Any film which requires a separate director’s cut has already been mutilated by the producers, the studio or the investors (or the stars) and as a result will probably not be that good in any version. The greatest films remain those in which the director had control from start to finish.
The phrase ’Director’s Cut’ is really little more than a marketing ploy these days, similar to ‘Unrated!’, and usually with no real artistic substance behind it.
On the subject of such things, I will say that I greatly prefer the Harvey Weinstein-influenced U.S. theatrical version of Cinema Paradiso over the recently released Director’s Cut, which adds roughly an hour to the film and just about destroys it on an emotional level, in my opinion.
Justin has said it best here. And sadly, that is the case with so many films – long live auteurs!
However, I did think the Director’s Cut of Blade Runner had fairly significant plot changes worth checking out…
@Brandon-I agree with you on Cinema Paradiso. Sometimes I think directors fall in love with everything they shoot and hate to cut anything out.
@Mchil-Directors cut of Blade Runner & Dark City are both better but in Blade Runner it’s not really any longer. I also prefer Ridley Scott’s longer version of Kingdom of Heaven and Clive Barker’s longer cut of Lord of Illusion(puts character development back into the film that the releasing company cut out).
Did anyone else notice that in Requiem for a Dream, Aronofksy “steals” a shot from Dark City, the pier that recedes into nowhere on the ocean. In Dark City it’s the faux entree to Pebble Beach. In Reqiuem it’s the end of Jared Leto’s dream, the point where he can run no further. But I swear, it is the exact same shot.
I think Brandon nailed it. At this point, at least in studio films, multiple cuts of films are the plan from day one, and everyone involved is in on it; the theatrical cut/release is almost just a teaser for DVD sales, international sales, and if adding in material as a ’director’s cut’ beefs up the bottom line, so be it. It’s not like a director’s cut of The Fast And The Furious is going to be like watching a reconstructed Rules Of The Game. I find that it’s very, very rare that the term means anything at all – I think every third DVD getting released seems to be a “director’s cut” of something.
When I have seen deleted scenes on most DVDs, you certainly see why they were deleted, so more of a film that has been previously released is not necessairly better. However, I have no issue with a film’s length, and realize that many times a film has been cut to accomodate a ‘tighter’ film. In some cases, key scenes are cut. This generally happens to films that are already long – over two hours. I believe that director’s cuts of films we like are always worth a look, as they do represent the ‘final’ ideas of the director on his film. We all know that editing films is what makes for great filmmakers, or at least film editors, but often cuts are made that have nothing to do with film quality and everything to do with film budget, production costs, distribution – all those things extraneous to the actual film.
Saying this, I don’t believe director’s cuts are always better, but I like that we can pick and choose. We have to take them on a case by case basis. For example, Apocalypse Now Redux is the version of the film I much prefer to the original theatrical release. It does add a substantial amount of new material, and increases the film lenght substantially, too. However, I believe the new material was obviously in a totally finished form and definitely adds to the overall enjoyment and quality of the film. That’s what I measure when evalutaitng different versions.
The expanded versions of Lord of the Rings is a bit more complicated. The originals are long, by any standard. In some cases, scenes are added that are just throw in, that don’t significantly enhance the plot. However, I did get a much better view of some key character development in the extended versions, that help to eliminate some of my initial confusion. However, for these films, I still prefer the original, because I thought they were tighter, and quite long enough. I would only watch the extended version when I want to see the full development of the one story line that it expands significantly (the king and his estrangement from his son).
“Director’s Cut” is a mixed bag. SOMETIMES it can be better then the released product, but most of the time, it only shows they were right the first time – such as “JFK”, in which the Director’s Cut shows that not only are the CIA and FBI in on the president’s killing, but also Liquor Store owners, Record Store owners, Furniture Store owners, and everybody else in the world – except Lee Harvey Oswald. While “Almost Famous” is BETTER in it’s extended version – or better yet, I prefer the longer version of “Almost Famous” to it’s theatrical version. But right off hand, can’t think of any other director’s version I prefer………
“Das Boot” is an interesting example of how something not only got re-released twice, but actually migrated from TV to the big screen, and only got stronger for it.
The original was a mini-series made for German TV (shockingly enough, considering how well made it is in cinematic terms.)
The first US release was a pretty fast-paced film that gave us enough to really like it, but the ’Director’s Cut’ made it so much more.
It added the necessary depth and breath to the film, and had the added benefit of a director-supervised, completely re-mixed soundtrack, including getting composer Klaus Doldinger to supervise the re-mixing of the original mutlitracks of the score, to be used for both the theatrical re-release and for the DVDs.
Of course, then on DVD, we finally got "The Complete ‘Das Boot’, which was Wolfgang Petersen’s seamless edit of all the episodes in the original, into a whopping 4hr-52min. monster of a film.
In hindsight, we now have both of his visions. The ’Director’s Cut’ is a fine, manageable film version of something longer, while the "Full Length’ is pretty much the original without episode interruptions. I have both, and they both play remarkably well. It just depends how deep you want to go. (Pun intended.)
Within the context of this thread, truly a project that went through permutations, and came out better for it.
When Blood Simple was released on DVD the Coens released it as a “Director’s Cut” which is silly since they produced the film themselves and thus always had final cut. But what’s even more amusing is that the director’s cut is even shorter than the original. They realized there were a couple scenes that went on to long originally and now they knew better and re cut it to be more efficient.
Girl bites pen
Recently I’ve got to thinking about the duration of films, specifically in the light of watching a couple of films on DVD that are only now available as Directors’ Cuts, as far as I know (they happened to be Betty Blue and The Big Blue). I enjoyed both – the former more than the latter – but felt that both were overlong and regretted not being able to see the original theatrical release, although I am always interested to see the director’s true vision for a film. Since this site is devoted to the admiration of auteur directors, I full well appreciate that many people will leap to the defence of the director and revere their true interpretation, but I’m hoping to stimulate an intelligent discussion about this. Personally, I feel that 90 minutes to 2 hours is often the optimum duration for a film in so far as it can be expected to fully sustain your attention for this period. Even in some of my favourite films, I regret that I’m starting to twitch after 2 hours. I think that concision is a skill and that sometimes creative management of a director (by a producer/editor etc) in terms of duration, is essential. I think this is also important in terms of widening accessibility to a film – not deterring audiences by narratives that are overlong and rambling. That said, I’m also interested in the vogue of the last few years of producing many commercial films that last over 2 hours – despite the increasing costs this will incur. Does longer duration confer a sense of the epic to a film that the producers believe will give it a passport to critical acclaim and awards? Is this at the expense of enjoyability for the audience?