In the past month, I have had the pleasure of seeing a few wonderful old films theatrically. It's more interesting to observe the differences between 40s, 50s and 60s cinematography watching the real thing, as it were. Two days ago, I got to see a three-strip Technicolor print for the first time, namely Rouben Mamoulian's BLOOD AND SAND (1941). Luckily, the print looked as good as new with barely a speck on it, perfect sound and no jumps during the reel changes. How do I know it was a genuine imbibition print? Well, it had to be, because I've never seen anything so breathtaking in my life. I liked the movie as such a lot, I thought it pulled all the right strings, but I mostly sat in awe savouring its sheer beauty. I have searched the web for screen shots from this film, but they don't look anything at all like the actual movie. Many moments stood out, for instance Tyrone Power's matador dressing scene (there's an incredibly rich blue shade of a piece of cloth lying on the floor in that scene), the glistening gold of the Virgin Mary in Linda Darnell's chapel scene, the terrace of Doña Sol's palatial mansion bathed in deep blue evening light, where Rita Hayworth's red-nailed hands caress the strings of a parlour guitar, the glowing skin tones, the deep reds of the matador's girldle and the rose on Laird Cregar's lapel (can't believe this guy was only 25 years old when he played the flamboyant bullfighting critic here). And not only the color stands out, the blacks are absolutely pitch black, as in Tyrone's black, white and red outfit in the restaurant scene where Anthony Quinn steals a dance with Rita. And what about that glistening dark cloak thing she wears over her pink dress. Ah toro! what a great movie. Technicolor, you're the only true one.

How is this film regarded next to other significant I.B. classics like THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (the only DVD I own that faithfully reproduces the look of this Technicolor era), BLACK NARCISSUS, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, THE BAND WAGON, et al.?

Perhaps a silly question: Is there a way of determining the age of a print from how the reel-change indicators look? These were the cigarette burn type, a black dot with many little pointy "petals" around it.

Another thing one notes is that the "colorized" look and fluctuation of color seen on TV sometimes when old films are shown has nothing to do with the real thing. So how does that occur, since dye transfers never fade? Poor telecine work?

Earlier, I saw PAL JOEY (1957) with Sinatra at the peak of his form, lovely Kim Novak (looking and acting exactly as she would do in VERTIGO a year later) and Hayworth again. I loved watching that one, too, but while the colors are still obviously Technicolor, they're different, kind of like Rapahel and Caravaggio are different from Cezanne and Paul Klee. The slightly sfumato look of the 40s is replaced with razor sharpness. (Is that dental work between Kim Novak's front teeth or a cosmetic variation)? Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of detail and the slight softness of three-strip is hugely attractive. I believe the PAL JOEY print must have been from the 50s, because it was a bit scratchy and jumpy at the reel changes. Anyway, I thought the art direction alone was worth the price of admission.

In contrast, the 1968 actioner WHERE EAGLES DARE looked faint in pale Metrocolor with grainy outdoor photography. On the other hand, the bleak look suits that particular movie. But it was surprisingly unsharp, though not bad-looking. As I expected, that red medieval font of the credits which is unreadable on TV looks fine on the big screen.

Another late 60s Panavision film I saw that better reflects the era was the French/Italian coproduction ROAD TO SALINA (1969), which was Rita Hayworth's penultimate cinematic appearance. The info sheet that came with the screeing of ROAD simply quoted a 1971 Swedish review in which the critic thoroughly trashed the film. I thought this movie was fantastic and one hell of a cult item. A young drifter who stops by a remote café in the Mexican desert is "mistaken" as the disappeared son of the owner (Rita) who encourages him to stay. Enter the gorgeous Mimsy Farmer, his supposed sister, and an incestuous relationship begins. The drifter then discovers the family secret... The print I saw looked absolutely brand new. The photography is smashing, as far as I'm concerned, featuring lots of razor sharp close-ups juxtaposed with huge panorama shots of the desert and the ocean. A good, pounding psychedelic score, to boot. I'd like to hear Mobian opinions on this film, which seems to me altogether modern.

