Yesterday’s viewing, today!
9.00 am PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID — this new restoration looked and sounded splendid. It’s essentially the Paul Seydor cut as far as I can see — a version some have a few issues with..
This time round I was keeping in mind what’s written in If They Move… Kill ‘Em! about Peckinpah getting cold feet and inventing the scene of Paco (Emilio Fernandez) getting tortured and killed to motivate, in the most conventional way, Billy’s decision not to leave for Mexico. Rudy Wurlitzer’s script had eschewed such melodramatics and morality. The addition of this scene creates narrative nonsense — Poe, one of the men on Billy’s trail, has just learned that Billy is in Old Fort Sumner. Then the Paco scene shows that he ISN’T in Fort Sumner, and shows him deciding to go there. Was Poe’s informant psychic?
In a world of unlimited versions of PGABTK one could envision a Rudy Wurlitzer Cut, where the Paco scene is harmlessly dropped. It would be, I think, just as valid as Seidor’s improvements — which is to say, it might make the film better in some respects, but in other respects it wouldn’t be Peckinpah’s total vision.
Today I’ll be seeing editor/director Roger Spottiswoode talk about his career, including this film. Maybe I can get his thoughts on the restoration. As I say, it’s visually and aurally stunning, and the film definitely communicates with the force Peckinpah intended.
We got out of the Peckinpah and joined the queue to go back into the same cinema for DESTRY RIDES AGAIN — a line circling the block, something none of us had ever seen in Bologna. And of course, that was a fun time. I wondered how the two flavours of western might clash, but it was fine, just fine. DRA is George Marshall’s only great feature, it seems. I can’t quite work out why he couldn’t repeat the magic elsewhere, the film certainly seems imbued with a distinctive personality (including the influence of his days with Laurel & Hardy).
Then I saw Marco Bellocchio talk, along with two episodes of French cinema programme L’Image Originalle, one on MB the other on David Lynch. The show looks at filmmakers’ oeuvres through the lens of their first features, so FISTS IN THE POCKET and ERASERHEAD. A really neat idea. I just watched FITP before coming out here, so I was nicely primed. Bellocchio is remarkable, and he seems to be enjoying his late-career success.
He was on hand again to introduce 1972’s SBATTI IL MOSTRO IN PRIMA PAGINA (SLAP THE MONSTER ON PAGE ONE), a smart, tough, wickedly funny newspaper drama with typically excellent work from Gian Maria Volonte’ and Laura Betti. But then I skipped out of the Bellocchio interview, because I’d seen him twice at this point and the translations make everything a bit long. I figured some time in the open air and a leisurely meal would set me up nicely to watch ORDET.
I’d made a ridiculous schoolboy error, though, because this wasn’t ORDET, or rather it was Gustav Molander’s ORDET, not CT Dreyer’s. And it seemed perfectly fine, but as with PENSION MIMOSAS the day before, I found I couldn’t get into it.
So I ducked out and caught some of the carbon arc projections in the Piazzetta. I’ve been starved of the earlies this trip, so this was just what I needed — acrobatics, actualities, and the familiar but always surprising and welcome sight of boulevardier Dranem defecating in a phone booth. All on a balmy night in Bolognia with live music. Bliss.
shadowplay 