 Márton Keleti: Mickey Magnate (1948) 54 KByte |
Film is “life written on quickly burning paper”. Pier Paolo Pasolini's heavy and painful statement hidden in this beautiful metaphor proved to be especially true with regard to the films of the great epoch of Hungarian film making between 1945 and 1962. For decades, the need of archivation and storage system of film accessories was not sufficiently met. The film collection has suffered irreversible damages in the different storms of the era. The Foundation for the Past and Future of Hungarian Film, which was established by the Hungarian filmmakers in response to the initiative of the Hungarian Film Institute is going to celebrate as much as its tenth anniversary in 1998. The foundation was created in order to renew Hungarian films and newsreels made after 1945 and being in critical state; currently it operates with the annual support of the National Cultural Fund. The basic objective of the foundation is to stop deterioration and rescue the films by restoring the reproduction base of the films which in many case were originally still shot on nitro based negative. Therefore renewal in the case of films from this era involved in many instances the manufacture of soft backup dub positive or dub negative, respectively, in appropriate quality. According to the original proposal of the foundation the renovation plan could not be made based on film historical aspects but it had to involve each and every film without exception since just think about it, most of these films are even dangerous once they were shot on nitro based material. The original negatives of the films in this era are severely damaged and deficient in many cases, just like the reproductive series of accessories which constitute the basis for presentation. Also, the contemporary mandatory copies to be found in the Hungarian Film Institute are prone to the ravages of time to a great extent. In order to restore this stock of films both intellectual and financial co-operation of the entire trade. Due to the missing accessories query lists were distributed world-wide and beside domestic companies such as MOKÉP, Hungarofilm, Budapest Film and the studios foreign archives and collectors were also contacted in the hope they could replace and supplement our damaged and incomplete materials. There were some fortunate films which could be completed by contributions from the authors and with the assistance of original sources, screenplays and dialogue lists. Some one hundred and forty films have been restored this way. György Illés, Ferenc Szécsényi, István Nyakas, Tamás Somló, István Hildebrand and other cameramen certified the restored copies. In nearly thirty cases the original negative of the film did not survive and therefore copied produced from the dub negatives made are a lot weaker in quality. Twenty two negatives of the seventy nitro based black and white films did not survive. Some examples of these include: Mickey Magnate, The Soil Under Your Feet , Relatives, Singing Makes Life Beautiful, Gentry Skylarking. Serious problems emerged with many films because of the extremely costly sound renovation. Especially saved sound was used among others for Erkel (1952), The Siege of Beszterce, Semmelweis. Before restoration, there was only one copy left with distorted sound and Romanian speaking inserts. Due to the missing accessories, the sound double of Mokép was restored by frames in Mafilm Audio Ltd. for almost two years. The great masterpiece of the epoch, - Zoltán Fábri's Merry-Go-Round (1955) which became a legend - due to its sound damages could only be saved frame by frame, manual restoration. During the process two dub positive, two dub negative, a working, a test and two correction copies were made altogether. Costs of restoration exceeded two million forints on 1992-93 prices. The coloured nitro based films were prepared by the collaboration of the entire trade. Following the production of a backup reproduction series of accessories based on the original nitro accessory, the archive positive copy was made. Films entitled Rákóczi's Lieutenant, Liliomfi, The Sea Has Risen, Penny, Me and My Grandfather, 2 x 2 Are Sometimes 5, Love Travelling a Coach, Young at Heart, Under the City were renewed this way. Colour restoration was not successful and therefore only a black and white copy saved of the films entitled Mattie the Goose-Boy (1949), a Try and Win (1951), A Strange Marriage (1951). Fading processes took place in the original nitro accessories of these films in such an extent that based on synergetic tests and in lack of appropriate laboratory technique colour information included in the negative proved to be insufficient to develop colours. Therefore we had to be contended with manufacturing black and white dub positive and dub negative, backup sound negative and sound positive. Therefore in these cases merely backup sound negative and positive could be made. The original colour nitro material of Zoltán Fábri's first film ( The Storm, 1952) also perished. However, a good quality colour nitro positive of the film has just surfaced from Germany, which seems to be suitable for the manufacturing of the backup dub negative. For decades we could only see Fábri's debutante piece in black and white. Although the schematic era has left its mark on it, yet Fábri shows promising talent in his forming of human characters. Now we seem to have the opportunity to see György Illés' pictures in colour again. Renewal of films from the era can only be regarded finished in general, since technological development produces ever newer restoration possibilities. Thus problems emerging from shrinkage can be rectified using a special device regulating the speed of film advancement in an appropriate way. Renovation can be started afresh when new findings emerge. A brand new example is St. Peter's Umbrella (1958). The wondrous Kálmán Mikszáth-tale of Frigyes Bán and György Illés is refreshing in its visual impact even today. Except for an almost unusable positive copy there was only one dub negative available which was unsuitable for reproduction. In 1994 we borrowed the original negative of the Slovak version from Bratislava, which was shot right after the Hungarian version and turned out to be different not only in dubbing but some other instances as well and therefore it was unsuitable for using in the restoration process. It was only this year that a complete but severely damaged original Hungarian negative surfaced. The test reel made in the Hungarian Film Laboratory provides evidence that the light environment of the film defies the passing of time. It remains to be seen how much of the damages can be rectified by copying. We only had bad quality secondary accessories of the first sound movie made after the liberation, entitled The School-Mistress (1945). In 1997 a good quality nitro positive made its way to our collection from the United States, which is much more complete than our archive copy. This will be used to make a double under solution, which in turn will be compared to the old double in order to create the most complete version. Fortunately due to surfacing newer materials and further development of the technology even in the case of this quickly degrading medium film renovation and restoration can never be considered to have come to an end. 1. original picture and sound negative: original accessory produced during shooting. 2. dub positive: soft, bluish positive, made of the original negative, base of reproduction, not to be presented 3. dub negative, double: softer, grainy negative made of the dub positive copy which is the basis for making presentable commercial copies 4. archive copy: representative positive copy made of the original negative including eventual light corrections. 5. renewal accessories: original picture and sound negative, dub positive, dun negative, test copies, light bands 6. nitro film: inflammable and degradable celluloid made during the first epoch of film making 7. copy: film positive |
 Márton Keleti: Mickey Magnate (1948) 67 KByte | |
 Márton Keleti: The Siege of Beszterce (1948) 46 KByte | |
 Frigyes Bán: Semmelweis (1952) 52 KByte | |
 Frigyes Bán: St. Peter's Umbrella (1958) 54 KByte |
