As a rule growing up for someone like myself who lived off of old movies, if you rented a video and it started with this logo, you knew you were in for a troublesome experience:
Goodtimes Home Video...the king of public domain and obscure home video releases at cheap quality rates. From the KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park TV special to clip videos such as A Tribute To Lucy and classic features such as Charade and Royal Wedding, Goodtimes was one of those home video companies that always made me scratch my head and wonder how they always stuck around. Their transfers were usually analog from old analog video sources from old public domain prints. Every Goodtimes VHS I have seen has been recorded on LP mode. Most tapes are recorded on SP mode, which allow 2 hours of program on an average size cassette, allowing for superior video quality. By recording in LP mode, which allows 4 hours of program, about half of the amount of physical tape needs to be used. This had its downfalls. It meant low frequency sound and a much softer image, not to mention thick lines during seek mode on your VCR that made it difficult to scan through. Also, LP tapes have a higher rate of video dropout.
Through 2007, when the company finally folded, Goodtimes seemed to nudge its way into the DVD era, by releasing their older titles on DVD using the same video sources they used for their VHS. I was taken aback the other day when I went to the public library and decided to rent an old film for the evening. There on the rack was the DVD of "Royal Wedding", a public domain film that every video company and their Nanna has tried to release. Official releases from MGM exist as well, but the film is commonly seen on internet streaming sites, public television, VHS and DVD because anyone has the right to profit from it. I saw the Goodtimes Home Video logo before I saw anything else and decided that I was going to tolerate whatever transfer I received as it was a free rental. There on the front cover though, my friends, were the words used so liberally: Digitally Restored. "This I have to see" I told myself and popped it into my machine the minute I got home. Before the feature even started came a white text on black background disclaimer, and I'm paraphrasing here: "This film has been restored using the best possible elements."
The first frame came on, and my inner voice flipped into Claire Huxtable sternly saying "What have you done?" to the makers of this DVD. Spending many years in the film and video archive world, I have been able to identify analog video sources based on grain pattern, dropout quality, and video overhead quality. What I was seeing, based on the video line on the right and the grain pattern of the image, appeared to be a DVD of a D2 of a 1" C video source. The 1" soundtrack had not been calibrated before being transferred to the D2 and the result was a lot of pops and clicks on the DVD. Now I have not seen the official DVD of this film, but SURELY there exists a better "element" of the film than a D2 or 1". This is what we were looking at:
This opens my third eye. I don't mind people releasing films on home video and them being sub par quality if there are other versions available. If you can make a buck, and there are people willing to pay a few bucks as opposed to more than 10, go for it! But why lie? Blatantly, at that. Nothing was digitally restored for this film. There wasn't a computer used to color correct the image. Scratches weren't removed, the soundtrack wasn't cleaned. What exactly was done to fix this? And on top of that, why is the company claiming that they used the 'best elements' for this, as if it had accomplished some great feat by releasing a D2 of a public domain film on DVD!!! The people who would buy a film like this would know when they are being fed a bowl of doo-doo in the form of a home video. Shame on you Goodtimes Home Video! It's no wonder you folded!!!
This last week, after getting my finances in order, I opted to bring the Netflix Watch Instantly plan back into my life. I had gotten rid of it about three years ago as at the time, the plan offered was less than what one would desire. The features included on the plan were very limited. I remember a friend of mine and I flipping through the films offered and having a hard time finding one that seemed remotely interesting. The films would come and go from the plan so quickly that by the time you were finally interested in watching a film, it had vanished and you had to order the disc. Films were taken from the cheapest available elements. For a film like "Charade", while the disc was a transfer from Criterion, restored in vibrant color and offered in its 1.85:1 aspect ratio, the watch instant plan was taken from the Goodtimes DVD, a crappy 1" of a crappy 16mm print that was spliced to hell, pan and scan, and had horrible video overhead on the side. Aspect ratios were completely unacceptable on other films as well. Due to a merger, a lot of the titles distributed came from Starz' catalog. So, if I wanted to watch Pulp Fiction, I would be watching it in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio as opposed to its original 2.35:1.
Time heals all wounds, and after hearing the site had cleaned up its act, I decided to rekindle the relationship. This is true and it has been a happy week for the two of us. We have laughed, cried, talked about memories, and shared many a film or tv episode with a glass of Fresca. I was also in the minority of people whom are still opting to get discs vs. watch streaming. Statistics are showing that now that bandwidth is increasing and it is easier for titles in HD to stream flawlessly, people prefer to rent titles online instead of visiting a local video store or order discs from Netflix. Most Blockbusters have closed, and laptops don't even include a DVD-R drive anymore. We have started to move into a discless generation where everything is ordered, screened, and paid for with the touch of a button. But this does not come without its limitations.
There is so much we are missing from watching a program on stream instead of getting a disc. The restorations screened may be great, but the same options available have now become a thing of the past. For example, if you have been following my blog, you may have read how when I can, I try to watch a title with the original sound mix vs. the upmix as I don't have surround sound in my apartment and enjoy the original mix quality better. Watching a film streaming no longer gives you this option. Whatever sound mix has been chosen is the one you are forced to watch the film with. There are other limitations. Audio commentary-- gone. Making of features-- gone. Deleted scenes-- gone. Music only tracks-- gone. Trailers....well these aren't gone, you can still watch them on Youtube, but you get my point. Not to mention, there is a bit of compression that comes with these streaming videos. Studying the quality as meticulously as a reviewer like myself does now is a thing of the past. The hard meticulous work that studios put into film to video transfers is almost worthless now, as no one is buying the discs that show off the work. The studios might as well lease out the older D1 transfers of the films instead of the newer HD transfers considering the image quality won't be making much of a difference by the time the compressed video with whatever demonic video proxy being used hits your laptop, wireless DVD player, or gaming system.
To wrap this up, sure, I do recommend watching stuff streaming if you don't mind the shift in video quality. But I also encourage you to still opt for a disc from time to time to see the glory of the colors, grain, and high sound quality one gets with an uncompressed video disc. Not to mention, if you want to check out the special features, they still exist on the discs. The studios are still slapping them on DVDs and Blurays in hopes of people buying and renting them. Don't compromise for cheaper video quality if you don't want to. It may take an extra day, but your film experience will be worth it.
Signed,
The Celluloid Avenger
I encourage people to watch films streaming as the option is so much easier than waiting for the disc to arrive in the mail, dealing with skipping sections, etc.
When it comes to my list of favorite film openings, this one definitely takes the cake:
Labeled
as India's 'curry western', a take on the 'spaghetti westerns' from
Italy, Sholay was and is one of the biggest films ever to be released.
Beyond being India's second 70mm released film (Around the World was the
first), Sholay struck big at the box office. Thakur Singh, a retired
police officer, now lives in a provincial town with his widowed
daughter. The town lives under the regime of a forceful criminal, Gabbar
Singh, who takes all assets of the town at his disposal and murders
everyone who may threaten his ruling. Through, song, dance, comedy,
action, and drama-- the perfect blend for a Bollywood film, Sholay
delivers as a prime example of classic Indian Cinema. The film didn't
'explode' at the box office overnight though. According to magazines
from the time, people walked out during the first 20 minutes because of
the long action sequence that introduced the lead men. The audience
figured it was going to be another B action film. The people who stuck
around got to see that the film gets better as it progresses and word of
mouth spread. Not long after, the film grew in audience numbers and
soon was selling out for weeks to come.
The 70mm
grandeur didn't hurt things either, although the film wasn't shot on
70mm. In 1975, widescreen was still a fairly new concept in India. While
most foreign films that came into the country had adopted the process,
most Hindi films were still 1.37:1. Theaters were not about to all
switch over to a 2.20:1 format to exhibit a film either due to the
financial obligation this would require. So, to compensate, Sholay had
two aspect ratios. The film was shot on 35mm at 1.37:1 and printed to
35mm in this aspect ratio, and then it was cropped and blown up to
2.20:1 for the 70mm release. This started a new trend in Bollywood.
Because of the rich colors of the image used in Bollywod cinema, blowing
up the frame didn't create a jarring effect in regards to grain. If you
watch the opening sequence above, you can picture where the mattes
exist. Watching this film open matte, one can see that a lot of empty
space exists, especially above the heads of the characters. The film is
definitely framed for the widescreen format, with many medium shots
featuring 3 characters at a time in the frame. I have seen the film in
both aspect ratios and love it both ways.