And then, there were three of the Swedish "Hillman thrillers" from the late 50s, of which I had only seen MANNEKÄNG I RÖTT ("Mannequin in Red"). First, there was the black and white DAMEN I SVART ("The Lady in Black"), which I thought was rubbish, but which was a big hit in Sweden and enabled director Arne Mattsson to continue the series with four more films. Cinematographer Sven Nykvist uses so little light that the result barely reaches the threshold values. Maybe it was the battered print I saw, but THE LADY IN SHANGHAI, which I revisited a few days earlier is so much more beautiful, with the aquarium scene being as striking and memorable as the famous hall of mirrors ending.

Anyway, back to MANNEQUIN IN RED. While the available DVD is full screen, and the IMDb lists it as being in 1.37:1, the screening of this restored print showed that MANNEQUIN was actually 1.85:1. Nothing today looks this good, and yet this undeniably colorful Eastmancolor production looks pale and dry in comparison with Technicolor. I preferred the follow-up to MANNEQUIN, actually, which is RYTTARE I BLÅTT ("Horseman in Blue"), also shot by Hilding Bladh. This was also a restored print in 2.35:1 Agascope (an anamorphic system I believe, since the reel change indicators were horizontal ovals). This film is a veritable concerto in blue, and features stunning photography, shot on location at one of the Royal castles and in beautiful studio interiors. As in the previous film, the clothes and costumes (by Max Goldstein aka Mago) are extremely stylish. The pacing of this installment is superior to the previous two, the soundtrack is meatier and the participation of the Hillman detective couple is kept at a minimum, focusing more on regulars Anita Björk and Gio Petré, which is a good thing. On a side note, Hilding Bladh's favorite film regarding cinematography was John Ford's THE LONG VOYAGE HOME, with black and white photography by Gregg Toland.

I caught one 70s film as well, SLEUTH (1972). As it's more or less a filmed stage play, there's nothing much to comment on in the photography department, except that I prefer any old films to new ones as they are brighter and better composed. I saw Rita yet again with Fred Astaire in the wonderful YOU WERE NEVER LOVELIER (1942). I need to find that great Jerome Kern soundtrack somewhere. I had my first encounter with Kenji Mizoguchi's TALES OF A PALE AND MYSTERIOUS MOON AFTER THE RAIN (1953). I'm pretty sure it's a good film but for some reason this was the only time I have almost fallen asleep during a theatrical screening. I was much more impressed with SEPPUKU, ONIBABA, KWAIDAN and REBELLION which I have seen on the big screen recently.

Up next month is another must-see Technicolor melodrama, the newly restored LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN (1945). Needless to say, I can't wait.

P.S. As for digitally "emulating" three-strip Technicolor - who are they kidding?

LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN is a must on the big screen. I've seen many old 3-strip Technicolor movies in 35mm on the big screen and I have yet to see that kind of color faithfully reproduced in:

A. new prints; B. TV broadcasts; C. VHS or D. DVD.

I must say I thought TV broadcasts were often pretty good with color in the old days, because the stations in NYC used to broadcast directly from projected film prints (usually 16mm, though).

20th Century Fox was especially good at old Technicolor.

Three-strip Technicolor was phased out sometime around 1951 and replaced it with one-strip Technicolor. And gradually Eastmancolor took over.

In other words, a "newly restored copy" of LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN is a bad thing..? :o

Well, it's better than NO copy. And certainly better than your other options, so go see it. But the print I saw of it some years ago (I forget which venue) was, I believe, an original 35mm print. And it was breathtaking. The process used to make these prints today is not the same process used 60-70 years ago. They're not making three-strip Technicolor prints anymore. (And they haven't in decades.) So new copies are gonna look different.

