Sometimes ignorance bugs me. I just can\u2019t help it. And I try to let it go, but I can\u2019t do it, because it just builds up and gets worse, so I have to confront it.<\/p>\n
Several years ago, I was at the Syracuse Cinefest (now defunct) premiering King of the Kongo<\/em>, Chapter 5. There were some students in the crowd who came in late and missed my scintillating introduction, and I happened to bump into them on the way out, and I heard their conversation.<\/p>\n \u201cDude, like I don\u2019t understand what the big deal was on that serial thing. It wasn\u2019t even like restored.\u201d<\/p>\n OK, well, I knew what the big deal was. It was the first time the soundtrack had been heard with the film for something like 80 years, which was cool, and the picture was restored. A lot. But, rather than be a whiner boy, which no one likes, I pursued his reasoning. I asked him what he meant by restored.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, it didn\u2019t look real good. Have you seen the Blu-Ray of Casablanca<\/em>? They really restored that. This one didn\u2019t look like that. He should have restored it.\u201d<\/p>\n My further contacts with people have cemented the idea that most people have. To be restored, a film has to look like the Blu-Ray of Casablanca. This, apparently, is the gold standard of restoration. Anything less is sub-par.<\/p>\n Further, since digital restoration techniques are magic, this means that if one were willing to put in the time and money on it, all movies that are restored could look like Casablanca<\/em>, and they all should. It\u2019s simply laziness on the part of restorers who have not put in the required resources to clean up the film.<\/p>\n I heard this again earlier this year with some films I didn\u2019t work on. Universal (bless them) restored several Marx Brothers films, including Cocoanuts<\/em>, Animal<\/em> Crackers<\/em>, and Horsefeathers<\/em>. Now, Universal had been lagging the field in doing restorations, but their work for the last 5-6 years has been astounding, so I\u2019m a huge supporter of their efforts. But apparently I\u2019m not in good company. I started to see people dogging Universal\u2019s efforts right out of the gate:<\/p>\n \u201cCocoanuts<\/em> is not restored. There were always sections of picture that looked bad, and these sections still look bad. They lied when they said they restored it.\u201d<\/p>\n And worse yet:<\/p>\n \u201cHow dare Universal claim they restored Horsefeathers<\/em>! There is a splicy section that\u2019s been there since the 1930s and it\u2019s still choppy! They didn\u2019t restore it at all!\u201d<\/p>\n Wait, what?<\/p>\n So let\u2019s back up. Cocoanuts<\/em> had several reels where dupe sections were made badly in the 1940s because the negative was rotting, and they had only poor copies. Those reels have not been replaced with better ones, but Universal did what they could to clean up said reels, rebalance the contrast, and match what they could.<\/p>\n Horsefeathers<\/em> was censored for reissue, and certain things were considered too risque for post-Code audiences. Paramount, who then owned the film, in its wisdom, took the censored footage out of the original negative. In order for this to be found, someone would have to find an original issue 1932 nitrate print of Horsefeathers<\/em> that is in good enough shape to use. It\u2019s not impossible, but unlikely. Universal cleaned up the footage as best they could, but the missing footage remains. (Let\u2019s give Universal credit and admit that they found a great deal of missing footage from Frankenstein<\/em> that they diligently restored from discs and alternate prints sources for years. For some time, you could pick up a new issue of Frankenstein<\/em>, and they\u2019d patch in a scene of Maria getting dumped in the water, or Frankenstein yelling in the lab, or Edward Van Sloan injecting the monster, etc.)<\/p>\n On the other hand, someone did find original nitrate material for Animal<\/em> Crackers<\/em>. Apparently the BFI had a near-mint dupe negative of the film that contains about 4 minutes of footage that was also censored for reissue. And, to top that off, it\u2019s about two generations better than what Universal was working with for this title, so the picture is greatly improved. There was nothing but praise for Universal on this one, which was quite deserved.<\/p>\n But why trash them for the other films? They did the best they could.<\/p>\n I know I sometimes sound like the Monty Python 4 Yorkshiremen sketch, but when I first got to be a movie fan, the prints we often had were terrible, and we felt lucky to have them. The studios didn\u2019t care, the foreign archives didn\u2019t care, and the only people who did care were the collectors, who were being raided all the time by the studios and the archives.<\/p>\n I get a little more confused when I consider that every 18 months, it seems like a new restoration of Metropolis<\/em> takes place. Each time, footage is inserted that hasn\u2019t been seen in years. The last restoration incorporated some footage from a South American 16mm dupe print that looked like a steam roller flattened it, and then sandpaper was run over it for cleaning. No one seems to complain about this, but poor Universal gets the lynch mob called on them for not finding 5-6 minutes of footage. How is this fair?<\/p>\n The idea that I can see Animal<\/em> Crackers<\/em> with 4 extra minutes of footage is enchanting to me, but so is the idea that I can see detail in Horsefeathers<\/em> and Cocoanuts<\/em> that I\u2019ve never seen before. OK, I\u2019d like to see better material, but it just plain doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s hit some of the myths here:<\/p>\n MYTH 1: Digital restoration techniques are like magic. If you spend enough time and effort on something it can look like Casablanca<\/em>.<\/p>\n FACT: This is completely untrue. It\u2019s also putting an unfair burden on Casablanca<\/em> as the standard-bearer for restoration. The original negative for Casablanca<\/em> still exists, and backup copies of it, made carefully over the years, are stored around the world. Not to trash the people who did the restoration (which is excellent), but they had a lot more to work with than the Universal did with, say, The<\/em> Cocoanuts<\/em>. There was one print of that made as a backup, poorly, in the 40s. That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n Digital techniques are wonderful, but they can\u2019t bring back stuff that isn\u2019t there. When detail is lost in a copying process, it\u2019s gone. I can take dirt marks out, some degree of scratching, splices, and I can rebalance the contrast a little, but if the sharpness is gone, it\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n MYTH 2: The original negatives of just about all the films ever made are stored safely in a salt mine in Kansas or New Jersey, and the studios are just too lazy to go get them.<\/p>\n FACT: There are some salt mines that do have BACKUPS in them, but not original negatives.<\/p>\n I\u2019m working on a restoration of Little Orphant Annie<\/em> (1918) right now, and it\u2019s going to look worse than King of the Kongo<\/em> did. With Kongo<\/em>, we had a 16mm duplicate print, which was copied from a deteriorating and splicy 35mm positive.<\/p>\n With Annie, we have a 16mm Kodascope that\u2019s been censored (they took out some of the scarier scenes), but is more-or-less complete. We have reel one and three of a second Kodascope, which is much darker. We have a 35mm that was about shot when it got scanned, and we have two different reference prints on video from various sources.<\/p>\n And you know what? I assembled a rough cut of all the footage in the film, and I had to use scenes from every one of these prints. Each one had a shot that was different or in the wrong place. I will never, ever get these to match seamlessly. It can\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n On the other hand, you\u2019d get to see some 5 minutes of footage that you\u2019ve never seen before in any other print. Does that mean Little Orphant Annie<\/em> is restored? Yes, to the best of my ability with the materials that currently exist. If you gave me a million dollar grant to fix it (which I would welcome!), there\u2019s only so much I can do to clean it up.<\/p>\n It will never look as good as Casablanca<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes ignorance bugs me. I just can\u2019t help it. And I try to let it go, but I can\u2019t do it, because it just builds up and gets worse, so I have to confront it. Several years ago, I was at the Syracuse Cinefest (now defunct) premiering King of the Kongo, Chapter 5. There were … Continue reading “What Does \u201cRestored\u201d Mean?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-films-pocket-rants","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=764"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":765,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764\/revisions\/765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}