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Showing posts with label Hitchcock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hitchcock. Show all posts
27 May 2011
CHASING PSYCHO (chapter 3)
Today, Friday, May 27th 2011 at 7:30pm (GMT -08:00), the American Cinematheque will show Psycho at The Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles... and I won´t be there. :(
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10 May 2011
CHASING PSYCHO (chapter 1)
As some of you know, as part of the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Release of Alfred Hitchcock´s Psycho, the negatives were restored and new prints were issued in 35mm. Also a Blu-Ray edition was marketed on October 19, 2010, but for "home-enjoyment".
Fresh out of youtube, a clip of how the original mono mix from the film was separated to create a new 5.1 mix for the rerelease. (Let us not get into the ethics of film preservation here, shall we?)
It has been a dream of mine to watch Psycho in the big screen ever since I was 15 years old, and I got a peek of it in Universal´s: "Alfred Hitchcock: The Art of Making Movies". Ever since then, the film has been eluding me. Twenty years and counting.
Four years ago, my dream had to be reformulated with the appearence of this dreadful digital technology. Now I not only had to catch it in the big screen, but I also had to watch it projected in 35mm.
This will be a series of posts about how the film pops-up here and there and I won´t be around to watch it.
20 Apr 2011
DISCONTINUED PROCESSES: VistaVision
VistaVision is a higher resolution, widescreen variant of the 35mm motion picture film format which was created by engineers at Paramount Pictures in 1954.
VistaVision was Paramount´s response to 20th Century Fox´s Cinemascope, which in turn was devised with the intention of stealing some of the crowds that were drawn to the few Cinerama theatres available in the world. It seemed that widescreen features were the answer to Hollywood´s prayers to try and lure audiences back into the theatres and away from the new technological threat: the TV set.
The soul of the VistaVision process was 35mm film, but travelling horizontally in the gate (instead of vertically) at eight sprocket holes per frame (instead of 4), giving a negative image area nearly three times bigger than the standard negative aperture.
The process included new wider angle lenses to give greater scope on the big screens and PERSPECT-A STEREOPHONIC SOUND. This type of sound was comprised of a single photographic sound track located in the standard position so that they will reproduce on any standard optical sound head in any projector the world over. What made it PERSPECT-A, was the use of frequencies below 30Hz as modulated control signals that assigned a certain sound source -one of the speakers located throughout the audiorium- to different parts of the soundtrack.
One of the design breathroughs of the PERSPECT-A system was that the sound control units had an automatic return to monaural sound in case of trouble. Today that is mainstream with all digital 35mm sound formats.
"All release prints will have a single photographic sound track that will play on every standard sound reproducer the world over. Paramount does not contemplate the release of any pictures with either a separate or four-track magnetic film. Further, Paramount does not contemplate releasing any prints having the Fox-Eastman narrow sprocket holes."
"PESPECT-A SOUND will expand music to multiple loudspeakers and control the direction of the sound source when and as it is required for dramatic effectiveness. Paramount suggests this type of sound for those exhibitors who desire multi-horn reproduction and who wish to fill the theater with sound. The present experience indicates that stereophonic sound is of questionable value in the smaller theaters. It may add to the effectiveness in large theaters with very large screens. The decision as to its use rests with the exhibitor. In selecting Perspect-a-Sound for VistaVision pictures, Paramount is moving toward standardization. It is our hope that we can gain complete compatibility with M.G.M., Warners and others."The VistaVision process did not introduce any modifications to the everyday 35mm exhibition print. It was merely a capture process to preserve the optical sharpness and contrast of the original negatives to produce better quality prints. It was processed by Technicolor and optically reduced directly from the negative to the Technicolor matrix which in turn was used to stamp out the release print by the imbibition process.
This gave a wider aspect ratio of 1.5:1 versus the conventional 1.37:1 Academy ratio, and a much larger image area. In order to satisfy all theaters with all screen sizes, VistaVision films were shot in such a way that they could be shown in one of three recommended aspect ratios: 1.66:1, 1.85:1 and 2.00:1.
Loren L. Ryder, chief engineer at Paramount, expressed four general reasons why he thought Paramount's VistaVision would be the forerunner of widescreen projection in most theaters:
- VistaVision could be shown at widescreen aspect ratios between 1.66 to 2.00:1.
- VistaVision could be (and most often was) further printed down to standard vertical 35mm reels keeping its 1.66:1 widescreen aspect ratio, which meant exhibitors did not need to purchase additional projection equipment, unlike CinemaScope.
- VistaVision did not cut down the number of seats in any theater (such as Cinerama and CinemaScope).
- VistaVision allowed patrons to see more and therefore gain more enjoyment out of a feature.
"White Christmas", "Strategic Air Command", "To Catch a Thief" and "The Battle of the River Plate" had very limited (two or three) prints struck in the 8-perf VistaVision format in which they were shot. Although the clarity of these 8-perf prints was striking, they were used only for premiere or preview engagements between 1954 and 1956 and required special projection equipment. This exhibition process was impractical because for the footage to travel through a projector at the normal 24 frames per second, the film had to roll at 3 feet per second, double the speed of 35 mm film and causing many technical and mechanical problems. Aside from these prints all other VistaVision films were shown in the conventional 4-perf format, as planned.
Alfred Hitchcock used VistaVision for many of his films in the 1950s. However, by the late 1950s with the introduction of finer-grained color stocks and the disadvantage of shooting twice as much negative stock, VistaVision became obsolete. Paramount dropped the format after only seven years, although for another forty years the format was used for high resolution special effects sequences. Less expensive anamorphic systems such as Panavision and the more expensive 70 mm format became standard during the later 1950s and 1960s.
List of all Films Shot in VistaVision
Sources:
Wikipedia
Widescreenmuseum.com
10 Apr 2011
THE MANY FACES OF PSYCHO
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| Spain - Original Engagement |
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| Spain - Original Engagement |
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| Spain - Original Engagement |
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| Germany - Original Engagement |
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| Germany - Original Engagement |
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| USA - 1965 Rerelease |
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| USA - 1968 Rerelease |
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| France - Original Engagement |
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| Italy - Original Engagement |
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| Italy - Original Engagement |
6 Apr 2011
How Psycho changed cinema
By Stephen Robb for BBC News
It's 50 years since Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was unleashed on a soon-to-be-terrified world. Even if you've never seen the film you've probably been exposed to its extensive influence.
Alfred Hitchcock had made his name as the "master of suspense" with brilliant, glossy thrillers like Rear Window and North by Northwest, but Psycho was altogether different - the like of which most cinema-goers had never seen.
