Recent Film Restorations

[jmj713]

Already posted in the Vinegar Syndrome thread back in January since Deaf Crocodile will be putting it on home video, so there is basically no chance that Criterion will be putting these out.

Thanks, I realize that, I would just love more exposure for something like City Zero. Or Dead Man's Letters that I mentioned earlier. I have a real affinity for 1980s Soviet dystopias (also Kin-Dza-Dza and Per Aspera Ad Astra). If anyone knows more of these less-known examples (everyone knows Stalker), let me know please!

[bad future]

Already posted in the Vinegar Syndrome thread back in January since Deaf Crocodile will be putting it on home video, so there is basically no chance that Criterion will be putting these out.

Thanks, I realize that, I would just love more exposure for something like City Zero. Or Dead Man's Letters that I mentioned earlier. I have a real affinity for 1980s Soviet dystopias (also Kin-Dza-Dza and Per Aspera Ad Astra). If anyone knows more of these less-known examples (everyone knows Stalker), let me know please!

The End of Eternity (1987) might be up your alley? I saw it during the early lockdown days of 2020 when I was watching a near madness-inducing number of films daily -- also when I saw Dead Man's Letters and Kin-Dza-Dza -- and to be honest End of Eternity is probably one of the films from that period I remember the least; I ended up skimming through it again a few months ago and it was like recalling a dream. Which I relate to you now to qualify my "recommendation" -- I can't really attest to its quality but I can be sure that it's an 80's Soviet sci-fi with elaborate sets. Not dystopian in the way Dead Man's Letters is; more the 1984/Metropolis/THX humans-as-cogs, oppressive state kind of bleak future, based on the Asimov novel of the same name.

[jmj713]

Thanks! I've added it to my watchlist.

[Yakushima]

jmj713, I very enthusiastically second more exposure to the titles you mentioned - City Zero, Dead Man's Letters, Kin-Dza-Dza and Per Aspera Ad Astra.

I was happy to hear about the upcoming Blu-ray of City Zero. Kin-Dza-Dza already has stellar Blu-ray editions in Japan and Germany (although not English-friendly). A restoration of Per Aspera Ad Astra was famously botched by the director's son. That "restored" version should be avoided like a plague. There were rumors of the original version been also restored and shown in UK in 2019.

The other dystopian Russian films I can recommend (although from a slightly later period) are Barabaniada (Drumroll) (1993) by Sergei Ovcharov, Okno v Parizh (Window to Paris) (1993) and Bakenbardy (Sideburns) (1990) by Yuri Mamin, and Okraina (Outskirts) (1998) by Pyotr Lutsik.

[L.A.]

The New Indian Express

World's largest film restoration project commences in India for Rs 363 crore

[Stefan Andersson]

The Joke (Jaromil Jires) restored:
https://www.kviff.com/en/news/3677-kvif ... s-the-joke

[MichaelB]

Oh, that’s excellent news - I’ve only seen the Facets DVD thus far.

[jmj713]

Berlinale Classics 2020 announced:
https://www.berlinale.de/en/press/press ... 33438.html

Ostatni etap (The Last Stage)
Poland 1948
by Wanda Jakubowska
with Wanda Bartówna, Huguette Faget, Tatjana Górecka, Antonina Górecka, Maria Winogradowa, Barbara Drapińska, Aleksandra Śląska
World premiere of the digitally restored version 2019 (DCP 4K)
Ostatni etap was one of the earliest films to tackle the subject of the Holocaust and was shot partially on location at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The director realistically depicts the everyday horrors of forced labour and mass extermination, but also resistance by the women prisoners. The restoration by Poland’s National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute, Warsaw, in cooperation with Tor Film Production, was based on a duplicate negative, since the original camera negative was lost. The restoration was funded by the European Regional Development Fund and the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

This hasn't been released yet?

[dekadetia]

This hasn't been released yet?

Unfortunately not. It's too important a film to just be sitting around like this, and the restoration is excellent — I'd have never guessed the film could look this good.

