January 14, 2003 Gangs before and after the cuts By David Poland of The Hot Button GANGS OF NEW YORK ANALYSIS: A while back, I wrote about the October 2002, 3-hour cut of Gangs of New York and the differences between it and the release version. Now that you’ve had a chance to see the film, I thought I would do a detailed analysis of the variations, just so there is a more definitive record of what I would love to see on DVD eventually. There are spoilers throughout, so beware…. The biggest changes in the final version of Gangs come in the first act. There is a lot of restructuring. The opening sequence in the cave and then in the Five Points hasn’t changed much. A few trims here and there and a few shots of extra violence have been removed. But nothing that really changes things. Two devices separate the two versions straight off. First, there is the DiCaprio voice-over which, with the exception of one sequence at the end of the film, doesn’t exist in the 2002 version. Second, Scorsese uses art cards from the era in the 2002 version that are used only two or three times in the release version. The biggest structural effort in the release version is that Scorsese and his editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, figured out a way to get Cameron Diaz into the movie much earlier. To do this, they chopped up a couple of scenes: the Tammany Hall meeting, the Five Points walk-through by Bill, and Amsterdam’s meeting with his thieving friends that ends up with him beating them up and moves on to the John C. Reilly get-his-cut sequence. The structure starts to match more at around the 45-minute mark, as Amsterdam watches Jenny steal from the uptown house. In this sequence, the release version has an extensive voice-over explaining what Jenny is doing. In the 2002 version, Jenny robs the house to a waltz, with a now missing line spoken by Scorsese himself. A maid tells him, “The upstairs maid has arrived.” And Scorsese responds, “We don’t have an upstairs maid.” A repeating change in the film comes up soon after. One of the distinct changes is removal of any acknowledgement that Jenny is a prostitute. This exchange has been removed from the film: Jenny: You want to do more than look it’ll cost you more than the price of that medal. Amsterdam: Well, I ain’t interested in that kind of romance. Jenny: Oh, I see. A man of god. Amsterdam: I don’t want to see you again. Jenny: Well, I don’t blame you. And they split. In the next Tammany Hall sequence, there is this bit of dialogue that’s gone. Talking about immigrants, Tweed says: “We can’t have them die off before the elections. Bill the city for $500 and you’ll get 10 percent for yourself.” Another repeating change is the removal of references to Roman Catholicism as an issue. In the dance sequence, a mother comes and gets her child out of the choir, the mother proclaiming the rest of the people “heathens.” In the Abraham Lincoln theater sequence, Bill screams, “Go live in Africa with your nigger friends!” Gone. When Jenny takes care of Amsterdam, after Bill has beaten him, she tells him about the money she’s saved, and that she’d saved the money by “bludgeoning and whoring and the rest.” In the release version, the whoring is gone. In the sequence in which the draft man explains the rules as Boss Tweed watched, Tweed spoke to the crowd in the 2002 version, saying, “Boys! The Union is in distress. You are bound by honor and love of country to fight in this time of crisis!” It’s gone now. Tweed also had this cut: “If he understood the true value of this kind of publicity, the archbishop himself would be shoulder to shoulder with half the Irish in New York.” Finally, there is the ending. The difference is huge, though I’m not 100% sure that I can explain why the change was made and what it is meant to mean. Like so much of the film, the re-cut took existing scenes that played out their little stories and chopped them into pieces that are rearranged throughout the sequence. This switches much around. But the biggest difference is in the death of Bill. But first, perhaps the most startling thing in all of Gangs of New York. When the cannonballs fly from the ships in the harbor, you might expect a whistle of a 30-pound ball or something. But if you listen closely to what is in the film, as everyone pauses in anticipation, the sound is that of a jet plane, followed by a crash… very much like the sound of the first airplane hitting the World Trade Center. Is it that actual sound of 9/11? I’m not sure. Jeffrey Wells will be trying to ask Thelma Schoonmaker about this later today. But it sure sounds like it could be a rather profound aural subtext. Now, about Bill’s death. In the 2002 version, Amsterdam and Bill rise from the explosion and, having lost their weapons, they wrestle aggressively in the dirt. Another explosion ends that. Then, separated by a couple of feet, Bill tells Amsterdam, “I’m glad I get to die a true American.” But unlike the release version, Bill not only hasn’t been wounded and is not already on his way to death, but he actually has a knife in his hand. While in the release print, Amsterdam eyes the wound, in the 2002 version, he has his eyes on Bill’s knife. And when Leo finally stabs Bill to death, Bill doesn’t defend himself, even though he is armed. Of course, in the release version, he is already dying of this wound and Leo finishes the unarmed Bill off, which feels like something about revenge more than about higher ideals. The effort to look at the two versions of the film side-by-side is seriously inhibited by the major structural changes that Scorsese has made in the film. Many of the scenes remain intact, but often in different places in the two films. Schoonmaker has also slices as much as five minutes out of the film by shortening lots of cuts by a second her and a second there. But the fact of the matter is, there isn’t a single change that I prefer. More to the point, the nature of the earlier draft is that Scorsese lets the scenes play out and then moves the story along. The Weinstein influence in the cutting room seems to clearly be about pacing. And I would continue to make the argument that the longer, more languorous version is significantly better. It’s not just 15 minutes more. It’s the entire spirit of the effort. Top of the Page

Back to Home || Back to GONY Articles