Cider House Rules

1999

Here's a film where all the back stories are more interesting than the film itself.

This film was controversial for a number of reasons. It took a pro-abortion position, and it evoked a measure of compassion for a father guilty of incest with his daughter. Those controversies were magnified under the glass of an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, which was rather unusual for a film which scored only 68% from the top critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and received only two stars from Roger Ebert. On the other hand, many people loved the film for its big heart and its beautiful photography. James Berardinelli picked it among his top ten of that year.

As for me, I weighed the pros and cons and went with my heart rather than my head. Here's what I wrote at the time:

"OK, maybe Cider House shouldn't have received its Oscar nomination because of some of its faults, but faults or no faults, I am here to ask you to forgive all the film's flaws, cinematic and otherwise, because they just aren't important when you consider the big picture. The film really only has one underlying message. It argues that we should love each other more in general, our children most of all, and we should not create children unless we plan to love them. It delivers that message powerfully and simply, as Irving's novel did.

And when you get right down to it, everything else is less significant than that.

So watch it with your kids and hug them when it's over."

Anyway, there's kind of an interesting story behind the nudity as well. I originally saw this film on an Oscar screener, and that version included a brief but clear topless flash from Charlize Theron. In those days, we never used film clips, and the damned thing was on VHS anyway, because DVD had not yet taken over, so I did some stills, made a crappy collage, threw out the screener, and awaited the official release.

Only one problem. The full scene never appeared on any version of the film, nor in any "deleted scenes." My crappy collage (see below) seems to be the only record that the scene ever existed.

The film is now out on Blu-Ray, and the remaining scene (clip one in the zip file) is still a beautiful look at Charlize Theron's bottom and her pretty face. The other scene (clip two) simply shows where the topless scene used to be. Here's the zip file.