Recent Film Restorations

[L.A.]

I've seen people say that the mystery big budget sleaze epic title is Caligula.

I was wondering what happened with E. Elias Merhige’s reconstruction/restoration of it

Caligula MMXX coming in 2023

[yoloswegmaster]

Toei has restored the original Kamen Rider series and will be releasing them on 4K UHD in 4 seperate boxes (for a grand total of $1200!)

[yoloswegmaster]

Another Japanese restoration has been announced, as Toho have restored Ishiro Honda's 'The Mysterians'.

[Stefan Andersson]

Topkapi restored, with Christopher Nolan actively involved:
https://www.film-foundation.org/topkapi-hfpa

[afilmcionado]

HKIFF47 announces 4 Chinese-language restorations:

- Nomad (1982) Director’s Cut
- A City of Sadness
- Dust of Angels
- A Confucian Confusion

City of Sadness and Confucian Confusion are old news, but glad to see the former making its overseas debut at least.

[Stefan Andersson]

List of restored Polish films, updated Feb. 26, 2023:
http://rekonstrukcje.eu/index.html

[Fred Holywell]

"CBS Sunday Morning" correspondent Ben Tracy talks with Martin Scorsese, and with film archivists, about the ongoing fight to restore and preserve a fragile and endangered art form.

Film restoration: Saving our cinema heritage

Includes some scenes from the new restoration of East of Eden (1955), debuting at the TCM Film Festival in April.

More here: Martin Scorsese on the importance of film restoration

[Stefan Andersson]

Some restorations showing at this year´s Cinema Reborn:
Ieoh Island (Kim Ki-young, 1977) - https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/movies/ieoh-island-1977
Ich bei tag und du bei nacht (Ludwig Berger, 1932) - https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/movies/i ... night-1932
Ruggles of Red Gap, 4K - https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/movies/r ... d-gap-1935
Die reise nach Lyon (Claudia Alemann, 1981) - https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/movies/blind-spot-1981

[therewillbeblus]

Ich bei tag und du bei nacht (Ludwig Berger, 1932) - https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/movies/i ... night-1932
Ruggles of Red Gap, 4K - https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/movies/r ... d-gap-1935

Wow, such great news on these two!

[andyli]

There is also a 4K restoration of Sunrise, which comes as a surprise given the existing material. Also, the 4k restoration of Mauvais sang is having its world premiere, too.

[Calvin]

Some restorations showing at this year´s Cinema Reborn:
Ieoh Island (Kim Ki-young, 1977) - https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/movies/ieoh-island-1977

That''s already been out on Blu-Ray via the Korean Film Archive since 2018

[hearthesilence]

Ruggles is definitely a pleasant surprise, but is the OCN lost like so many other Paramount titles? I've seen it screened in 35mm a few times, and it's definitely thick and gauzy looking - it would be amazing to see something that looks like a transfer from the OCN, but I'm keeping my expectations in check.

[hearthesilence]

I got out of work early and saw Los Olvidados at MoMA. I think Anthology Film Archives has their own 35mm print, which I've seen, but MoMA was screening a DCP of the Film Foundation restoration. (Nice surprise - the opening restoration credits indicated that George Harrison's The Material World Foundation funded the restoration. His widow's family immigrated from Mexico and apparently she has actively helped the Film Foundation restore Mexican films from the 1940s.)

FWIW, it looks pretty amazing - you can definitely see the difference when optical effects are used on the opening shots and the dissolves vs. the rest of the film. Even the opticals looks pretty good but when it cuts to regular footage, it's hard to imagine the picture quality looking better than it does here. (Not surprising as it was done from the original camera negative.) Hopefully we get a UHD of this.

[ballmouse]

Some restorations showing at this year´s Cinema Reborn:
Ieoh Island (Kim Ki-young, 1977) - https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/movies/ieoh-island-1977
Ich bei tag und du bei nacht (Ludwig Berger, 1932) - https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/movies/i ... night-1932
Ruggles of Red Gap, 4K - https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/movies/r ... d-gap-1935
Die reise nach Lyon (Claudia Alemann, 1981) - https://www.ritzcinemas.com.au/movies/blind-spot-1981

Ich bei tag und du bei nacht might be one of my favorite films from the early 30s. I'm so glad to hear it's been restored. The one time I saw it (possibly a TV rip) had a sequence that I believe had some audio issues. I wonder if that was fixed (or maybe it was an issue with the TV rip).

