Botched!: Cruising & Thief and the Cobbler

[tryavna]

I am in agreement with Glenn Erickson (DVD Savant) in his view that Sam Peckinpah's, Major Dundee was a botched masterpiece. Peckinpah still had a lot to learn in 1964 and the scope of this highly ambitious story by Harry Julian Fink is about as challenging as anything Peckinpah ever attempted in his career. The spectre of John Ford hangs over the film, but the discipline of Ford is sorely missing. The expanded 2005 version with a new, more appropriate, but uninspiring score by Christopher Caliendo allows the seriousness and energy of the visuals, performances and set-pieces to be revealed, where Daniele Amfitheatrof's melodramatic and overused original score simply destroyed much of the film's power. All of the additional scenes add more weight and continuity (narrative and emotional) to the story, though the scenes with Senta Berger still don't sit too well, I feel. Still far from greatness, but a fascinating and exilirating American Civil War era film.

I agree with your general appraisal of Major Dundee. (BTW, it's interesting that you pair this movie with Huston's Moby-Dick, since there are many obvious parallels between Dundee and Melville's novel.) However, I have to say that, when I've returned to Dundee after my initial viewing of the DVD, I generally watch it with the original score, not the new Caliendo score. For two reasons: (1) I find that the soundtrack of Dundee is so weak throughout that Caliendo's music (recorded in 5.1) overpowers everything else when it's playing and reveals the inherent weaknesses when it's not. (2) I find that Amfitheatrof's score is not as bad as most critics (including Savant) would have us believe. Yes, there's simply too much music throughout (though I suspect that Amfitheatrof was asked to cover up the weaknesses of the soundtrack), and the stupid electronic "Indian" cue is annoying and endlessly repeated. But it's mono, which matches the rest of the soundtrack, and Amfitheatrof was a decent -- if not particularly distinguished -- second-tier film composer who had enough experience to compose music that would capture the conventions of a genre picture. (The problem, of course, is that Dundee isn't a conventional Western, so the jauntiness of certain portions of Amfitheatrof's score works against the character of Dundee as Peckinpah portrays him. Oddly enough, however, the mediocrity of the love theme matches the mediocrity of Peckinpah's handling of the Senta Berger character.)

Anyway, I recently dug out Dundee after my viewing of Warner's new DVD of The Searchers, and although I didn't watch the whole movie this time, I think that they make an interesting double bill. Not to mention that both DVDs exhibit horrible "over-corrected" day-for-night. (Why do DVD producers do that?!)

EDIT: I don't mean to say that I think Amfitheatrof's score is great, by the way. I think that both his and Caliendo's scores are equally bombastic and/or inappropriate in their own ways. It's just that I find the original 1960s score to be somehow more "authentic" -- even though I realize that Peckinpah himself hated and denounced it.

[Gordon]

Yeah, I didn't think about the parallels between Major Dundee and Moby-Dick until afterwards. There are quite a few American films that use the Melville's central theme - Track of the Cat and The Bedford Incident come to mind. The theme works best when dealing with animals or elemental forces, though and in Major Dundee, it doesn't quite have the same impact.

That electronic motif in Amfitheatrof's score for the Indians, their objects or presence is quite ingenious, as it keeps the Apache in the picture, but it is overused and perhaps a Native American instrument should have been used instead of electronica. The main stength of the Caliendo score, is the lack of it, ie. its absence during dialogue scenes. But I agree that the digitally-recorded and mixed 5.1 score is way too much for the mono dialogue and effects track.

The overly dark day-for-night scenes on the DVD are far more appealing than the horrible shots on the old VHS, that's for sure. Dawn or dusk-for-night yields better results than daylight-for-night (fewer long shadows) but it is always a tricky process. The opticals in the film are also pretty rough.

Like the three versions of Pat Garrett, you can see a very good or even great film in your mind's eye. The 2005 version by Paul Seydor, overall, is my favourite, though it deletes too many memorable shots (literally, in the case of the coin blasts) and earthy dialogue, as well as R.G. Armstrong's, "I'll take you for a walk through hell on a spider web."

