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I asked Harris whether adjusting the color and image density for
these scenes was as big a challenge as any in his career. "Yes ...
and no. Making the color 'correct,' and not only good-looking, is
always a problem," especially with fading negatives, he answered. According to Harris, the original negative of "Lawrence of
Arabia" -- wherever he had the original negative he needed -- was
barely faded; "the problem was more getting it dead-on." The same
was true with "My Fair Lady." But "Spartacus" had "a totally
faded original negative," and that film's separation masters
(which record, on three positive black-and-white films, the three
separate components of a color negative) "had their own
limitations." And "Vertigo" had "fading from beginning to end and
was a nightmare of trying to get the color, not even dead-on
right, but just close and good-looking, even when we knew what it
should look like."
Michael Sragow Michael Sragow's column appears every Thursday in Arts & Entertainment + Archives
The pre-restoration shape of "Rear Window" was roughly on the "Vertigo" level, with specific problems "worsened by the overall fading of the surviving sections of original negative." One of those bad-news areas was an amazing erotic shot now known as "The Kiss," which occurs when Kelly first sweeps in and plants a beaut on Stewart. I couldn't analyze its tingling whoosh at a single viewing. Harris explained, "It was slowed down at the beginning and then run normal speed for the dialogue," making it an optical-effects shot in the pre-digital era. Unfortunately, the colors of "The Kiss" had melted down "to yellow-green." Intent on avoiding a quality gap comparable to the grainy flashback scene in "Vertigo" ("This would not have made us smile," Harris said), Harris and Katz experimented with combining elements that were never meant to be used together. After several optical-effects houses turned them down, Phil Feiner of Pacific Title pitched in and agreed to test the team's "rather odd concepts" of cooking up a "Technicolor mélange." In addition to the original negative, dupe material and an interpositive (the color master positive used for making duplicate negatives), the process involved a motion-control optical camera, new exposures of pure red and pure green information from the interpositive, blue information from the old yellow-separation master and digital cleaning. With this complicated recipe, it's not surprising that one writer called Harris the Martha Stewart of film restoration. "Try living that one down with your kid," he groaned. Then why not gain a reputation as restoration's Don Corleone?
According to Katz, he and Harris are aching to do "The Godfather"
next. Katz said it presents challenges similar to those on "Rear
Window": "It's a dark movie, but with colorful sequences. And it
needs to be saved." Having seen the horrible brown-yellow print
at the movie's 25th-anniversary gala three years ago, I can
testify to the necessity of salvaging this landmark film right
now. Harris and Katz have got to convince Paramount to let them
do it. Artistically, at least, it's an offer the studio can't
refuse.
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