34 Andrei Rublev

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Ovader
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#76 Post by Ovader » Fri Jun 13, 2008 11:25 pm

ando wrote:Shame the old thread is gone for good - some of my favorite discussions were contained therein.
There is a PDF file of the old thread from 2001 available at the Nostalghia website on the August 17, 2001 news post.

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kaujot
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#77 Post by kaujot » Fri Jun 13, 2008 11:46 pm

miless wrote:
jmj713 wrote:Have there been any hints if we'd see a reissued AR in 2008 from Criterion?
no. they have said that the title is in need of reissue, but they have not yet revealed if it's even in the "pipeline".
I believe the same thing was said of High and Low.

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#78 Post by jmj713 » Thu Jul 03, 2008 10:25 am

There is an article today on one of the Russian online news sites. Sorry for the machine translation but you can get the gist of it. It talks about how in Russia they've just completed a restoration of Andrei Rublev to its original version. I'm not sure what that means, if it's just what Criterion already released or something different.

In any case, I cannot wait, as this is one of my favorite films of all time, and hopefully Criterion will bless us in December or so with a 3-disc edition.

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miless
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#79 Post by miless » Thu Jul 03, 2008 12:48 pm

Vadim Yusov's involvement really makes me excited for this restoration. I was aware of the efforts but I guess I had forgotten how long it had been since I heard them. And given Yusov's involvement with past Criterion discs, I think it's safe to say that this new restoration will make its way to Criterion.

A three disc edition is completely necessary.

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#80 Post by jsteffe » Thu Jul 03, 2008 5:31 pm

jmj713 wrote:There is an article today on one of the Russian online news sites. Sorry for the machine translation but you can get the gist of it. It talks about how in Russia they've just completed a restoration of Andrei Rublev to its original version. I'm not sure what that means, if it's just what Criterion already released or something different.
Thanks for the link. I read the article in the original Russian and it indeed appears to be the "third version" that Yusov was working on and is mentioned earlier in this same thread.

About the various versions: Robert Bird's book on Andrei Rublev states that the 205-minute version was hastily completed before submission to the State Committe on Film. Following their recommendations, Tarkovsky apparently made about 15 minutes of cuts, which would have brought the film to about 190 minutes. Under further pressure he cut out another 5 minutes, resulting in the 185-minute version. We have to keep in mind that Tarkovsky didn't just cut footage out, he introduced alternate takes and restructured the film in the process. Perhaps Yusov is reconstructing the 190 minute version? If so, that would represent something new, and it could arguably be a legitimate "tightening up" of the film from its longer, 205-minute pre-release version.

I'm eager to see whatever Yusov has done, but at the same time I'm skeptical whether we can determine with 100% certainty what Tarkovsky really intended 40 years after the film was made and 20 years after his death. Even Tarkovsky apparently contradicted himself at times about which version he preferred. Also, a film's crew members (i.e., Director of Photography, Assistant Directors, editors, etc.) can have their own biases, so sometimes you have to take their claims with a grain of salt, even if their opinions are highly authoritative.

I hope that at the very least this new version won't be an amalgam of footage that was excised at various stages, but will represent a reconstruction of the film as it was supposed to have been assembled at a clearly identified, *single* stage in the process. Otherwise it won't mean very much as a cinematic text. More stuff is not always better.

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#81 Post by jmj713 » Thu Jul 03, 2008 5:50 pm

It's said it's "a restored copy back to the time when the script was written" - not sure what that means, but I suppose this will be close to Tarkovsky's original intentions for the film.

My dream Criterion re-release would include all these different cuts via seamless branching.

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miless
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#82 Post by miless » Thu Jul 03, 2008 6:01 pm

jmj713 wrote:My dream Criterion re-release would include all these different cuts via seamless branching.
could you do seamless branching when all three versions are fairly different (different soundtracks, scenes, takes, etc...)
I'd rather have a 4 disc set with each version (theatrical version, the 205 min. Scorsese print and this new cut.) sort of like the blade runner package (with a mini suitcase, too!). and that way the film could displayed with its optimal bit-rate.

this would be the release I'd go for Blu-Ray.

