Nitrate

The last two weeks, Psyche and I visited the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood to take part in their Nitrate Festival. The Egyptian is one of very few theaters that is allowed to project nitrate prints, and they haven't done so for a few years because they were closed for renovations before and after the pandemic. We saw two Hitchcock films, Rebecca and SpellboundRebecca, an archivist from the George Eastman Museum talked about nitrate prints. There were some things I already knew. I learned how vivid the images can be when I saw Casablanca, and I learned how the silver emulsion can catch the light when I saw Laura. The archivist stressed how because nitrate prints are generally stronger, the images on the print are usually closer to the negative retaining subtler "colors," while later printings start to develop higher and higher contrast. This was incredibly apparent when watching Rebecca on what was one of the first printings of the film, previous in the private collection of producer David O. Selznic. It was unbelievable how good it looked for preserved (not restored) film that was about 80 years old.

Spellbound wasn't as impressive, either in the print or the content, but the Dali sequences looked really good, as did Gregory Peck. I try to get the preview screen whenever I see something at the American Cinematheque, but I missed the one for Rebecca. Here's the screen for Spellbound.



(I needed to post an image hosted on DW in preparation of talking about it with dedalus_1947 before seeing Dune: Part Two at the Chinese Theater.)