Rare IB Technicolor Print Of 'The Godfather, Part II' To Screen At NYFF

Cineastes will get to enjoy a 13-film survey of "historically significant and brilliantly photographed" works, ranging from Ingmar Bergman's The Passion of Anna to Michel Gondry's Dave Chapelle's Block Party (RIP Broken Angel) next month, as the New York Film Festival pays tribute to the 100th anniversary of the American Society of Cinematographers in its Retrospective section.

One highlight is a rare IB Technicolor print of The Godfather, Part II. We asked co-programmer of the Retrospective section, Dan Sullivan, what's the big deal about IB Technicolor. "Concisely, IB Technicolor (aka dye-transfer Technicolor, aka dye-imbibition Technicolor) is an especially handsome and vibrant two-color Technicolor process that was abandoned for commercial releases of Hollywood films in the 1970s," Sullivan, who is also Assistant Programmer at Film at Lincoln Center, explained.

"It's one of the earliest and richest iterations of Technicolor, and good examples of it are relatively scarce," Sullivan added. "As it happens, The Godfather Part II was the final film to be widely distributed as IB Technicolor release prints (until the dye-transfer process's short-lived comeback in the late '90s). The print in 57th New York Film Festival should approximate what spectators saw when the film was first released in 1974."

Upon seeing the film, New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael waxed, "Visually the film is, however, far more complexly beautiful than the first, just as it’s thematically richer, more shadowed, more full. Willis’s workmanship has developed, like Coppola’s; even the sequences in the sunlight have deep tones — elegiac yet lyrical, as in The Conformist, and always serving the narrative."

(On the other hand, Vincent Canby of the NY Times complained at the time, "The photography by Gordon Willis, so effective originally, is now comically fancy—the exteriors are too bright and glowy while the interiors are so dark you wonder if these Mafia chiefs can't afford to buy bigger light bulbs.")

Other cinematographers in the Retrospective include Ellen Kuras, who shot Dave Chapelle's Block Party (you may have seen her other recent music-related film: Rolling Thunder Revue); Bergman's longtime collaborator Sven Nykvist, represented by The Passion of Anna (he also worked on Sleepless in Seattle, Pretty Baby, and Crimes and Misdemeanors); and James Wong Howe, the first minority cinematographer to be admitted into ASC, with The Hard Way

See the full listing of NYFF Retrospective films below; the 57th New York Film Festival runs from September 27th through October 13th. Ticket passes are on sale now.

America, America
Elia Kazan, USA, 1963, 35mm, 174m
The great Haskell Wexler shot any number of films that could be highlighted in this section, but few can match the overwhelming ambition of this epic by Elia Kazan, based on the life of his uncle. Powered by a largely unknown cast, America, America follows Stavros (Stathis Giallelis), a Cappadocian Greek, from his tiny Anatolian village to Constantinople and finally to New York City, encountering poverty, hardship, and struggle all along the way. Wexler’s sumptuous and kinetic black-and-white handheld cinematography suffuses America, America with a spontaneous energy uncharacteristic of period films at the time, greatly enhancing Kazan’s turn-of-the-20th-century portrayal of an immigrant’s journey to a better life.

Dave Chapelle’s Block Party
Michel Gondry, USA, 2005, 35mm, 103m
One of the great recent concert films, Michel Gondry’s 2005 documentary of a free daylong performance in Brooklyn hosted by comedian Dave Chapelle abounds with life, energy, and rhythm—thanks in no small part to DP Ellen Kuras’s nimble camera, which captures the all-star concert as a kaleidoscopic, reverberant event. Featuring the likes of Erykah Badu, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, the Fugees, Jill Scott, and more, Block Party also makes for an indelible portrait of the event’s host, arguably the world’s greatest working standup comedian at the time, operating at the height of his powers, clowning around with members of the lineup, and, most crucially, serving as the catalyst for this unforgettable happening.

