When you ask people to list their favorite “Harry Potter” films, usually Alfonso Cuaron’s third film ranks the highest. Yet one title that often gets right up there, at least with some of the audience, is “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One”.
The film is one of the most unique of the series as the action takes place away from Hogwarts for the first time and has both a more sinister tone and a kind of road movie feel to it.
It was also tricky as it’s the only ‘part one’ of a two-parter in the series, and by splitting the novel in two, it doesn’t have a natural endpoint. In fact, the film essentially lacks an entire third act, with the movie ending with an escape from Malfoy Manor and the burial of Dobby the House-elf.
The film was helmed by David Yates, who directed the last four films of the franchise, starting with the fifth entry ‘Order of the Phoenix’. Out promoting his Netflix film “Pain Hustlers” at the Toronto International Film Festival, Yates spoke with Collider and said that was the film he made that went through the most overall change in the editing suite:
“The great challenge of that film was it didn’t actually have a third act. It kind of ran out of steam halfway through, and Mark [Day – the editor on the final four Potter films] and I would often sit there kind of figuring it out and saying, ‘This movie doesn’t have a third act. How are we gonna…? Hang on, this is crazy. It doesn’t have a third act.’
Those two movies, Part 1 and Part 2, the idea was the first one was a road movie that was very sort of, like, take the kids out of the school, put them in jeopardy outside of that safe place, and see how they grow up and their relationship is tested.
But then you go straight into the climax and the fireworks to the final one. So, we noodled Part One to bits to try and feel that the end of the movie had an escalation when, in fact, it’s Jazz Hands. [Laughs]
There’s not much going on at the end in the second half of the movie, and I say that with great – People still say to me, ‘My favorite film is Hallows: Part One, mate. That was so amazing. It felt like a European road movie.’ And I’m going, ‘Yeah, but the work we did in the edit was unbelievable.'”
Yates’ “Pain Hustlers” hits select theaters on October 20th and then Netflix a week later on October 27th.
