Recent Film Restorations

[Calvin]

Sadly, I find it's the hope that kills you.

In all seriousness, I suspect most of these will come out - Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe is probably the least likely, as other recent Swiss restorations like Höhenfeuer have yet to be licensed. Yoru no Kawa seems like the kind of title that Criterion will probably licence, put on the Channel and then forget about for a few years. They've been sitting on Yoshimura's incredible The Ball at the Anjo House for around a decade now though, in fairness, I haven't heard a peep about a restoration of that one and the ancient DVD is still in-print in Japan.

[MichaelB]

I've long since lost count of the number of twentieth-century Polish films that have been restored over the last decade or so (we're certainly talking three figures), and the chances of more than the tiniest fraction of them making it to physical media even in Poland must be minuscule.

Given that Polish BDs often run at 25fps, I suspect their primary market (and, very likely, restoration funding source) is television.

[MichaelB]

But I would really stand by the idea that [The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie]'s not funny. The priest-turned-gardener handles his role well. The couple's romp in the bushes is slightly funny, just because of the wife's mannerisms. And the army showing up at dinner is, yeah, inspired — though the stories the messenger tells... bleck. There's the problem for me: it's very easy for a surrealist to lose his bearings (what if I put this dream in another dream? what if I include this image? what's stopping me?). Surrealists suffer more readily than other artists from a lack of that most necessary thing in art, constraint.

I've seen it with audiences on several occasions over a thirty-year span (I was even involved with a 35mm revival once), and they certainly found it funny, as did I.

So were we all deluded in laughing? Should we retrospectively recant and genuflect towards your evidently superior taste?

What I love about that film - which definitely got down to my final five when picking a compulsory Buñuel for my Sight & Sound top ten* - is the way that it switches mood so abruptly, going from properly hilarious (and I've seen repeated hard evidence that it's laugh-out-loud funny) to genuinely creepy and back again, sometimes in the same scene. And one of the biggest laughs came with the line "I dreamed that Sénéchal dreamed..." - a reaction that I'm sure was fully intended on Buñuel's part, as he knew perfectly well how absurd that particular twist was. I don't think the film loses its bearings at all - in fact, one of its many miracles is that it's remarkably coherent throughout while becoming (deliberately) increasingly nonsensical, the kind of thing that many artists have attempted to tackle but only people like Buñuel and Lewis Carroll have really pulled off with the necessary élan.

I'd also include Jan Švankmajer in this, as an ardent disciple of both, and Conspirators of Pleasure is a particularly interesting case study in that I've heard plenty of anecdata to match my own experience of watching it in a packed cinema in which occasional collective belly laughs were interspersed far more regularly with private giggling, as though the film was tapping into people's weirdest personal fantasies. Which I'm sure is precisely what Švankmajer intended - I can attest from meeting him on several occasions that he has a terrific sense of humour, and I suspect the same is true of Buñuel.

(*I went with L'âge d'or in the end, although given the subsequent fuss about the absence of Latin American cinema I half regret not picking Los olvidados - it's not as if my personal regard for that film is any less.)

[ryannichols7]

Sadly, I find it's the hope that kills you.

In all seriousness, I suspect most of these will come out - Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe is probably the least likely, as other recent Swiss restorations like Höhenfeuer have yet to be licensed. Yoru no Kawa seems like the kind of title that Criterion will probably licence, put on the Channel and then forget about for a few years. They've been sitting on Yoshimura's incredible The Ball at the Anjo House for around a decade now though, in fairness, I haven't heard a peep about a restoration of that one and the ancient DVD is still in-print in Japan.

most restored films don't make it of course, but the ones that play "the big 3" festivals seem to have more of a chance. I agree with you on Yoru no Kawa, Criterion seems most rights happy with Japanese films (especially non-genre ones) but do nothing - Twenty Four Eyes has been on BD in Japan for eons but who knows if/when it'll happen on disc here.

never seen a Swiss film I don't think? those are being held out on us

I've long since lost count of the number of twentieth-century Polish films that have been restored over the last decade or so (we're certainly talking three figures), and the chances of more than the tiniest fraction of them making it to physical media even in Poland must be minuscule.

Given that Polish BDs often run at 25fps, I suspect their primary market (and, very likely, restoration funding source) is television.

getting even the smallest trickle of these to end 2022 and into 2023 has been nice to see. hoping more of the labels do the same as time goes on, or they're able to put them out in Poland with English subs (and..better encodes)

[MichaelB]

The number of Polish BDs that don't have English subtitles is minuscule - I genuinely think that we're talking single figures, and I've only personally encountered one. I can't think of any back-catalogue BD that doesn't have English subtitles, and I definitely own the vast majority, as I've been ordering them automatically on release for something like fifteen years now.

(To be fair to the distributor of Xawery Żuławski's Snow White and Russian Red, they didn't claim that their disc had English subtitles - I just assumed that it did because the DVD definitely did. But the fact that the DVD definitely did meant that it was easy enough to rip them and create my own subtitled 1080p MKV file.)

[Penti Mento]

Incredible film. Just call it Twilight and you can retire on the profits from people buying it by mistake

Which of the above titles are you referring to, if I may ask?

[DarkImbecile]

Szürkület

[swo17]

I was responding to the last post on the previous page and must have missed that a couple others had already posted since

[MichaelB]

getting even the smallest trickle of these to end 2022 and into 2023 has been nice to see. hoping more of the labels do the same as time goes on, or they're able to put them out in Poland with English subs (and..better encodes)

I'm aware of eight 20th-century Polish titles that are currently being prepped for an English-friendly 2023 BD release in the UK across three labels, and that's not counting the BFI's brand new EO or Curzon's upcoming Kieślowski UHD quartet (since they've already had a BD release).

