![]() But those who did were richly rewarded, even those (like me) who had seen the film before. (None of Kubrick’s films played at Cannes during his lifetime A Clockwork Orange played in the Cannes Classics section in 2011.) To see 2001 - in the Debussy theater, one of the festival’s largest, which boasts a huge screen and pristine sound system, along with the technology necessary to play the print - audience members had to miss a few other premieres. Its Cannes premiere on Sunday night, though, was the first time the film played the festival. The “unrestored” print will open in select theaters in the US on May 18 and on 4K home video in the fall. Emma McIntyre/Getty Images The new print of 2001: A Space Odyssey premiered at the perfect setting: the Cannes Film Festival Actor Keir Dullea, Stanley Kubrick’s daughter Katharina Kubrick, Stanley Kubrick’s producing partner and brother-in-law Jan Harlan, and director Christopher Nolan were at the premiere of the new print of 2001: A Space Odyssey. “It is the most immersive, the most emotionally involving.” The point, he continued, is to give a new generation of filmgoers the same experience he had in 1968. “Film is the best analogy for the way the eye sees,” Nolan said. to create from preserved original negatives.Įven though it’s technically a kind of restoration, Nolan prefers the term “unrestored” because the goal was to give people the experience of seeing 2001 the way audiences saw it when it premiered in 1968 - including the richness and occasional flaws of film. He’d brought an “unrestored” 70mm version of 2001 to the festival, which he’d been working with Warner Bros. Nolan was on his first visit to Cannes - a remarkable fact for a director with such widespread acclaim and success - but he wasn’t there with a movie of his own. Those 241 people who walked out of the premiere, like Rock Hudson, perhaps all muttered that it was just beyond them, that it didn't make sense, and, perhaps, that it was only for those who had been chemically altered.Why 2001: A Space Odyssey is still one of the greatest films ever made, 50 years later from I Think You're Interesting To speculate: This appeal to "hippie" sensibilities - that is: lack of rollicking thematic clarity, psychedelic images, perhaps linking science to the spiritual - may be what kept squares away in the film's early life. This is not, perhaps, how Kubrick intended his film to be viewed - only the second half and likely high on God-knows-what - but there was, at least an appreciative audience. Hippies zonked out on weed or LSD could then slip in undetected, lay down on the floor in front of the screen, splayed in the sold-out auditorium, and allow the colors and sounds to wash over them. Theater owners would carefully monitor ticket holders as they entered the theater, but in many theaters, such scrutiny was not provided during intermission, allowing people to sneak in unfettered. Critic Joe Morgenstern of Newsweek was particularly harsh, however, saying the film begins as "a whimsical space operetta, then frantically inflates itself again for a surreal climax in which the imagery is just obscure enough to be annoying, just precise enough to be banal." I admire Morgenstern, but ouch. Roger Ebert noted that there were many walkouts at the premiere (which he attended), but defended the experience, knowing that those with patience had witnessed something profound and significant. The New York Times review of it placed it somewhere between majestic and boring. Most critics at the time noted "2001's" notorious opacity, whether to praise or lambast it. ![]() As it stands, the 140-minute version doesn't feel incomplete. According to those in the know, all that was lost was a second Pod sequence similar to the first. Kubrick ended up shortening the film by a good 20 minutes after the premiere. ![]() Which, as a cynic might take as a given, was not embraced by mainstream audiences. This was not traditional mainstream entertainment, but a heady and ambitious work of art and philosophy. Indeed, the general atmospheric attitude immediately after the premiere was that Kubrick had made an impressive technical achievement without making an actual, y'know, movie. ![]()
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