I have to admit that I'm a bit spoiled because I saw so many of these films in big-screen viewings long before "restored" became the norm. (The only "restored" films I saw back then were films that had originally been released in cut form and were now restored to their original lengths, e.g. KING KONG and SEVEN SAMURAI.) I saw THE SEARCHERS on the big screen in 1972 and I can't imagine anything looking better than that print. I saw it more than once on the big screen after that, but all before the "restored" version surfaced in the 1980s. So I never actually compared "before" and "after." Granted, the prints I saw back in the glory days of the rep houses have all invariably suffered from wear and tear during their years of circulation. So they have to make new ones. Some "restored" prints are going to be better than others, depending on who's supervising the new transfer.

I've never seen an original 35mm print of GONE WITH THE WIND. The one I saw in its re-release in the early '70s had been cropped to fit the 1:85 aspect ratio. I saw a revival screening in the 1970s or '80s that had the proper ratio, but it wasn't an original print. I can only imagine how an original print must have looked. I watched it on TCM a couple of years ago and I was very impressed with the print they showed, quite obviously a restoration and easily superior to the one I saw on the big screen. But I don't know how close to the original it was.

I'd highly recommend tracking down a copy of Richard W. Haines TECHNICOLOR MOVIES: A HISTORY OF THE DYE TRANSFER PRINTING - a fascinating book on theTechnicolor imbibtion printing process that also lists all of the films that were made with the intention of being printed in the imbibtion process.*

A newly restored print of a Technicolor film is not going to hold a candle to an original IB print because no one is using the Technicolor Imbibition process (it was briefly revived between 1997 and 2002) - a forty year old IB print (that is in good shape and has been properly stored) will blow away any fresh from the lab print of the same materials.

THIS is a great write up of the history of Technicolor. Since studios have been sold on the economics of the digital theater experience, I have serious doubts that IB will ever be revived.



* I would love to see some IB prints of films shot in Techniscope (such as TWO-LANE BLACKTOP). Because of the increased size of grain in the process (this process crammed two anamorphic widescreen images in what would normally be a single frame of 35 mm film), standard photochemical contact printing of these films are going to look very poor in comparison to how they were designed to look.

Newly restored prints of LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN and DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK were screened as part of the NY Film Festival last year. A friend says they were glorious, so I'd say you were in for a treat.

Caught LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN today. Hmm... Interesting. The restored print is a million miles away from the beauty of BLOOD AND SAND (which even looked better and more consistent in terms of print quality and sharpness). Skin tones and clothes were colorful, sure, but the colors didn't pop or bleed off the screen as they should have done (Gene Tierney's red lipstick, for instance, didn't have that magical glow). I'm uncertain whether this is altogether a result of the newly struck print, though. LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN has a different look than BLOOD AND SAND, a warm, earthy and dry palette, which I also recognize from the DVD release. I prefer the moist, richly luminous look of the latter. However, I can only assume that the restoration process made the colors paler and less vibrant than they were originally. Even so, the film seems to pick up when Ellen becomes pregnant. I found the following scenes to be the most attractive in the film. The 1957 PAL JOEY also looked more like true Technicolor to me. Logically, a dye transfer print of a non-three-strip film should look better than a film shot in three-strip and printed today.

As a movie, I think that BLOOD AND SAND is more touching. The best things about LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN are Tierney's portrayal of the ice cold Ellen Berent and the pounding doom of Alfred Newman's score.

In spite of what Darryl F. Zanuck once said of her ("unquestionably the most beautiful woman in movie history"), Gene Tierney is striking, but certainly not as gorgeous as Rita Hayworth (not even Hedy Lamarr was).

As someone stated before in this forum, once you know about those reel change markers, you'll never be able not to see them. LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN has several variants, including a half-black, half-purple "cake form" shaped one.

Like the second frame from the top here? Or do you mean something else by "cake form"? Cues like the one pictured at the link are a hallmark of IB Technicolor.

Not quite, those edges are too pointy. Imagine a dot with the edges looking like the pie form below, except rendered in a cubist fashion and with more protruding curves.

Seeing your example with the transparent purple cue dot, maybe the dot I saw was all purple with something dark behind half the dot, but in the theater I got the impression that the dot was purple in the upper left half circle and black in the lower right.



The other cue marks had many elongated points around the dots, about twice as pointy as a right angled triangle.

