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July 1999, Week 5

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From:
Richard Davies <[log in to unmask]>
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Date:
Thu, 29 Jul 1999 18:26:47 +0100
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Donald Larsson wrote: It was also Kubrick's habit to re-edit his films even
after their
> "debut."  The most notable example is 2001, where he cut quite a bit
> after a rather ill-received advance screening.

He did more than simply cut 2001, and he did so after the film had opened
in NYC. I saw it the day it opened (a showing marred by the presence of
anti-evolutionists who heckled throughout the first half, and a riot on
Broadway that threatened to invade the theater - I think it was the day
after M L King's assassination) and the version was puzzling to say the
least.

The biggest change Kubrick made was to put in the idea that by touching the
obelisk the apes and man underwent another stage of evolution. This was not
in the original where it was the mere presence of the obelisk that made it
happen.

But the most glaring change was the butchering of the shot in which the
camera follows the astronaut as he jogs round the circumference of the
space ship. In the original this shot - a single take - lasted several
minutes, and was I think the most perfect of all those 'following at ground
floor level' shots that were to become almost self-parody in The Shining.

Also the ending - the scenes of the evolved spaceman in the Georgian rooms
- was shortened, I reckoned at the time, by about 10 minutes, and the
chronology was simplified so as to make the movie more deterministic - the
image of the foetus kept returning.

Nevertheless when I saw the revised version a few weeks later I was rather
disappointed. It was more obvious, and had lost much of its strange
atmosphere.

Kubrick was not the only one: David Lean did the same with Lawrence of
Arabia after its London opening, and in the process removed some of the
most glorious shots in all cinema. And Jack Clayton did the oddest things
to The Innocents when it  was shown in the US.

Richard Davies

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