Revisiting how the dropping/rearranging of scenes definitely gives some wrong impressions in both shorter versions of the film;
I've been dancing around the subject for days, but thanks to James Aubrey's insanity, much of what we've been dealing with lately is either jumbled around in the film as it currently stands, or it's completely missing.
Case in point, the only part of Scene 227 that currently appears in the film is Tracy on the floor after the white mist has disappeared, which is then followed by an obvious cut to Quentin kneeling down to revive Tracy and cradle her as she sobs. And what's worse is those two bits of Scene 227 appear after Scenes 237 through 240, which are currently cut to right after Quentin begs Tracy to answer him in Scene 225. And all that means that in the timeline of the current version of the film:
- Scene 225: Quentin begs Tracy to answer him because he can hear her screams as Angelique attacks her in the basement room that Angelique has trapped her.
- Scene 237: Alex searches the tower, sees the parapet door is open.
- Scenes 238-240: Alex finds Carlotta, but she jumps to her death at Angelique's urging.
- Scene 227: Quentin reaches Tracy.
And the problems with that rearrangement is that:
- It causes the audience to presume Carlotta's death allows Quentin to reach Tracy because, apparently, Angelique is no longer being kept alive by Carlotta.
- And quite possibly Angelique could be in two places at once: attacking Tracy AND urging Carlotta to jump. Though because we never do see Angelique's actual attack on Tracy like we do with her attack on Alex, one could at least presume that Angelique doesn't go to Carlotta until after she feels she's dispatched Tracy.
- But the truth is that all of those presumptions are wrong given what was actually scripted. Similar to her attack on Alex, Angelique's attack on Tracy is actually ended by light flooding the room (once the door to the room is finally opened) - and that happens before the seance and before Alex even encounters Carlotta.
- And something that's also quite interesting is that the zooming shot down to Carlotta's dead body on the ground -
- (that currently appears after the bits of Scene 227 - further reinforcing that it's Carlotta's death that saved Tracy) is unscripted. We can presume it might appear in the 129 minute version of the film after Scene 241 (Quentin revives/everything is declared as being over), but who knows...
And something that I think I didn't discover until today - or at least I didn't remember it until today when I watched the DVD/Blu-ray version of the sequence.
(I've edited out most of the Alex/Carlotta/Angelique sequence.)
First, the VHS version:
Then the Blu-Ray version:
Though I shouldn't be surprised that each version has something that the other doesn't, particularly because Darren has complained about how the DVD/Blu-ray version is missing much of its foley (the VHS has sounds of Quentin's movement as he enters the room, the DVD/Blu-ray doesn't).
And while others have complained that the holdover music cues at the beginnings of some scenes shouldn't be there in the DVD/Blu-ray version, and I supposed
technically they shouldn't, I enjoy the fact that they are because it lets us know how things play in the 129 minute version. But truthfully, who knows if there will ever be a version of NoDS in which everything that should be in place is in place regardless of which length of the film it is? As it is there are already three different versions out there (the VHS, the DVD/Blu-ray and the Amazon Prime/iTunes) none of which is completely correct...