Unfinished Films by Famous Directors

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beamish14
Joined: Fri May 18, 2018 3:07 pm

Re: Unfinished Films by Famous Directors

#101 Post by beamish14 » Fri Apr 17, 2020 12:27 pm

Thornycroft wrote:
Fri Apr 17, 2020 5:52 am
beamish14 wrote:
Thu Apr 16, 2020 12:53 pm
Not from a famous director, but novelist/famed screenwriter Bruce Wagner's first produced work was a teen comedy called Young Lust
that Paramount either elected to never release or possibly never actually completed. This is the only article I could find that lays out some information regarding it.

I'm fascinated by "lost" films produced by studios like this and Broken English (1981).
There's a New Zealand film called Prisoners (1982) that was bought for distribution by Paramount and then buried. It starred Tatum O'Neal, Colin Friels, and David Hemmings (who co-produced), along with plenty of local talent (like the omnipresent Bruno Lawrence). I've never found any information on whether post-production was ever finished, though a press kit supposedly exists, and I know someone who owns some original publicity stills. There's a persistent rumour that Ryan O'Neal disliked the finished product so much that he bought the rights in order to prevent its release, but I can't confirm that either way.

That's very interesting. I've heard about Prisoners a bit-I think there was discussion of it on the IMDB boards, and some people
insisted that it got some festival screenings or maybe even a test release at one or two theaters. Tatum had recently made the Circle of Two
with Richard Burton and Jules Dassin, which gained some notoriety.

Fox picked up a French film directed by Édouard Luntz called Hung Up (Le Grabuge) in 1973, but I'm unsure it was distributed anywhere. Perhaps we should eventually spin this off into a thread about films that studios refused to release!

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whaleallright
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2005 12:56 am

Re:

#102 Post by whaleallright » Sat Apr 25, 2020 8:18 am

Arcadean wrote:
Wed May 18, 2005 10:55 pm
Stalin did not like what he was seeing when he watched both Ivan the Terrible movies and shut them down. He saw that Ivan's story was an allegory to Stalin himself. Ivan the Terrible Part 2 was then shelved until both Stalin and Eisenstein died then it was released I believe. Eisenstein was shooting part 3 when Stalin halted the trilogy so thats why there is some footage of it that exists.
To respond to an ancient post: this isn't quite right. Stalin was enthusiastic about the first Ivan—I believe he commended Eisenstein for showing how Ivan "needed" to be cruel—and it got a successful release in the Soviet Union, Eisenstein was given awards, etc. It was the second film that got Eisenstein in trouble; supposedly Stalin was disturbed by the way Ivan's cruelty was depicted as stemming from childhood trauma and by the extent to which he was portrayed as crazed and paranoid (among other things). The film went into limbo, and production on part 3 was stalled (that's the one that can truly be said to be "unfinished"). As Arcadean notes, Eisenstein died before he could be properly rehabilitated or the film's production resumed. The second part wasn't released until the period of "de-Stalinizaton" in the late '50s.

Speaking of Eisenstein, there's also his 1930s project Bezhin Meadow, on which production was shut down. Stills exist (and a reconstruction is on Criterion's Eisenstein set IIRC) but the footage is presumed destroyed.

Of course, the Soviet period—and the Stalin era in particular—is littered with unfinished, halted, suppressed, etc. films by major and minor directors alike. Not that having a film cancelled was the worst thing that could happen to a Soviet artist in that era.

Stefan Andersson
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2007 1:02 am

Re: Unfinished Films by Famous Directors

#103 Post by Stefan Andersson » Tue Nov 10, 2020 8:28 am

Upcoming book: Shadow Cinema The Historical and Production Contexts of Unmade Films
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/shadow-ci ... 501351594/
Deals with projects connected to Kirk Douglas, David O. Selznick, Ritwik Ghatak, Godard, Ken Russell (at BBC), Fuller (Tigrero), Clouzot (L´Enfer), Michael Klinger and more.


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