Digitisations, Restorations and Revivals (34) - Wenders, Curtiz, Clouzot & Mizoguchi

Associate Editor (Restorations and Revivals) and member of the CINEMA REBORN Organising Committee, Simon Taaffe has come across the following films being screened at institutions around the world.  So…folks  time to resume a Film Alert tradition…

Wim Wenders

A selection of eight early and mid-career Wim Wenders at Lyon’s Institute Lumière. Includes a personal favourite, the director’s quite remarkable Patricia Highsmith adaptation The American Friend based on the great lady’s second Ripley novel “Ripley’s Game”. If you can get to Lyon check out the Wenders restorations

At New York’s Film Forum a rare treat of Laurel and Hardy. Stan and Ollie star in four newly restored shorts: BRATS, THE CHIMP, HOG WILD, and BERTH MARKS. Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive. Hog Wild restored to its original Vitaphone aspect ratio. Brats and Berth Marks restored to their original Vitaphone soundtrack. I f you can get to New York head for the Film Forum.

I still remember a wonderful screening of G W Pabst’s Pandora's Box at Sydney’s State Theatre with a marvelous live score by Jen Anderson, If you are in London  you can see a new copy of the film at the BFI. The website Silent London reports: The version that will be shown is a 2K DCP of the 1997 Munich Film Museum restoration, not the more recent one, which is slightly disappointing, but that said, I saw this version on a big screen recently and it really is grand. The print really does well by Gunther Krampf’s complex patterns of light and shade in his cinematography, and there is enough detail to highlight all the nuances and symbols lurking in the background. Louise Brooks sparkles as she ought to, of course. Details here

The Sea Wolf

Also at the Film Forum Michael Curtiz’s 194 The Sea Wolf described thus “From out of the frying pan... Post-collision at sea, Ida Lupino is rescued — but by Edward G. Robinson’s Wolf Larsen. With John Garfield as the inevitable rebel, as the oppression, mutinies, and sacrifices ensue.” If you read Barrie Pattison’s book on Curtiz you get an enthusiastic response to one of the major Curtiz films, now playing on DCP in a complete uncut pre-release version, with 14 minutes of restored footage. Details here.

Kenji Mizoguchi

Finally three more screenings at the esteemed Film Forum H G Clouzot's Quai des Orfèvres and two by Japanese master Kenji Mizoguchi Sansho the Bailiff…. and fresh from its screening in a lovely 35mm print at the 1980 Melbourne Film Festival to a packed house at the Palais Chikamatsu Monogatari