[Tommaso]

Ich bei tag und du bei nacht might be one of my favorite films from the early 30s. I'm so glad to hear it's been restored. The one time I saw it (possibly a TV rip) had a sequence that I believe had some audio issues. I wonder if that was fixed (or maybe it was an issue with the TV rip).

It's one of my favourite films from that period, too! But sorry to disappoint you, but if the restoration is the same that was released on BluRay in Germany in 2019 (and I haven't heard of a newer one), then unfortunately there is still a minute or so with audio missing. It looks like the audio for that passage is irretrievably lost. It's sad, but thank God it's not a very significant part of the dialogue as far as I can see.

[Stefan Andersson]

French crowdfunding effort to restore magnetic sound reels for Med Hondo´s first short film Ballade aux Sources (1965), image already restored:
https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding ... =MAjVzg4jj

[hearthesilence]

MoMA's current 1 pm matinee program focuses appropriately on one of the most handsome (if not the most handsome) Hollywood matinee idols of the 1930s/1940s, Errol Flynn. Almost everything is being screened in a 35mm print from either their own collection or the Library of Congress, and today is a repeat screening of The Adventures of Robin Hood from a 35mm MoMA restoration. I wasn't aware of this before, but it looks like a print with the same exact description was screened as part of their Technicolor retrospective in 2015: "35mm restoration by The Museum of Modern Art, with support from the Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation; courtesy Warner Bros."

I couldn't check it out myself, but I looked into it and found this blog entry by David Neary on that 2015 screening:

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the film series so far was a new print of Michael Curtiz’s The Adventures of Robin Hood, from a new restoration undertaken by MoMA’s Peter Williamson. The print looks completely different to almost any version of it seen in the past 75 years, with the colours far less saturated, and far less blatantly Technicolor – similar to its contemporary A Star Is Born. The film looks far more natural now, although the classic Technicolor triggers, especially purple, still pop in costumes during the archery tournament. It may be a disappointment for those used to seeing undiluted Technicolor on their Errol Flynn, but keeping to MoMA’s standards of film preservation, this is probably as close as we can now get to how it looked in ’38

EDIT: Wish I had been able to check this out today - a few blocks away, the NYPD surrounded and entered the domain of another clown who tried to illegitimately take a country by force.

[Computer Raheem]

MoMA's current 1 pm matinee program focuses appropriately on one of the most handsome (if not the most handsome) Hollywood matinee idols of the 1930s/1940s, Errol Flynn. Almost everything is being screened in a 35mm print from either their own collection or the Library of Congress, and today is a repeat screening of The Adventures of Robin Hood from a 35mm MoMA restoration. I wasn't aware of this before, but it looks like a print with the same exact description was screened as part of their Technicolor retrospective in 2015: "35mm restoration by The Museum of Modern Art, with support from the Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation; courtesy Warner Bros."

I couldn't check it out myself, but I looked into it and found this blog entry by David Neary on that 2015 screening:

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the film series so far was a new print of Michael Curtiz’s The Adventures of Robin Hood, from a new restoration undertaken by MoMA’s Peter Williamson. The print looks completely different to almost any version of it seen in the past 75 years, with the colours far less saturated, and far less blatantly Technicolor – similar to its contemporary A Star Is Born. The film looks far more natural now, although the classic Technicolor triggers, especially purple, still pop in costumes during the archery tournament. It may be a disappointment for those used to seeing undiluted Technicolor on their Errol Flynn, but keeping to MoMA’s standards of film preservation, this is probably as close as we can now get to how it looked in ’38

Can confirm that this restoration is a lot less colorful than what has been presented previously; it's a lot more orange-y and far less saturated than what I can tell the most recent restoration presents. As this was the first time I have ever seen the film (and only the second film I've seen projected on 35mm), I'm unsure as to whether or not this "new" color scheme is to the detriment of the film, but I didn't personally mind it. It was surprising to walk into a three-strip Technicolor film and not getting something blindingly bright and vibrant, but I got used to this restoration's color scheme fairly quickly. Is it revisionist? Highly doubtful, given that it is being done by MoMA in-house rather than WB or an outside restro company. I do wonder, however, if this change is due to whether there was a shift towards a "more accurate" representation of how it looked in 1938 or if the film print they were projecting it on is simply fading; it was already showing some hints of damage. I also wonder if this new print was based off a digital restoration, as there was some Technicolor-specific damage baked into the print that you would think MoMA would have been able to fix if this was supposed to be the basis for a digital restoration. If anyone else here was at the screening, did they mention anything about the restoration beforehand? I got it somewhat late (about 5 or so minutes), so if there was anything at the beginning, I missed it completely

[Matt]

There’s a Jack Warner documentary from 1993 airing on TCM right now. It shows a clip from Robin Hood which looks more muted and golden in tone than what we’ve seen since the 2003 WB “Ultra Resolution“ DVD release. The Criterion laserdisc came out in 1988, so that might be the best home video representation of this less saturated look.

