Quick quiz: Who has been directed by Jean-Luc Godard, Wim Wenders, Aki Kaurismäki, Steven Spielberg, and Claude Chabrol?
If you guessed Worcester native and inveterate cigar smoker Samuel Fuller, writer and director of such white-knuckle Cold War classics as The Naked Kiss and Pickup on South Street, please advance one square. Geek.
Now Ed tips me off that a restored version of Fuller's harrowing World War II flick The Big Red One is making the festival and rep house rounds this fall. According to the Castro's program notes, where it screens December 10 through 15,
The Big Red One was butchered for its US release, reedited and cut by more than an hour. After discovering scripts, 70,000 feet of camera negative, and 112 sound rolls in a Warner vault, acclaimed critic and filmmaker Richard Schickel was able to restore the film to include almost 50-minutes of lost footage, made up of 15 new scenes and 23 extensions and inserts....
Sweet. Fuller's film makes male weepie Saving Private Ryan look like a Merchant-Ivory flick.
You can read more about the restored print here. Chicagoans can catch it during the Chicago Film Festival this October 13, at 8:30 pm at the Landmark Century Centre on N. Clark, where "Jonathan Rosenbaum will introduce the screening and interview Schickel about his work afterwards."
C'mon, when else will you see Lee Marvin, Mark Hamill, and Robert Carradine act side by side?
