It's nice to know that Steven Soderbergh isn't just spending his retirement sitting around watching Sex, Lies and Videotape or Out of Sight on DVD. The acclaimed director surprised fans on Tuesday (September 23) with a website post that included a recut version of Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, turning it into a black-and-white silent movie to highlight the important of staging in cinema.

Steven SoderberghSteven Soderbergh has recut Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark

Noting that it was a project for "educational purposes only", Soderbergh said: "I operate under the theory a movie should work with the sound off, and under that theory, staging becomes paramount." In some segments, the director replaces the sound with sounds lifted from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's compositions for The Social Network.

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Soderbergh said that Spielberg "forgot more about staging by the time he made his first feature than I know to this day (for example, no matter how fast the cuts come, you always know exactly where you are-that's high level visual math shit)."

As expected, the movie works incredibly well without sound. We still feel the tension and drama and never lose sense of the plot.

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Soderbergh has recut other Hollywood movies and uploaded them to his site to teach filming techniques. Among the films is a spliced version of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho with Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake. He also made a 108 minute cut of Heaven's Gate.

The director's TV miniseries The Knick, with Clive Owen, is currently showing on US network Cinemax. 

Soderbergh's last feature film as director was 2013's Side Effects, with Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum, Jude Law and Catherine Zeta-Jones.