Ethics and future restoration methods.

In the meantime, the archives and restoration technologists must consider ethical problems in preparation for these new technologies. Because of the increased flexibility and range of final achievable results, a major effort is needed for technical film historians to understand and research what the early cinema images really looked like, in order to brief the restorer.

Until now restoration has been a process of using whatever modern film stock the film stock manufacturer currently supplied for modern production purposes, in order to copy an old image. Most archives expect a restored image to look somewhat like the original. When transferred to a new safety film base almost all restorations look “better” than the original simply because the new film base is clearer, less opaque or less “cloudy”, than the original. Lack of precision on the part of archives in specifying what is an acceptable restoration does not matter a great deal when the range of possible results is limited by the narrow range of photographic routes and therefore the final results.

Relatively few colour restorations of faded images have restored the image to it’s original appearance [although sometimes the restorer believes that this is achieved], and there is also some small but effective resistance in some areas of the academic world that objects to the “cleaning up” of old cinema film images. Most archivists are aware of the objection felt by some traditionalists to the removal of all, even some, scratches, which are sometimes seen as a “patina” produced by time, much as it is seen on a fine piece of antique furniture. This syndrome even has an emotive subtitle - “the romantic scratch”! Modern film restoration and wet gate printing can remove most scratches if required, a modern telecine can remove almost every scratch on a broadcast quality transfer, and digital restoration can remove absolutely every scratch on a film resolution restoration. Should we be doing so?

While there seems little doubt that in the early cinema scratches were a regular feature of the projected image, we are only just beginning to understand the true nature of many of the colours seen in the early cinema. For a generation or two some archives have ignored the colours of tinted and toned films, on the grounds that coloured film was not an intrinsic part of early cinema, when actually, it seems, up to 80% of all cinema film was coloured until 1930. Many coloured films were copied in archives onto black and white stock without recording the original colours.

The problem seems to have been a lack of interest in the forensic aspect of cinema film, in distinct contrast to the restorer’s and conservationist’s attitude to the fine arts; considerably more is known about ceramic colorants, oil based paints or medieval wall paints, than about quite recent cinema dyes.

One of the best examples is the metallic colour Prussian Blue, used extensively as a toning colour on toned films until 1930, and as a primary colour on both 2-colour and 3-colour film, until 1950. Almost all old Prussian blue images today are darker, almost black or neutral, a dense “navy blue”, while a few seem to have been lost entirely in the centre of the frame, presumably due to the irradiation from projector lamps. Yet Prussian blue produced today, in place of the silver image, using a recipe from 1910, is a clear brilliant saturated cyan-blue, startling and vivid and quite unlike archive images. We should not be surprised at this. Unlike restoring a painting most restorations of film are carried by producing a new image rather than restoring the original artefact, and while this is might be unfortunate, it is necessary, but it could allow the restorer to aim for a “simulation” of the original cinema experience, rather than a copy of the tired image left today.

In practice, only a few photographic restoration techniques allow this possibility. Some of these are; - colour restorations using separations to correct for fading, tedious, costly and slow, and requiring an experienced technician.

- The flashed dupe mask methods, now impractical for 35mm film because there are no 35mm colour reversal processes any more.

- The Desmet colour method for simulating tinting and toning. Once the technician realises the colour required, for example the saturated colour of unfaded Prussian blue that can be produced, rather than a copy of the faded film colour. This technique also has the potential for restoring other types of original.

There are few photographic restoration techniques that can achieve Desmetcolor’s precision or control, but digital restoration has the flexibility to cope with all the possibilities.

Digital restoration will bring to film restoration technology a flexibility so great that it will be essential to set guidelines to avoid the restoration becoming an irrelevant image with little relationship to the original. At present few conservationists, archivists or historians have enough knowledge of the original photographic systems to be able to set these limits or prepare a technical specification for digital restoration of any pre-incorporated coupler colour film, or any tinted or toned film.

The problem becomes serious when the restoration method is capable of such great control and variation, and both convention telecine transfers, and especially digital restoration, are capable of this. The extreme example, quite realistic even today, at a price, would be to make a restoration of both a 1920 two-colour print and a 1935 Technicolor print look just like modern Eastman Colour. Leave a good Cineon operator alone with no specification to work to, and that is what he would produce!