Before moving on to get into anything having to do with Scene 46, I want to revisit a few things about Scenes 41 - 45:
DISSOLVE TO:
41 EXT - FRONT OF COLLINWOOD - NIGHT - WIDE ANGLE 41
It is much later. The house is completely dark. The only sound is the GENTLE MOANING OF THE WIND. Suddenly the strange light we saw in the opening sequence begins to emanate from the Tower Room. CAMERA starts a SLOW ZOOM IN
42 INT - MASTER BEDROOM - NIGHT 42
Quentin and Tracy are asleep. The curtains billow gently at the windows. CAMERA STARTS A SLOW TRUCK IN on Quentin as he begins to stir restlessly in his sleep. Finally he rolls over on his back. His eyes are wide open and he seems to be listening intently to some unheard sound. Slowly he starts to rise from the bed as CAMERA TRUCKS back revealing Tracy still sound asleep. Quentin, now out of the bed and moving as if in a trance, puts on his robe and quietly EXITS the room.
43 INT - CORRIDOR - OUTSIDE MASTER BEDROOM - LOW 43 ANGLE
as Quentin ENTERS the shot PAN with him as he starts toward the stairway to the third floor.
44 EXT - COLLINWOOD - NIGHT 44
SHOT favors the windows of the Tower Room, they still glow faintly from the light within.
HOLD on this for a moment as Quentin suddenly appears near the windows and then moves out of
44 CONTD CONTD 44
sight toward another part of the room. RACK FOCUS to EXTREME CLOSE-UP of Gerard, who has been standing there watching, his eyes blazing with hatred.
DISSOLVE TO:
45 INT - MASTER BEDROOM - NIGHT 45
Tracy, alone in the bed, stirs, half awake. She reaches out for Quentin, awakens a little more, sees he is gone. Then she falls back to sleep.
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I suspect a shot that appears as the opening of the 1 minute NoDS trailer that's from the back of the house (and not the front) and which shows a zoom in on Collinwood's tower with a light moving across the windows -
- may have been Scene 41. Trouble is that scene probably only appeared in the 150 minute rough cut of the film that was only screened for production personnel because, as Darren Gross wrote on his Restoration Web site, it's footage that was not recovered when the 129 minute version of the film was found. In fact nothing from Scenes 41 - 45 was recovered:
The following is a list of scenes that are still lost and which are not present in the 129 min version recovered in 1999.
...
EXT- FRONT OF COLLINWOOD-NIGHT. The Tower begins to glow. INT. MASTER BEDROOM- Quentin rises in a trance and leaves. INT. CORRIDOR-NIGHT. Quentin walks towards stairway. EXT.COLLINWOOD-NIGHT. Quentin appears in tower window. GERARD watches.
And the main reason I don't think it matters that the shot is from the back (and not the front) is that there are other shots of Collinwood where it was scripted to be from a certain angle but in the film it's actually from a different angle.
And it's really quite unfortunate that Scene 44 didn't survive beyond the rough cut because it helps a great deal to explain Gerard's motivation in the film. But then, we all know how little character motivations mattered to DC when it comes to the two DS films.
It's also interesting that DC indicates in his script that he wanted Scene 45 to take place in the film after Quentin appears near the windows in Scene 44 and before the part of Scene 44 in which Gerard is seen in extreme close-up with hatred in his eyes. That probably would have been more effective. But it doesn't really matter because in the end none of it got into the film...