Some have been announced or teased, some haven't, and I hope that I'm understating the total number.

[ryannichols7]

getting even the smallest trickle of these to end 2022 and into 2023 has been nice to see. hoping more of the labels do the same as time goes on, or they're able to put them out in Poland with English subs (and..better encodes)

I'm aware of eight 20th-century Polish titles that are currently being prepped for an English-friendly 2023 BD release in the UK across three labels, and that's not counting the BFI's brand new EO or Curzon's upcoming Kieślowski UHD quartet (since they've already had a BD release).

Some have been announced or teased, some haven't, and I hope that I'm understating the total number.

that's what I'm talking about. hopefully some scholarly contributions from you to come as well! and of course, hopefully more to come. Polish film has a bit of "catch up" to play in the English speaking world after the new awareness Czech/Slovak/Hungarian/etc film has gotten lately. and hopefully this will help a lot

[MichaelB]

I'm certainly involved with some - and with others I recommended people that I thought would do a better job (in particular, I'll always defer to an actual Pole when it comes to films that demand sensitivity to subtle cultural and linguistic nuances), and I'm delighted that everyone so far has said yes. There's a huge amount of enthusiasm behind these releases, and I very much hope that they'll turn out as well as everyone's hoping.

[yoloswegmaster]

Bong Joon-Ho's The Host has received a 4K restoration and will be shown in theaters starting in March (at least in France).

[FrauBlucher]

Why Do Some Films get Restored and Others Languish?... NYTimes article

[Stefan Andersson]

Cinema Regained program at Rotterdam 2023:
https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2023/cinema-regained

[Metalane]

Hello!

First time poster here, and I'm not sure if this is the appropriate thread for this (wasn't allowed to make a new one), but I'll ask anyway.

Next month, the 4K transfer of Three Colors Trilogy is coming to Criterion. Now I've never seen them, but I was hoping to just wait until this latest transfer dropped to finally pick it up, but I have 2 questions about it that left me downvoted on Reddit for some reason lol:

1: When I try to find any early reviews of it, I found that it premiered last year at select theaters (not too sure how that stuff works anyway), but either the journalists couldn't discuss it, or they just didn't have much to say about it. I'm a bit concerned about it because I was reading reviews on how the old 1080p Criterion releases had inaccurate color grading, and that the older DVD releases (forget which company) was actually superior in that department. So I'm wondering if the new 4K/HDR transfer has corrected that, and if it's truly directors intent now.

2: I'm still bew to this whole transfer/mastering stuff, so I'm curious, is Janus Films the company that actually does the mastering themselves, them they just send it for others to use such as Criterion? Because at first I thought the Janus Films transfer and the Criterion one of this trilogy was different, because when you read about the premiere last year, it just says Janus Films. So if that's the case, is this Criterion one in-fact using Janus Films's transfer?

[Stefan Andersson]

This may have been posted earlier --- The Runner (Naderi, 1984) has been restored:
https://www.indiewire.com/2022/10/the-r ... 234769169/

[Stefan Andersson]

Remorques (Grémillon), 4k resto supervised by MK2 Films:
https://carlottafilms.com/films/remorques/

[Stefan Andersson]

Upcoming restos at the Cinematheque Francaise:

Le testament du dr Cordelier
Le caporal épinglé
Danse macabre (Margheriti) with restored censored scenes
Brumes d´automne
Ménilmontant
Et la lumière fut, Iosseliani
Rien que les heures
Mauvais sang
Boy meets girl
S´en fout la mort
Three films by Nacer Khemir
and others..

https://www.cinematheque.fr/cycle/toute ... -1071.html

[beamish14]

Upcoming restos at the Cinematheque Francaise:

Le testament du dr Cordelier
Le caporal épinglé
Danse macabre (Margheriti) with restored censored scenes
Brumes d´automne
Ménilmontant
Et la lumière fut, Iosseliani
Rien que les heures
Mauvais sang
Boy meets girl
S´en fout la mort
Three films by Nacer Khemir
and others..

https://www.cinematheque.fr/cycle/toute ... -1071.html

Messidor and Running on Empty!

[dekadetia]

Messidor and Running on Empty!

Very excited about Messidor as well -- it's ripe for new audiences to discover and retains a lot of relevance.

[Grand Wazoo]

Ménilmontant

I hope Herr Schreck is rejoicing wherever he is.

[dekadetia]

Ménilmontant

I hope Herr Schreck is rejoicing wherever he is.

This resto aired on Arte earlier this year and looks fantastic and has a nice new score by Reinhard Febel. Hopefully a disc materializes with some additional Kirsanoff films.

[Calvin]

The latest batch of films to receive CNC funding for restoration has been revealed. They include Melville's Army of Shadows (so we can perhaps expect a 4K UHD upgrade in 2024), Louis Malle's A Very Private Affair, and, perhaps most excitingly, a selection of films by Luc Moullet - Les Contrebandières, A Girl is a Gun, Anatomie d'un rapport, and Genèse d'un repas

[tenia]

Nice to see Archimède le clochard, Buffet froid and La peau douce being restored now that they've been released on Blu-ray.
I'm also surprised by the amount of fundings obtained by La Traverse for their Moullet restorations : all good for them and the movies, but these are amongst the highest fundings obtained despite 3 of these being roughly 80 minutes long.

[ford]

The latest batch of films to receive CNC funding for restoration has been revealed. They include Melville's Army of Shadows (so we can perhaps expect a 4K UHD upgrade in 2024)

Well that's...extremely fucking exciting.