Film Restorations and Sound

I recently watched the new Blu-ray disc of the restored version of Kurosawa's 1951 classic "Rashomon".   Like many cinephiles of a certain generation, Rashomon was for me an introduction to the Japanese film.  It is now a certified "classic" of art cinema, and often featured on lists of the greatest films ever.   I haven't watched it for for some 25 years, and my appreciation of the range of Japanese cinema (in particular the films of Ozu) has considerably broadened since then.  I was curious how it would hold up.   Without going into too much detail, I certainly still appreciate the complexity of its story telling.   The celebrated "Rashomon" effect of conflicting memories is still potent, as is the stunning visual quality of Kurosawa's forest scenes.   On the other hand, the movie sometimes feels too ponderous, and the startling acting of Toshiba Mifune seems way over the top.   The constant scratching of his insect bites and his prolonged fits hysterical laughing are really too much.
One of the striking things about the movie is its soundtrack.   Kurosawa apparently instructed his composer to write something that sounded like Ravel's "Bolero", and that is indeed what we get, rather blatantly.  This is certainly jarring, and takes away from what we might want to think of as a medieval "Japanese" atmosphere.   (And perhaps even more so after "Bolero" became known as music for seduction for Bo Derek in "10" in 1979.)  The score also contains some rather ridiculous moments of classic Hollywood "mickey-mousing", where the music functions much like that in classic cartoons, in imitating exactly the character's actions.

The movie is advertised as "restored", and indeed the visual quality is quite good.  What is striking, though, is the quality of the soundtrack, which sounds very much "unrestored".  The orchestral recording sound absolutely terrible, like an old 78 recording.    I have no idea how well the music sounded on the original recording, though.    In some cases, restoration of the sound track just means removing extraneous sounds like "pops"  and "clicks" of various kinds.  But what is interesting to me as that there is very little they can do (or are interested in doing) to restore a very low fidelity recording.  In some cases, the original recording may have been of very low quality.  Or, in other cases, the soundtrack may have deteriorated over the years.   A classic case is the soundtrack for Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky", with wonderful music by Prokofiev.   The existing soundtrack is in fact a temporary, unfinished soundtrack that was put together for a showing for Stalin, who apparently pronounced everything fine as it was presented, and thus it stayed as it was.  (No one was about to explain to Stalin that what he heard wasn't perfect.)  The sound quality is truly terrible, and, in at least one case, there is a single note piano melody where a choir was supposed to eventually be added.   Another case I heard/saw recently was the Japanese film "Gate of Hell" (1953), which was one of the first Japanese films to be shot in color, and is as beautiful a color film as you will ever see.  In the restoration, the colors are vibrant and clear; it could have been shot yesterday.  At the same time, the audio is the same old creaky low fidelity sound.
One could perhaps say that, as always, the visual takes priority over the audio, and that companies that preserve or restore films are more willing to spend money on the visual.   Or, more likely, it is in the nature of early recorded sound to be resistant to restoration, in the sense the original recording might not have been that good to begin with.   And I am talking primarily about the musical part of the soundtracks, as the spoken dialogue is usually pretty good.   And, with the invention of stereo sound for films and the later multitrack sound tracks, sound was certainly improved, and in some cases, has been effectively restored.  (This was done for Hitchcock and Herrmann's "Vertigo".)
One case where technology has made a difference is when the original music track can be rerecorded in modern sound.   Technology has allowed the vocal tracks to sometimes be effectively isolated from the original musical tracks, and mixed in with a newly recorded music track.   This has been the case with Alexander Nevsky, which came out in a fantastic laser disc edition in the 1990's with a newly recorded orchestral soundtrack in true high fidelity.   It's an amazing experience to watch and hear this version, but unfortunately, it has never been released on DVD or Blu-Ray.  (Why?)  And now it has become very popular for symphony orchestras to perform live presentations of films, with the live orchestra replacing the original musical soundtrack.  (The latest being Herrmann/Hitchcocks "North by Northwest".)  Should this be called a restoration or a new version?   I don't know.   In an age when a dead actor can be digitally recreated (Peter Cushing in Rogue One), I'm not sure if it matters.  It's all digital data.    But I can certainly think of so many extraordinary film scores by great composers that I would love to hear in full high fidelity sound.   (Korngold, anyone?  Though the orchestras would probably never be as good or at least as well rehearsed.)  Maybe technology will get us there some day; though I am sure many people would prefer to have old movies with soundtracks that sound "old".   Once having heard the newly recorded "Alexander Nevsky" though, I can never listen to the old version.  I would be happy to have a choice.

Gate of Hell colors: