Halloween Wicker Screening at the Cinematheque, Vancouver

The Wicker Man

Great Britain 1973. Dir: Robin Hardy. 94 min. DCP

NEW RESTORATION! DIRECTOR-APPROVED “FINAL CUT”! ► A devoutly Christian policeman from the mainland investigates the disappearance of a child on a remote Scottish island. Christopher Lee presides over a pagan sex cult. Britt Ekland shakes — and slaps! — her booty in lascivious fashion. The Wicker Man, Robin Hardy’s legendary 1973 cult film, has been newly restored in a director-approved “final cut” version. The film was specifically written for Lee by Anthony Shaffer, who also penned Sleuth (both stage and screen versions) and Hitchcock’s Frenzy. Neil LaBute’s 2006 remake, with Nicolas Cage, can’t hold a Burning Man to Hardy’s unhinged original. Britt’s butt, she later revealed, was actually a body double’s! “Troubling, brilliant, and unmissable … Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England [and Kill List] reawakened interest in ‘folk horror’; here is the superb precedent” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian).

Robin Hardy to appear at BOZAR film screening in Brussels

THE WICKER MAN – ROBIN HARDY

En présence de Robin Hardy

Robin Hardy réalisateur

avec Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento

Nous avons l’immense honneur, privilège et plaisir de présenter la projection director’s cut du cultissime The Wicker Man de Robin Hardy. Peu de films ont réussi à atteindre l’aura particulière que dégage le film original. Et ce n’est certes pas le remake de 2006 avec Nicolas Cage qui pourra nous convaincre du contraire. Le film retrace l’enquête d’un détective confronté aux coutumes tribales des autochtones hallucinés et exaltés d’une île écossaise. Sous-estimé lors de sa sortie en salle, monté sans tenir compte du point de vue de Hardy et distribué comme une série B sans intérêt, le film était voué à une mort prématurée. Ce n’est que fin des années 1970 qu’une version longue fut projetée et appréciée à sa juste valeur, parfois saluée comme le Citizen Kane du film d’horreur sans pour autant être le film que Hardy désirait ardemment montrer. Quarante ans plus tard, il peut désormais nous présenter en personne sa propre version!

Ravensteinstraat 23 | Rue Ravenstein 23

Brussels, Belgium

+32 2 507 82 00

http://www.bozar.be/

Lieu	Palais des Beaux-Arts / Salle M
Dates	Dimanche 16.03.2014 – 20:00 > 22:00

Prix à la caisse

€ 8,00: tarif standard € 6,00: tarif réduit

>TICKET

Langue(s)

VO: Anglais

http://www.bozar.be/activity.php?id=14706

 

A Lucid Restoration: Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man

Thanks in part to a gorgeous digital restoration, Robin Hardy’s darkly comic The Wicker Man, currently screening in a “final cut” in select theaters on both coasts, feels like a lucid dream. The 1973 film is tinged with lasciviousness and pervaded by jangly folk music, and its tone fluctuates madly, veering from the hysterical to the horrifying, from the fermata of promiscuous harmonies to the howls of a man wreathed in flames. Trying to get a grasp on the film’s sense of normality, of realism, is like trying to squeeze a flopping fish. The dichotomy of modernity and tradition transects the film; restored to the original look of glorious 35mm, it feels perversely modern and timeless. Like a passage from the Bible, or a 14th-century oil painting, The Wicker Man is at once epochal, rooted in a specific time (the wake of the summer of love) and place (a Scottish island village), and somehow transcendent of reality. You slowly sink into its bizarre charm, and by the time its sinister epiphanies begin to proliferate, you’re too deep to get out.

Edward Woodward is Sergeant Neil Howie, an uptight Christian who’s intolerant and ignorant while preaching morals—”a privileged fool,” you could say. After receiving a letter that claims a young girl, Rowan Morrison, has disappeared on the remote Hebridean island of Summerisle, he takes off in a sea plane, by himself, set on finding her. When Howie arrives, he wastes no time in flashing his credentials, telling everyone he’s there on police business and threatening to lock up anyone and everyone who may interfere with his investigation. His first interaction with the locals sets the tone for his brief stay: He passes a photo of Rowan to a group of fisherman who don’t lack for plaid or facial hair, and the camera slowly strolls along the line as the picture is passed from calloused hand to calloused hand. No one has ever heard of the girl, and Howie, they say, should mind his own business.

