I've never read anything about a 127 min cut of the film. If you could please post the website with that information. In regards to flashbacks at the end, I do not remember seeing any flashbacks that were not in the 91 min. cut. In regards to the strange pictures surfacing of scenes not in the film, these are simply publicity shots. Many publicity shots are taken for cover reasons. The most famous publicity shot not shown in the film itself involves Laura & Fabrizio on the beach together. This, I believe is not evidence of another deleted scene but of an alternate cover. I have seen many American films with stills that were not in the film and were simply shot for promotional reasons.In regards to the film's original language, you are right it was not in Italian or German. However it was not in english either, it was in french. The official 91 min dvd version features the fully restored Frrench soundtrack along with alternate soundtracks dubbed in different languages. The only English is in regards to the subtitles.
Maladolescenza Deleted Scenes St
the offical dvd with french soundtrack does run around 91 min.I remember the flash back scene you are referring to as well. It seems it was complete on my DVD. There is two scenes where both Fabrizio & Silvia make love, both involves nudity and they are both laying down. I have seen the wikipedia sources quote as saying 127 min. but i am weary to accept this fact because it does not give an explanation as to the different censorship cuts. The most severe edit of this film I ever saw was with a running time of 78 min.
What is this "official" dvd with French language? Produced by...?I am just curious to know whether the film was actually released at 127 minutes before censorship, in which case the deleted footage will likely reside in archives somewhere, as opposed to mere editing when it would probably be destroyed. The quotation 127 minutes in many sources suggests the former.Somehow I doubt we are ever going to see the Director's Cut of this one!
and if there was a version with an additional half hour of more graphic sex scenes that would really be stepping over the line of decency and people would lose respect for it's artistic value. how can anybody believe that there could exist an even more explicit version of THIS film??
@ hodkinn - I'm glad someone else thinks the original language looks like English! Love to know... @ kalvinharp, we're still asking about this "official" French edition of yours...@ asgardsreil - I agree with your comments. This film affected me in a similar way, and a movie that is so affecting has to have some artistic worth. I happen to think it's rather good, totally unique, too explicit but if it drives a few moralnuts to apoplexy then that's a price well worth paying :-)However, you are both assuming that any "cut" material was even more explicit and this does not have to be the case. It could just be fairly uneventful scenes, whose omission does not remove any "action" but does upset the narrative flow. The film I have in the back of my mind is "The Wicker Man" (1973), another cult classic from the same year, where the production company butchered the film before release. Some of the missing material (about 15 minutes) has been restored, adding so much to the logic of the story overall. However there is still more footage that is probably lost forever, which would be even more valuable (the scripts are available, unlike Maladolescenza). My feeling is that there are "non-sequiturs" in Maladolescenza that suggest cut footage, but I may be wrong. As you say, it will probably remain a mystery ... unless the full story becomes known one day. Surely someone who was involved in the enterprise would love to talk about it now?
Finally learning more and more about this unique film, which is no easy task, I can assure you. I've been learning more and more about its creator, Pier Giuseppe Murgia, and his original intent. It seems very nearly everyone is waayyy off. For some reason that I'm unsure of, he looks different than I thought he would. To me, in 1977, he bore a vaguely passing resemblance to Christopher Nolan of today, LOL! He was a blonde haired, blue eyed, clean cut guy, with hipster bangs and a black leather jacket. He also has a prominent, pouty-looking bottom lip. He was born in Italy in 1940, and was originally more of a novelist than a filmmaker. In 1960, at just the age of 20, he published his first novel, called "Il Ragazzo di Fuoco" ("The Boys of Fire"), and apparently it was quite scandalous. A year later, he published a collection of short stories, in 1961 when he was 21, it was called...are you ready?... "La Mala Adolescenza" ("The Bad Adolescents"), and was not connected to the later film of a similar title except that it was about troubled teens and had sex and violence in it. But these were BOOKS, not films, and the writer was quite young himself, so there wasn't really too much trouble. Apparently, though, most of his writings during this period dealt with young people and sex and other scandalous things. His other books followed, and he also regularly contributed poetry and short stories to various literary magazines and such in Italy at the time. He published another book, called "Il Buoncostume", as well as a book of stories called, "Chronicles of Fascism After the Resistance: 1945-1950". His first foray into screenwriting came in 1974, when he co-wrote a script called, "Bali". He worked on several other scripts and even dabbled in still art photography in the mid-70s. Finally, he wrote and directed his first feature film, "Maladolescenza", in 