Technicolor News
Technicolor's Foundation restored Pierre Etaix complete work La Fondation Technicolor restaure l'intégrale de Pierre Etaix
A year ago, the Technicolor Foundation and the Groupama Gan Foundation decided to join forces in order to preserve the world film heritage.
Their first operation was restoring Jacques Tati’s “Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot”. To do so, we first had to jointly work out a quality charter in order to provide a framework for our heritage projects. We thus set ourselves conditions we deemed necessary to achieve this kind of operation and which cover the entire enterprise. These were: respect for the filmmaker and the original film; complete restoration using the negative to ensure its preservation, an obligation to deposit the preserved masters as well as prestige prints in appropriate archive facilities, and, above all, to give the restored film the widest possible exposure. All these aspects are dealt with in the preliminary phases with all parties concerned (rights owners, producer, distributors, etc.) Thanks to the success of this first joint adventure with Hulot, we committed ourselves both to Pierre Etaix and the same high standards described above. If every restoration is specific, we this one is unique: 8 films restored, (this is the restoration of a Complete Oeuvre), no fewer than 1000 pages of contractual documentation to resolve the years of legal imbroglio which had made these films unavailable for over two decades.
Centered on an auteur, Pierre Etaix, this project has thus comprised an even more extensive undertaking, resulting in a successfully completed joint endeavor, involving, notably the technical work of restoring films damaged by the ravages of time, and a limited time-frame in view of the pressing legal concerns, and above all programming the international re-release of a complete retrospective of an auteur whose work has remained unseen by a whole generation of viewers.
The singularity of this project also and above all depended on these two foundations’ involvement with Pierre Etaix and those close to him. Interview followed interview, each revealing new aspects of a body of work that is quite unique: music-hall, film, circus, magic, and Pierre’s whole artistic world. Pierre Etaix started out on the stage, which he never abandoned, was fascinated by the big screen that he initially approached alongside one Jacques Tati, with whom he worked closely and to whom he brought a highly personal touch through his drawings, and props. He finally launched out, with his friend Jean-Claude Carrière, who was himself taking his first steps in the film world, to make two short films in the early 1960s. This was the start of a ten-year collaboration that resulted in 5 feature films and 3 shorts that were seen the world over, until contractual problems and litigation stopped any further screenings.
For all these reasons, the restoration and release of the Complete Pierre Etaix Retrospective has proved to be a very particular and unique project indeed that has proceeded over many long months in an extremely cheerful atmosphere, despite the complexity of the whole process. An unusual project in the milieu of restoring heritage films that came to fruition with the programming of “Le Grand Amour” at the recent Cannes Festival, just before the theatrical re-release of all the films on July 7th.