Recent Film Restorations

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dda1996a
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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#276 Post by dda1996a » Wed Aug 21, 2019 6:05 pm

I'd rather they restored Yang's Confucius Confusion and Mahjong which only exist in horrendous quality. Restoring HHH's middle films would also be great as well. On ecan only hope for more Taiwanese cinema in the collection

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swo17
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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#277 Post by swo17 » Wed Aug 21, 2019 6:07 pm

The only title being mentioned here that seems egregiously in need of an update is The Leopard

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DeprongMori
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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#278 Post by DeprongMori » Wed Aug 21, 2019 8:32 pm

I would add Fritz Lang’s M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder to that list as a substantial restoration has been done on the materials since the Eureka and Criterion releases. The German release on Universum in 2016 (already out of print) is reviewed here.


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DarkImbecile
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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#280 Post by DarkImbecile » Fri Aug 23, 2019 2:13 pm

DarkImbecile wrote:
Thu Mar 14, 2019 7:32 pm
Reverend Drewcifer wrote:
Thu Mar 14, 2019 4:13 pm
I have tried and failed to fully enjoy Cotton Club many times. The gangland plotline is performed too broadly for my taste, with Fred Gwynne making the only positive impression. The film has a highly-polished look that flatters chandeliers and burnished wood paneling, with a glow cast around everything and everyone like it was photographed by Allen Daviau. The whole thing looks and sounds well-cared-for, but it seems to wear its tortuous production history on its face. I always wanted more back stage showbiz story at the CC, and I always wanted the surrealistic ending to "work," whatever that means. Who cares what I want, though. What did you enjoy about it?
To answer that, let me quote from Coppola's written introduction to the Encore cut's debut at Telluride in 2017 (emphasis mine):
Director's Statement

As often happens, I came upon an object that brought back an entire chapter of my life. In this case it was an old Sony Betamax tape that had the recording of the original final version of The Cotton Club, the film I made in 1984 and which I had blocked from my memory due to the odd circumstances that surrounded it. When I say "the original final version," that means it was the form the film was in when I presented it to its financiers, distributors, and producers. The situation at the time was closer to "trench warfare" than any film I had worked on; the version was condemned as too long, having "too many black people," and with "too much tap dancing." The ownership of the film itself was the subject matter of a court case to determine who ultimately had control of it, and in addition to this confusion, there had been a murder related to a producer of the film, and the negative and film prints were constantly being jockeyed from office to secret office to avoid falling into the wrong hands.

Usually when I worked on a movie on which I supposedly had "final cut", the legal right to determine what form the film finally takes, I tried to be conciliatory to the opposition view. We made the film shorter, we took the emphasis off the black family story line, and we eliminated musical numbers, especially tap dance routines. The film that was finally released was about 2 hours and 7 minutes long, compared to my original final version which was 2 hours and 30 minutes.

When I screened this old Betamax tape for myself, I realized immediately that when a film is deemed too long, making it in fact shorter may make it play longer yet. It was meant to be a story of two main characters, one white and one black, and their families involved in and around the life of the Cotton Club, so diminishing the family life of Gregory Hines's character threw the balance of the story off-kilter. And losing many of the musical numbers, including the great "Stormy Weather" as well as the typical off-color specialty songs, eroded the historical portrayal of what the shows were really like.

After seeing this old tape, I became energized to find the missing parts and come up with a new version that would be much closer to what the intention of the film had originally been. I also realized that so many of the great members of the cast were gone, not the least being Gregory Hines, but so many others — Bob Hoskins, Fred Gwynne, Gwen Verdon, and Julian Beck — but beyond that sad fact, the cast was so full of talent: Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Lonette McKee, Nicolas Cage, Laurence Fishburne, James Remar, Maurice Hines, Novella Nelson, Allen Garfield, Jennifer Grey, and many other memorable performers.

Clearly, a film that stumbles into its world premiere in controversy and does less than stellar box office tends to remain stuck in its place, with few of those connected to it willing to spend the time and treasure it takes to make a restoration. I didn't know about the others, but I and my company American Zoetrope set about the daunting task to find the more than thirty minutes of lost negative, in some cases restoring it from old print material, and to restore, remix, and allow this film to re-emerge in a new and worthy edition.

This is The Cotton Club Encore, the film the world should have seen despite the countless court cases, murder trial proceedings, and warring producers.