[Lino]

Cruising - Al Pacino Gets Bitch-Slapped By Black Cop in Jock. Oh, yeah. Let me see you resist clicking this one!

Seriously, now. I still haven't seen this movie but that scene is so fucked-up hilarious it's almost surreal! This is what you get for watching out of context scenes.

[colinr0380]

The rest of the film is just as mad but that's the coup de grace! I was completely confused when I first saw it but the essay Friedkin Out helped me appreciate it more!

It was probably the Bag Murders, where the victims were patrons of New York's leather bars, that inspired Friedkin to transpose Walker's story, originally set in the mainstream gay community, to that milieu, while Jurgensen's story inspired the characters of DeSimone and Desher (Joe Spinnell and Mike Starr), two cops in a patrol car who are shaking down gay hustlers for money and sexual favors in the film. (Jurgensen also claims to have witnessed an interrogation like the one conducted by a naked black cop wearing a cowboy hat and boots – apparently a form of psychological intimidation – which is by far the most bizarre scene in the film.)

EDIT: sorry inri222 - didn't realise you'd already linked to it!

[Roger_Thornhill]

I don't think anyone has mentioned one of the great, maligned masterpieces that, along with Ambersons, is one of the Holy Grails of lost cinema. That is, of course, von Stroheim's Greed. I saw I believe a 90 minute 16mm print at the Univ of Illinois and was amazed by every second of this butchered masterpiece. It's such an old film that I'm sure by now even if the original six hour (I think it was 6 hours - may have been 4) print is ever recovered it'll be unwatchable because of the march of time.

I wonder, is there a decent DVD release in any region of Greed? I would surely buy it if there was.

[Via_Chicago]

From my blog:

In a history that now spans over a century, cinema has seen its fair share of unfairly butchered films. These wild cutting practices were not only common, but some are downright notorious (Erich Von Stroheim's Greed and Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons are two of the most infamous in Hollywood history). Such butchering though, was not the exclusive domain of early Hollywood cinema. As recently as 1995, Richard Williams' as yet unfinished animated gem The Thief and the Cobbler, was butchered not once, but twice, by two different studios.

Like any discussion of a lost, butchered, or unfinished work of art, The Thief and the Cobbler must first be put into its proper creative context. Begun in 1964 under the working title Nasruddin (the film was to be based on the "wise fool" hero of its title), Williams wanted to craft an animated epic, a hand drawn masterpiece that would be enjoyed for generations. While the Nasruddin concept was dropped in 1972, all of the animation not featuring Nasruddin himself, and all of Vincent Price's voicework for the character that became ZigZag, was retained. Williams promised that the new film would be "the first animated film with a real plot that locks together like a detective story at the end."

In 1986, Williams received the backing and financing of producer Jake Eberts, and after the success of Who Framed Roger Rabit?, The Thief and the Cobbler was picked up for distribution by Warner Brothers studio. However, when Williams still had not completed the film by Warners' 1991 deadline (Williams apparently found storyboards creatively constricting, among other things) and with Disney's Aladdin project (which borrowed imagery from Thief) a looming threat, the investors asked Williams to fill in the remaining fifteen minutes of the film with storyboards and show them a rough cut. Unimpressed, they backed out and the Completion Bond Company took over control of the project.

At this point, the project completely collapsed. A television animator, Fred Calvert, was hired to finish the film. He leased out the new work to animators in Korea. The results were nothing short of disastrous as the film quickly evolved into something very far from Williams' original vision. This version of the picture, re-titled The Princess and the Cobbler, was released internationally, but in America, the film was re-cut even further by Disney subsiduary Miramax, who added new voices for previously mute characters and created new songs. This version, titled Arabian Knight, was an even greater distortion of Williams' project than the Calvert version.

All that remains for American audiences is the Miramax cut, available on DVD, and Williams' bootleg version, the very same cut that he showed to the Warners investors. For years, this bootleg version had circulated in animation circles, and was revered as something of a lost masterpiece. Now this bootleg is available to anyone willing to watch. Broken up into seventeen parts on Youtube, the bootleg version is, barring some kind of miracle, the closest thing we'll ever have to Williams' original vision. It's unfortunate that this animated masterpiece may never be finished, let alone released in this form on DVD.

