Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Gone With the Wind (1939

This is topic Gone With the Wind (1939 - 1998) in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 04-12-2006, 07:49 PM:

On that topic of the reissue of GWTW where that post was issued in 2002, ..I start here..

That NewLine 1998 dye-transfer GWTW anamorphic release print was a beast to run - due to the three nitrate negatives had shrunk in places, thus color bleed on certain scenes.

Being a dye transfer, the soundtracks were the silver variety - including the three digitals tracks.

We had a bugger of a time running DTS with major dropouts, SR-D with high error/dropout rates...thus had to play this movie in SR-optical.

thx-monte

Posted by Aaron Sisemore (Member # 145) on 04-13-2006, 12:50 AM:

I played it in SDDS with zero problems(!!). The SRD track was totally unplayable. Never had a chance to try it in DTS.

-Aaron

Posted by Fred Georges (Member # 505) on 04-15-2006, 10:28 AM:

Same here. Brand new print. One of show. During tests major dropouts on SR-D. Tried the SDDS & it performed flawlessly. I cut a reverse windowboxed aperature plate for this showing. Our print Looked decent but Grainy. The 80's re-issue was far better in terms of picture quality IMHO.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 04-15-2006, 12:10 PM:

We played it here in DTS with no problems.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 04-15-2006, 06:33 PM:

This is a film that everyone should see (and which should be presented properly--just as every film should be), but I really don't like it very much. The acting is a bit over-the-top and none of the characters is particularly likeable in any way. It means much more to me as an important piece of film history than as a piece of art.

The 1998 prints were crappy (especially since the 1.33 image pillarboxed within a scope frame appears super-tiny in theatres with common-width masking). The sound mix was the best part of that reissue--it's one of the few fake-stereo mixes that I have heard that actually sounded decent. We ran it in Dolby A, as we didn't have SR cards. The sound level always seems to be low on the "new" IB Tech prints, despite being a silver track (at least that's the case with Bulworth, GWTW, and Wizard of Oz, on both white-light and red-light readers). Most "old" IB Tech prints play at normal levels on both types of readers. Can anyone explain what has changed?

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 04-15-2006, 08:45 PM:

I tried, once, to watch GWTW. Couldn't stand it. I just don't get its appeal. [Shrug]

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 04-15-2006, 09:41 PM:

Frankly, David, we don't give a damn.

(Someone had to say it ... you were all thinking it.) [Big Grin]

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 04-16-2006, 01:17 AM:

I remember running this movie in 1998. The DTS rocked the house (I think...). But we did get "convergence" complaints from about 33% of our entire audience who came to see it. I went downstairs and told the guy that it was film, but he insisted that some of the colors were off, looking like bad convergence on a cheap TV set. I told him that's what film does and to please go away and preferably never come back, as we don't like people who enjoy old crappy movies. Turns out that this was an IB Technicolor print (the film equivalent of RGB video) and they printed one or two of the layers of color or however they do it poorly. Sure, they could have re-enlarged the shrunken nitrate colors in Final Cut Pro, but the people who made the print sucked ass and would never think of such a clever solution. We might have caught this if we screened the print, but the entire projection staff along with the rest of the staff of the theater hate watching super long movies with boring plots, no female nudity and/or unattractive people in them. Actually come to think of it one of our ass. managers did screen it. However he wouldn't notice if a reel was upside down and backwards. But for the 3 people who actually bought tickets to it (during matinee only) for its entire run, I probably wouldn't have replaced the print anyway. The print shed so much I thought Kate Moss was living in our projector. I fail to understand why they make an IB Tech print of a movie that has super-crappy color in the first place. I can't wait for the first IB Tech black and white movie.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 04-16-2006, 08:54 AM:

quote: Joe Redifer
I can't wait for the first IB Tech black and white movie.

In that case you need wait no longer (than 1946): A Matter of Life and Death. The b/w sequences were done in 'Dye Monochrome', meaning that the three colour records were shot in the beam-splitting colour, and then they were all printed with the same dye.

Hopefully the digital recombination of variably shrunk seps should go a long way to addressing registration issues. At last year's AMIA conference we were shown clips from 4k restorations of The Wizard of Oz and Chinatown (the latter had been recombined from acetate preservation seps, the o-negs having faded badly), and they did look impressively crisp and saturated.

Agreed with David on GWTW - it never really did much for me, either (though, admittedly, the burning of Atlanta scene is spectacular).

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 04-18-2006, 03:04 AM:

Nice that on film-tech you can actually say you think GWTW is a nothing but an overblown soap opera with characters so wooden that would have been WAY more fun watching if they were used as kindling in the fire at Atlanta.

On the other hand, I DO love it because of the great score which you get to pump up 3 or 4 points TWICE, and you get to play with the curtains and curtain warmers twice as well, assuming you leave the intermission in. That score just give me goosebumps every time. Of course, if you take the intermission out, they we know you don't have a curtain or warmers, then you can't do movie palace presentation. And then it's just REALLY boring. Then again, I know Joe hates all that curtains and warmers and intermisison music and stuff, but that's cause he's never had the chance to play the big movie palace toy. Once you ride that bike, Joe, you never want to get off.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 04-18-2006, 03:13 AM:

The last "real" theater I worked in had curtains in half of its 16 auditoriums, and I even cued them to close and open on intermissions. I also turned up the heat in the auditoriums so the audience would be "warmer".