Sight and Sound: Kevin Brownlow on the lustre of nitrate

[David Pierce]

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/exc ... itrate.php

Once upon a time the silver screen really glistened. Kevin Brownlow remembers when a good film could clear the air

What was I supposed to do with that? Knowing I was keen on films, someone had given me a 200ft roll of nitrate. It showed a scene from Rupert of Hentzau, made in 1913. I had heard that old films were printed on cellulose nitrate stock, which was highly inflammable. What’s more, the industry was still using it. It was 1950; I was 12 years old, and enjoyed staging battles with my friends on the acres of bombed sites that surrounded my home in North London. I placed this roll in a paper bag, climbed to the roof of a bombed building and when my pals passed beneath, I lit the fuse and dropped it. It exploded most satisfactorilly. But I could have kicked myself when I needed the sequence for a documentary in 1996. That roll was all that was left of an important film – and the images on the reel had looked most impressive.

Far more exciting than burning nitrate was watching it on the screen. I remember at the National Film Theatre showing a dim 16mm dupe of a Colleen Moore comedy called Orchids and Ermine (1927). It was the usual thing that laboratories subjected us to in the 1960s. Then the projectionist switched over to the same scene in original nitrate. The audience gasped. The difference was indeed breathtaking. The 16mm barely registered. The 35mm looked stereoscopic – you felt you could walk into it.

I first became aware of the beauty of nitrate when the Museum of Modern Art sent a print of The Strong Man (1926) to the National Film Theatre in the 1950s. Expecting the standard dupe of the time, we were treated to a gorgeous tinted print, identical to what people saw in 1927 – it was bright, steady and sharp as a tack. I had become a connoisseur of print quality because my first sight of a moving picture had been a dreadful home movie made by Dr Barnardo’s and shown to us kids at boarding school. I knew nothing about films – had never even seen one – but I felt instinctively that this was Bad. When I finally went to a cinema, around 1943, Snow White was accompanied by a newsreel. Four naval officers were walking towards camera. The superb black and white photography remains in my mind to this day. Snow White’s Technicolor animation impressed me less than that one rich image.

My enthusiasm for early films was sparked at another school, where once a term we saw a talkie; the rest of the time we saw silents, hired from Wallace Heaton film library. Enthralled by these, I beseeched my parents for a projector and soon became an avid collector myself. The British Film Institute used to show silents at the French Institute in those pre-National Film Theatre days. But what miserable prints! Oily, soupy, dupey, there was absolutely nothing to commend them.

Without Bert Langdon, a collector in Camden Town who used to show original nitrate prints every Saturday night, I might have abandoned my interest. He cranked his projector with one hand and played gramophone records with the other. Thus we had stunning picture quality and orchestral accompaniment. How he managed to hold on to those films I cannot imagine. He lived in a council flat, and he had been there all through the war. His collection included 86,000ft of extracts. Had all that celluloid been hit by incendiaries, the entire terrace would have gone up.

Bert Langdon wouldn’t admit it, but he was slightly afraid of nitrate. He knew he should have proper ventilation yet he didn’t even open a window and kept incense burning throughout the show. To minimise the fire risk, he limited his lamp output to 100 watt. This was a shame because it reduced the impact of the films. Nonetheless, the quality was superb and we could see all the tints and tones.

I hadn’t realised the old films were so elaborately tinted and not only that, the early French had a stencil system called Pathécolor which could be incredibly beautiful. Those evenings watching unique nitrate prints set a new standard and made me paranoid about print quality. I couldn’t so much as watch 8mm. But sell me a 16mm print from the Kodascope library – you could tell these by the smell of camphor – and I knew I had the nearest to nitrate, for the prints were uncannily sharp. Original 35mm prints were hard to see outside the NFT and Bert Langdon’s, although some fleapit would make up a Sunday programme somewhere from old nitrate prints.

But rapidly they fell into obsolescence. People became paranoid about them. Fire officers took sadistic delight in relating horror stories in which nitrate burned under water, producing its own oxygen. “Nonsense,” we veterans retorted. “So long as you treat it properly, it is no more dangerous than the petrol in your car.” But even archives, once they’d made their copies, burned the nitrate. Many of them still do. How desperately grateful we would be, in this age of DVD and HD, to have access again to those exquisite prints…

My wife was deeply impressed by the nitrate we used to see at the Fox studios, in Los Angeles, when the great Murnau and Borzage and Hawks films were dug out of the vaults. That was 40 years ago, but even today, when you get that incredibly intense light right after a rainstorm, she will break into a seraphic smile and say “Nitrate weather again.”

