Recent Film Restorations

[DarkImbecile]

Announced restorations for Berlinale 2018, including Ozu, Wenders, Lumet, and Kalatozov.

[hearthesilence]

MoMA apparently held a retrospective on William K. Howard last summer, but you have a chance to see his films again during To Save and Project, which is going on right now.

I caught Transatlantic last night and it's every bit the revelation Dave Kehr made it out to be, a technical marvel that in 1931 builds on the cinematographic breakthroughs Murnau and others made before that transition period when sound recording seemed to hamper filmmaking like a lead weight. In many ways, it also looks forward to the stylistic innovations of Citizen Kane.

The restoration is also a pretty amazing. Apparently NO print of the domestic version exists, so what they created was a Frankenstein version pieced together from various exported versions that had been dubbed in different languages, and then matching the visuals to a copy of the English soundtrack. (A few sections of English dialogue were still missing and had to be covered with subtitles.) They projected a DCP and what they had looked pretty hazy and often VERY grainy, but considering the circumstances, it's a commendable job.

[Quiche]

Is there any known reason why Uma (1941) directed by Kajirô Yamamoto and co-directed by Akira Kurosawa has not been restored and released on DVD or Blu-ray? Out of all of the films from the past, you would think that anything touched by either director would be at the top of the list to be released to the public?

[GaryC]

The NFSA in Australia has just restored The Cheaters (1929), directed by Paulette McDonagh. It premiered earlier this month.

[FrauBlucher]

I'm currently watching TCM. A between films segment, Ben Mankiewicz is interviewing John Bailey, President of The Film Academy Arts and Sciences, they are talking about the Academy Archives in which they have taken up film restorations. Bailey said they work closely with other organizations like the Film Foundation and the UCLA Archive. They are currently working on restoring Detour. That would be awesome. Especially if they came across some better elements. Hopefully it's on Criterion's radar.

[DeprongMori]

At the current Noir City festival in San Francisco, Eddie Muller announced that the screening of I Walk Alone, starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, was a new digital restoration from Universal. There is still a fair amount of speckling and damage apparent, so it wasn’t a full restoration. It still looked pretty darned good.

[Calvin]

This January's CNC funding report has only just appeared online. To highlight a few titles:

Douce (Autant-Lara)
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Bresson)
Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson)
The Strange Monsieur Victor (Grémillon)
La Fille de l'eau (Renoir)
Nana (Renoir)
Sur un air de Charleston (Renoir)
The Little Match Girl (Renoir)

[Ribs]

And it also seems like it may explain why Arrow's pulled L'atalantide from the schedule!

[diamonds]

Today the Metrograph will be playing a reconstruction of Personal Problems (1980). I've observed rumblings about this for a few weeks leading up to it, and everything I've read about it sounds absolutely fascinating. Has anyone seen this work? Further, since the "restoration" is Kino Lorber, is there a good chance we'll see a physical release anytime soon?

[Calvin]

Dennis Hopper's Out of the Blue to be restored in 4K

[thirtyframesasecond]

Dennis Hopper's Out of the Blue to be restored in 4K

Nice, it's a great movie - especially if you're also a fan of Primal Scream's Xtrmntr.

[Calvin]

The China Film Archive's 4K restorations of Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth and Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Horse Thief will premiere at the Beijing International Film Festival this month. Though they have apparently been claiming that they've restored The Horse Thief in 48fps...

[beamish13]

The China Film Archive's 4K restorations of Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth and Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Horse Thief will premiere at the Beijing International Film Festival this month. Though they have apparently been claiming that they've restored The Horse Thief in 48fps...

WOW. These are two monumental works that have long been in need of restorations and greater visibility in the West. I saw a new 35mm print of Yellow Earth a few years ago, and it looked a bit rough, but it elevated a film I had previously just enjoyed on VHS to becoming an all-time favorite.

[domino harvey]

Yellow Earth is great, hopefully one of the more visible labels picks it up to give it more exposure

[hearthesilence]

If it was filmed in 24fps, I'm not sure converting it to 48 fps will actually do anything unless they're doing something awful like creating "interpolated" frames instead of repeating every frame. Hoping for the best.

[StevenJ0001]

Yes, love Yellow Earth, and I'd kind of given up hope of it ever getting some decent treatment. Great news!

[swo17]

Horse Thief is also exciting news!

[domino harvey]

This will be Martin Scorsese's favorite Blu-ray release of the 2020s

[swo17]

This will be Martin Scorsese's favorite film of the 2020s

Fixed

[Big Ben]

For those uninitiated here's Scorsese sitting with Ebert beaming with effusive praise for the film.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Yellow Earth is fantastic, and it would be great if his other early films (The Big Parade, King of the Children, Life on a String) got decent releases too.

[Calvin]

If it was filmed in 24fps, I'm not sure converting it to 48 fps will actually do anything unless they're doing something awful like creating "interpolated" frames instead of repeating every frame. Hoping for the best.

Whatever it is they've done, a new post on that thread says that it is distracting. And they've scrubbed the grain. Here's hoping that, if it does get licensed, they can rescue it by going back to an earlier step in the workflow.

[hearthesilence]

That sucks. Sort of like crawling through a desert and finding an oasis, only to discover that some asshat has been using it as a toilet.

[Ribs]

Cannes classics lineup

[jsteffe]

Whatever it is they've done, a new post on that thread says that it is distracting. And they've scrubbed the grain. Here's hoping that, if it does get licensed, they can rescue it by going back to an earlier step in the workflow.

I think digital film restoration is still in its awkward adolescent phase. There is much excellent work being done, but also a lot of questionable choices regarding things like grain management and color grading/color management workflow. (And now frame rate, too???) As a result, there are far too many restorations out there with obvious technical problems, and they become the default versions that people will have access to for years to come. We desperately need more internationally agreed-upon standards and more accountability within the digital film restoration community.