Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

survived - until now no trace has shown up in any archive. The most
complete remaining material of the German version is the magnetic
sound print of the reedited version the Munich Filmmuseum possesses.
Since the colour faded film clips spliced into it later originally had been
in foreign language, the idea occurred to replace these sequences with
the corresponding sequences from the French reedited version and
thus to restore the multilinguality of the film. Yet, one must bear in
mind that this will lead to a new version, a construct combining
material from two differently shot language versions which represents
but an approximation of the original.
In the course of the search for the best French material, two prints
showed up which surprisingly enough correspond to the French
première version. The Cinématèque Municipale de Luxembourg
possesses a silent workprint in which some takes have been replaced
with black leader, but which includes all the cut sequences and
moreover, is of good picture quality, for, thanks to its silence, it’s never
been run. But the major surprise came from a somewhat worn Belgian
distribution print from the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique,
corresponding not only in picture to the French première version, but
has also the original four-channel magnetic sound. The only limitations
consist of the bad colour preservation and in the Flemish subtitles
stamped into the picture. On the soundtrack but one word had been
erased: Lola’s answer to the governess’ question in the ship’s dormitory,
how old she is. Commentaries from the Paris première report, that the
public laughed at Lola’s answer “Sixteen”, not buying it from 33 year old
Martine Carol.
The best picture quality can be found in the original negatives. The
German negative as well as the French negative have survived, the first
one (without reel 2b which is lost) preserved by
Bundesarchiv/Filmarchiv, the second one at G.T.C. in Paris. Unfortunately
both negatives have been cut down to the short reedited chronological
version. But whereas in the French negative each second shot is
shortened, the German negative keeps all the remaining shots in their
original length so that they could be used for the reconstruction.
The montage of the new, restored version is highly complex, since it
adheres as often as possible to the German original negative, but also
has to fall back upon the Munich print for missing parts, and for
foreign parts mainly upon the Luxembourg workprint and only
sometimes upon the French original negative. In order to harmonise
these different materials and to avoid a loss in picture quality by
duplication, the reconstruction was made digitally on HDTV. For the
sound reconstruction the magnetic track of the Munich print had to be
interwoven artistically with the one of the Belgian print. The sound mix
of the French première served as a model to correct the modifications
of the reedited German sound mix. Yet, these corrections could only be
carried out in a limited way, since Ophüls did not separate the sound to
the four channels and since no music, noise and dialogue tracks have
survived. Thus, the restoration of bilingual sequences by a combination
of the two existing sound tracks could be carried out only in scenes
where music and background noise were identical. This turned out well
at Lola’s meeting with the student, and at her audience at the King’s. At
15 Journal of Film Preservation / 65 / 2002