In the early
1990s, evident from a trailer on an Eros VHS for Chamatkar (1993),
Sholay was rereleased in theaters. While its legacy lived on from this
rerelease, the legacy was not given the same treatment when it came to
home video. Various copies of various aspect ratios have made their way
to home video. The first VHS I remember seeing was from an open matte
print with French subtitles. This copy that circulated around the
bootleg home video market had some scenes cut and many video dropouts,
but was still rich in color and featured the theatrical ending. Eros
issued an official VHS and DVD of the film. Eros is notorious for taking
2.20:1 or 2.35:1 films and cropping them to 1.85:1 letterbox for
release. With Sholay, one would have thought they could have taken a
1.33:1 source and matted it if they wanted to go that way. Instead, they
took a 2.20 source and zoomed farther in to 1.85:1, making the film
barely watchable. Later, MoserBaer took a 1975 2.20:1 print (the year of
the element comes from the censor certificate at the beginning of the
film) and released it in non-anamorphic form on DVD. This print, while
pretty worn, does contain the film as it was meant to be seen in its
theatrical cut.
Sometime in the 1990s, with the advent of
cable tv, the film received a 'director's cut'. The film had its issues
with censors back in 1975 for being too violent and featuring an ending
that did not please the government (I'm not a spoiler, but if you
really want to know what the differences are, I'm sure IMDB can
accommodate). This original ending and some of the gore was reinstated
to bring the film up to 204 minutes. Of course, this version was
released as a 1.37:1 version. Because it has the highest image quality
and is distributed by Eros, who rule the international video market,
this is the most common seen version of the film. I'm not down with
that. For years, I have been searching for the theatrical cut of the
film in its widescreen aspect ratio-- the way people remember seeing it
in 1975 if they went to a 70mm screening. Which is the proper way to see
the film though? The film really only played in 70mm in a few cities.
The big 'crowd' that made the film what it was actually saw the film in
the 35mm square aspect ratio version. I can say this though, they did
NOT see a 204 minute cut of the film. That's a little too much Sholay
for my taste.
And now, of course, something else happens. Sholay has been released
in....wait for it...3D! 3D?! Yeah, that's right. 3D. I am sure it looks
as bad as it sounds, but this also means that a proper 2D release was
done. And it looks BEAUTIFUL! I am not for tampering with old films in
the form of gimmicks, but in this case it actually paid off. In order to
do a 3D conversion, a 2D high quality restoration needed to be done. I
am so happy and proud of the work that went into this. Sholay should be
seen and shared with future generations. It is a huge part of Indian
history. Not to mention, it is just a badass film. I anticipate the new
DVD of this release with great anticipation and hope that when it comes
out, you will do yourself a favor and pick it up:
Truth be told, you don't even have to hear the theme to know what you're in for when it pops up on Comedy Central. That opening text slate (which is usually a lot shorter on air-- I surmise that it is also used as a means of station identification) evokes emotion out of a lot of people. College students smile and know they're in for a good half hour of relaxation from studying. Parents jump up and change the channel before their son or daughter will be exposed to the filth that lies ahead. Middle school and high school kids know to do a 360 with their heads to make sure no adults around and turn down the TV so that no one will know what they are watching. This has been happening for 17 years, and yet, no matter how much it gets protested, feared, or critiqued, South Park lives on as a legacy of Comedy Central.
I was 13, the perfect age, when South Park hit TV. At that time, the idea of watching a show online was a pipe dream. We hadn't even mastered the MP3 download yet. So, to be able to brag that you got away with catching an episode of South Park meant that you were the COOLEST kid in school. If you could sit at the lunch table and intelligently discuss the events that occurred the night before, be it cattle killing themselves in a mass cult suicide or a hypnotic trip to the planetarium, you were obviously on a higher level than the average 7th grader. These first few seasons were incredibly crude and almost geared to preteens and teens who wanted good toilet humor. As the show progressed, it got more sophisticated and took on an entirely new tone. With this came a more general demographic. As the initial viewers matured, so did the show. Between seasons 4-10, South Park began dealing with important political and social issues, always ending with a moral of the day. The show never branded itself as liberal or conservative. Instead, it branded itself on having the opinion that had the most sense, and aimed to share it in the most cynical and crude way.
After season 10, the show began to jump the shark. Episodes became a little too strong in their political message, the humor became a little too crude, and it was hard for the show to find a demographic. However, a demographic was still apparent because it soars on. All of the episodes are now available to watch on an official website, www.southparkstudios.com, and yet the show still has high ratings on Comedy Central. I guess people still like being 'surprised' with which episode from the gigantic library the station now has as at its disposal will be chosen.
Now, to chime in on the archivist's point of view. While I love the ability to watch this show online, I do have an issue with the way it is presented. It wasn't until recently that the show switched from a 1.37:1 to 1.77:1 aspect ratio, to adjust for the more common HD TV format. The website opted to reformat the entire show to 1.77:1, from season 3 on. The remastered versions of the show do this from the pilot on. Sure, the show is construction cutouts (later changed to flash) that crudely move around the screen and I'm sure there's nothing cinematic about the show that could compare it to something such as Mad Men. However, I am a firm believer that aspect ratio should be left as presented. People watching the show today should see it as it was originally released. By altering this, the show gives off the impression that the show was always a widescreen show and cropped for initial showings when truth be told the opposite is true.
While we're on the subject, there is constant debate about how the vulgarity of the show should be handled. The rules of what can and cannot be said on television have definitely changed over the years. Still, there are certain words such as 'fuck' that are a total taboo and cannot be run on Comedy Central. The show had crude beeps in place of profanities, as did many shows back in the 1990s, and current showings on Comedy Central leave these in place. The website, however, opted to remove the bleeps and allow the profanity to be heard. In a way, this ruins the show for me. When Cartman says a naughty word , the profanity bleep makes the instance funnier, as it accentuates the fact that a word that an eight year old shouldn't know just came out of an eight year old's mouth. The film's release, of course, allowed the characters' use of profanity to remain intact, but following this, all airings of the show on Comedy Central still kept profanity censored. It adds something special to the show, and to allow the viewer to hear the characters cuss almost removes the humor of their lines.
I will close with this. While I nitpick, I am eternally grateful for www.southparkstudios.com for releasing these shows for free to the public. This show should be seen by people of a variety of ages, disgusting as it may be. The humor is timeless, and the creators' (Matt Stone and Trey Parker, respectively) bravery to push the envelope every week have made this show a classic on American TV. I hope, years from now, people will see this show for what it is, and the reruns on old tv stations will do what shows like All in the Family do for audiences today.
A few months ago, a good chum lent me the Meet Me in St. Louis Bluray, which if anyone hasn't seen yet, is a definite must-- there are many debates about the quality of the transfer as compared to the quality of an original Technicolor print, but overall it is a great Hi Def video release in my opinion. I was a little sad to see that there weren't any new special features added to the release from the previous DVD a decade earlier. I was even more angry about the sound mixes however. When released on Standard Def DVD a decade earlier, the DVD offered two choices, either a restored mono track, or a 5.1 upmix. The new Bluray only offers the 5.1 upmix as an option.
Let's get technical for a minute for those who don't know what I am talking about. A film such as Meet Me in St. Louis came out in the 1940s when all films were mono, meaning that theaters only had the option of showing the film with one composite track. Even if a theater had two speakers, the same information would be passed out of the left and right speaker. With a 5.1 upmix for home viewing, the manufacturers have made it so that the sound will be passed out of 6 speakers (subwoofer included) and have the sound separated so different information is coming out of each speaker. While post production houses and studio restoration departments that work with old films claim to do this as discreetly as possible, it does still cause an issue. By altering the sound in such a fashion, the film is being tainted. Making such decisions are altering how the film was originally viewed. How is it possible for us as an industry that sets forth to release old films to new audiences to argue for this technique? I feel, personal opinion of course, that anyone who supports the upmixing of old films for home video release and then reprimands the acts of colorization or cropping a fullscreen film to widescreen is a hypocrite. The act of altering the sound in such a fashion is just as abominating in regards to what we stand for as film historians and preservationists and should be stopped.
