Ted Turner's colorization of classic black-and-white movies has generated much controversy, but you won't hear any complaints about the use of that technology to breathe new life into "Gone with the Wind" in commemoration of the classic romance's 50th anniversary.
Technically, this isn't colorization because the movie was in color to begin with. The term being used to describe the restoration of the movie is "color correction."But the effort has gone beyond that rather routine process to enhance some scenes, bringing them into line with "contemporary color styles" and brightening shots that were too dark for viewers to see the faces of the actors.
"What you're seeing today is more of a clean color," said Richard May, director of film services for Turner Entertainment Co. and the man who oversaw the film's restoration.
"I don't mean the colors are garish, but they are brighter, more vivid than the original. (Producer) David Selznick did the best he could with the technology that was available at the time, but we've come a long way since then. What we have (in the film) now is much more accurate" to what actually was filmed, May said.
Scenes that were lighted by candle, for instance, "were a little orangey because that's the way the colors printed then. We've been able to correct that."
The restored version also has extended the film's depth-of-field, the range of things that are in focus. "People nowadays are used to much more depth-of-field," May said. "In those days the camera needed so much light that they were shooting at an ASA of 8 that gave them hardly any depth-of-field at all. It's amazing what they did under those conditions."
The 1939 film, which won eight Academy Awards, including best picture, has been reissued several times: 1947, 1954, 1961 and 1967. Turner, who got the picture three years ago along with about 6,700 others when he bought the MGM library, asked May simply to pull another print for this year.
May started to do that, but didn't like what he saw. "The negatives were almost worn out from use," he said. "They were very grainy and very contrasty."
The color also was fading. One of the movie's many famous scenes, the one in which Scarlett (Vivien Leigh) declares, "I'll never be hungry again," had lost its color entirely. Other scenes had turned muddy, obliterating the details of the shots.
The movie also had changed shape somewhere along the line. It originally was shot in an almost-square format in a length-to-width ratio of 1.33 to 1. One of the film's reissues had converted it to the modern-day standard ratio of 1.85 to 1. As a result, the top and bottom of every shot had been cut off.
"We went to management and said that we needed to redo the entire picture," May said. "I brought along a survey that said that `Gone with the Wind' was one of the public's all-time favorite movies. And I said, `Look, this is the top picture we have. At least it should look respectable."'
May got permission to see what could be done with the movie's opening. It was a good test because the change in format had necessitated a change in the opening credits, the biggest being that the giant "sweep" title that moved from left to right across the screen had been replaced by a stationary block of type. May and his technicians found the original title and restored it.
May showed his bosses the restored version and the one that had appeared in recent re-releases. "We told them to compare them," he said. "They took one look and said, `Let's move on.' "
The main problem with the color was that the technology used in 1939 was primitive by today's standards.
"The system goes back to the earliest days of color," May explained. "Cameras ran three separate rolls of film, one for each of the primary colors (red, green and blue). These three negatives were used to create matrices that, like printing plates, were dyed their respective colors and then transferred to a final, release print."
Not only had the dyes faded, but the three negatives had shrunk unevenly so they no longer lined up with one another. Thus, when technicians got one part of the picture in focus, say the center, everything around the edges was fuzzy.
"We had to balance the density of the three colors element by element within each scene," May said. "It was basically just trial and error."
The process took seven months and cost $200,000. Another $50,000 was spent to feed the soundtrack into digitalized recording equipment and convert it to stereo.
Turner is being very selective about where the movie is shown, and he's allowing only a one-week run in each city. "It's been our experience that if we had an open-ended (run), people would wait until the last week to come see it," May said. "This way they know that they have one week, so if they want to see it, they better do it now."
May said that there's no more need for further worry about the state of "Gone with the Wind."
"With the film stocks we've got today, it will last longer than either you or I will," he said.