Catalogo Giornate del Cinema Muto 2012 - La Cineteca del Friuli

il negativo non esiste più. All’epoca, la miglior descrizione del colore
fu fatta su Variety da Mollie Gray che, scrivendo di moda femminile
al teatro e al cinema nella sua rubrica “Gray Matter” del 26 dicembre
1928, osservava: “The Viking è un piacere per gli occhi ormai stanchi
del bianco e nero; che importa se il verde del mare è troppo intenso?
È comunque un colore splendido, così come lo è tutto il resto, barbe
comprese. Nel ruolo della regina vichinga Pauline Starke è abbagliante:
l’elmo che indossa è sempre intonato alla gonna e il corpetto di scaglie
e borchie metalliche sembra costantemente riverberare riflessi del
medesimo colore. Le sfumature di verde e di bruno esaltano l’oro
ramato dei suoi capelli …”
I magnifici colori di The Viking, e in seguito quelli di Redskin della
Paramount (1929), servirono alla Technicolor a vendere il suo
procedimento a Hollywood. I risultati furono tanto convincenti da
indurre la Warner Bros. a fare il grande passo, commissionando 20
lungometraggi a colori; presto altre case l’imitarono. Grazie ai nuovi
contratti, uniti al rinnovato interesse degli investitori, nei primi
mesi del 1929 la Technicolor poté raddoppiare la propria capacità
produttiva, trovandosi a far fronte a un boom della domanda di
pellicola a colori. L’azienda entrava trionfalmente nell’era del sonoro:
dopo aver trascorso quasi 15 anni a sperimentare e ad espandersi,
finalmente realizzava dei profitti. Ma il boom era destinato a esaurirsi
rapidamente, così com’era cominciato, a causa di stampe poco brillanti
e di un gran numero di prodotti di cattiva qualità sfornati dagli studios.
La Technicolor sarebbe riuscita a rimettersi in piedi solo alla fine degli
anni Trenta, dopo aver definitivamente sviluppato il procedimento a
tre colori. – JAMES LAYTON & DAVID PIERCE
Technicolor spent the majority of the 1920s trying to establish itself
as a reliable supplier of color product. By 1927 the company had not
convinced the industry that the value of color on the screen justified
the significant additional cost. Following five years of mostly providing
inserts to the Hollywood studios, the Boston-based company wanted
to create a series of showcase examples to highlight the quality of the
color work they could provide to producers, to demonstrate that films
could be produced efficiently in color, and that the company could
manufacture prints on schedule. President and Founder Herbert T.
Kalmus wanted to present all-color production as a viable option and
devised a series of twelve Great Events dramatic 2-reelers to present
the potential of Technicolor photography and printing. These shorts
were constructed with color in mind from the outset: Kalmus’s exwife
Natalie developed the new role of the color consultant, and the
photography, by in-house cameramen Ray Rennahan and George Cave,
was exquisite. Combined with prints made by the newly introduced
dye-transfer process, these shorts did much to raise Technicolor’s
status within the industry and to encourage future business.
The Viking was another important part in this industry push. It marked
the next step in Technicolor’s efforts: to convince producers that allcolor
features were a viable option both financially and technically.
Both The Wanderer of the Wasteland (1924) and The Black Pirate
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(1926) had been great successes commercially and critically, but
Technicolor’s reputation had been tarnished by problems delivering
the large print-runs of cemented prints, which cost six times more
than black-and-white copies yet would wear out more rapidly. Herbert
Kalmus had worked closely with Douglas Fairbanks on The Black
Pirate’s production and wanted to repeat the success with another
seagoing adventure film, The Viking. In his role as executive producer,
Kalmus hired several key creative personnel from Fairbanks’s film.
Jack Cunningham was a prolific screenwriter who had worked mainly
for Famous Players-Lasky and M-G-M throughout the 1920s. He had
several big films under his belt, including The Covered Wagon (1923),
Don Q Son of Zorro (1925), and The Black Pirate. He had even
worked on early drafts for what were to be two major all-Technicolor
features for M-G-M: The Mysterious Island (abandoned first version,
1925-1927) and Rose-Marie (abandoned color version, 1926).
