The quality of this reconstruction is exquisite. Although to us, the “blue” color appears turquoise, in 1930, printed on nitrate stock, it may have appeared significantly bluer due to the “silvering” effect of the nitrate. Until somebody contrives a way to mimic this effect artificially, we’ll never know.
Up to this point, Technicolor was only a 2 strip process (Red and Green). Therefore, Blue could not be reproduced. The 3 strip process didn't come till the mid 30s.
@smadaf no. Nothing about the handwriting would look different, under your analogy By contrast, nitrate film would look different indeed. I saw a pristine copy of a nitrate-filmed short, starring Mickey Rooney, and I was gobsmacked at the difference. There's a reason they used to call it the "silver screen". Edit: once in a while, they hold a nitrate film festival. You might want to look into that. One viewer who'd seen Leave Her to Heaven on a nitrate copy gasped when Gene Tierney popped up on the screen.
@@rubenmejia942 Walt Disney Did have Exclusive Rights to the 3 Strip Technicolor Process from 1932 to 1935 . In Late 1935 & Early 1936 other Cartoon Studios had access to the 3 Strip Technicolor Process. 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍
the mint green looks really strange to us, but it was only 2-color Technicolor meaning it could only capture red or green well. still it is amazing. watching the huge piano open and the musicians inside playing- we will never see anything like that again!
Excellent restoration of 2 color Technicolor! Even the soundtrack sounds great. Interesting that the floor and background curtains look black and white, but presumably that was the way they were originally and nothing to do with the restoration. Thanks for this!
Wow! I have the more common color version which has been around for years and the colors are washed out and the print has rough spots. Evidently, amazingly, they recently found the 35mm negative of King of Jazz (!) and this is a clip from the new version. Stunning!
It almost looks too perfect to be 86-years-old although The Wizard Of Oz from 1939 looks just as good. But I'm so used to seeing early talkies full of pops and crackles like Universal's Dracula from 1931. It just shows what happens when you take care of something.
They used the original negatives for their restoration of this film. Dracula's original negatives no longer exist so cruddy multi generational dupes are all that can be used.
They have most of the negatives for this film, some scenes ended up being lower generation copies and any missing scenes are just presented as black voids where the music keeps going without the visuals
Comes out in March from The Criterion Collection on blu-ray. Should look splendid. I was surprised Criterion chose to release this over some other studio films they might also have access to. I’d imagine it’s due to the historical/milestone nature of the film.
I see no reason not to expect something of this caliber being from 1930. It was, after all, an era of cinematic innovation which garnered some pretty spectacular films. Even widescreen was already developed, though over 20 years ahead of its time - witness films like THE BIG TRAIL and THE BAT WHISPERS, both from 1930. What IS remarkable is the meticulous restoration job in the case of KING OF JAZZ that accurately reflects the high production standards of those days. Heck, even films from 1895, after having been properly preserved, can look like they were shot yesterday.
Frankly I'd rather see it on opening day, brand new and clean, no cracks and fuzzed sounding to it. That was the treat, being there then..not seeing it as a historical piece.
Don't think GG ever appeared in any movie. From what I gather, GG and Paul Whiteman weren't on speaking terms by the time the '27 electronic recording was made.
"The King Of Jazz" (made in 1930) was a technical marvel.... It not only had a superior sound quality, (insisted upon by Paul Whiteman but complained about by 'Western Electric', (on cost grounds)), but also had the very latest film skills including 'Colour'. This Film still remains one of my favourites. It includes a very young 'Bing Crosby' as one of the 'Rhythm Boys'. That's how good it was !
It's very green because they were showing off the two-strip process, but they didn't have the three-strip blues yet . My great uncle was George Whiteman's orchestrator and personal assistant, and they finally got blue to work with the three strip process in 1935, where you can see them showing off blue colors.
