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Glorious Technicolor
"Gone With The Wind" has never looked better than it will on its forthcoming re-releases in Melbourne and Sydney. It has been brought back to life by the use of a new printing procedure backed by Chapel Distribution and The Astor Theatre in Melbourne. But it's not just GWTW - the David Lean classic, "Ryan's Daughter", has also had the treatment. Chapel Distribution and The Astor Theatre have long been involved in having new prints made of older films but GWTW was a major challenge because it had used the Technicolor dye-inbibition system. Technicolor IB was the first successful "full-colour" film process but, interestingly, it did not actually use any colour film.
Three strips of black & white film were used in the camera and, by the use of filters, each strip recorded information for one of the three primary colours. Then (in a process that is, in many ways, analogous to modern printing on paper) each of the three camera negatives was used to produce a printing matrix. Each matrix would then soak-up the appropriate dye which would be transferred to clear film stock which would become the actual release print. There were three passes - one for each of the colours - and it will be seen that extreme accuracy in registration (to just 500 millionths of an inch) was necessary to make sure that each of the colours was put in the correct position. Any errors would result in colour fringing. The process was made more complicated by the fact that the clear film stock sometimes carried a faint black & white image to improve contrast.
The film receiving the image would also already have a sound track which would have been exposed in the conventional manner. When you consider all the complications it seems something of a miracle that it worked at all. But work it did - and the process produced some of the most-stunning results ever seen on the screen. There were some refinements over the years - such as the use of a single camera-negative from which colour separations were then produced. But the essential system remained unchanged until improvements in single-film colour processes brought about its demise. Much of the plant was sold-off (some went to China). But, for many people, the "magic" of the three-strip process never went away. There's no doubt that it had deep blacks, rich colours and stunning contrast that never seemed to be matched by any of the single-strip processes.
This led to a renewed interest in the process for the re-releases of films such as "Gone With The Wind" (which was actually filmed using the three-strip process). But getting the process working again was not easy - the old skills and much of the equipment had been lost. This alone would have made things difficult but more obstacles were placed in the way of a successful re-release of GWTW. The inter-positive for an earlier re-release was used to produce the colour separations. Many experts in the field felt that it was simply not suited to that purpose and that "earlier-generation" elements should have been used. Then there was the problem that GWTW, as with all films from the pre-widescreen days, was filmed using the full Academy frame area - that is, an aspect ratio of 1.37 : 1 - which cannot be handled by the vast majority of multiplexes today.
Multiplexes can usually project only films shot for aspect ratios of 1.85 : 1 (a process that uses less than the full frame height) and 2.35 : 1 (the 'scope process where the image is optically "squeezed" horizontally and which must be "unsqueezed" when projected). It was obvious that the multiplexes were not going to buy the new lenses and aperture-plates that would be needed to allow the full Academy image to be shown properly. There were several ways this could have been handled but the method chosen was almost bizarre - the full height of the 35mm frame was used but the printing elements were "squeezed" horizontally so that they used less than the full frame-width as if it was a 'scope production.
This proved to be a major mistake! Keep in mind that IB printing is a direct-contact process so the squeeze had to be applied to the images used to produce the actual printing elements. It could not be added later. The result was that the inevitable registration errors were exacerbated when the image was unsqueezed at the projector. There was considerable criticism when GWTW was released - many prints were almost unwatchable because of focus and registration errors. In fact, the only thing the new prints really had going for them was the fact that they carried tracks for all the digital-sound formats. Chapel Distribution imported an IB print but it did not meet their high standards - it was simply not good enough for exhibition on anything but the smallest of screens.
An Eastmancolor check print was rushed over - it was better but still suffered from focus instabilities. The decision was made to have new prints struck from the earlier re-release inter-positive using the full 1.37 : 1 frame and, of course, with no squeeze. After consultation with MGM and Technicolor Labs in the US, Chapel Distribution chose Kodak Vision Premier print film - a new stock that was developed partly as a single-strip answer to IB printing. It gives the deep blacks, vibrant colours and much of the "feel" of IB without the problems. Using the new stock was an expensive exercise - more than twice the cost of an ordinary print - because, apart from anything else, Technicolor Labs had to reset the colour balance for every reel. But the results justfied the expense and the superb, full-frame image combined with the digitally-remastered sound means that "Gone With The Wind" will be more stunning and closer to the original "Glorious Technicolor" in Australia than anywhere else in the world. Indeed, the results were so good that Chapel Distribution decided to use Kodak Vision Premier where appropriate for other re-releases.
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