John Wayne digital ausgegraben ...

[preston sturges]

zwei interessante vorführungen in der retro-reihe der Filmfestspiele in Cannes widmen sich John Wayne, der dieses Jahr 100 geworden wäre ...

 

HONDO in 3-D

John Wayne's einziger 3-D western nun auch in digital 3-D

 

"Hondo" hasn't exactly been a lost film in the 53-plus years since its original release, but few people alive have seen it as it was meant to be seen.

Pic was filmed in WarnerColor 3-D, yet even at the time got only a limited 3-D release.

 

So when the picture screens at Cannes, with its color and 3-D digitally restored, audiences will finally have the full experience director John Farrow and producer-star John Wayne intended.

 

Gretchen Wayne, the star's daughter-in-law and the prexy and owner of his production company, Batjac, says, "If you never had seen a John Wayne film, this might be the first one you want to see, because he's at his peak." She says the Duke himself felt he looked his best in the film, which catches him at 46, mature but still lean and athletic.

 

The cowboys-and-Indians side of the film is pure 1950s pulp but still manages to weave a surprisingly complex triangle between Wayne's part-Indian cavalry scout, the married-but-abandoned ranch woman (Geraldine Page) he comes to love and the Apache chief (Michael Pate) who also takes a protective interest in her.

 

The supporting cast includes a raft of familiar faces, including future "Gunsmoke" star James Arness and none other than Lassie, hair dyed brown and with a makeup scar on her forehead, as the ill-tempered Hondo's worse-tempered dog.

 

Wayne was something more than the top box office star of the day and a producer. As Gretchen Wayne notes, "He was able to demand to have the return of the copyright of the film and perpetual distribution of his film, which was really unique for actors."

 

"Hondo" shot on location in Chihuahua, Mexico, at a time when such travel was rare, especially for oaters, which could shoot much nearer Los Angeles.

 

But that made 3-D more difficult. The 3-D rigs used a pair of interlocking 35mm cameras, each running single-strip WarnerColor negative film. The massive cameras proved so unreliable at the desert locations that Wayne complained to Jack Warner that the studio couldn't seem to get him a camera that worked.

 

Still, the 3-D went ahead because the studios were trying to regain the audience they were losing to television. Then, as now, the ability to project a stereoscopic image seemed to be something the small screen couldn't match.

 

Warner Bros. took out a two-page spread in Variety in November 1953 to tell exhibitors: "It is our conviction that the presentation of 'Hondo' gives your patrons the opportunity for the first time to fully evaluate

 

3-Dimension entertainment." Ad went on to tout the presentation of "dimensional vistas inexpressibly beautiful and never before possible."

 

Yet the 3-D craze had passed its peak. "Hondo" in 3-D screened at only a few theaters and has almost never been seen in 3-D since.

 

The film itself has been restored more than once, with most of the restoration work done only on the left-eye negative, which was used for 2-D release. There were tears to be fixed, lots of dirt to be removed. Strange perforations in the film stock had to be masked. On top of that, parts of the original negative had mysteriously been destroyed and replaced with an internegative, which doesn't quite match the quality of the original.

 

Restoring the film for 3-D introduced still more challenges. The two color negatives had shrunk and faded differently, making it even more difficult to get the color identical and the images perfectly aligned. That exacerbated an inherent problem with the 3-D rigs of the 1950s: Each of the paired cameras had its own camera shake, so the two "eyes" would be just enough out of alignment to make 3-D viewing uncomfortable. It proved a big task for the restorers at Post Logic, who spent much time and effort correcting for that camera shake to get the two eyes to line up precisely for 3-D.

 

Merle Sharp, Post Logic's chief technology officer, says that one headache they faced was simply "trying to find somebody who saw it originally so they could tell us if the 3-D effect was working as intended."

 

At the end of the process, Sharp says, "(The 3-D) was actually quite good, but there's almost too much. It's like ... the guys are sitting right in your face."

 

Gretchen Wayne, though, says the digital 3-D is far better than the original release. "I never really got it, it never really affected me that much," she says of the original 3-D, with its red-green anaglyph glasses. "Now with the new digital format, you feel like you're sitting at the table with him. You can feel the depth, it's so sensational. It's like, 'Pass the bread.' "

© VARIETY

 

 

und RIO BRAVO - mein lieblings-western mit John Wayne

 

"For "Rio Bravo," the third time is the charm. Or so says Ned Price, a Warner Bros. VP who has headed up work on no fewer than three restorations of Howard Hawks' 1959 classic "Rio Bravo," starring John Wayne.

Together with "Hondo," this newly remastered Western about a sheriff who takes on the ranching establishment unspools at Cannes to honor the Duke's centennial on May 26.

 

"It's an important film," Price says of "Rio Bravo." "John Wayne is very much associated with the identity of Warner Bros.; he helped build the studio. It is our responsibility to show his films in their best possible light."

 

That was not the case with two previous restorations of the film, says the tech-operations exec: Previously, "I tried to complete restoration from the faded camera negative, and was never satisfied with the results. We artificially pumped the color that was missing, and got artificial-looking results."

 

"Rio Bravo" was originally filmed with "fairly early single-strip color photography, which had poor color stability," explains Price, and the original camera negative had faded to the point that Warners couldn't salvage the color using traditional photochemical restoration processes. However, for the 2007 restoration, Price and his team were able to use new digital tools "to mine the color information that remained in the camera negative, restoring the color image back to its natural balance."

 

In that respect, Price is happy to be finished with the Wayne/Hawks masterpiece. "Now I can put it in the vault and walk away with a clear conscience," he says.

 

Although "Rio Bravo" won Hawks a DGA nomination, the film was completely snubbed by the Academy Awards, which seven years earlier gave Fred Zinnemann's highly acclaimed oater "High Noon" no fewer than seven noms, including one for picture. Most film historians now rate Hawks' Western higher than Zinnemann's. According to "Howard Hawks: the Grey Fox of Hollywood," by Variety senior film critic Todd McCarthy, "'Rio Bravo' was born out of Hawks' visceral abhorrence of that earlier film."

 

As Hawks told the story, "I didn't think a good sheriff was going to go running around town like a chicken with his head off asking for help, and finally his Quaker wife had to save him."

 

Hawks instead pushed his hero, the Wayne character, to adopt "a real professional viewpoint ... the exact opposite of what annoyed me in 'High Noon' and it worked, and people liked it," he said."

© VARIETY

 

Wäre schön, wenn diese beiden restaurationen auch nach deutschland gelangen würden ...

[cinerama]

Eine Bitte und Frage an die Moderatoren:

 

wäre es möglich, diesen hoch interessanten Thread in die Rubrik "Digitale Projektion" zu verschieben (gerade durch digitale Restaurierungen konnten auch etliche geschrumpfte Negative wieder zur Deckung gebracht werden, u.a. ROBIN HOOD, WIZARD OF OZ, GONE WITH THE WIND usf.). Aber es sind brandneue Produktionsweisen, die sich auch nur brandneuer Projektionsweisen bedienen.

 

Ein Beispiel: SINGIN IN THE RAIN IN BERLIN DIGITAL ist eben so in der Rubrik "Digitale Projektion" systematisch richtig eingeordnet: http://forum.filmvorfuehrer.de/viewtopic.php?t=4231

 

Sinn der Rubrik Nostalgie erscheint mir, gerade die traditionellen Produktionsweisen des Kinos zu behandeln. Dies bezieht sich dann ja auch Formate, Vorführweisen, Filmkopien oder älteren Präsentationsmaterial und ältere Gerätschaft.

 

HONDO ist daher m.E. lediglich Demomaterial für Digital Cinema-Umrüster, die eben so auch ROBINSON oder alsbald BATTLE ANGEL damit vorführen können. Eben so wäre doch der DVD-Vertrieb älterer Filme eine eigene Rubrik oder ein eigenes Forum: siehe www.beisammen.de).

 

"Nostalgie" zielt im Kern m.E. auf museale Produkte und Ihre Beschaffenheiten.

 

Zwar lassen sich nicht alle Verfahren streng trennen, und auch ein älterer Film hat nostalgischen Wert, aber ich glaube, dieses Forum hat nicht umsonst eine Rubrik der Nostalgiker eingeführt, um darin primär Fragen und Möglichkeiten der tradierten Vorführweisen einen Platz einzuräumen.

 

Daher bedanke ich mich aufrichtig für eine Verlagerung der sehr spannenden Events in die Digitalrubrik.

[preston sturges]

"Nostalgie" zielt im Kern m.E. auf museale Produkte und Ihre Beschaffenheiten.

 

 

Auszug aus wikipedia: "Heute versteht man unter Nostalgie eine wehmütige Hinwendung zu vergangenen Zeiten, die in der Erinnerung oftmals stark idealisiert und verklärt reflektiert werden. Dabei kann es sich sowohl um frühere Epochen als auch um ganz individuelle Lebensabschnitte handeln. Nostalgie äußert sich in einem Hinterhertrauern der guten alten Zeit , in der angeblich alles viel schöner und besser war als in der Gegenwart. Beispiele hierfür sind das goldene Zeitalter, die Antike, das Mittelalter, die Kaiserzeit, die Fünfzigerjahre.

 

Die Liebhaber der Nostalgie nennt man Nostalgiker. Sie gibt es auf vielerlei Gebieten: in der Kunst, in der Musik, in der Technik, in der Politik usw. Nostalgikern wird oft Gegenwartsflucht vorgeworfen."

 

nach dieser definition hast Du recht ... mache in "Digital" den thread erneut auf ... die mods können hier ja die tür dichtmachen!

[T-J]

...die mods können hier ja die tür dichtmachen!

 

Nun, dem sei so... :wink: