SF Silent Film Festival, Day 2

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Lincoln Spector

Amazing Tales From the Vault
This year’s technical talk concentrated on digital restorations and distribution by major studios, with experts from Paramount and Sony (Columbia). I didn’t take notes, so I’ll just give you a quick overview:

  • Wings was projected off a DCP Friday night. Paramount has made a 35mm negative and prints of the new digital restoration, but the Festival decided to show the DCP because they were more confident of the quality.
  • The restoration cost about $700,000, and will probably lose money. Since Paramount is a for-profit company, this bodes ill for other silent restorations.
  • We were treated to a back-and-forth comparison of the first reel of Dr. Strangelove in 35mm and DCP. DCP looked better.
  • If you sit close enough to the screen, 4K projection looks better. They showed a single frame from Lawrence of Arabia in 2K and 4K. The difference, from my seat in the third row, was amazing.

Little Toys
I had mixed feelings about this late silent from Shanghai. At times, I felt the lack of sound as a flaw, something I rarely experience in a silent film. Other times, this tale of a brilliant toymaker and her tribulations in a world of war, touched me. Ruan Lingyu gave a brilliant performance as the lead, but at times it felt like it was going on too long.

The 35mm print looked washed out and badly scratched–probably a problem with the source and not this particular print. The Chinese intertitles had badly-translated, often grammatically strange, English subtitles.

Donald Sosin was, as usual, brilliant on the piano.

The Loves of Pharaoh
This is the sort of big, epic, costume melodrama that Hollywood loved in the 1950s–except it was made in Germany in the 1920s. The plot involved an evil yet love-sick pharaoh, a slavegirl, her lover, barbarian Ethiopians, and…well, you get the idea. Silly, but utterly entertaining.

Recently restored from two incomplete tinted prints, the movie is still not complete. Missing scenes were filled in with intertitles (“Pharaoh walks to the window”) and occasional stills.

The DCP presentation was acceptable, but not as crisp as Wings. One annoyance: The bulk of the intertitles used light blue letters, which was very distracting and anachronistic. Only the ones filling in for missing footage used the conventional white letters. It would have been better the other way around.

Dennis James provided fine music on the Castro’s mammoth pipe organ. There was no subtlety to the score, but that was appropriate, as there was no subtlety to the movie.

Mantrap
No surprises here. I own this romantic comedy–the perfect Clara Bow vehicle–on the Treasures 5 DVD box set. And I’ve even seen it once before at the Castro, with live music. But that didn’t keep me from enjoying the movie. After all, comedy is always better with a large and enthusiastic audience, and Stephen Horne’s score (mostly piano but also with some accordian and flute) sounds better live. A tale of a flirt who marries a hick, with a New York divorce lawyer thrown in as a reluctant piece of the triangle, is very much a work of its time. But in many ways, it’s timeless.

Physically, the film hasn’t aged well. The 35mm print from the Library of Congress came from a source that was scratched and lacked detail. Seeing this the day after Wings brought home the difference between preservation and restoration. No one will likely spend $700,000 to make Mantrap look new. So it has only been restored; the best existing print was copied to a more stable film stock.

I decided to skip the last movie of the evening, The Wonderful Lie of Nina Petrovna. I didn’t think I could stay awake for it. To paraphrase Lloyd Bridges in Airplane!, “I knew this was the wrong week to give up caffeine.”

But I did buy the Wings Blu-ray before I left.

Note: I corrected a factual error in the original post.

Filed under: Comedy, Digital Projection, Festivals, Film Preservation, First-person Report, Preservation, Restorations, Silent Films | Leave a Comment »

SF Silent Film Festival Report 1: Wings

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Lincoln Spector

I always felt that realistic sound effects weren't appropriate for silent films. I was wrong. Or perhaps this was just an exception. Realistic sound effects are fantastic if they're performed live by an ensemble directed by sound effects wizard Ben Burtt. Using bicycles, drums, a typewriter (I think) and devices that I couldn't possibly name (but all, I suspect, existing in 1927), Burtt and his team brought the air and land battles of World War 1 to life. The thrills, shocks, and horrors of combat came through in Burtt's audio as much as in William Wellman's images.

Music by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra helped, as well. One of the best ensembles accompanying silent films today, they make any silent film come alive. But this time, to be honest, they were upstaged by the sound effects. I don't think they minded.