With its shocking bursts of violence and provocative sexual explicitness, Psycho tested the strict censorship boundaries of the day as well as audiences' mettle - and it gave Hitchcock the biggest hit of his career.
Awakened to the box office potential of violence and sex, mainstream filmmakers followed suit. Here is how Psycho changed cinema:
GRAPHIC VIOLENCE
The 45-second shower murder in Psycho is possibly the most famous scene in cinema history.
David Thomson, author of The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder, has said it still ranks "legitimately among the most violent scenes ever shot for an American film". According to the book Story of the Scene, by Roger Clarke, it "changed cinema forever".
For the film's first three-quarters of an hour the audience has followed Janet Leigh's Marion Crane, building engagement with the film's supposed central character.
Then in an electrifyingly brutal scene, as Marion readies herself for bed with a shower in the decrepit Bates Motel, she is hacked to death by a barely-glimpsed old woman.
THE SHOWER SCENE
Most of the film was shot quickly with a crew from television, but the 70-plus shots for this 45-second scene took a week to film
To get the scene past the censors Hitchcock claimed the knife never touched the victim, but studies have since suggested it does
Chocolate sauce was used for blood, and the hand holding the knife in some shots is Hitchcock's
Janet Leigh said she avoided taking showers for the rest of her life after filming Psycho
Source: Story of the Scene by Roger Clarke
"They [audiences] had never seen anything quite like it before - the total shock of killing off a lead character a third of the way in, and just the complete feeling of disorientation," says Michael Brooke, Screenonline curator at the British Film Institute.
Psycho was filmed in black and white - unusual for Hitchcock by that stage of his career - partly to cut costs, but also to manage the graphicness of this scene. Hitchcock knew he would not get shots of red blood splattering the wall and floor past the censors of the time.
"The shower scene in colour in 1960 would have just been unshowable," says Mr Brooke.
Psycho "opened the floodgates" for screen violence, says Mr Brooke, paving the way for the slow-motion bloodshed of Bonnie and Clyde and The Wild Bunch in the late 60s, up to today's torture porn of Hostel and the Saw films.
Though "watching the film, you think it's a lot more graphically violent than it actually is".
It is a mark of the shift in levels of violence in cinema that Psycho, given an adults-only "X" certificate in the UK in 1960, now carries a relatively tame "15" rating.
SYMPATHY FOR THE KILLER
Arguably the film's most appealing character is Norman Bates, played by Anthony Perkins, the awkward, softly-spoken young man resignedly running the declining family motel and caring for his abusive, invalid mother.
After Leigh's slaughter, the film switches to Bates' point of view and the audience is invited to sympathise with his agonising dilemma over concealing his mother's horrific crime.
"There is that scene just after the shower murder when the car is sinking into the swamp and it pauses momentarily," says Mr Brooke, "and in a weird kind of way you almost want it to carry on sinking. You don't want him to be discovered even though he is covering up this hideous murder."
Mummy's boy - Bates' character was meant to draw viewers' sympathy
The effect was to toy with audiences' sympathies in a way mainstream thrillers hadn't done before.
Psycho is considered the first modern horror film and credited with launching the "slasher" sub-genre. But Paul Duncan, author of The Pocket Essential Alfred Hitchcock, argues its greatest legacy is the shifting point of view that became a common device of the slashers.
Most of Hitchcock's peers worked in the "third person", positioning their camera as a detached, neutral observer of the film's events, says Mr Duncan, whereas Hitchcock's "first person" camera allied his audience inescapably to key characters.
"That, I think, is probably the most copied aspect of Hitchcock's movies," he says.
John Carpenter's 1978 film Halloween, whose considerable debt to Psycho is emphasised by the presence of Leigh's daughter Jamie Lee Curtis in the lead role, is a "very good example of point of view camera being used brilliantly", he adds.
"Don't give away the ending - it's the only one we have! " Psycho promotional slogan
Having switched the film's point of view to Norman, Hitchcock has manoeuvred his audience exactly where he wants them for the film's shattering, shock twist.
"With all the information you are given you believe him to be innocent, and you identify with his crisis," says Mr Duncan.
SEXUAL EXPLICITNESS
The film opens on the skyline of Phoenix, Arizona, on a hot December day, the camera panning lazily across the rooftops before casually zooming in through a window to a hotel room where - unmistakably - an underwear-clad Leigh and shirtless John Gavin have made love moments earlier.
RELEASE OF PSYCHO
To keep secret the film's final twist, Psycho was not screened for critics or cinema-owners before release
Unusually for the time, cast and crew had been made to sign non-disclosure agreements preventing them speaking about the film
No-one was allowed into the cinema once the film had started - enforced by uniformed guards, this was an extraordinary measure in an era when people were used to coming and going during theatres' continuous programmes
These first moments are almost a statement of intent from Hitchcock. "He was quite deliberately testing the waters as far as the censors were concerned with the film," says Mr Brooke.
"It took what had previously been only suggestive sexual undercurrents and made them absolutely upfront."
At that time most US studio films were constrained by the puritanical Production Code, which dated from the 1930s and restricted depictions of sex, drug use, drinking, offensive language and anything else that could "lower the moral standards of those who see it".
When he was unable to secure financing for Psycho from studios fearful of the film's potential for controversy, prompting him to put up 60% of a scaled-down budget of less than $1m himself, the director found himself with an opportunity to work outside the restrictions of the studio system and deliver an exploitation film Hitchcock-style.
The overt sexuality of the film's sightings of Leigh in her underwear, the shocking violence - even a shot of a flushing toilet - were radical in commercial cinema at the time.
And while there had usually been varying amounts of humour in Hitchcock's films, it had never before been combined with such dark, violent material as in Psycho. Today, that pioneering blend of shocks and laughs is notably evident in the films of Quentin Tarantino.
USE OF MUSIC
The violins wailing away during Psycho's shower murder scene have achieved the status of cultural shorthand - denoting imminent violent insanity.
Their importance to the impact of that terrifying scene is emphasised by the fact that at pre-release screenings of a cut of the film before the music was added, many viewers reacted with mild indifference.
"It was only with the second version, with the music added, that people just leapt out of their seats - especially when the shrieking violins started," says Mr Brooke.
The most memorable part of Bernard Herrmann's score has now been imitated to the point of being "one of the all-time aural cliches", he adds.
But the entire soundtrack is integral to the mood of the film, from the blast of strings over the opening credits onwards, says Mr Brooke.