— Francis Ford Coppola
Basically, I agree with Coppola that the film flows much more smoothly with the more equal weighting of the black and white characters, and the pacing feels more balanced in the longer version. Some of the musical numbers left out of the theatrical cut are among the best in the Encore version, and make the setting a vital part of the film rather than a curiosity. The Encore version is by no means a great film, but it's much closer to Coppola's best works than his worst, and unlike Apocalypse Now Redux — which I find a lot of value in but recognize its divisiveness — I think it's unequivocally better than the theatrical cut.
The Cotton Club Encore will be screening at NYFF this year, with a Q&A with Coppola

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Reverend Drewcifer
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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#281 Post by Reverend Drewcifer » Fri Aug 23, 2019 4:47 pm

It’s now clear that Francis Ford Coppola’s eighties constituted his most fruitfully experimental period of filmmaking, when he used the clout from such behemoth masterpieces of the previous decade as the Godfather films and Apocalypse Now to try his hand at films of various genres and budget levels. At the time, The Cotton Club, Coppola’s stylish throwback to those 1930s Hollywood standbys the gangster film and the musical, was considered a costly disappointment, altered seemingly irrevocably due to behind-the-scenes conflicts with producers and financiers. Yet this sophisticated, witty, wildly ambitious movie, starring Gregory Hines and Richard Gere, about the titular Harlem nightclub, where legendary black musicians like Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, and Duke Ellington performed for an exclusively white clientele, was always something special, a rousing American entertainment that was both an evocation of the work of such directors as Raoul Walsh and William Wellman and a loving recreation of the period itself. The brilliance of Coppola’s vision is more apparent than ever in this “reawakened” version, The Cotton Club Encore, for which the director recovered lost negatives to bring the film back to its original length and luster, with restored sound and image.
"Reawakened" is apt, though re-contextualizing the eighties without mentioning why he made these films is a bit of a whitewash. Jon Lewis covers this period in Whom God Wishes to Destroy . . .: Francis Coppola and the New Hollywood. Between the bankruptcy, lithium carbonate, marketplace ructions, family tragedies, and his Airstream "Silverfish" trailer packed with gizmos and geegaws, Coppola's eighties period films are products of his chaotic personal life. His "vision" during this era was severely compromised, though all of these films hinted at work that would benefit from restoration. I wouldn't hesitate to see The Cotton Club in a form that really played. I also wouldn't hesitate to hear Coppola on stage with Robert Evans hashing out the whole mishegoss, or hear his current thoughts on his state of mind during the eighties.

beamish14
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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#282 Post by beamish14 » Fri Aug 23, 2019 8:19 pm

Reverend Drewcifer wrote:
Fri Aug 23, 2019 4:47 pm
It’s now clear that Francis Ford Coppola’s eighties constituted his most fruitfully experimental period of filmmaking, when he used the clout from such behemoth masterpieces of the previous decade as the Godfather films and Apocalypse Now to try his hand at films of various genres and budget levels. At the time, The Cotton Club, Coppola’s stylish throwback to those 1930s Hollywood standbys the gangster film and the musical, was considered a costly disappointment, altered seemingly irrevocably due to behind-the-scenes conflicts with producers and financiers. Yet this sophisticated, witty, wildly ambitious movie, starring Gregory Hines and Richard Gere, about the titular Harlem nightclub, where legendary black musicians like Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, and Duke Ellington performed for an exclusively white clientele, was always something special, a rousing American entertainment that was both an evocation of the work of such directors as Raoul Walsh and William Wellman and a loving recreation of the period itself. The brilliance of Coppola’s vision is more apparent than ever in this “reawakened” version, The Cotton Club Encore, for which the director recovered lost negatives to bring the film back to its original length and luster, with restored sound and image.
"Reawakened" is apt, though re-contextualizing the eighties without mentioning why he made these films is a bit of a whitewash. Jon Lewis covers this period in Whom God Wishes to Destroy . . .: Francis Coppola and the New Hollywood. Between the bankruptcy, lithium carbonate, marketplace ructions, family tragedies, and his Airstream "Silverfish" trailer packed with gizmos and geegaws, Coppola's eighties period films are products of his chaotic personal life. His "vision" during this era was severely compromised, though all of these films hinted at work that would benefit from restoration. I wouldn't hesitate to see The Cotton Club in a form that really played. I also wouldn't hesitate to hear Coppola on stage with Robert Evans hashing out the whole mishegoss, or hear his current thoughts on his state of mind during the eighties.