Discussing The Wicker Man: Final Cut with Director Robin Hardy

Update: While The Wicker Man: Final Cut tours the U.S. from Bellingham to Brookline (see link below), L.A. audiences are fortunate, as it’s just been announced that this Friday night, the first of November, legendary actress Britt Ekland — “The Landlord’s Daughter” herself! — will introduce the 7:30 screening at Landmark’s fabulous Nuart Theatre, plus she’s staying for a Q&A. If you miss this, you’re crazy.

Britt Ekland in The Wicker Man: Final Cut

We now return you to the original opening paragraph.

I get excited about movies, but rarely does a film astound me. Sinisterly exuberant, elegantly subversive, ravishingly eerie, hilariously chilling — I just can’t throw enough positive adjectival phrases at The Wicker Man: the 1973 masterpiece penned by Anthony Shaffer and magnificently directed by Robin Hardy. At the fore stands the world’s greatest actor Christopher Lee, in one of his career peaks (“the best-scripted film I ever took part in,” Mr. Lee says of The Wicker Man, in the 1999 edition of his autobiography); plus it features remarkable turns from Edward Woodward, Ingrid Pitt, Lindsay Kemp (who taught David Bowie and Kate Bush to dance), and the alluring Britt Ekland (whose dance herein could alter your worldview). Add the brilliant songs of Paul Giovanni and generous dollops of folkloric savvy, et voilà: perfection.

The trick is the treat.

The plot? I’m not telling. A cop searches for a missing child. Do not read synopses, don’t ask anyone about it, just see it. If for the first time, I envy you.

Truly, lucky you. In its unique blend of mystery, thriller, drama, comedy, social satire, and yes, even musical, this film practically reinvents the art form of cinema. Following years of butchered prints, short cuts, slightly-improved cuts, and missing shots, you get to experience The Wicker Man: Final Cut, director Hardy’s approved DCP restoration of his definitive version. This edit has been out of circulation since 1979, and recently scanned from a 35mm U.S. print discovered in the Harvard Film Archive. After being unceremoniously slashed in 1973 to fit on a double bill with Don’t Look Now, The Wicker Man: Final Cut celebrates its 40th anniversary in style. I spoke with Mr. Hardy, and asked him about the film’s origins.

“Tony Shaffer and I had been partners in the film company we owned for 13 years,” he relates. “We had facilities in Paris, Frankfurt, Milan and New York — headquartered in London. And we made dramas for television, and lots of very high-priced commercials all over the world.

“During that time, Tony and I, in our association, were very much — how can I saw, smitten, perhaps, is the right word — with a passion for games play. And this is a key that really very few people have understood about The Wicker Man — and maybe because they’ve never seen Tony’s play Sleuth: which preceded it, on the stage in London, and in New York.

“The games playing was part of our daily lives for those years. Every now and then he would play an enormous practical joke on me, and I would have to think of one to play back. This was all very good-humored, and sometimes I was furious at what he had done, and he was furious at what I’d done — but it kept us amused through all those years, and then the time came for us to start leaving the whole commercial/television scene, and move to features — and plays: he of course was very much influenced by the fact that by that time his twin brother was one of the most famous playwrights around (Peter Shaffer: Equus; Amadeus).”

Wicker Men: Producer Peter Snell, screenwriter Anthony Shaffer, director Robin Hardy
(from the autobiography of Christopher Lee)

Robin Hardy brings The Wicker Man to Forbidden Planet!

Monday, 14th October, 2013 17:00 – 18:00

London Megastore,

179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, WC2H 8JR

On Monday 14th October, from 6 – 7pm, at our London Megastore, Forbidden Planet are delighted to welcome director Robin Hardy, signing the 40th anniversary edition of The Wicker Man.

When a young girl mysteriously disappears on a remote Scottish island, devout Christian Police Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) travels there to investigate. He finds a close-knit and secretive pastoral community living on an island paradise, ruled over by mysterious Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), with beliefs very much at odds with his puritanism. He begins to fear that the fate of the girl could be linked to the islanders’ failing crops and their belief that only a sacrifice of the highest order will change their luck. As May Day festivities intensify and the islanders’ behaviour becomes more frenzied, Howie’s quest to save the girl becomes a race against time…

With a host of bonus features, this 40th anniversary double play edition is presented as The Final Cut. Approved by director Robin Hardy, The Final Cut is the finest and most complete version of The Wicker Man ever created.

https://forbiddenplanet.com/events/2013/10/14/robin-hardy-bring-wicker-man-forbidden-planet/

 

Robin Hardy to complete The Wicker Man trilogy

Wicker Man director Robin Hardy has revealed that he is moving ahead with new feature Wrath Of The Gods, which will complete a trilogy of ‘Wicker’ films.