Its influence can particularly be seen in films that use music to evoke a sense of menace and heighten sudden shocks, such as Jaws.
This is not the only way in which Steven Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster, in turn massively influential itself, bears the influence of Psycho, says Mr Brooke.
"When they made Jaws, one of the stated aims was they wanted to make America's beaches as empty as American motel showers were when Psycho came out."
Psycho is re-released in the UK on 2 April. A season of films - entitled Psycho: A Classic in Context - runs at the BFI Southbank, central London, throughout April.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Below is a selection of your comments
In 1961 I was an usher at the Paramont Theater in Salem, MA and my job was to hold the crowd back for the last 15 minutes of the movie "Psycho" and we could not tell them anything about the ending.
Paul Duggan, Salem, Massachusetts
It's 50 years since Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was unleashed on a soon-to-be-terrified world. Even if you've never seen the film you've probably been exposed to its extensive influence.
Alfred Hitchcock had made his name as the "master of suspense" with brilliant, glossy thrillers like Rear Window and North by Northwest, but Psycho was altogether different - the like of which most cinema-goers had never seen.
With its shocking bursts of violence and provocative sexual explicitness, Psycho tested the strict censorship boundaries of the day as well as audiences' mettle - and it gave Hitchcock the biggest hit of his career.
Awakened to the box office potential of violence and sex, mainstream filmmakers followed suit. Here is how Psycho changed cinema:
GRAPHIC VIOLENCE
The 45-second shower murder in Psycho is possibly the most famous scene in cinema history.
David Thomson, author of The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder, has said it still ranks "legitimately among the most violent scenes ever shot for an American film". According to the book Story of the Scene, by Roger Clarke, it "changed cinema forever".
For the film's first three-quarters of an hour the audience has followed Janet Leigh's Marion Crane, building engagement with the film's supposed central character.
Then in an electrifyingly brutal scene, as Marion readies herself for bed with a shower in the decrepit Bates Motel, she is hacked to death by a barely-glimpsed old woman.
THE SHOWER SCENE
Most of the film was shot quickly with a crew from television, but the 70-plus shots for this 45-second scene took a week to film
To get the scene past the censors Hitchcock claimed the knife never touched the victim, but studies have since suggested it does
Chocolate sauce was used for blood, and the hand holding the knife in some shots is Hitchcock's
Janet Leigh said she avoided taking showers for the rest of her life after filming Psycho
Source: Story of the Scene by Roger Clarke
"They [audiences] had never seen anything quite like it before - the total shock of killing off a lead character a third of the way in, and just the complete feeling of disorientation," says Michael Brooke, Screenonline curator at the British Film Institute.
Psycho was filmed in black and white - unusual for Hitchcock by that stage of his career - partly to cut costs, but also to manage the graphicness of this scene. Hitchcock knew he would not get shots of red blood splattering the wall and floor past the censors of the time.
"The shower scene in colour in 1960 would have just been unshowable," says Mr Brooke.
Psycho "opened the floodgates" for screen violence, says Mr Brooke, paving the way for the slow-motion bloodshed of Bonnie and Clyde and The Wild Bunch in the late 60s, up to today's torture porn of Hostel and the Saw films.
Though "watching the film, you think it's a lot more graphically violent than it actually is".
It is a mark of the shift in levels of violence in cinema that Psycho, given an adults-only "X" certificate in the UK in 1960, now carries a relatively tame "15" rating.
SYMPATHY FOR THE KILLER
Arguably the film's most appealing character is Norman Bates, played by Anthony Perkins, the awkward, softly-spoken young man resignedly running the declining family motel and caring for his abusive, invalid mother.
After Leigh's slaughter, the film switches to Bates' point of view and the audience is invited to sympathise with his agonising dilemma over concealing his mother's horrific crime.
"There is that scene just after the shower murder when the car is sinking into the swamp and it pauses momentarily," says Mr Brooke, "and in a weird kind of way you almost want it to carry on sinking. You don't want him to be discovered even though he is covering up this hideous murder."
Mummy's boy - Bates' character was meant to draw viewers' sympathy
The effect was to toy with audiences' sympathies in a way mainstream thrillers hadn't done before.
Psycho is considered the first modern horror film and credited with launching the "slasher" sub-genre. But Paul Duncan, author of The Pocket Essential Alfred Hitchcock, argues its greatest legacy is the shifting point of view that became a common device of the slashers.
Most of Hitchcock's peers worked in the "third person", positioning their camera as a detached, neutral observer of the film's events, says Mr Duncan, whereas Hitchcock's "first person" camera allied his audience inescapably to key characters.
"That, I think, is probably the most copied aspect of Hitchcock's movies," he says.
John Carpenter's 1978 film Halloween, whose considerable debt to Psycho is emphasised by the presence of Leigh's daughter Jamie Lee Curtis in the lead role, is a "very good example of point of view camera being used brilliantly", he adds.
"Don't give away the ending - it's the only one we have! " Psycho promotional slogan
Having switched the film's point of view to Norman, Hitchcock has manoeuvred his audience exactly where he wants them for the film's shattering, shock twist.
"With all the information you are given you believe him to be innocent, and you identify with his crisis," says Mr Duncan.
SEXUAL EXPLICITNESS
The film opens on the skyline of Phoenix, Arizona, on a hot December day, the camera panning lazily across the rooftops before casually zooming in through a window to a hotel room where - unmistakably - an underwear-clad Leigh and shirtless John Gavin have made love moments earlier.
RELEASE OF PSYCHO
To keep secret the film's final twist, Psycho was not screened for critics or cinema-owners before release
Unusually for the time, cast and crew had been made to sign non-disclosure agreements preventing them speaking about the film
No-one was allowed into the cinema once the film had started - enforced by uniformed guards, this was an extraordinary measure in an era when people were used to coming and going during theatres' continuous programmes
These first moments are almost a statement of intent from Hitchcock. "He was quite deliberately testing the waters as far as the censors were concerned with the film," says Mr Brooke.
"It took what had previously been only suggestive sexual undercurrents and made them absolutely upfront."
At that time most US studio films were constrained by the puritanical Production Code, which dated from the 1930s and restricted depictions of sex, drug use, drinking, offensive language and anything else that could "lower the moral standards of those who see it".
When he was unable to secure financing for Psycho from studios fearful of the film's potential for controversy, prompting him to put up 60% of a scaled-down budget of less than $1m himself, the director found himself with an opportunity to work outside the restrictions of the studio system and deliver an exploitation film Hitchcock-style.
