Journal of Film Preservation N° 56 - FIAF

Where do we go from here?
Afterthoughts on the 1997 Retrospective on G.W. Pabst in Berlin
Martin Koerber
A retrospective as we understand it includes a critical dialogue with the
film material. When a film archive takes responsibility for such an event,
it must be different from the retrospectives one experiences in “normal”
cinemas, municipal theatres or on television. In such venues, copies in
circulation are assembled to highlight the work of a particular director, a
genre, or some other theme. When we stage a retrospective, it should
always also be concerned with what cannot be shown elsewhere on such
occasions. The attention of the international professional and general
public must be drawn to the fact that an opportunity to see even wellknown
films again cannot simply be taken for granted. Why not link the
preservation and restoration of archive collections with Festival themes
to make the Berlinale Retro a showcase for this work?
The retrospective on the oeuvre of G.W. Pabst marks a further important
step in this direction. Our thanks are due to many partners in other
archives both for having understood what our objectives were and for
having adopted them, indeed, for having joined enthusiastically in the
common effort to evaluate collections, preserve surviving originals, and,
where feasible, to restore the most authentic possible versions. The
Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv in Berlin, for example, produced new preservation
material of three Pabst films and lent out numerous other, existing
prints. With the premiere of the reconstructed Die Freudlose Gasse, the
Munich Film Museum brought us nothing less than a film history sensation
- no-one in the audience can continue to maintain he had already
really known this picture. The final film of the Festival, too, Die Büchse
der Pandora, came to us from Munich in an extended and improved version,
in which parts of a copy from Gosfilmofond, Moscow, had been
inserted. The performance of new music for this film, composed by Peer
Raben and recorded on the initiative of the tv-station Arte also demonstrates
the many common interests that can unite in such a Festival
event: restoration, presentation, television broadcasting.
Numerous other titles were available in the fine versions that Enno
Patalas has produced over the past two decades in Munich; the only
regrettable aspect being that they are (and for the moment are likely to
remain) unique copies. We earnestly hope that Munich will do for these
films what Chris Horak, Klaus Volkmer, and Gerhard Ullmann have
already achieved for Freudlose Gasse - to check and improve these versions
on the basis of original material.
The Cineteca Nazionale in Rome lent some good copies and produced a
new preservation package and a new print of La Voce del silenzio on the
basis of the original negative. The archive of the CNC in Bois d’Arcy was
represented with a large number of Pabst’s films from his French period
23 Journal of Film Preservation / 56 / 1998