And yet I remember when a West End cinema was showing a nitrate print of a Garbo film – out of focus. A slight twist of the lens and it would have looked superb. I called an usher and asked him to contact the projectionist. The film was being ruined. “Oh, that,” he said, gesturing with contempt. “That’s an old film. Nothing you can do with it.”

[Gagman 66]

Wow! That's awesome! Now where is that 35 MM of ORCHIDS AND ERMINE, or LILAC TIME or any Colleen Moore feature? And speaking of Howard Hawks, how about getting the restored FIG LEAVES shown at next years TCM Film Festival? Or maybe BEAU GESTE? Might go a long ways to getting these films released on DVD.

[rogerskarsten]

This is interesting, but now I'm a bit confused. Mr. Brownlow's love letter to nitrate film stands in contrast to a comment made by Jack Theakston a couple of months ago in the "What's your favorite wrong 'film fact'?" thread on this board, where he mentions the notion "That nitrate film is somehow "better" than safety film in reproducing images" among the erroneous "film facts."

So what's the verdict on the image quality of silver nitrate versus safety film?

~Roger

[mmandarano]

Here's an interesting article from Oregon at the Movies, A to Z asking Dennis Nybeck about Nitrate -

http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2010/ ... rate-film/

This excerpt seemed to pertain to this thread:

I asked the projectionist Doug Stewart if this 16mm print could be nitrate. He told me there had never been any 16mm nitrate. I asked him, if they had safety film that long ago – in World War I – why did they keep using nitrate into the fifties?

Doug said “Because it looked better.”

Nitrate film had a very high silver content. If you see it on the screen you’ll be struck at how black the black is. If you pause to think, you’ll realize that you’d never really seen black in a motion picture before. Safety film is literally a pale imitation of the gold standard of nitrate.

Television cut into the profits of the studios in the fifties. Before that there was never a need to cut corners by getting rid of nitrate. At the same time the Hollywood studios were searching for ways to keep the profits up, introducing Cinemascope, 3-D, and stereo sound, they were dumping nitrate for the cheaper safety film. If you think about, if nitrate was so dangerous, why did we end up tearing down most of the old movie palaces, when they should have burned down by themselves long before that.

[Danny Burk]

I've heard mixed answers to this, and likewise I'm curious since I've never seen a direct comparison myself.

I once asked Audrey Kupferberg, formerly of the AFI, and her reply was that one can't tell the difference between nitrate and a really good, properly made safety print. I've thought that she should know what she's talking about, but do other folks here **who have actually compared for yourselves** feel the same?

I've never seen b&w nitrate projected, although I've examined it by hand and yes, it's easy to see that it has a high silver content and, therefore, great contrast and tonality. I have seen IB Technicolor nitrate projected, which is a thing of wonder, with incredible saturation and depth; however, I haven't seen the same footage in a safety IB version, so again I have no direct comparison.

I don't agree with the comments above re: silver content as the direct reason for replacement. Back in my 16mm days, I had some prints from the '40s and '50s that had much higher silver content than more recent prints, and they looked great on the screen. Far superior to more recent prints, which were washed-out and flat in comparison. But of course all of these were safety film, being 16mm, the only real difference being that of silver content. Over time, all b&w film stock has been gradually reduced in silver content, including both movie film and negative stock for still photography. Clearly, safety film could also retain high silver content, as it did in those older 16mm prints; it was gradually cheapened over time, and I see no reason why the same situation wouldn't be the case in 35mm prints as well. Given the same silver content, does anyone feel that there is an innate visual superiority in nitrate vs safety film base?

[drednm]

Ok here's a dumb question.... is the wondrous, glistening effect in A Midsummer Night's Dream due to nitrate?

[Jack Theakston]

This is interesting, but now I'm a bit confused. Mr. Brownlow's love letter to nitrate film stands in contrast to a comment made by Jack Theakston a couple of months ago in the "What's your favorite wrong 'film fact'?" thread on this board, where he mentions the notion "That nitrate film is somehow "better" than safety film in reproducing images" among the erroneous "film facts."

So what's the verdict on the image quality of silver nitrate versus safety film?

With all due respect to Mr. Brownlow, that's a very unscientific appraisal of nitrate film. And with respect to Mr. Nyback, that's a very unreliable account of history.

