Peckinpah Masterpiece Restored: Missing Scenes from Major Dundee
This year, film preservationist Grover Crisp came to the end of a long journey. He was able to unveil a new version of Major Dundee, a film long regarded as a mutilated masterpiece by fans of maverick director Sam Peckinpah.
Film historian David Thomson calls the Civil War drama starring Charlton Heston and Richard Harris "a broken thing" because of the way it was cut after Peckinpah lost his fight to see it released in its original form in 1965.
The beautifully restored new edition being unveiled on DVD this week by Sony Home Entertainment is still not complete. Crisp, the vice-president of film restoration for Sony, calls the new release "the extended version."
"This is definitely not the ultimate final director's version," he said by phone from Los Angeles. That's because some of the footage hacked away 40 years ago has been deemed irretrievable.
But Crisp is excited over what he did unearth. And especially at the fact that his restoration version has a new musical score to replace the one that the hard-drinking, outspoken director always loathed.
Peckinpah, who died in 1984, was a Hollywood outsider who fought constantly with his corporate keepers and consistently pushed the envelope with violent entries like The Wild Bunch or misogynistic bloodbaths like Straw Dogs. He gained Hollywood's attention with his 1952 western, Ride the High Country, starring Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea - and Columbia offered him Major Dundee.
"This was the first really big studio film that he had been given and, of course, the first major conflict he had," Crisp said.
Heston plays an obsessive Union officer who leads a troop of Rebel prisoners, ex-slaves and criminals across the border into Mexico to hunt down some murderous Apaches. Harris plays the former friend turned embittered Rebel enemy who becomes part of the mission.
Columbia gave Peckinpah a $4.5-million (U.S.) budget - a huge figure then - because it saw Major Dundee as an epic running up to three hours. But at the last minute, the studio lopped $1.5 million off the budget and triggered a battle with the outraged filmmaker, who decided to continue making the movie he had originally envisaged.
Film historian David Thomson calls the Civil War drama starring Charlton Heston and Richard Harris "a broken thing" because of the way it was cut after Peckinpah lost his fight to see it released in its original form in 1965.
The beautifully restored new edition being unveiled on DVD this week by Sony Home Entertainment is still not complete. Crisp, the vice-president of film restoration for Sony, calls the new release "the extended version."
"This is definitely not the ultimate final director's version," he said by phone from Los Angeles. That's because some of the footage hacked away 40 years ago has been deemed irretrievable.
But Crisp is excited over what he did unearth. And especially at the fact that his restoration version has a new musical score to replace the one that the hard-drinking, outspoken director always loathed.
Peckinpah, who died in 1984, was a Hollywood outsider who fought constantly with his corporate keepers and consistently pushed the envelope with violent entries like The Wild Bunch or misogynistic bloodbaths like Straw Dogs. He gained Hollywood's attention with his 1952 western, Ride the High Country, starring Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea - and Columbia offered him Major Dundee.
"This was the first really big studio film that he had been given and, of course, the first major conflict he had," Crisp said.
Heston plays an obsessive Union officer who leads a troop of Rebel prisoners, ex-slaves and criminals across the border into Mexico to hunt down some murderous Apaches. Harris plays the former friend turned embittered Rebel enemy who becomes part of the mission.
Columbia gave Peckinpah a $4.5-million (U.S.) budget - a huge figure then - because it saw Major Dundee as an epic running up to three hours. But at the last minute, the studio lopped $1.5 million off the budget and triggered a battle with the outraged filmmaker, who decided to continue making the movie he had originally envisaged.