Restoration print screenings worldwide

This thread is intended to collect additional information about and given with screenings of the restored version.

I attended the screening at the Munich Film Festival on June, 29 with Grover Crisp being available for questions afterwards (BTW, the first screening of the restoration print outside the US - as told by Mr. Crisp).

1. Sony didn't re-edit the new version, but used a longer print negative/YCM found 15 years ago. Short ago Sony discovered the exactly matching magnetic master soundtrack was waiting all the years to be discovered in wrong labled cans. This made the additional 12min version possible.
As of today, all the original camera negative is missing, so the restoration has to deal with the old internegative pieces done for the fading effects, decreasing picture quality in the known way for the trick-effects. There is no additional source to do anything about it.
This version was edited for some premiere screening, then being the starting point for further downcuts for national release versions. What Sony did, was to ensure that the restoration version is presenting the scenes in the same order as they appear in Peckinpah's original script, but Grover Crisp didn't point out explicitely that they had to re-order scenes in the extended version they used now.

2. There are another 3min that were found in advertising trailers that could not be added to the print, simply because there is no magnetic master but only the mixed optical mono soundtrack, having the old music score mixed with. And the scenes are not complete.
But this will be as extra bonus material on the DVD.

3. Peckinpah's script shows the opening sequence to be way longer. The intension was to attend the Halloween Party of the settlers, heads of costumed white children get into the frame as closeups until war painted indian children appear the same way inbetween - then the massacre starts.

4. While part of the script was never put on film, other parts got lost after this initial version was cut. (The studio heads resentments against Peckinpah - and backwards - let them exclude a directors cut version forever, all original extra footage disappeared. A bad egocentric error.)


Irrespective you intend to get the DVD or not, you should not miss to see the new print on a big screen and sit as close as for a 70mm Todd AO (horizontal 60-90 degrees frame width). Because it's done like a 70mm epic with wide angle panorama shots and never too close to the action - an experience that's truly lost nowadays. Big parts offer a picture quality good enough for this close approach. Don't worry about the trick fadings lower quality, you have to stand it only for seconds.
(Being supervised by Technicolor right away would have avoided these problems as the Technicolor process of this time was able to do the trick fadings directly when gaining the YCM from the camera negative, no second generation process necessary.)
If Peckinpah wouldn't have been known to use tons of camera footage for to decide later in the cutting room, the producers might have spent the 65mm negative. This epic could have become a perfect masterpiece. Even with the drawbacks (still missing scenes, internegative process, ordinary 35mm) but having this background now, you can experience another rare classic epic masterpiece.