He spoke to ScreenDaily ahead of a 40th anniversary re-release of The Wicker Man, which has been digitally restored and has been labelled ‘The Final Cut’.

“I am just at the opening stages of financing it (Wrath Of The Gods) and hope to make it next year,” said Hardy, who will also produce.

The writer-director added: “The first two films are all (about) offers to the Gods. The third film is about the Gods. I use the vehicle of the final act of Götterdämmerung (the last of Wagner’s Ring cycle).”

The new project, which is slated to shoot in the Shetlands, won’t be “heavily Wagner-esque” but is expected to explore similar themes to the previous two films.

The Final Cut

The Wicker Man: The Final Cut is released in UK cinemas by StudioCanal in a 2K restoration on Sept 27.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the 1973 film about a policeman (Edward Woodward) sent to a remote island village in search of a missing girl, whom the townsfolk claim never existed. It also stars Christopher Lee.

The Wicker Man was originally released with minimal promotion as the second feature in a double bill with Don’t Look Now.

The version exhibited to audiences was significantly shorter (88mins) than Hardy’s original vision (102mins).

The negatives disappeared from storage at Shepperton Studios and were allegedly used as landfill in the construction of the nearby M4 motorway.

Worldwide search

Ahead of the anniversary, StudioCanal spent the past year conducting an extensive worldwide search for film materials of The Wicker Man, including a public appeal to fans for clues as to the whereabouts of the missing original cut.

Eventually a 35mm release print was found at Harvard Film Archives and measured to be around 92 minutes long. This print was scanned in 4k and sent to London, where it was inspected by Hardy who confirmed that it was the cut he had put together with Abraxas in 1979 for the US release.

This has previously been known as the “Middle Version” and was in turn assembled from a 35mm print of the original edit he had made in the UK in 1973, but which was never released.

“As far as I am concerned, I am completely satisfied with it,” said Hardy of the the Final Cut and expressed his delight at “finally seeing” his film in a state close to what he intended to be released in British cinemas.

A sequel, The Wicker Tree, was released in 2011.

By Geoffrey Macnab

http://www.screendaily.com/news/robin-hardy-to-complete-wicker-man-trilogy/5059535.article

 

Robin Hardy announces results of The Wicker Man appeal – original print found

Studiocanal find print of The Wicker Man based on Hardy’s original cut and plans to release ‘The Wicker Man – The Final Cut’

Following a public search for the original film materials relating to Robin Hardy’s horror classic The Wicker Man, Studiocanal UK and director Robin Hardy have made an announcement about what has been found via the hunt’s Facebook page. The announcement includes news that an original print of the film has been found.

Since its creation, the Facebook page has attracted comments from fans far and wide, and thrown up rare and fascinating stories from the film’s history, as well as all-important clues as to where the elusive materials might be stashed…

“Over the years, the fate of The Wicker Man has been the subject of much discussion amongst the fans,” says Studiocanal’s General Manager UK Home Entertainment John Rodden, “We set up the Facebook page not only to act as a hub for information in the search, but also in order to give fans the chance to discuss their love for The Wicker man, and to expound on some of the wilder myths and legends surrounding the film. The response has been amazing, and we’re so grateful to all the people who have taken the time to join the conversation. We hope they will be pleased with what we’ve found.”

2013 marks the 40th anniversary of the The Wicker Man’s original release. In celebration of this and as part of their continuing project to both preserve and showcase classic British cinema, Studiocanal intends to restore and release the most complete version of the film possible.

Laurence Boyce

http://www.moviemail.com/blog/news/1612-Robin-Hardy-announces-results-of-The-Wicker-Man-appeal-original-print-found/

The director of 1973 horror film The Wicker Man has praised the work of Robert Burns and actor Edward Woodward’s Gaelic singing.

Robin Hardy has written exclusively for Empire magazine about the feature, which has scenes shot in Galloway, Plockton and Ayrshire.

He said Burns’s Gently Johnny was the “perfect love song” for the film.

Hardy has also written about Woodward singing Gaelic songs for the cast and crew in evenings after shoots.

