Cabiria
(1914) Director: Giovanni Pastrone (Piero Fosco) –
Director of photography: Augusto Battagliotti, Natale Chiusano, Segundo de Chomón, Vincent C. Dénizot, Carlo Franzeri, Gatti, Giovanni Tomatis –
Production: Itala Film, Torino –
Original lenght: Cabiria 1914: 3364 m; Cabiria 1931: 3132 m –
Intertitles: Italian/English –
Censorship certificate: 3035, 11/4/1914 –
Première: 18/04/1914 –
Cabiria, the colossal masterpiece directed by Giovanni Pastrone, is the most well-known and representative film of the Italian Silent Cinema. Its extraordinary importance is object of the studies, the researches and the challenging restoration curated by Museo Nazionale del Cinema, focused in bringing back, as much as possible, the integrity of the 1914 version curated by Pastrone himself.
The film restoration:
The film had already undergone preservation and restoration (in particular in 1977 and 1995) but the discovery of new documents which were bought by the Piedmont Region and deposited in the archives of the Museo Nazionale del Cinema shed new light on previously unresolved philological questions, offering various, interesting details regarding how work on the sets was conducted, for example. In particular, it was possible to identify material which Pastrone had shot in view of the 1931 sound version and, as a result, carry out a parallel restoration of both versions.
The restoration was conducted at London’s PresTech laboratory in 2006.
Cabiria 1914:
The primary sources of the restoration of the Italian 1914 version were the colored nitrate positive print of the 1931 version which Pastrone donated to the Museo Nazionale del Cinema and a safety copy printed in the 1960s from the original 1914 negative, which is also conserved at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema. Copies conserved at the MOMA in New York, Gosfilmfond of Moscow and the Filmoteca Española of Madrid were also used. By comparing the various copies, analyzing the film and comparing the film with the script notes, it was possible to identify the sequences shot after 1926 for the 1931 version, roughly 150 meters which were added to the sacrifice scene in the temple of Moloch. In fact, this scene is much shorter in the older version of the film. Most probably, in 1914 the Sinfonia del fuoco by Ildebrando Pizzetti was not performed during that scene, as had always been assumed, but rather before the beginning of the film. With respect to the 1995 reconstruction, the new restoration eliminated scenes that had been shot for the sound version and roughly 100 m of the Spanish copy, which only now have become available, were added. The difference in quality of the materials used created various problems in printing, which were resolved by using different laboratory techniques depending on the quality of the material at hand.
The colors of the 1914 version were estimated based on color samples from 1919 which, since no color copies are available, are considered the closest to the original. The reconstruction of the Italian intertitles was based on the Spanish print conserved in Madrid, a remake passed by Pastrone in 1919, and on the vast production material conserved at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema. The 1914 censorship certificate, the cutter’s script notes for an intermediate (1921?) version of the film, the intertitles on plates and the color samples all confirmed in detail what was disclosed by the filmic sources, including shortening the sacrifice scene that takes place in the temple of Moloch. A dupe negative was made using various printing techniques based on the quality of the original materials; digital restoration was also used. Positive prints were then made of the English and Italian versions, which were colored using the Desmetcolor method.
Cabiria 1931:
The primary source of the 1931 sound version of Cabiria is the tinted and toned nitrate print which Pastrone donated to the Museum. Besides shooting various scenes for the new version and moving the performance of the Sinfonia del fuoco by Pizzetti to the sequence in the temple of Moloch, in 1931 Pastrone decided to shorten most of the scenes and to change the projection speed from 16 fps to 20 fps. The soundtrack was recorded on Bixiophone records, which today are conserved at the Museum and are being restored because the poor state of their conservation risked jeapardizing the quality of the sound. A comparison of the images and the sound accompaniment confirms that the restored version is practically complete. It is possible to precisely identify the small lapses thanks to a system for “marking” the splices which Pastrone had created to remain in synchrony with the accompaniment. The sources for reconstructing the coloration were the nitrate copy and the 1931 color samples. The original signs with the title and credits from the 1931 version, which had been removed from the print, were found and reinserted. A dupe negative was made using various printing techniques based on the quality of the original materials; digital restoration was also used. Positive prints were then made of the English and Italian versions, which were colored using the Desmetcolor method.