What remains is nevertheless a beautiful, exotic, rapturous animated masterwork. Williams and his team of animators crafted a splendidly fluid kind of animation. That such remarkably complex frames could be pieced together without the aid of CGI and look so good is a tribute to the care with which Williams constructed his picture. Two particular sequences in the film stand out. In one, the cobbler chases the thief across the Escher-like tableau of the Golden City palace, encountering optical illusions and pitfalls along the way. In another, the film's climactic battle, Williams constructed a Rube Goldberg series of destruction that will leave you speechless.

In recent years, it has been rumored that Disney was planning on resurrecting this butchered masterpiece, but the battle for control of the company put these plans on hold indefinitely. Now seventy-three years old, we can only hope that some day Richard Williams is given the chance to complete his life's work, so unfairly snatched from him nearly fifteen years ago. It's easy to forget that the film business, particularly in the United States, is exactly that. A business. Williams was but one of many of its victims in an ongoing struggle between art and commerce.[/url]

[Tom Peeping]

In an interview on the French site dvdrama, Friedkin confirms he is presently working on a new cut of Cruising that will include the 40 minutes that were cut at the release of the film back in 1980.
+ more infos: the film will be shown this year in Cannes 2007 (in the Cannes Classics Selection). The DVD will be released mid-2007 and will include Friedkin's commentary, a Laurent Bouzereau's documentary & more.

Quote:

Quels sont vos projets ?
Je vais faire une nouvelle version de Cruising, un nouveau montage qui sortira en DVD dans une copie neuve remastérisée et accompagnée de nombreux bonus.

Vous allez faire comme avec L'Exorciste et Le Sang du châtiment ?
Non, pas exactement. Là, il ne s'agit pas de mettre quelques rajouts ou de changer le montage d'un film. Il s'agit surtout de 40 minutes de film coupées par la censure.

Vous voulez remettre la scène du fist fucking ?
Il y en aura une partie dans cette nouvelle version, oui, mais pas autant que ce que j'ai filmé et que ce que j'ai montré aux censeurs. (rires) Il ne faut pas oublier que cette scène était réelle, tournée sans aucun trucage, les gens que j'ai filmés dans cette séquence font vraiment ça pour de bon… Mais surtout, cette scène manquait dans le film. Donc, ce sera une version encore plus graphique, encore plus énervée. Je n'avais pas revu le film depuis 25 ans et je l'ai trouvé toujours très puissant. Donc, je finis cette nouvelle version de Cruising et je finis également un documentaire sur la restauration d'une peinture dans un musée de Los Angeles, ça fait deux ans que je travaille dessus.

[Lino]

In an interview on the French site dvdrama, Friedkin confirms he is presently working on a new cut of Cruising that will include the 40 minutes that were cut at the release of the film back in 1980.
+ more infos: the film will be shown this year in Cannes 2007 (in the Cannes Classics Selection). The DVD will be released mid-2007 and will include Friedkin's commentary, a Laurent Bouzereau's documentary & more.

Don't you just hate it when the internet starts getting this inconsistent with information? This just in:

"It split the gay community," director Billy Friedkin recalls his 1980 Al Pacino starrer, "Cruising. " It's coming out as a DVD from Warner Home Video this Fall with a premiere in Cannes. Friedkin has remastered it digitally as well as upgraded the sound. But there are no changes in the film itself, he says.

Daily Variety's review by James Harwood noted, "If this is an R, then the only X left is actual hardcore." Friedkin explains, "I was making a statement between the leather-vise world and those in the then-discreet gay community, which had not come out of the closet."

