With the Pickwick Theatre Classic Film Series, I work with a large venue and large crowds, but one thing I miss about running the smaller LaSalle Theatre was working with actual film– and talking about film. Since those days of projecting 16mm and 35mm prints, most theatres in recent years have converted to digital projection. “DCP” (Digital Cinema Package) being the format that has replaced film. But it has not replaced the unique qualities of film itself. Images were not meant to be pixelated and uploaded into a computer. The properties of Technicolor, for instance, most certainly cannot be duplicated digitally. Sadly, with theatrical film exhibition receding into the past, the values and history of such terms as Technicolor have become lost on the new generation. Since I often say, “If we only had an IB Technicolor print of this title we would bring in twice as many people…” Whether that’s true now, I don’t know. But to answer some of the specific questions I’ve taken this season, I thought I’d elaborate in more detail.
Three-strip Technicolor is IB Technicolor. One and the same. “IB” stands for “Imbibition” indicating the use of dyes (cyan, magenta and yellow) on a single black strip of finished film (a matrix) from corresponding (three) camera negatives. After 1975, the word “Technicolor” was merely a copyright logo and saleable name in the industry; everything was actually processed on Eastman stock. Not that it made much difference by then. Full-blown, full-lit color photography was out; the kind of muted, shaded “noir” look was in. Everything started to look drained thereafter. All other studio systems, i.e., Metrocolor, Warnercolor, Pathe, etc., were all Eastman products. The absolute nadir was Deluxe, filled with pinks and purples over true reds and blues, and, interestingly, mostly associated with the Cinemascope process; the cost of wide-screen photography was offset by the inferior hues. Sort of pointless, really. As far as 16mm went, all those Warnercolor films of the early and mid-1950s were genuinely finished on Technicolor stock and consequently rather nice as projected.
I can’t exactly tell you how to spot a true Technicolor print; you just know it from experience. But Tech film stock is the “thickest,” naturally, due to the three layers of dyes, and the soundtrack is jet black as opposed to a bluish or purplish-ish track on an Eastman. The nice thing is, Techs were virtually vacuum-packed and, hence, fading is almost nil, even forty, fifty years later. Eastmans can literally fade to red in a matter of months. Of course, I’m talking about the “old days” before the low tolerance Japanese stocks that surfaced a few decades ago. There’s a CRI Technicolor standard stock (actually Kodak) that really captured most of the hues of the original Tech, except possibly for that unique “green” shading no one could touch. I suspect that A Matter of Life and Death was a CRI or just possibly a true Tech from England, in which case we all would relish a screening! The Biograph, pre-VCRs, used to annually run a Tech on The Adventures of Robin Hood which would knock your eyeballs for a loop; it was so sharp and rich you thought it was a 3-D print!
I can’t say for certain that some of the Warner cartoons I played at the LaSalle Theatre were Tech. They could’ve been Kodak dupes. Generally speaking, most every major film photographed after 1935 was Technicolor, with an occasional foray into Cinecolor or Magnacolor or some similar 2-color Eastman process; up until maybe 1949 when Kodak refined a single strip process that was more feasible than the costly and mechanically-difficult Technicolor and the 3-pack camera set-up. You’ll notice a lot of films starting in the early ’50s carry a credit “Print by Technicolor” meaning they were shot in some form of Eastmancolor but processed onto a Tech release stock, and quite often the difference was almost undetectable due to improved raw celluloid. Though I’m not positive, I believe one of the last features shot in the 3 camera Tech negative way was Underwater in ’55, with Jane Russell, before they went to a ‘single-pack’ film in which the three colors were printed onto the single strip of stock in the camera via a prism.
I almost forgot about those eccentric-looking ‘Trucolor’ Westerns from Republic, a dual-color format showcasing snazzy ‘teal’ greens and ‘orange’ reds.
Another question I’ve been asked pertains to how new film prints are made or “struck” for replacement after old prints wear out. As previously mentioned, prints are no longer being struck for the commercial market, though some filmmakers still shoot on 35mm film. But generally, new prints of classic films would be made through institutions like the George Eastman House, or the Library of Congress, or the Museum of Modern Art, etc. But back in the day when all theatres projected film, the process went something like this: There were a number of avenues, which also accounts for the disparity in results. In a nutshell, we start with the original negative, that is, the camera negative. A positive “work print” is struck from the various reels. This is edited and acts as a blueprint for cutting the original negative. From there you can print all the ‘release’ positives wanted. ‘Protection’ copies of both the negative and positive can be created– duped– from these sources as safeguards. Film will naturally wear out the more times through the optical printer. Now, I’m talking the Golden Age when nitrate ruled. Decades pass. Film deteriorates. Nitrate was highly flammable and quick to decompose. Sometimes titles disappear forever in original form, negative or first positive. Protection prints, also known as ‘lavenders,’ may be the only existing source material. Enter acetate ‘safety’ film in 1949. Their biggest problem is shrinkage. Kodak introduced 16mm in 1923, mainly for amateur home movies. Hollywood product was first matched to 16mm around 1944, the popular format for rental libraries, later TV packages. Needless to say, a new ‘inner’ negative in the reduced gauge was struck from any available source, as close to the camera neg as possible. That shift in tone, light and dark, within a continuous strip is due to the lab not ‘timing’ the different edit cuts (like the same scene was broken up in two or three different photographic sessions). The reason some newer 16mms are ‘light’ struck, dupey, flat contrast, etc., is you might be working from a dupe reduction positive, or a duped 16mm from the only existing fine-grain positive. I can tell you, for example, there is no 35mm material on a Republic movie serial like Dick Tracy Vs. Crime, Inc. in existence. Lost, mis-catalogued, damaged, decomposition, whatever. Only fine-grain 16mm positives from which everything down the line is or will be struck. Obviously, the further away from the initial source, the lesser the quality. I don’t have to mention how this problem is magnified a million-fold in dealing with color stock. Improved stocks of today can yield marvelous representations of older prints, and with the advent of computer and digital technology, whole images can be erased, certainly cleaned up to near perfection. The bottom line, before digital, was how good was your best source material?
And what can you say about abnormal situations, like RKO selling off its entire library of some 755 titles, shipping the camera negs to South American labs, and forever altering the opening credits on many a classic by eliminating the tower trademark and relabeling everything a “C&C” film (with freeze frame titles) and doing the same with the endings. That was 1955 and there are still Radio pictures so disfigured. Ditto for a lot of Universals, like the Abbott & Costellos, taken over for reissue in the ’50s by Realart. Or the Columbias which emerged as “Screen Gems” product in TV packages. You’ll be unhappy to hear there is no 35 neg on Stagecoach for the most heinous reason imaginable: Wanger/UA sold the material to Masterpiece Imprints in the late ’40s and they cut up the camera neg to make new trailers! Most of your modern day print-offs were copied from the only 35mm positive around– from John Wayne’s collection– donated to USC.
~MCH