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San Francisco Examiner (21/Oct/1995) - 'Vertigo' to be completely restored

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'Vertigo' to be completely restored

"Vertigo," Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 classic that is often rated as one of the greatest American films, will be fully restored for Universal by Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz, who together and separately have been responsible for the dazzling reconstructions and restorations of "Lawrence of Arabia," "Spartacus" and "My Fair Lady."

Originally shot in color in Paramount's VistaVision process, the James Stewart-Kim Novak starrer will be upgraded to Super Vista-Vision 70mm and a DTS digital soundtrack, with the result, according to Katz, that "the film will be seen like it's never been seen before." Restoration work should take one year.

Unlike much of what passes for "restoration" and "director's cut" these days, this effort, like the team's earlier work, will involve an exhuming and total rehabilitation of all existing materials on the film in order to achieve the best possible visual and aural result.

Already, an alternate ending has been found that will be presented as a bonus.

The first question many film buffs and Hitchcock fans will ask is, why "Vertigo"? Along with several other pictures the director made at Paramount in the 1950s, it was sold to Universal after his death, re-released with great success in 1984 and put out on video. What's the problem?

"The truth is, it's an important film, and it needed to be done," Harris said. "If somebody didn't do something about it now, it would be a lost film. We couldn't find one good print from 1958. The L.A. Conservancy showed one in downtown L.A. to a packed house a couple of months ago, and the best print they could get was awful. It was horrible in 1984. It was all yellow, and the negative was so bad that there was no way you could strike a good print."

Katz, who, as president of Universal Classics was instrumental in the 1984 reissue, acknowledged that no restoration work was done on the Hitchcocks at that time.

It has taken three years to receive all the necessary clearances to proceed with the current project, an expensive undertaking that has received the enthusiastic support both of former studio boss (now MCA vice chairman) Tom Pollock and of the new Seagram-era administration.

Creating a new 65mm restoration negative, from which the 70mm prints will be struck, will be a complicated job, involving use of the faded original negative, old and new separations, and digital technology. As often happens, some of the original materials have shrunk, while others are covered with dirt, which will require extensive digital repair.

In terms of the soundtrack, "Vertigo" was originally released with monaural sound. However, Harris and Katz's sleuthing has already unearthed tapes of Bernard Herrmann's great score recorded in three-track stereo, done in both London and Vienna due to a Hollywood musicians strike at the time. The entire track will be remixed and converted to DTS.

Harris offered an example of the sort of exacting detail that goes into their work: "We're trying to get a reference on the precise color of the Jaguar that appears in the film, so I've been in touch with Coventry to try to get a paint chip from that year and model.

"But even that's not really enough, because you should really then photograph that paint with the same stock that Hitchcock originally used, to see how the color looked on screen."

Harris and Katz agree that most of the studios have been more conscientious about preserving their films and negatives since the worth of the video and laser markets became apparent, and since preservation activists such as Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg began raising consciousness about the subject.

All the same, there are many films, such as those once made for United Artists, that fall between the cracks of producer-distributor ownership and are rarely looked after, and the problem currently is much more urgent for 1950s-60s films on Eastmancolor negatives than for earlier black-and-white or I.B. Technicolor pictures.

The alternate or, more properly, additional ending Hitchcock shot but didn't use has James Stewart, after the mission bell tower climax, returning to Barbara Bel Geddes' San Francisco apartment and listening to a radio report on how the killer has been caught.

Apparently, this scene may have been used in some international markets that required such an explicit resolution.

As for specific pictures Harris would like to tackle in the not-too-distant future, such 1960s road-show epics as "The Alamo," "West Side Story," "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" and "The Sand Pebbles" are strong candidates.

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