That's a type in H'wood for sure. Raymond Rohauer for one. Not just film elements but photos and other things from many of the major studios/production companies. It's collecting and hoarding. One recent major auction with items from a FX guy was loaded with presumably pilfered photos (among other things of dubious provenance.) There's no way those images were given away or sold. They were content and were taken (maybe w permission by someone who had no authority to actually give them away.) I worked in the photo department at a major studio for many years. I was told that a major stills collector was given carte blanche to take 4x5 transparencies and original prints from the phot library as they were just gathering dust. Before home video, many of those photo assets were perceived to not have too much value and were not archived or saved in any organized way.
I finally got around to watching the TCM recording of this 2021 restoration. It looked beautiful on my OLED. It's such a great film that I hope Warner would re-issue another Blu-ray release derived from this 2021 restoration. The differences between the 2013 Blu-ray and this latest restoration are significant to me.
This is great to hear regarding this restoration, but I can’t understand why it’s not being released. World premier three years after the work was done?
The world premiere was 3 years ago at L'immagine ritrovata film festival in Italy.
Warner didn’t finance this restoration. It was financed by other entities for preservation purposes. With that said, I expect TCM to show this restoration going forward whenever they have this movie on their schedule. I’m hoping that Warner will reissue another Blu-ray release derived from this restoration.
I was streaming films from the festival at Bologna, Italy, and the gentleman from the Academy Archive who introduced the film @ TCM spoke about the restoration during an interview prior to the screening. BTW, it was shown theatrically, but not streamed. I watched many other streams, and rued the fact that Best Years of Our Lives was not streamed.
That 2020 Blu-ray was a re-issue of the 2013 Blu-ray except it was issued by Warner Archieve instead of Warner Home Video. No differences presentation-wise.
Who financed, and by that I mean wrote checks to labs?
Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