Several years ago, I attended a screening at a conference. I can't name the city, year, studio, or film that I saw but remember these details well and will carry them to my grave. The head restorer of the project gave a lengthy but wonderful lecture about how the film had switched studios over the years and in order to restore this 1930s film to the way it was originally scene, a title card had been found and carefully added back into the film, while taking heed to how it fit with the score's timing of opening credits. The film started and I noticed that there were several 'layers' in the soundtrack. Uneasy, I was beginning to wonder if what I was hearing was the original mono track to the film. I shrugged it off, however, as I figured that no one would go so far as to present a film and take the time to explain how a 3 second title card had been restored and then go forward to alter the soundtrack of the film. Eventually, as a tree fell in the middle of a scene, I heard the track move from the front right speaker, around the back, and swoosh to the front left speaker. Turning my head around to follow the sound and recreating an image of Reagan spinning her head in The Exorcist I said to myself "WOAH! THAT'S NOT MONO!" I was livid, to say the least. The audience present was a group of film historians and archivists. If a sound mix was to be chosen for such a screening, it should have been a restored mono.
Going back to Meet Me In St. Louis, my anger lies in the fact that an audience should be given an option to hear an original mix or a 5.1 mix, as was the case with the original DVD release of Meet Me in St. Louis. Obviously the restored mono existed, was well received by consumers, and could have easily been included as an option on the new release. By taking away the option and forcing us to listen to the new upmix, we as consumers are being treated like children who must be taught to be grateful for what is presented to us. It is as if I went to an ice cream parlor, knew that chocolate and vanilla were available, was given chocolate instead of vanilla when I wanted the latter, and when I asked why had a finger shaken at me and was told, 'you get what you get, and you don't get upset'.
I am sure that the upmix for this film sounded beautiful, I am not arguing that-- although I will always question the integrity of it. More frustration lies in the fact that I couldn't hear it. Who buys old films on DVD and Bluray? Let's look at our demographic. Yes, there are film scholars who have a prestigious home theater setup with a sound system that can interpret the channel separation of such an upmix. But that is only a percentage of the demographic. Many home viewers are like myself. They have two speakers on their television or attached to a receiver that take this upmix and cast it out as a 2 channel Lt/Rt fold down. It is obvious that the people who headed this restoration did not keep us in mind and QC the Lt/Rt fold down of this upmix. If they had, there is no way they would have released it. Not only do the levels jump from incredibly quiet to booming loud, but the levels of M&E overtook the dialogue in several instances.
Before a side is taken on upmixing or not, one more argument should be presented. Altering sound has been a part of home video for a long time, and I know this. Before we were tinkering with upmixing, sound would be compressed before it was released on television and VHS so that the louder levels wouldn't contrast as much with the quieter ones as they would in a theater setting. So if tampering with sound has been a part of releasing these films to the home market as a staple, does this give restorers the right to upmix since the sound would have been tampered anyway? Food for thought.
If you've visited the Smithsonian, you've seen the chair. If you've watched That's 70s Show or The Simpsons, you've seen the parody, and if you've tuned into any syndication channel, you've seen and heard the familiar theme song:
All in the Family will go down as one of the most important and influential shows of TV history. For nine seasons, CBS brought the Bunkers into our living rooms. Archie, the patriarch, was a working class middle aged republican who supported the war, hated diversity, and got a little confused when paraphrasing his great American quotes. Edith, his wife, was a mousey homey "dingbat", as Archie called her, who believed in serving her husband and family, but spoke up wisely when she saw something unjust. Gloria, their daughter, was a feminist who believed in the future of our children through demonstration and outspoken reaction. Her husband, Mike, was as far left as they come. Together, they brought issues to television that no one before dared.
Starting in 1969, CBS went through what was referred to as the "Rural Purge", cancelling any shows that portrayed middle American life, to appeal to a younger demographic who desired to see shows about the more hip metropolitan areas of the time. Unfortunately, this meant that most family plot shows were tossed aside as well. All in the Family revived the family sitcom by tossing aside issues such as Beaver being jealous that Wally was hanging out with girls, or Opie stealing a candy bar from the drug store. Instead, it dealt with more raw family problems, such as a draft dodger being invited to dinner, or Gloria being sexually assaulted and the family debating on whether or not to report it, but doing it with a flawless mix of drama and humor. This is the true success of the show. The performances are unlike anything one will ever see on TV again. Never in my life before or since have I laughed uncontrollably and started sobbing in the same breath because of the way an actor changed a climate from one line to the next. I don't tend to get emotional when watching a film or TV show, but every 4th episode or so of this series will somehow get me because of the powerful way it is written and the way the script is carried out in the performance.
There is another element that helps evoke emotion in me with this show-- the help of the studio audience. Prior to All in the Family, the 3 camera live audience sitcom had been on hiatus. Series were employing the process of shooting shows with a single camera and using a laugh box during the jokes. Tests found that audiences reacted better to a show if there was laughter on the soundtrack, which encouraged them to laugh along. Although many shows after All in the Family, which was also the first show to utilize videotape for the three camera process as a means of saving money, were 'filmed in front of a studio audience', most of them tended to be sweetened by the laugh track, meaning additional canned laughter would be utilized where the audience didn't laugh as hard as one would expect. If you watch DVDs of shows like Gimme a Break or Roseanne, you can hear the difference in quality of the studio laughter and canned laughter now that it has been digitally remastered.
All in the Family did not do this. Norman Lear has gone on record several times to say that the show was not sweetened and that the audience reactions were accurate to the taping. In the final season, when the show was taped on a closed set, a videotape of the show would be broadcast to audience members attending tapings of One Day at a Time, and these reactions would be added onto the soundtrack of the final product...still not sweetened. The omission of canned laughter is only the tip of the iceberg in regards to how this affected the quality of the show. Microphones placed above the audience record all reactions, giving it a more genuine feel. For three camera live audience sitcoms, there are two 'fourth walls', the one between the live audience and the actors on stage, and the one between the viewer at home and the live audience. The latter wall I mentioned is immediately shattered by Lear's choice of recording all reactions to this show. If an audience members shuffles uncomfortably when Archie is screaming about his support for the war in a dramatic moment, or someone lets out an inappropriate small chuckle at what they might perceive was a joke during a mood change of a scene, the microphones pick this up and bring it into our living rooms. So, when sitcoms today choose not to record laugh tracks in order to allow the home viewer to decide if a joke is funny or not, I feel that this is choice by Lear is comparative. It brings the viewer closer to the action as opposed to dictating when to laugh or not laugh. There is one known instance of when the laughter of a taping had to be edited: the Sammy Davis Jr. episode. Davis, playing himself, comes to Archie's home. Archie is excited to meet him but is still not shy about sharing his feelings about African Americans or the Jewish race with Davis. At the end, while posing for a picture, Davis kisses his cheek, and Archie is confused on whether he is delighted or disgusted.
The laughter went on so long that there was no choice but to edit it down. To me, it is one of the funniest moments ever to hit television.
I love this show and am so glad that it is on DVD (some episodes transferred better than others) for all to watch. Many episodes have hit Youtube recently, and I encourage everyone to check it out!
Tonight, my partner is coming back from work, and I have a special evening planned for us. A meal of oven grilled kabobs, and a screening of the oh so tawdry film, Heavenly Bodies (1984). Heavenly Bodies is a campy cult classic about an aerobics studio that is in danger of being shut down by a larger competitor. In order to keep its studio space, an aerobics-off is chosen...last man standing from the representing competitor gets to keep the studio space to use for their business. Here's a beautiful dance number featuring the music of Bonnie Pointer:
I wish I had this film on an official DVD. Luckily, the DVD I made came from a pristine VHS that had hardly been touched since its issue in 1985, as released by Key Video. The VHS has an incredible Hi-Fi track, as well as mono, so although the DVD is pan and scan, the analog quality from the VHS does not ruin the viewing experience. Still, seeing it in its original aspect ratio and digitally mastered (in 1985, VHS weren't even digitally mastered yet, and this probably came from a 1" source) would make Heavenly Bodies more Heavenly!!!
I wanted to do a quick writeup on this issue because it is one that affected me regularly when I was working at the Sundance Institute. Many people are under the assumption that because a film was once released by a large studio or has been put out on home video that the film is archived and safe. Luckily, this film has seen a Turner Classic Movies broadcast in widescreen, which means that the elements of the film are probably still around, and that a decent master on a newer format must exist somewhere, but that isn't the case for a lot of films.