The overt sexuality of the film's sightings of Leigh in her underwear, the shocking violence - even a shot of a flushing toilet - were radical in commercial cinema at the time.
And while there had usually been varying amounts of humour in Hitchcock's films, it had never before been combined with such dark, violent material as in Psycho. Today, that pioneering blend of shocks and laughs is notably evident in the films of Quentin Tarantino.
USE OF MUSIC
The violins wailing away during Psycho's shower murder scene have achieved the status of cultural shorthand - denoting imminent violent insanity.
Their importance to the impact of that terrifying scene is emphasised by the fact that at pre-release screenings of a cut of the film before the music was added, many viewers reacted with mild indifference.
"It was only with the second version, with the music added, that people just leapt out of their seats - especially when the shrieking violins started," says Mr Brooke.
The most memorable part of Bernard Herrmann's score has now been imitated to the point of being "one of the all-time aural cliches", he adds.
But the entire soundtrack is integral to the mood of the film, from the blast of strings over the opening credits onwards, says Mr Brooke.
Its influence can particularly be seen in films that use music to evoke a sense of menace and heighten sudden shocks, such as Jaws.
This is not the only way in which Steven Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster, in turn massively influential itself, bears the influence of Psycho, says Mr Brooke.
"When they made Jaws, one of the stated aims was they wanted to make America's beaches as empty as American motel showers were when Psycho came out."
Psycho is re-released in the UK on 2 April. A season of films - entitled Psycho: A Classic in Context - runs at the BFI Southbank, central London, throughout April.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Below is a selection of your comments
In 1961 I was an usher at the Paramont Theater in Salem, MA and my job was to hold the crowd back for the last 15 minutes of the movie "Psycho" and we could not tell them anything about the ending.
Paul Duggan, Salem, Massachusetts
6 Mar 2011
A PIECE OF ROBERT A. HARRIS Part 4
Vertigo - A Smash-Hit Down Under!
Was it worth the more than one million dollars that it cost to restore Alfred Hitchcock's classic film, Vertigo.
The answer has to be an unqualified yes if the crowds that turned up to see the 70mm release at The Astor Theatre in Melbourne, Australia, are any guide.
More than 2,000 people were there for the first three screenings on a Sunday in late September - there were close to 1,000 in the audience at the late show alone!
By the end of the three-week run the results were the best The Astor had achieved for any re-release. In fact, they were nearly as good as those for the 70mm version of Hamlet. And that screening at The Astor broke all national, season-average records for a first-run release.
Vertigo also played in Sydney. It did well there although the figures were not as good as those for Melbourne which did 50% better in half the time.
The audiences were almost as fascinating as the film. Some were Hitchcock aficionados while others were simply intrigued by the Hitchcock legend. Many had seen the film some 30 years ago and wanted to see it presented in 70mm - a close as possible to how Hitchcock had meant it to be seen.
The Astor is superbly equipped for doing just that (see the August, 1997, issue of Wide Gauge). And it is the only cinema in Melbourne capable of screening the Vertigo restoration with 70mm DTS sound.
There was an almost-palpable sense of expectation as the film started. The screen masks, fully-open at 2:1 for the Universal logo, closed to about 1.8:1 when the old VistaVision logo appeared. It was faded and washed-out with a slight colour-cast. It looked as though it might have been the original logo left unrestored as a contrast to what was to follow.
And the first scenes, with James Stewart running across the roof-tops, had many people catching their breath.
It was clear that it was a restoration, that it was not an original, Technicolor print. There was a certain softness and, sometimes, the colours seemed somewhat pastel in nature. But the superb quality of the restoration became blindingly obvious during those few sequences for which the colour separations had deteriorated too much - the restorers had been forced to resort to the camera negative. The sheer detail and apparent accuracy of the colour must leave one in awe of the work done by Robert Harris and James Katz.
The full, 70mm frame was being projected so nothing of the image on the film was lost. It was most-interesting to see the VistaVision framing marks.
The 70mm DTS sound was stunning and, clearly, vastly superior to the original. The use of the surround and screen-effects channels was particularly effective during the driving sequences when vehicles in the background crossed from one side of the screen to the other.
There was a sync problem during the first reel with the sound leading the picture but it corrected itself after a while. It happened at every screening and appears to have been caused by errors in the time-code on the print.
One particular thing about the sound that caught the attention was the fact that music sometimes continued uninterrupted as the reel-change cue-marks appeared.
At The Astor, film from the shipping reels is combined to make-up 4,000-foot reels so not every set of cue-marks is at the physical end of a projection reel. But there were some continuing effects and music at actual change-overs.
The owner, manager and chief-projectionist of The Astor, George Florence, had noted them while previewing the print. He found that it was possible to change projectors with no discernible jump in the sound if the film was cued-up accurately and the change-overs made exactly on cue.
It is possible that Universal expected Vertigo to be shown using platters instead of reels - a view supported by the fact that some of the shipping reels had some very-odd film lengths. One, for example, had just eight minutes worth.
One thing that did give Florence some concern was the lack of audio back-up - there was only one set of discs and, of course, no fall-back sound-track on the film. However, he is certainly well aware of the huge financial and logistic benefits to be gained by producing in 70mm DTS instead of mag-stripe.
Leaving the technical aspects aside for a moment, how did the audiences react to the film?
Many people seeing Vertigo for the first time were expecting nail-biting suspense. But that's not what Vertigo is all about. It is a disturbing rather than a suspenseful movie - a story of obsession. Hitchcock meant to leave audiences with a feeling of disquiet. It certainly achieved that although there were several instances where the "dated" nature of some of the scenes gave rise to gentle, but not unkind, laughter.
Those who had seen Vertigo before were stunned - they felt that the 70mm restoration was much better than the 35mm screenings they had seen. Memories were sometimes a little hazy but everybody commented on the bigger screen-image and on the superb sound. As one member of the first-night audience put it, "I now feel that I had never really seen Vertigo until tonight."
It is noteworthy that most of the audience stayed to watch the closing credits which gave some insight into the work and the people involved in the restoration.
George Florence is obviously excited about the success of the Vertigo restoration. He hopes it will spur film-company executives to put up the money for the preservation or restoration of other wide-format films - there are undoubtedly enough of them in need of it!
He is certainly looking forward to the 1999 release in 70mm DTS of the Harris/Katz restoration of Rear Window. And he is looking at the possibility of getting new prints of some of the classics in 70mm DTS.
