From the Vault: Vintage Film Restorations and Transfers

[MichaelB]

I cant believe that GOS-- for gods sake one of the most mysteriously extensive vaults anywhere... will we ever kwow it's full post WW2/Iron Curtain hand here in the west???--cannot get their hands on, even rent time on someone else's 75mm telecine unit.

Or if they don't have enough faith in the commercial viability of this film resto in full 75, then at least take the 75neg and strike a new preservation 35 reduction interpos with restored color etc, and from this create a new commercial neg for striking touring fine grains in 35. And give us fresh telecine from the new reduction interpos. At least will provide a new generation of restored imagery for this film, to correct it's shoddy past.

I totally agree, and the more I delve into deals with Eastern European and Russian companies, the more bewildered I am at the impenetrability of the underlying politics.

What galls me is that I know of several cases where Western distributors would be quite happy to pay them extra for a shot at a better transfer, only to be fobbed off with unconvincing excuses which they're not inclined to believe for a second, but which they have no firm evidence to counter.

So a deeply substandard transfer gets circulated, pissing off audience and distributor alike (the latter because they get blamed, even though they honestly did everything they could short of actually breaking into the relevant vault and pinching the master materials themselves), and the owners of the master end up with less money. So it's a lose-lose situation all round.

[HerrSchreck]

I totally agree, and the more I delve into deals with Eastern European and Russian companies, the more bewildered I am at the impenetrability of the underlying politics.

What galls me is that I know of several cases where Western distributors would be quite happy to pay them extra for a shot at a better transfer, only to be fobbed off with unconvincing excuses which they're not inclined to believe for a second, but which they have no firm evidence to counter.

So a deeply substandard transfer gets circulated, pissing off audience and distributor alike (the latter because they get blamed, even though they honestly did everything they could short of actually breaking into the relevant vault and pinching the master materials themselves), and the owners of the master end up with less money. So it's a lose-lose situation all round.

Spot on, and a disposition which baffles me.

This resentment of a secondary market which-- let's face it-- probably dwarfs in size the primary domestic (i e Russian, at least for vintage films) market is something I'll never understand. Here you have a preservation organization Gosfilmofond which post WW2 took possession of eastern European, and German vaults-- which in turn in WW2 took possession of the vast bulk of western European vaults i e France Denmark et al-- and therefore cumulatively represents the one major vault (save the USA) which remained unaffected by the bombings & destruction of the war. Heaps of untapped German, Austrian, French, Scandinavian, Hungarian, plus US, eastern.. and of course Soviet /Russian films. Silent films considered lost found intact is routine for these guys.

To be fair they have and do continue to cooperate with the Murnau foundation and the BFI on some silent masterpieces' film restorations, and rediscovery like the Bauer material (will we ever see the rest of this genius' work?).

One would have hoped that the old days of "taking what one can get because its at least something" i e the slop handed to Kino for Parajanov ASHIK KERIB or Dovzhenkos EARTH would be over, but it seems not. That MK2 & AEye are working off of this same old digibeta as the Image/Kino amazes me-- that beta is like 5 yrs old at least, and I suspect it may be a cleaned up beta of the old CC LD transfer. CC still is apparently struggling with them on the silent Eisenstein... and after being slipped those goofball dubs on NEVSKY who knows how the relationship is shaping up.

There's a strange & mysterious posessiveness the Russians have about their vault materials.. it's like they don't want anyone to enjoy what they enjoy at their own midnight parties passing vodka & pricey cigarettes and watching pristine classics. Yet at the same time they want to enjoy the revenue generated by the huge bulk of their international sales.. but they keep passing slop off on the distributors looking to buy for their hungry audiences in R1 ntsc & R2 PAL. The resentment of deeply dedicated non-domestic market reminds me vaguely of the Germans who produce on dvd almost none of the treasure trove of their brilliant silent film history, and whose archives would never find the money to transfer these films onto PAL digibeta without ongoing deals with US distribution cos to sell the films on dvd in the USA (and occasionally the UK)... then they seethe when they watch the sole dvd of these rare films because the digibeta used in the US was PAL!

[Tommaso]

The resentment of deeply dedicated non-domestic market reminds me vaguely of the Germans who produce on dvd almost none of the treasure trove of their brilliant silent film history, and whose archives would never find the money to transfer these films onto PAL digibeta without ongoing deals with US distribution

Not generally true, I believe, as curiously there is obviously a lot of money spent by the Murnau Foundation and other institutions to actually restore/re-assemble German silents from materials found all over Europe, making dead sharp transfers of them, recording new soundtracks etc. But THEN, all they do is to show these restos on festivals, art cinemas and - pretty regularly, admittedly - on TV. As I doubt they will play the original film on TV, the sources must come from PAL digibeta, which I'm sure were made WITHOUT any US distribution deals for the most part. There are a lot of films extant and shown on TV for years which did not show up on any US dvd (Kino or otherwise) yet (films by Wiene, Czinner, Pabst, to mention just the better-known names that immediately spring to my mind).

But then they refuse to do the next logical step: to release them on dvd. Why this is so is beyond me. The only reason I can think of is that there is no real market for silents here. The 'German filmmusuem' edition is completely state-financed, not a commercial affair (and perhaps they simply wanted to imitate the DFI) . The same goes for TV: Unlike in the US (I believe), German TV and other organisations have a sort of 'official' cultural mission by the government to show 'artistically important' films (which of course includes Weimar cinema), so they have to show these films on TV regardless of whether they think anyone would watch them. And they invariably start these programs no earlier than one o'clock in the morning, which shows how little hope they have anyone could be interested in them. So even the release of the Transit Lubitsch box is still a big, though welcome surprise.

[HerrSchreck]

It's not wrong, it's absolutely correct Tom. You're putting the cart before the horse with the FWMS stuff-- the fact that you see it on dvd is not simply an afterthought after the primary goal of getting it shown on TV first.. i e TV as an end all market-free cultural gift.. these restos are created to make their cinema premeires (covers some costs), show on tv here & there for obligatory publicity & reviews & "cultural duty", then make their way to dvd which is the goal all along... to cover costs & fund the next project. Koerber bounces back & forth over the pond prior & during restos sitting (twice I just missed him going upstairs to Kino NYC while I was picking up an order) with these dvd labels to measure their wants as well as intentions to work out the prior details on these no-German-audience projects. DOnations, tax arrangements combine with deals cut with Transit which thrives off of the global audience for this stuff, and thence they pay salaries, fund the Italians in Bologna, fund transfers with a financially-sustaining utility (for profit via R1&2 dvd). The FWMS is not a state office but a foundation which aquires it's funding from it's own means and has it's own peculiar operation which finds it's vitality and sustainance from sales abroad. If it were not for this smart, self-sustaining operation of global sales of their restos, our cinematic hearts would be a hell of a lot emptier. Film is an extraordinarily expensive business, especially global element hunting and restoration from contrastiing-condition composite sources that must be made to flow with continuity. If it weren't for Kino & the bfi & divisa the germans would still be staring at the hideous old MoMa 16's of NOSFERATU every night at 4am state tv. DVD has been the greatest gift tto film restoration and preservation. Good national intentions viz "culture" is not going to cover the very expensive business of first resto, then transfers (for a country which itself has no interest in its film heritage). Our international dollars are helping enornously to ressurect that heritage.

[Tommaso]

The FWMS is not a state office but a foundation which aquires it's funding from it's own means and has it's own peculiar operation which finds it's vitality and sustainance from sales abroad.

I couldn't find anything absolutely unambiguous on their site, but they say that their 'Kuratorium' (i.e. their sort-of management) consists of people from the film industry AND of people sent by the government (the Hessian ministery for art and science, the ministry of finance and some representatives of the federal government). Which makes them at least partly a state organisation in the way I described, and it also means they receive money from the state (them being a 'Stiftung' doesn't exclude, however, getting money from elsewhere, of course).

Good national intentions viz "culture" is not going to cover the very expensive business of first resto, then transfers (for a country which itself has no interest in its film heritage). Our international dollars are helping enornously to ressurect that heritage.

Which isn't a bad thing, as you now are also able to see these bits of heritage in an acceptable manner. But that still doesn't explain why there are many restos around which are not available on dvd anywhere, although the restos have been available for years. Who paid for these, then? Why were they made in the first place if nobody wants to release them, assuming your theory that dvd production is the main goal is correct? If divisa or Kino or the bfi or whoever had co-financed the restos of Fanck's "Berg des Schicksals", of Czinner's "Fräulein Else", Pabst's "Abwege", "Vögelöd", the Wiene films etc etc. (all restored at least five years ago), all these things that both of us dearly want to have on dvd, how come these are not out there to buy?

[MichaelB]

But that still doesn't explain why there are many restos around which are not available on dvd anywhere, although the restos have been available for years. Who paid for these, then? Why were they made in the first place if nobody wants to release them, assuming your theory that dvd production is the main goal is correct? If divisa or Kino or the bfi or whoever had co-financed the restos of Fanck's "Berg des Schicksals", of Czinner's "Fräulein Else", Pabst's "Abwege", "Vögelöd", the Wiene films etc etc. (all restored at least five years ago), all these things that both of us dearly want to have on dvd, how come these are not out there to buy?

