If you got to this page without having read Part 1 of the Caligula saga, you need to click here

Click here to return to main Tinto Brass page

Did you happen to record Monty Python’s Flying Circus when it was shown on PBS back in the 1970s? Do you still have the tapes? Is there a TIME LIFE logo at the end? If so, please write to me. Thank you!

The Mythical 210-Minute Version

Caligula received its world première at three private screenings during the May 1979 Cannes trade festival (as distinct from the concurrent Cannes Film Festival):

A few months later the weekly edition of Variety said something even more enticing:

Of course, “Werb” did not see the version presented Cannes. Nobody from Variety saw it at Cannes or was permitted to see it at Cannes. By the end of 1978 Caligula was pretty much in the form in which we now have it, about 156 minutes. So what’s all this about a 210-minute version screened half a year later? A claim of 210 minutes seems a bit extreme. Were, perhaps, the numerous deleted scenes, many of whose publicity stills were published in the May 1980 Penthouse and elsewhere, put back in to the print screened at Cannes? That would seem to be a reasonable assumption, yet that is certainly NOT what happened. Nonetheless, this unsubstantiated passing reference has gone into film history, and “sources” from the half-fictional Ultimate Porno to countless official listings matter-of-factly state that the print at Cannes was 210 minutes. Other sources mangle things, and state that the 210-minute version was actually released. How these stories grow! In a desire to leave no stone unturned, back in about 1985 or 1986 I tried my luck. I called Penthouse International and asked if I could get permission to view the 210-minute version. The fellow who took my call (I wish I could remember his name) went silent for a moment, and then sounded totally confused. “What 210-minute version?” Was I perhaps referring to a rough cut? No, I said, I was referring to the version shown at Cannes in May 1979. He then sounded even more confused. But, he explained, the version shown there was exactly the same as the version released in the US in February 1980, which had been prepared and completed long before May 1979. When I told him that Variety reported otherwise, he seemed to figure out what went wrong, and attributed the mistaken running time to a typo. That would seem to make perfect sense. Someone means to type “2 ½ hours” but mistakenly types “3 ½ hours” instead—and voilà, history is invented. In any case, from that day until 3 April 2003, I dismissed claims of a 210-minute version. But then I discovered Noel Bailey’s review of the film on the Internet Movie Database, in which he claims to have seen it. Take a look:

Certain that he was mistaken, I wrote to him, and he replied as follows:

Well, to put it mildly, I was flabbergasted! If this report is true, then the print must have been made by some employee of the lab that had performed the negative cutting and was currently holding that edited negative, GTC-CTM Laboratories (1, quai Gabriel-Peri, 94340 Joinville-le-Pont; JG Noel, president of the board; Michel Kaganski, executive director; Jimmy De Brabant, contact; it was this lab that had supplied all prints for the first release). On Thursday, 17 April 2003 I wrote back, asking for particulars on the when’s and where’s and how’s, and especially about how the exhibitors announced it without getting caught, and how they got everyone to keep quiet about it. He replied:

So the claim of “over 210 minutes” is here modified to “well over three hours” with the proviso that the person making the claim was inebriated both times he saw it. What the “visceral violence... [v]iolence you just wouldn’t credit to being filmable” might have been remains a mystery. Tinto shot only one violent moment that was deleted from the final film, and we can see that one moment in the supplements to the deluxe “Imperial Edition” DVD box sets. That, of course, was the sacrifice of the priest rather than the bull. As for Guccione’s “additional scenes,” well, those consisted only of sex, not violence. I showed Noel some photos of 35mm projectors and 16mm projectors, and that’s when he realized that he had been speaking of a 16mm print after all. Noel saw that 16mm pirated print first in late 1979 in a London club, and then later, at some time in 1980, at a private gathering in a house in Sydney. Now, it would not surprise me in the least if a 16mm bootleg had been circulating as early as 1979. The editing and mixing had been completed and the answer print had been delivered by mid-March of that year. There was nothing to stop a technician from sneaking into the GTC-CTM lab late at night and running off a 16mm print to show to his buddies or to sell on the black market. Maybe he didn’t even do it late at night. Maybe he did it during work hours when he knew that nobody would have any reason to question him. And there is no reason why such a print would not have been screened at a sleazy London pub late at night or at a private house in Sydney in 1980, prior to its release in the UK or Australia. If such a print was actually shown, there would be every reason for the program host to introduce it by saying that there were those who would deny its existence. Such a statement could have multiple nonoverlapping meanings, and could easily be misunderstood. It could mean that because the film on view was not available for release, the distributor was denying that it could possibly be seen at such an early date. Or it could mean that the producers or the pirates were denying the existence of the 16mm bootleg. Such a statement could — and almost certainly would — be misunderstood by noninitiates in the audience as meaning that there were authorities who denied the existence of the film itself, not merely the particular print or availability of the film. For casual movie fans accustomed only to the bland Hollywood diet of cops and robbers and car chases and puppy love, a movie that depicted a disembowelment (obviously faked), sex and orgies (mostly mimed and with a few surprisingly convincing prosthetics), a (mimed) rape, a (very phony) castration, a (mimed) torture, the mocking of a corpse (portrayed by an actor playing dead), and a scene of multiple beheadings (of obvious dummies) could come as quite a shock to the system. Those who had grown up on The Wizard of Oz and The Maltese Falcon and My Foolish Heart or even The Last Picture Show would have been in for a rude shock, and they might well remember the film as being far more outrageous than it really was. Indeed, that was a frequent response heard from many who saw Caligula in 1980 and 1981. (And indeed, that was a frequent response heard from many who were deeply shocked by Monty Python and the Holy Grail in 1975.) The problem is what Noel remembers about that 16mm bootleg, as well as what he misremembers about the edition of the film screened publicly at the Barclay in Sydney “the following year,” by which he meant the year following the time he first saw it in London in late 1979. Actually, it was not “the following year”; it opened at the Barclay on 19 June 1981. He also remembers the print that played the Barclay as having “barely topped 120 mins.” In fact, it was 149 minutes long, with a few objectionable sequences shortened and others softened by the use of alternative footage, but still, all things considered, basically the same as the 156-minute version screened in the US. With the most sensational images slightly diluted, it would not be surprising if a viewer were to think he was watching an abridgment. When Noel finally saw the Beta edition as released in the US, which was the 156-minute version (but time-compressed to 148 minutes), it would not surprise me if, now that he was used to the thing, it no longer looked nearly as sensational, leading him to believe that, once again, he was watching an abridgment. So for the sake of argument, let us assume that Noel is being honest, if perhaps mistaken in his recall of events that took place years ago while he was under the influence. We can then turn to another source that would seem to confirm Noel’s recollections. Check out the interview with a fellow to whom the Caligula SuperSite provides the protective pseudonym of Lucky Fellows. He appeared in Guccione’s inserts, and states:

Assuming that this extra was being honest, it is clear that he was reaching into the recesses of 20+ years of his memory to recollect that the Cannes edition was “three and a half hours long.” But in those 20+ years the “three and a half hours” claim had been published far and wide, and could well have influenced his memory.

For the sake of argument, let us assume, for the moment, that there actually was a 210-minute version or something like it. If there was, my basic question remains unanswered: What was in that extra hour? Could it have been the Temple of Jupiter? The Consulship of Incitatus? More of Tiberius’s torture ward? More of Tiberius’s sex slaves? Caligula’s massage? Caligula’s destruction of his own statues? Some other long-missing sequences? The answer is definitive: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! The negatives of those scenes had never been edited, the music had never been composed, the dialogue had never been revoiced. Those sequences were NEVER shown prior to late 2007, when excerpts from work prints and rough cuts and raw footage were allowed out of the vaults. Besides, the edited movie NEVER ran much over two and a half hours. So what on earth would this have been? A padded version, maybe, with another 54 minutes of porn, shot by Guccione, spliced into a print of the film? To say the very least, that does not seem at all likely.

Considering all the information above, it would seem reasonable to conclude that the longest version of Caligula ever screened anywhere was 156 minutes, and that any claims of longer editions are so suspect that they should be dismissed. BUT... along comes some different information, which we were not expecting, and it comes from a reliable source. Let’s look at some interviews given by Malcolm McDowell:

So far it looks like he’s exaggerating, to say the least, because there are only about six minutes of hardcore in the movie, and the editors in London never — NEVER! — included more than about six minutes of hardcore in any copy of the film, no matter how rough or early or preliminary. At least we now know from this quote a detail we never had before: McDowell’s agent, David Wardlow, accompanied him. But then years later McDowell added a statement and changed his story, and with this the pieces begin to come together:

What on earth does that mean? There were no sneak previews. Bob Guccione was adamant about never sneak-previewing the film and about never permitting press screenings. So McDowell must have crashed a private trade screening (for distributors, exhibitors, and select VIPs). There were several trade screenings, first in London in November 1978 (an unfinished work print), then in Cannes in May 1979, and then in various locations in the US for the remainder of 1979. The Penthouse people would certainly have been gatekeepers at all the trade screenings, and they certainly would have wanted to keep a gate-crasher out. Guccione would also have been at most or all of the trade screenings as well. This begins to make some sense! But how did the “twenty minutes of porn” suddenly become “two 20-minute segments of hard-core porn”? Simple. Ten years had passed, and McDowell’s memory was acting up. He remembered that there were two porn sequences, and he remembered something about twenty minutes. He merely conflated the two memories. Either that or he was misquoted.