Silent movies were meant to be seen, not heard, so let's talk about visuals. Paramount's new restoration of Wings–the first Best Picture Oscar winner–is simply stunning. A couple of scenes looked grainier than the rest, but most of it looked like a brand-new black and white movie. Except there wasn't much black and white. Most of the movie was tinted, and if the tints lacked the excitement of those in Napoleon, they were still effective. Flames were hand-painted orange (or CGI'd to look hand-painted). I don't know if I saw a brand-new 35mm print or a digital copy, and frankly, I don't care.

But what about the movie itself? I don't know if it was the audio, the restoration, or my age, but Wings seemed much better than I remembered. A great, big epic of regular soldiers at war, it took its time developing the atmosphere and characters, and foreshadowing an important death. When the action starts, we're entirely invested.

The two leads, Charles (Buddy) Rogers and Richard Arlen, give complete and subtle performances. There's a moment when Arlen's character is receiving a medal, and the weary sadness and confusion on his face spoke more volumes than any dialog ever could. Among the other impressive performances are a not-yet-famous Gary Cooper in a small but effective role, and Henry B. Walthall as a father trying his best to repress emotions raging inside. The wonderful Clara Bow, despite her top billing, is wasted here as the ingenue in love with a man who doesn't realize he's in love with her.

Tomorrow night, we'll watch Bow shine in Mantrap, a movie more suited to her talents.

 

Filed under: Action Movies, Awards, Festivals, Film Preservation, Restorations, Silent Films | Leave a Comment »

Children of Paradise

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Lincoln Spector

Something struck me as I watched Children of Paradise Saturday at the Castro. The main characters are, at heart, all extraordinarily selfish. Even when expressing deep and undying love, they’re thinking only of their own needs and desires. They want to own the object of their adoration, but they don’t see that object as a human being with desires of his or her own. No wonder there are no happy endings here.

Perhaps that’s why I so pity the two most love-struck characters in the story, Baptiste and Nathalie, but I can’t bring myself to like them very much. They’re doomed by their intense, melodramatic, but ultimately unattainable loves–even when they appear to, perhaps briefly, attain them..

Yet I adore two other major characters: Garance and Frédérick. For them, love is simple pleasure. They’re almost as selfish as Baptiste and Nathalie, but they, at least, are honest about their desires. Garance and Frédérick are merely hedonists, while the seemingly serious and romantic Baptiste and Nathalie have sunk into narcissism.

And yet no character in this large cast earns more affection for me than Avril, the criminal sidekick (and possibly murderer) with the innocence and demeanor of a child. Avril has no ambitions or desires. He does what he’s told, even when he’s reluctant to do so. His eyes are soulful, and he almost always carries a small flower–sometimes by hand, or in his teeth, or behind his ear. How can you hate a man like that?

Avril takes those orders from Lacenaire, who comes as close as anyone to being children_of_paradise2Children’s villain–a well-educated dandy with a deep distain for almost everyone, he steals for a living and dreams of committing a grand murder. Like Baptiste and Frédérick, he’s a planet orbiting Garance–the gravitational center of the film’s solar system. But while Baptiste needs Garance to be his true love, and Frédérick merely wants to sleep with her, Lacenaire’s desires are less clear. He’s fascinated by Garance, and she’s fascinated with him, but there’s nothing sexual between them. Perhaps Lacenaire is gay–or asexual.

Garance acquires another male admirer before the film is through–the Count Eduard of Monteray. He wants to own Garance and make her his mistress. He’s rich and powerful, and used to getting whatever he wants. But I’m not sure if he desires Garance for sex, for status, or for an excuse to kill other men honorably in duels. (Eduard is more evil than Lacenaire, but there’s too little of him onscreen to call him the villain.)

And all of this is set in the theater world of 19th century Paris. Baptiste, a mime, grows as an artist as unrequited love burns a hole in his heart. His staged mime children_of_paradise3routines are amongst some of the film’s best moments–funny, touching, and sad. Baptiste and Frédérick are both historical figures. Jean-Baptiste Debureau was one of the greatest mimes of all time. Frédérick Lemaître was his era’s great dramatic actor. (Lacenaire and Avril are also historical figures. The other characters  are, as far as I know, fictitious.)

The large sets, filled with extras, and captured with Roger Hubert’s atmospheric cinematography, bring the audience back to a teeming, lively, and romanticized time and place. I’d be hard-pressed to think of another black-and-white sound film that works so well as period spectacle. The high production values are all the more impressive when you remember that Children of Paradise was shot during the last months of the Nazi occupation.