He also hopes that the digital system will encourage film makers to use the wide format. "The major cost with 70mm," Florence says, "has been adding the mag-striping and then recording the sound reel by reel. With DTS the cost of a 70mm print could be brought down to about three times that of a 35mm print instead of something like twelve times the cost."
As Scott Marshall, the Editor of Wide Gauge, put it, "That would be a nice side effect. I think that digital sound these days is so fine that it's starting to make the picture look bad in comparison. That's a surprise reason why digital sound may encourage large formats. It was previously thought to discourage them because it was assumed that mag tracks were 70mm's only advantage."
The Vertigo print went from The Astor to a, possibly-ambitious, five-week run in Adelaide, the capital city of the state of South Australia. It will then be screened in three other capital cities before returning to Melbourne and The Astor in February.
George Florence says he expects to get good houses at the second run of Vertigo as well. "Melbourne people seem to like nostalgia and classic films," he says. "And they are becoming increasingly aware of the advantages of wide-format presentations."
Apart from the return of Vertigo, The Astor's audiences can look forward to more screenings of the 70mm version of Hamlet, a new 70mm print of 2001 in December, the Harris/Katz 70mm restoration of Lawrence of Arabia at Christmas and a new 70mm mag-stripe print of Ben Hur next Easter.
"But," says Florence, "if I had known six months ago, when I was doing the deal, how successful 70mm DTS would be I would have ordered Ben Hur in that format instead of in mag-stripe and saved a bundle!"
© Copyright 1997 Ralphe Neill
Melbourne, Australia
ran@sub.net.au
(This article was first published in the October, 1997, issue of Wide Gauge Film and Video Monthly in the US)
Was it worth the more than one million dollars that it cost to restore Alfred Hitchcock's classic film, Vertigo.
The answer has to be an unqualified yes if the crowds that turned up to see the 70mm release at The Astor Theatre in Melbourne, Australia, are any guide.
More than 2,000 people were there for the first three screenings on a Sunday in late September - there were close to 1,000 in the audience at the late show alone!
By the end of the three-week run the results were the best The Astor had achieved for any re-release. In fact, they were nearly as good as those for the 70mm version of Hamlet. And that screening at The Astor broke all national, season-average records for a first-run release.
Vertigo also played in Sydney. It did well there although the figures were not as good as those for Melbourne which did 50% better in half the time.
The audiences were almost as fascinating as the film. Some were Hitchcock aficionados while others were simply intrigued by the Hitchcock legend. Many had seen the film some 30 years ago and wanted to see it presented in 70mm - a close as possible to how Hitchcock had meant it to be seen.
The Astor is superbly equipped for doing just that (see the August, 1997, issue of Wide Gauge). And it is the only cinema in Melbourne capable of screening the Vertigo restoration with 70mm DTS sound.
There was an almost-palpable sense of expectation as the film started. The screen masks, fully-open at 2:1 for the Universal logo, closed to about 1.8:1 when the old VistaVision logo appeared. It was faded and washed-out with a slight colour-cast. It looked as though it might have been the original logo left unrestored as a contrast to what was to follow.
And the first scenes, with James Stewart running across the roof-tops, had many people catching their breath.
It was clear that it was a restoration, that it was not an original, Technicolor print. There was a certain softness and, sometimes, the colours seemed somewhat pastel in nature. But the superb quality of the restoration became blindingly obvious during those few sequences for which the colour separations had deteriorated too much - the restorers had been forced to resort to the camera negative. The sheer detail and apparent accuracy of the colour must leave one in awe of the work done by Robert Harris and James Katz.
The full, 70mm frame was being projected so nothing of the image on the film was lost. It was most-interesting to see the VistaVision framing marks.
The 70mm DTS sound was stunning and, clearly, vastly superior to the original. The use of the surround and screen-effects channels was particularly effective during the driving sequences when vehicles in the background crossed from one side of the screen to the other.
There was a sync problem during the first reel with the sound leading the picture but it corrected itself after a while. It happened at every screening and appears to have been caused by errors in the time-code on the print.
One particular thing about the sound that caught the attention was the fact that music sometimes continued uninterrupted as the reel-change cue-marks appeared.
At The Astor, film from the shipping reels is combined to make-up 4,000-foot reels so not every set of cue-marks is at the physical end of a projection reel. But there were some continuing effects and music at actual change-overs.
The owner, manager and chief-projectionist of The Astor, George Florence, had noted them while previewing the print. He found that it was possible to change projectors with no discernible jump in the sound if the film was cued-up accurately and the change-overs made exactly on cue.
It is possible that Universal expected Vertigo to be shown using platters instead of reels - a view supported by the fact that some of the shipping reels had some very-odd film lengths. One, for example, had just eight minutes worth.
One thing that did give Florence some concern was the lack of audio back-up - there was only one set of discs and, of course, no fall-back sound-track on the film. However, he is certainly well aware of the huge financial and logistic benefits to be gained by producing in 70mm DTS instead of mag-stripe.
Leaving the technical aspects aside for a moment, how did the audiences react to the film?
Many people seeing Vertigo for the first time were expecting nail-biting suspense. But that's not what Vertigo is all about. It is a disturbing rather than a suspenseful movie - a story of obsession. Hitchcock meant to leave audiences with a feeling of disquiet. It certainly achieved that although there were several instances where the "dated" nature of some of the scenes gave rise to gentle, but not unkind, laughter.
Those who had seen Vertigo before were stunned - they felt that the 70mm restoration was much better than the 35mm screenings they had seen. Memories were sometimes a little hazy but everybody commented on the bigger screen-image and on the superb sound. As one member of the first-night audience put it, "I now feel that I had never really seen Vertigo until tonight."
It is noteworthy that most of the audience stayed to watch the closing credits which gave some insight into the work and the people involved in the restoration.
George Florence is obviously excited about the success of the Vertigo restoration. He hopes it will spur film-company executives to put up the money for the preservation or restoration of other wide-format films - there are undoubtedly enough of them in need of it!
He is certainly looking forward to the 1999 release in 70mm DTS of the Harris/Katz restoration of Rear Window. And he is looking at the possibility of getting new prints of some of the classics in 70mm DTS.
He also hopes that the digital system will encourage film makers to use the wide format. "The major cost with 70mm," Florence says, "has been adding the mag-striping and then recording the sound reel by reel. With DTS the cost of a 70mm print could be brought down to about three times that of a 35mm print instead of something like twelve times the cost."
As Scott Marshall, the Editor of Wide Gauge, put it, "That would be a nice side effect. I think that digital sound these days is so fine that it's starting to make the picture look bad in comparison. That's a surprise reason why digital sound may encourage large formats. It was previously thought to discourage them because it was assumed that mag tracks were 70mm's only advantage."