Interestingly, when you shift the color tone, you got a kind of light blue instead green and the faces looks more natural. So I could imagine, Technicolor's assistant said "blue instead green would be possible" but the employees ignored the special request and said "Our goal is to show nearly the same colors as were seen on the set". So it turned to a Rhapsody in green.
I really want that piano! (the smallr one) It's fantastic to see this restored to it's original glory. I've only seen the crappy, scratchy,faded version before and am anxiously awaiting my new copy from Amazon.
I'm not sure this is actually the way this film looked when it was brand new, but then there is actually no way to know that for certain. Regardless, this is very striking to look at. The complete lack of scratches or other visual defects makes me sure that each frame here had to have been digitally cleaned up. The absence of the usual audio and visual damage we normally see on old movies really gives me a different viewpoint; I can see these as real people, just like today, instead of the unreal depictions I've always thought they were.
Thank you so, so much, Davidalp1, this is wonderful. I understand that the people behind the project won't want to compromise book sales or theater revenues, but I do hope the DVD is planned to be released in time for the Christmas season. My dad is no longer young and a theater visit is out of the question, but he would love to see the restored version and I'd most enjoy watching it with him. Whatever their decision, grateful and unequivocal thanks to them.
one of my all time favourite films - the score and songs and dance sequences - showed the way for many other musical film's too come and also the larger than life man himself - Paul Whiteman who commissioned Rhapsody in Blue - which I could hum at the age of 5 ?
Why would Horowitz play a piece composed by Beethoven? It's Roy Bargy, the pianist with the Whiteman band at the time. Gershwin recorded with this band five years earlier, but did not appear in this film.
Wow! This restored technicolor sequence is amazing. Color is so vivid, and I cannot believe this movie was produced in 1930. I want to watch full restored technicolor version of King Of Jazz .
@@markschildberg1667 Thank you very much for informing me. I enjoyed completely restored version of King of Jazz to the full. The color is magnificient, isn`t it?
A two strip colour version of the Rhapsody was made by UFA in Berlin. It featured a young South African pianist who had recently graduated from the RCM, Isadore Goodman, who then moved to Sydney and taught at the Sydney Conservatorium and was the first soloist in the ABC subscription symphony series in 1932.He became a stalwart of the Australian music scene.He recorded the Rhapsody late in his career--the recording is on youtube
I’ve heard of Isadore Goodman; he plays a BRILLIANT piano solo version of a WW2 song titled “Bless ‘em All” on the highly recommended CD “Fidgety Digits” put out by Shellwood Recordings in the UK, featuring reissues of original rare recordings of various USA and Europe (mostly) pop pianists of the 20s and 30s.
Thanks for posting this, BUT to my eyes, the two-strip Technicolor is barely evident here. It's far more vivid in the Criterion home video edition of this film.
Now I heard, that at the premier of this film much people criticized, that eveything is green. So I guess, Universal studios asked Technicolor's assitant about, how to get blue, he or she said, it would be possible, when changing the used ink, so the faces were pink, everything green. Technicolor copied the sequence without any changing, following the rules, ignoring any hints, turning the "Rhapsody In Blue" into an "Irish Rhapsody". We come closer to the possible reason, why it is green and why it is easy to turn into blue.
As a junior artist in Reservoir there was a three colour process called PMS Colour, similar to the early eastman film. It went through various run throughs. Hope this helps.
At 2:36? The clarinet player on the front left has a scratch mark appear momentarily. However, other than that, everything else looks sharp, pristine, and excellent.
Almost unrelated, but you make me listen to any piece that was included in Fantasia 2000, and I'll always imagine the visuals that was came up in the film, to go with the selected piece.
Somewhere Universal or Technicolor found the original camera negatives or one hell of a pristine master print. This is the Paul Whiteman orchestra performing the original version of "Rhapsody in Blue", as George Gershwin wrote it and performed it on piano with the Whiteman band twice, in 1924 at Aeolian Hall in New York and later in a Victor Records studio there, and again in 1927, again at Victor, to re-record it electronically. This is history on film, and worth preserving, despite Whiteman's shameless self-promotion.