Which brings me to Pathe’s new restoration. It’s gorgeous, from the sharp, fine detail of the crowd scenes to the smoky insides of the theaters–so brilliantly lit by Hubert to give the impression of gas lighting. Wisely, Pathe did not attempt to sharpen scenes that were never meant to look sharp. A handful of shots fail to look as good as they should, probably because they were restored from inferior sources.

The Castro screened Children of Paradise digitally in DCP. I know that many will object, but I don’t. 35mm film couldn’t have looked better.

September 10, 2012: After watching the film again on Blu-ray, I have made a few changes to this article.

children_of_paradise4

Filed under: Film Preservation, First-person Report, Great Films | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

In Praise of Digital Projection

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Lincoln Spector

I’m a cinema purist. I want my films shown in the correct aspect ratio. I don’t approve of colorization, adding new and “improved” special effects, or 2D-to-3D conversions. I’m offended when the DVD or Blu-ray disc of a classic doesn’t include the original mono soundtrack.

Yet, in terms of the esthetic cinematic experience, I wouldn’t shed a tear if film completely disappeared as a presentation medium, and was replaced entirely by digital projection. (I have other, non-esthetic problems with digital projection, which I discuss below.)

I have now seen several movies played off a hard drive using in the DCP standard. When done properly, they look as good as a mint-condition 35mm print run through a first-class projector. They have as much color, as much detail, and yes, as much warmth. They look better, actually, because they lack film’s slight vibration.

Poor projection can hurt the experience, of course, but that’s the case with film, as well. With digital, a bad projectionist can ruin the screening. With film, he or she can ruin every subsequent screening of that particular print. Digital not only removes the vibration, but also eliminates the scratches and dirt.

And what do you lose? Nothing except the knowledge that a clear piece of acetate is moving through a projector at a rate of 90 feet a minute.

The first time I saw 2K digital projection, more than five years ago, my immediate response was  “What a great print!” I have yet to experience a 4K presentation that made full use of that resolution’s capabilities, but I’ve read reports that call it as good or better than 70mm.

But how can I say that 2K is equivalent to 35mm when restoration experts insists on scanning 35mm sources at 4K or higher? And scanning 65 or 70mm at 8K? Film loses a tremendous amount of detail between the camera negative and the projected image. You need 4K (or more) to capture all of the information available on a 35mm negative, but 2K can reproduce as much as you actually see on a projected 35mm print. And with digital as with analog, oversampling improves the quality of the resulting image.

Digital projection is greener, as well. Distributers don’t have to ship thousands of feet of chemical-drenched acetate to every theater that’s showing the movie.

So what are the problems with digital projection?

One is archival. Film rots over the decades, but we know to handle and store film to minimize the . It will be a long time before we know how best to preserve a digital motion picture. But archives and studios can work out solutions now, including preserving many copies, writing the bits to multiple digital formats, and keeping film elements, as well.

The other problem is money. Digital projection, a big money saver for distributers, is a big investment for theaters. Major chains can afford to go all digital—and more and more of them are. But many smaller, independent cinemas, including many that I cover here at Bayflicks, can’t afford the big, expensive digital projectors.

If there’s a solution, I don’t know what it is. Many of these theaters have prosumer-level HD projectors that can produce a very good image on their moderate-sized screens. Perhaps there’s a way to make these work with DCP.

I know that many purists disapprove of digital projection, insisting that something shot for film presentation should be presented on film. To my mind, that’s taking purity too far. Hamlet was written for a particular actor—Richard Burbage. No one has seen him perform for nearly 400 years. It’s still a great play.

Filed under: Digital Projection, Film Preservation, Technical | 1 Comment »

A CENTURY AGO: THE FILMS OF 1910

Posted on November 12, 2010 by Lincoln Spector

For the fourth year in a row, Randy Haberkamp of the Motion Picture Academy came to the Rafael with an overview of one-hundred-year-old films. For the first time, I was there to see it.

Haberkamp introduced and presented seven one-reelers (pretty much all there was in those days) from 1910—six of them narrative fiction. Despite the Rafael site’s promise that “the program spotlights evolving cinematic storytelling methods,” he talked mostly about the studios and the filmmakers, and only occasionally about how the art evolved over that year.

Nor did he arrange the films (all American, by the way) in any sort of order that would suggest an evolution—either chronologically or working from the most primitive to the most advanced. In fact, the most primitive film shown, “The Wonderful World of Oz,” was fourth on the program.

