The Berlin International Film Festival is set to close on February the 18th with a digitally restored version of Sam Peckinpah‘s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.
It’s not just any Special Edition or Director’s Cut though, it’s made a bit more special since the Director is dead. The work was carried out using his old notes and colleagues of the man himself. As close to a Director’s Cut as we’ll ever see then.
The story from ABC News took my attention to the official site where a short clip can be seen called “Deconstructing Pat & Billy” where you can hear some of the tales of the original cut.
This version sounds really exciting, but it brings up an interesting debate. You have a Director trying to create his vision of a movie, hopefully in sync with the Writer and Editor otherwise they are trying to make their own movie too. Then you get the Studio’s interfering, who tend not to know that much about movies, just money making…and even then it more often than not they still have no idea about audiences.
That’s usually where the Directors Cut wades in, after the first movie has been out for a while and the Studio reckon there’s more money to be made by letting that ranting creative in the back have a go. So he does, and there you have your new cut, as was originally intended…or was it?
In this situation the Director wasn’t even alive, so we’re being told that it was made by people who knew what he wanted to do originally, and from his old notes…which apparently he did keep. Is that still his vision of the movie?
Regardless of all of that, I’ll still want to see it…but who’s cashing in?