In "Cruising, " Al Pacino plays the young cop sent underground by police chief Paul Sorvino to search for a sadistic killer. Jerry Weintraub produced the film, and it is currently being DVD-augmented with behind-the-scenes background info by Laurent Bouzereau who has edited 150 DVDs, including Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" and "Jaws. "

Friedkin says he was "amazed" to learn that "Cruising" was the most-requested DVD reissue. When I read him critical comments on the rating-achievement of his film, he reminded, "It also took me 50 days of editing to get an R rating for 'The Exorcist'. " Yes, the "Cruising" DVD rating will be R.

[Barmy]

There's no French term for "fist fucking"?

[flyonthewall2983]

This just in:

It's coming out as a DVD from Warner Home Video this Fall

Wasn't the film released by United Artists?

[David Ehrenstein]

Michel Foucault was a big fan of fist-fucking. He said it was "a new sexual act," and indulged in it with great enthusasim at a San Francisco sex club called "The Slot" -- frequented by both Randy Shilts and Gaetan Dugas (aka "Patient Zero")

"They are all equal now"

[Nothing]

Like the three versions of Pat Garrett, you can see a very good or even great film in your mind's eye. The 2005 version by Paul Seydor, overall, is my favourite, though it deletes too many memorable shots (literally, in the case of the coin blasts) and earthy dialogue, as well as R.G. Armstrong's, "I'll take you for a walk through hell on a spider web."

Nooooooo.... The Seydor cut is an abomination. The Director's Cut is a great film as it stands.

[flyonthewall2983]

Here's my two cents on the "old" Cruising

Brilliant. I haven't seen it (nor do I want to, the image of Pacino as a leather bottom would probably disturb me as much as it would some people if John Wayne played the role), but reading that gave me a good idea of what kind of waves it made at the time in the LGBT community.

Not mentioned though, was that it seems (like so many movies, unfortunately) to also portray S&M as a bloodsport which is personally offensive to me.

[inri222]

Cruising Hits Cannes

The Devil May Care

[emcflat]

As long as this thread keeps resurrecting itself with regards to Cruising, I would just like to clarify that I don't (nor did I ever really) consider it to be a "masterpiece," botched or not. Chalk this up to unthoughtful titling on my part.

Maybe we could retitle: "Botched! Cruising, Thief & the Cobbler" and save what's left of my credibility.

[Nothing]

Erm, David E, you can't go blaming Friedkin for the actions of a crazy person. Surpring to see that old cause-and-effect fallacy being pedalled around here.

Still haven't seen Crusing, but excited by the prospect of the DVD. Saddened to hear about the loss of the original cut, though.

[David Ehrenstein]

Erm, David E, you can't go blaming Friedkin for the actions of a crazy person. Surpring to see that old cause-and-effect fallacy being pedalled around here.

So what happend in the film's immediate wake should NEVER be mentioned for fear of upsetting the poor put-upon auteur.

Oh Prunellla!

Still haven't seen Cruising, but excited by the prospect of the DVD. Saddened to hear about the loss of the original cut, though

Cry Me a River! (The Joe Cocker version.)

[Mr Sausage]

Erm, David E, you can't go blaming Friedkin for the actions of a crazy person. Surpring to see that old cause-and-effect fallacy being pedalled around here.

So what happend in the film's immediate wake should NEVER be mentioned for fear of upsetting the poor put-upon auteur.

That's not what he said at all. He clearly said one should not blame the director, which is quite different from merely mentioning something. And your condescending attitude is not at all helped by your inability to read properly.

[David Ehrenstein]

I can read quite well, thank you very much.

Have you read my article? Somehow I doubt it.

[Mr Sausage]

I can read quite well, thank you very much.

No doubt you can, which makes it all the worse when you refuse to do so.

Have you read my article?b Somehow I doubt it.

Yes, I have, and I thought it was good. However, your article and whether or not I have read it is entirely irrelevant to my point, which concerned your summation of someone else's argument, not with your opinion of the film.

[David Ehrenstein]

We have entered Fugue State.

[Nothing]

Hmm, interesting that the gay contingent here seem to hate the movie. Friedkin was fairly on form at the time, even Deal of the Century is under-rated.

Like I say, I'm waiting for the DVD...

[Matt]

Hmm, interesting that the gay contingent here seem to hate the movie.

Er... two people do not a contingent make.