[Calvin]

The films in the Rediscovered and Restored section of this year's Il Cinema Ritrovato festival have been announced:

Le Voyage dans la lune (1902) di Georges Méliès • Les Misérables (1912) di Albert Capellani • Blind Husbands (Mariti ciechi, 1919) di Erich von Stroheim • Crazy to Marry (1921) di James Cruze • Béhula (1921) di Camille Legrand • La Terre (The Earth, 1921) di André Antoine • Tu m’appartiens! (Tu m’appartieni!, 1929) di Maurice Gleize • La Règle du jeu (La regola del gioco / The Rules of the Game, 1939) di Jean Renoir • All That Money Can Buy (L’oro del demonio, 1941) di William Dieterle • Sciuscià (Shoeshine, 1946) di Vittorio De Sica • Caught (Presi nella morsa, 1949) di Max Ophüls • Singin’ in the Rain (Cantando sotto la pioggia, 1952) di Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly • Invaders from Mars (Gli invasori spaziali, 1953) di William Cameron Menzies • Él (Lui, 1953) di Luis Buñuel • Giant (Il gigante, 1956) di George Stevens • Written on the Wind (Come le foglie al vento, 1956) di Douglas Sirk • La ricotta – Ep. di Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963) di Pier Paolo Pasolini • Až prˇijde kocour (The Cassandra Cat, 1963) di Vojteˇch Jasný • Topkapi (1964) di Jules Dassin • Le Samouraï (Frank Costello faccia d’angelo, 1967) di Jean-Pierre Melville • Korotkie vstrechi (Brevi incontri / Brief Encounters, 1967) di Kira Muratova • Il conformista (The Conformist, 1970) di Bernardo Bertolucci • Dolgie provody (Lunghi addii / The Long Farewell, 1971) di Kira Muratova • Doroshkechi (The Carriage Driver, 1971) di Nosratollah Karimi • The Last Picture Show (L’ultimo spettacolo, 1971) di Peter Bogdanovich • Cheshmeh (The Spring, 1972) di Arby Ovanessian • Buck and the Preacher (Non predicare, spara, 1972) di Sidney Poitier • La Maman et la putain (The Mother and the Whore, 1973) di Jean Eustache • Ludwig (1973) di Luchino Visconti • Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) di Peter Weir • Tommy (1975) di Ken Russell • The Driver (Driver, l’imprendibile, 1978) di Walter Hill • The Blues Brothers (1980) di John Landis • Avskedet (The Farewell, 1982) di Tuija-Maija Niskanen • Tenebre (1982) di Dario Argento • Nostalghia (1983) di Andrej Tarkovskij • Videodrome (1983) di David Cronenberg • Trading Places (Una poltrona per due, 1983) di John Landis • Carmen (1984) di Francesco Rosi • Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Fuoco cammina con me, 1992) di David Lynch

[agnamaracs]

Are these all new restorations? What's different about Trip to the Moon?

Wonder if they added anything to Blues Brothers.

[hearthesilence]

A new one of Blind Husbands just screened at several festivals in the past few months - this must be that one?

Written on the Wind is frustrating considering that Criterion finally caved and released it on BD recently.

[Calvin]

Are these all new restorations? What's different about Trip to the Moon?

Wonder if they added anything to Blues Brothers.

As I understand it, not necessarily. We'll find out when the individual pages are up.

A new one of Blind Husbands just screened at several festivals in the past few months - this must be that one?

I'm sure it will be

[andyli]

Wow that's a lot of info to digest. Since individual film pages have not appeared in the database yet there's a lot of room for speculation.

I'd expect films like La Règle du jeu, Singin' in the Rain, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and The Blues Brothers, to name a few, are using recent 4k restorations so they won't technically be premieres. But I do hope Le samouraï is a complete redux that fixes the Pathé disaster. The Conformist has been restored by Cineteca di Bologna long ago (and appeared in a previous Ritrovato version) but it deserves a new 4k scan/resto if only for it's visual beauty. We'll see. Nostalgia, Hanging Rock and Videodrome go into that hd-master-long-overdue-for-a-4k-upgrade catogory, too.

I'm most excited about El, The Long Farewell, and some other more obscure treasures in this bunch. If they get decent restorations and blu-ray releases in the years to come I'll be able to fill some major holes in my collection.

[tenia]

I suspect Written on the Wind will be the same source than the Criterion BD, just like we're seeing Buck and the Preacher announced.

[Calvin]

Wow that's a lot of info to digest. Since individual film pages have not appeared in the database yet there's a lot of room for speculation.

I'd expect films like La Règle du jeu, Singin' in the Rain, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and The Blues Brothers, to name a few, are using recent 4k restorations so they won't technically be premieres. But I do hope Le samouraï is a complete redux that fixes the Pathé disaster. The Conformist has been restored by Cineteca di Bologna long ago (and appeared in a previous Ritrovato version) but it deserves a new 4k scan/resto if only for it's visual beauty. We'll see. Nostalgia, Hanging Rock and Videodrome go into that hd-master-long-overdue-for-a-4k-upgrade catogory, too.

I'm most excited about El, The Long Farewell, and some other more obscure treasures in this bunch. If they get decent restorations and blu-ray releases in the years to come I'll be able to fill some major holes in my collection.

