NEW DIRECTORS CUT

[HG]

In Simsolo's Conversations avec Sergio Leone, Leone describes how Grimaldi changed their plans to make the movie in two parts:

Why did you separate from Grimaldi?
He was very eager to produce the film. But there was the success of Last Tango in Paris by Bertolucci. Then there were big failures in 1900 and Casanova by Fellini. This last film was a financial disaster. The coup de grace for Grimaldi. He hoped that my film would get him out of this impasse. He changed our plans. He did not want to have two parts as for 1900. He panicked because he had lost the support of major companies. Everything was going very badly. I wanted to break our agreement and get the rights to the novel. He refused. There were lawsuits. It was long. More than three years during which I kept on working on the project. Other producers were interested. Finally, thanks to Yves Gasser, I met Arnon Milchan. Again three years of hesitation waltz. When he was assured of finding thirty million dollars to fund my film that would cost twenty million dollars, he agreed to it. First, he put ten million dollars into the pot. He bought the rights from Grimaldi for the tidy sum of five hundred thousand dollars. And production began.

I don't think that the Ladd company ever agreed that the movie would be shown in two parts.  Milchan admits he was a bit naive at the time and would have handled things differently now.  Possibly Leone thought he would be able to persuade everyone to support his view once the movie had been completed.  De Niro was keen that all actors should have a Brooklyn accent and Woods and De Niro persuaded Leone to use direct sound for parts of the movie.  Leone estimated that in the end 65 per cent of the film was recorded direct and it's possible that some of the unscreened footage may be fairly complete.  I'm sure we would all love to see the unreleased footage irrespective of how complete it is together with the movie in high definition.  OUATIA and OUATITW are obvious candidates for future Blu-ray releases.