(Now should be as good a time as any to mention I've run hundreds of, maybe even over a thousand, vintage 35mm prints, including many nitrate films, so I'm not just blowing smoke.)

I still contend, although I'm sure there are a number of people on this board who will vehemently disagree, that there's no such thing as the "nitrate shine," and that it's a lot of romantic nonsense. Silent era prints look so good not because of the stock they were printed on, but because of a larger aperture area and good lab-work, including good gamma and prints that came right off the camera negative.

Because of the changing aperture sizes over the years, the limitations of film have grown. Case-in-point: take any black and white film from the '50s, and a set of new Schneider lenses, and you'll see what I mean. Run it at 1.85. Then run it at 1.37. Then run it full-aperture. In each case, you're reducing the grain size on the screen, leading to a sharper, brighter picture.

If you read Brownlow's article, it's obvious that he had little point of reference. "Oily, soupy, dupey" or "a dim 16mm dupe." Duh! An original 35mm always tromps a dupe 16mm in quality. That's an unfair comparison. That's as broad a comparison as someone offering you a 24-karat diamond ring and then one made out of cubic zirconia!

As for the safety switchover, little has been written on this, and it should be. It happened in 1948 (over a period of three years), and had nothing to do with television. The safety switch was made because of increased insurance rates in transportation and increased difficulty in transporting hazmat materials during that era. Safety film was the norm a full two years before CinemaScope and 3-D.

[Jack Theakston]

I once asked Audrey Kupferberg, formerly of the AFI, and her reply was that one can't tell the difference between nitrate and a really good, properly made safety print. I've thought that she should know what she's talking about, but do other folks here **who have actually compared for yourselves** feel the same?

Absolutely.

Over time, all b&w film stock has been gradually reduced in silver content, including both movie film and negative stock for still photography. Clearly, safety film could also retain high silver content, as it did in those older 16mm prints; it was gradually cheapened over time, and I see no reason why the same situation wouldn't be the case in 35mm prints as well. Given the same silver content, does anyone feel that there is an innate visual superiority in nitrate vs safety film base?

I must chime in here— the silver content of film has not been drastically reduced, contrary to what has been said by archivists and collectors. The main reason for muddy, low-contrast prints was the labwork, NOT the stock. At the same time places like Movielab were spitting out crappy, milky prints, places that specialized in black and white (such as Thunderbird) were spitting out really quality copies.

A number of sources claim that nitrate is somehow gives a "purer" spectrum of light. Nonsense. This is a theory made by someone who has no understanding of optics. Modern polyester stocks have the best light transmission of the four types of film base.

Ok here's a dumb question.... is the wondrous, glistening effect in A Midsummer Night's Dream due to nitrate?

It has far more to do with Hal Mohr's cinematography!

[Penfold]

Not being technical, I can't explain in precise terms why it looked better, even how it looked better....but having been at a screening of a nitrate print of Black Narcissus at the NFT - thank you David Pierce - some years ago, I can say it had a quality that no safety print I've seen ever had, however back-to-negative it was in terms of generation, or how restored. It sounds stupid but it really did look like it was projected onto velvet in comparisom. It was positively tactile.

[Danny Burk]

Thanks for the response, Jack. Basically what I thought, although no difference in amount of silver does surprise me. It's been "common knowledge" (or perhaps lack thereof) in still photography that this is also the case, e.g. b&w negs from the '30s having more silver than the stuff that Kodak or Fuji puts out today. I shoot 4" x 5" sheet film, and while I've not seen any old negs with which to compare, I have no problem getting rich tonality from them as long as they're not "thin", i.e. underexposed. Although I didn't mention it previously, it goes without saying that a print of physically larger size, or closer in issue to the original camera neg, would normally have superior quality.

Interestingly, re: BLACK NARCISSUS, Jon Mirsalis mentioned many years ago that the most beautiful print he had ever seen, by far, was a nitrate IB of that title. One of my great favorites, and which by coincidence I'm going to watch tonight, having picked up the new Criterion blu-ray yesterday.

[Jack Theakston]

I usually don't shoot on anything larger than 120 myself, so I can't speak for large format stuff, but I have a an opinion that tabular-grained stocks most definitely have a different "look" than their conventional-grain stocks in shooting, but are far more controllable in printing from old negs.

