Earlier this week, I attended a screening of DAWSON CITY: FROZEN TIME at the Nuart Theater after hearing rave reviews, both by colleagues in our field and by critics. I was excited to see a film that had been grabbing people's interest about a fascinating story of film discovery, directed by Bill Morrison, whose other famous film DECASIA was quite memorable. After the lights went down and the film started, I began to lose interest quite quickly. It became clear that this was simply a reworking of DECASIA-- while the film was supposed to be about Dawson City, and could have been quite charming, the entire first hour (after which point I left) was told though zooming images, small text on the screen, and shots of old Yukon films, a portion but not the majority of which were found in Dawson City buried under an old hockey rink. With the exception of the first five minutes, there were no interviews, there was no dialogue, and the soundtrack was very avant-garde and in many ways a pretentious accompaniment to these hum-drum images that flatly glossed over the screen, personal opinion of course.
I left the film an hour in, came home, and watched a blu-ray of DUMBO which was recently released and I had not checked out yet. People seem to have had an annoyed reaction to this, which I think is a little unfair...I wanted to like DAWSON CITY but felt that it did not meet the expectations I had, and that is okay. It was mentioned too that my critical opinion of this film was an example of my 'trolling nature'. This not the case at all, and I want to take a few paragraphs to discuss why this bothers me. I feel that in our small industry of "media archivists/preservationists/restorers/repertory theater presenters/home video distributors", we have reached a frustrating level of mediocrity. I am not counting Morrison's film in this category because clearly many people liked it and I missed something, which is fair, but the idea of having a critical opinion of a project or presentation in our industry is shot down so often by our colleagues without fair justification.
The source of this could be from many different places. Fear of a lack of support preventing other projects from happening could be one of them. For example, in 2009 the UCLA Film and Television archive ran a very lovely print of DARK PASSAGE as part of their Bogart retrospective. Five years later, the Noir City festival decided to run the movie, and stated that they could only get hold of a fair quality print as no other good prints were available, according to Warner Bros. Now, the print that they claimed was 'fair' was actually better than they said but it was not the quality of the UCLA print. I knew more people knew that in the audience, but no one was opening their mouth to say so. After a few repeated instances of this scenario I began to, and was shot down by colleagues: by criticizing the quality of prints publicly, I was pointing out the flaws of 35mm presentation, and people who were rooting for DCPs to take over the industry were gaining points. It was necessary for me to turn a blind eye to the occasional bad 35mm presentation because our collectively not doing so could potentially halt 35mm presentation in the future with films that should truly be seen on 35mm instead of digitally.
This critique is understandable based on the flawed work of digital restoration artists saturating our field today that people are just as timid about pointing out. In the past, I have commented blu-rays such as the Warner Bros. release of EASTER PARADE or Disney's BAMBI are ridiculously oversaturated and resemble nothing like their Technicolor origins, in comparison with the various prints and home video releases of the films released over the years. A friend stated that making comments like this could not put me on good terms with these archives, and because these projects are so expensive and other vendors are involved, it was a touchy subject and therefore it wasn't fair of me to point out these flaws as often as I do. Doing so could jeopardize the future release of other vintage films by these companies.
These arguments of external vendor work on films determining how a presentation is going to look didn't just start with the DCP days, it goes back to the early 2000's. An example: In 2012, the Academy Film Archive did a series entitled "The Last 70mm Festival" at which over a course of a number of Tuesday evenings, 70mm prints were run with Q&A sessions and short films preceding the features. One of these was THE SOUND OF MUSIC. This film was made in lucious 4-Track Stereo specifically designed for 70mm presentations, but as the vendor "Thank You's" were happening, it was mentioned the print featured a 5.1 surround sound mix by Audio Mechanics. The question that ran through my head was naturally, "Why?" The answer was just as simple-- the vendor created a new sound mix for a DVD release, and that was what was restored, not the original mix, ergo that was what would be laid onto the 70mm print. I was also told that because of the politics involved in getting a 70mm print made, it was best to 'just be happy' that I was seeing it in 70mm.
There is another level to this that is not being discussed, and that is our level of camaraderie in the industry-- this 'one for all, all for one, let's go save movies' attitude that has developed over the years and discouraged people from being critical of poorly done work. While colleagues pat each other on the backs for a job well done and refuse to ask 'How can this be done better?' or 'What is lacking from this presentation?', the potential of quality is being destroyed, mainly by the cost of needing to redo it properly. When the Warner Archive Collection first took off, the original releases were horrendous; in the case of some, worse than their VHS counterparts. Because nobody with professional leverage piped in to say "These are terrible," and instead simply said "Thank you for releasing these on DVD," those films will probably never be released in a proper form. If they do, it will likely cost a fortune, as these projects always do.
When CBS Home Video first released "I Love Lucy, Season 1" on DVD, the sound mix by Chace Audio was HORRENDOUS. A comparison of unrestored vs. restored clips exists on each disc, and one can clearly hear that the unrestored audio has a broader level of frequency (with a slight hiss) than the restored audio, which has no hiss or crackle but now is so processed that everyone sounds like they're lisping. Because of a lack of criticism of this sound restoration, when it was released a second time, years later and in a slimmer casing, the same sound mix was used. It wasn't until the Blu-ray release that a proper sound mix was done that compared to the quality of the other seasons that had been done properly and as a result the client had to pay a ridiculous amount of money to get what they should have been given in the first place.
Speaking of CBS Home Video, when the 1965 version of Rodgers & Hammerstein's CINDERELLA was released on DVD for the first time, the program was edited and came in a washed out form, again in a form that was worse looking than its VHS counterpart. It clearly came from a worse source, filled with dropout, a flat image, and dull sound. Because it was not mastered properly the first time around, when the 50th Anniversary release was scheduled a new remastering was done from another source. With the increase of a 2" video transfer price from 2002 to 2015, clearly more money was spent than needed to be if the project had just been done properly to begin with. Not enough people had complained about the quality of the DVD, however, and 'were just glad it was released on DVD instead of VHS', and the end result was too much money being spent on something that should have been done properly in the first place.
Now is the time to make a difference in our field of work-- be critical. Swim against the waves when everyone blindly praises work. It is not 'trolling', it is not 'antagonizing', it is not 'seeking attention'. It is ensuring that what we do as a future generation of "film and video archivists/preservationists/restorers/repertory theater presenters/home video distributors" is of solid quality. Now is the time to step up and ask what can be done to ensure that the flubs mentioned above do not happen as regularly as they do. Instead of simply patting our colleagues on the back and praising them, in fear of losing them as a potential business contact or in fear of pissing off a studio, or in fear of drawing attention to the flaws which could potentially stop other projects from happening....ask why a decision was made, and open a discussion about what could have been done to make it better. Mediocrity in our field cannot end until this happens.
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