The film:

An early colossal film. Some columns fall on the floor and bounce (therefore unveiling the trick), but rarely something so spectacular had been seen on the screen in 1911. Giovanni Pastrone rehearses in anticipation of his feat: Cabiria. 

The film restoration:

The restoration was carried out by the Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, the Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino and the Cineteca del Friuli. A census of the copies led to the identification of five first generation nitrate copies, an important element for the restoration. These copies are conserved at the Cineteca di Bologna, at the Cineteca Italiana di Milano, at the Nederlands Filmmuseum of Amsterdam [EYE Film Institute Netherlands] and at the National Film and Television Archive of London. A comparative analysis proved without a doubt that all five copies derived from one negative. The copy in Milan, which had original Italian intertitles, was the source of reference for reconstructing the frames and fonts of the intertitles. The texts of the intertitles, that were missing in the copies, were reconstructed thanks to documents and intertitles on plates conserved at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema. A dupe negative and copies colored with the Desmet method were printed on safety film. The restoration was carried out in 2005 at the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna.

Link Vimeo Cineteca MNC:

https://vimeo.com/402135325

back

• Restorations
• Silent films
• Sound films

• Online collections