“Oz” was also the biggest revelation for me, which is odd because I’d already seen it. In fact, I have it in two different boxed sets. It’s in the More Treasures from American Film Archives collection, and is on a Wizard of Oz (1939) supplemental disc. Clearly made up of scenes from a stage production–with painted backdrops even for exteriors, and shot from a single, never-moving, straight-on camera–it looks more like a movie from 1905 than 1910. I never cared for it.

But seeing it in 35mm, projected onto a large screen, with Michael Mortilla tickling the ivories and an enthusiastic audience, I could enjoy it for what it was. Yes, it was crude as cinema, but it recorded scenes from what must have been a very fun stage production—full of clever sets, slapstick, and dancing.

The program wasn’t all painted sets.  A western called “The Sergeant” was shot in Yosemite, and takes full advantage of the scenery. Thought to be lost, a print of the “The Sergeant” recently turned up in New Zealand, and the movie has just been restored. We were among the first people to see it screened in close to a century.

My favorite? “A Tin Type Romance,” a slight romantic comedy from Vitagraph. and staring Florence Turner. Movie actors weren’t credited in those days, and she became known as the “Vitagraph Girl.” She had a wonderfully expressive face and almost as expressive feet. On the other hand, her charisma wasn’t strong enough to keep a dog from stealing the picture.

Haberkamp brought up two interesting evolution-of-the-form issues. One involved intertitles. In 1910, the vast majority of them told you what you were about to see—”Ramona finds out that she’s part Indian”—and that really hurts the story. Filmmakers were only just beginning to experiment with more effective uses of the printed word, and very little of that was seen in these examples.

The other issue was more complex stories. In many of these pictures, the filmmakers are clearly suffering from a need to burst out of the one-reel form. After all, the last film of the evening, D. W. Griffith’s “Ramona,” was based on a 500-page best-selling novel.

Actually, in 1910, the one-reeler had only just become the standard length. During the Q&A, Haberkamp admitted that one of the challenges in putting this year’s show was the length of the films. In earlier years, the films seldom filled a reel, and he could show more than seven.

That makes me wonder how long he can keep this series going. By 1913, much of the cinema’s important evolution was happening in features.

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Digital Projection & Classic Movies

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Lincoln Spector

Twice this month I saw, projected digitally, an older, arguably classic film, originally intended to be screened in 35mm. One was a major disappointment—technically, at least. The other was perfectly acceptable.

Both films were new “director’s cut” versions. I’m guessing that the owners of these films chose not to spend money on a 35mm print, although I have not checked with the distributers to confirm this.

The disappointing experience was with Ride with the Devil, screened at the Kabuki as ridewithdevilpart of the San Francisco International Film Festival’s tribute to James Schamus. (I’m not sure if Ride qualifies as a classic, as it’s only 11 years old and hasn’t been seen enough to earn the reputation that, IMHO, it deserves.)

Ride with the Devil was shot in anamorphic 35mm, with a 2.35×1 aspect ratio. Instead of using the full width of the Kabuki’s Theater 1 screen, it was letterboxed within a 1.85×1 frame, making it smaller than it should have been. While close-ups looked fine, long-shots in this period action film, shot mostly out of doors, looked washed out and lacked detail.

According to Festival Technical Director Jeremy Stevermer, Devil was screened off of HDCAM SR media with a 1920×1280 resolution. By comparison, Blu-ray is 1920×1080. However, since the image was letterboxed, we can safely assume that the effective resolution was the same as a Blu-ray disc.

I had a farmetropolis more satisfying experience with Metropolis at New York’s Film Forum. Much of the film, especially the newly-restored scenes, looked horrible, but it was film horrible—grain and scratches—not digital or video horrible. The scenes that came from good sources looked fantastic—as good as anything I’ve ever seen off of a silent film.

I don’t know the technical details of the presentation. The ads simply stated that it was presented in “HD.”

I also don’t know why the experiences were so different. But I have my theories:

  1. The Kabuki’s Theater 1 doesn’t normally do digital projection, and the Festival rented an HD projector for this and other non-film presentations. Either the installation or the projector itself may not have been as good as a permanent one.
  2. A color, widescreen movie may have made greater demands on the image-processing capabilities than a narrow-screen, black and white film shot more than 80 years ago.
  3. The Film Forum has pretty small screens, making it easier for an image to look good.

The new Metropolis restoration gets its San Francisco premiere at the Silent Film Festival in July. They will be projecting it digitally—I believe a first for that festival. Then we’ll see how the digital version looks on a really large screen.