The great look of those old movie prints is a tribute to the good labwork that was being done at the time. There was never a sharper 'scope print to my mind than Technicolor's work on YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. On the other hand, I've seen some really terrible prints, and that includes nitrate prints. Most specifically one that comes to mind was TOWED IN A HOLE (which had dupe sections and slugs on the original print run!).

[moviepas]

Mention of Thunderbird, I assume means Thunderbird Films of LA(Eagle Rock, Verdugo Road & other parts West) run by the late Tom Dunnahoo who I imported lots for my customers. Then if that is the case I would say Ray Pointer of Inkwell Images(now back in Michigan, my early 1970s home), who did a lot of work on a kitchen table as a very young man like we all were then, is your man. I have got some great rare stuff from Ray's business, particularly the DeForest films.

[Nick_M]

I've only seen a handful of nitrate prints, but if you didn't tell me that any of them were nitrate, I probably wouldn't have been able to tell. Knowing that which prints were nitrate, the only thing I could guess was in common with them is that the image was subtle in comparison to new prints (no blinding white, no abyss-like black, no bleeding-eye Technicolor), but I'm probably totally wrong on this.

Seeing Easy Living (1937) in sparkling safety and a nitrate of Midnight (1939, both made by pretty much the same people) three weeks apart convinced me that it's not the nitrate stock that primarily makes all those old films look so good. Aside from wear and tear, they looked surprisingly similar.

However, I do get a kick out of seeing nitrate since it basically guarantees that what you see is how the film looked originally.

[Dennis Nyback]

Since something I have said has been discussed I thought I'd throw in another anecdote. I was happy to join this group to do so. Several years ago I was asked to provide some films for a project called Decomposer. The idea would be that arresting visual film would be shown and musicians in the theater would create music on the spot to accompany it. The film could originally be sound or silent. This is something I am not fond of myself. Some famous musicians took part. I provided film. It was about half and half 35mm and 16mm. I then went to Europe to show films there. While I was in Europe the people putting on the show had decided the 35mm stuff looked better than the 16mm stuff and went looking for more. A friend of mine who had a key let them into my film rooms and they took some more 35mm. It was well over a year later I was talking to someone who had attended what had been a very popular show. I asked what film in particular that person had liked. She said the crowd favorite had been "the boxing film" and added it "It was beautiful." At first I was stumped. Then it hit me. The only boxing film I had in 35mm was a Nitrate original ten minute short of a not all that interesting 1940 bout. Not realizing it was Nitrate they took it, handed it to the projectionist, and it was shown to the crowd. I am sure no one had a clue it was Nitrate. It was then returned to my friend who put it back where he'd found it, along with the rest of the films. I got back from Europe and found everything in order and never gave it a thought. I might add that I provided some really great stuff for Decomposer in the first place. One item was an original Jam Handy Technicolor work print from 1960 that is among the prettiest things I own. Also, don't worry about my carelessly leaving Nitrate film lying around. A year or so ago I shipped all my nitrate films to the Academy Nitrate storehouse in Los Angeles.

On another topic, I just got back from Buster Keaton Days in Cottage Grove, Oregon. 85 years ago Buster spent several months there filming The General. I have written a report about that which is on my blog at http://www.dennisnybackfilms.com/2011/0 ... aton-days/" target="_blank

[Jack Theakston]

Welcome to the board, Dennis!

[sepiatone]

Some people may not be technically minded about the luminous qualities of either nitrate film, acetate safety or even shot on glass still photography. And that's the word that comes to mind for me on this subject; luminence(sp). The pioneering work Eadward Muybridge shot for his zoopraxiscope was on glass over 125 years ago if I'm not mistaken and while not glistening they are quite clear for their age. The Wright Brothers first flight photo taken in 1903 wasn't developed until ten years later in 1913 when it was thought that the Great Dayton Flood had destroyed the plate that year. While the brothers were amateur rather than professional photographers the glass plate negative showed how well it could keep an undeveloped image over a ten year period with almost no loss of detail. A great example of that photo can be found on Wikipedia and it won an award a few years ago. When we watched Lois Weber's WHERE ARE MY CHILDREN? at the LoC, the film certainly had a luminence about it uncommon with films of that vintage that were more than once removed from the camera negative source. I remember saying to myself this film looked as if it could've been shot yesterday instead of 1916. There are several examples throughout the silent nitrate era and sound nitrate era where comparisons can be made on the same film with two different copies. That is a first generation nitrate print once removed from the camera negative or a several generation dupe that makes scenes murky rather than luminous. Yes without being too technical, I would agree there is a visual difference.