The Vertigo print went from The Astor to a, possibly-ambitious, five-week run in Adelaide, the capital city of the state of South Australia. It will then be screened in three other capital cities before returning to Melbourne and The Astor in February.
George Florence says he expects to get good houses at the second run of Vertigo as well. "Melbourne people seem to like nostalgia and classic films," he says. "And they are becoming increasingly aware of the advantages of wide-format presentations."
Apart from the return of Vertigo, The Astor's audiences can look forward to more screenings of the 70mm version of Hamlet, a new 70mm print of 2001 in December, the Harris/Katz 70mm restoration of Lawrence of Arabia at Christmas and a new 70mm mag-stripe print of Ben Hur next Easter.
"But," says Florence, "if I had known six months ago, when I was doing the deal, how successful 70mm DTS would be I would have ordered Ben Hur in that format instead of in mag-stripe and saved a bundle!"
© Copyright 1997 Ralphe Neill
Melbourne, Australia
ran@sub.net.au
(This article was first published in the October, 1997, issue of Wide Gauge Film and Video Monthly in the US)
13 Apr 2009
Last Saturday I got to live one of my dreams... (almost).
I got to watch "Vertigo" on the big screen. I say "almost" because it was only a crappy DVD being projected. My dream involves it being shown on 35mm... To watch the DTS-70mm print that blossomed after the Katz-Harris restoration back in 1996 would be more like a wet dream..... ;)
Anyway, the soiree took place in this gorgeous theatre in downtown Mendoza. The image, of course, sucked. Don`t worry! I asked the box-office dude before going in to watch it. It`s not that I´d realised that it was a DVD while sitting on this beautiful(ly uncomfortable) leather-bound seats. I decided it was worth the $8, despite the crude quality.
Counting down the days until I get to watch "Psycho" on the big screen... whenever that may be.
Some other time I´ll tell you about the time I projected a rather nice copy of "Dial M for Murder" myself, back on Xmas 1998. Until then...
I got to watch "Vertigo" on the big screen. I say "almost" because it was only a crappy DVD being projected. My dream involves it being shown on 35mm... To watch the DTS-70mm print that blossomed after the Katz-Harris restoration back in 1996 would be more like a wet dream..... ;)
Anyway, the soiree took place in this gorgeous theatre in downtown Mendoza. The image, of course, sucked. Don`t worry! I asked the box-office dude before going in to watch it. It`s not that I´d realised that it was a DVD while sitting on this beautiful(ly uncomfortable) leather-bound seats. I decided it was worth the $8, despite the crude quality.
Counting down the days until I get to watch "Psycho" on the big screen... whenever that may be.
Some other time I´ll tell you about the time I projected a rather nice copy of "Dial M for Murder" myself, back on Xmas 1998. Until then...
16 Jul 2008
10 Jul 2008
A PIECE OF ROBERT A. HARRIS Part 2
What follows is the transcription of an article intitled "Film Restoration: More than ´Rear Window´ dressing" written by Bill Desowitz for cnn.com, published on December 11th, 1997. You can read the original here
First "Vertigo" was brought back from oblivion; now the ever-popular "Rear Window" is the latest Alfred Hitchcock classic starring Jimmy Stewart being saved from the ravages of time.
To enhance its image quality, the restored version will be among the first films printed in Technicolor's new dye-transfer process (so far used only experimentally with a few prints of Warner Bros.' "Giant" reissue and "Batman & Robin").
This marks the third Universal Pictures restoration by the team of Robert Harris and James Katz, following "Spartacus" and "Vertigo." The "Rear Window" fix-up is less expensive the other large-format projects -- "Vertigo," for example, cost $1.3 million -- but no less intensive.
"Like 'Vertigo,' we can make 'Rear Window' look like it's never looked before, with rich colors to show off the new process," says Katz, who produces the restorations. "This serves the future without forgetting the past."
Indeed, as Technicolor gears up for next year's high-tech return of dye transfer (abandoned since the mid-1970s) -- which has suddenly become cost-effective in the current "event" film market -- the "Rear Window" announcement proves that the process can also accommodate special reissues as well.
According to Frank Ricotta, Technicolor's senior vice president of worldwide technical and engineering operations, the new process yields sharper, less grainy prints than conventional color positive prints, as well as "an extended tone scale resulting in blacker blacks, whiter whites and improved color rendition."
The restorers concur that the results are impressive.
"'Rear Window' is a dark-looking movie," Katz says. "And in the tests, we've been getting a lot of detail in the blacks you don't ordinarily see. There's also increased sharpness. You can see it in the bricks on the buildings (in the courtyard) and in the patterns on the dresses."
Actually, "Rear Window" has never looked as good as it could have, according to Harris, even during its initial release in 1954. That's because the first dye-transfer prints weren't made until the 1962 reissue, when they were badly timed and came out beige. "So this will be the first time we see the film's full-color spectrum," he says.
But first the restorers must clean up an extremely dirty negative, abused from the very beginning. "It's a mess," Harris says. "There were 400 runs off the camera negative before the end of 1954. We don't know why they didn't do it dye-transfer, which would have saved printing off the negative. This was reasonably unusual for the period. And we're missing 1,000 feet of negative."
It is ironic that "Rear Window" has suffered this fate, considering it was one of Hitchcock's personal favorites and his most successful film of the '50s. It was also the first movie from his peak Paramount period, which he eventually owned outright and later withdrew for a decade. When last reissued, in 1983, "Rear Window" grossed another $9.1 million for Universal, which acquired it from Hitchcock's estate.
Inspired by Cornell Woolrich's cunning short story about murder, voyeurism and confined spaces, the director was obviously at his crafty best. He had all the technical toys he desired at his disposal, plus two of his favorite stars, Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly. "Rear Window" was Stewart's favorite of the four films he made with the director.
Breakthrough made restoration possible
Yet were it not for a recent technological breakthrough conceived by the restorers and developed by Phil Feiner, executive vice president of Pacific Title film lab, a complete restoration of "Rear Window" would not have been achievable.
Besides the accumulation of dirt, pieces of the original Eastman color negative that were dupes (titles and optical effects) have faded in the yellow layer of emulsion due to aging and improper storage -- a malady that sooner or later strikes all color negatives from the early '50s through the '80s, when a more stable stock was introduced. This first- layer deterioration includes loss of contrast, blacks and shadows going blue and facial highlights turning, in the words of the restorers, "a lovely shade of crustacean."
