[MSN] Italian films threatened by age await restoration.

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Posted on Sat, Dec. 02, 2006

Italian films threatened by age await restoration
By Marta Falconi
The Associated Press

ROME -- Italian director Sergio Leone's 1968 Western classic "Once Upon a
Time in the West," like so many films stashed away in storerooms for
decades, has not aged well.

The common signs: Scratches, fading colors and a reddish hue.

But by next fall, the film starring Henry Fonda and Claudia Cardinale will
be restored to its blazing glory, ready to be shown at the second Rome Film
Festival.

It will be a fitting venue to unveil the rejuvenated movie, the first chosen
for restoration under a three-year initiative started this year by the film
festival and director Martin Scorsese, an ardent film conservationist, to
preserve Italian films.

Organizers are still determining the project's scope and what films to
restore, but festival executive Mario Sesti said the campaign was urgent.

"There's a point of no return after which a film cannot be restored
anymore," Sesti said.

Beyond threats such as flood or fire, films often degenerate because they
are stored in areas that are too humid or dry.

"It's a desperate battle, it's embarrassing to see in what conditions some
movies are," Sesti said. "Movies are a cultural heritage that belong to
everybody, just like the great and famous paintings."

Experts welcomed the project, saying not enough was being done to preserve
the cultural treasures.

Giuseppe Rotunno, a leading film restorer, said a restoration generally
takes months, costing an average $127,570, but they can run much higher.

One of the most expensive works was 1962's "Lawrence of Arabia," the
Oscar-winning epic which took 21/2 years to restore in the United States in
the 1980s at a cost of $600,000.

"We are brokenheartedly witnessing the daily extinction of films that could
hardly be rescued," said Alberto Barbera, the director of the National
Cinema Museum in Turin. "It is as if entire slices of art history that we
admire were condemned to vanish."

"If Leonardo da Vinci had been a filmmaker, we probably wouldn't even know
of his existence," Sesti said.

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