Big Reason to Restore it

In all the reviews and comments, I haven't heard mention a big reason the film was made in the first place: the novel it comes from is based on a true story. Bergman's Sanziani was in real life The Marchesa Luisa Casati, the most important fashion icon in Europe, who brought the Belle Epoch into the 20th century, inspiring the likes of Cocteau and Diaghilev and countless painters, through the 20th century with couturiers Galliano, Norell and Dior, and into the 21st with Lagerfeld, Armani and Gucci. She was said to be the third-most depicted woman, after the Virgin Mary and Cleopatra. She went through a fabulous fortune, collecting palaces, wild animals and servants and men. She took her cheetahs for walks in Paris, dressed in furs and nothing else. Her parties were legend. Her stated purpose was, "I want to be a living work of art."

Sanziani of the film is Casati, having grown old and broke and fairly forgotten. What's so outrageous is that the execrable American International Pictures cut the very scenes -- the flashbacks -- that would have established why we should be interested in Sanziani. This woman, this work of art, really did hold the world in the palm of her hand. It's no wonder that Casati's Lust for Life would have strongly attracted the great Minnelli. The wonder is that the producers would have placed such a potentially great work in the hands of distributors whose stock in trade was teenage exploitation and cheap horror. Is that the only distributor/money the producers could come up with?

Not only Siskell but the great Pauline Kael said that a potentially fine movie had been butchered. I suspect they were right, and an angel who loves movies and has the resources should take on the restoration, if a uncut print is extant -- a big If, considering American International.