Last month I was all about that most exciting and entertaining of films:

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

As promised in the above post I attended the screening at the Belcourt Theatre.  I was there, sitting in one of the slightly collapsed, saggy yet homey, misshapen cushioned seats of Nashville’s Best Cinema, ready to watch one of my favourite movies, when Bam!  The film started and I realised it was something I had never seen – an ‘extended’ version of the pic that fundamentally altered the experience of the film for me – and has led to some thinking on the nature of filmic storytelling vis-a-vis how a simple editing trick can make your film more interesting, more surreal, more engaging and interactive to the audience.

Ok, here’s the thing:  the version of ‘The Good, The Bad and the Ugly’ that I grew up on (as a kid at the UC Theatre and the UK DVD Release), that I’ve seen over a dozen times, and that I was raving about in the post, is 161 minutes long.  The version the Belcourt showed was a ‘restored’ 175 minute version.  So, was I raised on a butchered, compromised version of the film that director Sergio Leone hated?  Well, I don’t know if he hated the shorter version – but the shorter version, (and of course I realise that I have a fondness for it based out of primary experience but am trying real hard to take that into account), is a far more interesting, and interactive picture.  Here’s why:

When we compare the two versions of GBU, it’s clear that when faced when the need to cut down the pic from 175 to 161 minutes, (to satisfy who?  Nervous US distributors?  Jeez hadn’t ‘Fist Full of Dollars’ and ‘For a Few Dollars More’ already made a bundle for everyone? Cut Leone some slack why don’t you), rather than make individual scenes shorter*, Leone and his editors cut out the linking material between scenes.

So, in the ‘original’, shorter version for instance, The Ugly and the Good are in a desert wasteland – the Good is about to die – he hears the Name on the Grave aka the Location of the Gold – the Ugly realises the Good must live – and so takes him in the next scene to Bam! his brother’s monastery for care.  His brother’s monastery? Wait, the Bad has a brother, in fact is the head of a monastery, and it’s somehow adjacent to the desert killing fields where the Good/Blondie almost died?  Well, that’s a lucky coincidence.  For you see, in this version of the film, all scenes where the protagonists have to look at maps or get directions, (in short, all scenes that locate the viewer of the pic in geographical space), are eliminated.

This makes for a far more abstract, interesting, interactive and surreal picture.

This shorter version is swathed in dream logic.  Things just happen.  As referenced above, coincidence abounds and geographical space is folded in on itself.  All things are next to all other things and the protagonists are able to gather around them helpmates, other gunslingers, hired hands without mention.  Gone are the multiple scenes of recruitment where we find out where Tuco, for instance, gets the ‘Your Spurs’ gang who subsequently lose their life at The Good’s hand.  In the shorter version of the film these Guys, (poor noisy spurs b****ards), just appear and then DIE.  In the long-form version we see them hired, get to know a little bit of their backstory, etc.

The shorter version is better.  By cutting out this linking material the film stumbles upon a simple technique that makes pics more interesting by mimicking how we experience our own lives – for don’t we edit out most linking material?  Who stores in their mind, (or recalls readily), the time spent commuting, or looking at a map, or finding a listing of a restaurant on Google – we remember the destinations themselves – rather then then tedious bits of business that got us there.

Films can, and often should be, the same way.  This is of course a lesson that Quentin Tarantino knows well.  He’s often brought up ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly’ in interviews and we can see why.  Look at ‘Inglourious Basterds’ – how much linking material is there in that pic?  Is there any? Isn’t it just the raw meat of the scenes themselves?, (and they’re only a dozen of them after all!).  No need for all that frew-fraw hidey ho – just get to right what matters.**

This technique is also useful if you don’t have the pic you thought you did.  Look at ‘Apocalypse Now’.  Comparing the original 1979 Theatrical Release to the 2001 ‘Apocalypse Now Redux’ we see something similar to GBU.  But instead of cutting out the linking and explanatory scenes for time in the 1979 version, it looks like editor Walter Murch and director Francis Ford Coppola realised they didn’t have the picture – the movie that Coppola saw in his mind wasn’t there in the shot footage.  So, what to do?

Their solution was brilliant – cut out as much as possible all the linking material – just leave the set-pieces in the pic, (Wagner Attack on the Village, Puppy Shooting etc.), with some narration to paper over the cracks.  This helps make ‘Apocalypse Now’ a powerful, true-to-life hallucinogenic experience – it’s as if we’re there – tagging along on the PBR – a newbie with nobody helping us – thrown into the deep-end, much like life often is.

As for ‘Apocalypse Now Redux’?  It’s a far more conventional picture – things are explained – we’re in a much more linear space, (geography and temporal markers are introduced – much like the longer version of GBU); the pic is not as interesting – it’s oddly, more of a mainstreamy, ‘Patton-style’ war picture.  By providing explanations and backstories, (Mr. Clean is a virgin etc.), the surrealism of the film is leeched out – we no longer have to provide our own explanations, work with, interact with the movie – it’s all laid out for us.

Of course Stanley Kubrick is another one who knew there was no need to tell us everything – he was famous for dispensing with the unnecessary, (who needs the opening interviews in 2001?) .  Brian Aldiss, (the science fiction writer who wrote ‘Super-Toys Last All Summer Long’ - an inspiration for A.I.), dined out on this bit of Kubrickania: that Kubrick had said on several occasions that what he was looking for in a treatment or script was “6 non-submersible units”.  It makes a lot of sense.  A half-dozen great scenes – that’s what you need.  As Tarantino knows, the audience will do the rest – the interpretation – for you.

For what are Quentin’s movies, after all, but the discussion of the movie you’ve just watched?  He makes movies that are composed of the remembered, talked about scenes from the movie you’ve just seen.  He knows that we don’t need all those bits of business – all that in-betweeny stuff – let the audience figure it out for themselves – on the screen less is more.

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* With some minor exceptions:  the ‘Boot of Water’ in the Desert Scene for example.

** Of course one can overdo it: after the Cannes premiere of ‘Inglourious Basterds’ Tarantino inserted a scene in which we see the Basterds discussing the ‘Cellar Rendezvous’ right before the rendezvous takes place – one can understand that, with this prelude missing, the audience might have a hard time getting up to speed with the nature of the Cellar scene, both it’s narrative place in the pic and the nature of its internal dynamics.