The Nitrate Picture Show: Meet Me in Rochester
Meet Me in St. Louis
The achingly beautiful Technicolor musical Meet Me in St. Louis has long been one of my favorite films. It exemplifies the genius of the Hollywood studio system–its entire cast and crew crafted a heartwarming piece of Americana while WWII was raging. Yet underneath its brightly colored nostalgia is a (literally) dark undercurrent of loss, unfulfilled longing, and an awareness of death, all reflecting the artistic vision and personality of its director, Vincente Minnelli. It is no accident that Judy Garland (as Esther Smith) wears a black dress, in a sea of pastel colors, when she sings “The Trolley Song.” In the film’s most exquisite scene, which immediately precedes “The Trolley Song,” Esther leads her would-be beau through her family’s house late at night, extinguishing the candlelights, hoping to create a romantic mood that might inspire him to kiss her. This beautifully poignant scene took four days to light and stage, with a delicate palette whose refined approach was constantly challenged by Technicolor’s color consultants.
I have seen the movie many times, but never in its full glory until the presentation of a pristine, vibrant nitrate dye-transfer Technicolor print on a transcendent Sunday morning in June at this year’s Nitrate Picture Show at the Eastman Museum in Rochester. The print was on loan from the Library of Congress, where it was deposited eighty years ago by MGM to fulfill copyright requirements. A nitrate print, on thick celluloid stock, printed with a photochemical blend containing high silver content, offers a spectacular and unmatched viewing experience. The colors are rich, shades of black and white are deep, gradations of gray are textured, and the images offer a perception of depth that gives them a subtle 3-D quality. Yet nitrate prints are irreplaceable. Famously flammable, nitrate prints ceased being made in 1951. (Tragically demonstrating their fragility, a fire at the Eastman archive in 1978 destroyed the camera negative for more than 300 films.)
The Dryden Theater at the Eastman Museum is the only venue on the East Coast for the projection of nitrate prints, and now in its eighth year, the annual Nitrate Picture Show has become an essential pilgrimage for cinephiles, a chance to spend four nights and three days watching what could well be once-in-a-lifetime screenings of nitrate prints from archives around the world. The shipping, preparation, and projection of these prints is incredibly labor-intensive. Countless hours are spent inspecting each print, sprocket by sprocket, to make sure they can make it smoothly through the projector. There are three projectionists in the booth for every screening; in a charming tradition, they are all introduced to a round of applause before the film starts.
The lineup, not announced except for the opening film, until the first day of the event, is a mix of classics and rarities, including feature films, documentaries, avant-garde, animation, and orphan films such as burlesque shows, dance performance footage, educational films, and more. I came to this year’s show just a week after returning from Cannes, so I was able to see a stunning print of D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance soon after wathcing Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis–both epic, history-spanning spectacles that share similar achievements and flaws; dazzling artistic invention marred by fuzzy ideas and heavy-handed scripts. This year’s entire lineup can be seen here.
There were films by Max Ophuls, William Wyler, King Vidor, Jean Renoir, Pare Lorentz, Raoul Walsh, G.W. Pabst, Walt Disney and more (including a Lewis Milestone-directed public service film about syphilis). In a vivid demonstration, Disney’s cartoon The Skeleton Dance was shown twice, once in a standard modern “safety” print, and one in a vintage nitrate print. In a show of hands, about 95% of the audience identified the nitrate print, easily seeing its superior image quality.
But it is not just the image quality that makes the Nitrate Picture Show so special. There are also some intangible and essential elements that are part of its appeal. One is the aura around each screening, the knowledge that you are watching a unique vintage print anywhere from 80 to 100 years old; you somehow feel that you’re not watching a copy of a film, but the original film itself. (In one case we were watching William Wyler’s personal print of a film made 89 years ago). Another key element is simply the experience of watching these films in a jam-packed 500 seat theater. Wyler’s delightful comedy The Good Fairy, starring Margaret Sullavan, with a Preston Sturges script, played like gangbusters. Every gag landed perfectly, and the room was filled with laughter; this could well be the best screening the film has had since its 1935 release. And finally, the Nitrate Picture Show is an incredibly hospitable experience; scores of archivists, Museum staff, volunteers, and projectionists give their all, clearly taking great pride in their work and understanding how special the experience is for everyone involved.
Sadly, I had to leave this year just before the final screening, the traditional “Blind Date with Nitrate,” where the film title is not revealed until the curtain rises. This year’s blind date was Carl Dreyer’s Day of Wrath. A friend who was there told me it was a stunning print, with the richest blacks and whites she had ever seen. It was painful to know that I had missed this screening, and that I may well never have a chance to see this print. Yet what greater proof could there be of the importance of the Nitrate Picture Show, which may be the ultimate FOMO cinema event?