Filed under: Digital Projection, Film Preservation, Technical | 2 Comments »

War and Ballet @ the PFA

Posted on April 5, 2010 by Lincoln Spector

I attended two very different British films at the Pacific Film Archive Sunday. They were not a double bill.

The Red Shoes

I’d seen this 1948 Technicolor backstage ballet drama in the 1970’s, and didn’t care for it then. But it’s considered a classic and has recently been restored, and I felt it was time to give it another chance. This time around, I still saw the flaws that turned me off long ago, but I was also more aware of its considerable strengths.

For one thing, it’s one of the most expressively beautiful color movies ever made. (The PFA screened it as part of a series on the Technicolor work of cinematographer Jack redshoescloseupCardiff.) The outdoor European locations and lush interiors dazzled, while the rehearsal halls somehow managed to be lovely while looking completely utilitarian.  But it was in the dance numbers—where expressionistic colors were utterly realistic—where Cardiff’s art shined most. There’s a close-up of Moira Shearer’s eyes where her red stage makeup makes her surprise all the more effective.

The story by directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger is slight during the first half. But the characters, all fanatically devoted to their art, make up for it. At the center is the dictatorial ballet director played by Anton Walbrook, who expects nothing but absolute devotion. Two promising young talents–Marius Goring as a composer and Shearer as a dancer—try to win his confidence and make their name. This is very much a film about the sacrifices people make for art.

The film’s centerpiece is the Red Shoes ballet, based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen. Lasting about 20 minutes, it tells the Andersen story (which we’ve already been told in dialog) in a way that’s thrilling, romantic, and terrifying. The dance is supposed to redshoesdance be taking place on a stage, but like many old Hollywood musicals, it doesn’t limit itself to what could actually happen in live performance. At first, I had a harder time suspending disbelief than I would in a less serious film, but not not for long. I soon realized that the visuals had has much to do with what was happening in the dancer’s head as on stage.

Unfortunately, the movie runs for nearly an hour after the dance, and it’s all anti-climatic from there. It’s also melodramatic. Powell and Pressburger must have decided they finally needed a plot, and they picked a clichéd and unbelievable one. A major letdown.

The Red Shoes has gone through a big restoration, and it shows. The colors were incredible. But the restoration wasn’t perfect. While the close-ups were sharp, long shots were often a bit soft. Maybe that was intentional.

One more thing: A large, organized group of students attended this screening, and most of them came quickly into the auditorium at the last minute. That might have been intentional—the movie begins with a crowd of students running into a theater to take their seats.

King and Country

I never heard of this 1964 Joseph Losey anti-war drama until I read about it in the PFA schedule (it’s part of a Losey series). That’s a shame. This is a masterpiece that should be studied in film classes. Set entirely in the trenches of World War I, it follows the quick, pre-determined trial of a soldier arrested for desertion.

Based on a stage play (and that based on a short story) and shot on a very low budget, the film is quick, direct, and dialog-Losey_King&Country2[1] heavy. But it never feels stage-bound. Thank the squalor for that. Losey creates a world of dampness and mud. There’s a dead mule with a belly full of rats, and constant, never-ending gunfire in the background.

And of course, the knowledge on everyone’s part that at some point or other, you’re going to have to seek that gunfire or it will have to seek you. Either way, your chances of returning to normal life are small, even if you’re not awaiting trial for a capital crime.

Dirk Bogarde gets top billing as the officer assigned the impossible task of defending a man who is pre-condemned. But the more fascinating performance came from a young Tom Courtenay as the not-too-bright prisoner who doesn’t quite realize how bad his situation is.

The print was not, as the program promised, from the PFA collection. It turned out to be something more unique—a fine grain master made off of the original camera negative and intended for making dupe negatives. It lacked some of the contrast you’d find in a print made for projection, but it was as sharp as a tack.

King and Country will screen at the PFA again on Thursday, at 7:30.

Filed under: Film Preservation, First-person Report | 5 Comments »

The Big Country on the Big Screen

Posted on September 14, 2008 by Lincoln Spector

I finally saw The Big Country on the big screen last night–at the Rafael. I was wrong to give this sprawling, 1958, pacifistic western a B. This is A material.

This was the second of the Rafael’s three-part, weekend-long Academy Color Restorations series. Part 3, Jean Renoir’s The River, starts tonight at 7:00.

The restoration itself was a mixed bag. Most of the movie had that clear, color-punched look that the Technirama process–which used twice as much film per frame as standard 35mm–delivered in the original release prints. But significant chunks looked mediocre and sometimes worse, with bluish blacks, heavy grain, and even out-of-focus shots.