Compounding "Rear Window's" problem is an additional reel of negative that had its yellow layer stripped off the emulsion when a lacquer that was applied and reapplied over the years to cover scratches was eventually removed.
"No one was malicious here," Katz says. "The film was a victim of its environment over the years. It doesn't stand alone. There are thousands of films out there like this. No one knew enough about the properties of emulsion or temperature control for color negatives."
The restorers were first stymied by the yellow-layer problem last year when trying to correct the revelatory flashback in "Vertigo." Frustrated by their inability to restore the sequence, they later approached Feiner about devising a solution for subsequent restorations.
Using test footage from "Rear Window" and the 1956 remake of "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (to be restored at a later date), Feiner spent six months implementing a cost-effective photo- chemical solution.
To bring "Rear Window's" colorful brilliance back to life, an interpositive, an extremely fine-grain, low-contrast color- duplicating element, will be made from what survives on the original negative and combined with what survives on the yellow separation master.
"This is something that's going to benefit all of these pictures," Katz adds. "All the damage seems to be in the yellow layer."
'That shot is going to be breathtaking'
The most important moment in "Rear Window" to benefit not only from the yellow-layer breakthrough but from the new dye- transfer process is Kelly's seductive entrance -- which over the years has developed a yellow-green tint. Stewart, the aloof photographer confined to a wheelchair because of a broken leg, is awakened in his apartment by her tender kiss. To prolong the kiss and make it appear more sensual, Hitchcock shot it in close-up and then double-printed each frame in slow-motion.
"That shot is going to be breathtaking in Technicolor," Katz predicts. "When people first see her, they'll understand why everyone who came into contact with her fell in love with her."
The main title sequence, another casualty of yellow-layer fading, has already been repaired. "We used five different formulas to get the precise color for the main titles," Harris says. "There's a kind of Chinese red drop shadow that was difficult to reproduce. We finally got one that was acceptable using the yellow-layer method."
The original Paramount logo, incidentally, will return to the film's beginning and end, linked, of course, with the rising and falling bamboo shades in Stewart's apartment.
While "Rear Window" lacks the stunning visual reputation of "Vertigo," its technical virtuosity is legendary, boasting Hitchcock's most elaborate set to re-create the Greenwich Village apartment complex where Stewart spies on his neighbors with his telephoto lens. The effect, as Francois Truffaut first observed, is like viewing ambiguous scenarios of love and marriage from tiny movie screens or TV sets.
It was all part of Hitchcock's famous "pure cinema" scheme: creating tension between Stewart observing and being observed -- and involving us in the suspense of waiting for him to get caught. In fact, the way he introduces Stewart and his neighbors through a series of serpentine camera movements is as succinct an example of visual exposition ever filmed.
"People don't ordinarily think of 'Rear Window' as a stylish movie," Katz says. "But what we're discovering is that there is a style in the way Hitchcock used color. With Miss Lonelyhearts, we can now see the mauve in her apartment and the green in her dress. Each apartment has its own color style."
Harris and Katz expect the restoration to be completed next spring. However, Universal's distribution plans could be complicated by a blackout in place until 1999, coincidentally, the centenary of Hitchcock's birth. Sheldon Abend, who owns the copyright on the Woolrich short story from which the film is based, won a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1990 declaring his copyright renewal was violated.
"The important thing is, we're saving another Hitchcock," Katz adds. "And we have a whole new audience right now for this."
First "Vertigo" was brought back from oblivion; now the ever-popular "Rear Window" is the latest Alfred Hitchcock classic starring Jimmy Stewart being saved from the ravages of time.
To enhance its image quality, the restored version will be among the first films printed in Technicolor's new dye-transfer process (so far used only experimentally with a few prints of Warner Bros.' "Giant" reissue and "Batman & Robin").
This marks the third Universal Pictures restoration by the team of Robert Harris and James Katz, following "Spartacus" and "Vertigo." The "Rear Window" fix-up is less expensive the other large-format projects -- "Vertigo," for example, cost $1.3 million -- but no less intensive.
"Like 'Vertigo,' we can make 'Rear Window' look like it's never looked before, with rich colors to show off the new process," says Katz, who produces the restorations. "This serves the future without forgetting the past."
Indeed, as Technicolor gears up for next year's high-tech return of dye transfer (abandoned since the mid-1970s) -- which has suddenly become cost-effective in the current "event" film market -- the "Rear Window" announcement proves that the process can also accommodate special reissues as well.
According to Frank Ricotta, Technicolor's senior vice president of worldwide technical and engineering operations, the new process yields sharper, less grainy prints than conventional color positive prints, as well as "an extended tone scale resulting in blacker blacks, whiter whites and improved color rendition."
The restorers concur that the results are impressive.
"'Rear Window' is a dark-looking movie," Katz says. "And in the tests, we've been getting a lot of detail in the blacks you don't ordinarily see. There's also increased sharpness. You can see it in the bricks on the buildings (in the courtyard) and in the patterns on the dresses."
Actually, "Rear Window" has never looked as good as it could have, according to Harris, even during its initial release in 1954. That's because the first dye-transfer prints weren't made until the 1962 reissue, when they were badly timed and came out beige. "So this will be the first time we see the film's full-color spectrum," he says.
But first the restorers must clean up an extremely dirty negative, abused from the very beginning. "It's a mess," Harris says. "There were 400 runs off the camera negative before the end of 1954. We don't know why they didn't do it dye-transfer, which would have saved printing off the negative. This was reasonably unusual for the period. And we're missing 1,000 feet of negative."
It is ironic that "Rear Window" has suffered this fate, considering it was one of Hitchcock's personal favorites and his most successful film of the '50s. It was also the first movie from his peak Paramount period, which he eventually owned outright and later withdrew for a decade. When last reissued, in 1983, "Rear Window" grossed another $9.1 million for Universal, which acquired it from Hitchcock's estate.
Inspired by Cornell Woolrich's cunning short story about murder, voyeurism and confined spaces, the director was obviously at his crafty best. He had all the technical toys he desired at his disposal, plus two of his favorite stars, Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly. "Rear Window" was Stewart's favorite of the four films he made with the director.
Breakthrough made restoration possible
Yet were it not for a recent technological breakthrough conceived by the restorers and developed by Phil Feiner, executive vice president of Pacific Title film lab, a complete restoration of "Rear Window" would not have been achievable.
