Moon in the Gutter

Synopsis

Two women: Loretta (Nastassja Kinski), a wealthy amateur photographer who prowls the docks in her early '60s Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder looking for handsome men, and Bella (Victoria Abril), a poor but beautiful woman who is probably a prostitute, share affections for a dock worker named Gerard (played by Gérard Depardieu). He is obsessed by the memory of his sister, who was raped and then committed suicide in a back alley, which he visits every night. No one knows who committed the rape, and he has sworn to avenge the crime, if he can only figure out who the perpetrator was.

Reception

Although the movie was a failure when first released, it had a number of cult admirers. In the mid-1980s it was often screened as a fashionable late night art movie for esoteric clubs such as the "Edinburgh Academy Cinema Society".

In the American DVD release director Jean-Jacques Beineix reveals that after the expanded 3 hour DVD version director's cut of Betty Blue was released he approached Gaumont, the studio that produced the film, about doing the same with The Moon in the Gutter. A studio executive later notified him sadly that such an extended release recut was not possible in this case. It was revealed that Gaumont had felt the film was so poorly received initially that all of the extra footage and doubles were destroyed to make space in the film vaults.

The excuse was that accountants had reasoned that the film was a financial liability with little future value that had severely damaged Gaumont's reputation. Such an action is said to be extremely rare in the film industry since the cost of storing film footage is rather minimal after production has ended. Beneix added that the film had originally been cut into a 4 hour version and a 3 hour version as well and that both lost versions expanded on the main characters and more fully exposed and explained the story's main premise. The loss reportedly still haunts Beneix today.

Cast