The Man Who Knew Too Much - Restoration Demonstration

[TheModernGuy]

Criterion really does show once again they are truly masters at restoration of film.

[BMPinc]

God bless Criterion! They are saving films. At least you know if you're paying more for their titles, the profit if going back to efforts like this. Thank you Criterion!

[SkemeKOS]

I love watching these restoration videos!

[CitizenOfTheWorld]

This is a noble enterprise. The love, devotion and patience of these artists and technicians is laudable and very impressive. Their work is a gift to future humanity. It would be a sin to lose forever these master works from the dawn of film making. We owe it to the past, to ourselves and to the future.

[paulmanningremixes]

Fifteen people on Earth gave this a thumbs down. What were they expecting? What was it that they didn’t like about this video? The mind boggles! As a person with some skill in digitally restoring single photographs, I find the whole process of restoring film utterly fascinating. I could happily watch stuff like this for hours, and would be happy as can be chipping away at thousands of frames of film. Great video.

[GERRYMALONEY]

I'm so glad there are people like you that take the time to restore these old films we are losing enough of our history and enough of our identity we don't need to lose our films as well

[tomkvideo]

Is anyone else just grinding through these Criterion Restoration videos in awe like me?

[PittsBurghFuzz]

I think this is an underrated film, and am glad that it has a Criterion release.

[hcombs]

I've always been fascinated with the process of film restoration. Now I wish they could find the early sound Warner Brothers sound-to-disk films that are apparently lost.

[happyfeet]

I take my hat off to all the amazing people who can work this magic with old films and make them look like they were filmed yesterday. Thank you

[TheChiptuner]

It’s insane how much work goes into restoring these films, and something we take for granted when we watch them

[PupRiku]

I was shocked to see how expensive some of these releases were at first...then I realised just how much effort goes into them to ensure we can not only watch them but also preserve them physically.

[WillNGo]

Wonderful video, thanks. The most beautiful film I ever saw was an original nitrate print of Isle of Lost Souls, Karl Struss cinematographer (& he was there that night! I think he was 96, so he was frail). It had a sepia tone, incredible range from the fog at the beginning to open shadows. We had to have our projection booth in Ann Arbor, upgraded with fire suppression gear in order to show the highly flammable film stock. ( I never found out of the sepia tone was original or caused by time. It was so consistent and wonderful I'm pretty sure it was original. I've sepia toned most of my B&W silver prints, but never to the full orange. It's also both an archival technique and caused by time. Some of those old photographs that are sepia are just old not originally toned. Though in my experience the time caused sepia toning is slight.) I wonder if this print ever made it to BluRay?
I grew up watching all the old movies on B&W TV, very very low res. It wasn't until I got to college that I realized most of the Wizard of Oz was in color. In college we showed a lot of old movies always trying to get 35mm prints, but too often having to settle for 16mm 'TV scans' - this is where a wide screen movie was copied into 1.33:1 format to fit the format of a TV screen. I think Giant is one of the most egregious examples. Brilliant color, wide screen, no possible way to fit it to the TV format so they did horrible things. But it's kind of like your dad telling your joke and ruining it. You still can share the original. So any restoration is welcome.
Hitchcock's earliest British films were notable for using the German developed technique of lighting the backgrounds differently from the actors - this gave the actors and the scene a three dimensional quality. Once you know something like this is possible and you understand how it works, you begin looking for more techniques. Hitchcock really pushed movie making forward. I don't know if it's been said recently, but Hitchcock was the Kubrick of his day. I recently watched The Man Who Knew Too Much for about the 5th time. Everyone who loves movies should read the book _Hitchcock_ by Francois Truffaut. Back in the day, probably starting in the late 1960s Hollywood would try to make a thriller. It would be billed or promoted as 'like Hitchcock, ' and they were almost always terrible (The French made some great thrillers but never felt the need to mention Hitchcock.) Brian DePalma was the first filmmaker I know of who wasn't French who made thrillers like Hitchcock.

[jedigoddess]

Incredible. Saving the history of film, complete and utter magic.

[Orsonu]

An extraordinary story in film restoration and recovery. Thank you for documenting it and sharing.

[GiftSparks]

Amazing job. The clarity of the image is astonishing.

[ThatsGoodTelevision]

I have never seen this film look this good. So impressed!

[trudi]

I appreciate these restorations so much. These movies will live on forever now.

[AnthonyMonaghan]

All hail the BFI and Criterion. Making the world a better place one frame at a time. I can't get enough of these restoration shorts.

[DungeonStudio]

Got to hand it to Criterion. I just spent the last week salvaging VHS tapes, which was pain in patience enough! What Criterion goes through to restore film amazes me!