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HerrSchreck
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#83 Post by HerrSchreck » Thu Jul 03, 2008 6:17 pm

jmj713 wrote: but I suppose this will be close to Tarkovsky's original intentions for the film.
I don't know that he even knew what his original intentions were. Hoberman's phrase (I think it was Hoberman) "superproduction run amok" fairly well describes, I think. And its this luxury that created the necessarily peculiar conditions for this most miraculous film, which benefited from state agencies having no fucking idea what was on deck, how loose, adventurous, and indulgently original were the conception (not to mention entirely contrary to state paradigms at the time) and execution.. with well nigh a small city of resources made available. Even AT himself probably couldn't believe he was getting away with and actually pulling off the cinematic logistics he was.. with the wildest conceptions physically realized no matter what-- by the time it was all done he must have wound up with stuff he'd never dreamed he'd actually successfully execute.. material directors visualize only in their imagination (if they had the rare imaginative fertility to even conceive such material). The combination of censorship and carte blanche along the way probably made the scene by scene "original intentions" (beyond the basic episodic structure loosely bound to the person, whether present or not, of the painter Rublyov) something to be construed in an ex post facto way.. a "wait and see" scenario. Which may be why he contradicted himself regarding his intentions: they were never totally fixed in the first place.

Or I'm totally wrong. Which I very well may be. But given the whiffs I get of the film, I get that sense... It's a miracle of a film nonetheless-- AT never made another remotely like it-- though he made others just as good, though not as physically ambitious, and necessarily more intimate rather than sweeping-historical.

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#84 Post by jsteffe » Fri Jul 04, 2008 12:25 am

jmj713 wrote:It's said it's "a restored copy back to the time when the script was written" - not sure what that means, but I suppose this will be close to Tarkovsky's original intentions for the film.
That's precisely why I'm skeptical about what Yusov is doing. The film wasn't even shot when the script was written, so how could Tarkovsky even know exactly what the finished film was supposed to look like? We already know that Tarkovsky's conception changed in the editing process, and that's perfectly normal.

You have to remember that in the Soviet Union it was *not* as if film directors typically created a finished "director's cut" of the film which was then submitted to the censors who told them to trim out x amount of footage. Based on my own study of Goskino production and censorship files at the Russian State Archive of Art and Literature, films were still basically in the rough cut stage when they were submitted for critique, and many of the comments by the studio's Artistic Council, the Script-Editorial Board, the State Committe on Film, etc., were directed towards "improving" films artistically, not just monitoring them for ideological offenses. The whole process was complex and accordingly shaped the finished product in complex ways.

I'm starting to get a queasy feeling about this "restoration," I have to say.
My dream Criterion re-release would include all these different cuts via seamless branching.
I doubt that would even be feasible, since Tarkovsky used some alternate takes and changed a number of the shot transitions as he reworked the film.

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Tommaso
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#85 Post by Tommaso » Fri Jul 04, 2008 6:01 am

I think it was on one of the extras of the Ruscico/AE disc that someone said that Tarkovsky, being well aware that the film wouldl be censored, intentionally put some passages into the first cut with the sole purpose of having THESE censored, so that other passages that he really cared for would go through. If this is true, it is very hard to determine whether a restored original cut would really represent Tarkovsky's intentions.

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FilmFanSea
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#86 Post by FilmFanSea » Fri Jul 04, 2008 12:45 pm

Thank god for a Rublev restoration--a CC re-release can't come quickly enough, as far as I'm concerned. Until the other night, I had only watched my Criterion disc on an old analong TV. Watching it via my projector (even with Oppo upconversion) was a painful experience, and I threw in the towel after 20 minutes. This had better be a BR on the next go-round.

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jsteffe
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#87 Post by jsteffe » Fri Jul 04, 2008 1:04 pm

Tommaso wrote:I think it was on one of the extras of the Ruscico/AE disc that someone said that Tarkovsky, being well aware that the film wouldl be censored, intentionally put some passages into the first cut with the sole purpose of having THESE censored, so that other passages that he really cared for would go through. If this is true, it is very hard to determine whether a restored original cut would really represent Tarkovsky's intentions.
Yes, that wouldn't surprise me at all! It's not uncommon for filmmakers and writers working under a censorship system to include stuff they know will get cut in order to keep what they really want. But the Soviet system was still unpredictable--it also depended who was on the various committees. Some people were stricter than others.

I think HerrSchreck's characterization of the film as a "superproduction out of countrol" also makes a lot of sense.

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miless
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#88 Post by miless » Fri Jul 04, 2008 2:17 pm

This was also in production at the very end of the thaw period of Russian History. It was just extraordinarily bad timing that it ended up going to council just as everything was tightening up (but still better timing than The Commissar, which remained unreleased until the late 80's). I have never personally heard of the "Tarkovsky made a longer edit to protect the scenes he really wanted" idea, and frankly I don't buy it. Tarkovsky had started making films only during the Thaw, and as his films were never outright political critiques (at least in a literal translation), it made it difficult to censor them (everyone disagreeing about what to cut, or what to change).

