Respuesta: LA PUERTA DEL CIELO / HEAVEN'S GATE de Michael Cimino
Lo he puesto también
aquí, pero con vuestro permiso lo repito en el hilo de la película ya que la nueva versión también conlleva un montaje algo diferente de los conocidos:
Restoring Heaven's Gate
Lee Kline, Criterion
When Heaven's Gate was released in the 219 minute version in 1980, it made the rounds in a few 70mm prints. As a result of the reception the film received, the prints were quickly pulled from distribution, and then a shortened 149 version was quickly released to theaters. There are few, if any, 35mm prints of the long version. The negative was quickly cut to the shortened version, but luckily YCM's had already been made.
Using the YCM's was determined to be the best way to get back any sort of quality to the picture. Working with director Michael Cimino, the film has been brought back to 216 minutes, removing some sections and making various scene trims at the director's request. This was a gigantic undertaking for a small company and this presentation will focus on how to accomplish a project of this size on a tight budget.
Fuente
Es decir, la restauración de Criterion parte de las separaciones de color del negativo original, que al parecer se salvaron antes que la película fuera cortada y el negativo empleado para la versión reducida. Y aunque no se dice oficialmente, la nueva versión de Criterion vendría a ser un
Director's Cut, pues reduce en tres minutos de duración la versión larga anteriormente conocida (216 vs. 219).
Por otro lado, John Kirk, que realizó la anterior restauración a mitad de la década pasada, se ha expresado en los siguientes términos en el
Grupo de Facebook "Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate":
It's a pity no one asked me for help on this project. I probably could have saved someone a lot of research time. Unless more footage has been found since I left MGM, the "sepia sequence" was really a B&W work print that was the only known surviving footage of several shots. Vilmos Zsigmond told me that the entire movie was meant to be in color, but with very unusual timing that only he was familiar with, I had to cannibalize film elements to make a completely-restored long version, and it would have been impossible to come out looking right without Vilmos's guidance. I hope Criterion at least used the high-def master that Vilmos and I produced as a guide, if they didn't bother to contact him for his input either.
[...] As for the sound, I discovered that the movie was only partially mixed in stereo. Because so much time had been spent on the picture to get the cut ready for the premiere, the sound was put together very hurriedly at the last minute - and because Cimino is hard of hearing (this story came from one of the film's sound engineers whom I serendipitously came across during my work on the project), he couldn't really tell what was in stereo and what wasn't, so everyone told him it sounded fine just so they could get through the mix in time. There were no surviving separate DME tracks, although there was a music and effects only track. However, the dialogue was what needed to be helped most, because a lot of the dialogue had been mixed too low against the music and effects. We were able to improve the level and quality of the dialogue somewhat, but we were hampered by the dialogue being married to the music and effects. What didn't exist in stereo I had "stereoized" so that the sound would be as consistent as possible. Stephen Bach told me at the Berlin Film Festival premiere of the restoration that if the movie had sounded that good at the original premiere, maybe it wouldn't have been the disaster that it was, since one of the main complaints at the time was that the dialogue was often difficult to understand. I took that as quite a compliment. The restoration was well-received there and at the Toronto Film Festival, but the restoration was booked into the Film Forum in New York the same week of the New York Film Festival, and it got virtually no coverage at all. In fact, the New York Times, very irresponsibly, reran its original review of the film instead of seeing the restored version. Therefore, the movie died another death at the time. I'm very curious to see what it looks and sounds like now.
Yo he visto la copia en 35mm procedente de esta restauración anterior y, aunque desde luego luce INCREÍBLEMENTE diferente de cualquier proyección digital de material originado en HD al que las audiencias actuales están acostumbradas, puedo asegurar que ver la película en ese formato es lo más parecido a una revelación que he sentido en mi vida. Ese aspecto anticuado de la fotografía, evocando una época anterior a través de la degradación de la imagen (en mi modesta opinión, en este aspecto, "Heaven's Gate" es la película más lograda junto con las secuencias del joven Vito en "The Godfather, Part II") estaba representado a las mil maravillas en aquélla proyección.
En cuanto al sonido, al haber visto la copia en una sala (Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid) que no puede competir con un Kinépolis, por así decirlo, es dificil pronunciarse, pero sí que me sorprendió positivamente, porque aunque posiblemente fuera un simple Dolby Stereo con cuatro canales matriciados, la música y los efectos tenían una apariencia muy rica, con mucha profundidad y riqueza de sonido, e incluso con graves bastante poderosos. El diálogo, como dice este hombre, era inferior, casi reminiscente del de "McCabe And Mrs. Miller" por su bajo volumen, distorsión y cerrados acentos del lejano oeste.
Estoy impaciente por ver los resultados de Criterion, espero que al haber partido de mejores elementos puedan superar los de la copia restaurada en 35mm, pero siendo una película tan dificil de transferir y sin haber contado con la ayuda de Vilmos Zsigmond (aunque sí con la de Cimino), espero que no echen a perder en el soporte digital la riqueza y aspecto orgánico, sucio, humeante, de bajo contraste y grano pronunciado de la copia fotoquímica. Y en cuanto al sonido, quizá Criterion también haya contado con mejores elementos (las separaciones de diálogo, música y efectos) que Kirk, puesto que anuncian una remezcla en DTS 5.1 que me produce mejores augurios a la hora de verla en mi casa.