Gucci, The Film Foundation and Warner Bros. Entertainment are pleased to announce the 2013 restoration of Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (1955). The new 4K digital restoration, which was restored by Warner Bros. in association with Martin Scorsese's The Film Foundation, and funded by Warner Bros., Gucci and The Film Foundation, will have its world premiere at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Bing Theater on November 1, 2013. The film will be introduced by Martin Scorsese, who will be joined by Gucci Creative Director Frida Giannini and LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director Michael Govan as co-hosts of the evening.
The following evening, LACMA will honor Scorsese along with David Hockney at the third annual Art+Film Gala, co-chaired by Leonardo DiCaprio and Eva Chow. For the third consecutive year, Gucci continues its longstanding commitment to LACMA as the presenting sponsor of the Art+Film Gala, with Creative Director Frida Giannini serving as Gala Host Committee Chair.
"Gucci has a long history of supporting art and film, and we are very proud to announce our tenth restoration project with The Film Foundation," said Gucci Creative Director Frida Giannini. "Thanks to Martin Scorsese and Warner Bros., the timeless story of Rebel Without a Cause will be experienced by a new generation the way it was initially envisioned by Nicholas Ray. Premiering the restored film in Los Angeles where it was originally shot in 1955, and with our longtime partner LACMA, makes the occasion all the more significant as a part of cinema history."
"I'm grateful to Frida Giannini and Gucci for sharing our
Passion for cinema and our commitment to preservation," said Martin Scorsese, Chair of The Film Foundation. "Working together over the past 8 years, they've made exquisite restorations possible by such master filmmakers as John Cassavetes, Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, and Sergio Leone. Now their support has resulted in a new restoration of Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause; a film as powerful and subversive as when it first hit the screen."
Nicholas Ray's iconic film Rebel Without a Cause tells the story of a troubled teen, Jim Stark (James Dean), who moves to a new town and quickly makes enemies with the local
High School gang. The film immortalized James Dean; launched the Hollywood careers of Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, and Dennis Hopper; and captured the
Zeitgeist of the 1950s through the prism of teenage angst.
Restoration was completed from an 8K scan of the original CinemaScope (widescreen 2.55:1) camera negative at
Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging. Due to color fading, the original camera negative could no longer yield an acceptable photochemical print.
"Nearly sixty years after his tragic death, James Dean remains an icon and a timeless cult favorite. Rebel Without a Cause represents one of the most influential performances in movie history and even today still makes a powerful impact. We are very proud to be working with all our partners on this historic restoration," said Jeff Baker,
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment's Executive Vice President and General Manager, Theatrical Catalog.
The stereo soundtrack was reconstructed by Chace Audio at Deluxe from the magnetic soundtrack stripes of release prints, commonly referred to as "Fox hole" prints due to the smaller perforations found on Cinemascope prints that were a product of Twentieth Century Fox. The original stereo soundtrack master was
Erased by the studio so that the magnetic stock could be re-used for another film. (This was a common practice for most studios at the time, as it was difficult to obtain good quality magnetic stock.)
Director Nicholas Ray shot this film using early single-strip Eastman color 5248 negative which was a low-cost alternative to the three-strip Technicolor process and provided more flexibility for camera placement. Unfortunately, this early color negative yielded poor color imagery. This was a "Warnercolor" feature, which meant that the Eastman negative would be processed and optical sections created at the
Warner Bros. laboratory, rather than at Technicolor. The
Warner Bros. lab created optical sections by shooting the single strip negative sections to separation positives, then shooting back to single strip negative, which yielded soft images with heavy grain.
The original camera negative of Rebel Without a Cause sustained heavy physical damage due to the popularity of the feature and the large number of theatrical re-releases. The camera negatives for reels 3 and 4 were discarded by the studio many years ago as they had been entirely damaged in printing. Reels 7 and 8 were extremely fragile and had sustained heavy damage in the perforations throughout the reels. For the restoration,
Warner Bros. scanned and recombined YCM separation master positives for the missing camera negative sections. They also used the YCMs to replace sections of damaged picture negative in reels 1, 2, 6 and 7. The 1954 original Technicolor dye-transfer answer print was used for color reference.