Hell, the controversy over Ivan's Childhood (many of the panel delegates wanted the ending montage of nazi war footage to be removed) was one of the only times where a concrete reason was given for censoring his movies (every other time it was very vague reasoning, and Tarkovsky often got around it)

What's really interesting is that, from what I've read, the initial viewing of the film was very positive (all the reports say that the film had very high artistic merit), and that it just needed some slight trimming (which Tarkovsky complied with). It wasn't until the second or third panel viewed it (once the freeze had taken place) that the project really got out of hand.

I think that the only way to really make a conclusive edit of the film is to finish the original edit (the 205 minute version). compiling the negatives (or best elements) to recreate the Scorsese print with a soundtrack that takes into account the release version (on DVD they could even include the original soundtrack).

also, the script was never fully realized. Had everything in the script been filmed (or the budget been made available) the film could easily have been twice as long as it is now... so going from the script might be a tad difficult from a re-edit standpoint.

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#89 Post by jmj713 » Fri Jul 04, 2008 3:08 pm

miless, is the script available anywhere to read?

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miless
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#90 Post by miless » Fri Jul 04, 2008 3:16 pm

It has been published multiple times (in fact it was even published before production on the film began), but it looks as if it it is now out of print. (on amazon copies are going for $160+)

I'd check either public libraries or one from a college if you have access (it will undoubtedly be available via inter-library loan)

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On November 21, 2006

#91 Post by jmj713 » Fri Jul 04, 2008 3:28 pm

Jonathan Turell wrote:In short, we only rerelease a film if we can do a significantly better job with either the film transfer, the supplements, or hopefully both. We know there are a good two-dozen early releases (Andrei Rublev and Shock Corridor, to name just a couple) that need to be redone, and we’ll probably get to them at a rate of three to four a year.
So this November will be two years since that hint/announcement was made. Could they shock us and announce a 3/4-disc Andrei Rublev re-release already next month for November? I mean, if everything's finished with the restoration, it's only a matter of assembling the extras etc. That takes time of course but dammit I want this one so bad! :)

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jsteffe
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#92 Post by jsteffe » Fri Jul 04, 2008 6:39 pm

miless wrote:This was also in production at the very end of the thaw period of Russian History. It was just extraordinarily bad timing that it ended up going to council just as everything was tightening up (but still better timing than The Commissar, which remained unreleased until the late 80's). I have never personally heard of the "Tarkovsky made a longer edit to protect the scenes he really wanted" idea, and frankly I don't buy it. Tarkovsky had started making films only during the Thaw, and as his films were never outright political critiques (at least in a literal translation), it made it difficult to censor them (everyone disagreeing about what to cut, or what to change).

Hell, the controversy over Ivan's Childhood (many of the panel delegates wanted the ending montage of nazi war footage to be removed) was one of the only times where a concrete reason was given for censoring his movies (every other time it was very vague reasoning, and Tarkovsky often got around it)

What's really interesting is that, from what I've read, the initial viewing of the film was very positive (all the reports say that the film had very high artistic merit), and that it just needed some slight trimming (which Tarkovsky complied with). It wasn't until the second or third panel viewed it (once the freeze had taken place) that the project really got out of hand.

I think that the only way to really make a conclusive edit of the film is to finish the original edit (the 205 minute version). compiling the negatives (or best elements) to recreate the Scorsese print with a soundtrack that takes into account the release version (on DVD they could even include the original soundtrack).

also, the script was never fully realized. Had everything in the script been filmed (or the budget been made available) the film could easily have been twice as long as it is now... so going from the script might be a tad difficult from a re-edit standpoint.
When the Thaw actually ended is a complicated issue. Khrushchev was ousted in 1964, but even before then there were indications that things were tightening up, such as when Khrushchev criticized the art exhibition at the Manezh in 1962 and when he attacked Marlen Khutsiev's film I am Twenty in 1963. (That's a magnificent film, by the way, and it even has a cameo by Tarkovsky!) However, the changes didn't occur all at once or evenly in every sector of society. For instance, the atmosphere remained a little more relaxed in Armenia and Georgia than in Russia or Ukraine.

