The "Coppola Restoration" Letters: Postscript

Making his bones in this town while you were banging cheerleaders. If, in fact, you were banging cheerleaders. We kind of doubt it, actually.

"The Coppola Restoration" of the three Godfather films is a major salvo in a battle that won't be settled any time soon. The battle over how classic cinema should look on high-definition video. And this has an impact even on those who don't have a Blu-ray player and don't intend to get a Blu-ray player, because pretty much all mastering of film to other media is being done in high-def and then down-converted to standard def NTSC for "regular" DVDs. It's a high-def digital world and the tools available to both moviemakers shooting in video and technicians putting older films into home entertainment formats are almost magical. Potentially dangerous.

Gordon Willis, Allan Daviau, and Robert A. Harris drew a line in the sand with their restorations of the first two Godfather films. They used the digital tools to present the films as they were shot and printed. No messing with the grain of the film stock (or "grain-rape," as Jeffrey Wells rather, um, infelicitously puts it). Maintaing the four-points-yellow-one-point-red above-normal processing. Keeping those blacks—actually unexposed parts of the negative!—black. Keeping the nearly blown-out whites of the wedding sequence blaring. And so on. A bold statement. I agree with it. (And, more importantly, I enjoy the result.) Others don't. Some are kinda confused.

More statements are coming. Disney's first Blu-ray of a classic animation title, Sleeping Beauty, comes out in October. It was done at Lowry Digital, with a process I'll detail in a forthcoming Popular Mechanics feature on High-Def. (Which I'll alert you to and link to when the time comes.) A very discerning fellow critic who saw a Disney-sponsored preview demo of selected scenes (as I did) used the same word Kay used to describe her marriage to Michael in sizing up the results of the restoration. I'm reserving judgment until I see it in a theater, and after that on a properly calibrated home display. (At demos they tend to pump up the brightness on the displays to pretty much unconscionable levels.) In November come Criterion's first Blu-rays. The range of the first eight titles shows they're eager to strut their stuff in a lot of modes, from the lustrous black-and-white of The Third Man to the ravishing color of The Last Emperor to the altogether more funky and impressionistic stylings of Chungking Express.

Should be a very interesting Fall.

Comments

[Dan]

Yeah, I have to admit, the one-two punch of Criterion announcing "White Dog" and all but announcing "The Exterminating Angel" (YEEEEESSSS!!!!) will make the coming months a hoot.

[bill]

Yeah, "White Dog"...I've wanted to see that one for ages. What a great, unusual idea for a film. Nice cover, too.

[Stephen Bowie]

"White Dog" is indeed a nice surprise (well, Criterion has been hinting at it for a year, but it was a nice surprise back then). Only seven Eclipse sets this year: not so nice a surprise.

And is Fantoma ever going to release "Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street"? That must hold the record by now for the most-delayed DVD of all time.

[Mark]

Another candidate for most-delayed DVD of all time, Michael Mann's insane 'The Keep'.