In the original Enrico version there are five points in the story where we hear Peyton Farquhar’s internal diegetic voice-over, but the Twilight Zone version retains only one of these, when we hear the man call out his wife’s name, “Abby,” which precipitates the memory or flashback image of his wife.
But there are other significant changes not dependent on running time which will be noted, mainly the decision to remove all but one instance of subjective voice-over. These three edits of approximately seventeen seconds, twelve seconds and forty one seconds comprise the trimmed footage. The edits needed to trim down the original of approximately 1’10” occur in three spots in the film, right at the beginning, a few shots right at the end, and a single shot about three-quarters into the film. How exactly did Serling and the producers of Twilight Zone spend the $5,000 to edit the original film down to this prescribed running time? What did they edit out and change from the original? What follows is a contextual analysis of the two versions to ferret out these changes. In terms of running time, the original version of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge which was directed by Roberto Enrico in 1962 and titled La rivière du hibou, ran 26’40”, while the version which aired on Twilight Zone on February 28, 1964, ran one minute and ten seconds shorter at 25’30”. But to fit the 27 minute short film into the 30 minute television commercial format Serling had to cut it down to approximately 25 minutes. 1 It aired on February 28, 1964, the only time that a premade film aired on Twilight Zone, which always featured episodes written and directed by in-house people.
The producers of Twilight Zone purchased the rights to air it for $25,000 (actually $20,000 for the rights and $5,000 extra for the re-editing) considerably less than the $65,000 it cost for an in-house episode. Serling loved the film and story so much that he made an exception and wanted to run it on his show, which only featured episodes made by the Twilight Zone production team. The film won the 1963 Academy Award for Best Short Film and first prize for Best Short Subject at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival.
Serling was a huge fan of author Bierce and a literary man himself. Most people in North America know of the short film based on the 1890 short story by American Ambrose Bierce, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, through its initial broadcast in 1964 on Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone. Rod Serlingīy Donato Totaro Volume 18, Issue 4 / April 2014 16 minutes (3810 words)
Contextual Analysis of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge: Robert Enrico vs.
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