The Godfather was premiered in New York on this day 50 years ago. The epic Trilogy will be released in 4K UHD as a celebration. The theatrical release started on 25 February while Blu-ray boxset will be available from 22 March. The restoration process was supervised by the director. Over 300 cartons of film were scrutinised to search for the best possible resolution for each frame of the trilogy. Over 4,000 hours were spent repairing film stains, tears and other anomalies in the negatives, while over 1,000 hours were spent on colour correction to restore the films to Coppola and DP Gordon Willis’ original vision. The original mono tracks of The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II have also been restored.
In an interview with the New York Times, Coppola addressed two key issues on the restoration. The Godfather’s unprecedented success prompted the studio to use the original negatives to strike so many prints to meet the demand. The studio was weak at preservation and the negatives wore out awfully. ‘The whole thing is trying to get it to look like it did at the original screening of The Godfather, when it was only two weeks old, not 20 years old or 50 years old.’
The second mission is to restore the signature darkness of the film. The trilogy is famously dark, so much that Paramount pushed back in the early days of re-releases. Coppola assured the latest restoration has made the right call to the colour. Now the pictures should be as vivid and shadowy as it was in 1972.
Watch now! 50th Anniversary Restoration Trailer:
https://youtu.be/Ew9ngL1GZvs
Further readings:
Dave Itzkoff, ’Restoring The Godfather to Its Original (Still Dark) Glory’, New York Times, 23 Feb 2022.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/movies/godfather-francis-ford-coppola.html?smid=url-share
Photo credits: Paramount Pictures
