Nitrate Picture Show

[Monsieur Arkadin]

The George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York just announced the full schedule for the 8th Nitrate Picture Show.
I was gifted full passes this year, so it's the first year I'll be at every screening. But I usually make it to 2 or 3. The prints are always nitrate prints, most often original prints, and usually have pretty fun stories about how they made their way into the program.

The films screening this weekend (in order) are:

Opening Film
-Intolerance - DW Griffith (1916)
Shorts Program
-The Flute of Krishna - Martha Graham, Rouben Mamoulian(?) (1926)
-The Lunch Hound - Walter Lantz (1927)
-Lights Out - Eddie Donnely (1942)
-Know For Sure - Lewis Milestone (1941)
-Juke Box Follies - W. Merle Connell (1945)
-Le Vieux Chateau - Henri Cerutti (1935)
-It Never Happened - J.S Watson Jr. (1934)
-Zarozhdenie Zhizni - Vsevelod Pudovkin (1930)
-The Skeleton Dance - Walt Disney (1929)
Feature(ish) Films
-From Mayerling to Sarajevo - Max Ophuls (1940)
-The Good Fairy - William Wyler (1935)
-Kikyo - Hideo Oba (1950)
-Stella Dallas - King Vidor (1937)
-The Plow That Broke the Plains - Pare Lorentz (1936)
-Partie De Campaigne - Jean Renoir (1936/1946)
-Germany, Year Zero - Roberto Rossellini (1948)
-The Strawberry Blonde - Raoul Walsh (1941)
-Meet Me In Saint Louis - Vincente Minelli (1944)
-The Threepenny Opera - GW Pabst
Closing Film
-Blind Date with Nitrate (left a secret until the screening. Previous years included The Third Man, Pinocchio and something by Teuvo Tulio that I didn't catch the name or screening of.

I'm not good at festival reportage. I tend to just watch the films... but I'll try to provide a couple updates as I make my way through the next three days.

[rischka]

that sounds amazing

[wba]

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Went to the opening film, Intolerance last night. Almost completely sold out show, which is impressive for a film from 1916. We had live accompaniment by Phillip Carli, who is one of the great living accompanists, and conveniently lives in Rochester.

The Print
The nitrate print was a 1936(?) print that was lent to the festival by The Library of Congress. It had been suggested for the Nitrate Picture show years ago, but the print had 1.4% shrinkage, which the projectionists were uncomfortable attempting to project. However, over the last few years, they had built some confidence in working with shrunken prints and felt they could manage it, which is why it came this year.

The print came to the library of congress from Germany shortly after the reunification of East and West Germany. Before that happened, it was unclear that there even was a surviving nitrate print of the film. After reunification, and the merging of two national film archives, Germany decided to repatriate all their American films to the US, and this was one of them. However, upon repatriation it was clear that the print had been made for MoMA, as their logo sits at the front, before any other titles. Apparently, Moma had a print made in the 1930s for a "classic film series" they were running. Then sent it on tour, where it made its way to Germany just at the start of political unrest, which led to it staying there until the 1990s. I don't believe it had ever been projected fully since then, due to the shrinkage.

I was quite surprised how good it looked. Definitely some image issues throughout, but overall it was in good shape.

The nitrate projector had its gate fall apart minutes before the screening, so there was a bit of a delay, but otherwise all went quite well.

The Film
I am pretty ambivalent towards Griffith in general, and this is one of the few ways I would probably ever sit through 3 hours of him in a single go. It's not going to change my mind about him. Some of his most impressive traits were on display here, and many bad ones. Worst of all is his simultaneous pedantry and shallow-mindedness. Moral actions are always simplistic. If someone does something bad he has to intervene with a title card calling them "INTOLERANT!" or "HYPOCRITES" (which he seems to save only for the pharisees, suspiciously, despite reusing the same vocab constantly for other notable words). You can tell he had basically no story for the Hugeunots other than the massacre sequence, and the Christ stuff is clearly an afterthought. I also think, despite the impressive cross-cutting, these stories fit together only through Griffiths brute force and a heavy hand with the title cards.
Undoubtedly impressive. Clearly innovative. But also... Chaplin made The Kid only four years later, and that feels like a completely different era of filmmaking, so I think its worth keeping the praise of Griffith in check.
The teenager in me loves nudity and beheadings though, so I'm going to find joy in the film regardless.

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Day 2 of the festival. Very intense day. Almost wall-to-wall screenings from morning to midnight.