During the Q&A after the movie (more on that below), I asked, Academy Governor, film historian, and visual effects supervisor Craig Barron about the restoration in general, but not about the inconsistent image quality. He talked mainly about the difficulties in restoring from a Technirama source, since that format died decades ago. In answer to someone else’s question, he explained that the restoration was entirely photochemical for budgetary reasons, and that he wished they had had the money to restore it digitally.

So what about the movie, itself?

Although not well-enough known to warrant a digital restoration, it belongs among the great westerns, and is arguably the beginning of the anti-western sub-genre that blossomed a decade later. But unlike later anti-westerns, The Big Country has a real hero, albeit one whose courage comes in his refusal to behave by the code of the west. Gregory Peck plays James McKay, a sea captain who’s come west to marry his sweetheart, the daughter of a wealthy and powerful rancher. Captain McKay’s reluctance to prove his manhood soon runs foul of the locals, especially foreman Steve Leech (Charlton Heston in a rare supporting role). He also opposes his future father-in-law’s violent harassment of a far less wealthy competitor.

Visually, The Big Country is very much of its time. As with many major, widescreen period pieces of the 1950s, shot after shot emphasizes the bigness of everything, from vast landscapes to boulders to the thick steaks served at breakfast. Even the title emphasizes the largeness of the setting and story, although the multiple screenwriters wisely turned that title into a running joke.

After the film, Barron and director William Wyler’s daughter, Judy Wyler Sheldon, came on stage to talk a bit and answer questions. Sheldon recalled a feud her father had with Peck doing the shooting (they co-produced the film together). She talked about how the auturists rejected her father for the sin of being too versatile. She also mentioned her father’s pacifistic leanings, which also inspired his previous film, the Quaker Civil War drama Gentle Persuasion (which I’ve also yet to see on the big screen). “If he was still alive,” she added, referring to his opposition to war, “I know who he’d vote for.”

Filed under: Film Preservation, First-person Report, Westerns | Leave a Comment »

Good News on Universal Fire

Posted on July 30, 2008 by Lincoln Spector

You may remember my post from last month, Precious Prints Lost to Fire. Universal Studios lost almost its entire collection of archival 35mm prints in the fire that also damaged parts of the amusement park. While new prints could be struck from the unharmed negatives (stored in Philidelphia), economic realities suggested at that time that few such prints would be struck.

But according to Eddie Muller of The Film Noir Foundation, “a quickly paid insurance settlement will allow [Universal] to work virtually round-the-clock striking new prints of everything that was lost or damaged…The plan is to start with films that have upcoming screenings scheduled, so those bookings can be met. Eventually all the lost films will be resurrected in new prints.”

That’s great news all-around. Maybe some local revival house will do a series called “Saved from the Flames: New Prints from Universal.”

Filed under: Film Preservation, News (not local) | Leave a Comment »

Precious Prints Lost to Fire

Posted on June 5, 2008 by Lincoln Spector

You’ve probably heard about the big fire at Universal Studios, and about how nothing irreplaceable was destroyed. While that’s true in the technical sense, economic realities control what does and does not get replaced. Thus, thanks to that fire, many an old Universal and Paramount movie will probably never be properly screened again (Universal owns the pre-1950 Paramount library).

According to an article in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times, Universal stores its negatives in Philadelphia, far from its studio/amusement park and the fire. But it stored archival 35mm prints of its older films in an on-studio vault. According to one Universal estimate, the “fire destroyed nearly 100% of the archive prints kept here on the lot.”

Of course, Universal could strike new prints from those Philadelphia-based negatives, but will they? Striking a new print off of an old negative costs thousands of dollars. I could see them doing that for something hugely popular, like Vertigo, but not, say, for King Kong Escapes.

I didn’t randomly pick that last example. The Cerrito scheduled King Kong Escapes as part of a June 13 Thrillville event. According to Speakeasy programmer and Thrillville host Will Viharo, writing to the Speakeasy mailing list, “the single existing 35mm print…has…gone up in flames, and it is highly unlikely it will ever be replaced, because of its, shall we say, selective appeal.” Viharo will screen the movie off of a DVD. The Cerrito has a good DVD projection system, but it’s no substitute for 35mm.

Viharo has dropped one other previously-screened movie, Curse of the Werewolf, from a future Thrillville booking.

Filed under: Film Preservation, News (not local), Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

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