Days of Heaven
Terrence Malick, USA, 1978, 94m
Before coming to the United States and joining the ASC, Néstor Almendros cut his teeth as a go-to cinematographer for François Truffaut and Éric Rohmer; his first Hollywood film was Terrence Malick’s anticipated follow-up to his debut, Badlands. Almendros promptly won a 1979 Academy Award for his work. (Haskell Wexler, who received an Additional Photography credit, stepped in to help finish the film.) Hired by Malick for his sure hand with natural lighting, Almendros ravishingly draws out and amplifies the inherent beauty and poetry of Malick’s 1916-set story, concerning a laborer (Richard Gere) who accidentally kills his boss and flees Chicago for the Texas Panhandle with his girlfriend (Brooke Adams) and younger sister (Linda Manz), where they find work with a farmer (Sam Shepard).

Dead Man
Jim Jarmusch, USA, 1995, 129m
Jim Jarmusch’s hypnotic, parable-like, revisionist Western follows the spiritual rebirth of a dying 19th-century accountant (Johnny Depp) named William Blake (no relation to the poet . . . or is there?). Guiding Blake through a treacherous landscape of U.S. Marshals, cannibalistic bounty hunters, shady missionaries, and cross-dressing fur traders is a Plains Indian named Nobody (Gary Farmer), one of the most fully realized Native American characters in contemporary cinema. Dead Man doubles as a barbed reflection on America’s treatment of its indigenous people and a radical twist on the myths of the American West, expressed in no small part by frequent Jarmusch collaborator Robby Müller’s striking black-and-white cinematography.

The Godfather: Part II
Francis Ford Coppola, USA, 1974, 35mm, 212m
Francis Ford Coppola and Gordon Willis enjoyed one of the 1970s’ most defining cinematographic partnerships, and their most astonishing collaboration was this, the second installment of Coppola’s adaptation of Mario Puzo’s best-selling novel. Picking up where the first film left off—with Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) having assumed power over his family’s criminal syndicate—Part II tracks the young don’s move into the casino business in Las Vegas while dealing with increased attention from Washington, D.C. But most striking are the flashbacks to the early life of Michael’s father, Vito (portrayed here by an Oscar-winning Robert De Niro), lent unsurpassed dimension and atmosphere by Willis’s masterful compositions and lighting. Rare I.B. Technicolor print!

The Grapes of Wrath
John Ford, USA, 1940, 129m
Though Gregg Toland is perhaps best known for his work with Orson Welles and William Wyler on such films as Citizen Kane and The Best Years of Our Lives, his camerawork in John Ford’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic novel rates among the influential cinematographer’s greatest achievements. Starring Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, the iconic itinerant ex-con leading his large family down Highway 66 in search of work and a better life in California, The Grapes of Wrath—one of American literature’s great politically liberal books adapted by a famously conservative auteur—stands as perhaps Ford’s most powerfully compassionate movie.

The Hard Way
Vincent Sherman, USA, 1943, 35mm, 109m
The pioneering Chinese-American cinematographer James Wong Howe shot more than 130 films during his distinguished career—perhaps none as engrossing and entertaining as Vincent Sherman’s 1943 genre-melding musical melodrama. Ida Lupino stars as housewife social-climber Helen, who schemes to use the budding career of her singer sister Katie (Joan Leslie) as her ticket out of their dingy steel town (conjured by earlier documentary footage shot by Pare Lorentz). But when Katie falls for an up-and-coming band leader (Jack Carson), she must choose between her new love and her conniving sister. 35mm print courtesy of UCLA Film & Television Archive.

He Walked by Night
Alfred L. Werker, USA, 1948, 35mm, 79m
Alfred Werker’s pseudo-documentary noir is a lean, mean thriller concerning a petty thief (Richard Basehart) who kills a cop and roams Los Angeles, igniting a manhunt—including future Dragnet star Jack Webb as a shrewd LAPD forensics specialist—that culminates in a climactic chase scene reminiscent of Carol Reed’s The Third Man. Finished by an uncredited Anthony Mann, the film represents one of cinematographer John Alton’s crowning achievements, an endless, anxious maze of urban shadows. 35mm restored print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Restoration funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation and The Film Foundation.

