According to the co-scriptwriter Arkady Strugatsky, it’s in two parts because originally Tarkovsky shot the complete picture, then the film lab ruined almost all of the footage, and to get funding to re-shoot he had to submit to the authorities the idea that the film would be in two parts. Therefore he was able to get an extension to re-shoot the material. See
http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/TheTopics/Stalker/strugatsky.html
and spend a week or two exploring around nostalghia.com for one of the best Tarkovsky sites on the ’net.
a quote -
Swedish director Vilgot Sjöman: What was the film?! A political allegory?
Tarkovsky was silent.
Sjöman: Science fiction?
He smiled. “Science fiction, but without the science!”
ah, thank you. i love the fact that its actually an interesting story, as opposed to the simple question of length. cheers for the links, i shall check them out this afternoon.
Two-part films were the bigger budget ones, in theory. As Prudence’s post says, the only way he could reshoot it once the lab had ruined the first version, was to resubmit it as a two part film, with the idea that the money for ‘part two’ would be used to reshoot the entire film, which is what happened. Tarkovsky’s other two-part films were Andrei Rublev and Solaris. Strangely, two part films were shown without intermissions (according to a Russian colleague of mine).
adam
something that has always been the source of trivial internal questioning has been as to what the reason is for the split halfway through stalker, seperating it into “part 1” and part 2".
does anyone know why this is?
im hoping its not something as literal as to give the opportunity to the audience to have a break, i mean its not particularly long, and usually an interval would be relatively subtle (see 2001). i figured maybe tarkovsky was making some kind of artistic statement or point with it, alas please correct me if im wrong.