Footage came from three sources: the OCN, a dupe negative made in 1938, and a 35mm nitrate print from the BFI's archives. This nitrate print was several generations removed from the OCN as it was an exhibition print with the kind of wear you'd expect from anything that's been run through a projector. The nitrate print's origin is also a bit mysterious: it was struck in 1943 (info printed on the film itself) but it was long speculated to contain lost footage cut for the censored reissue, which indeed was the case. How this came to be is unknown. (Perhaps it was a preview print of some kind, but regardless, no documentation exists to suggest any answer.)
They actually scanned the OCN in 2014 but they really wanted to see if a restoration of the original cut was possible, so they spent the time finding and gathering all the necessary materials, including all of the paperwork regarding changes and censoring. One major problem was that a guide to what was done had no information regarding actual content of scenes - it was all just numerical measurements of the length of film involved, and things were trimmed in a way where you could have lost a crucial moment and still have the scene come up with a measurement that matched what was there before. So they had to do the painstaking task of running all three sources side-by-side plus an old video transfer as a guide and pinpoint exactly what was in all three sources. I'm sure that was only the beginning of their work - a demo showed substantial flaws like scratches and blemishes in the nitrate print that had to be cleaned up. By 2019, there was interest in premiering their work at a major festival, and they thought maybe they could aim for 2020, but obviously that could not happen. It took a while to start up their restoration work again, but ten years after the OCN scan we now have it.
During the film, I noticed what looked like a subtle shift that suggested footage from a different source had to be inserted to complete a shot, and the demo confirmed this. (It's a close-up of Loretta Young at the restaurant in the second scene.) To their credit, this was very subtle, less distracting than even a scratched frame flying by. It was an extremely good match too - you can barely notice any change in quality, so it was not jarring at all. They must've graded it to match - a demo of the skinny dipping scene showed the raw scans for the OCN and the nitrate print side-by-side and as great as the nitrate print looked, you can see the loss in detail, the thicker grain and most of all the loss in dynamic range with a lot of stuff becoming more lost in darkness. One shot used from the nitrate is when Young says she doesn't have a bathing suit - the scene actually cuts back and forth between Tracy and Young here, and the other times they show the camera angle on Young is from the OCN, so you can compare the two and see how much better the OCN looks versus the nitrate - after restoration, it looks subtle but noticeable if you scrutinize closely and know where to look, but honestly, because of the editing, I bet most people won't notice at all. (FYI she said Sony's policy with restorations was to enhance the original artistic intent, i.e. don't go overboard with restoration tools and de-grain or over sharpen simply because you can.)
As for the content, the Code-butchered reissue really does sand away some edges. Innuendo is taken out, a controversial topic (sadly relevant to the U.S. today) is mostly gutted out, and one's profession as a prostitute is obscured, but the biggest botch is moving a crucial scene from reel 7 to reel 2 - so much happens in that scene internally for Tracy and Young's characters, but by placing it in the wrong context, the Code-butchered reissue completely robs it of its meaning and power. FWIW until 10 minutes ago I still had a copy of the TCM broadcast on a drive (PQ now looks comparatively awful) and to my surprise, that scene was back where it belongs, in reel 7. It was well-known what had been done with that scene due to the Code so maybe TCM and/or Sony decided to make things right years ago and make that change in the broadcast master? Certainly was doable, but moving that scene meant Columbia had to make cuts later and before, at least one of which created a terrible jump cut that I still remember. (I also remember an egregious jump cut unrelated to the scene move that takes place in a hotel room - that was to gut out some sexual content). You can see those cuts in the TCM broadcast as the missing footage had not been found yet, but from what I can tell, all of these cuts are now indeed fixed with the missing footage restored - no more jump cuts!
Finally, the skinny dipping censorship is more substantial than I thought. I knew about it before and knew what was cut, but that knowledge isn't enough, you really need to see it play out. Seen in its restored form, you get a greater sense of how that moment effected another character -
SpoilerShow
his predatory lust becomes much clearer and disturbing and as a result the motivation for what he does later becomes much more clearer and even more frightening, less contrived and less abstract.