Besides the accumulation of dirt, pieces of the original Eastman color negative that were dupes (titles and optical effects) have faded in the yellow layer of emulsion due to aging and improper storage -- a malady that sooner or later strikes all color negatives from the early '50s through the '80s, when a more stable stock was introduced. This first- layer deterioration includes loss of contrast, blacks and shadows going blue and facial highlights turning, in the words of the restorers, "a lovely shade of crustacean."
Compounding "Rear Window's" problem is an additional reel of negative that had its yellow layer stripped off the emulsion when a lacquer that was applied and reapplied over the years to cover scratches was eventually removed.
"No one was malicious here," Katz says. "The film was a victim of its environment over the years. It doesn't stand alone. There are thousands of films out there like this. No one knew enough about the properties of emulsion or temperature control for color negatives."
The restorers were first stymied by the yellow-layer problem last year when trying to correct the revelatory flashback in "Vertigo." Frustrated by their inability to restore the sequence, they later approached Feiner about devising a solution for subsequent restorations.
Using test footage from "Rear Window" and the 1956 remake of "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (to be restored at a later date), Feiner spent six months implementing a cost-effective photo- chemical solution.
To bring "Rear Window's" colorful brilliance back to life, an interpositive, an extremely fine-grain, low-contrast color- duplicating element, will be made from what survives on the original negative and combined with what survives on the yellow separation master.
"This is something that's going to benefit all of these pictures," Katz adds. "All the damage seems to be in the yellow layer."
'That shot is going to be breathtaking'
The most important moment in "Rear Window" to benefit not only from the yellow-layer breakthrough but from the new dye- transfer process is Kelly's seductive entrance -- which over the years has developed a yellow-green tint. Stewart, the aloof photographer confined to a wheelchair because of a broken leg, is awakened in his apartment by her tender kiss. To prolong the kiss and make it appear more sensual, Hitchcock shot it in close-up and then double-printed each frame in slow-motion.
"That shot is going to be breathtaking in Technicolor," Katz predicts. "When people first see her, they'll understand why everyone who came into contact with her fell in love with her."
The main title sequence, another casualty of yellow-layer fading, has already been repaired. "We used five different formulas to get the precise color for the main titles," Harris says. "There's a kind of Chinese red drop shadow that was difficult to reproduce. We finally got one that was acceptable using the yellow-layer method."
The original Paramount logo, incidentally, will return to the film's beginning and end, linked, of course, with the rising and falling bamboo shades in Stewart's apartment.
While "Rear Window" lacks the stunning visual reputation of "Vertigo," its technical virtuosity is legendary, boasting Hitchcock's most elaborate set to re-create the Greenwich Village apartment complex where Stewart spies on his neighbors with his telephoto lens. The effect, as Francois Truffaut first observed, is like viewing ambiguous scenarios of love and marriage from tiny movie screens or TV sets.
It was all part of Hitchcock's famous "pure cinema" scheme: creating tension between Stewart observing and being observed -- and involving us in the suspense of waiting for him to get caught. In fact, the way he introduces Stewart and his neighbors through a series of serpentine camera movements is as succinct an example of visual exposition ever filmed.
"People don't ordinarily think of 'Rear Window' as a stylish movie," Katz says. "But what we're discovering is that there is a style in the way Hitchcock used color. With Miss Lonelyhearts, we can now see the mauve in her apartment and the green in her dress. Each apartment has its own color style."
Harris and Katz expect the restoration to be completed next spring. However, Universal's distribution plans could be complicated by a blackout in place until 1999, coincidentally, the centenary of Hitchcock's birth. Sheldon Abend, who owns the copyright on the Woolrich short story from which the film is based, won a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1990 declaring his copyright renewal was violated.
"The important thing is, we're saving another Hitchcock," Katz adds. "And we have a whole new audience right now for this."
7 Jul 2008
3 Jul 2008
HITCHCOCK FLAVOURED SUPER8 DUALITY
Even though I haven´t made much noise about it (except for the modified header), some time ago I decided to stop collecting Super 8 films. Mainly because of the lower quality compared to 16mm, also because of the amateurish halo around it. As a matter of fact, I have begun the process of getting rid of everything that I don´t hold personally dear.
Having said that, there´s still one Super 8 fetish I haven´t been able to shake.
Hitchcock films. Buying Hitchcock films in Super 8.
They appear occasionally on the usual channels, and I jump at them like mad.
If you´ll endulge my vanity, I´ll show off my little collection:
One thing that will haunt me to the last of my days is my personal loss of a 16mm copy of Psycho (1960). That one is my favourite film of all time, and recently I came across a 16mm copy on eBay. It was going for USD200 and as much as that is for a banana republic collector, I bought it. Because of it´s weight, it got stopped in customs, and those a$$#°1e$ wanted USD700 for the print to clear. Unfortunately I couldn´t afford that much on top of the 200, so, brokenhearted I had no chance but to abandon it. In my imagination there is a warehouse exactly like that of the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where my print collects dust in shelf.
Having said that, there´s still one Super 8 fetish I haven´t been able to shake.
Hitchcock films. Buying Hitchcock films in Super 8.
They appear occasionally on the usual channels, and I jump at them like mad.
If you´ll endulge my vanity, I´ll show off my little collection:
- Hawke Films presents Alfred Hitchcock Film Festival Part 1: 350ft - Color - Silent - Includes scenes from North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963). Also advertisements for Frenzy (1972).
- Hawke Films presents Alfred Hitchcock Film Festival Part 2: 350ft - Color - Silent - Includes scenes from The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964) and Frenzy (1972).
- Hawke Films presents Alfred Hitchcock Film Festival Part 3: 350ft - Color - Silent - Includes scenes from Torn Curtain (1966), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and Vertigo (1958).
- Hawke Films presents Alfred Hitchcock Film Festival Part 4: 100ft - Color - Mono - Includes 6 promos by Hitch himself.
- Alfred Hitchcock Trailer Reel: 400 ft - Color - Mono - English spoken w/no subtitles - Includes trailers for Frenzy (1972), The Birds (1963), Vertigo (1958) and Rear Window (1954).
One thing that will haunt me to the last of my days is my personal loss of a 16mm copy of Psycho (1960). That one is my favourite film of all time, and recently I came across a 16mm copy on eBay. It was going for USD200 and as much as that is for a banana republic collector, I bought it. Because of it´s weight, it got stopped in customs, and those a$$#°1e$ wanted USD700 for the print to clear. Unfortunately I couldn´t afford that much on top of the 200, so, brokenhearted I had no chance but to abandon it. In my imagination there is a warehouse exactly like that of the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where my print collects dust in shelf.
22 Jun 2008
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