Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Outstanding Print of COBRA WOMAN shown

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Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 08-25-2007, 11:11 AM:

The Ohio Theatre in Columbus has had a summer film series for over 30 years. This year they tried some experiments such as late night films (Monty Python Holy Grail) and continued some traditions such as at least one silent film accompanied by Clark Wilson.

They tried a double feature of HE DONE HIM WRONG and COBRA WOMAN, a 1940's B movie with Maria Montez, Jon Hall and Sabu.

The first film was a decent b/w print with a lot of background noise and some splices. But what came after that was a big surprise. The print of COBRA WOMAN was truly a near mint dye transfer print. The reds and greens just popped off the screen. There was only one splice that I noticed and very few weak sections. Most new prints I see don't look this good. I have no idea where they got this, but I'm guessing it was a vault print. It was just beautiful.

The Ohio runs reel to reel, and has a reputation of taking care of things.

There was an audience of about 1,000 there last night (One of the best deals in town with admission of only $3.50) and the crowd really enjoyed it, breaking out into applause after the amazing "Cobra Dance" sequence.

This is a Universal picture.

The organist also noted that the sound reproducers needed to be adjusted between pictures. I applaud the crew for taking the time to do that mid show. Nice job, Ohio Theatre.

Its interesting that so many films are now impossible to book due to lack of prints, yet a picture-perfect print of COBRA WOMAN survives!

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-25-2007, 11:41 AM:

Was it nitrate? If it was an original release print, then I guess it must have been, given the date. If not, it's interesting that this film (i) was rereleased in acetate IB prints, and (ii) that one of those prints has survived in such good shape.

Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 08-25-2007, 01:04 PM:

I recall, about 10 years ago, American Movie Classics was running Cobra Woman and it did look quite good. Universal had been restoring a lot of their Technicolor movies, including the 1940's Phantom of the Opera.
It's probably printed on some kind of modern stock.

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 08-25-2007, 05:43 PM:

I did not see the print, so I can not confirm its nature. But it sure did look like dye transfer and it was almost totally free of problems.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-26-2007, 04:27 AM:

If I'm remembering correctly, IB printing in the US was phased out in the late '60s. So unless this print dates from a rerelease between 1950ish and then (or - very unlikely - it was made during the brief revival of IB between 1997-2002), I guess it must have been nitrate.

Posted by Jeffry L. Johnson (Member # 453) on 08-26-2007, 10:38 AM:

US IB Tech printing ended in the mid 1970's.

Wikipedia: Technicolor

quote:
The last new American film released before Technicolor closed their dye plant was The Godfather, Part II (1974).

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-26-2007, 02:13 PM:

Thanks Jeffrey. I guess a rerelease at some point during the '50s or '60s is the most likely source here. These acetate prints did look good - if anything slightly better than many nitrate IB prints, as the misregistration problems with the thicker nitrate were less of an issue with triacetate. I once showed an original IB print of Goldfinger, presumably made on the London IB line. It was scratched, battered and knackered, but the photographic quality was so sharp and dense it could have been 70mm - it was like watching a moving Kodachrome 64 slide.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 08-26-2007, 09:54 PM:

Funny, I JUST got off the phone with a friend of mine who had just come back from that screening and raved about it. Said the audience reaction was teriffic, especially when they noticed she was wearing stelletto heals in the middle of the jungle.

He is a New Yorker and a Brooklynite at that, so it's not easy to please him, but he raves about Columbus and that beautifully restored theatre and with a Wurlitzer rising from the pit no less! He said we have nothing like it in Brooklyn....he had to go to Columbus Ohio for such an impressive venue -- he said the place was the built in 1928, same as our Loews King movie place on Flatbush Ave., only we don't have the sense to recognize what a gem we have, so it stays fallow, rotting away over the last 20 years.

Posted by Matt Fields (Member # 3211) on 08-27-2007, 07:53 AM:

Seeing some of those summer movies at the Ohio have been among my all time favorite movie experiences, with my two favorites being "Citizen Kane" and "Gone with the Wind".

Ohio Theatre History

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 08-27-2007, 03:27 PM:

quote:
I once showed an original IB print of Goldfinger, presumably made on the London IB line. It was scratched, battered and knackered, but the photographic quality was so sharp and dense it could have been 70mm - it was like watching a moving Kodachrome 64 slide.

I find that Technicolor looks particularly good projected by carbon arc; it really does seem to make more difference than it does with chromogenic prints; I don't know why.

There's a Yahoo group for dye transfer printing, of the still photographs on paper variety. There are still a few people printing by this process many years after Kodak dropped all materials for it. Some people are using old stocks of materials, while others have made their own, some even making emulsions and coating their own matrix film. That's dedication for you! People are also making Deguerrotypes and even Lippmann photographs again; it's incredible. There has recently been discussion of whether Technicolor still have any stocks of dyes, and if so whether they would be prepared to sell them to still photographers. The general opinion seems to be that the answers are 'Yes' and 'No'

I was told, by somebody who should know, that while the American Technicolor labs destroyed their matricies after dye printing finished, the London lab retained many of theirs. The matricies always remained the property of Technicolor. When Technicolor briefly restarted dye printing there was a proposal to send some of the British matricies to America for test printing to see if they were still usable, but Technicolor abandoned the process again before this could be done. A pity, but I've no idea if they would still have been printable after all these years.

I've seen a photograph of a printer at the London lab which consisted of two old two-colour machines, with one of the four printing stations unused. I don't know how long this remained in use.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-27-2007, 03:40 PM:

The matrices would probably have shrunk significantly.

If any of the surviving ones were of films for which no separations (either camera original or intermediate) survive, though, it would be interesting to see what results scanning the matrices and then attempting to reconstruct the picture using software would achieve. Sony Pictures Classics' archive department have already done a lot of work on correcting differentially shrunk seps that way, so I'd guess that the software could be adapted to read matrices without too much trouble.

Posted by Richard P. May (Member # 3598) on 09-03-2007, 12:38 PM:

Regarding Frank's comment on audience reaction to COBRA WOMAN:
It must have been the dye transfer stiletto heels that did it!

Posted by John Stewart (Member # 989) on 09-03-2007, 11:02 PM:

Wikipedia also says:

"In 1997, Technicolor reintroduced the dye transfer process to general film production. It was also used on the restorations of films such as The Wizard of Oz, Rear Window, Funny Girl, and Apocalypse Now Redux...."

We ran a COBRA WOMAN last year and the print was new and very clean with vibrant colors. However, our copy was an Eastman print. Sure looked techicolor like.

John