I really do hate it when the TV people decide to cut out a scene from a film, especially one of my favourite films. On the other hand, it’s always interesting to see a director’s cut of a film when previously cut scenes have been added back. I think that explains the premise of this week’s post but stay with me and hopefully it should soon become clear.

I’m going to kick off with the film Young Winston. I’m a great fan of Winston Churchill and I’m not amused about current plans to remove him from UK banknotes, but getting back to the film, Young Winston is a wonderful dramatisation of Churchill’s own book, My Early Life. I read the book many years ago and first saw this film at the cinema where I greatly enjoyed it and I remember it coming to television some years later.

The film details Winston’s early life and we see him at school and later in the army and the rather cool relationship he had with his parents is gradually revealed. The film finishes with a poignant dream sequence which I remember reading somewhere was based on something Churchill either said or wrote. In the dream, a much older Winston meets his father, Randolph but Randolph is not the unwell man of his later years but restored to full health. He asks Winston about great events and Churchill answers telling of the two World Wars. ‘Did Joe Chamberlain ever become Prime Minister?’ asks Randolph. ‘No,’ answers Winston, ‘but one of his sons did, Neville’.

Winston mentions that he has resigned his commission in the army. Randolph looks about at the many paintings and asks Winston if this is what he does. Winston answers that painting occupies much of his time. Randolph thinks for a moment and then tells Winston to ‘do the best you can’ and we see the sleeping Churchill smile at the thought.

I’ve always liked this final sequence but when I bought my VHS copy back in the 1980s the scene was omitted. Likewise, every time in recent years, since I first watched the film on television, this scene has always been removed. I’d love to know why. Perhaps the producers thought the film too long or perhaps preferred the new ending in which Winston talks briefly about his marriage and living ‘happily ever after’. After a search on the internet, I came across a post which claimed that Carl Foreman, who wrote and produced the film, found that US audiences occasioned so little reaction to the scene that he promptly had it cut. What reaction was he expecting to see I wonder?

Another film I’ve always rather enjoyed is Notting Hill. It was written by Richard Curtis and stars Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. Grant plays William Thacker who owns and runs a bookshop in Notting Hill. Enter film star Anna Scott played by Julia Roberts who picks up some books in the bookshop. Not long after this she collides with Thacker in the street and he spills coffee all over her. They return to Thacker’s home only a few doors away where she cleans up and later Anna invites William to her hotel and consequently a romance ensues.

Thacker shares his home with Spike, a slightly oddball Welshman. In fact, Thacker describes Spike to a hotel receptionist by asking him to envisage the stupidest man he has ever met and then double it.

Anyway, I was watching this film not long ago. It was late evening and the film began at 9pm I think which of course is watershed time and we are all aware of things like bad language which of course is something which can be broadcast after 9.

In a really funny sequence Spike asks William to choose which T-shirt he should wear on a date and models about three shirts. William vetos them all due to rude or sexist phrases. He chooses a last one which says ‘LOVE’ on the front. Happy, Spike turns away but as he leaves we see written on the back of the t-shirt  the phrase ‘fancy a f#ck?’ Now I’ve always found that particular sequence rather funny but this time it was cut out. Why? It was after 9 (well, I think it was anyway) and although rude, it kills me every time. Do TV channels cut down films to fit their available time slots? If I was a director and that was my film I would be very upset indeed if some unknown TV editor had randomly chopped up my film just to fit it in a particular broadcast slot.

Let’s go the other way with this next example. I must have first seen Aliens on TV. I’ve always thought that it was as good, if not better than the Ridley Scott’s original Alien. In Aliens, astronaut Ripley played by Sigourney Weaver is adrift in a space lifeboat. I do love the opening of the film: The music gradually fades in as we come across a lifeboat drifting through space. Yes, the lifeboat holds astronaut Ripley, sleeping soundly in suspended animation after her adventures in the previous movie, Alien.

Later we see Ripley facing a committee where it is revealed that the spacecraft Nostromo, which Ripley self-destructed, caused a loss of over 64 million adjusted dollars. Another committee member advises that LV426, the planet where the Nostromo landed was ‘a rock’ with no indigenous life forms. I can feel Ripley’s frustration when she says, “Did IQ levels just drop while I was away?” She tries to tell the group about a derelict alien vessel containing alien eggs but the meeting ends and Ripley’s story is not believed.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that Ripley joins a motley crew of space commandos on a mission to help the colonists of LV426 with whom all contact has been lost. On the planet the soldiers gain entry to the colonist’s base camp and we meet one of the survivors, a young girl nicknamed Newt, to which Ripley goes to extraordinary lengths to rescue from the aliens.

Why is she so keen to rescue Newt? Well, that is explained in a later director’s cut of the film in which it is revealed that Ripley’s daughter has died of old age. I know that sounds confusing but remember, Ripley has been in suspended animation for 75 years. She is still saddened by the news of her daughter which she has only just been told about and it is this loss that spurs her on to help Newt.

Now for me, this director’s cut is a much better version of the film and in fact, every time I have seen Aliens on TV recently, it is this new version which seems to be the accepted ‘cut’.

Here’s one final example. Spartacus was made in 1960. It was produced by and starred Kirk Douglas and was directed by Stanley Kubrick, whom Douglas brought in to direct after becoming disenchanted with the original director, Anthony Mann. The film is the story of a revolution, or at least a near revolution in ancient Rome. Spartacus, played by Kirk Douglas, is a slave who starts off a rebellion in a gladiator camp; the rebellion gets bigger and bigger until it threatens the entire fabric of ancient Rome. Laurence Olivier played the part of the Roman general and politician Marcus Licinius Crassus who uses the rebellion to further his own dreams of dictatorship. Peter Ustinov plays the gladiator school owner and Charles Laughton plays Roman senator Gracchus. Ustinov, Olivier, and Laughton are a wonderful trio, their performances superb, so much so that other actors who share the screen with them seem to pale in comparison.
Tony Curtis plays another slave who calls out famously; ‘I am Spartacus’ towards the end of the film, heralding a chorus of similar calls.

The film was restored in 1991 and 37 minutes of cuts were restored to the film including a scene where Anthony Hopkins had to dub the sound for a sequence involving Laurence Olivier who had died two years previously.

Which film cuts do you love, or hate?

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