If I recall correctly, the wave of banned and shelved films started around 1966 or 1967. Besides ANDREI RUBLEV and COMMISSAR, there was THE INTERVENTION, BRIEF ENCOUNTERS, A WELL FOR THE THIRSTY, and I believe others. There were also many projects that got shut down even before they went into production, such as Paradjanov's KIEV FRESCOES, which was closed after they saw the screen tests (that's the footage which survives).

From what I've read, Alexei Romanov, the Chair of Goskino at that time, was very conservative. Without having seen the actual Goskino memos on the film, I would imagine that he objected not just to the violence and the nudity, but also to the film's complicated structure. If a film was not "accessible" enough to the masses (one of the underlying tenets of Socialist Realism) or if it was too "experimental," it could get condemned for "formalism." That's partly what happened to Paradjanov with The Color of Pomegranates--it was not due to any supposed "nationalism," as has often been assumed in the West. The point is that there are all sorts of "non-political" aspects that the authorites might have objected to. I know that at least some of the censorship documents for ANDREI RUBLEV have been published in Russian--I'll track them down this summer and look through them. I'm really curious now to see what Romanov and the other authorities had to say about the film.

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#93 Post by jmj713 » Mon Jul 21, 2008 4:41 pm

I emailed Criterion to inquire about whether this news had any bearing on a forthcoming re-release by Criterion, and after a few weeks now still no reply :cry:

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#94 Post by swo17 » Mon Jul 21, 2008 4:49 pm

Doesn't Criterion have a pattern of not confirming releases that are on the verge of a formal announcement? Or is this just wishful thinking?

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#95 Post by aox » Mon Jul 21, 2008 4:50 pm

jmj713 wrote:I emailed Criterion to inquire about whether this news had any bearing on a forthcoming re-release by Criterion, and after a few weeks now still no reply
Must be a fluke.. they must have just overlooked your email, because they are always quite prompt when I email them about anything.

Although, I hear sometimes when one emails them about a possible upcoming release and they don't email, that usually means it's a possibility but Criterion doesn't want to confirm or deny.

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#96 Post by Macintosh » Tue Jul 22, 2008 12:10 am

Those in the NYC area note that this film will be playing as part of a double bill with his Mirror, August 2nd at Anthology Film Archives.

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#97 Post by jsteffe » Tue Jul 22, 2008 6:02 pm

Macintosh wrote:Those in the NYC area note that this film will be playing as part of a double bill with his Mirror, August 2nd at Anthology Film Archives.
It's worth noting that they're showing the 205-minute version ("The Passion According to Andrei"), which they're calling the "complete director's cut." I still haven't been able to get an definitive answer about what footage Vadim Yusov has put into the recently completed digital restoration.

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miless
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#98 Post by miless » Tue Jul 22, 2008 7:58 pm

Macintosh wrote:Those in the NYC area note that this film will be playing as part of a double bill with his Mirror, August 2nd at Anthology Film Archives.
Oh man... I really wish i was in NYC. My birthday is Aug. 2nd and I couldn't think of anything on Earth I'd rather do than see that double bill. But alas, I am stuck waiting to eventually see any Tarkovsky film on the big screen.

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#99 Post by kaujot » Tue Jul 22, 2008 8:31 pm

miless wrote:Oh man... I really wish i was in NYC. My birthday is Aug. 2nd and I couldn't think of anything on Earth I'd rather do than see that double bill. But alas, I am stuck waiting to eventually see any Tarkovsky film on the big screen.
I had the opportunity to see Mirror once, and I embarrassingly fell asleep about a fourth of the way through. It was my first attempt at watching Tarkovksy, and I had heard all the stuff about his films being contemplative, paced, etc., and I still let it get to me.

That said, I love the film now. I just wish that I had used the chance I had to see him on the big screen a bit more wisely.

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#100 Post by nostalghic » Wed Jul 23, 2008 10:29 am

kaujot wrote:I had the opportunity to see Mirror once, and I embarrassingly fell asleep about a fourth of the way through. It was my first attempt at watching Tarkovksy, and I had heard all the stuff about his films being contemplative, paced, etc., and I still let it get to me.

That said, I love the film now. I just wish that I had used the chance I had to see him on the big screen a bit more wisely.
Ha ha I love that you freely admit that :).

A re-issue of Andrei Rublev would be fantastic. I've gone through 3 copies, 2 criterions lent out and disappeared and finally my R4 edition in the Tarkovsky box set. I'd look forward to the booklet with the new set, maybe they can find something Ingmar Bergman wrote about it, as I've heard it was one of his favourite pictures.

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