Give Report a release
I would want to restore soooooooo many
The Man on the Eiffel Tower
The Stranger (Welles)
Porgy & Bess (Preminger)
Isadora
If I had Spielberg money, I’d do it for NAPOLEON, hands down no question.
Also that Welles film, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND if I remember right.
release mariano llinás’ historias extraordinarias on dvd with english subs. and edward yang’s a brighter summer day. plus the surviving films of sadao yamanaka
also king vidor’s the crowd. why is this only available as a japanese import?!
I would hire a search party to find Ernst Lubitsch’s lost film " The Patriot."
and murnau’s four devils lol ^ plus all the excised footage from the magnificent ambersons
k i’m gonna stop now cuz i could go on indefinitely
I know, Ruby. But I am obsessed with lost films. Maybe it’s just the idea of wanting what I can’t have?? But I would use lots of money to hire people to search only for lost films. Any bits or pieces of them.
Find Greed too
better hurry and get rich then cuz they won’t last forever ;)
I like the version of Lost Horizon that’s circulating now. It’s not complete, but fills in the blanks all right, but I’d definitely like to get an even better version of that film. I really enjoy it.
Ruby: In the magical cave I pretend these films are in, they will all be found in pristine condition.
If I get rich and famous, I promise I’ll restore all these films before I install my pool lined with diamonds.
we’ll hold u to it. i hope bijoux is right about the magic cave. and i hope greed is in there too. all 6+ hours
Chimes at Midnight.
Probably won’t happen until Beatrice Welles dies though.
You can buy those diamonds from the magic cave, I’m sure. Sorry, for going a bit OT. Loved the question!!
@ BIJOUX ALEXANDERPLATZ and RUBY STEVENS
I myself was thinking of financing an obviously impossible (but perhaps fruitful if one can dream) search for the lost films of Ozu and Mizoguchi. I would also like to bring the more obscure films of Naruse, Imamura and others to a larger Western audience. I would also like to restore the out of print films of some of my favorite directors for further circulation.
Wow I never realized how many troubled films Welles had.
Great choices, Deckert.
So, I don’t know a lot about Greed, but from my small amount of research (aka ten seconds on imdb) am I correct in assuming that a copy of the film exists but that the full footage, hours worth of the film, are lost?? Or is even the heavily edited copy hard to find?? Because I read the description and the names of the people involved and really want to see it now. Of course.
it’s on youtube, both versions. the film is in public domain. there is a restored version, made by tcm i think, with storyboards and stills similar to what was used for lost horizon. i haven’t had the heart to watch it yet :(
here’s the edited version ^ not bad quality either. the other version is 4 hrs i think
“Mac and Me”
in 3D.
London at Midnight
Because we all deserve to have to sit through the supposed boring parts of that movie to get to the real star of that show, the ghoulish teeth and make-up that Lon Chaney wore.
Also a fuller length version of Freaks, with the complete ending and the carry-through of the whole castration deal that was included in the original plot.
Satyijat Ray’s The Music Room. The dvd I recieved was from some Indian publisher named Angel, and it may be the worst cut of a movie I have seen since Werner Herzog’s Where The Green Ants Dream.
The Third Man. When I saw it the picture was so damaged and the sound so poor I felt like I was watching a movie made in the 20s. This movie needs a slick restoration.
Orson Welles’ The Trial. I personally hate this film, but I cannot call it a terrible film in the current condition it’s in, so i’d love to watch a more comprehensible, cleaned up version of it with better audio so I can bash it confidently.
Rashomon. Nothing deathly wrong with the current print being spread around on netflix, I would just LOVE to see it in blu-ray.
Solondz’s Happiness. Nothing wrong here either, I just think it is one of the most important movies of our time and more people should see it.
Metropolis. I watched the “Complete Metropolis” and it did not feel complete in the slightest. And a wide release in theaters everywhere and screening’s in parks with orchestras!
The Passion of Joan of Ark. How awesome would it be to watch this outside, in a park, with a live orchestra performing Voices of Light?
and I have a question: is there a blu ray copy of The Assassination of Jesse James floating around out there? I would kill for a special edition.
umm the music room has a criterion now. i’ve never seen a problem with the third man? and it’s london after midnight
…..Music Room has a criterion?…. facepalms damn, damn, damn…… The version of Third Man I watched on Netflix was damaged, but it has been a while and maybe it was my connection that was sketchy.
so, a funny story, i finally set out to watch that youtube version of greed and guess what. the intertitles are in italian. and it’s the same version they have at archive.org. and youtube’s closed caption thingie doesn’t work on silent film intertitles! that one’s short at least 30 mins from the edited version, anyway. so i looked on amazon. they have one copy, on vhs, for 175 dollars. according to wikipedia, the original was over 10 hours long.
In 1999, Turner Classic Movies decided to “recreate” the film as close to Stroheim’s intention as possible, and with the assistance of preservationist and scholar Rick Schmidlin (who also worked on the restoration of Welles’ “Touch Of Evil”). Utilizing a continuity script of the four hour version found in Belgium, and a staggering number of production stills from many of the deleted sequences, combined with the currently available edit of the film, Schmidlin put together what he prefers to call the “original story narrative” of the film. The resulting edit, running about four hours, has been broadcast on TCM and had a brief, limited run on VHS before going out of print.
tcm currently owns the rights to the film and a dvd release has been rumored for several years. i hope they would include both versions; i would buy this in a heartbeat. instead i’ll have to resort to more nefarious methods
“The Third Man. When I saw it the picture was so damaged and the sound so poor I felt like I was watching a movie made in the 20s. This movie needs a slick restoration.”
There’ve been a couple of slick restorations of THE THIRD MAN, Criterion even released two of them.
What struck you as incomplete about the Complete METROPOLIS?
The later Feuillade serials Tih Minh, Barrabas, and Parisette
I would definitely restore three of Takeshi Kitano’s best works, Violent Cop, Sonatine, and Fireworks, all of which are in shitty quality on DVD, to their deserved (Criterion) Blu-ray glory. Fuck it, put in Sorcerer and Ms. 45 on the list too.
I would hire a band of career criminals to break into Jerry Lee Lewis’ private vault to steal the Day the Clown Cried.
^ Now that would make a good movie!
Definitely “The Other Side of The Wind”
I’d do it on the sly and just distribute it independently then use my money for the inevitable lawsuits which would follow.
Rock and Bull
This was inspired by the thread on Abel Gance’s Napoleon, where someone said it would take a millionaire that cared enough about the film to convert and restore 5 1/2 hours of film, plus record a score for it. I was wondering what films you would bring to your country or release on DVD or translate or restore or whatever if you were powerful enough to do so.
Something I would love to do is release a proper version of Richard Williams The Thief And The Cobbler. Currently, the only legitimate releases of this film are the versions the studio took over and ruined. The one good version of this film (which is a fan project that uses the best material possible from all stages of the original production, containing varying qualities of animation and some scenes only in storyboard pictures) is only available to download illegally. This downloadable DVD also contains very informative special features on the film. If I had the power I would get the rights for this version of the film and all of its’ special features, and release it on a legitimate DVD, and hopefully reach a larger audience with it. There are many others, but that would probably be my biggest one.
What would you do?