A couple of evenings ago we viewed our marketing print of Once upon a time in the West. Sergio Leone's classic epic Western and, in my view, one of the best westerns ever made with one of the best soundtracks ever produced by the brilliant Ennio Morricone.
As with many marketing prints the editing is pretty poor. If you have seen, and know the feature then this is a satisfactory souvenir of the movie. If you havnt seen the feature then there are several parts where you will be wondering what is going on. I will never understand how marketing could have got so many of their 3 x 400ft featurettes so badly wrong with the editing. They had some of the best 8mm titles in their offerings. The idea of putting titles on each part was a waste of footage, the titles were choppy on the first batch of releases but utterly poor on the second batch where originals were replaced by letraset titles. As for the ending!!! In the case of this title, there isn't one, it literally just cuts off and the screen goes blank, the spare titles from one of the other reels had to be used to make it look like an ending.
We have enjoyed this version of this movie since its first release around 40 years ago, it is in very good condition with some light fade. I just wish i could understand the German editor of marketing, so many great opportunities to do it so well but so many failures in the editing department. This title especially.

There were a few titles where the editing was ok but there were many more where it was very choppy in parts or where the film makes no sense.

Here are the screenshots for those who may be interested.

Once upon a time in the West Marketing release 800ft

It seems to me, with 3x400 foot to play with, you would have to go out of your way to produce a bad digest. I have never seen this digest, but apparently they missed the mark. (I have the movie on DVD.)

The Castle editors were the masters. Even their 8 minute digest mostly work!

The Univerasal 8 editors often missed the mark with the comedy classics of the 30s and 40s, but they mostly hit the mark with their 2x400 foot color releases of recent (at the time) movies. THE STING is probably the best example I've seen. You can show that one to anyone who hasn't seen the full movie and you don't feel like you've missed anything.

Such a masterpiece of a movie, and with epic length, would be difficult to digest.

So, I just re-read this-I said 3x400, but was it just 2x400, or is it that all 3 reels only add up to enough to fit on an 800 foot reel?

I haven't watched my DVD in ages -- perhaps worth another viewing to see if I feel you could do it decently in about 45-60 minutes.

These Marketing Films were on thin polyester stock. The 400ft (7") reels even had wider edges on the outside so you couldn't see the film. Totally agree about the editing and letraset type titles. War Of The Worlds was edited OK and I think When Worlds Collide too. Always thought on digests with more than one reel they obly needed one set of titles.

Our 3 x 400 version of this film fits onto 1 x 800ft. All the marketing 3 x 400s do fit on one large reel. There are a couple of titles where it is a very full reel but generally they fit fit fine.

The marketing editors in my view, were one of the worst. After some feedback from there first batch of titles where they were told the main front titles were a bit too short and lacked the logos, they decided on the second batch of titles to completely do away with any of the original titles and instead put on cheap and nasty looking letraset titles instead!
There are a few titles where they did get it right, War of the worlds, When worlds collide and the Hunter were quite well edited, but this title from a three hour movie was hopelessly edited. It's still a good viewing but you do need to have seen the feature to get it.
They did issue the paramount logo's for free for a while which we got via Derann when you bought a new edit.
We also have this film on a disc as the full feature on 8mm would be very expensive and spend most of its life sat on a shelf.

We do also have the trailer to this film which has outstanding quality, the master material has some wear in it but it looks good in scope. Reviewed here,

Once Upon a time in the west SCOPE/TRAILER

Thanks. I only have one Marketing Film -- the 400 foot edition of THE GODFATHER.
I never noticed if it was polyester or not. Color has held up very well, but it was a very dupey-looking color.
The edit is as good as can be for 16 minutes from a nearly 3 hour film. That being said, it doesn't make any sense if you've never seen the whole thing. Brando gets shot less than 2 minutes into the digest! They did release it as a 3-parter and also in full-length as I am sure you all know.