I just got my copy.the color that you see in the archive version is 3 color version of blue-green.It was revisioned, just like the 83 version.It's just sharper. Universal striped all the yellow-green tint out of the tones, which color enhancement not restored.Ohjr than that the only scene they did not add more third color was meet the girl's sequence.Song of the golden dawn although the tones are three color blue-green.Meet the boys had the walls colorized as pure blue tint until the banjo which reverted to the three color green light.Happy feet, other than the yellow-orange tint stripped out, no color was added except on the walls behind the wiggling dancer on the left and right dark side was colorized pure blue times.All noisy on the eastern front was not touched.A dash of spice was not touched.Universal could have saved money not touching the color.Worst the distributor changes the color of the piano. Rhapsody in blue to be a little bit more blue, for the DVD and Blu-Ray version.It's a disappointment that it wasn't restored to the 1930 version, but, everything else was restored accurately.If you go the public domain follow thru and Mammy, you know that this film isn't accurate in color history. Criterion, could of offer two versions of the film one disc the enhanced and the original.They did not.I'm not going to give up my copy cause it's the excuse for the corporate film studio to throw their film history away and not accurately restore it and put it out again.
Well, there was not as yet a "blue layer" for Technicolor, so red/green had to be used. I still don't understand how 'yellow' was depicted in Technicolor or color TV, as it's always been "red blue green' layers / dots. But Yellow did appear. Not much Blue in this case, but I think they did come close. Actually, the new & very beautiful print of KofJ could have been tweaked with some blue; I wonder why they didn't try that, if only with an alternate "director's cut" version on the DVD ... which I assume is coming soon.
I think, blue would be possible. There are some 2 color systems with blue instead green. You may have noticed how strange the faces looks. It could be that the Technicolor assistant said "When everything is green and the faces are more red, you can get a natural skin tone plus a light blue" and the development department said "we do it, as we did and do". I noticed, when I shift skin tone, that the faces got a more natural tone and all green became light blue.
The negatives in the Technicolor camera were black & white film to represent the primary colours. But the orthochromatic b&w negative film of the day meant that blue could not be represented. (This is why 1920s b&w silent film scenes shot outdoors show an obviously bright sky as white). It wasn't until a couple of years later, in the early 1930s, that the wider range panchromatic b&w film became available and Technicolor could progress its "three-strip" process to give all the colours of the spectrum on a film print, not just red and green. Cheers
I'm sorry but this is a little off. Orthochromatic film stock, sensitive to blue light only, was the natural state of film emulsion since the beginning of film photography. The necessary chemicals were added to the emulsion to make it also sensitive to green light circa 1875. Truly panchromatic stock (which included sensitivity to red light as well as blue and green) was developed sometime around 1900. Two-color photography used panchromatic stock always, which is how it was able to capture the red and green portions of the spectrum. Since panchromatic black and white film was used, the colors of the release print relied on dyes and not the light sensitivity of the film itself.
i hate rhapsody in blue but this is REALLY cool, antique set design, it's so flashy and i love the art deco feel of things from this era. seeing them in set design and in costume design, despite only being two-color, is awesome!
outstanding - with the man himself on piano - Bing Crosby's first film - does the movie musical 'Words and Music' survive - it dates from 1929 - Duke Morrison has a supporting role - a year later he would change his name to John Wayne
A friend of mine has a Vitaphone disc for a deleted sketch - Paul comes across a guy who wants to "jump' to his death, but Paul talks him out of it with stuff about the wonders of Music ... then the guy plays his instrument (I forget which) and Paul expresses extreme displeasure & pushes the guy out the window, anyway. They could put that back into the new release, even if only with some "stills" and the soundtrack ....
Is this really a restoration of the original 2-color-print? There´s a lot of very neutral gray, so to me it looks more like a colorized black-and-white-print. Anyway, the definition and clearness of the pictures are amazing!