Heavenly Bodies was produced by several independent companies, Playboy Enterprises for one, and was originally released in Canada. MGM/UA released the film theatrically in 1985, and the home video distribution rights, as I mentioned, were handled by Key Video. Key Video is no longer around, and the theatrical rights to films not made by large studios usually run out over time. When I was at Sundance, dealing with this on a daily basis was the most difficult part of my job. I would call filmmakers, asking them for information on their films that ran in the festival. They would tell me the same story every time. A studio handled the theatrical rights for a few years, another studio handled the video rights, and both contracts had expired. After expiration, they never contacted the filmmaker to tell them where the elements were or bothered to tell them how much was owed to the lab that was storing the film elements. The lab refused to return the elements to the filmmaker unless the lab storage fee was paid, and threatened to destroy the elements to the film. These weren't films that were all that old either, many of them were 15-20 years old and were remembered by large audiences-- some even got DVD releases and were now falling apart in a lab. Other times, the filmmaker would hold the original elements in an environment that was not ideal for the film, such as rental storage or in a New England basement. In many ways this was the big shock to me about the film archive world. Physically saving the elements wasn't the hardest part. Going through the negotiations to start the process was much more difficult.
Sadly, unless the rights of Heavenly Bodies are renewed with the same or another distribution company, it may never hit DVD, and this is the truth for many films. Far too much has been lost because of the negligence of filmmakers, studios, and labs-- not knowing where things are, who owes who money, or not caring whether the film survives beyond a rare VHS at a video store that never threw it away. Lucky for Heavenly Bodies, there is a huge cult following and prints are still circulating at vintage theaters such as the Cinefamily and Nuart. It is time that we as an industry remember that there are still so many films that need to be given access to audiences. Audiences do not need to see another restoration of Casablanca or Citizen Kane...keeping the current home video releases in print will suffice. Films like Heavenly Bodies do not need a 5.1 upmix and a meticulous restoration for Bluray. They just need to have a barebones transfer that looks slightly better than their VHS counterparts and put on an accessible format so that the lovers of that film, no matter how large or small, can share its memories. When we as a society decided that film archiving was important, we carried a motto that sharing the culture and history of a specific time and space needed to be attended to in regards to the moving image form. As I hear that some films have gotten their 4th or 5th DVD release in the last 15 years and films like this have been brushed aside because they are not guaranteed to make the same profit, I worry that our motto as a field has begun to vanish. I ask you, who wouldn't want to rent or buy this charming gem?
I had a sudden urge to watch More American Graffiti, as I realized I had never seen it. Before doing this, though, I presumed it would be a good idea to throw on the original film that preceded it, American Graffiti, as it had been a while since I had seen it and wanted to get in touch with the many characters of the film so that the transition to the sequel would be a little less confusing. It took me a while to warm up to American Graffiti. The first time I rented it, the copy I got from the local video store was an early 80s MCA/Universal VHS that had been pretty worn out, and because of its quality, I had a hard time engaging. It wasn't until I saw a 35mm print of the film at the New Beverly Cinema that I really fell in love with this film. American Graffiti follows a group of teenagers on a summer evening after they graduate from high school. The plot is simple, but there is a certain charm to it that still attracts new audiences.
For film nerds like me, this film has a few qualities worth mentioning. For starters, all of the sound, except for the title sequences and the Goodnight Sweetheart song which continues through a few scenes to the end, is diegetic, meaning all of the sound that we hear as the audience is also heard by the characters of the film. For two hours, music of the time period heard on the radio, at a sock hop, etc., plays as the characters' stories develop. The double record soundtrack to the film, which was a favorite of mine growing up, includes the majority of these songs and the coolest part is that the quality of the recordings on the soundtrack matches that of the film. Master recordings aren't used, and there is a canned quality with limited fidelity used to illustrate the quality of sound of the recordings as heard back in the time that the film is set. Five years after the film was released, it was reissued in Dolby Stereo sound (with a few more scenes added back in), which was fairly experimental for its time. Still, because the technological abilities to do a stereophonic remix in 1978 were limited, this remix is discreet enough to not distract from the film's original concept, compared to the 5.1 mixes of mono films that are chugged out by companies on a regular basis today. I am so happy that the Bluray and DCP of this film retains the 1978 stereo remix, and not a new 5.1 surround. That definitely would have killed the viewing experience for me.
Another notable quality of the film is that it was shot using a process called Techniscope. Instead of shooting a 2.35:1 aspect ratio with an anamorphic lens, Techniscope cameras took 4 perf 35mm film and shot it at a 2.35:1 aspect ratio by filming at 2 perfs at a time, reducing the frame in half. This would then be blown up onto 4 perf 35mm film so it could be projected at its widescreen aspect ratio...sort of a cheap man's widescreen. This gave the film a certain gritty aesthetic that adds to the memorable charm of the film a lot of people may remember in initial releases. I only wish I could have seen when the film was blown up to 70mm for the 1978 rerelease. My mind imagines that the grain for this blow up would have been quite distracting, but it's hard to tell without actually seeing it. When I saw the DCP and Bluray of the film recently, I noticed that any resemblance of this Techniscope process had now been removed with grain removal. The grit that showed the budget and time that the film was made was part of the charm that attracted audiences over the years. By removing this, the studios are almost shaming the filmmakers for the artistic choices they made. The movie is much brighter than I remember as well, probably because with the grain removed the colors needed a makeover. It's hard for me to stomach studios doing this. For years we as professionals discriminated against colorization with black and white films, and now we're colorizing color films. The restoration of this film is a perfect example of that.
The nice thing about films like American Graffiti is that they will always be released time and time again. Gone with the Wind has had numerous releases over the years, and each time, the people working on releasing the film try their hardest to have it resemble its original release. While American Graffiti is no Gone with the Wind by any means, it does hold a special place in many people's hearts and I do see it getting more restorations and releases in the future. Hopefully, the next time around, some of that 70s charm that went into the process of making it will come back. Until then, I will constantly be checking the movie listings for 35mm prints that may show up at local theaters in the LA area.
Last night, I was stuck at O'Hare International Airport for 5 hours. It was by far the most awful airport experience I have had. The airport shut down for four hours prior to my arriving there and all flights were delayed, cancelled, overbooked, you name it. Being a person who doesn't drink, it was charming to at first be surrounded by angry people, then by angry drunks. As people were dealing with hangovers and still not boarding planes, they became a little more calm and discussions broke out. Somehow, my field of profession came into the mix and a group of us started talking about in-flight entertainment. A suit who travels for a living mentioned that by 2015, all aircrafts should have the feature of purchasable cable TV stations (via satellite of course) with personal screens on the seat in front of you. All I can think is that it is about time this happened.
Films on airlines have been around since the 1920s, and the technologies have constantly been changing. While previously, 16mm prints were used (my personal print of Sweet Charity is an airline print-- letterbox with the titles flipped so that it could be projected from the rear of the screen), by the 1970s, 1" tapes were being used instead, with the open reel tapes running above the passengers heads. God bless cassette formats such as Umatic and eventually VHS, which made the in-flight entertainment portion of a flight much easier on the flight attendants, who also had to schlop out drinks and peanuts to the greedy customers while rocking back and forth in the air.
I remember being a child and watching many films on planes. Previous to television screens that dropped down in the aisles, there was one huge screen in the middle row of the plane that ran everything. A flight to Europe would start with your instructional video on how to be a good airline passenger, followed by the BBC news, a feature or two, a couple sitcoms, and finally a set of cartoons for the kids on the plane before ending with an instructional video on filling out the customs card. There were very few times the films weren't edited for content, which made watching a film like Scent of a Woman nearly impossible. As years have passed, I understand from friends at the studios that the films have been time crunched as well. I find this a little odd of course, as a film won't be run on any flights unless they are 4 hours or longer. Why bother time compressing a 2 hour film on a 4 hour flight? Lame.
One very unique experience I remember is flying Midwest Express back from Los Angeles to Milwaukee with my mom and sister. My mom was generous enough to pay the ridiculous charge (I think it was $7 or so) to let my sister and I watch a film on a portable player. Midwest Express had smaller planes at the time and could not hold the projection system needed for in-flight entertainment. So, one could order a portable player, which came with an attached Hi-8 tape machine, and watch a film on your meal tray on the seat in front of you. We of course rented Sister Act. It's PG and has nuns singing if you're not familiar:
My sister wanted to watch Straight Talk, but I was the youngest, so I got to decide. The flight attendant was so condescending when she gave us the machine. "To start the film, hit this big triangle. It's the play button. When the movie is finished, hit the square. It's the stop button. Then let me know and I'll take care of the rest for you, okay?" Please woman, I was 8 and my sister was 10. We were pretty familiar with home video systems at that age. At the end of the film, there is this huge number which my sister and I love. So when it finished my sister simply said 'let's watch it again' and rewound the tape. I was getting so nervous and started shouting 'No! You're going to get us in trouble!' She didn't care, and of course we didn't, but just goes to show you how I was the good seed and she was the deviant one.
Jumping back to last night though, the film was The Lego Movie, and I was surprised to see that the only 'modified from its original version' disclaimer that ran before the film was that it had been 'formatted to fit this screen', meaning it was going to be shown at 1.33:1 instead of 2.35:1. I figured I could stomach this. Well, the film was awful. I don't know who writes children films these days, but they're definitely not professional writers, and this was a good example of that. I ended up tuning out after 35 minutes. My interest peaked at a certain moment though, when the captain had to pause the film to let us know we were entering some turbulence. The film paused digitally, as if the source was a DVD. I bring this up because almost exactly one year ago to date, my mom and and I took a trip to Hawaii and saw an equally terrible film-- The Great and Powerful Oz. I had already seen the shoddy film in theaters, and while it was way too long, I didn't see why the film had a disclaimer that it had been edited for time and content, beyond reformatting for fullscreen. When the pilot paused that film, the format was a VHS. I remember distinctly seeing an analog pause and the heads eating away at this poor VHS tape of the film as he made the announcement and then hitting play again. This was the same type of plane, by the way, a Boeing 757. So, either VHS have been done away with in the last year on airplanes, as they should because the tapes we saw were in horrible condition from every time someone hit pause to make an announcement, or there are only some flights that are capable of showing DVD.
Nonetheless, it is so wonderful to hear that pretty soon there will be NO set programming for in-flight entertainment. I think it is wonderful that people can choose what they want to watch and flip through channels to catch a Nick at Nite Cheers marathon or something on Turner Classic Movies while waiting to go visit their grandmother in Utah, or wherever the heck they're headed. There is one downside though, which none of us have considered. Flying back from Milwaukee to Los Angeles on such a flight that offered the cable tv channels, I tuned in to see a Comedy Central roast, as it was a late night flight and TV-MA programs tend to run at these weening hours. I was enjoying myself immensely, watching something that was highly immature and offensive, but when I came back to my seat after going to the little passenger's room, I noticed that there were a few munchkins, ages 12 and under, tuning into this same adult program. Mom and Dad were either not on the flight or seated far away, and could not monitor what their child was watching. So while we once, as a whole audience of passengers had to, and still on some flights do, watch films censored for the minor eyes and ears of the flight, the new 'cable tv' option is opening a new world of inappropriate television for young'ns...all they have to do is get booked on a flight, and a standup comic can explain the birds and bees to them in a way their human growth and development classes missed!
It was a snowy February Sunday night in 1995 in Brookfield, WI. My usual bedtime was 9pm, but on this very special night, my mom let me go with her to a very special screening: a film that had been buzzing all over the Bollywood gossip magazines: Hum Aapke Hain Koun. An hour later than scheduled, the lights dimmed, and the loud sold-out crowd cheered in delight as the following title sequence hit the screen:
This was actually what we saw. There are a few logos that are supposed to come before this title sequence, but the print we saw had traveled all over the US, and had come to us incredibly worn, starting with the logos cut, and this number incredibly scratched. Still, green emulsion lines dancing and all, it was a night to remember. Hum Aapke Hain Koun was considered a landmark film in Bollywood for so many reasons. I particularly can take or leave the film today, but do applaud its reverence because of what it did for the Bollywood industry. To see its deterioration over the last 20 years in different releases and to see that it has been beautifully restored in HD and released on home video makes my heart smile, even if I don't agree with it being a particularly good film.
The synopsis of the film is quite simple. Two wealthy Hindu families arrange a marriage between a boy and a girl, and in the process of the lavish traditional Indian wedding, followed by the wife becoming 'expectant', the bride and grooms siblings fall in love, keeping their coy feelings from the family. When tragedy strikes (the bride, finding the two are in love, joyously runs down a flight of stairs, trips into a concussion and dies in a coma), their love is jeopardized as her sister must now marry the bride's widow to care for her nephew instead of marrying the man she loves. Full of over-the-top humor, 14 songs, and incredibly cheesy dialogue, the film may not hold up as well as it did when it hit screens in 1994. But at the time, it was a saving grace for an industry that was starting to fall apart.
Still chugging out roughly 900 films a year, India's film market had a new focus...it seems that all films I remember of this era were romantic-drama-action-comedy-musicals that involved drug lords, cops, scorned love by family members, and a rape scene thrown in for good measure. I kid you not, while kissing on the lips was not seen for another year in Raja Hindustani, a staged rape scene happened more times than it needed to. Hum Aapke Hain Koun (HAHK) decided to be different. It broke box office records selling out for weeks in advanced on a simple story about love and family. If it weren't for this film, so many other classics that followed (Dilwale Dulhuniya Le Jayenge, Dil To Pagal Hain, and Rangeela, to name a few) wouldn't have been made, even in an industry that did release so many titles at a time.
There are three main versions of this film, to date. The first release, not remembered by most, had only 10 songs in it, and ran about 20 minutes shorter than the most common version. A groundbreaking marketing technique, Rajshri films waited until attendance had started to tamper down, and rereleased the film with 4 new songs: "Chocolate, Lime Juice", a reprise to "Diktana, Diktana", "Mujse Jodha Hokar", and "Lo Chali Main", the latter before the climactic coma inducing stair fall. This was the version I remember seeing in theaters as the film traveled around the US, running roughly 3 hrs and 5 min. Beautifully restored, here is the "Chocolate, Lime Juice" number, courtesy of Youtube:
Alas, there is one more version of this film that ran roughly 3 hrs and 20 minutes. For a long time, a person had two choices when purchasing the film. There was the first release, which cut the four numbers I mentioned above, and this long version that was almost unbearable to watch. Included were a number of extra short scenes that had nothing to do with the plot and were obviously put back into the film to market it for perhaps a third release, or one for home video or television broadcasts. Most annoying in this version was the alternation of "Ye Mausum Ka Jadoo". In the first and second versions of the film, the last shot of the number involved Madhuri Dixit ringing a bell at a temple and Salman Khan attempting to do the same but flubbing the process. They both sit to pray as the last line of the song is overheard, before the intermission card appears before the screen. The print we saw which toured the US did not have the original intermission card, being such a worn shabby print, but an inappropriate replacement title card, where a dramatic lightning bolt struck the frame and the word 'intermission' shot out at the audience. I remember my mom, sister, and I being a little disturbed by this. The third extended cut of the film featured a closeup of Madhuri looking on at Salman Khan while the song is heard in the background at a picnic, followed by a full scene at the temple, done a la An Affair to Remember. This was the first addition of scenes in the third version. The majority of them happen in the second act of the film, which is a shame because most people will admit that the second half of the film is what makes it drag.
The film became a landmark in a bad way, too. Video Sound, Asian Video, and Eros Video handled the official international video releases of Bollywood films in their respective territories. These releases weren't without flaws, of course. There would be commercial breaks in the official video releases and the transfers were low quality telecine transfers, usually matted from 2.35 to 1.85, but still of watchable quality and widescreen to a certain degree, nonetheless. When HAHK hit screens and became such a blockbuster, nobody wanted to pay for the rights to officially release the film on video before the crowd was ready to see it, and pirated videos in the US were born. These were common in India already, but a foreign idea to international audiences. It became clear that people were okay with renting pan and scan videos with numbers and sequences cut, advertisements flying across the bottom third of the screen, or films taped at private screenings in theaters with whatever sound was booming in the theater that would hit the camera microphone. It was a pleasure to see the film without the commercial breaks that official video releases had at the time, but this was the only advantage. Most films would, months later, get an official release, but a new precedence was set. A film would be released in India, a bootleg from a theater would hit the home video market, a home video from Pakistan with advertisements on the bottom of the screen would follow, and lastly, sometimes up to a year later, the official release would come out. Thankfully, this film was released in 1994 and the Bollywood industry started going to DVD around 1998, at which point everything was of a better quality. At that point, even the bootleg DVDs were better looking than the VHS releases that came out from the official distributors.