The final elements created from this preservation project will include a 35mm YCM separation master from the raw 8K scan of the OCN, a 35mm intermediate negative from the final 4K color corrected restoration, a 4K Digital Cinema Master from the final restoration, a 35mm soundtrack negative 5.1, and a 35mm release print.
The restoration of Rebel Without a Cause marks the tenth collaboration between Gucci and The Film Foundation. Through this long-term partnership, Gucci celebrates its own 92-year history, which has been strongly influenced by cinema.
The Collection of iconic films, under the banner "Cinema Visionaries," restored to date by Gucci and The Film Foundation includes:
- In 2006- A Woman Under The Influence (1974, d. John Cassavetes)
- In 2007- Le Amiche (1955, d. Michelangelo Antonioni)
- In 2008- Wanda (1970, d. Barbara Loden)
- In 2009- Senso (1954, d. Luchino Visconti)
- In 2010- Il Gattopardo (1963, d. Luchino Visconti)
- In 2010- La Dolce Vita (1960, d. Federico Fellini)
- In 2011- support of the restoration of We Can't Go Home Again (1976, d. Nicholas Ray)
- In 2012- Once Upon A Time In America (1984, d. Sergio Leone)
- In 2012- Il Caso Mattei (1972, d. Francesco Rosi)
- In 2013- Rebel Without a Cause (1955, d. Nicholas Ray)
Through the "Cinema Visionaries" series, Gucci and The Film Foundation screen these restored titles at select international film festivals and museums around the world. In order to further benefit the communities served by the program, Gucci extends its support to local film festivals and film societies, and is also proud to support The Film Foundation's Conservation Collection.
About Gucci:
Founded in Florence in 1921, Gucci is one of the world's leading luxury fashion brands. With a renowned reputation for quality and Italian craftsmanship, Gucci designs, manufactures and distributes highly desirable products such as leather goods (handbags, small leather goods, and luggage), shoes, ready-to-wear, silks, timepieces and fine jewellery. Eyewear and fragrances are manufactured and distributed under license by global industry leaders in these two sectors. Gucci products are sold exclusively through a network of directly operated boutiques (446 DOS as of June 2013) and through e-commerce, as a valuable complementary business channel. Gucci products are also distributed through a small number of franchisees, and selected department and specialty stores. For more information about Gucci, please visit www.gucci.com. Gucci is part of the Kering Group, a world leader in apparel and accessories which develops an ensemble of powerful Luxury and Sport & Lifestyle brands.
About The Film Foundation:
Created in 1990 by Martin Scorsese, The Film Foundation (film-foundation.org) is dedicated to protecting and preserving motion picture history. By working in partnership with the leading archives and studios, the foundation raises awareness of the urgent need for preservation and has saved over 560 films. In addition to the preservation, restoration, and presentation of classic cinema, the foundation teaches young people about film language and history through The Story of Movies, the organization's groundbreaking educational program that is currently being used by over 92,000 educators. Joining Scorsese on the board of directors are Woody Allen, Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Curtis Hanson, Peter Jackson, Ang Lee, George Lucas, Alexander Payne, Robert Redford, and Steven Spielberg. The Film Foundation is aligned with the Directors Guild of America.
About
Warner Bros. Entertainment:
Warner Bros. Entertainment is a global leader in all forms of entertainment and their related businesses across all current and emerging media and platforms. A Time Warner Company, the fully integrated, broad-based Studio is home to one of the most successful collections of brands in the world and stands at the forefront of every aspect of the entertainment industry from feature film, television and home entertainment production and worldwide distribution to DVD and Blu-ray, digital distribution, animation, comic books, video games, product and brand licensing, and broadcasting. The company's vast library, one of the most prestigious and valuable in the world, consists of more than 61,000 hours of programming, including nearly 6,500 feature films and 3,000 television programs comprised of tens of thousands of individual episodes.
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