Cinema
The Wicker Man
Robin Hardy · 1973
Synopsis
Sergeant Neil Howie, a Scottish policeman and fervent Christian, arrives alone by seaplane on Summerisle, an island in the Hebrides, with an anonymous letter in his pocket: a girl, Rowan Morrison, is said to have disappeared there. At the harbour, he is told that no one lands without written permission, and no one recognises the child in the photograph. At the mother's house, he is shown another little girl and told that the girl in the photograph is not from the house. He notes everything: the couples embracing outside at night, what is taught to the children at school, the toad put in a child's mouth to cure her throat.
Context
The film comes from a book by David Pinner published in 1967. Its new owners judged it unsellable, cut it from nearly a hundred minutes to eighty-seven and released it as the second feature on a double bill, behind another English film in this catalogue. Most of what was cut is lost; it is reported that the negative was used as landfill under a motorway, though the sources do not agree on which one. A copy found in the United States allowed a new cut in 2013, without the lost scenes. It is also reported that an affair between the producer and an actress in the film had angered her husband, who ran the programming of a major cinema circuit.
Who it is for
Eighty-seven minutes in the 1973 version, a little over ninety in the 2013 cut; in English with subtitles or in a French-language version. It is in part a musical film.
Prizes and reception
Judged unsellable in 1973, it is now counted among the three founding films of British rural horror.
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