1976. It was released in 1977. Now, as for the film itself, no one of today that I have come across has quite interpreted it properly, with regard to Murgia's original intentions. His ambitions, it seems, were far greater than anyone really has caught onto today. Regardless of the now endless debates about the film's morality, of the morality of using actors THAT young in simulated sexual scenes, or of the film's legality in today's world, the original intent of Murgia (which I have constantly seen people wonder about in these boards), had little to do with that. In addition, this film is not merely a tender "coming-of-age" story, or a story about painful rites of passage, or a study of juvenile bullying, like many of its supporters claim. It was also not intended, at least not conciously or overtly it seems, as titilation or child pornography, either. Murgia explained in 1977 that the film is a dreamlike, fairy-tale-like metaphor for fascism and its corruption of the innocent. (Now, honestly, who really in these boards understood THAT?!?). It's all about context, it seems. Remember, this was an era when Pier Paolo Pasolini had just made "Salo", and Bertolucci had made films like "The Conformist" and "Novecento/1900". And the communists/socialists/intellectuals/artists of post-WWII Italy were in full swing. The film is a character study of a typical 70s anti-hero (Murgia likened Fabrizio to Travis Bickle!!!), who is not supposed to be entirely sympathetic. Fabrizio represents the "angry young man" of the proletariat, working classes. Lara Wendel's Laura represents the working class innocent, and Sylvia represents the spoiled, cruel, lazy, bratty child of the bourgousie fascists. Fabrizio draws nearer and nearer to the cruelty and opportunism that led so many angry young men to embrace anarchic fascism and Nazism with an unholy furor, and they represented a "rape" of the innocence and purity of the proletariat, or working classes. The fascists, represented by Sylvia, used pretty packaging and manipulation and cruelty to "lure" the angry young men into the fold, and used their advantages to have power over the young men, who then imitated this, and used a false sense of their own power to further abuse the "weak" in their midst. Laura represents the genuine, the pure, the loving, even more mature, the voice of reason, of conscience, the maternal, the motherly, who is continuously raped, abused, mocked by the fasicst and her slave, who thinks HE'S in charge. If there is intended to be a sympathetic protaganist, it is Laura, but even then she is indicted to a degree for being the too-willing victim. Ultimately, we see the fall of fascism in Sylvia's death, and the shame and regret and lonliness and fall from grace of the followers through Fabrizio, and the ultimate re-emergence and survival of Laura, who is still loving and forgiving. All the while the sex is merely representative of the abuse of commodities to abuse power, like in Pasolini's "Salo". In other words, no way is this sex supposed to be erotic, in any way shape or form. The first sex scene (in the cave)is an all out violation of Laura, and the later sex scene is a punishment, a shaming of Laura. The frolicking about and cavorting of Fabrizio and Sylvia after that, which appears to have erotic intent, is still intended as illusory. Fabrizio is living in a fake world of fake comforts, outwardly rejecting conformity (ie, living in the forest), while hypocritically embracing it, frolicking with the girl who represents it. He first breaks the window of the people in the fancy tower, and later can't bring himself to. Laura is the only one of consistently good character. Other little nuances include the boy using his dog to terrorize Laura. (ie the Nazis using German shepherds to hunt their prey). There is also a reason this film was a GERMAN-ITALIAN production. See the connection? In the end, one can debate the morality/legality of using young kids in the film, but there is certainly one thing that is clear: Murgia most certainly had a serious, political, and artistic intent when he made the film. That much is certain. All of this massive description pretty much comes from Murgia himself, in the Italian press, circa 1977. Sadly, removed from the context of that time and political understanding, this film ,like "Salo", is likely to be misunderstood completely, with people focusing entirely on the "lurid" content and the "shock value". Surprisingly, a clear understanding of the film doesn't necessarily save it, either. That seems to be the case with a judge in the Netherlands, who was among the judges who declared the film "child pornography" there in 2010. This judge argued that he understood the film completely, but that that only made it worse to him. He says that, in trying to make a film about the human exploitation committed by fascists, when using children to metaphorically act out this exploitation, the filmmakers have inadvertantly made a film that, by its own admission, is literally ABOUT the exploitation of children. Not sure if I agree with his conclusion there, but it is ceratinly food for thought. I have a much deeper understanding of what the film is actually supposed to be about now, after tons of curious, exhaustive research. Incidentally, Pier Giuseppe Murgia actually has an official website now! Likely due to the renewed interest in this film in recent years. It is simply wwww.piergiuseppemurgia.com I know this was a helluva long post, but I hope it was the most helpful post these boards have seen yet!!! 2ff7e9595c
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