If you have seen "Apocalypse Now REDUX" at The Astor Theatre you will know just how stunning a film can look.
It's a Technicolor "dye-transfer" print - a system that's about 70 years old but which still looks better than any other colour process you can see on a screen!
Technicolor dye-transfer was the first successful "full-colour" film and, in a process that is, in many ways, analogous to modern printing on paper, the three primary colour layers that made up the image were printed onto clear film stock. The film receiving the image would already have a sound track which would have been exposed in the conventional manner and there was sometimes a faint black & white image as well to improve contrast.
Improvements in multiple-layer colour films - where each of the primary colours has its own emulsion - eventually saw the demise of the dye-transfer process
But no "modern" process can completely match the grainless image of dye-transfer and the system has been revived for special releases such as the re-edited version of "Apocalypse Now REDUX", "The Wizard of Oz" and the superb restorations of "Rear Window" and "Funny Girl".
It is perhaps ironic to see such an old process making a comeback but that is nothing unusual in the world of film.
CinemaScope and similar wide-screen processes were developed in an attempt to stave-off the threat from television in the 1950s. But the basic "anamorphic" technology had been around for years before that. Even 70mm film had been used in the old Fox "Grandeur" process earlier in the 20th Century.
Sometimes the latest is not the greatest!
"Apocalypse Now REDUX" is screening at The Astor Theatre on Wednesday, March 16, at 7:30 PM.