The Most Famous Un-Scenes

It is not being broad to say that every film ever made has had a significant amount of footage end up out of the public reach. The process of editing is designed to be merciless to whatever coverage has been made during production. Only the very best of what has been shot is designed to make it into a final edit. However, an all-too-common situation for a director or editor to find themselves in is otherwise unforeseen circumstances influencing the length or editing of their final product. This, unfortunately, is also a well publicized issue still prevalent even in modern day films, and to a certain extent is a well-understood aspect of the commercial film industry.

However, sometimes this lost footage is of such a monumental or legendary status that fans and film scholars alike are captivated by the stories behind them. While I have my own personal holy grails (including the lost latter half of Michael Corleone’s story in The Godfather Part II or the extended 70mm cut of Logan’s Run), there are certain cases of lost footage with such a profound place in film history that they beg discussion on their own merits for the sheer insanity or interest of their existence. While I admit my own selections are based on personal bias and interests, I feel these stories are worth repeating.

One of the most egregious examples of studio-based interference in editing occurred in 1924 with Erich von Stroheim’s Greed, a sprawling silent epic tackling the effect of greed in all forms on an elaborate love triangle. At least, that summary is accurate to the 2 hour general release version which MGM unleashed in 1924 after a long series of test screenings and consistent whittling down. The original edit lasted nearly eight hours with two intermissions, and chronicled the downfall of the trio in far more explicit and gradual detail, in what Stroheim described as a Greek tragedy. To date, this original version has been glimpsed by only 12 people in full- and all 12 agreed on it as one of the finest films ever made. With the technical prowess and expertise displayed in the existing shortened version, the original full version of Greed is one of cinema archivist’s greatest holy grails, with ongoing attempts to rescue the original cut from any number of sources. As of now, however, these efforts have been inconclusive. Just as the film is a Greek tragedy, so is the story of its cutting at the hands of MGM producers. Director Stroheim reserved a little piece of his heart to stay broken for the way the film was treated.

Such stories are common in the early days of film, when footage was easily lost due to last minute cuts or poor storage. One famous example with a moderately happy ending is Fritz Lang’s seminal Metropolis from 1927. When originally debuting in Berlin, with Gottfried Huppertz’s stirring symphonic accompaniment, it ran a stout 153 minutes. However, the film’s strong socialist sentiments (especially with regards to the story of Maria and Freder, the two leads) and religious subtext led to a long series of cuts over the next decade which steadily pared down the film’s length to an almost insulting 91 minutes, leaving over a full hour of footage and story completely destroyed. For years, it was thought that this was the most complete cut that would exist, until as late as 2008, when a nearly complete version of the original 153 minute edit was discovered in Argentina in a private collection. While approximately five minutes of footage is still lost, presumably for the foreseeable future, the current restoration represents the entirety of the story as original envisioned by Fritz Lang, and stands as one of the happier endings in film preservation history.

The trend of films simply being too much for audiences to handle reared its head in a profound way in 1932 with the film Freaks, a provocative horror film which saw a band of circus freaks (played by real performers with real disabilities) turn on the oppressive “normal” people around them. The film is notably violent for the time, with dismemberment and gruesome murders figuring into the plot in a way not seen in many domestic productions at the time. However, the film as it exists today is only a taste of what was originally filmed and edited by director Todd Browning. A full half hour of footage was excised, and a new ending inserted, to try and mitigate what MGM considered to be a film so acutely disturbing that the general public would never take to it. Unfortunately, the studio was only half right; it was far too disturbing for audiences of the time, but the cuts did nothing to hide the true horror of the film, and it was considered one of the biggest box office bombs of the early days of film.

Sometimes it is not the studio or any outside force responsible for a film’s last minute recut. In the case of many of Stanley Kubrick’s films, he was more often than not the culprit. Two of his films, above all others, are worth mentioning because of the fact that the cuts occurred after their debuts. In the case of The Shining, the original premiere version received enough exposure that it survives in nearly its entirety (barring a rarely-seen epilogue which Kubrick only saw to make the ending even more confusing). However, the story of 2001: A Space Odyssey is much different. At one point, it was a very different film. The original prologue, excised just before its 1968 premiere, was a miniature documentary of sorts made up of a collection of interviews with many leading scientists and speculative fiction authors about the prospect of life on other planets. While he believed it a perfect thematic introduction to what he intended the film to stand for, he also acknowledged that there would be no way for an audience to expect that the film was going to be remotely like what the audience had been promised, and for a film as obtuse as 2001 already is, he must have considered this an unwarranted risk (you can read the original transcript here: http://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2018/02/23/2001-a-space-odyssey-prologue-interviews/).

After the initial premiere in 1968, Kubrick took the film through yet another round of cutting, this time targeting 17 minutes scattered across all of the film’s reels, in an attempt to make the film more sellable for its general release. The content of this footage is known well, and rather than any lost whole sequences or subplots, the footage is mostly trims from all over the film, extending the major setpieces even more. Many critics have their own fondness for this original version, in particular a scene at the very end of the film which only added to Dave’s isolation. Kubrick, however, was convinced that this would make the film more audience friendly. He even inserted footage to make certain plot points come across more clearly. This has led to arguments on both sides; some in favor of the edited version, and others arguing for the uncut premiere cut. If nothing else, it stands as an example of how editing can change a film’s perception, even if minorly.