pride of the Yankees" came out that year.
Yeah, and Robert Wise's bloated 'epic', "West Side Story," is 5 hours long. That's how long it is, right? Because it sure felt like it. One wonders why the studio never chopped 50 minutes out of it and then changed the ending so Tony lives.
No evidence that a 148 minute cut was ever put together. And no way that the bits and pieces from the final shooting draft of the script that didn't make it into the original post-production cut added up to 16 minutes - unless it was edited atrociously. (It's known some of that wasn't even shot.) His first cut was 132 minutes. He wasn't going to release it at that length; he had no plans to release it at anything longer than 120 minutes, as he was outspoken about not liking pictures that lasted more than 2 hours. He had put the gears in motion to make his own questionable editorial decisions (which were briefly implemented and then discarded by RKO after the Pomona preview on March 17, 1942 bombed) to get it down to that length, which included treating Isabel's death like a silly Hollywood cliche. That the 89 minute final cut is a chopped-up mess that looks like it was edited with a lawnmower is besides the point. Welles was going to chop it up himself by taking out scenes that we all know. Had he gotten his way, perhaps we'd all be lamenting the loss of George's and Lucy's breakup, or Isabel's horseful car ride home instead of what we are.
I am sympathetic to Welles to an extent, but not all the way. The fact of the matter is, he left the country - and, in effect, abandoned his own film; he did authorize them to reshoot scenes without him there - and, in effect, opened the door for RKO to do whatever reshoots they felt like without him there; and, ultimately, when he found out the picture was taken away from him over the summer, made no attempt whatsoever to try to get his reels back from Brazil. He left them there. He had years to go back and get them, and didn't. He may have departed for noble reasons (although, honestly, he probably departed to dodge the draft), but all the same, if it meant that much to him, he would have been there for his child when it needed him most instead of skipping town. That being said, I never really bought the legend that RKO was trying to lighten up the picture. If that were the case, they would have kept funny scenes like Friend of the Ace and Drunk Uncle John instead of all the gloomy parts they did keep. And call me sacrilegious, but I do feel that a few, not all, of the retakes did improve what was there, at least from a scriptwriting standpoint. It's also readily apparent that they completely butchered other areas (the entire section where Isabel and the Major die is incoherent).
reply
share