THX 1138 "preservations" + the 'THX 1138 Italian Cut' project (Released) — Page 86

msycamore said:

AntcuFaalb said:

My knowledge of this film isn't great. What evidence do we have of the 81min cut being released in the US besides word-of-mouth?

It's definitely not a word-of-mouth thing, it is well known that WB took the film and cut 4-5 minutes. The issues young Lucas faced with the studio system has been covered in tons of interviews, documentaries and books over the years. But exactly what Warner did and what was excised has gone undocumented as far as I know.

A few examples mentioned in the links in one of my earlier posts...

An upset Lucas in the documentary Maker of Films from '71:

"Walter Murch did most of the sound work, montages, what have you. The one problem is, that's one of the things Warner Brothers altered considerably, it was much more abstract and much more musical. The film was designed as a kind of opera you know, kind of a musical science fiction film. And the soundtrack was composed under purely musical concepts and they didn't quite understand that, they thought they all had to tell the story. So essentially the biggest change is that they have injected more story, what they thought was the story, that's the story of... they took out all of the humor and the happiness and people laughing and stuff because they didn't..." (the interviewer interrupts him)

^ I recommend it, I think it is still available on the Spleen. It's worth it just to see a young and skinny nerd before his real breakthrough.

In the book Skywalking by Dale Pollock, he writes on p.97 (first printing) how Warner turned the film over to in-house editor Rudi Fehr:

"Fehr cut only four minutes from THX, mostly scenes in the White Limbo and some of George's bizarre attempts at humor."

It's nothing concrete though.

poita said:

The 16mm and the 35mm IB have Buck Rogers at the start, the reviews from '71 I can find say it was Buck Rogers, I'd like to see if the review in Rolling Stone Issue 81, which I used to own, but now can't find, mentions it as well.

Good to hear Buck Rogers is there. I'm really surprised that 1971 35mm IB Tech prints were even struck, the studio hated the film, it wasn't a hit with audiences, and IB Techs were expensive to produce. I could understand if Lucas had a few prints struck around the same time as Star Wars in late '77, but '71? That is awesome. This 16mm print is apparently dated '71 and it's the unmolested cut, so I guess I should stop being surprised.

Also, great job on the scan, Poita! I've only seen a small sized 720p re-encode but even that is beautiful. If only there was a good cure for the fading.

 I just organised the scan, I didn't do it myself, credit goes to the guy who actually did the work :)

However, I am planning to scan it myself at some point with a different light-source and sensor to try and recover more of the colour at the scanning phase.

Apparently the IB was part of the original deal for THX1138, so thankfully there were some struck at the time.

The sources for the changes are pretty much Lucas himself and whomever Dale had as his source, but it has never been documented by comparing actual releases, and many other stories, like the Buck Rogers/Things to come stuff that doesn't seem to hold up to actual evidence.

It was a big part of the reason I tracked down these prints in the first place, was to finally get some concrete evidence as to the differences.

The running times published are all over the place, and almost never correct, so I wouldn't take those as meaning anything.

SilverWook said:

Not to derail the thread, but is everyone here who's a fan of The Shining on AMPS already? Wanted to start a new thread for that, but not sure if I should do it here or there...

 I'd go for both.

ShaneLSD said:

excuse my ignorance but i just put the original b&w 16mm scans together and from buck rogers to the end credits its 86min my LD is 85min the so called WB cut was cut by 5mins even with differences people have mentioned its nowhere near 5 mins so it is my belief that this is not the WB cut that george lucas said is 5min shorter it simply is not 5 min shorter. can someone correct me please? i dont understand.

 My gut feel is that the 5 minutes supposedly cut, were not necessarily cut from the running time as such, perhaps it was roughly 5 minutes of changes, or just a sloppy metaphor for "they changed my film a bunch and I am crabby about it".

The 16mm version and the Tech IB appear to be identical, both also have the Buck Rogers sequence, which is mentioned in the reviews of the day, so it would appear that the 16mm is the release version that hit cinemas in 1971.

The version Lucas put out post Star Wars is significantly different in the details, so in all likelihood I think we are now, finally, seeing the version that was released in 1971, and like many pieces of history, what has been reported and re-reported, without hard evidence, may in fact end up being more myth than fact.

poita said:

Apparently the IB was part of the original deal for THX1138, so thankfully there were some struck at the time.

That is fantastic. I guess we should all thank Francis for that.

My gut feel is that the 5 minutes supposedly cut, were not necessarily cut from the running time as such, perhaps it was roughly 5 minutes of changes, or just a sloppy metaphor for "they changed my film a bunch and I am crabby about it".

The 16mm version and the Tech IB appear to be identical, both also have the Buck Rogers sequence, which is mentioned in the reviews of the day, so it would appear that the 16mm is the release version that hit cinemas in 1971.

The different editing in the middle of the film encompass more than 5 minutes though, and no scene is cut, just a different placement of scenes. And on top of that there's slightly more footage with SEN (Donald Pleasence) talking with the children.

This is very different from the information we've been fed with. But, what's beautiful is that the prints don't lie. You say the Tech IB appear to be identical, are you able to get it 100% confirmed from the owner of the print that it is exactly the same cut of the film as on this 16mm print?

The version Lucas put out post Star Wars is significantly different in the details...

Have you been able to see a re-release print? I'm curious to know if they match the 80's home video release version with all the false information around.

...so in all likelihood I think we are now, finally, seeing the version that was released in 1971, and like many pieces of history, what has been reported and re-reported, without hard evidence, may in fact end up being more myth than fact.

Well, Lucas sometimes like to consider himself a mythmaker. ;)

Chouonsoku said:

Hey guys, I threw together the encode on the spleen and can confirm the original .MOV files of the scan do have the Buck Rogers clip, I trimmed it from the encode as I did not have nearly as much knowledge of the source as you guys seem to! I'm very sorry about that and if anyone wants a 100% unaltered encode of the scan with the clip, reel ends and all I can do one. Just trimmed it to the movie by itself as I thought that was easier for comparison. Sorry for any confusion!!

Total Runtime (w/ Buck Rogers Clip): 01:26:23 / 124277 frames

Full Scan Runtime (NO TRIMS): 01:27:24 / 125754 frames

No problem. Huge thanks for doing it in the first place. As this was more for analysis than anything else it's cool, no need for another re-encode. Others may think differently of course. You might want to mention the absence of it in the description though, in case you've not already done that. Thanks.

SilverWook said:

I should probably keep my full frame THX print for the Buck Rogers prologue, correct?

The scope print have the prologue too. It was just a re-encode of the original upload that was missing it.

Guys, going insane here :) Is THX1138 16mm preservation avaialbe for general use already-can't seem to find it on Usenet...

You know what if you promise you won't hit and run, I'll give you a spleen invite.

I know promises are given to be broken, but this one I can easily keep :) Promise to stick around for good! 

So I take it the majority of the differences are rearrangement of scenes, and not added or deleted footage?

I'm not familiar with THX, I'm mainly curious and from a preservation standpoint.

Tried to update the text that describes the different versions of the film in the first post of the thread. Please let me know if it's clear enough. My English grammar isn't the best, so let me know if you see something funny.

thxita said:

Well, since we are there at fixing... my name has changed from erri_wan to thxita in these years ;)

Sure, it's because it originally belonged to the Italian DVD upload. You are credited as erri_wan in the DVD subtitles anyway. ;)