I'm surprised by the contrast and how good the grays look. They initially used a black and white "key" image in three strip to get decent contrast but I don't think that was possible with the two strip process.
Is there any way to see this version of the film? This looks strikingly different that the Criterion version, which is slightly blue-shifted and with flatter gamma- though it could be in my head.
Gershwin's recordings and piano rolls indicate brisk tempi. Classical players of jazz-inflected works tend to linger and overdo the rubato. Possibly the opening glissando of the Rhapsody is a satirical warning against overdoing the 'rhapsodical' and Chopinesque. Syncopation is essentially rigorous; despite all the contemporary talk of wild jungle rhythms, jazz began as 'strict' dance music, easy for amateurs to follow. It never lost the compressed, relentless drive one hears in Ellington's Cotton Club three-minute masterpieces or even back in the ODJB and King Oliver recordings. Gershwin's concert hall ventures elongated and loosened up the form but did not lose the strict, crisp keyboarding that had delighted Stravinsky when he heard Tin Pan Alley jazz. Both maestri treated the piano almost as percussion, and a Stravinsky piece such as 'Tango' is as satisfyingly succinct as 'Some of These Days'.
@@Raughwe Roy Bargy, a Whiteman foot soldier who looked like GG. Bargy had been the first to record Gershwin's piano concerto in 1928 (arranged by Ferdy Grofe, orchestrator of the Rhapsody) so he had the musical chops to sit in for the composer, as well as the physical likeness. By 1930 Gershwin and Whiteman were not getting along, though.
All the original tricks of using blue where a trade secret at the time, but blue/red was well known to Technicolor as they printed the Multicolor negs, in the days before Multicolor (later Trucolor/Cinecolor) developed a low contrast duplicating film from Ansco. If blues were needed the Studio had to pay extra! The girls dressed in blue and black in some examples, so that the resultant green areas where in fact blue, so they just changes the inks to blue, Skin tones were the same in red green and red blue, Technicolor could also print in yellow to give a gold tone, which was used in the finale of King of Jazz Whoppee and The Cuckoos both had blues printed in. I am very surprised that the restorers do not know how to identify the dyes, simply scratch gently an out of frame black area and the dyes show in layers, Technicolor dyes simply do not fade, it the gelatine that shrinks that is a problem. The fade look of some Technicolor is simply wear and tear of the printed ink causing shifts and colour flashes.
The Criterion Collection is releasing a fully restored version in March of 2018; DVD and Blu-ray. It can be pre-ordered from Criterion - or Amazon: www.criterion.com/films/29389-king-of-jazz So, we can finally kiss ancient and inferior transfers "goodbye."
Beautiful production. I can only imagine what those Astaire Rogers musicals must have been like in color! But those cheap narrow minded executives chose profit over creating timeless art in color as it was meant to be
YES! I agree! It DOES almost look like 3-strip Technicolor.. That the first thing that sprang to my mind upon first viewing it. The faces of the actors are so REALISTIC! It really punches you doesn't it!
Whoa! So I'm not the only one who thought that! That actually came to mind earlier today when I was walking (I tend to think about random things when I'm not busy) and I thought "You know, King of Jazz looks a lot like 3-strip Technicolor." It looks a decade newer than other 2-color films like Gold Diggers of Broadway and Show of Shows, even though it was released less than a year after those films.
Two-color Technicolor chose red and green first so they could accurately reproduce skin tones and foliage, so the engineers had made sure beforehand that human flesh would look good on film. Thanks for providing this video! It's pretty cool to not only see the two-color process, but also to be able to see the Whiteman orchestra in color.