I'd love to read that tome on Coppola. Beyond the animosity between him and Evans that would prevent them from ever sharing a stage, the latter has been in very poor health for a number of years, and he describes
his recuperation from a stroke in his second memoir.

Stefan Andersson
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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#283 Post by Stefan Andersson » Wed Aug 28, 2019 5:55 am

Cohen Media Group is doing a 4K restoration of Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, aiming for release in 2020. The original negative is with Turner.
Source:
https://www.hometheaterforum.com/commun ... st-4773136 (posts 8, 11)

JakeStewart
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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#284 Post by JakeStewart » Tue Sep 03, 2019 6:26 pm

TCM played Dino Risi’s Scent of a Woman a few days ago. It opened with the Criterion and Janus logos. The information on the restoration stated that it was restored in 4K back in 2016. The picture looked okay, but was quite soft.

Not sure if this means a Criterion release in the future.

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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#285 Post by Stefan Andersson » Wed Sep 04, 2019 4:32 pm

Restorations playing at the 2019 London Film Festival:
https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/d ... =treasures
Includes:
Los Olvidados
Finishing School (Ginger Rogers)
Paris Qui Dort, 2018 restoration
Elephant Man
Finis terrae, Epstein
Illustrious Corpses (Rosi), Masque of Red Death (Corman), both restored by The Film Foundation (sounds like new restorations to me)
Star-Crossed Lovers, Frank Beyer
and more

The new issue of Film Comment, in its Restoration Row column, reports a new resto of Neun Leben Hat Die Katze (Ula Stöckl, 1968).

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Gregory
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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#286 Post by Gregory » Thu Sep 05, 2019 6:21 pm

LPM0317 wrote:
Wed Sep 13, 2017 5:43 pm
http://afghanistans-7000-lost-films-hid ... o-digital/

7000 Afghanistan films hidden from the Taliban are being preserved and restored.
A recent Washington Post article describes the intensive (and at times just plain intense) process of digitizing these films.

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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#287 Post by Stefan Andersson » Sat Sep 14, 2019 5:00 am

Restoration news from Hiventy, in French:
https://www.hiventy.com/wp-content/uplo ... 019_v2.pdf

Includes an update on Gance´s Napoleon, 90 minutes of the film have been restored so far, from 20 different sources. The length seems to be six hours. There is a separate mention of 30 minutes of triptych and tinted sequences, so it´s unclear if this material is included in the six hours, or if the resto will run six and a half hours. It´s done in 5K resolution. The scanning includes between-the-frames parts of the negatives, where editors have written notes not visible on the screen.

Also info on L´age d´or, Faisons un rêve, Toni, CNC grants and more.

Satantango, 4K resto, showing at the 2019 New York Film Festival + resto of Seul contre tous underway:
http://www.dvdclassik.com/forum/viewtop ... &start=135


Older Hiventy news:
https://www.hiventy.com/wp-content/uplo ... 2018_2.pdf
20 Iosseliani films to be restored
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne restored

https://www.hiventy.com/wp-content/uplo ... 1-2019.pdf
On the consequences of reduced CNC grants

beamish14
Joined: Fri May 18, 2018 3:07 pm

Re: Recent Film Restorations

#288 Post by beamish14 » Sat Sep 14, 2019 11:23 pm

Trailer for The Cotton Club: Encore. This excites me way more than Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut. I doubt it'll be among the Blu-Ray extras but I'd love to see some acknowledgement of the insanity that went on during the making of this film

Stefan Andersson
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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#289 Post by Stefan Andersson » Sun Sep 15, 2019 2:26 pm

Restorations ("Lumière Classics") showing at the 2019 Festival Lumière in Lyon, France:

French films

Toni by Jean Renoir (1935, 1h22)
Bizarre, Bizarre by Marcel Carné (Drôle de drame, 1937, 1h34)
Woman of Evil by Edmond T. Gréville (Le Diable souffle, 1947, 1h32)
Rue de Paris by Denys de La Patellière (Rue des prairies, 1959, 1h31)
Swords of Blood by Philippe de Broca (Cartouche, 1962, 1h56)
Dark Journey by Léonard Keigel (Léviathan, 1962, 1h38)
Male Hunt / The Gentle Art of Seduction by Edouard Molinaro (La Chasse à l'homme, 1964, 1h31)
A Bag of Marbles by Jacques Doillon (Un sac de billes, 1975, 1h40)
The Princes by Tony Gatlif (Les Princes, 1983, 1h35)
Liberty at Night by Philippe Garrel (Liberté, la nuit, 1984, 1h19)

