When it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the director Lars von Trier’s new film, “The House That Jack Built,” prompted walkouts, dismissals and outright condemnations because of its graphic depictions of a serial killer’s spree of sexualized violence.

Now he and his distributor, IFC Films, are hoping an unorthodox release plan will help spin bad press in their favor. An edited, R-rated version of “Jack” will reach theaters and video on demand on Dec. 14; but first the unrated director’s cut will show in cinemas on Wednesday for “one night only,” all but daring audiences to withstand what so many at Cannes could not.

The “director’s cut” label is usually affixed after a film’s traditional release rather than before, but the Danish provocateur’s savvy appropriation seems a logical variation on that pliable phrase — which has undergone a fascinating transformation over the past four decades. And, like so much of the current moviemaking landscape, its ubiquity is owed, in no small part, to Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

Neither man invented the idea of a feature rereleased to theaters in altered form. The most common occurrences before the late 1970s, however, took scenes out instead of adding them in. Salty “Pre-Code” films, made before the 1930 Production Code (regulating sex, violence, and adult content) was enforced, were subsequently trimmed and rereleased to comply with it. In something close to this spirit, the 1977 R-rated smash “Saturday Night Fever” was shown in theaters the following year in a PG version, with its profanity and sex expunged.