Wellesnet

Robert Gitt is the senior film preservation officer at the UCLA film archive, who over the years has been responsible for many important film restoration projects, including the 1980 restoration of Orson Welles original 108-minute version of Macbeth.

I talked with Mr. Gitt last year about both his original restoration of Macbeth, and thanks to new funding from the Film Foundation, plans for his updated restoration of the film for (hopefully) an eventual DVD release on Paramount home video.  

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LAWRENCE FRENCH: How did you discover the longer version of Orson Welles Macbeth back in 1980? 

ROBERT GITT: Well, back then, when we first got the Republic pictures collection at UCLA I went through the vaults and we had not only the material we got from Republic studios, but also, as part of that, we arranged to call in a lot of dupe negatives that were in storage at the British Film Institute by the European rights owner, who at that time was Richard Rosenfeld. He had materials on several of the Republic pictures, and it turned out that Welles original cut of the movie, with the Scottish brogue accents (that ran for 108 minutes), had been seen and was shown in Europe for a long time. But they were printing off a dupe negative. The quality of the negative was all right, but it was not great. It had dirt particles printed in, and wasn’t quite as sharp. So we got that from England, and when I looked at what Republic had, I found there was no longer an original camera negative. My guess is they might have thrown it away because of nitrate decomposition, but I don’t know. However, there was a fine grain master positive of the shorter (86 minute) re-issue version, which was of good quality, made from the original negative when it still existed. That was also the version which had the soundtrack re-dubbed. While Orson Welles was in Europe filming The Third Man and doing radio shows in England, they called in Richard Wilson, Welles associate producer, who got all the actors to come back to Republic and have them re-dub their lines. It’s kind of ironic, because when Welles made Macbeth he had the notion of trying to make it very quickly, in only 23 days, and he also wanted the sound to be really good, so he had the idea of pre-recording the entire performance by the actors in advance, so the actors actually rehearsed and recorded the soundtrack for the whole film before they shot it. So when Welles shot the film on the stage at Republic, he was able to make elaborate camera moves without worrying about the noise of the equipment, or anything like that.  
LAWRENCE FRENCH: So Welles could use long takes, like Hitchcock did on Rope, without having to worry that the sound would be completely unusable because of all the noise from the camera moving around.  
 
ROBERT GITT: Yes, and on Macbeth all of the actors were just mouthing to a playback, which is actually hard to do. To hit your marks and move around and still keep in sync to the soundtrack and also give a good performance. But for the most part they did a very good job, although every now and then the sync is a little bit sloppy. But the strange thing is for the re-issue version, which they released in 1950, they wanted to take out the Scottish accents, and the poor actors had to come back again and watch themselves as they’re mouthing to the playback of their Scottish burr. So they had to read the lines and stay in sync once again, but this time without the Scottish burr. That’s one reason why I think the performances are a little more awkward in the de-burred version. But one of the nice things about the short de-burred version is that Orson Welles does a narration at the beginning, and that’s not in the original version. On the other hand, the original version has a ten-minute take, which is one entire reel with no cuts, which is quite impressive. In the short version, they’ve cut some things and put some dissolves in to shorten it, so it ruins the whole flow of that take. So both versions are interesting, but in 1980 I only restored the long version.
 
We had all the material from England and also from the Republic vault, and then Ernie Kirkpatrick, the man who was in charge of the Republic library and was always very helpful to me and UCLA, called me up and said he had found something they had left behind, and it was a partial fine-grain copy of the long version of Macbeth, although it was missing a couple of reels. But I would say almost three-quarters of it was there. That was all very good quality material, off the original camera negative, with the original soundtrack. That became the basis of our restoration of Macbeth back in 1980. Then we filled in the gaps with the British version, which was of poorer quality, visually. But there also some scenes where the short version matched the long version, so we were able to use those better quality shots from the short version. So we really had three different sources, as far as the picture was concerned. And the sound mostly came from the reels of the good fine-grain copy that Republic had found after the fact, and to some degree from the British dupe negative.
 