Even more confusing is his statement that the “second time around they had taken out the porn and it was much better.” What was this second time around? Was he talking about the R-rated version? No, he was not. If we leaf back through ten years of dusty pages, we find yet another statement he made, which helps put things into perspective:

Now at last we can begin to understand. He had gate-crashed a private trade screening in 1979 in Hollywood, but he could not possibly have “anted up at the boxoffice” when he saw it that day, because boxoffices are closed for private trade screenings. Admission to trade screenings is free but not open to the public. So what was this about anting up at the boxoffice to purchase a ticket? He “anted up at the boxoffice” when he went to see it the “second time around,” and the “second time around,” as we can see from the date of the article, was in the first part of 1980, prior to 7 April 1980. That’s when “they had taken out the porn and it was much better,” though still not at all good, if we are to judge from his other statements. Caligula had not yet opened in Hollywood by 7 April 1980, and so that means that there were only three cinemas anywhere in the world where he could have seen the movie: The Penthouse East in Manhattan NY, the Lumiere in San Francisco CA, or the Georgetown in Washington DC. Considering that he and Mary Steenburgen were living in an apartment in NYC in 1980 because he was soon to appear off-Broadway in Look Back in Anger, he probably saw the movie at the Penthouse East, though that is by no means certain.

Let’s do some arithmetic. The usual 156-minute version has about six minutes of porn. If McDowell saw 20 minutes, and if the print was like the usual one in every other way, then it ran about 170 minutes. That tallies nicely with the only known review of the print shown at the Cannes Trade Festival. The Cannes screenings were strictly off-limits to the press, and so how a journalist was able to gain admission remains unanswered (assuming he really did get to see it at Cannes and is not simply playing a trick on us). In a British skin mag called Fiesta, staff journalist Bobby Dupea wrote a scathing attack on censorship, condemning the BBFC for demanding cuts and condemning Guccione twice as much for going along with them. He compared the British release version with the “original” that he had seen at Cannes, and which he assumed — assumed — was identical to the edition released in the US.

I would like to chat with Bobby Dupea. So Mr Dupea, if you chance upon this page, please write to me. A million thanks!

If these sources are, in essence, correct, then the trade-show print ran just shy of three hours, with an extra 15 minutes or so of the lesbian tryst and the Imperial Brothel. That would mean that after editing had been completed, and after the final 156-minute version settled upon, Guccione would have hired a fly-by-night editor to go to Joinville-le-Pont to run off a padded print with extra materials. Since the dialogue and music and effects tracks had never been recorded for a padded version, in all likelihood the soundtrack was artifically lengthened for the extended sequences. That would not have been at all difficult. The lesbian tryst had no sound to speak of, and the ominous music could easily have been extended by repeating passages; and as for the Imperial Brothel, it would have been easy to re-edit the percussion music and extend it 10 minutes or 15 minutes or even more, without the audio splices being noticeable. Actually, the Imperial Brothel scene was greatly padded even in the 156-minute version. It should have run no more than three or four minutes, but with the needless additions, it was stretched out to 11 minutes. To accomplish this, Malcolm’s ten-in-one carnival-talker routine (“Only five gold pieces!”) had been extended by what would now be called sampling, and such sampling could have been continued ad infinitum. This would not have been a challenge for a competent sound editor, for at that time all the master tapes were still on file and could without difficulty have been re-edited and remixed.

But how much can we rely on these third-hand sources? Todd McCarthy, in “Penthouse’s $16 mil ‘Caligula’ Done but Pent-Up” (Daily Variety, 12 July 1979), reported as best he could on the Cannes screenings to which he was not permitted. He also reported on the screening in Brooklyn at the US Attorney General’s Office (New York Eastern District) as well as on the screening in Washington DC for the US Department of Justice. His unwritten conclusion is that all three screenings were identical, with a “151-minute running time.” Where did that 151-minute figure come from? Who knows? Since no one from Variety was permitted anywhere near the film, the journalists had to rely on the best information they could gather. McCarthy probably got that figure from someone who had seen the version screened for the US Attorney General or the US Department of Justice, and by the time it reached him, it had probably gotten a little bit garbled. Also, it is by no means out of the realm of possibility that the print seized by US Customs and screened at the US Attorney General’s office and for the US Department of Justice was a decoy, a somewhat “cleaned-up” or “cooled-down” version, with five minutes or so of needlessly redundant porn deleted. After it had been cleared, of course, more prints would have been flown in from Joinville-le-Pont, now with the extra footage, and there would have been no troubles at Customs. This, of course, is all conjecture. If you have access to the files relating to the Customs seizure, or to the AG or DOJ files relating to these screenings and the clearance, please write to me. I think we’ll become friends. Thanks!

