Sweet Charity (1969): The Perfect Cut

[Wraith]

There are a number of great things about Sweet Charity….

Bob Fosse
Shirley MacLaine
Ricardo Montalban
And and what should have been an Oscar winning 10 min cameo by Sammy Davis Jr (which is worth it all on its own).

This is one of my PERFECT MOVIES.

So why create a fanedit?

Well, Fosse (to his directorial credit) found the original ending too ideal and reshot it to be more in tune with where society and the world was at in the late 60s…realism!

I was 7 when I first saw this, and I was already a big MGM musical fan…Gene Kelly especially…(The Three Musketeers … no dancing)

I had already sat though the dreary Oliver the year before and dreaded seeing another boring musical like Dr Doolittle from the year before that (as a birthday treat… YUK) but Sweet Charity floored me then…and still wows me every time I watch it. I’ve lost count how many time I’ve put it on just to watch THE ALOOF, If the could see me now, and SAMMY!!!!

The only let down fir 7yr old WRAITH was the ending… I hated it. Now, I’m all grown up and it has settled with me and it is the right ending for this “fairy tale”.

But…..

Then I read about an alternate ending…and when I finally saw it that 7 year old awoke in me…
Perfection (in my child eye)…so straight away I made an edit from the dvd. Then the blu ray came out, and I thought the footage would be carried over in std def… but it was in HD to my delight.

So here I assembled it again…

And now, from my archive, you too can share in that childlike joy and all the other musical and choreographically wondrous moments peaking with Sammy Davis jr rendition of The Rhythm of Life…

Dropping this weekend!

W

 

[Dwight Fry]

I much prefer the theatrical ending (which is also the ending of the original play), big cynic that I am, but then I was considerably older than 7 when I first watched this. But this is a great movie in any form and I'll welcome this version as an "alternate universe" approach, trying to watch it through the eyes of a (quite old) child.

 

[Wraith]

Even now I’m watching Sammy …and film version of that song is sensational…the version on the cd is a poor anaemia shadow of that sensational 8 mins that should have won him an Oscar frankly..and he did not even get nominated…

 

[Wraith]

Simple though this was conceptually to execute, there was something REALLY odd about how this was encoded which led to some strange frame transpositions occuring at edit points..notably during the captions and break points...really bizarre...

Although this was in my archive, I had to re-render it since something in the settings led to this issue being hard coded into the new render so all the transitions etc had to be rebuilt again from scratch and pre-rendered and dropped into the timeline prior to final render. I had this issue when I first made this edit, but I wanted to provide a higher encode bitrate for the mp4, so I needed to re-render the master rather than pull the file from my edit blu ray...which would have been a second generation pass and intorduces softness if used as a conversion source....

So much for a quick one....

 

[lapis molari]

I favor more Sammy Davis Jr! That man was an incredible performer, entertainer, professional. I had the pleasure of seeing him on stage in '89. His act included an homage to Michael Jackson, with Sammy doing the moonwalk and ending the song with/in a jump split (at age 63!).

 

[Wraith]

I favor more Sammy Davis Jr! That man was an incredible performer, entertainer, professional. I had the pleasure of seeing him on stage in '89. His act included an homage to Michael Jackson, with Sammy doing the moonwalk and ending the song with/in a jump split (at age 63!).

Agree...A true all rounder ...
I've watch half a dozen renditions of Mr Bojangles over the past few days... I tear up on EVERY one of them...

But then there is a little known movie for TV...POOR DEVIL...What a hoot...

 

[Wraith]

I have just become aware that this EDIT is in fact commercially available on a KINO LORBER release as a bonus disc of the restored ROADSHOW VERSION of Sweet Charity.

HAving made this edit where the ending was a bonus feature on an alternate earlier release, I have now purchased the newer release and will ask that this edit be withdrwarn from the listings.

 

[Wraith]

This edit had been withdrawn due to the discovery that it is actually commercially available on Blu Ray in a KINO LORBER release as a bonus disc.