Unity, Not Sour Grapes, Needed to Restore Classic Films

Jeffrey Wells’ article “A Bridge Rebuilt” (Nov. 21, Calendar) unintentionally or otherwise appears to put the Los Angeles Times into the pocket of a disgruntled, self-interested party.

Focusing on Columbia Studio’s restoration of “The Bridge on the River Kwai” that premiered at the UCLA Film and Television Archive on Nov. 22, Wells pivots his piece around allegations that the quality of the restoration was somehow compromised.

The evidence for this judgment? Not the restored film itself, but rather the fact that Robert Harris--who Wells states “had every reason to expect that he would be hired to supervise the restoration,” one of them being Harris’ relationship with director David Lean that began during the restoration of “Lawrence of Arabia”--failed to get the job.

The logic is mind-boggling. How envious other vendors of film services in Hollywood must be that the sour grapes of a free-lance technical consultant, however skilled, should be elevated by The Times to the level of high principle.

A more serious issue for preservationists, however, is the extent to which this controversy has resulted in a misleading picture of precisely how the battle to rescue our moving-image heritage is currently being waged. It is simply a distortion to characterize this effort as little more than a battle between “in-house” restoration efforts and “independent consultants” . . . “a replay of an age-old Hollywood clash between status quo types and lone-wolf visionaries.”

In point of fact, a vast collaborative partnership for preservation has slowly evolved, bringing together multiple players including: the studios, public film archives, private consultants, specialized laboratories, government funding agencies, individual donors and support groups such as Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation. Each makes its own distinctive contribution to the cause, but all share a common commitment to get the job done.

Today, archives across the country collaborate closely with the studios in coordinating the preservation effort. At UCLA, for example, we have undertaken highly successful restoration projects in cooperation with Universal, 20th Century Fox, Republic, Warner Bros., Turner Entertainment, Columbia and others.

Ironically, Columbia Pictures--the villain according to Harris--is among the studios most deeply committed to promoting studio-archive collaboration to protect its historic film library.

Its initiative two years ago in creating a national advisory board of film archivists has resulted in numerous milestone restorations showcased in UCLA’s recent “Turning Points” series, including: “His Girl Friday” (with UCLA), “On the Waterfront” (with the Museum of Modern Art) and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” (with the Library of Congress). In all of these efforts, archive preservationists have been sticklers for perfection but so too has the studio.

“The Bridge on the River Kwai” may have been undertaken by Columbia as an in-house restoration (as the Wells article states) but to my eyes and ears the final result is a glorious tribute to the accomplishments of its director, David Lean.

It would be a tragic mistake to allow the heritage of the first 100 years of cinema to disappear. For our century, film has been at once an art form, a cultural artifact, a historical document, an ideological force and a source of popular entertainment. It is the repository of our collective memory, and to lose it is to lose part of ourselves.

Yet we already have lost more than 50% of all the films made before 1950, and more than 100 million feet of uncopied nitrate film stock is currently turning to dust in the vaults.

Clearly, the enormity of the preservation challenge cannot be met by any one participant alone. In the collaborative effort still to come there will be a need for preservation initiatives by the producers, the public archives and, yes, dedicated independent consultants as well. What we cannot afford is the luxury of inventing pseudo-conflicts that divide us from one another. We are in a race against the clock and time is running out.