Rhapsody in Blue presented with a green color palette! Some comments argue that ageing of the nitrate film caused a color shift. But I question that since the flesh tones are correct and the neutrals in some of the props and background are also as close to neutral as two-strip ever got. On the other hand in this clip th-cam.com/video/oadzppD9Rv8/w-d-xo.html of the same scene the color is a light blue (cyan). Maybe Universal used the wrong dye bandpass for the blue-green strip? This clip is sharper of the two, but the other clip is probably a better rendition of the color seen at the time. Rhapsody in Blue was commissioned and premiered by Paul Whiteman in 1924, whom the movie is about and appears with his orchestra in this clip. Notice that the clarinetist in the clip is not actually playing the instrument. Practice was to record musical soundtracks then play them pack while musical scenes were shot starting with this film - something Whiteman insisted on. The rest of the orchestra is playing, but what you hear is not what they were playing when then scene was shot.
I believe the original release prints had additional blue color dyes applied manually after. So it would have benn blue in the theatres. This print simply restores the 2 color print. missing the blue.
So, the main question is : why does George Gershwin NOT play the piano ? King of jazz is all about Paul Whiteman, who ordered "rhapsody in blue" from George Gershwin, in 1924 , so, why ? ....
Great Restoration. Eddie Lang looks wonderful. Is Frankie Trumbauer in this? It can not be Technicolor, but colorisation. The audio was recorded in the studio and 'lip synced' on stage. The production is gaudy and pure CORN. The dancers are cheesy! Rhapsody In Blue did not require this corn. Moreover, when Bix Beiderbecke wrote "In A Mist" in 1928, he made 4 minutes of Jazz composition that blew George Gershwin out of the water. Not even Gershwin's Preludes can beat "In A Mist", "Flashes" or The Davenport Blues". When this was made, Bix was dying in a small flat in Queens and he was not yet 30. By the time Bix was my age, he had been dead for 30 years.
It looks like someone misunderstood the original capabilities of Two-reel Technicolor. In original it's not was that green, I'm 100% sure. This green is unreal. For example early part of the film "The Aviator" emulates it right. Or see the same year film "Whoopee!".
I tend to agree with you. Rest assured that the restored version on the Criterion blu-ray looks much better (but even that may be a little too green during this sequence.) People must be under the impression that, because the red and green portions of the spectrum were photographed, that the resulting dyes on the release print were red and green as well but they were not. In subtractive color photography, the dyes are the complimentary colors of what is on the negative, so cyan is used for red and magenta is used for green. If it was three color, then there would also be a separate blue record represented by a yellow dye. Since a two-color image of cyan and magenta only would look unnatural, they compromised the image to fool the brain. They added yellow to the cyan and magenta dyes, making the cyan a blue-green and the magenta a red-orange. The colors weren't necessarily accurate to what was filmed but the resulting image was much more balanced and gave the "impression" of yellow even though none really existed.
I used to have a job playing a colossal piano with four other guys, this brings me back
This looks astoundingly good for a film made over 90 years ago!
I'll say!
The quality of this reconstruction is exquisite. Although to us, the “blue” color appears turquoise, in 1930, printed on nitrate stock, it may have appeared significantly bluer due to the “silvering” effect of the nitrate. Until somebody contrives a way to mimic this effect artificially, we’ll never know.
Up to this point, Technicolor was only a 2 strip process (Red and Green). Therefore, Blue could not be reproduced. The 3 strip process didn't come till the mid 30s.
Isn't that a bit like saying that, until somebody creates a typeface that looks like handwriting, we'll never know what handwriting looks like?
@smadaf no.
Nothing about the handwriting would look different, under your analogy
By contrast, nitrate film would look different indeed. I saw a pristine copy of a nitrate-filmed short, starring Mickey Rooney, and I was gobsmacked at the difference. There's a reason they used to call it the "silver screen".
Edit: once in a while, they hold a nitrate film festival. You might want to look into that. One viewer who'd seen Leave Her to Heaven on a nitrate copy gasped when Gene Tierney popped up on the screen.