That was all done back in 1980 and the film was copied “dry” at that time. So the truth is, for the last twenty-five years we’ve had the movie, and we made new prints of the movie, only some reels were printed from the new dupe negative we made, while some reels were printed from the old nitrate dupe negative from England. Then in addition to the prints, we made new acetate preservation elements, which were in two forms: half the movie was in the form of a preservation master positive, and half the movie was in the form of a preservation dupe negative. So until this day, we still don’t have a complete preservation printing negative, or a complete preservation fine grain master. And we still don’t have it on polyester film, we have it on acetate stock, because in 1980 there was no polyester film, and as you know, acetate stock eventually gets vinegar syndrome. So this year, The Film Foundation, which is Martin Scorsese’s organization, has very generously given us funds to upgrade and improve the preservation of Macbeth.
 
So what we are going to do now, is to go back to all those original materials, and this time print them with wet-gate printing, which will help to remove even more of the scratches and specks. Not that it looked that bad before, but now it will look even better. In addition we are going to be very carefully re-recording the soundtrack, to keep the original dynamic range and quality, but there were some sections of the British soundtrack that had a lot of crackles, clicks and splices and at the time we didn’t have the technology to remove them. But further than that, the film foundation has approved doing both versions, so we are not only going to do a new set of preservation prints and material on the long version, but also on the short version, so now we’ll have a record of both versions.     

ROBERT GITT: Yes, and there is a very good executive at Paramount, Barry Allen who we are working with and although he has many different things he works on, he has a particular interest in the Republic titles, and Macbeth is one of his favorite films. He has also helped pay for a lot of the sound clean-up work, which can be very expensive, because it takes many hours on the computer to clean up the soundtrack. We’ve actually done it already on the long version, and Paramount paid for all of it. But both versions are worth seeing, because they are two very different versions of the film, with different line reading, and so-forth. It’s also interesting that Welles recorded his line readings over in England, and shipped them back to Hollywood, where they edited them in as best as they could, while all the other actors were called back to Republic by Richard Wilson and did all their lines there. I had the pleasure of meeting with Richard Wilson before he died, and he was very interesting to talk with, because he had worked with Welles on Macbeth, and many other films, including It’s All True and The Lady From Shanghai. He was very knowledgeable.
 
LAWRENCE FRENCH: Did you meet Richard Wilson at the time of your 1980 restoration of Macbeth.
 
ROBERT GITT: No, it wasn’t until a few years later, when he was working on the restoration of It’s All True. But I remember Dan O’ Herlihy and Jeannette Nolan came to the screening we had of our Macbeth restoration.
 
LAWRENCE FRENCH: Of course, back in 1980, Orson Welles was also still around.
 
ROBERT GITT: Yes, but apparently, from what I’ve heard, he didn’t particularly care to see his old films. But the sad thing that happened for me, is I almost got a chance to meet Orson Welles. What happened was a year or two before he died, USC had a series of Orson Welles films, and he had agreed to come and talk after each movie. I understand he generally didn’t stay around while they were showing the movies, but maybe he’d go out for a drink and come back afterwards. But apparently, when they ran Macbeth, he learned it was his original version, and according the people who were there, he was very pleased with it. I’m not sure if he actually saw it, or just kind of peaked in for a few minutes from the back, but when it was over I was told he said, “I’m really please my original version has been restored and I’d like to meet the man who did that work.” So they called me up and told me what Welles had said, and told me Orson’s coming next week when we’re showing The Fountain of Youth and Mr. Arkadin. So I went down and Orson Welles came onstage to introduce The Fountain of Youth and then the film began. The idea was that after the showing of The Fountain of Youth, and before the feature began they’d have a reception where I could meet Orson Welles. So I stayed to see The Fountain of Youth, and after 30 minutes go by I went over to the reception to find out that Orson Welles had just left. Apparently he had gotten bored, because everybody was watching the movie, so there was nobody around to talk to and he left.