I do remember reading that Natalie Kalmus, the wife of the inventor of Technicolor and the official arbiter of the use of color in Technicolor films through 1949, was upset with the brighter colors used for the costumes and scenery in the film, but I don’t recall if she had a negative opinion on the look of the finished film.

Perhaps it was always intended to be shot brightly and then color timed to give it a golden tone, but who knows now? Seems like any claims of color grading being authoritative and “authentic” these days (in the age of Ritrovata and Eclair restorations) have just become a matter of taste, despite any archival or vintage print evidence. Warner Bros. was certainly not exempt from accusations of color revisionism in the early DVD era.

Scott Higgins’ book Harnessing the Technicolor Rainbow:
Color Design in the 1930s has quite a lot of original archival research on the film, but I don’t have a copy at hand.

[bad future]

This description reminds me of these notes from MoMA on Nothing Sacred:
This new MoMA restoration is based on the original Technicolor separations in the Museum’s collection, and is the first to reflect the experimental color design of the film’s first 1937 release. Backing away from the harsh tones of early two-color Technicolor, cinematographer W. Howard Greene uses Technicolor’s new three-strip process to create softer, paler color washes, an intriguing effect that later reissues obscured by pumping up the hues to the standard Technicolor intensity.

...which I haven't seen, but it does sound intriguing! I hope these restorations make it to blu-ray eventually; likely the only way I'll see them. I think Kino's second release of Nothing Sacred went OOP fairly recently.

I'd be curious to know what documentation exists for the intended color scheme of these films, and learn more about the context. Were they consciously working against the natural look of Technicolor, or did that familiar "pumped up intensity" just not become standard until a little later into the 3-strip era?

[senseabove]

I thought it was relatively common knowledge that early Technicolor tended to a more muted richness than a(n over-)saturated vibrancy, and, as Matt referenced above, that Nathalie Kalmus' oversight of its use frequently frustrated creatives who wanted to push its capabilities in the latter direction, e.g. Kalmus's "Color Consciousness" heavily emphasizes balance, restraint, and the use of vibrant colors for emphasis, not across the board:

It is a psychological fact that the nervous system experiences a shock when it is forced to adapt itself to any degree of unnaturalness in the reception of external stimuli. ... A super-abundance of color is unnatural, and has a most unpleasant effect not only upon the eye itself, but upon the mind as well.

It's probably over-used as evidence for its perfect succinctness in making the point, but she and Minnelli rather famously did not get along. The Eastman House catalog for their exhibition is another great reference for early technicolor. See also the discussion on here about the WAC release of Elizabeth & Essex.

[Stefan Andersson]

First news of the 2023 Cinema Ritrovato fest --
to feature restorations of The Fall of Otrar (Gibel Otrara, Ardak Amirkulov, Kazakhstan, 1991); The Dupes (Al-Makhdo’un, Tewfik Saleh, Syria 1972); and Ceddo (Ousmane Sembène, Senegal, 1977):
https://festival.ilcinemaritrovato.it/e ... il-cr2023/

There will also be a Kinugasa strand -- the site shows a photo from Daibutsu kaigen (Dedication of the Great Buddha, 1952).

[yoloswegmaster]

A new 4K restoration for Dino Risi's Una Vita Difficile has been performed.

[Fred Holywell]

There’s a Jack Warner documentary from 1993 airing on TCM right now. It shows a clip from Robin Hood which looks more muted and golden in tone than what we’ve seen since the 2003 WB “Ultra Resolution“ DVD release. The Criterion laserdisc came out in 1988, so that might be the best home video representation of this less saturated look.

It seems that the film clips in the Jack Warner doc are of a fairly recent vintage. Though the show was originally made in 1993, producer Gregory Orr substantially revised it this year, going back to Warners for what he said were "updated clips."

He discusses redoing the doc (among other topics) here: Gregory Orr talks Jack L. Warner: The Last Mogul

[Stefan Andersson]

2023 Cinema Reborn site now live; essays have started to appear on the site:
https://cinemareborn.com.au/2023-Program