Leave Her to Heaven
John M. Stahl, USA, 1945, 110m
John M. Stahl’s landmark Technicolor melodrama-noir stars Gene Tierney as Ellen, a young socialite who meets Richard (Cornell Wilde), a reclusive ex-con novelist, on a train; they fall in love and marry after she leaves her fiancé (Vincent Price), setting off a chain of events that leads to Ellen’s escalating suspicion that Richard is actually in love with her adopted sister Ruth (Jeanne Crain). Stahl steers his brilliant cast through a mind-boggling, winding plot, toward its exorable tragic crescendo. Fox stalwart DP Leon Shamroy’s Oscar-winning work on Leave Her to Heavenmarks a historically inspired attempt at a kind-of squaring of the circle: shooting a gripping noir in vibrantly beautiful Technicolor.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Robert Altman, USA, 1971, 121m
Robert Altman’s revisionist western classic stars Warren Beatty at the height of his powers as fur-clad gambler John McCabe, who blows into a snowy town in Washington State and sets up a brothel. He lucks into a business (and, later, romantic) partnership with a wayward cockney woman (Julie Christie), but their success lands McCabe on the radar of some unsavory types who want to buy the brothel and its adjoining zinc mines and won’t take no for an answer. Equally known for Beatty and Christie’s lead performances, Altman’s signature overlapping dialogue, and use of Leonard Cohen songs, McCabe & Mrs. Miller is defined by Vilmos Zsigmond’s fleet camerawork, which masterfully captures Altman’s characters amid snow-covered landscapes and in candlelit back rooms.

The Passion of Anna
Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1969, 100m
Filmed on Fårö, Ingmar Bergman’s bleak island home, The Passion of Anna is the case history of a contemporary Everyman, one Andreas Winkelmann (Max von Sydow), a lost soul ricocheting emotionally among a trio of equally damaged folk. Trapped in one of Bergman’s hellish marriages, Bibi Andersson and Erland Josephson are worlds apart—she, fading from lack of love; he, armored in cold cynicism. Anna (Liv Ullmann), the woman who becomes Andreas’s lover, assaults him with her righteous honesty until he explodes in brutal rage. Passion was filmed by legendary Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist, who would later secure his American Society of Cinematographers membership working in America with Philip Kaufman, Bob Rafelson, James L. Brooks, Woody Allen, and others.

Soldier Girls
Nick Broomfield & Joan Churchill, USA/UK, 1981, 87m
Following a platoon of female cadets through basic training at Georgia’s Fort Gordon, Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill’s 1981 documentary endures as a comical and often critical look at the military industrial complex. The film’s subjects have enlisted for a myriad of reasons, ranging from genuine patriotism to socioeconomic circumstance. But once the women begin training, they find themselves performing strange drills, encountering stranger drill sergeants, and experiencing no shortage of sadism and prejudice. In her collaborations with Broomfield, Churchill’s work is always impeccable, but it’s especially striking here, where her dual role as cinematographer and director intensifies her already complicated relationship to the subject.

Street Angel
Frank Borzage, USA, 1928, 102m
In Frank Borzage’s essential silent melodrama, a young woman (Janet Gaynor in an Oscar-winning role) forced into a life of crime by her ailing mother’s escalating medical costs finds herself on the lam, seeking refuge with a traveling circus—where she falls in love with a bad boy painter, played by Borzage axiom Charles Farrell. Brilliantly shot by Ernest Palmer and Paul Ivano, Street Angel has endured as one of Borzage’s most transporting and affecting weepies. The film is also notable for being a key example of the transitional silent/sound hybrid form, featuring no recorded dialogue but nevertheless boasting an early Movietone track of sound effects and passages of recorded music. 4K restoration!