If you can’t accept it has got some serious faults but it also has good things about it also then I don’t know really.
Ronster, it appears you are mistaking your own subjective opinions for cold hard fact, an approach that has no place in discourse about film (unless it’s to settle whether Greedo or Han shot first, of course). Lots of people, myself included, thoroughly enjoy Friedkin’s original cut, despite - or even because of - the “faults” that you describe. I can’t help but think that your hostility towards some of Friedkin’s artistic decisions was exacerbated by your reading so much about the film before seeing it and, in effect, deciding what the film would or should be before you even saw it. Leave the film alone for a week and then try to come back to it with zero expectations, and see what you think of Friedkin’s “mistakes” then. It’s a difficult (though I wouldn’t say incoherent) film, and it’s supposed to be. The European cutdown being supposedly easier to follow (and shorter) does not necessarily make it a better film.
Nonetheless, I thoroughly support any endeavour to preserve or re-create the cutdown, or do an “integral” combo of both cuts, and would happily do the former myself if I had access to the Finnish VHS I mentioned earlier to get the original audio.
I am not trying to point out mistakes. Whenever I get interested and invested in a film I will read up about it before seeing it. Not to spoil it mind.
I wanted to give you an honest opinion about the film. I am not being hostile towards it. I do admire it in a lot of ways. But please realize I am not wanting to change the film really in any drastic way. Since spending quite a few years here now looking at films and analyzing all sorts of things. I am a great believer in small things can really make a massive difference when it comes to film. The smallest thing can completely change something whilst it’s not really that different the whole meaning might change for instance.
Basically I would like to experience the international cut (probably agree it’s worse than Friedkin’s?)
But take in to account what is good about it and as you say intergrate that in to the existing cut.
I stopped the film at one point whilst I was watching it because I wondered where the trees came from that engulfed the truck on the bridge. I stopped a rewound it to see if I had missed something.~(This was the only point I stopped it because I thought I had missed something) I had not. When looking at the international cut report I noticed the bridge half collapses and… Then the trees cave in on the side of the bank on the truck. Also when the truck leaves the bridge it drives clearly away from the bridge in the international cut. as soon as the wheel lifts over the last log we cut away.
It was things like that, that felt choppy as the pace of the film is not fast but all of a sudden there is a sudden abrupt cuts and it feels like stuff is missing. And when you look at the report you can clearly see that there are missing shots there.
I am being honest and really not slagging the film off at all. I don’t think the film was badly made as in the cinematography or the sound mixing.
Subtitles were not good. I think that is a fair comment and if you compare it to the script entry they only translate what is translated in the script. I doubt the Spanish version subtitles or French version subtitles skip over loads of English dialogue?
The only visual edit I would advocate is the telescopic sight overlay. If you check the censorship report about this point in the film of the German version there is 2 different shots of the truck. One of those shots was meant to have a telescopic sight superimposed over it (Probably the one in the German version)… Before the wheel get’s blown out. So it’s a simple overlay. Job done in my mind. It’s clearly stated in the script. The wheel is blown out by a terrorist with a rifle that has a telescopic sight.
Blue Ray
I had a go.