Long-lost Charlie Chaplin film meticulously restored after 100 years
When classic films undergo 4K restorations, the results can divide fans. Look around Hollywood and you will find many examples of reminders of films with controversial use of digital noise reduction, movement smoothing and other post-production tools. Meanwhile, the proliferation of scale programs based on AI- and machine learning has only complicated the debate.
When approached correctly, however, the technique has contributed to relaunch some of the oldest – and for a long time, inaccessible -. A recent example is the official 4K restoration of one of the most famous and appreciated titles of Charlie Chaplin, The gold rush. The work laboratory celebrating the anniversary of the centenary of the film was created at the Cannes Festival on May 13, followed by projections at 250 rooms in 70 countries on June 26.
The story of how and why The gold rush Received her 4K restoration shows that tinkering with films is not always a bad thing. It is not new either – in some cases, the own creator of the film is the original DIY.
‘He transformed it’
Almost 100 years ago, Charlie Chaplin published one of his most emblematic works, The gold rush. But unless you saw the film during its original theatrical race, it would take decades to most audiences to review this version. This is because for years, The gold rush That Chaplin fans knew was not the dumb film of 1925 – it was a “talkie”.
“He transformed it into a film of his,” explains Arnold Lozano Popular science. “It’s his own voice comments throughout the film.”
Lozano is the director general of the Chaplin office, who oversees the rights to the films of the legendary film star such as The kid (1921), The circus (1928), and City lights (1931). He explains that while Chaplin left the majority of his other intact films after their beginnings, The gold rush Never sit well with him. So, 17 years after his first, Chaplin decided to do something.
A nation on the brink of the great depression appreciated the years 1925 THE Gold rush Partly because he punctuated his situational comedy and his slapstick with melancholy reflections on endurance, hunger and loneliness. Although 1942 marked the start of an era politically busy for Chaplin – he released The large dictator Only a few months earlier – he believed The gold rush Requires a more updated (and more optimistic) revision.
“It became a fairly different film … It was war. The gold rush was reintroduced, ”explains Lozano.
Chaplin cuts about 16 minutes from the original Gold rush at a tight execution time of 72 minutes. He removed whole sequences and reorganized others. Chaplin’s voices have added more lightness, as well as a new matching musical score. When he finalized the Redititus, an advertising slogan of the film promised to theater fans that the transformed Gold rush It would be their “laughing to laugh for ’42!”
“Chaplin himself believed it was an improvement,” says Lozano. “There is a legal document from the 1960s where he said:” I improved it “.”
Many audiences and criticism agreed with him at the time, but dissident opinions circulated in the years that followed.
“Many fans and moviegoers said:” What did he do in the film? “They,” Lozano stops, “respectfully in disagreement that it was an improvement.
Gone for 50 years
After the reissue, the 1925 version apparently disappeared, but not because the public preferred the 1942 edition – Chaplin ordered the destruction of all the available impressions of the first Gold rush.
“Each time he heard about them, he had powerful lawyers and he did what he could get rid of all of this,” said Lozano.
It seemed to be the end of the story to THE Gold rush. But from the 1980s, Kevin Brownlow and David Gill cinema historians began to look for surviving coils of the original version. They finally raised enough equipment and in 1993, began to combine the recovered rolls with a copy of 1942 Gold rush print.
A large part of their project was based on an impression of Japanese opening hosted in the archives of Chaplin. The full opening applies only to the film which includes the entire original frame. When the films first integrated the sound, the designers had to cut a section on the left side of the film to make room for the soundtrack. Although the Japanese copy contains the 1942 version, the full opening allowed Brownlow and Gill to use it as a base to build around.
Lozano returns to the 1993 edition as a “current work” – imperfect, but an essential step towards recovery from the original film. Meanwhile, the generalized adoption of digital communications rationalized the ability of archivists to continue their Gold rush prospecting.
“Now, it’s a few years later and … the world has changed,” he says. “It is much easier to contact people now instead of writing letters and faxes and everything.”
What took back and forth communication weeks can now occur in a few days or hours. Knowing this, Lozano and the Chaplin office decided to continue a final Gold rush Prospecting project.
A few years ago, Chaplin’s office called to locate the remaining copies of 1925 Gold rush. Six archives responded with what they had, including the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York and the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York. The enlarged resources have enabled experts from the Imagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna, Italy, to start working on a real 4K restoration of the first version of Chaplin de Chaplin The gold rush.
Praise for “pirates”
“The double negative that Brownlow [and Gill] Produced in 1993 for the previous restoration was our starting point for two reasons, ”explains the Imagine Ritrovata and project manager Elena Tammaccaro Popular science. “Seventy percent of this double negative was the best we had in terms of image quality and complete frame.”
This still meant that around 30% of the original film remained missing. According to Tammaccaro, a large part of the completion of the project is due to decades of pure and simple disobedience of people in the film industry.
“People worked like pirates … by making copies that they were supposed to eliminate,” she said.
In addition to the duplicates, the team also found an original nitrate coil in report 4: 3, the standard for the silent era of Hollywood.
After having made a frame review by frame of all their available coils, Tammaccaro and his colleagues settled on the best combination of equipment to rebuild the original version of Chaplin in 1925 of The gold rush. The factors they considered included the grain levels of film, the overall degradation of the image and the coloring. Tammaccaro says that their restoration approach was “not aggressive” compared to many other laboratories, but it sometimes required the use of digital tools to sharpen particularly fuzzy frames.
From there, the team scanned and digitized its final cup. Tammaccaro estimates that his team took 10 months to restore the 88 -minute film and create an entirely new 35 mm print. However, it will never be shown – instead, it is purely intended for conservation purposes in the archives of the Chaplin office.
“It is good to have a real print made of this restoration and, if necessary, can be canceled by robots or anything in the future,” says Lozano with a smile.
For the first time in decades, new and long -standing fans can now look at what is unequivocal the best preserved and precise reassembly of The gold rush. It may not be the favorite cup of its creator, but his return marks a major moment for the history of cinema and preservation.
“We do not think they are in competition with each other,” explains Lozano about the two versions. “These are both reflections of their time.”
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