i have the original US VHS tape and i was wondering what had happened to the scene where in the tunnel the palms of Adjani's hands split open and eyeballs appear. i have the dvd double feature of Possession/ Shock that came out awhile ago and the director makes no comment about that scene being missing or added by its US distributors... any ideas what's going on with that?
shareThe removal of the scene in the European market may have been for reasons of allowing the film the ambiguity of Adjani's "exorcism" - which was basically her internal fears/desires coming to the fore in the form of a "monster". This scene may have made the point too obvious and detract from the sadness that the scene in fact exhibits. The US market was going for the straightforward horror flick, so they thought nothing of adding this scene in. I believe there were other moments in the subway tunnel scene that were cut. Incidently, the version shown at Cannes was shown in its entirety. Mondo-Vision will be releasing Possession on DVD in a restored version sometime in the future (a version that will include far more features than the Anchor Bay version). Perhaps they will also restore all missing scenes that you are talking about.
shareIn an interview feature included with the recent UK DVD release of Possession, Zulawski complains about how the film was promoted in the US. In his opinion, the film is not a horror movie and should never be discussed as such. He says the American distributors were "idiots" trying to market and promote this as a horror film. It is possible that the shot of the eyes was never intended to be used by Zulawski, but was included by the American distributors to push the grotesque/horror element even further.
I would imagine this to be the case since any such shot has been totally absent from all subsequent DVD versions, all of which have been approved, to some extent, by Zulawski himself.