@@rubenmejia942
Walt Disney Did have Exclusive Rights to the 3 Strip Technicolor Process from 1932 to 1935 . In Late 1935 & Early 1936 other Cartoon Studios had access to the 3 Strip Technicolor Process.
😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍
the mint green looks really strange to us, but it was only 2-color Technicolor meaning it could only capture red or green well. still it is amazing. watching the huge piano open and the musicians inside playing- we will never see anything like that again!
This is marvellous 🤩 Thank you so much for sharing this phenomenal piece of cinematic history!!🥰❤👏🏼👏🏼
Excellent restoration of 2 color Technicolor! Even the soundtrack sounds great.
Interesting that the floor and background curtains look black and white, but presumably that was the way they were originally and nothing to do with the restoration.
Thanks for this!
Wow! I have the more common color version which has been around for years and the colors are washed out and the print has rough spots. Evidently, amazingly, they recently found the 35mm negative of King of Jazz (!) and this is a clip from the new version. Stunning!
Superb, thank you for your efforts in showing us such a beautiful performance.
Beautiful ! We need a movie studio today to be daring enough to make a good old fashion musical in the style of its heyday.
It almost looks too perfect to be 86-years-old although The Wizard Of Oz from 1939 looks just as good. But I'm so used to seeing early talkies full of pops and crackles like Universal's Dracula from 1931. It just shows what happens when you take care of something.
They used the original negatives for their restoration of this film. Dracula's original negatives no longer exist so cruddy multi generational dupes are all that can be used.
They have most of the negatives for this film, some scenes ended up being lower generation copies and any missing scenes are just presented as black voids where the music keeps going without the visuals
Any information abouts it's future release?
It's in a Theatrical release scenario right now where it's touring cinemas, there has been no word of a DVD / Blu Ray release
Comes out in March from The Criterion Collection on blu-ray. Should look splendid. I was surprised Criterion chose to release this over some other studio films they might also have access to. I’d imagine it’s due to the historical/milestone nature of the film.
I see no reason not to expect something of this caliber being from 1930. It was, after all, an era of cinematic innovation which garnered some pretty spectacular films. Even widescreen was already developed, though over 20 years ahead of its time - witness films like THE BIG TRAIL and THE BAT WHISPERS, both from 1930. What IS remarkable is the meticulous restoration job in the case of KING OF JAZZ that accurately reflects the high production standards of those days. Heck, even films from 1895, after having been properly preserved, can look like they were shot yesterday.
Frankly I'd rather see it on opening day, brand new and clean, no cracks and fuzzed sounding to it. That was the treat, being there then..not seeing it as a historical piece.
Amazing George Gershwin actually playing his masterpiece
I think that's actually Roy Bargy
Don't think GG ever appeared in any movie. From what I gather, GG and Paul Whiteman weren't on speaking terms by the time the '27 electronic recording was made.
Fiona’s right. Pretty sure this is Roy Bargy, as his bio and associations with Whiteman fit the timeline of KoJ’s production.
@@mlbg10158 It is Bargy, who happened to resemble Gershwin.
@@esmeephillips5888 Very much so.
"The King Of Jazz" (made in 1930) was a technical marvel.... It not only had a superior sound quality, (insisted upon by Paul Whiteman but complained about by 'Western Electric', (on cost grounds)), but also had the very latest film skills including 'Colour'. This Film still remains one of my favourites. It includes a very young 'Bing Crosby' as one of the 'Rhythm Boys'. That's how good it was !
i had this film on vhs and played it a hundred times!
Wow. 90 years ago!! Amazing.
It's very green because they were showing off the two-strip process, but they didn't have the three-strip blues yet . My great uncle was George Whiteman's orchestrator and personal assistant, and they finally got blue to work with the three strip process in 1935, where you can see them showing off blue colors.
Interestingly, when you shift the color tone, you got a kind of light blue instead green and the faces looks more natural.
So I could imagine, Technicolor's assistant said "blue instead green would be possible" but the employees ignored the special request and said "Our goal is to show nearly the same colors as were seen on the set". So it turned to a Rhapsody in green.