Every time this film got a video release, it seemed more worn out. The sound would get grainier and more muffled, the colors would be more faded, and there would be more pesky splices. I am so thrilled that the familiar hybrid version of the film is now released in HD, so all can see its splendor and glory. Looking back, I can say that while I don't care for the film as much as I did when I was 10, I do still feel that it should be preserved and treasured in that it holds an important part in Hindi film history. Now, let's work on getting a 20th anniversary rerelease theatrically!
The following was a tv spot preceding an annual airing of The Ten Commandments on ABC in 1984:
Every Easter, this film is run on ABC. And every Easter, I ask the same two questions. What on Earth does this film have to do with Easter, and what cuts will the film be slaved to? Unfortunately, I have not found an answer to the first question and never will. The second question, however, always comes up with a wonderful result: minimal. My copy of The Ten Commandments was taped the same day that the telecast in the included clip ran, except they taped it off of WISN, the ABC affiliate in Milwaukee. I have probably watched that tape a total of 5 times, but have seen the film numerous times. Only once have I seen it on DVD. Being an epic 3.5 hour film, it would be hard to give you a shot by shot comparison, but I will say that the film is pretty much shown uncut. The original version has overture, entr'acte, and exit music, which are chopped from telecasts, as well as a prologue where the director, Cecil B. Demille, blesses us with his presence to talk about the research that went into the making of the film. This has been replaced with a text prologue that has absolutely nothing to do with the original. It now tells us the first half is about Moses' rearing, and the second is about him meeting God and Exodusing the Jewish race out of Egypt. A few years ago, as I was doing inventory of my family's massive collection of VHS tapes, I noticed that there was a splice here or there cutting shots of slaves getting stabbed (surprisingly, the 1984 telecast shows the actual film splice as opposed to doing a video edit). There may be a few time compression techniques used to fit in more commercials, but I didn't spot them.
I bring this up to tie it in with my last post about home video. Owning a film such as The Ten Commandments on an official VHS would have cost a large penny back in the day. With technology the way it was, there would have been little noticeable difference between a taped telecast of the film and an official mono VHS on a TV that fit the average size and video standard back in the 1980s. So, why would someone fork over the money to buy the video when they could simply record it for free? Most Paramount VHS titles were Macrovision free too, so a person could have rented and copied the film if he wanted as well. Unfortunate for the studios at the time, this was the attitude that many home video consumers held back in the day. The Sound of Music and The Wizard of Oz, both of which usually have been Macrovision encoded, had annual telecasts, and as far as I can remember, while these films have had numerous home video releases over the last 34 years (both had 1980 home video releases as well), I can't remember a single time when I watched them at a friend or relative's place on official home video! Taping films off of TV was the way to go. In 1989, CBS began running The Wizard of Oz uncut on TV annually the day before Thanksgiving, and it gave VCR consumers an opportunity to get the restored copy for free, but with commercials.
I want to swing the conversation to The Sound of Music for a minute, because compared to the other two films I mention, this was probably the most brutally edited film for television I have ever seen. I haven't caught it on TV in many years, but through the 90s, the film was chopped to no end. Songs were chopped, conversations were halved, and I'd guess that a good half hour or more of the film was simply tossed to make room for commercials. Renting the film was a brand new experience because I felt like I was watching a director's cut compared to the 1984 Christmas telecast we had on home video. I have only seen the official film about 10 times, once on a beautiful 70mm print, but have seen the TV edit over 100 as it was a favorite growing up. So, when I watch the official film in its uncut length, I am still unfamiliar with it. I know that I am not the only one. If people of my generation grew up with a home video of this film and did not have parents who splurged on video collections, chances are they grew up watching the TV edit. That being said, and knowing that the edits made to the film on TV today are far different than the version we grew up with, should the edited version be salvaged, not for access sake, but more from an archival point of view? Thankfully, we have the next best thing. Fan sites and people on Wikipedia have documented the edits so that people will know just how different the film experience was.
In 1977, 20th Century Fox leased a series of titles to be released on VHS (a new format) through a company called the Magnetic Video Corporation. One of the titles released was the Marilyn Monroe gem Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The following is a 30 second clip from the opening of that release, courtesy of Youtube:
Take a look at what happens 20 seconds in. There is an evil splice on the print followed by a flutter in the transfer machine, all within the first few seconds of the opening logo. I point this out for a couple reasons. First of all, a bluray today costs roughly $20-30 and with that, consumers expect a pristine transfer and a large amount of special features. For the first decade of VHS, tapes cost a bit more. I haven't found a source on how much this one specifically cost, but I do know that Dumbo cost roughly $79 in 1980 and Gone With the Wind cost $89.95 in 1985, according to a Today Show clip promoting the video release. By the time these two releases came out, home video transfer had improved a bit, but there was still a long way to go.
This leads me to my second point to this article. Last night, I was watching a DVD of Libeled Lady (1936), as released by Turner in 2005. By all means, this was a decent release-- crisp mono sound, great contrast, sharp focus, and yet, I found myself being a horrible cynic while watching the whole film. At the end of a reel, there were a series of scratches and cue marks from the source print, but I found an internal voice nagging that they were present, even though beyond this, a thick emulsion line on the right, and a few base scratches, the source print was in impeccable condition. Truth be told, we are lucky that a DVD release of such a film is still on the market.
When did we, as a film history field, become so cynical? I can't play martyr because I am just as guilty of it as everyone else. I read the reviews on www.dvdbeaver.com and www.bluray.com and pay attention to what they say before picking up a disc. I nag about how little grain is in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre HD transfer, or how blue Desk Set and The King & I look, but there was a time when I wasn't like this, when I was happy to see a film on home video at all!
For those people of a younger generation, there were a lot of films released on VHS that have not made it to DVD, and the quality wasn't always as good as it is now. Online streaming wasn't an option, and we had only a few means: local video stores, and public libraries. While rereleases may have occurred on VHS tapes, if you were renting them from local vendors, you took what they had. If it was a 10 year old tape or a 20 year old one, you, as my friend would say to his kids 'get what you get and you don't get upset.' I remember renting the Streisand version of A Star Is Born on VHS and, beyond being a worn tape from 1980 chock full of dropout lines, there were splicy sections. This wasn't released by a public domain company like Good Times Home Video, either. This came from Warner Bros. Home Video! This isn't an issue that disappeared with time, when it came to VHS necessarily. When Republic Home Video released Father Goose (1964) on VHS in 1994, the cover noted that it was from the original 35mm negative. I slapped it on a few years ago. The scratches take over the film like confetti, and I remember paying a lot for this item. Keep in mind, this was only 3 years before the DVD started hitting stores.
So, really, when I see people complaining about color temperature, grain, and a little sound distortion, all of which I am also guilty of, I have to remind them, and myself, to give the home video distributors a break. When we rented films on VHS back in the day, we knew we weren't watching the film. We were watching a reference of the film. We used our imaginations to fill in the anomalies so we could picture what the film was supposed to look like. Any step in the right direction should be applauded, but personally, I would rather see more rare films come out than see yet another restoration of Gone with the Wind or The Wizard of Oz, trying to emulate that 'perfect image'.
It is 4pm on a Wednesday afternoon, and I'm hear to talk about porn. You see, the Cinefamily theater is running a 35mm print of Boogie Nights tomorrow night, hosted by Doug Benson, and the whole screening got me thinking about the porn chic era of films, and how infatuated I am with this genre.
