Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Sunset Boulevard (UK rerelease)

This is topic Sunset Boulevard (UK rerelease) in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 04-15-2003, 02:08 AM:

Dunno if this belongs here or is now in the realms of the afterlife, but as the film is currently being distributed on 35mm in British cinemas, I'm going with here.

This print is a massive improvement on any copy of this film I've seen before, both in terms of completeness and visual quality. In particular, the version put out by the BFI about 5-6 years ago on prints blown up from a 16mm interneg was fuzzy, flat and generally unwatchable.

Sunset Boulevard was the last Hollywood studio feature to be shot on nitrate, and someone told me that the camera negatives had decomposed within 20 years. All the releases since have originated from second-generation elements at best. I can't believe that the sharpness, lack of any visible grain, incredible depth of field and deep contrast can have been achieved by traditional optical printing. I don't know for sure, but would almost put money on this having been done digitally, and at very high resolution too. However, given that the Academy frame is magnified that much less than 1:1.85 or 'scope, I guess they might have got away with 2k.

The complete absense of any visible negative dirt or scratching, and of any hiss whatsoever on the soundtrack made the film a bit disconcerting to watch at times, I thought.

As for the film itself, I thought it drew interesting parallels in the combination of the Hollywood immigrant workforce (e.g. De Mille and Erich von Stroheim, not to mention Billy Wilder) and the indiginous managerial and industrial talent (e.g. Jay himself, and the Nancy Olson character) which led to the rise of the studio system and, as this film is implicitly arguing, its post-war decline.

It certainly has a lot more interesting points to make on the issue than Singin' in the Rain, which covers similar subject matter but dumbs it down relentlessly.

Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 04-15-2003, 10:32 AM:

Indeed, Paramount used 2K resolution digital restoration technology (by John Lowry) to restore "Sunset Boulevard":

http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/amia-l/2003/01/msg00146.html

http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-021126film,0,1213961.story

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/files/lowry.txt

http://www.blogcritics.org/archives/2002/11/25/122016.php

http://www.technofile.com/dvds/sunset_blvd.html

http://www.thebigpicturedvd.com/bigreport11.shtml

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 04-15-2003, 11:28 AM:

Not a bad guess! [Smile]

According to the Chicago Tribune piece, the new version did not have a theatrical release in the US, so all thanks to the British Film Institute for picking it up for distribution.

Now if they'd scanned it at 4k and made the release prints on Imax...