I really want that piano! (the smallr one) It's fantastic to see this restored to it's original glory. I've only seen the crappy, scratchy,faded version before and am anxiously awaiting my new copy from Amazon.
I'm not sure this is actually the way this film looked when it was brand new, but then there is actually no way to know that for certain. Regardless, this is very striking to look at. The complete lack of scratches or other visual defects makes me sure that each frame here had to have been digitally cleaned up. The absence of the usual audio and visual damage we normally see on old movies really gives me a different viewpoint; I can see these as real people, just like today, instead of the unreal depictions I've always thought they were.
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How remarkably good ! I must try to get a copy of this film which is no doubt the best from the era !
Actually the Gold Diggers of 1929 was the most popular movie until 1939. It's a shame they couldn't save that one too.
Thank you so, so much, Davidalp1, this is wonderful.
I understand that the people behind the project won't want to compromise book sales or theater revenues, but I do hope the DVD is planned to be released in time for the Christmas season. My dad is no longer young and a theater visit is out of the question, but he would love to see the restored version and I'd most enjoy watching it with him.
Whatever their decision, grateful and unequivocal thanks to them.
I ve seen the original, but congrats to whoever did the excellent job of restoring the colour.
What really got me was Frank Trumbauer on sax. WOW!
This is really Eddie Lang's movie...his guitar is evident throughout.
one of my all time favourite films - the score and songs and dance sequences - showed the way for many other musical film's too come and also the larger than life man himself - Paul Whiteman who commissioned Rhapsody in Blue - which I could hum at the age of 5 ?
Great restoration job, can't wait to actually see the restored movie..🤗
It is not Gershwin. It is Roy Bargy.
Ok.
Why would Horowitz play a piece composed by Beethoven?
It's Roy Bargy, the pianist with the Whiteman band at the time. Gershwin recorded with this band five years earlier, but did not appear in this film.
Simply stunning.
Wow! This restored technicolor sequence is amazing. Color is so vivid, and I cannot believe this movie was produced in 1930. I want to watch full restored technicolor version of King Of Jazz .
You've got to remember this is two-strip technicolor, it could not reproduce true color because it was missing blue color information.
It’s available from The Criterion Collection.
@@markschildberg1667 Thank you very much for informing me. I enjoyed completely restored version of King of Jazz to the full. The color is magnificient, isn`t it?
Absolutely stunning for an 87 year old film!
90 actaully
A two strip colour version of the Rhapsody was made by UFA in Berlin. It featured a young South African pianist who had recently graduated from the RCM, Isadore Goodman, who then moved to Sydney and taught at the Sydney Conservatorium and was the first soloist in the ABC subscription symphony series in 1932.He became a stalwart of the Australian music scene.He recorded the Rhapsody late in his career--the recording is on youtube
I’ve heard of Isadore Goodman; he plays a BRILLIANT piano solo version of a WW2 song titled “Bless ‘em All” on the highly recommended CD “Fidgety Digits” put out by Shellwood Recordings in the UK, featuring reissues of original rare recordings of various USA and Europe (mostly) pop pianists of the 20s and 30s.
This is Isadore Goodman’s band playing on this 1940 radio program that is used as background music for the TH-cam clip Melbourne 1940 and 1942.
That bellhop was really good on the piano.
Absolutely stunning!
Thanks for posting this, BUT to my eyes, the two-strip Technicolor is barely evident here. It's far more vivid in the Criterion home video edition of this film.
This looks remarkable. So few 2 color Tech movies exist in original negative form, which this must be.
Now I heard, that at the premier of this film much people criticized, that eveything is green.
So I guess, Universal studios asked Technicolor's assitant about, how to get blue, he or she said, it would be possible, when changing the used ink, so the faces were pink, everything green.
