This film was re-edited right? I've heard Arthur Penn say that it wasn't what he originally intended it to be. Do you think there is any way it will ever be restored to what it should be?
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According to a Brando biography I read, Arthur Penn was furious because he was not involved in the editing-the producer Sam Spiegel edited it with no input from the director.
Robin Wood goes into some of the details in his defense of the film. He mainly mentions that Penn's main problem was the use of different takes. Supposedly, he did many takes of each scene, starting close to the script early on, and working out farther towards more improvisation as each take progressed. When Sam Spiegel took away the film, he stuck to the script, and as such, the earlier takes. Penn considered nearly all the later takes far superior, both for their perfomances, and for the off-beat "hysterical" quality he wanted the film to have (He claims that Brando's best work was left on the cutting room floor, as the final film contains only the worst takes).
I've also heard that this "hysterical" quality was another feature the edit was to include, using the "New Wave" elliptical editing that he would later use in Mickey One and Bonnie and Clyde. The cutting in the Spiegel cut is fairly conventional in comparison.
Both of these clearly show that the Penn's vision of the film would be a completely different, much more radical beast than the final film was, although as Wood's defense shows, the main ingredients are still their in the final film, much more than just "silly-60s-sexual innuendo and soap operatica".
"It's the first "American apocalypse" movie, the first film in which the disintegration of American society and the ideology that supports it (represented in microcosm by the town) is presented as total and final, beyond hope of reconstruction." - Robin Wood
Another problem was the ending, as Penn strongly felt the Jane Fonda scene and the Brando-Dickinson scene should have been shown in the opposite order than in the final film.
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Like I mention, read the Robin Wood defense. Probably the greatest critic when it came to defending movies that we're either ignored or hated/misunderstood. He's the guy who made me reconsider this more than just a failure (and he was one of the foremost writers on Arthur Penn).
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That's interesting that the film was re-edited. I, as all of us, would love to see the product that Penn had originally planned.
On that note though, I rather enjoyed the movie. You get some pretty good performances mixed with a "confused" depiction of the South. Many different vehicle makes surrounded but an outdated Western set. I like how someone earlier in the thread pointed out the "Halloween" aspect. I would definitely agree.
In my personal opinion I would have liked to see Sam Peckinpah direct the film. It's gritty enough(Robert Duvall and Janice Rule's relationship for one) for Sam to have really taken it somewhere.
Regardless, a somewhat "underrated" film that just isn't completely there.
Don't tease me about my hobbies, I don't you about being an a$$hole
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Do you think there is any way it will ever be restored to what it should be?