I envy your ROAD TO SALINA experience, I'd love to see it on a big screen. I missed this for years at my local video store as the tape had no box to entice me, and I had no idea what it was. Turns out it's 4 star Euro-Trash goodness through and through, with a game cast and what may be Mimsy Farmer's most affecting performance ( and possibly her most sensual ). Rita Hayworth is also very good here, she went out on a strong but unorthodox note.
The old Charter VHS is a full screen abomination, but gets the job done. Bleak and downbeat but fascinating and criminally unknown, ROAD TO SALINA was a huge pleasure to uncover.

Couldn't agree more with that assessment, John.

And I want to see more of Rita on the big screen. :D

Googling just now, I found these suitable facts about the astrological natal chart of "The Love Goddess":





Libra is ruled by Venus, the goddess of Love. ;) Rita had the Sun, Mercury and Venus in Libra. Libra (The Scales) learns to define itself through its relationships with others. (Rita Hayworth had an abusive father, developed a low degree of self-regard and judged herself through the eyes of her husbands).

To balance my objectifying of Rita, here is a piece from Adrienne L. McLean's book Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom.

But what I am concerned about here is why female performers, for whom repression really is an issue, are hardly ever described this lushly, with this much reference to their energy, their "kinaesthetic" potency, their precision, their ability to achieve the impossible. That women are not described in these terms can of course be linked precisely to their status within film studies as "glamorized female forms," as objects rather than performing subjects. But if women's skills were routinely discussed along with those of male performers and choreographers, then it would paradoxically become much more difficult to justify relegating women to the status of object.

(...)

Even when the lack of attention historically paid to female film performers is precisely the issue under consideration, somehow women's authority as performers still gets bypassed--to wit, in Virginia Wright Wexman's discussion in the chapter called "The Love Goddess: Contradictions in the Myth of Glamour" in her 1993 book Creating the Couple, Wexman writes that "although women actors are more likely than men to sing and dance onscreen, their roles are less likely to 'spill over' in a way that could endow their offscreen personas with the status of musical professionals. Thus, Fred Astaire is known primarily as a dancer-star of the movies, Ginger Rogers as a movie star who danced with Fred Astaire. Further, female performers are often positioned as images whose skill in these areas must be manufactured by technological sleights of hand: for example, there is no male equivalent for Marnie Nixon."

(in the "Don't get me started" department)

Maybe I'm misunderstanding that quote, but...d'uuuhhhh... Ginger Rogers freaking WAS a movie star who danced with Fred Astaire. If you look at her pre-code movies (PROFESSIONAL SWEETHEART, anyone?), she was already an accomplished leading comic actress by the time she teamed up with Astaire and she continued to act leads in comedies and dramas throughout the 1930s and '40s, while also teaming with Astaire, and did very well at it, thank you, even winning a Best Actress Oscar for KITTY FOYLE (1940). Look at some of her credits during the years she also made movies with Astaire: STAGE DOOR, BACHELOR MOTHER, FIFTH AVENUE GIRL, PRIMROSE PATH, TOM, DICK AND HARRY, ROXIE HART, THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR (Billy Wilder's directorial debut), ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON, TENDER COMRADE, LADY IN THE DARK, etc. And post-Astaire: STORM WARNING, WE'RE NOT MARRIED!, Howard Hawks' MONKEY BUSINESS, BLACK WIDOW, Phil Karlson's TIGHT SPOT, etc.

She was an actress and movie star, who also danced with Astaire. And I doubt she would have complained about that description.

Astaire, on the other hand was a musical star who also acted, but not that often. He wasn't really thought of as a bonafide dramatic actor until ON THE BEACH (1957), when he was 58 years old. He didn't do a lot of non-musical movies, but he sort of had a second career on TV in comic or dramatic guest spots in the later decades of his life, e.g. as Alexander Mundy's dad on "It Takes a Thief."

Anyway, you get my drift.

For the record, Fred Astaire is one of my favorite people of all time. Cyd Charisse is the best female counterpart, in my opinion.