On Sat, 26 Mar 1994, Steve . Kellman wrote:
 
>     I recently viewed a videocassette of THE PLAGUE, a lame, 1992 adaptation,
>     by Luis Puenzo, of Albert Camus's 1947 novel.  It situates Oran in South
>     America and transposes the action from the 1940s to the 1990s.
           [stuff omitted]
>     The film is certainly a curiosity, but what most piques my curiosity is
>     what happened to its distribution.  I have seen no publicity at all for
>     THE PLAGUE and wonder whether it went straight to video without any
>     theatrical exhibition, even at festivals.  The formidable cast includes
>     William Hurt, Robert Duvall, and Raul Julia, and it is extremely odd that
>     such a project should have vanished into video without any attention.
 Does
>     anyone have an explanation?
 
         Yes, that is more or less what happened.  (More or less, I say,
because the film was exhibited at Cannes, but outside of competition.)
         Regarding why, I have no explanation.  The film has its good
moments, although I must confess that, overall, it did less for me than
Puenzo's OLD GRINGO and much less than his THE OFFICIAL STORY.  My guess
as to what happend is that the overall reaction to the film when it got
shown out of competition at Cannes and inside the other circles where it
was shown was such that Puenzo and his producers (it was an Argentine-
US-French coproduction, if I remember correctly) couldn't get theater
showings of it.  Probably the memory of what had happened to OLD GRINGO
didn't help either.  But with OLD GRINGO, of course, there is an
explanation.  (Puenzo wanted to edit the film one way and Columbia
another.  Columbia canceled the premiere that had already been announced
and made Puenzo spend several months re-editing.  The cancelation made
some of the critics smell blood [some praised it, but a lot did not],
and the re-edited version did not hold together as well as it should.
[Columbia wanted a western, which is what it got in the first half;
Puenzo preferred an intellectual film, which is what the second half
remained.  Some critics liked the first half of the film and not the
second; some liked the second and not the first.])
      If there is a similar tale in this case, I would like to hear it.
And I would like to hear the reaction of others who have seen the film
(video).  I have only seen it once and, as I say, found parts of it I
liked but was not favorably impressed overall.  On the other hand, I
recently talked with someone whose taste I generally trust, and this
person was very favorably impressed with the film (and had seen it as
a film, which may make a vital difference, of course).  I need to see
it (the video) again.