> Painting out these movie mistakes as part of a restoration is wrong. What's in the movie is in the movie, and altering the movie to this extent is a form of revisionist history. Cinema is worse off when over-aggressive restorations alter the action within the frame. To me, this is equivalent to swapping out an actor's performance with a different take, or changing the music score during an action sequence, or replacing a puppet creature with a computer graphics version of the same creature decades after release.
It's really not the equivalent though. I don't see anything wrong with fixing a license plate or removing a reflection or a modern-day wristwatch.
It's the equivalent of fixing a spelling error in a novel, or a wrong chord in sheet music. None of the filmmakers wanted those things there. They weren't done with intent. They were just mistakes.
Changing music or replacing a puppet with CG, of course I'm against. That's changing the art of it. Different music makes you feel different. A CG creature has a different personality. Just like you don't want to replace vocabulary in a novel to make it more modern-day.
I think it's usually pretty easy to distinguish the two. The first ones would have been corrected at the time if they'd noticed and gone for another take. They take us out of the movie if we notice them. The latter category is a reflection of the technology, resources, and intentional choices. They keep us in the world of moviemaking as it was at that time.
It's really not the equivalent though. I don't see anything wrong with fixing a license plate or removing a reflection or a modern-day wristwatch.
It's the equivalent of fixing a spelling error in a novel, or a wrong chord in sheet music. None of the filmmakers wanted those things there. They weren't done with intent. They were just mistakes.
Changing music or replacing a puppet with CG, of course I'm against. That's changing the art of it. Different music makes you feel different. A CG creature has a different personality. Just like you don't want to replace vocabulary in a novel to make it more modern-day.
I think it's usually pretty easy to distinguish the two. The first ones would have been corrected at the time if they'd noticed and gone for another take. They take us out of the movie if we notice them. The latter category is a reflection of the technology, resources, and intentional choices. They keep us in the world of moviemaking as it was at that time.