#34
Post
by Hogfather » Wed Apr 17, 2024 2:33 am
Just to straighten things out, these are the different cuts of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid that I know about and why they were or were not included in the Criterion release:
1. The First Preview Version, also called the 1988 Turner Version. This was the closest thing to a director's cut for about thirty-five years. It is 122 minutes long and was first shown publicly on TCM in, you guessed it, 1988, at which point it became the most widely circulated version of the film for almost twenty years. The physical materials have become badly degraded for this version, making it unsuitable for Blu-ray or 4k UHD.
2. The Second Preview Version, also known as Peckinpah's personal version of the film. It is the last version of the film in which Peckinpah was involved at all, and I think it's the version stolen from the MGM editing room by his buddies. It is mostly the same as the 1988 Turner version, but contains a handful of differences (a scene with Ida Garrett, a strange end-crawl written by Peckinpah himself. Because this print was rarely shown and was kept in Peckinpah's private collection, it was in good enough condition to be used as the source for a 2k transfer. However, because its original materials are a 50-year-old second generation print, it is not good enough for a 4k transfer.
3. The Theatrical Version. The 106-minute-long version was edited by, amongst others, Roger Spottiswoode (Straw Dogs) and Robert Wolfe (The Getaway, Junior Bonner) under enormous pressure from Peckinpah's archenemy, MGM studio chief James Aubrey. This version was critically panned upon release in 1973 and has been hard to come by since the rediscovery of the first preview version. Because the original film negative exists in this form and for historical reasons, this version is included on the Criterion release in 4k UHD.
4. The Television Version. I may be misremembering, but I seem to remember the existence of this strangely edited-for-television version that included then-new footage in exchange for the removal of violence and nudity.
5. The 2005 Special Edition, also known as the Seydor Cut. In the early 2000's, Peckinpah scholar Paul Seydor, who had seen Peckinpah's private cut of the film, attempted to assemble a version of the film that would resemble the "best of both worlds," using the higher-quality footage from the negative and the cut scenes included in the Turner Cut, as well as several scenes included in neither (I think the chicken-catching scene is one of these). Having known Peckinpah personally (Seydor even dated his daughter!), he wanted to create a version that would most accurately resemble Peckinpah's original vision. However, this 115-minute-long cut was rushed and underfunded. As a result, Seydor was able to rearrange the structure of the film to fit Peckinpah's version, but used a number of cuts that had been taken from the theatrical version and had never been meant for release; there were also issues with the audio. Seydor has for almost twenty years expressed a desire to retry this experiment with better funding, finally resulting in...
6. The 2023 50th Anniversary Edition. Produced by the Criterion Collection with the collaboration of Seydor and Spottiswoode, this version is an attempt to combine the editing from Peckinpah's preview cuts with the original materials and what Seydor and Spottiswoode believe to have been Peckinpah's ultimate intentions. It is 117 minutes long, longer than the 2005 Special Edition but shorter than either preview version. Who knows, maybe this version is the closest we'll ever get to what Peckinpah really wanted. After all, even his private print (The Second Preview Version) was just a rough cut. At the very least, I think it's a good thing that his chosen editor has finally gotten to work unencumbered on a version of the film. Because of all these reasons, this version is included on the Criterion release in 4k.