Cunningham was experienced in writing with color in mind and he had
worked on some of the Great Events shorts. Cunningham adapted
The Viking from a 1902 novel by Ottilie A. Liljencrantz dramatizing
events in the life of Norse explorer Leif Ericsson and his discovery
of North America around 1000 A.D. As you would expect, the use
of color is prominent throughout the story; the clash of bloodthirsty
paganism and Christian ideologies provides many opportunities for
altercations with bloody swords, daggers, and axes from the outset.
The Swedish-born artist Carl Oscar Borg, noted for his landscape
paintings of the American West, was borrowed from United Artists,
where he had worked exclusively for Fairbanks and Samuel Goldwyn
since 1926. His designs for The Viking showcase the best of the
process, from the striking red-striped sails of the long ships to the
lavish wooden banquet hall at the Greenland outpost. Even the actors’
costumes and make-up were presented with attention to detail, with
the characters modeling impressive wigs and facial hair throughout.
Director Roy William Neill joined Technicolor from Fox, where
he concluded several undistinguished years as a staff director with
Westerns starring Buck Jones and Tom Mix. Neill directed several of
the Great Events shorts before being assigned to this feature.
The Viking was the first all-color feature with a soundtrack. The
film opened at New York’s 596-seat Embassy Theatre in November
1928 with live orchestral accompaniment. A score composed and
compiled by William Axt, mixing Viking shanties with extracts from
Richard Wagner and Edvard Grieg, was recorded the first week of
December at M-G-M’s sound studio in Harlem, and replaced the live
music that month. Technicolor had been experimenting with printing
a soundtrack on the film since early 1928, and a color Movietone test
made for Fox was successfully exhibited in New York in July. The
combining of sound and color was heralded in the trade press as yet
another step in the technological progress of motion pictures. The
film played a respectable seven and a half weeks at the Embassy before
being released nationwide, where it underperformed except in areas
with Scandinavian communities.
This Eastmancolor print of The Viking reflects the colors in the
original release prints fairly closely. Technicolor transferred their
rights in The Viking to M-G-M in the 1960s, and M-G-M subsequently
made two preservation CRIs from the camera negative in 1976. This
new print is made from one of these CRIs, as the camera negative no
longer exists. The best contemporary description of the color comes
from Variety’s Mollie Gray, who reported on women’s fashions on
the stage and screen (in her column “Gray Matter”, 26 December
1928): “The Viking is a pleasure and a sight for tired-of-black-andwhite
eyes. What if the sea is too green? It’s a beautiful color anyway
and so is everything else, including various whiskers. Pauline Starke is
splendid as the Viking-Viqueen. She wore helmets matching her skirts
and always her bodice of metal fish scales of nailheads seemed to take
on some of the same color. Greens and browns harmonize with the
red gold of her hair …”
The beautiful color work displayed in The Viking, and later in
Paramount’s Redskin (1929), was instrumental in selling Technicolor’s
dye-transfer process to Hollywood. The results were convincing
enough for Warner Bros. to make the first big leap, signing to
make 20 color features, and other studios soon followed. The new
contracts and renewed interest from investors allowed Technicolor
to double its capacity in the early months of 1929, as the company
fast approached an explosion in demand for color work. Technicolor
entered the sound era on the crest of a wave; it was finally making
a profit after nearly 15 years of experimentation and expansion. The
boom would end as quickly as it began however, following lacklustre
printing and an abundance of poor-quality product from the studios.
Not until the company had firmly settled into its three-color process
would Technicolor find its feet again in the late 1930s.
�����
JAMES LAYTON & DAVID PIERCE
The Haghefilm / Selznick Fellowship 2012
La borsa di studio Haghefilm è stata istituita nel 1997 per favorire
la formazione professionale dei più brillanti fra i diplomati della L.
Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, che si tiene presso
la George Eastman House di Rochester (New York). Il borsista
trascorre un mese ad Amsterdam lavorando a stretto contatto con
i tecnici del laboratorio Haghefilm e seguendo assieme a loro tutte
le fasi del restauro di un film della collezione della GEH. Viene quindi
invitato a presentare i risultati ottenuti alle Giornate del Cinema
Muto. Il vincitore dell’edizione 2012 della Fellowship è Josh Romphf
di London, Ontario, Canada. Nel 2011 Josh si è laureato in cinema
alla University of Western Ontario della sua città. Prima di seguire i
corsi della L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, ha lavorato
alla Western come tecnico film e video presso la facoltà di Lettere e
Discipline Umanistiche e presso l’Archives and Research Collections
Centre. Egli è anche un cineasta ed ha presentato le sue opere in
occasioni internazionali come il Media City Film Festival e il Free
Screen del programma TIFF Cinematheque. Ha preparato il progetto
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per l’esame finale della Selznick School collaborando con il Motion
Picture Department della George Eastman House all’elaborazione di
un manuale sulla proiezione delle copie d’archivio.
In qualità di vincitore della borsa di studio di quest’anno, Josh
cura il restauro di una serie di frammenti Two-Color Technicolor
recentemente individuati nelle collezioni della George Eastman
House. Benché si tratti solo di brevi estratti, servono comunque a
documentare l’uso del colore sia in vari lungometraggi sonori di alto
profilo sia in cortometraggi meno noti. Le pellicole in programma
appartenevano a un collezionista, ma si ritiene che provengano tutte
dai laboratori di Boston della Technicolor; in molti casi sembra
trattarsi di prove di stampa. I titoli sonori sono stati preservati nelle
condizioni in cui sono stati trovati, ovvero senza la colonna sonora
originale. Oltre a questi frammenti a colori, Josh sta pure restaurando
i soli materiali che risultano sopravvissuti del film con Colleen Moore
Affinities, recentemente rimpatriato negli Stati Uniti dalla Nuova
Zelanda. – CAROLINE YEAGER & JAMES LAYTON
Technicolor - The Zenith of Process 3
The Haghefilm Fellowship was established in 1997 to provide additional
professional training to outstanding graduates of The L. Jeffrey Selznick
School of Film Preservation at George Eastman House, in Rochester,
New York. The Fellowship recipient is invited to Amsterdam for one
month to work alongside Haghefilm lab professionals to preserve
short films from the George Eastman House collection, completing
each stage of the preservation project. The Fellow is then invited to
present the results of their work at the Giornate del Cinema Muto.
The recipient of the 2012 Haghefilm Fellowship is Josh Romphf, from
London, Ontario, Canada. Josh holds an Honors degree in Film Studies
(2011) from Western University there. Prior to his studies at The
L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, he worked as a film
and video technician for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and the
Archives and Research Collections Centre at Western University. He
is also a filmmaker, having shown his work at international venues
including the Media City Film Festival and the TIFF Cinematheque’s
Free Screen series. As his final project at the Selznick School, Josh
aided the Motion Picture Department at the George Eastman House
in the creation of a manual on archival film projection.
As this year’s Haghefilm Fellow Josh is restoring a series of Two-
Color Technicolor fragments recently identified in George Eastman
House’s collections. Although only brief excerpts, these sequences
offer glimpses into the use of color in several high-profile sound
features and other lesser-documented shorts. Despite being obtained
from a collector, it is believed the following films were all originally
sourced from Technicolor’s Boston laboratory. Many appear to be
printing tests. All of the sound productions in this compilation reel are
presented as found, without the original accompanying soundtracks.
In addition to these color fragments Josh is also restoring the only
known footage from the Colleen Moore feature Affinities, recently
repatriated from New Zealand. – CAROLINE YEAGER & JAMES LAYTON
R & R