American Cinematographer - September 2008 - (Page 75) colored chaos” to itself, with saturated hues that were “violent and almost exaggerated.” As the flashbacks jump back and forth between different parts of Lola’s life, three different color palettes distinguish the different eras. During her sad youthful years, the colors are blue, black and gray; when we see her as a grown woman in Bavaria, the colors shift to ivory, blue, silver and gold; and finally, in the latter part of her life, the colors become autumnal, mainly gold and red. According to Annenkov’s notes, Ophüls even had his crew paint a long stretch of road ochre-orange so that when the coach carrying Lola and Liszt passed by, the landscape would display the proper colors. To ensure that the restored color was in line with Ophüls’ intentions, the colors were matched to a reference print made by the Cinémathèque Française under the supervision of Marcel Ophüls. Technicolor arranged a link between its California and London facilities so Ophüls, who was unable to travel to the States, could screen the results of the color-correction (done on a da Vinci 2K Plus) in London and give immediate feedback to Burton’s team. The restoration yielded three color-space versions, one for film (for recording to 2242 internegative stock), one for DCinema, and one for Rec 709 HD Video (for output to HDCam SR 4:4:4). New 2K negatives of the movie were filmed out via Technicolor’s Arrilaser recorders. “This restoration was very important to Marcel,” notes Braunberger. “It was very difficult for him because he saw his father suffer when the public didn’t understand at all what he wanted to do. Max Ophüls died just after the last cut [was released]. The drama of this production is the way in which the producers tried to present the film to the public and fell into the trap of trying to get closer to a public they couldn’t really know. In the end, they created a failure. With time, we succeeded in getting back what the film originally was.” The restored Lola Montès had its premiere at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and is scheduled to screen at the Telluride and New York film festivals this fall. A limited theatrical release will follow. I 75 http://www.chimeralighting.com http://www.chimeralighting.com
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