Restoration of Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" to Premiere on October 30th in Rome, Italy
On the 50th Anniversary of its release, Gucci and The Film Foundation in association with Medusa Film are proud to present Cineteca di Bologna's restoration of "La Dolce Vita" at the 2010 Rome Film Festival
Oct-29-2010
GUCCI and The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 1990 by Martin Scorsese dedicated to film preservation and restoration, have come together with Cineteca di Bologna, Medusa Film, Pathé, Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, Paramount Pictures and Cinecittà Luce to restore one of the most influential masterpieces of all time, Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. Released in 1960, the restoration will celebrate the film’s 50th Anniversary.
In 2010, restoration work on the film was completed by Cineteca di Bologna laboratory L'Immagine Ritrovata, who benefited enormously from Martin Scorsese's expertise during the course of the project. The original materials were made available by Medusa Film, including the original camera negative which was shot in Totalscope (2.35:1) on Dupont film stock. The lab scanned the negatives at a 4K resolution and over 8,000 hours of digital cleaning were necessary to repair the signs of time and decay. Digital grading was executed with particular care using a vintage copy as a reference print, as well as a positive copy restored in the 90s by Mediaset. During the restoration of the film many sources were inspected and compared to the original negative including a vintage lavander preserved at the CSC-Cineteca Nazionale.
Recently, a new discovery of longer takes which were presumably cut a few weeks before the film’s final release was located. This unique and unseen footage amounts to an overall 10 minutes of additional materials. Fellini invited friends, intellectuals, journalists and artists who watched different versions of the film and advised him accordingly. La Dolce Vita is the first 3 hour long Italian auteur film, however Giuseppe Amato tried until the end to have the film shortened. These 10 minutes of extra footage are most likely trims, but some of them offer a very interesting glimpse of Fellini's vision.
The restoration recaptures the film's original shine and beautiful sharpness of its black and white splendour. Many thanks is due to Fellini’s processing expert Vincenzo Verzini as well as Ennio Guarnieri's contribution, Director of Photography Otello Martelli's camera assistant, whose knowledge of the film was invaluable.
The restoration of La Dolce Vita has been made possible by GUCCI as a longstanding commitment to restore and preserve significant films through the work of The Film Foundation. Recently, these two organizations along with Cineteca di Bologna have restored three additional Italian films: Michaelangelo Antonioni’s LE AMICHE (1955), Luchino Visconti’s SENSO (1954) and IL GATTOPARDO (1963).
The world restoration premiere of La Dolce Vita will be held on Saturday, October 30, 2010 at the Auditorium Parco Della Musica’s Sala Petrassi Theatre as part of the 2010 Rome Film Festival. Martin Scorsese, founder and chair of The Film Foundation is set to introduce.