Mat Viola's article at Notes of a Film Film Fanatic, detailing the restored scenes, makes a more informed argument than I could. His comments roughly echo my own, comparatively uneducated thoughts on the matter.
Restoring Leone's films has been a hit or miss proposition. Undoubtedly the initial theatrical cuts of Once Upon a Time in the West, Duck You Sucker! and the 144 minute version of America are deficient. The 144 minute West pointlessly deletes key scenes (the whole trading post sequence, Cheyenne's death), making the film incomprehensible. Sucker!'s 138 minute version (I haven't seen the even shorter 121 minute) is a rushed, unfocused mess. I've never seen the shorter America but by all accounts it's an atrocity.
Apparently under the same principle that gave us Apocalypse Now: Redux and various Star Wars revisions, some have decided ALL of Leone's movies deserve tweaking. John Kirk's 2003 "restoration" of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly met with mixed reactions: fans still debate the necessity of the added scenes, and especially the soundtrack remix. And yet it's this version that's most readily available on DVD and Blu-Ray. A marginally longer version of West, which does little more than augment a few existing scenes, has also cropped up recently.
My big objection (concededly without seeing the whole cut) is its superfluity. Leone's films are elipitical and the lack of exculpatory detail rarely hurts them. Before the new cut of Good, who ever cared how Angel Eyes got to the Union prison camp? How many people watch West wishing Leone had filmed the shootout between Cheyenne and Morton? Indeed, their absence adds to the films' mythic atmosphere more than literal explanation could. Papering over minor plotholes that never bothered 99% of viewers isn't justification for a "restoration." Certainly, I'd argue leaving some things to the viewer's imagination isn't a bad thing.
The scene with Louise Fletcher as a cemetery caretaker can be viewed here. Judge for yourself, but I find it a bald piece of exposition that tells us nothing of import. Noodles' poetic, wordless visit to the gang's crypt becomes a talky dialogue that benefits no one except Louise Fletcher fans. Not to mention it raises other issues: explaining the crypt's use of Cockeye's song, a nice touch in the shorter scene, makes it ridiculously unlikely.
In any case, my biggest problem with America - as enumerated in my review - isn't any plot holes, real or imagined. Rather, the deficiency and awkard pacing of the 1968 scenes. It's possible the added bits flesh them out, making them more functional. Or they could could just add to the tedium. Certainly I have no great desire to see a long bit with Elizabeth McGovern performing Antony and Cleopatra.
One final point is that, as the article above indicates, Leone was more than happy with the existing cut. True, he'd originally planned for a six-hour super epic, and only reluctantly trimmed it to 229 minutes. Well, what director wants their work edited? What matters is whether they're satisfied with the finished version. Given Leone's acceptance of the older cut as "my version," this marks the new America as a curio rather than a director's cut.
But hey, maybe I'm wrong. For those who like every conceivable detail explained, I'm sure there will be a future version of America complete with epilogue explaining the garbage truck, and a caption on whether or not the film's a dream. No need to leave anything ambiguous, am I right?
No comments:
Post a Comment