Shorts Program
A ton here. Early silent two-strip technicolor print of The Flute of Krishna which was shot in Rochester, NY for Eastman Kodak, and has been preserved perfectly. Likely directed by Rouban Mamoulian, but can't say for sure. Other than the technicolor (which is quite spectacular) and the quality of the print, nothing to write home about. But it was a fun way to kick it off.

Know for Sure is a 20-minute PSA about Syphalis, produced in Hollywood. Starring an array of semi-famous faces. Primarily focused on Ward Bond who is shy to tell his doctor about a sore on his penis. Kind of noteworthy because of how Frankly they discuss sex work, condom usage, and body parts, yet it feels like a fully Hollywood production, making it feel like a bizarro world Hollywood film where there was no Hayes Code.

It Never Happened also known as Tomato's Another Day had everyone talking David Lynch as they left the theater. And it definitely has a bit of Rabbits in it. Interesting because it was produced by a wealthy film hobbyist in Rochester. So family of the cast and crew are just around to provide some details. Curators solicited help from the audience in identifying one of the actors on screen. Which proved, so far, to be fruitless. The woman in the film was a student at the Eastman School of Music. And the director was friends with many people at the George Eastman Museum, so we had access to the single print available.

For me, the highlight of the shorts was Vsevelod Pudovkin's Zarozhdenie Zhizni or Death and Regeneration. The print was gorgeous and it was filled with the most striking rhythm and imagery I've seen so far at the festival.

Finally they played Walt Disney's The Skeleton Dance twice. Once on Acetate and once on Nitrate and let the audience guess.Both prints were made from the same negative about three years apart. So it was the closest comparison available to us this festival. It was partly to see how much of our entire festival is merely fetishization in our heads. I do think the difference is more subtle than some people will let on. However, it's obvious to almost any semi-engaged viewer. The second the first print started I said to my wife "this is acetate". The theater was almost unanimous in correctly identifying the nitrate print. So it was cool to see how viscerally audiences could feel the difference.

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Day 3 done and I've made my way through most of the features (and two featurettes).

The Good Fairy has proven to be a festival highlight. For me, and for most of the audience. It was one of the more lively screenings I've been to. I'd never seen a Margaret Sullivan film before, but was blown away. She is really excellent in the film. In fact, it's one of the best comedies I've ever seen in terms of performances. All three leads are firing on all cylinders, which rare. Usually you have a Joel McCrea or someone there to sap the energy out of the room. Excellent script, but I think the crowd was a little excited to denigrate Wyler and over-credit Sturgess' screenplay. The rhythm, staging, and quality of the performances speak a lot of what Wyler did with Sturgess' script.

People were less stoked about Hideo Oba's Homecoming. The first (and only?) nitrate Fujifilm print of the festival. The film had the misfortune of playing late evening after a looooong day of screenings. And also starting late due to projector difficulties. It's not a crowd-pleaser but the print was gorgeous. One of the most pristine I've ever seen. And the film is quite good. I imagine it would play a lot better at 2pm. Oba was apparently Oshima's mentor, but not widely screened outside Japan in the 40s and 50s. This film was last screened in America in 1978.

Another crowdpleaser was the 9:30am screening of Stella Dallas. Notable because Nitrate prints tend to not exist of popular films. The more frequently they screened the less likely the print would survive in project-able quality to 2024. So most often we see films that were not wildly successful. But we got this one from Martin Scorsese. Who has a massive collection, but only a few Nitrate Prints, and this was one of them. The print was not pristine, but very watchable. Also... this film would make an amazing double feature with Mildred Pearce.

Germany Year Zero screening was noteworthy because we screened the only (currently) known nitrate print of the film. From the Finnish film institute. As a result it had both Finnish and Swedish subtitles hard coded, which bothered a lot of people more than it bothered me. People sitting behind me were sobbing by the end. I am a cynical heartless person, and was more apt to cry during Stella Dallas. I liked the film, which I hadn't seen before.

Raoul Walsh's The Strawberry Blonde was the final screening of Day 3, and connects the program to this morning's first screening of Meet Me In St. Louis. Not quite the crowd pleaser of The Good Fairy but charming nonetheless. The moment where Walsh decides to transition from a lion's roar to a German Opera Singer is so absurd that I was laughing for several minutes after. So I had a good time.

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Final day of screenings. Only three films today.
Meet Me In St. Louis on a pristine print from the library of congress. It was submitted to them as part of the copyright process in 1944.

The Threepenny Opera in a far from pristine print from the Austrian film archive. It was apparently long believed that the Nazis destroyed all the original prints of this film. Criterion's restoration erroneously claims to be restored from the original negative, however the original negative has been destroyed. Criterion's restoration comes from a dupe. This print somehow made its way into soviet hands and was preserved. Little is known other than the fact that it is the closest to contemporary surviving print in existence. Which was exciting. Must be reiterated that it was not in great shape. The final 10-15 minutes were damaged due to improper restoration work. Still watchable, but some weird pattern keeps flashing on the screen which also caused issues with the optical soundtrack.