There are so many classic films that came out by these pornographic filmmakers in the 1970s and 1980s. Before the advent of home video, it had become common for people to attend them with their significant others and discuss the films as if they were a form of high art. From Deep Throat, to Debbie Does Dallas, to an entire series devoted to a well endowed detective, Johnny Wadd, these films paved the way for a more liberal sexual revolution in the United States. Filmmakers who devoted their art to making these films did so with great artistic value. Although the majority of films were done in a time span of a few days, they always had a great sense of artistic style to them. The acting and storylines may not have always been the best, but they were definitely watchable, and had some merit to them. From New Wave French edit styles to experimental angles with 35mm and 16mm cameras, there was a dedication to the art of filmmaking in pornography. When videotape came around, however, as discussed in Boogie Nights, the artistic quality seemed to quickly fade away. People were no longer seeing the films in the theater, they were watching them in the privacy of their own homes on VHS. Pacing was no longer an issue as purpose was no longer an issue. For the sake of keeping this blog PG-13, I will simply state that couples were no longer going to the theater, watching the movie beginning to end, and then going home to 'discuss' what they learned. These types of 'discussions' were done while watching the films in the privacy of their own homes while the film was being screened on their own private boudoir television set in their boudoir VCR.
Today, because rights revert back and forth between distributors so quickly with pornography and it is such a disposable format, a lot of the films have been lost, even though it has been less than 40 years since they were made. There is no pornographic film archive. There are video archives that stream the films from time to time on their websites, and institutions like the Library of Congress and UCLA do keep a small number of titles in their collection from time to time. However, in terms of a full preservation, with a new internegative, I doubt very much that this has occurred for a film like Deep Throat.
Deep Throat is definitely a favorite film of mine, but being a homosexual, much less than its concept interests me. Linda Lovelace wants to hear 'bells ringing' during intercourse and cannot. A doctor, through demonstration, tells her the reason is her clitoris is in the back of her throat. That's the premise. The film was a huge smash at the box office and the only reason was because it was also one of the most banned films in the United States. The more people wanted the film to be declared obscene by the government, the more money it pulled in. Soon, celebrities were going. Shirley Maclaine, Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, and when Jackie Onassis was spotted at a screening, everyone wanted to go!
The film does have some points worth discussing in regards to alternate versions. Beyond having a rated R release to appease people who wanted to see the film but without all of the lewd content, the opening of the film has a troubled history. Originally released by Vanguard Films, the original film opened with a text prologue, including a Sigmund Freud quote, and then went to a long track shot of Lovelace walking by a pier and getting into her car before the main titles start. In 1981, the rights of the film were assigned to Arrow Film and Video, another porn distributor. Because Vanguard Films appears both in the prologue and in this opening shot, both were removed from the opening in most releases, and the more common opening is what you see in the clip at the top of this post. The music varies in different releases too. The music used for the opening in the clip above is different than some other copies I've seen. A rock version of Ode To Joy is used instead while Linda drives around Miami, but I've only heard this music in versions that use the longer opening.
The Italian opening of the film is completely different altogether. The text prologue is in Italian with a different font and color, and the theme music used in the clip I posted is laid against stills of Linda Lovelace in different lingerie poses before cutting to the story of the film. No shots of Linda driving are featured in this version. Because the music used in the original Italian version matches the music in the Arrow rerelease, I am unsure what music was used in the original domestic release. If anyone has more info, I'd be happy to hear about it. Beyond purchasing a 16mm print on Ebay for $1300 or buying the soundtrack to the film (yes, the film does have a soundtrack featuring songs written and performed specifically for the film), it would be hard for me to know this.
The other question I have about the film is the aspect ratio. Different sites have insinuated that while the film was shot 1.37, this was an open matte film and would have been projected at 1.85 in theaters. I have a hard time believing this, though, because if one watches the 1.37 DVD, there is no overhead on the image that could get cropped for a 1.85 release. If the film had been cropped, we would lose foreheads, mouths, and even genitalia, God forbid! I have heard of 1.37 open matte films being blown up to 5% on all edges, but the idea of someone doing that with a cheap film like Deep Throat seems a little extraordinary. Another mystery I have always wanted to solve....
So, there are really no words to start this blog piece. All I can do is introduce you to a clip of King Kong Kolorized:
Now, I'll be the first to admit that the horror of this film is the color of King Kong's Kostume (okay, that'll be the last time I do that pun). If you are a true cinefile reading this, I'm guessing the chance of you taking the time to look at that clip was close to 10%. There are certain rules we must abide by in the film historian world. We must all admit that The Graduate was the first modern film (I had a professor who threatened to fail me for denying this in a lecture). We must all admit that Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's is an atrocious portrayal of an Asian, yet think that Peter Sellers in The Party and Apu in The Simpsons are 'cute' and 'endearing'. Most of all, however, we must all admit that the colorization of films is the worst form of graffiti one can do to a piece of art. We applaud at 5.1 upmixes of films that are mono or 2 track stereo, ironically, but veto the colorizing. To me personally, I'll take the colorizing over the 5.1 mixes, but that's a different story.
I, as a cinefile, know that the colorizations are wrong, and that they look awful. But there is something so ridiculous about how they look that I can't help but collect them. To this date, I have over 30 VHS tapes of black and white films that have been colorized, from Hal Roach's It's a Wonderful Life, to King Kong, to all of the Cary Grant films, and my absolute favorite, Metropolis. Growing up in Milwaukee with parents who were incredibly against cable television and where weekend afternoon syndication goes for the cheapest product possible, a lot of colorized films would pass through the stations. Of course they looked goofy, and I hardly ever wanted to tune in, but I couldn't help it. It was like hearing that my mom was going to pop a blister on my sister's finger. I knew it was going to be a painful disgusting experience, but I couldn't help but watch-- I was so curious!
You can imagine how happy I was when I got my VHS to DVD recorder and found that most of the MGM/UA colorized VHS tapes were not macrovision encoded, meaning I could transfer them to DVD without any issues. King Kong was at the top of the list. The Turner colorizations seemed to favor a yellow palate for some reason. During a dissolve, the color will switch to black and white, and come back as color as soon as the optical trick is finished. As you can see from the posted clip, the palate of colors wasn't a wide variety either. And for being of a limited variety, there were some WACKY colors chosen. The cute orange masks that the plane pilots wear always geeks me out. Isn't it interesting that the lead female has a dress that is the exact same color?
Leonard Maltin, bless his heart, once said in an interview, 'if you're bothered by the color, you can just turn the color down on your television set.' Well, here's the issue with that. To do a colorization back in the 80s and 90s, the film needed to be transferred to a 1" video (this VHS has 1" video overhead plastered all over the right edge of the screen), put through certain filters, and have the grain washed out before the color is added to the image. Not to mention, the colors chosen are so bright and smudge the image so badly, that when you turn the color off, you have a terribly washed out, soft, blurry image.
Still, I do enjoy these colorized films for the simple reason that they are a part of our cinematic rerelease history. Just as the cropping of Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz for rereleases was done, and years later these and a large batch of films were upmixed to 5.1 stereo for home video, we need to remember that there was a point in time when this was how these films WERE rereleased to the public, and while no one is happy to admit it, for a lot of people, this is how they remembered seeing the films on television, whether that was how the public wanted to see them or not. A former coworker of mine once told me that she had seen Arsenic and Old Lace colorized for so many years without knowing that it was colorized, and when she found out it was actually a black and white film, she was shocked.
Here's an interesting fact I'll bet you did not know. For Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, the first couple seasons were originally broadcast in black and white and were later syndicated in colorized form. For the last 20 years or so, many people have seen these episodes colorized, not in black and white. So, when the DVD sets came out, it was no surprise that the colorized sets actually outsold the black and white sets!
Colorizing is wrong, it's bad, it's sinful, it's immoral. Is it? Let's take a look at an example where this so called evil force has been used for good. The BBC has a series of programs which were originally televised in color but only black and white copies of the program exist. You can read more about these tests here:
http://www.techmind.org/colrec/
In a case like this, by studying sources and restoring the color back
into the program, the engineers of the project were able to actually
make a closer representation of the most original form of the program
than when it was first released. Take a peak:
A totally different project done than the Turner colorizations, mainly because the proper research was done in this case. For Turner's work, the idea of turning Frank Sinatra's eyes from blue to brown didn't even phase them! This was noted in a Siskel and Ebert at the Movies episode about the dangers of colorizing movies. The value of these horrible blotch jobs, still, lies in the fact that they are now incredibly rare and out of print. Beyond the fact that VHS is so obsolete now, which is really the only format these existed on, only a select number of each of these were made as they failed so terribly with consumers and nobody wanted to pick them up. Beyond Ebay, it is hard to come across these unless you're a dedicated thrift shopper like myself. Still, when you do, don't turn your nose up. You might be picking up a one of a kind item that people will want to look back at one day...wondering of course how a video distribution copy could ever allow that to hit sales shelves, much like Debbie Reynolds workout video from the 1980s.
