Goncharov is a Bad Meme...
...because it’s a bad movie. I don’t begrudge anybody their cult movie favorites, but so few people have heard of Goncharov that there’s a joke going around that it doesn’t exist and people have made it up just to troll. Ironically the things that have won it acclaim as a cult success are the very things that doom it as a work. You need look little further than the box office reception for proof.
Check out the top grossing movies of 1973 and you’ll notice that Goncharov doesn’t make the list. The Exorcist tops things out with a gross of $193 million. The bottom spot goes to Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid with $8 million. Goncharov on the other hand was a commercial failure at release, barely recouping its unnecessarily bloated budget. Not that the budget was big, it was really a shoestring, but a list of production issues and re-shoots ate more and more time and money just to get something out the door.
Now I’m not trying to argue that box office revenue is all that matters for a good movie. It doesn’t at all. But in the case of Goncharov, the box office flop is informed by the way the film was made and thus informs its unique problems.
You see, Goncharov was filmed on location in Naples in the early 1970s during one or perhaps two extended “vacations” for most of the cast in the film. Highly unusual. But that’s sort of how things work when Stefano Pessina of Walgreens Boots Alliance (then Petrone Group) has an urge to play in an American mobster movie. He footed the bill himself (or rather convinced his daddy to), and the mess they shot was largely derivative and not worth any notice.
Scorsese wasn’t even involved until De Niro and Keitel approached him for help. Doing what he could to piece together what he assessed as workable bones, Scorsese tied together formerly loose threads and themes (notably the clock motif wasn’t nearly as significant before he took to work on it). The biggest thing is that he insisted on re-shoots as possible, adding new scenes, cutting scenes entirely, and notably excising all but a cameo of former star Pessina--the man can’t act. But he was paying the bills and while he’d find himself lucky to break even on the venture, his checkbook did at least allow the thing to see the light of day. Saved as much as possible by Scorsese’s talented eye.
All that cut material was saved, possibly at Pessina’s insistence, and has found its way to the public in the half century since its debut. Which has resulted in a number of new cuts and editions. It’s a favorite for film students to practice editing because the copious extra scenes allow wildly varying stories to be told. Since most people aren’t even aware of the movie in the first place, those that see it happenstance may well have found an unofficial edition. This is why we see many wildly varying “canonical” scenes. They all exist, but very few of them actually showed up in Scorsese’s theatrical release back in ‘73.
This is also why it’s lauded on that famous poster with “Martin Scorsese presents.” Despite his extensive work directing re-shoots and new scenes, editing and producing, Scorsese saw it for the train wreck it was and chose to distance himself from the thing. Al Pacino once joked in a TV Guide interview that he wished he had been “able to distance my name from it in that manner. I think we all do.”
Look, who among us has watched Mean Streets or Serpico? Both of those are better works than Goncharov and came out that same year. For a modern audience they would have worked just as well for this joke. Except then instead of topping it off with the ultimate punchline of hunting down the thing and being disappointed you wasted two hours of your life, Mean Streets or Serpico would be enjoyable watches. So save yourself some disappoint and go watch one of those instead.