These processes can yield beautiful results, yes, but in this case, we’re talking about something nearly as dazzling and precise as the Technicolor wonder-pics of the 1930s onward. When I say ‘full colour,’ I don’t mean tinted (a process by which the film is bathed in a solution that colours everything on-screen) or even hand-painted, as some films had been, cel by cel, since the very beginning. The effect is extraordinary, and worth the price of admission on its own. This print, rarely seen, and in spots poorly maintained, nevertheless contains a spectacular full colour version of the Masquerade, in which the Phantom (Lon Chaney) appears in skull mask and brilliant scarlet robes. So it was for me last night, as I got an opportunity to see-live-the 107-minute version of The Phantom of the Opera a print about 30% longer than any I’d seen before. And occasionally, the results are to be treasured. Watching silent films, then, has an element of the treasure hunt in it. If so, it will replace Kino’s print as the definitive Metropolis, until someone pries open a garbage can in an abandoned asylum in Bucharest and finds another reel. For example, poor Kino International, which put out a gorgeously restored edition of Metropolis (1927) only a few years ago, could soon see that edition rendered obsolete, as a substantial amount of new footage was discovered last year in Buenos Aires, of all places, and from it a new longest-cut-ever may be created. This puts anyone’s claims of a ‘definitive’ edition under serious strain. This makes a whole print pretty hard to come by, but footage thought lost forever often pops up again. Abused, cut up, re-edited (sometimes for sound), pirated, poorly stored and left to rot. This is not to say that movies of this era were more malleable somehow-they were treated like crap, for the most part. One of the benefits of being a silent movie fan is that you never know when a film you’ve seen before will be reinvented.
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