Writing in Empire, the director said the quality of Gently Johnny had been restored for the newly-released Blu-ray DVD version of The Wicker Man.

Hardy said: “We chose Celtic melodies where we could.

“Robbie Burns provided us with that perfect love song, Gently Johnny, which Paul Giovanni, our composer, himself sang, and Corn Rigs is the melody that takes us on our flight past the peaks of Skye to the palm-fringed coast of Summerisle.”

Croydon-born Woodward, who died in 2009, played police sergeant Howie, sent to search for a missing girl on the fictional island of Summerisle.

The Wicker Man was remade for a 2006 film starring Nicolas Cage.

Croydon-born Woodward sang in Gaelic in evenings after filming

In his article, Hardy said: “Edward Woodward, singing for us in Gaelic in the evenings, enchanting us with that beautiful mouth music – more than a mere film star, a superb actor.

“How seriously unwise for any other artist, even the talented Nicolas Cage, to try to give an encore as Sergeant Howie in the remake.”

Scenes for the 1973 feature were shot in Plockton in the Highlands, Culzean Castle on the Ayrshire coast, Logan Gardens in the Rhins of Galloway and Wigtown in Dumfries and Galloway.

Christopher Lee and Britt Ekland starred in the film alongside Woodward.

Hardy’s latest film, The Wicker Tree, has scenes which were shot in Dalkeith in Midlothian.

Released in 2010, its cast includes Brittania Nicol and Honeysuckle Weeks.

Glasgow-born Graham McTavish, who will appear in The Hobbit, also appears in The Wicker Tree.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-15254942

STUDIOCANAL, with the endorsement of director Robin Hardy, have launched a world-wide public appeal to locate original film materials

STUDIOCANAL, with the endorsement of director Robin Hardy, have launched a world-wide public appeal to locate original film materials relating to legendary horror classic THE WICKER MAN, originally released in 1973, in celebration of the cult film’s 40th anniversary.

2013 marks the 40th anniversary of the THE WICKER MAN’S original release. In celebration of this and continuing its project to conserve, restore and release for future generations the best of Classic British cinema, STUDIOCANAL today announces its intention to release the most complete version of the film possible. The now widely lauded film was released with minimal promotion in 1973 as second feature of a double bill with Don’t Look Now. The version exhibited to audiences was significantly shorter than director Robin Hardy’s original vision. In what has now become an apocryphal episode in British film history, the negatives disappeared from storage at Shepperton Studios, were then allegedly used as landfill in the construction of the nearby M4 motorway, and are considered lost forever.

STUDIOCANAL are now appealing worldwide to film collectors, historians, programmers and all-round fans to support the campaign and come forward with any information relating to the potential whereabouts of original materials.

Director Robin Hardy comments: “I never thought that, after forty years, they would still be finding lost fragments of my film, we thought all of The Wicker Man had gone up in flames, but fragments keep turning up and the hunt goes on!”

STUDIOCANAL General Manager UK Home Entertainment John Rodden adds: “The Wicker Man is not only a great horror film; it is a true classic that grows in stature as the years pass. We’re now appealing to the public to help us create the most definitive version possible.”

A special Facebook page has been created to serve as a forum for the search to continue. For further updates and to join the conversation with any news please visit:https://www.facebook.com/WickerManAppeal

More details about the history of the various cuts of the film are below.

THE WICKER MAN: A SHORT HISTORY:

In 1973, Robin Hardy’s debut film THE WICKER MAN fell victim to a boardroom takeover at distribution company British Lion, and had its release temporarily shelved. A finished version of the film that director Hardy was happy with had been delivered with a running time of 102 minutes.

When it did finally reach UK cinemas that year, with little fanfare or promotion, and as part of a Double Bill with DON’T LOOK NOW, 15 minutes had been cut, leaving the film’s running time a trim 88 minutes. Director Robin Hardy and the other filmmakers had not been involved and did not approve of this new version.

A few years later when Hardy tried to track down his original version, he was told that all the negative trims from it that had been stored at Shepperton Studios had been thrown away, and the only “original negative” was now the 88-minute version. He finally managed to ascertain that Cult US Director Roger Corman still had a print of the full-length version, and this was used for the US theatrical release. Corman’s print has been missing since the 1980’s and only poor quality 1” video material is known to exist of this version.

http://www.showfilmfirst.com/the-wicker-man/