The word "rights" nearly always looms large in any plausible answer. Just to cite the most obvious example, the BFI is sitting on the definitive restoration of Abel Gance's Napoléon, but it's currently unreleasable (I'm not even sure that it's currently screenable), and will remain so unless some kind of accommodation can be found with the current rightsholders.

Part of the problem is that often (usually, in fact) these archives who store and maintain the materials and restore them generally don't have any power to do anything with them once the restoration is completed. Which is when their own interest in the project - professional if not personal - generally ends.

(In fact, archives would often much prefer it if once the restoration was finished, no-one touched the print ever again...)

[Tommaso]

The word "rights" nearly always looms large in any plausible answer. Just to cite the most obvious example, the BFI is sitting on the definitive restoration of Abel Gance's Napoléon, but it's currently unreleasable (I'm not even sure that it's currently screenable), and will remain so unless some kind of accommodation can be found with the current rightsholders.

Good that you mention that point. The "Napoleon" desaster aside, the commercial rights for the German silents are held by Transit Film, and here's a quote from their website:

"Transit Film was founded as a limited company on January 18, 1966, with the objective of conducting trust activities for the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Foundation and for the Federal Republic of Germany. The sole shareholder is the Federal Republic of Germany, represented by delegates of the Federal Ministry of Culture and the Media (BKM).

Transit Film is responsible for commercial exploitation of the movies belonging to the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Foundation, as well as the film documents from the collections of the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv in Berlin.

In other words, a government affair, with all the cultural mission implied I mentioned first with respect to the FWMS. Apparently, dvd production seems not to be the very first goal for the Ministry of Culture.....

[colinr0380]

The word "rights" nearly always looms large in any plausible answer. Just to cite the most obvious example, the BFI is sitting on the definitive restoration of Abel Gance's Napoléon, but it's currently unreleasable (I'm not even sure that it's currently screenable), and will remain so unless some kind of accommodation can be found with the current rightsholders.

Part of the problem is that often (usually, in fact) these archives who store and maintain the materials and restore them generally don't have any power to do anything with them once the restoration is completed. Which is when their own interest in the project - professional if not personal - generally ends.

(In fact, archives would often much prefer it if once the restoration was finished, no-one touched the print ever again...)

That is a huge shame but I suppose at least someone is bothering to restore them. Beyond DVD, how does (or did) television factor into this? I'm thinking of the Channel 4 silents done with Photoplay Productions. Would rights for one television showing have been easier to negotiate for than putting a film into wider circulation for a longer period on a DVD? Would it also have been easier to negotiate for films to restore if there was the guarantee of a screening of the finished print at the end of it all?

[HerrSchreck]

If divisa or Kino or the bfi or whoever had co-financed the restos of Fanck's "Berg des Schicksals", of Czinner's "Fräulein Else", Pabst's "Abwege", "Vögelöd", the Wiene films etc etc. (all restored at least five years ago), all these things that both of us dearly want to have on dvd, how come these are not out there to buy?

Don't stretch me into extrapolated absurdity, Tom-- I didn't say (or mean to say) that without US dollars the German film industry would do nothing or that medium to small level restorations (which can be as simple as wetgating an old nitrate print with emulsion dust & scratches to create a new fine grain on safety stock, or editing a a few minutes of an exhibition-print reel of fine grain into a preservation interpos which has that corresponding length of film decomped into unwatchability; restoration can take a mere couple workdays or it can take years) will never occur. I don't know that these restos are as extensive and expensive as those globally-hunted, meticulously compared, internationally coordinated projects like METROPOLIS, NOSFERATU, PHANTOM, etc. I guarantee you there was almost no way they could have embarked on the restoration of Wegeners GOLEM, or Pabst's TAGEBUCH without cinematic exposition, TV, and then DVD. GOLEM was a large global project which took a lot of cataloging, coordination between international vault entities contributing their held elements, comparison frame by frame, copying onto safety stock elements not even used in the final composite print determined to be "the" "final version" of THE GOLEM. Government can incentivize with grants and tax breaks, but massive projects like these hi-level globally coordinated restos certainly would exceed annual grants & the benefits of the tax status of a foundation.

So yes of course like any functioning country with a film industry, and government and commercial archives, you have people who are interested in and going about the business of preserving their cinematic heritage. And I'm sure they're going about the business of quietly cataloging & preserving prints of stuff you & I have never heard of every day. And those very same folks have very intelligently gone about the business of insuring commercial exploitation of their efforts and generating interest-- and securing foreign investment-- in the mammoth restorations and subsequent transfers-to-tape so that well-deserving works like GOLEM and METROPOLIS will receive the dollars/care that they absolutely deserve. DVD has created a whole new realm of dimension of quality and possibility of frequency in film restoration and preservation. For without that global interest the ressurrection to the state found on these Transit-distrib'd dvd's would be totally unthinkable.