International films

Moonrise by Frank Borzage (1948, 1h30)
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman by Albert Lewin (1951, 2h04)
Miracle in Milan by Vittorio De Sica (Miracolo a Milano, 1951, 1h36)
5 Fingers by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1952, 1h48)
The Cranes Are Flying by Mikhaïl Kalatozov (Letyat jouravli, 1957, 1h37)
The Joy of Living by René Clément (Che gioia vivere, 1961, 1h53)
Cremator by Juraj Herz (Spalovač mrtvol, 1968, 1h36)
Reversal of Fortune by Barbet Schroeder (1990, 1h51)
The Oak by Lucian Pintilie (Balanta, 1992, 1h45)
Once Were Warriors by Lee Tamahori (1994, 1h43)


There is also a Treasures & Curiosities section; I assume at least some of these are restored:

Hungary
The Fifth Seal by Zoltán Fábri (Az ötödik pecsét, 1976, 1h47)

Iran
The House is Black by Forough Farrokhzad (Khaneh siah ast, 1963, 20min)
The Hills of Marlik by Ebrahim Golestan (Tappeh-haye Marlick, 1963, 15min)

Poland
A Woman’s Decision by Krzysztof Zanussi (Bilans kwartalny, 1975, 1h36)

Portugal
As Armas e o povo by the Collective of Workers of the Cinematographic Sector (As Armas e o povo, 1975, 1h21)

Russia
Assassin of the Tsar by Karen Shakhnazarov (Tsareubiytsa, 1991, 1h45)

Slovakia
Field Lilies by Elo Havetta (Ľalie poľné, 1972, 1h20)

Sweden
The Flight of the Eagle by Jan Troell (Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd, 1982, 2h20)
All Things Fair – Love Lessons by Bo Widerberg (Lust och fägring stor, 1995, 2h10)

Switzerland
Zone grise by Fredi M. Murer (Grauzone, 1979, 1h39)

plus La Roue (Gance)

http://www.festival-lumiere.org/en/prog ... films.html

Stefan Andersson
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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#290 Post by Stefan Andersson » Sun Sep 15, 2019 3:05 pm

La Roue restoration trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UknfR_bv04A

Stefan Andersson
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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#291 Post by Stefan Andersson » Tue Sep 24, 2019 8:05 am

This thread contains some detailed info about the ongoing Cohen and Lobster Keaton restorations:
https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic. ... 8d#p225580

Recent posts discuss the resto of the Cameraman (with details of shots still missing) and the Lobster Our Hospitality, restored from a print from Robert Youngson´s Collection, and from a diacetate copy made off the OCN in 1948 and held by MoMA.

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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#292 Post by DeprongMori » Tue Sep 24, 2019 11:25 am

Alain Corneau’s 1979 Série Noire finally gets a restoration and (I believe) its first US release.

This adaptation of “A Hell of a Woman” is among the best adaptions of the twisted novels of Jim Thompson.
Last edited by DeprongMori on Tue Sep 24, 2019 12:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#293 Post by ianthemovie » Tue Sep 24, 2019 11:52 am

Has there been anything written about the new restoration of La Roue since it screened a couple of weeks ago? From the trailer it looks gorgeous.

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tenia
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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#294 Post by tenia » Tue Sep 24, 2019 12:44 pm

I had the opportunity to see a few frames at Ritrovata during the restoration process. It was gorgeous.
It hasn'r screened anywhere yet. Its premiere will be at Lyon Lumière Festival mid october.

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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#295 Post by 4LOM » Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:05 pm

tenia wrote:I had the opportunity to see a few frames at Ritrovata during the restoration process. It was gorgeous.
It hasn'r screened anywhere yet. Its premiere will be at Lyon Lumière Festival mid october.
The premiere of the new LA ROUE restoration took place 14 September at the Musikfest Berlin.

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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#296 Post by tenia » Thu Sep 26, 2019 1:23 am

Looks like I missed this one, and that Lumière's organizers too since they're claiming they're the world premiere !

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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#297 Post by 4LOM » Thu Sep 26, 2019 3:38 am

LA ROUE Vert
Ciné-concert événement

En avant-première mondiale à Berlin et à Lyon
http://www.festival-lumiere.org/program ... -roue.html

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tenia
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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#298 Post by tenia » Thu Sep 26, 2019 4:33 am

Ah ! Should have realised the poster might be a tad more summed up than the event page.
It's a bit silly though to say it's a joint international premiere, yet the 2 events happen a month from each other.

