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Kinetica 2 Catalog, 2000
Preserving Fischinger
Joe Lindner
At the Academy Film Archive, we have begun a cycle of work to provide comprehensive preservation for the films of Oskar Fischinger. Oskar's personal collection of negatives and prints originally came to the Archive through the generosity of the late Elfriede Fischinger and Dr. William Moritz. Through the generosity of The Film Foundation and the Sony Preservation Fund, we will be able to restore virtually all of Fischinger's work. For this Centennial tribute, I would like to comment on some of the specific challenges involved in preserving Oskar's animation.
The collection contains all of Oskar's personal prints, as well as the surviving negatives. In most cases, nitrate materials exist for all titles. The first step in our preservation effort involved simply identifying each element, and building a comprehensive list of what existed for each film. The next step was to compare those materials and select the best source - the most original, the most complete, and in the best condition. In the case of Motion Painting No. 1 (1947), we had the original nitrate successive exposure negative, so this process was fairly straightforward. For Radio Dynamics (1942), we found only Oskar's original, spliced master positive. As Oskar never made a negative, it was the most original source. Unfortunately, for many titles, especially the European films, we were (and still are) left with only nitrate release prints. For most of the Studies (1929-32), Composition in Blue (1935), and even American March (1941), no original elements survive.
For American March, the decision came down to two surviving prints. One, on Anscocolor film stock, was badly faded, and had virtually no remaining color values. The alternative, a Technicolor dye-transfer nitrate print, retained all the bril-liant colors of Oskar's work. Unfortunately, the Ansco print was significantly longer than the Technicolor nitrate, and closer inspection of the nitrate showed a number of splices.
When dealing with release prints, splices are almost always an indication of damage in projection, frequently involving the removal of damaged frames. In this case, the lost material was more than a few frames, and more like a few dozen feet. Thus, we were left with the prospect of either preserving the entire piece, or preserving the original color.
Fortunately, Oskar was the type of person who never threw anything away. The can for the American March nitrate was, like all of Oskar's cans, completely filled with tightly rolled pieces of film. Along with the release print were two short pieces of film, which turned out to be the missing material. Clearly, someone (presumably Oskar) had carefully removed two sections of repeated animation cycles, leaving a truncat-ed but still very coherent version of the original animation. In fact, the cement splices were made with such care that only one frame was lost. (Typically, a cement splice requires the loss of two frames per splice.) Oskar would have treated his 35mm Technicolor prints with care, as making release prints this way was quite expensive. Had Oskar not saved these "cuts" or "trims," or if he had handled this print with less care, we would not be able to preserve the film with both its orig-inal length and its original color.
Evaluating film elements is easier when it comes down to two or three remaining sources. When we began work on Allegretto (1936), we were faced with many stacks of cans, some pre-print elements and some release prints. Complicating the issue were the multiple titles Oskar used, including Allegretto, Paragretto, Para Abstract, Paramount Film and even Radio Dynamics. After careful inspection, we picked the best elements and began our lab work. We were quite surprised, upon the first viewing of our new materials, to see a slightly different film than the one we knew. In fact, we were watching a previously unknown version of the film, which we have named Allegretto - Early Version. The more familiar version is now referred to as Allegretto - Late Version. Both films share the basic animation and have the same running time, but there are differences in colors, and the latter version has more layers of animation. (A third version included in this show has been named Paragretto, which is a black and white version Oskar prepared only at Paramount's insistence.)
Understanding the history of Allegretto requires delving into Oskar's biography. Dr. William Moritz had described Oskar's time at Paramount, including the fact that they parted ways over the issue of printing Allegretto in color versus black and white. A few years later, with a Guggenheim grant arranged through the Baroness Hilla von Rebay, Oskar was able to buy back both the rights to his film and the original materials. Our assumption was that the earlier version had been the result of Oskar's work at Paramount, and that the latter version was done after he received the Guggenheim money. Much of the materials do not have visible edge coding, so we could not pinpoint the date of the different elements. Just recently, I discovered in the files of The iotaCenter a letter Oskar wrote to the Baroness (dated February 19,1943) which clarifies the situation:
"This film was made 1936 in Paramount. There was never given the per-mission in this time to make a color-print. Only a black and white print existed. The three color Negative existed all the time. Finally, with your great help, I could clear now everything, and since I preserved the draw-ings and scripts and everything - and after the Laboratory found out that it was impossible to use the shrunken three-color Neg. for a color print, I could reshoot the whole film with the help of your money..."
We had discovered the same shrinkage Oskar refers to in the original negative of Allegretto - Early Version. Hence, we made our new negative from the nitrate separation masters. We never suspected that the poor condition of the original successive exposure negative was present a mere seven years after it was first produced. The second version was clearly completely reshot from the original drawings. As for this original negative of Allegretto - Late Version, it appears to be lost. The only record Oskar had of his new film was a single nitrate print, which was used to make the new preservation internegative.
Somewhere in between the cases of Allegretto and American March lies Kreise (1933). Using the newly developed Gaspar-Color process, Oskar made the first YCM-color film in Europe. Produced as an advertising film, Oskar's original version bore a slogan announcing "Alle Kreise erfasst Tolirag" (Tolirag Reaches All Circles). After the initial run, the rights reverted to Oskar, and he prepared an abstract version. The Abstract version had a different color scheme for the last half of the film. While the Tolirag version had brightly colored circles against a light blue backdrop, the Abstract film had a black background and slightly muted circle animation. We pre-served the Abstract version from a GasparColor nitrate print, and are currently at work trying to reproduce Oskar's Tolirag results from the original successive exposure negative. Yet another surprise awaited us when we printed this negative, as it turned out to have a completely white background. We will have to try and reproduce the tinting effect that original-ly made the light blue background.
I would like to add a final word on sound. All three versions of Allegretto, Motion Painting No. 1, American March, and a number of other titles were preserved from optical track elements in Oskar's collection. The results were cleaner and more dynamic than any signal we could have gotten off of the com-posite prints or later safety negatives. For some, like Kreise, the track from the composite print was the only useable source. Nevertheless, we did not employ any digital "no-noise" processing, nor did we consider using newer recordings of the same music. In all cases, the recordings we preserved are the same that Fischinger used to produce his own prints. In some cases, the track still has a distinctive "noise floor," which is inherent in the original materials. Our policy at the Academy Film Archive has always been to maintain the integrity of the original source materials. But for Oskar's films, it would sound unnatural to have digitally enhanced musical tracks, and the charm of his original recordings has been left untouched.
Lindner, Joe. "Preserving Fischinger" Kinetica 2 Catalog, 2000
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