In his commentary track on the Imperial Edition DVD, former Penthouse journalist Ernest Volkman claimed that the trade-show print, from the very first, had run four hours, with the extra 84 minutes consisting only of porno padding. He is certainly wrong about that. The first trade screenings in London in November 1978 were essentially the movie as we now have it, though minus most of the music and with a few scenes in a different order, and I doubt that Volkman was in attendance. If we are to give Volkman the benefit of the doubt, then he probably caught later trade screenings, and years afterwards he must have misrecalled what exactly he saw where and when, after which his imagination took over.

Yet none of the above correlates to the claim of a 210-minute print shown at Cannes in May 1979. Variety is not known for inaccuracies, not even small inaccuracies. Yes, the Variety people are human, and they make mistakes, and they have been fooled at times, but a running time is not something about which Variety would normally make an error. But as we see, not only did Variety make an error with Caligula’s running time, Variety made TWO errors! We just might have the missing piece of the puzzle, though. Nobody from Variety was at the Cannes screening, and so unbeknownst to its staff writers, the Cannes screening included some preliminary version of Giancarlo Lui’s behind-the-scenes documentary. That little bit of information was never known until documentation was unearthed in the vaults that indicated the screening program. (I would love to see that documentation with my own two eyes, but, alas, those documents are still locked away in the vaults, and I’m still locked away outside of the vaults. I have to rely on the word of a trustworthy colleague who saw those documents.) The release version of Lui’s documentary runs about an hour. How long the preliminary Cannes version ran, we do not know, but combined with the feature, the program may well have totaled 210 minutes.

So, if we are to trust Malcolm McDowell’s word (and I do), there was indeed a slightly longer padded version floating around prior to the release. Was this padded version shown at Cannes? Maybe. Maybe not. Did the 16mm bootleg that Noel Bailey saw derive from the padded version? Quite possibly, but maybe not. Can we find this padded version? I am not too sanguine about the prospect. There is now no trace of any version longer than the usual 156-minute version in the Penthouse vaults. The whereabouts of the trade-show print are unknown. The 16mm bootleg in all probability was a one-off print directly from a 35mm CRI. If there were more than one 16mm print, that would have required the creation of a 16mm dupe neg from a 35mm interpositive, and I doubt that an employee at the GTC-CTM Lab would have had the luxury of creating such while under the not-so-watchful eye of a supervisor. He would instead have quietly run off a 16mm pos from a 35mm neg while working on other projects, and then developed it and breathed a sigh of relief at not having been caught. There is a possibility, of course, that further 16mm copies were derived from the 16mm bootleg, though they would have looked awful. The print that Noel saw has probably been chewed to oblivion by now, or it’s in the closet of a collector who doesn’t realize exactly what he has. If you have any clues as to where any work prints, longer prints, the trade print, the print seized by Customs, or the bootleg print might be found, please write to me! Many, many thanks!

There are persistent claims that prints circulated showing an extra moment in the beauty-cream sequence, in which Ennia mimes pouring the goblet over her face. As far as I can tell, that is only a rumor, an urban myth that eventually saw its way into print in Tom Dewe Mathews’ Censored: A History of British Film Censorship (1994). Unless someone can find that footage and demonstrate that it ever existed, we would do best to ignore the story, as there is no evidence for it anywhere. Also, a misprint has been replicated for far too long. The print that the BBFC received from Penthouse was exactly the same as the print shown in the US, 155 minutes and 50 seconds. It did not run 160 minutes. The claim of 160 minutes was just a typographical error, nothing more.

NOTE ADDED THURSDAY, 1 NOVEMBER 2007: Maarten van Druten of UltraGore Pictures is actively on the lookout for more Caligulan footage and for any trade prints that may have been different from the versions now available. He has even devoted a web page to this material, which is no longer in the Penthouse vaults.

Click here to read Stuart Urban’s reminiscences about being an assistant to Tinto Brass’s Caligula editing team