Frankly, My Dear, You’re a Bit Blurry

What’s wrong with “Gone With the Wind”?

That’s what disgruntled filmgoers want to know after encountering disturbing image and sound problems in the newest reissue of the beloved 1939 Technicolor classic.

There have been reports of problems locally, including several letters received by The Times, at the Mann Glendale Exchange Theater, AMC Century City, the United Artists Warner Center, the AMC Santa Monica and Pacific Winnetka All Stadium 20.

Shots intermittently go in and out of focus and appear overly soft, and there are color fringes around objects so bad at times that it’s like watching 3-D without glasses. In addition, the Dolby stereo soundtrack slips into mono on several occasions.

Then there’s confusion about the uneven color quality, which ranges from the exquisite to the bland. New York Times critic Vincent Canby recently wrote that he even preferred the video to Technicolor’s new dye-transfer version (which separates the primary colors in special matrices, applies corresponding dyes and transfers them to blank film stock).

“See it as you’ve never seen it before.” These glitches are not what distributor New Line had in mind.

New Line insists that only 20 defective reels were released to theaters around the country, and that they have been or are being replaced.

“The register’s off in some of the new prints, mostly in the early part of the picture,” says Al Shapiro, president of distribution for New Line. “Theaters weren’t used to the flaking off the new prints, which affect focus. It’s a problem with Technicolor’s new dye-transfer process. We’ve replaced the prints and have informed theaters that they need to clean the heads and get the dirt off after every showing.

“The sound problem is related to the SDDS Dolby format. The location of the soundtrack on the edge of the film is also a problem with dye-transfer prints. We’ve recommended to theaters that they use one of the other Dolby formats.

“We are doing everything we can to ensure that the public sees ‘Gone With the Wind’ in the best possible presentation,” he said. “We’ve sent out handbooks to every theater, telling them how to run the picture. If they haven’t followed the instructions, that could’ve contributed to the problem.”

*

According to Technicolor and other independent technical experts who requested anonymity, flaking does not affect focus. Incorrect focus of this kind is caused by misregistration, which also accounts for the color fringing. The sound problem, meanwhile, is a technical glitch that Technicolor experts say they are addressing.

A Technicolor executive says the company regrets that the defective reels were not inspected but suggests that the situation is more complex.

“We were given a color interpositive [a special positive print used for duplicating purposes] that another lab worked on in the ‘80s,” says Technicolor President Ron Jarvis. “There were registration problems in that interpositive carried over from the original three-strip negatives due to misplacement and shrinkage. So what happened is our slight registration problem in those bad reels exacerbated the existing registration problems already there. One of the things dye transfer will do anyway is magnify existing registration problems.

“Added to this is the fact that we were requested to do a squeezed internegative to be able to see all the picture on the screen. This is because most theaters can’t do the original square aspect ratio of 1:3:3. . . . It’s not going to be as sharp. You’re going to degrade the picture quality.”

Jarvis adds that any mistakes with the reintroduction of the dye-transfer process can be attributed to the company’s being rusty with the process. “We’re sorry if people are disappointed or confused. We worked from the best element available, an interpositive, which has its flaws and contaminates the color because you’re now introducing another process, Eastmancolor. But we didn’t have time to go back to the original three-strip black-and-white negatives. This reissue was going to happen now, with or without us.

“We felt we could do a better job with dye transfer than color positive printing, and I think we have. The colors, the contrast, the blacks, the shadow detail, the lack of grain are big improvements over the ’39 original. And the latitude we have with color is something you don’t have with color positive printing.”

*

Despite any complaints filmgoers may have with the latest presentation of ‘Gone With the Wind,” they are still embracing it on the big screen all over again (the reissue has grossed around $2.5 million on 214 screens). But members of the film preservation and restoration community insist that you must separate the enormous popularity of the film from its appearance.

Many of them are dismayed with what they call the “substandard” presentation. Two prominent members even walked out of the preservation benefit screening at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. These technical experts, who spoke on condition of anonymity, blame Warner Bros. for rushing “Gone With the Wind” a year before its 60th anniversary to make a quick profit (especially from the upcoming home video release in November), sacrificing the integrity of the film and Technicolor’s new dye-transfer process.

They contend that a full restoration should have been done, which would have provided a more accurate and satisfying return to the film’s original Technicolor glory, and that Technicolor wasn’t quite ready for such a high-profile classic. In other words, you don’t mess around with “Gone With the Wind.”

“By the time they made the print, they were so far removed from the original that you’d expect it to look the way it did,” says one knowledgeable expert who requested anonymity, and who says he walked out of the academy screening.

“Technicolor is not set up to handle the details of restoration work,” he said. “What Warners [which owns New Line] should’ve done is either make a fresh interpositive in consultation with Technicolor, which has the records to fix the registration problems, or allow them to print matrices from the original negatives and let them fix the problems themselves.”

Richard P. May, vice president of film preservation for Warner Bros., says making a fresh interpositive was never a consideration. “The interpositive was good enough 10 years ago and there was no reason to believe it wasn’t good enough now,” he says. “I’m not qualified to get into an interpositive debate, but it’s very easy for others to criticize and say they could do better.”

*

Others suggest that the return of dye transfer negates the necessity of using an interpositive, avoiding the color contamination Jarvis refers to.

“This was a corporate decision on the part of Warners and their home video department to reissue the film now, and I was not part of that decision,” says Turner Entertainment President Roger Mayer. “We did 12 1/2 minutes of digital work to fix what we thought were the worst parts. It would take two or three years to do the rest. Sure, some people are not happy, but 95% of the reviews are positive about the quality of the prints. If it proves feasible to go back to the negatives one more time, we’ll do that.”

Technicolor hopes to avoid the same mistakes with its next high-profile reissue from 1939, “The Wizard of Oz,” due Christmas Day on 2,000 screens. Jarvis has permission from Warner Bros. to do a test reel from the original nitrate negatives. If the results are satisfactory, he would like to print matrices directly from the negatives. His company has special permission to do so, one reel at a time. And Jarvis still would like to run tests on “Gone With the Wind” as well. Another option is to make a dupe from the negatives, preserving them for posterity while retaining the integrity of three strip.

“The new dye transfer is made for films today to improve the film-going experience and stave off digital exhibition, but we want to start our own separate restoration division and make it affordable to do more films,” Jarvis adds.

More than anything else, it appears that the misuse of the term “restoration” in recent reviews and articles has been blamed for creating false expectations. Though it’s true that restoration work was performed on the negatives in preparing the interpositive 10 years ago and that some digital restoration was performed this time around, the version in theaters was not fixed in its negative, and thus is not a restoration.

“Journalists wanted to call it a restoration, but I never told them it was,” May says in his defense.

However, the marketing campaign was full of implicit references to restoration, such as the ad line: “For the first time in its original Technicolor glory and a remastered Digital soundtrack.”

To lower expectations, the AMC theater chain informed filmgoers in Century City and Santa Monica before most screenings that the reissue was not a restoration.

“Calling this a restoration or implying that it’s a restoration really demeans the real restoration work done by well-intentioned people,” proclaims a knowledgeable expert who also requested anonymity. “And it’s time that journalists become better informed and viewers more discerning. This hurts the film, the people who love it and the cause of restoration.”