Theoretical Frameworks of the Preservation and Restoration of Beyond the Rocks (1922) - Text 1
The case of Beyond the Rocks also shows how users, with the turn to digital, are gaining a growing level of inclusion in the film archival technological frame[1]. A film like Beyond the Rocks, thanks to the great popularity of its leading actors, especially that of Valentino, belongs to the audience. Once the retrieval was announced, the expectation of being able to see the film instantly grew high everywhere. This clearly influenced the restorers, also with respect to the choice of using multiple dispositifs. And, in turn, it is thanks to its multiple dispositifs that the restoration of Beyond the Rocks has reached many more users than restored silent films usually do.[2]
Beyond the Rocks, though, is also a project where the “film as original” framework has been put into practice. The original artifact has been duplicated one-to-one photochemically, to make sure that this unique print of the film could be preserved as it was found, even if the nitrate original would be damaged beyond recovery. Also, all the possible “originals” have been restored, that is both the Dutch release version, with Dutch title cards, as it was found by Eye Filmmuseum, and the American release version, with English title cards, based on the continuity script. If only these two versions had been restored, the “film as original” framework should have been considered the leading one in the project.
The project of Beyond the Rocks is also representative of convergence/divergence[3] as everything that film technology could offer in 2005, on both photochemical and digital fronts, was tested and, in most cases, used for making one of the seven versions that exist today. In line with Haghefilm’s practice, digital and photochemical tools were adapted in order to duplicate the fragile unique nitrate print. For instance, a state-ofthe- art digital scanner was equipped with a traditional wet gate and it was fed manually, frame by frame, in order to capture as many details as possible from the seventy year-old film. The restoration in the end has been a compromise between what could be done to make the film cleaner, more stable and more pleasant to the viewer’s eye, what was affordable, and what would have made it look as close as possible to the original. Nonetheless, the restoration of Beyond the Rocks still shows image damage, as approximately only half of the defects were digitally corrected. If the technology and the means had allowed it, though, at least one of the versions would have been completely cleaned from damage, placing this restoration also within the simulation concept.
