‘Becket’: the bottom line

The Academy Film Archive ran into a bit of unexpected trouble restoring the 1964 film “Becket.”

“Becket,” based on the Jean Anouilh play, stars Richard Burton as Thomas a Becket and Peter O’Toole as his good friend King Henry II of England and chronicles the fierce power struggle that erupts when Henry makes Becket the archbishop of Canterbury.

“There was one shot that takes place further into the film once King Henry has started war with France,” says Mike Pogorzelski, director of the Academy Film Archive. “They are on the front lines and Becket walks in and he and Henry begin a dialogue scene. Henry pulls back the sheet to reveal there’s a French girl in bed with him nude.”

In the international version, O’Toole slaps her bare backside.

“Seeing the French girl’s bare bottom was too much for American audiences,” he says. “So they reshot a version of the scene where he pulls back the sheet but now she has another sheet around her. It is the same slap and the same line of dialogue [from Henry], but with her covered.”

The film archive was working with materials from the international release to make a new negative, but late in the restoration process, as he was bringing the picture and sound together to make a work print, Pogorzelski realized there was a problem.

“All of a sudden, O’Toole’s lips were moving but not quite matching the sound,” he says. The soundtrack, as it turned out, was from the American version, “so we had the picture of the bare bottom and the covered bottom sound. What we had to do was try to find the covered bottom [picture] or bare-bottom sound. I am happy to report [we found the] bare-bottom soundtrack. Unfortunately, it is not in stereo, so we had to do a little bit of tweaking to fold it into the stereo mix.”

The restored “Becket,” which has screened in London and New York, has its West Coast premiere Friday at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Nominated for 12 Academy Awards -- including best picture, best actor for both O’Toole and Burton, best supporting actor for John Gielgud and best director for Peter Glenville -- it won for Edward Anhalt’s screenplay adaptation. (Four years later, O’Toole would receive another Oscar nomination as King Henry in “The Lion in Winter.”) “Becket” lost the best picture Oscar to “My Fair Lady,” which was restored over a decade ago.

The Academy Film Archive became involved in the restoration process of “Becket” six years ago. MPI Home Video, the company that owns the rights to the film, was trying to make a transfer of the film from a laser disc and contacted the archive to see what material it had.

Though MPI had the original stereo soundtrack, 70-millimeter prints and a separation master, Pogorzelski says, “they didn’t have the original negative.”

Actually, no one seems to have the original negative.

“The paper trail ends with it being sent to Europe for a TV sale. A dispute over money erupted, and all of a sudden it was just kind of lost. That was back in the ‘80s. But even then there was a condition report made that said the colors had started to fade on the negative and splices were starting to weaken.”

MPI ended up sending the archive all the material it had so it could restore and make a new negative of “Becket.”

The Film Foundation, the organization Martin Scorsese founded in 1990 to help preserve and restore films, footed the $100,000 bill for the project.

“It will be interesting to see what people think of the movie,” Pogorzelski says. “The one thing everyone appreciates is the acting and the craftsmanship.”

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‘Becket’

When: Friday at 8 p.m.

Where: Samuel Goldwyn Theater, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills

Price: $5 for general admission; $3 for academy members

Contact: (310) 247-3600 or go to www.oscars.org