On Thu, 17 Jun 1999 23:58:36 -0700 "Edward R. O'Neill" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > We're talking about the studio itself sending a print to > UCLA Archive: it was almost as if they didn't want the film > to be seen. And for a film which didn't do particularly well on it's original release, there's even less excuse for supplying a duff print. My experience has been that for a 10-30 year old film, which was not very successful when originally released and which has not had new prints made, there are usually quite decent release prints available, because they won't have been abused very much the first time round and will have been sitting on a shelf ever since. In particular I have recently shown beautiful 70mm copies of 'The Sand Pebbles' and 'The Man Who Would be King' in the last month or two. Eastmancolor fading and brittle acetate can cause problems in prints of this age, but for this sort of film, they're often totally free of scratches, dirt and joins. For a film like 'Heaven's Gate', I would have thought that UCLA could have located a good-quality release print to use for access purposes, and certainly one without a mis-synched reel. L __________________________________ Leo Enticknap Postgraduate Common Room School of English University of Exeter Queen's Building, The Queen's Drive Exeter Devon EX4 4QH United Kingdom email: [log in to unmask] ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite