THE long-awaited restoration of “The Big Red One,” Samuel Fuller’s 1980 chronicle of World War II, is headed here, courtesy of the New York Film Festival.
Originally released at a truncated 113 minutes, the film has been restored to 158 minutes, which would have pleased Fuller, who died in 1997.
In his autobiography, “A Third Face,” Fuller wrote of the film: “Future audiences and film historians will judge it for themselves. All I ask is that they be given the opportunity to see the movie I lived, wrote, directed and edited with my heart and soul.”
“The Big Red One” – with Lee Marvin, Mark Hamill and Robert Carradine – is included in the just-announced line-up for the festival, which runs Oct. 1-17 at Lincoln Center.
Now in its 47th year, the NYFF is the city’s leading big-screen event, specializing in tony art-house cinema, as opposed to the populist fare at the fledging Tribeca Film Festival.
There are 25 films in the main program, from such directors as Hou Hsou-hsien, Mike Leigh, Zhang Yimou, Jean-Luc Godard, Todd Solondz, Eric Rohmer and Ingmar Bergman.
There also will be a tribute to Spanish maverick Pedro Almodovar, whose noirish “Bad Education” will be the event’s “centerpiece.”
The tribute will include a screening of career highlights, a one-on-one with Almodovar and appearances by “special guests.”
There will be several “special screenings,” including Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Hong Kong cops-and-robbers trilogy “Infernal Affairs.”
The NYFF will open with Agnes Jaoui’s French comedy “Look at Me” and close with “Sideways,” a buddy pix by Omaha-based Alexander Payne.
The festival box office opens at Alice Tully Hall at noon Sept. 12.