By Katey Rich
One of the best parts of attending a college with a strong film program was the film series, which screened four features weekly in the state-of-the-art cinema that had just been built on campus. It's how I got to see Lawrence of Arabia and Jacques Tati's Playtime in glorious 70 mm, or share with my friends the unique thrill of Harold Lloyd's Safety Last. Movies you might never have otherwise bothered to rent-- Purple Rain, for example-- were must-sees when screening in a big theatre for free.
It's with those memories in mind that I mourn the loss on the Universal lot last Sunday-- a temporary loss, yes, but one that might be felt for months if not years. Over 40,000 prints in a storage facility on the lot burned in the massive fire, and though the original negatives of all the films still exist elsewhere, these archival prints were the ones that were regularly loaned out to film societies and revival houses. Not only are Universal's assets included here, but all of Paramount's films pre-1950, an era in which Paramount was such a major force it was the namesake of the landmark Supreme Count ruling splitting ownership of studios and theatres. When we saw Psycho on a 35 mm print in film class, Universal's warehouse is probably where the print came from.
"All the prints are replaceable -- in theory," wrote Variety in their report yesterday about the aftermath of the blaze. But Universal reps acknowledge that the effort to even figure out what is missing, much less replace it, will be massive. Bob O'Neil, the studio's VP of image assets and preservation, told The New York Times that the process for striking new prints would be slow, given that only about six film laboratories can work with the kinds of negatives that remain of older films.
Bruce Goldstein, the director of repertory programming at Film Forum, said he has often ordered prints from the vault that burned, through O'Neil. "It's going to be a big job to see what was lost," Goldstein told me in a phone interview. He had originally planned a Preston Sturges retrospective for Film Forum this summer, which would have certainly involved films from Universal's lot. Before the fire, though, Goldstein pushed the festival back to the fall. "That would have been affected. Luckily I had already moved it to another date."
O'Neil told the Times that Universal will assess which bookings they had within the next six months, and try to arrange new prints to be sent. But Goldstein acknowledges that, even though Film Forum had no specific Universal screenings set up, "it's going to make your job a little more difficult." "There's a lot of concern in the community, my small part of it," he continues. "[But] I'm sure Universal will do the right things."
Goldstein also dismissed any concerns that new prints of the negatives would not be up to the same quality as the prints that burned. "It's not like dubbing a tape and losing a generation. You're going to the preserved negative, the preservation negative. That's where all those prints came from. You're not going to lose any quality."
Despite current confusion, it seems likely that Universal will recover copies of every print lost, especially given their reputation for high standards in film preservation. For Goldstein the recent fire is more of a reminder of the bad old days, when films printed on nitrate would catch fire and kill projectionists, not to mention whatever movie was contained on that reel. Even though it's all going digital now, the Universal fire is reminder of how much of our film history is contained on fragile celluloid. We've lost many of our early films, thanks to the combustible nitrate stock and other accidents, so we can be grateful for the careful people at Universal who are making sure that this fire, while sad, is far from a catastrophe.
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