STACK Magazine November Issue 121

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DVD&BD
NOVEMBER 2014 JB Hi-Fi
FEATURE
078
visit
Steven
Spielberg
Director’s
Collection
is out now on
Blu-ray
realm of zany comedy, and Gale agrees
that it’s the director’s most atypical film.
“In terms of Steven doing broad comedy,
for a sustained amount of time, it is a
departure for him, and maybe the reception
that the movie got kept him away from that.”
1941 was poorly received by both critics
and audiences when it opened on 14
December 1979, but Gale is quick to point
out that the movie wasn’t the box-office
disaster many believe it to be. “It earned
a profit, it just wasn’t anywhere near as
profitable as Jaws and Close Encounters
were,” he explains. “So in American
baseball terminology, Steven hit two home
runs in a row and then 1941 was a single,
but not a strike out.”
Gale believes that if the film had been
released in a longer version initially, it may
not have been met with such a negative
response. “Steven was up against a hard
release date in 1979,” he says. “The movie
had been promoted and advertised as a
big Christmas release, and there was no
way he wasn’t going to get the movie out
for Christmas, and I think it got short shrift
in the editing room – a few more sneak
previews would have helped the movie,
I think. Steven was concerned about the
audience’s attention span – he wanted to
get right to as many action set pieces as
he could, and that was at the expense of
character development.
“One of the lessons that Bob [Zemeckis]
and I learned from that was to not be
afraid to take the right amount of time to
set things up, which of course we did with
Back to the Future. We spent all the time
that we needed with the McFly family in
1985 so that you understand everything
about them, so it all makes sense later on
when history starts to get messed up.”
At 146 minutes, the extended version
of 1941 runs significantly longer than the
theatrical cut (118 mins), with some major
character development and interplay
restored to the first hour. “You really get a
much better sense of who these characters
are and how all these events are building
and on a collision course,” notes Gale.
With the extended cut now available
on Blu-ray (together with the theatrical
version) as part of Universal’s Steven
Spielberg Director’s Collection box set,
1941 is ready for reappraisal. “I’m gratified
that Steven and Universal saw fit to
include the extended version,” says Gale,
“because I think people will watch that and
have a better opinion of the movie than
they did when it came out in the theatre.
“I watched the Blu-ray myself and
was elated at how good it looked,
how great it sounded, and how nicely
the movie flowed in the extended
edition. I was very proud of it –
I’d always felt that Steven had
cut some of the heart out of
the movie for the theatrical
version. But I feel much
better about it now.”
Steven hit two home runs in a
row and then 1941 was a single,
but not a strike out.