The situation with the BFI on NAPOLEON is insane, whereby an entity went about the very expensive business of massive restoration and score-commissioning, and found the avenue of naturally anticipated & probably pre-budgeted cost-recoup (first global exhibition, limited cable broadcast to drive home the initial marketing buzz via the cinema, then the arrival on home-video with extras, etc) amputated. Tempers must really be flaring at BFI, and not merely out of fidelity to the idea of promulgating an important work of art that the world is aching to see. A hell of a lot of money was spent, and that money is cruelly & pointlessly being flushed away by a presently-useless, rampantly assaholic US director.

[Tommaso]

Government can incentivize with grants and tax breaks, but massive projects like these hi-level globally coordinated restos certainly would exceed annual grants & the benefits of the tax status of a foundation.

This certainly is true, and I didn't quite understand that you had the real expensive restos of "Metropolis", "Der letzte Mann" etc. in mind. It's understandable that they wouldn't go to such lengths with less famous films, and in general I'm not disappointed when they do nothing more than make a good new transfer of the best elements that are available ( of films like "Fräulein Else" or "Abwege" there seem to be only one or two prints left anyway, without much possibility of restoring them anywhere near as good as "Metropolis"). I still find it surprising that there is suddenly such a 'rush' of well-informed restoration of these old films, the situation is in no way comparable to what it was ten years ago (not to speak of occasional showings of silent films in the 80s, at sound speed and with awful image quality). They surely could have tinted "Nibelungen" during their first resto in 1994, but obviously saw no need to do so. Now they're doing it again, and probably this is indeed a case where they found international support . Same goes for the recording of the original music for "Nosferatu".

It's surely the advent of dvd that has generated not only interest in the filmic heritage, but also the need to put a little effort into the quality of the end product (regardless of whether the film is shown in the cinema, TV or dvd). That there is generally a greater interest in silents might be explained by do a lot of people having started with the dvds of "Golem", "Metropolis" etc. and becoming infatuated with what to them must have looked like something entirely NEW (because so different from what is done in the movies today to a great part). And then they started to search for more of that exciting stuff.

It's also funny to read older online reviews of silent dvds. At around, say 2001, many reviewers were apparently appalled at what they perceived was inferior image quality: scratches, dirt, nitrate decomposition, which had nothing to do with the transfers themselves. Reading new reviews, most reviewers now are aware that this cannot be helped and are far more appreciative if some resto work has gone into the film or at least if the transfer itself is impeccable.

This may well be an international thing rather than a development in Germany, though. But it seems that the Transit Lubitsch box has created quite some interest here, I read reviews and notices about it even in totally unspecialized newspapers (actually, the first one I came across was in my weekly TV magazine). So I hope that the dvd market for silents will expand over here as well. The advent of the "German filmmuseum" edition is a good sign. If they only were not so slow in releasing the things they announce....

[MichaelB]

It's also funny to read older online reviews of silent dvds. At around, say 2001, many reviewers were apparently appalled at what they perceived was inferior image quality: scratches, dirt, nitrate decomposition, which had nothing to do with the transfers themselves.

But conversely, many reviewers based their comments on the assumption that, crap though the picture was, it was unlikely to get any better thanks to the ravages of time. I myself have made loads of assumptions like that in print, though have been only too happy to be proved wrong.

[Tommaso]

Sure, but one of the reviews I had in mind was the digobsessed review of Image's "Birth of a Nation", which according to the Beaver, is identical to the Kino disc that I have. The reviewer gives it a "D" grade (their lowest) and writes:

"The damage is particularly severe near reel changes, with breaks, jumps, splices, tears, scratches, blots, speckling and all manner of other damage, making this film very difficult to watch. A certain amount of damage is to be expected, since we are talking about a film from 1915 and precious few films of that time period survive at all. However, when we see clips in the documentary, they are almost all in better condition than the film presentation itself. Clearly there had to be a better master out there."

I tend to doubt that last point. Now this disc is clearly not the best imaginable, but still it is not worse than many comparable prints of films from that age (hey, it looks like I'm defending Kino here!) Also the reviewer's statement about the clips in the documentary is wrong mostly, as the doc basically contains out-takes and test shoots which apparently have survived in a better state than the film itself. The same site (actually one of my favourite review sites) gives an "A" grade for "Broken Blossoms", which does look slightly better, but, well, isn't in good condition either. Just an example of many one could find.