Restoration rescues the Godfather series

Thanks to a painstaking restoration, The Godfather is back with cinematic vengeance on a three-disc DVD set as well as a four-disc Blu-ray set from Paramount Home Entertainment, featuring a fully restored The Godfather: Part II, and The Godfather: Part III.

The frame-by-frame restoration of The Godfather began in 2006 under the watchful eye of acclaimed film restorer Robert Harris (who had previously restored Lawrence of Arabia, among other titles). One screening of The Godfather showed Harris just how bad things in the Corleone world had become.

“The better a film is, the worse condition it will be in when you go to restore it because thousands of prints have been made of it over the years,” Harris said. “You’re constantly going back to the original negatives for dupes, and the elements of those negatives just get used up until you’re left with a film that’s in a pretty sorry state. And that’s exactly what we found.”

Suffice to say there hasn’t been a pristine version of The Godfather since Coppola put it in the can back in 1972. The original film was dark, literally and figuratively, with a rich, deep golden hue, dimly lit and purposely grainy. Over the years, that hue, created by cinematographer Gordon Willis, had turned almost bluish.

“The opening of the film [in Don Corleone’s study] is very dark because Wallis purposely gave it a very thin exposure,” Harris said. “Over time, duplication processors that didn’t know what they were doing simply lightened everything so that all that hue was gone. Well, it’s back, and it’s gorgeous.”

FilmLight’s Baselight colour grading system played a crucial role in the restoration of The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II and the creation of a new digital intermediate of the Director Cut of Part III as part of The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration Collections on DVD and Blu-ray.

Under the direction of Francis Ford Coppola and cinematographer Gordon Willis, the painstaking restoration of the films spanned more than a year, during which the film imagery was rigorously restored, and the films’ soundtracks were given new 5.1 mixes.

“It speaks volumes about Paramount’s and its commitment to the preservation of the great films in its library,” said Harris.

According to Harris, the Godfather films have, to some extent, been the victims of their own success. “We were dealing with very damaged negatives due to the age of the films,” he said. “Also, because they are extraordinary films, they have been overprinted.”

Under Harris’ supervision the existing film elements were scanned in 4K. After all of the various elements were scanned, Baselight was employed to aid in comparison, selection and finally to grade the scanned imagery. That portion of the work was completed in a DI grading theatre at Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging in Hollywood.

For Harris, it was his first exposure to grading via Baselight, and he came away very favourably impressed. “I don’t look at the Baselight as a machine, I look at it as a musical instrument,” Harris said. “And the colorist, Jan Yarbrough, sitting in front of the Baselight is like a concert pianist. It’s incredible.”

Using Baselight, Harris and Yarbrough were able to perform butterfly tests, viewing graded scanned images alongside 35mm projections for making comparisons and matching looks. “Baselight enabled us to do everything we needed to do, which was wonderful,” Harris said. “It allowed us to not only see everything harvested in the scans, but to make the films look as closely as possible to what they did in 1972 and 1974.”

Harris is proud of the work that was done on the Godfather films, which have now been restored to pristine condition not only for the new DVD and Blu-ray releases but also for the enjoyment of generations to come. “Our data files are perfect; Baselight gave us everything that we needed,” he observed.

He added that viewers of the new Blu-ray collection will be treated to an incomparable viewing experience. “I actually prefer to watch the film digitally,” he said. “Although I am a film purist, you can’t always be watching a print that has just come out of Technicolor. When projected theatrically, the digital version has a higher resolution, a steadier image, and there is no dust or scratches.”

No small task when you consider that The Godfather consists of more than a quarter-million film frames. It meant going to the vaults around the world (negatives, B-roll, outtakes and full prints are kept in various locations worldwide to prevent a film’s possible loss). But there was one caveat.

“Coppola said we could see if there were shots that were really ragged or destroyed, and if original trims survived, we could use those trims, as long as no one outside a forensic scientist could ever [notice] that a change had been made,” Harris said. “The basic concept of film restoration is do not harm the film, figuratively and literally, and don’t leave tracks. It shouldn’t look like anything has been done to it; as if the original negatives had been hermetically sealed in 1972.” ASIAIMAGE