Hellzapoppin' 1941 in Colorized HD (Lindy Hop)

Like most Hollywood musicals of the early 1940s, Hellzapoppin’ was shot in black-and-white, and cinephiles will maintain that it’s best seen that way. But just as the technology powering long-haul flights has developed greatly since the days of Charles Lindbergh, so has the technology of film colorization. Take DeOldify, the “open-source, Deep Learning based project to colorize and restore old images and film footage” that “uses AI neural networks trained with thousands of reference pictures” – and that was used to produce the version of Hellzapoppin‘s Lindy Hop number seen at the top of the post. It all looks much more convincing than when Ted Turner attempted to colorize Citizen Kane, but in lovers of dance, whatever sense of realism DeOldify contributes will mainly inspire a deeper longing to experience the culture of Harlem as it really was in the 1920s.

After Charles Lindbergh “hopped” the Atlantic in 1927, his history-making solo flight set off a craze for all things “Lindy.” Of the countless songs, foods, products, and trends created or named in honor of the famous onetime U.S. Air Mail pilot, only one remains recognizable these more than 90 years later: the Lindy Hop. Developed on the streets and in the clubs of Harlem, the dance proved explosively popular, though it took Hollywood a few years to capitalize on it. In the late 1930s, the musical Hellzapoppin’ brought the Lindy Hop to Broadway, and in 1941, Universal Pictures turned that stage show into a major motion picture directed by H.C. Potter (now best known for Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House).

Video Restoration Process by Life Before:
✔ Download raw video
✔ Increase Quality and frames to 60 Fps
✔ Improve resolution to HD
✔ Improved video sharpness and brightness
✔ Colorized only using machine learning software
✔ Add artificial sound for ambiance
✔ Proper Restoration: stabilization, denoise, deblur etc.

[Andy-SwingDJ]

Also - I'm not sure that the cropping has really done it any favours.

[ickeroomorgan]

Why would you crop this from the original 4:3?

[Andy-SwingDJ]

My bad - I got the end credits wrong on that version you based it on - I've replaced more recently with a 4K / 60fps restoration with the ending credits corrected, if you wanted to use that one instead.