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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#299 Post by La Clé du Ciel » Fri Sep 27, 2019 7:48 am

I was at the premiere of LA ROUE in the Konzerthaus Berlin and can confirm that it did indeed take place. The programme notes contained an excellent guide to the various versions of the film released in the 1920s and the subsequent reconstructions:

Contemporary releases
1922 (premiere version): 10,730m; prologue + six chapters; 8 hours 45 minutes (at 18 fps)
1923 (general release version): 10,495m; prologue + four episodes; 8h30m
1924 (first re-release version): 4200m, prologue + two parts; 3h30m
1928 (second re-release version): 2100m; 1h42m

Reconstructions
1980 (Cinéthèque française): 6170m; 5h
2008 (Flicker Alley): 5350m; 4h20m
2019 (Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé): metrage unspecified; 7h

(Interesting to note is the discovery that the difference in length between the 1922 and 1923 versions of LA ROUE was less than previously thought. The figure that has been stated in existing Gance filmographies for the 1923 version is 9200m, but the real figure was 10,495m.)

The 2019 reconstruction is seven hours long, so still 90 minutes short of what audiences saw in 1923 (and 105 short of 1922). I was fascinated to see the major and minor differences between this and the multiple copies I’ve seen in the past. I always regretted that the Flicker Alley release of 2008 fell so short (in overall length and in quality) of the Cinémathèque française reconstruction of 1980, which was itself far from what it might have been. So vast is the difference between the versions of 2008 and 2019 that it would be pointless to describe all the changes. More interesting (for me, at least) was that several short scenes/shots included in the 1980 restoration have been excluded from the 2019 restoration. In the prologue, these are principally of the grinning red signal and the elderly signalman, together with an additional glimpse or two of the incompetent railway officials. Gance must therefore have cut these between 1922 and 1923, perhaps in response to criticism of his use of personified objects (signals, trains, flowers). Of greater significance are the additions (i.e. material not seen in either 1980 or 2008 reconstructions), which principally come in the third and fourth episodes of the film. I think the most important is a lengthy sequence in episode three, where the rivalry between Elie, Hersan, and Norma reaches its climax. My understanding is that some of this was reconstructed using alternate takes, many cans of which were discovered during archival research for this restoration. The result is a much more coherent narrative, providing a greater sense of character motivation etc in this episode.

But perhaps the greatest difference between the 2019 restoration and previous ones is the music. This huge orchestral score was based on the cue sheets drawn up for the performances of LA ROUE at the Gaumont Palace in Paris in 1923. The music was assembled by Paul Fosse in collaboration with Arthur Honegger, who wrote original music for a few sequences (overall, a very small percentage of the score). Bernd Thewes was in charge of finding, reassembling, and orchestrating the original cues for the 2019 version – and the result is extraordinary. In the Konzerthaus, so many moments stood out that I can only mention a few...

In the prologue, the rhythm and sonic weight of the orchestra during the train crash was incredibly powerful. When Sisif tries to divert the oncoming train away from the wreck, the musical-visual tension was unbelievable – the Berlin audience audibly sighed with relief when disaster is averted, and the music subsides. In the first episode, when Norma pretends to be crushed by the train while playing with Elie, there is the most brilliant crescendo and decrescendo (perhaps my favourite piece of orchestration in Thewes’ score) – the scene drew gasps of shock. In episode three, the climactic cliffhanger sequence likewise gave rise to cries of alarm and surprise. That said, some some of the musical choices by Fosse/Honegger did seem a little odd to me – with a couple of important moments on screen not registering in the score, and one or two visual references to sound not replicated. (At the premiere in 1922, sound effects were used for steam/whistles etc; the 2019 reconstruction has not tried to replicate these.) But I suspect my own musical taste is as much an issue here as anything in the score – audiences in 1923 no doubt had different expectations of film music.

Overall, it was an astonishing musical-visual whole – and as a recreative document I think the new LA ROUE is an exceedingly important restoration. It was a joy to experience this film with a large audience and hear their reactions alongside the music.

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Re: Recent Film Restorations

#300 Post by ianthemovie » Fri Sep 27, 2019 11:26 am

Thank you so much for that, La Clé du Ciel! It sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I hope a Blu-ray will come soon, since I doubt many people will have the opportunity to see this theatrically with a full orchestra. I was astonished when I discovered La Roue on DVD (the Flickr Alley version) so I can't wait to see this.

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