From Scott Miller comes the following…
I really enjoy your weblog (and have for some time now), and your latest entry about the possibility of putting alternate versions on DVD reminded me that this has been tried at least once, with The Big Sleep. Someone (or several someones) has probably already brought this up, but just in case they haven't, the DVD currently available from Warner Bros. features (on Side A) the theatrical cut we all know and love from 1946, while Side B features the 1945 version that survived only because it was a print that had been sent overseas for the G.I.s to watch. The 1945 cut makes a little more sense plot-wise than the 1946 version (though not much more — this is The Big Sleep, after all, and not even Raymond Chandler knew who killed the chauffeur) and has a number of different scenes, despite there only being a 2-minute difference in run times.
I agree with you — it seems to me that this is exactly the sort of presentation DVD was made for. I'd love to see some of those alternate versions (like, for example, Horse Feathers, whose British versions apparently have a scene entirely missing from the US version on video — if I remember what I read in Joe Adamson's Marx Bros. book correctly).
I recall that from Joe's fine book…and perhaps now that I've posted this here, I'll hear from Joe, because I'm a little fuzzy on how long the "most complete" version is. Of course, this also raises the issue of what is the "correct" version and how we determine that. We've occasionally seen home video companies splice in outtakes or scenes that were cut before the official premiere and announce that they have "restored" a movie to its original version. The version that gets previewed is often not the version that anyone associated with a film ever felt was the final one. The interesting thing about the foreign versions is that both were meant to be exhibited.