Closing Film
The Blind Date with nitrate turned out to be Day of Wrath by Carl Dreyer. In great shape, from the Eastman's own archives. I like Dreyer, but hadn't seen this one. It was an American release print, so credits were in English, and the subtitles were hard coded, they also skipped maybe 1/4 or 1/5 of the dialogue, nothing important. But the print was gorgeous and the film was great. There was an audible gasp in the room when people realized what we were about to watch.

Overall it was a lot of fun. Exhausting as shit to sit through that many films, and the Eastman Museum's Dryden Theater is not always the most pleasant room to watch these in, not well suited to a large crowd. I'm not confident I'll ever sit through the whole program again. But I'm glad I did it this time.

[rischka]

omg DAY OF WRATH i love that movie!! i would've gasped too

Finally they played Walt Disney's The Skeleton Dance twice. Once on Acetate and once on Nitrate and let the audience guess.Both prints were made from the same negative about three years apart. So it was the closest comparison available to us this festival. It was partly to see how much of our entire festival is merely fetishization in our heads. I do think the difference is more subtle than some people will let on. However, it's obvious to almost any semi-engaged viewer. The second the first print started I said to my wife "this is acetate". The theater was almost unanimous in correctly identifying the nitrate print. So it was cool to see how viscerally audiences could feel the difference.

this is interesting, i have often wondered about it. glad you had a good time, sounds like a rare opportunity. also margaret sullavan is the best ♥♥♥

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Just catching up with this recap now. Thanks for this. So interesting, and so envious of getting to see all of these vintage nitrate prints! I'll have to go one day...

[nrh]

an interesting essay on nitrate picture show (and il cinema ritrovato) from this weekend - https://mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/the- ... -s-dilemma

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

an interesting essay on nitrate picture show (and il cinema ritrovato) from this weekend - https://mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/the- ... -s-dilemma

Lovely!

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Thanks for posting that article. I missed it!
I take a bit of umbrage with this line:

Though there were many attendees in their 20s and early 30s, it’s disappointing that there were no teens or families in attendance and that most seemed to have come from out of town

maybe because it feels personal to me, being the only film professor at the local community college. But I saw several of my own students there, in their teens and 20s, and several who came with their families (including 12 and 13 year olds). This is despite the fact that there's no student discount during the festival and individual tickets are quite expensive.

I do agree that it is overwhelmingly older out-of-towners... but I've been working pretty hard the past half-decade to rejuvenate the filmgoing crowd here.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Thanks for posting that article. I missed it!
I take a bit of umbrage with this line:

Though there were many attendees in their 20s and early 30s, it’s disappointing that there were no teens or families in attendance and that most seemed to have come from out of town

maybe because it feels personal to me, being the only film professor at the local community college. But I saw several of my own students there, in their teens and 20s, and several who came with their families (including 12 and 13 year olds). This is despite the fact that there's no student discount during the festival and individual tickets are quite expensive.

I do agree that it is overwhelmingly older out-of-towners... but I've been working pretty hard the past half-decade to rejuvenate the filmgoing crowd here.

Not sure if the Notebook has a Letters section, but this feels worthy of a write-in correction!

[wba]

Thanks for the write-up!
A wonderful selection of films.
Would love to attend one day.

As for THE GOOD FAIRY: the screenplay based on a play by Ferenc Molnar (and definitely not Sturges), a Hungarian writer, writing in Hungarian, who was - among many other things - one of the pioneers of the screwball comedy on the stage during the 1910s and 1920s (in the 1920s he wrote for example the play "One, Two, Three" which Billy Wilder adapted pretty faithfully to the screen in 1961, only switching locations from New York to Berlin). I'm a huge fan of Molnar, as he's one of my Top 5 favorite writers, and the movie is an adaptation of his play, which was a Broadway hit during the early 30s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Fairy_(play)

The directing is all William Wyler, who is in my opinion easily one of the absolutely greatest of all filmmakers working in the USA (for me, Top 3, beside Hitchcock and Chaplin), and THE GOOD FAIRY is one of his many masterpieces.

I'm not trying to denigrate Sturges, but he's simply nowhere near Molnar, when it comes to writing characters, dialogue, screwball comedy - you name it.
And he's also not even close to being as great a director as Wyler.
So yes, Sturges did change a lot from the play and made it his own, but one shouldn't overestimate his contribution.