One we do know about is The Conformist - Stefania Sandrelli will be on hand to present the new restoration

[Stefan Andersson]

UCLA 2022 festival of preservation:
https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2022 ... eservation
Includes restorations of The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, films noirs Cover Up and The Argyle Secrets, All That Money Can Buy, Haskell Wexler´s The Bus (1965), Scram! (L & H), Blondie (1938), Topper Returns and more.

[hearthesilence]

UCLA 2022 festival of preservation:
https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2022 ... eservation
Includes restorations of...All That Money Can Buy

Totally forgot this is also known as The Devil and Daniel Webster (the title Criterion uses for their DVD which they've yet to upgrade). Hopefully this will pop up on a Blu-ray in the not-too-distant future.

[agnamaracs]

UCLA 2022 festival of preservation:
https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2022 ... eservation
Includes restorations of...All That Money Can Buy

Totally forgot this is also known as The Devil and Daniel Webster (the title Criterion uses for their DVD which they've yet to upgrade). Hopefully this will pop up on a Blu-ray in the not-too-distant future.

Yeah, I admit I stared blankly at that title for a couple seconds (I confused it with All the Money in the World). The Devil and Daniel Webster is the more famous title, and the title of the original story, but apparently RKO backed themselves into a corner by releasing The Devil and Miss Jones the same year.

[Stefan Andersson]

Videos from the San Francisco Silent Film Festival:
https://silentfilm.org/screening-room/ (restoring Sylvester, William S. Hart films, Fragment of an Empire and more)

Review of the 2022 festival:
https://strictly-vintage-hollywood.blog ... -25th.html
- The Primrose Path (Clara Bow) rediscovered and restored
- Smouldering Fires (Clarence Brown) restored from Kevin Brownlow´s show-at-home print)

[Rrobynne]

Ridiculous how POLA X is still so neglected.

I can't remember where but I've definitely seen are URL to some funding page or other proving that Pola X received restoration funding within the past decade in addition. However, what I was unable to determine was whether they were including the longer (superior) TV cut in that effort. With how tangled its rights supposedly are, I wouldn't take it as a given. Really is atrocious how needlessly neglected it's become.

[Stefan Andersson]

4K restorations of a number of Dario Argento titles, including Sleepless, Opera, Do You Like Hitchcock? and The Five Days:
https://www.indiewire.com/2022/05/dario ... 28929/amp/

[Stefan Andersson]

New list of restorations in France supported by the CNC:

https://www.cnc.fr/professionnels/aides ... 22_1695187

includes several Mocky titles, La Grande Bouffe, Alphaville, Stavisky, Danse macabre (Margheriti), S´en fout la mort, La femme d´a côté (Truffaut), Carne, Seul contre tous, Delannoy´s two 50s Maigret films, Mes petites amoureuses, Le Magnifique, Le Comedien (Guitry).

[Stefan Andersson]

Restored Mike Leigh films:
https://www.filmlinc.org/series/human-c ... igh/#films

Leigh on the resto of Naked:
http://reverseshot.org/archive/entry/2937/mike_leigh

Three Colors trilogy restored:
https://www.filmlinc.org/daily/flc-summ ... lade-more/

Top of the Heap (Christopher St. John, 1972) restored by Shout and American Genre Film Archive:
https://www.bam.org/film/2022/top-of-the-heap
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-a ... er-st-john
http://reverseshot.org/interviews/entry ... hristopher
Shown on the Criterion Channel, April 2022:
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts ... 022-lineup

[hearthesilence]

Restored Mike Leigh films:
https://www.filmlinc.org/series/human-c ... igh/#films

Leigh on the resto of Naked:
http://reverseshot.org/archive/entry/2937/mike_leigh

I commented on this in the Topsy-Turvy thread but the 4K restoration of Naked definitely looks great. The "2K restoration" of Topsy-Turvy actually looks like the same gristly-looking master used for Criterion's BD of Topsy-Turvy but without the hints of what I think is sharpening or edge enhancement that I'm seeing on the BD around heads and shoulders in certain scenes.

Also, after the Naked Q&A, I complimented Leigh on the restoration's re-creation of the bleach bypass look, and he agreed it look great, crediting it to Dick Pope's supervision. I nearly asked him why it was missing before but thought better of it, thinking it might sound accusatory. Turns out Leigh supervised the Criterion Blu-ray that didn't have it, which brought to mind this SNL sketch and the moment Hartman asks Lovitz: "The pedestal was too weak to hold the osmium, wasn’t it, doctor?" "Yes." "Did you design these pedestals, doctor?" "[ angry ] Yes!" "Aaallll right..."

EDIT: Naked and Secrets & Lies Q&A's are now up on YouTube.