Incidentally, if there are people reading this who are shaking their fists in anger because I am attracting attention to colorized movies, I encourage you to channel your anger to another source. There still are colorizations being released, and they look just as terrible as the Ted Turner releases. Sony Pictures released a box set of very orange versions of The Three Stooges. Reefer Madness has now been colorized and released on DVD, with different colors of smoke blowing through the air. Some films, such as It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th St, and Night of the Living Dead, which have established their mark with audiences who remember watching them on TV in color, have now been released in NEW colorizations on DVD. And, while they may look a little better, they still will make you cringe.
Okay. Avenging with a vengeance when it comes to this blotch job. The film is called Chori Chori. Here's the backstory. In Indian Cinema, technology didn't develop as fast as it did in the United States...understandably so as the budgets weren't there. Widescreen experiments were done but weren't common practice until the 70s, and it took until the 1960s before color film was commonly used (Indians preferred to use Eastman Color, although one would never guess it watching a DVD today, as the color correction done represents ANYTHING but Eastman Color).
Chori Chori was a 1956 film and a musical remake of It Happened One Night. The film was shot mostly in black and white with the industry's common aspect ratio at the time, 1.37:1. I first saw Chori Chori on VHS. My parents had a copy they had purchased from a vendor on Devon Street in Lincolnwood, IL. Looking at it recently, it looks to be at least 2 generations of VHS transferred from a Umatic 3/4", indicated by the frequent dropouts on the source tape. This film holds a special place in my heart as it has one of the most beautiful music numbers in a Hindi film, called Aaja Sanam. Take a look:
Now, while the VHS we owned was atrocious in many ways compared to the DVD rip above, it did have two musical numbers that, as I mentioned before, were shot in color. One is Pancchi Badun Urit Phiron, which takes place in a park (our main female lead, Nargis, decides to venture off there during her bus layover, which results in her tagging along with Raj Kapoor for the rest of the trip) and another is when the two leads are hitchhiking and come across a puppet show. In 2009, when I was studying at UCLA, I started a project trying to find out what happened to these color elements. The VHS we owned, which included the numbers, was from the early 80s, and it appears that every DVD release that had come out up to that point had them in black and white! Did these color elements still exist? Where was this magical print that was used for this horrendous video transfer? No one knew. But a thorough search found that no DVD included them in color. Here is the puppet number in black and white:
Then, one magical day, a press released was announced. The ENTIRE film was to be colorized and matted to 1.78 for a new HD release. Whaaa? I.....just......wow. That's all I can say to that. Personal opinion only, I believe in keeping things as true to form as they can. And this goes for all ends of the spectrum; upmixing a film to 5.1 is no better than colorizing it. You are tampering with the director's work. For years we nagged about pan and scan being an issue, and now people are cropping because a wider image will appeal to modern audiences. If the people in charge of this project had done a little research, they would have seen how terrible colorization projects were received in the United States and eventually abandoned because of the backlash on how terrible they looked. But, no. They felt that their colorization ways were 'magical'. Now, if this wasn't bad enough, here's where my real beef is. In NO WAY do the colors of the new colorization match the colors of the original sequences as they were shot in color. Take a quick peak at this:
I wish I could upload the original color sequence of this film as a reference. One day I will when I get my VHS to DVD unit working again, but just to give you an idea, I think we can all agree that Nargis did not have purple skin. Whose leg is being pulled into believing this was shot in color? Nor did she wear a pink and purple sari in this number. The blouse was red, the dupata was white. As I mentioned before, it's possible that there aren't any more copies of the original color sequence to use as a reference, but I am sure that there are press photos, reference stills, or something of the sort that could have been used. It's such an insult to the original film-making team to release something like this, and to market it as an impressive project.
One day, hopefully, the color elements will be found, the film will be returned to its original aspect ratio, and a reasonably decent release that would do Raj Kapoor and Nargis proud will hit the market. Until then, I hope people enjoy watching the beautiful noir like number I posted above looking like an Easter extravaganza, as seen in the newly restored colorized clip below:
Welcome to my brand new blog. I have been thinking about starting one for a long time, but today, the power of the Madhuri Dixit Youtube frenzy I got stuck in inspired me to actually start jotting down a few words. Who knows where it will take me? If this starts to ramble, apologies.
Let me introduce myself. I call myself the Celluloid Avenger. I have been working in the film and video preservation world for roughly 10 years. Film and video images mean the world to me. There is nothing like the moving image as a historical document to take you into a specific time and place. And it all started with Bollywood.
My grandfather owned two second-run movie theaters in Pune, India. My mother would go to the theaters every day and catch whatever films were running in the theater and knows more about Indian cinema than most people would, as she has seen practically every Hindi film that has come out from the 1950s to today. While I was growing up, most of my friends were renting VHS tapes from Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. Mom, insistent that my sister and I get in touch with our Indian roots, would rent Bollywood films from the local Indian store. Of course, these films would not be subtitled. My mom would sit next to us on a Sunday afternoon, after working a 50+ hour week as an OB/GYN, and with very little sleep, would translate the films to us line for line as the actors spoke them on the screen. Now that, my friends, is dedicated motherhood.
Of course, there was the occasional Bollywood screening at the local theater. My mom would take us and whisper through the lines of the film, my sister sitting on her left and me on her right. I will never forget these precious memories, and the night we went to see Yaraana was one of the most influential evenings of my life, paving the road for what would eventually become my profession. I remember distinctly that when the film started, the projectionist had put the wrong lens on the projector (1.85 instead of 2.35) and my mom was the first to notice. Soon, other people noticed and a near riot started in the middle of the theater (thanks Mom). An important moment in my film education, however, as it taught me the difference in aspect ratios and what anamorphic prints look like. Tweaking the focus throughout the film, the projectionist obviously had no clue what kind of audience he was dealing with. Indian film audiences are known for their loud interaction with the film...cheering after epic monologues, whistling and dancing in the aisles during songs, and shouting randomly at the screen for no apparent reason. Rocky Horror Picture Show has nothing on a Bollywood audience.
The number that you see at the top of this post had a huge impact on me. Hindi films are shot on a cheaper film stock than Hollywood uses. The film gets scratched and worn quite easily as a result. In addition, it is not uncommon, to this day, for 70mm blowup prints to be made. To compensate for the grain of the blowup, plus the fast deterioration of the prints, Indian filmmakers will use EXTREMELY bright colors in the costumes and sets. When the "Mera Piya Ghar Aaya" song came on the screen, it was unlike anything I had seen before. The colors on Madhuri Dixit's orange dress and the dreamlike quality of smoke against the neon pink outfit she wears jumped out on the screen. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. That sharp image quality seemed so 3D, and the music was blaring through the speakers, making my soul dance. Years later, I would learn that the quality of watching a film print, when shot with the perfect exposure and color saturation, can do this. At the mere age at 11, though, all I knew was that I was seeing something special.
The video included above cannot do it justice. Watching it actually pisses me off because I remember what it was like to see a mint print, compared to the shoddy faded piece of crap I included. Sadly, being nearly 20 years old and a B picture, I doubt that the film has been preserved to its glory and that memory will stay as that....a faded memory. Indian cinema is not treasured as much as American cinema. While there is a national archive in Pune, many negatives are stored with the original producers and directors. Every time a print is made, it is taken directly off of the original negative, as confirmed by my sources from the Association of Moving Image Archivists. You can see it too, if you look carefully. The splice marks are always present on every shot on a Bollywood film if it's shot on 35. A proper preservation of internegatives and dupe negatives is never done, which is probably why the colors on the print I saw were so sharp.
While Yaraana is far from a perfect film, it would be a joy to see it on film once more, if anything just to catch this beautiful dance number. Video releases, which we'll discuss on another day, were horrendous before DVDs hit the market, and when they did, a lot of older films were already on the road to decaying. I cannot stress enough how important it is for people to invest in helping the Indian film market in saving their films. From talking to representatives of restoration facilities, it appears that people aren't going off of prints and negatives for restorations. An SD video source is touched up for an HD video release, and the product is then schlopped on the market with no regard to how the image is supposed to look. I hope and pray that an intervention is done at some point, or those of us who treasured these images when they first came out are in serious trouble.
