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RH: We feel this is the first restoration to use it successfully and properly. It was used on Gone With The Wind, but you couldn't focus it, which was a minor problem. [Laughs.]

O: What did you think of the Gone With The Wind restoration?

RH: Let's change the subject.

O: Oh, that good?

RH: I watched two reels and left because I had a headache.

O: Colors were too pronounced?

RH: Colors were wrong, and they couldn't focus, and it was out of registration, and it was contrast-y. Beyond that, it was beautiful. It's a lovely film.

O: What sort of discoveries do you make about a film when you look at it that closely?

RH: Well, how badly it cuts together when they change the lighting and change the camera angles—how things don't match. Remember, this is very early Eastmancolor, and it might have looked better in 1953 and '54, but now it's all faded. Part of the trick is making it all look like it cuts together and making a new cohesive film.

O: With Vertigo, you completely overhauled the foley work, correct?

RH: We had to, yeah. All the foley and the effects were totally redone. We had the same problem with the Vertigo track [as we did with the Rear Window track]. All that survived were used 35mm prints. We had no mag material, except for the music, which we found in the Paramount vaults. These weren't even the cut music takes; these were the original floor recordings that we found in three-track stereo. So, once we found those and they sounded so extraordinary, we discussed it with a number of critics we respect and Herbert Coleman, who was Hitchcock's producer, and Pat Hitchcock [the director's daughter], and a few other people. We said, "What do we do? Do we try and make the mono track, which is dirty and has holes in it, sound as good as we can make it sound? Or do we take the original music, which is stereo and which many people feel is [composer] Bernard Herrman's finest work, and redo the tracks?" And everyone, to an individual, said, "We want to hear it in stereo." The caveat, of course, was that we would have to re-foley and re-effect the entire picture.

O: That must have been a fearful thing to do.

RH: Not really, because we preserved what existed. Actually, on the DVD, we wanted the studio to put what was left of the original mono track optical on one track and run the stereo on the other. But they didn't want to do that, because it wasn't on the laserdisc. Anyway, the music sounded so extraordinary and the recordings were so well done, but there were problems. Put yourself back in 1958. You're putting film on a projector. How old do you think that projector was in 1958? Where do you think it came from? It's probably out of the mid-'30s, with a tube sound system and speakers out of the '30s. So all of the warts that are in that soundtrack would not come through on the speakers, which smooth everything out—lop off the high end, lop off the low end. But if you take that track and you run it on a new system today, you hear everything, including lots of holes where they would just cut in dead film—no room tone, nothing. So when we would add a foghorn, a couple of birds at the bridge, some wind rustling through the tower at the end of the film... Those were to cover holes. We had no room tone. We had to create everything.

Ahh, ok. I was wondering if his comments were in regards to a DVD or a theatre re-release.

Ess Ay Cee Dee wrote:I'm not happy with the restored audio on Vertigo. I don't see why they couldn't include a remastered version of the original mono soundtrack as a bonus. Re-recording the foley tracks and the score is fine and dandy, but only if the original soundtrack is made available.

I think the new Vertigo soundtrack is a bit too "modern." Many of the sound effects just seem exaggerated to me. It wouldn't bother me too much to watch a 40-year-old film without a booming LFE track.

Ess Ay Cee Dee wrote:I'm not happy with the restored audio on Vertigo. I don't see why they couldn't include a remastered version of the original mono soundtrack as a bonus.

Rspaight wrote:Speaking of Hitchcock, North by Northwest was done with the WB/Lowry process referred to in the thread starter and is eye-meltingly lovely on DVD.

About the non-anamorphic state of Vertigo, does anyone know why these days a movie, particularly one as historically relevant as Vertigo, would NOT receive an anamorphic transfer?