Technicolor copied the sequence without any changing, following the rules, ignoring any hints, turning the "Rhapsody In Blue" into an "Irish Rhapsody".
We come closer to the possible reason, why it is green and why it is easy to turn into blue.
What a joy, just to be able to see this!
A great version that I never saw...that was the Paul Whitman band playing Rapsidy in Bluue
Not just a sequence; the whole film was in 2-strip Technicolor, beautifully restored. Original color, not colorized.
As a junior artist in Reservoir there was a three colour process called PMS Colour, similar to the early eastman film. It went through various run throughs. Hope this helps.
2:36 The 3rd guy is Frankie Trumbauer.
At 2:36? The clarinet player on the front left has a scratch mark appear momentarily. However, other than that, everything else looks sharp, pristine, and excellent.
I looked to the clarinet player on the front left but didn't see a scratch mark
Wow, Thank you so much! I've been searching that for years!
Total class.
quite incredible
Looks "Minty Fresh"
They really need to spray inside that piano....serious infestation of tiny green musicians...
Damn leprechuans.
Gorgeous,
Awesome thanks!
Almost unrelated, but you make me listen to any piece that was included in Fantasia 2000, and I'll always imagine the visuals that was came up in the film, to go with the selected piece.
Somewhere Universal or Technicolor found the original camera negatives or one hell of a pristine master print. This is the Paul Whiteman orchestra performing the original version of "Rhapsody in Blue", as George Gershwin wrote it and performed it on piano with the Whiteman band twice, in 1924 at Aeolian Hall in New York and later in a Victor Records studio there, and again in 1927, again at Victor, to re-record it electronically. This is history on film, and worth preserving, despite Whiteman's shameless self-promotion.
Anyone else notice how the audio quality on the newly restored version is so much flatter and tinny than the VHS version?
Yes , I did because I love this piece of music.
I just got my copy.the color that you see in the archive version is 3 color version of blue-green.It was revisioned, just like the 83 version.It's just sharper. Universal striped all the yellow-green tint out of the tones, which color enhancement not restored.Ohjr than that the only scene they did not add more third color was meet the girl's sequence.Song of the golden dawn although the tones are three color blue-green.Meet the boys had the walls colorized as pure blue tint until the banjo which reverted to the three color green light.Happy feet, other than the yellow-orange tint stripped out, no color was added except on the walls behind the wiggling dancer on the left and right dark side was colorized pure blue times.All noisy on the eastern front was not touched.A dash of spice was not touched.Universal could have saved money not touching the color.Worst the distributor changes the color of the piano. Rhapsody in blue to be a little bit more blue, for the DVD and Blu-Ray version.It's a disappointment that it wasn't restored to the 1930 version, but, everything else was restored accurately.If you go the public domain follow thru and Mammy, you know that this film isn't accurate in color history. Criterion, could of offer two versions of the film one disc the enhanced and the original.They did not.I'm not going to give up my copy cause it's the excuse for the corporate film studio to throw their film history away and not accurately restore it and put it out again.
More like "Rhapsody in Green," amirite?
Well, there was not as yet a "blue layer" for Technicolor, so red/green had to be used. I still don't understand how 'yellow' was depicted in Technicolor or color TV, as it's always been "red blue green' layers / dots. But Yellow did appear. Not much Blue in this case, but I think they did come close. Actually, the new & very beautiful print of KofJ could have been tweaked with some blue; I wonder why they didn't try that, if only with an alternate "director's cut" version on the DVD ... which I assume is coming soon.
Well played, but Leonard Maltin already made that joke in the Movie Guide. ;)
A remapping could help, but the color wil remain "strange"
Rhapsody in Turquoise?
I think, blue would be possible. There are some 2 color systems with blue instead green.
You may have noticed how strange the faces looks.
It could be that the Technicolor assistant said "When everything is green and the faces are more red, you can get a natural skin tone plus a light blue" and the development department said "we do it, as we did and do".
I noticed, when I shift skin tone, that the faces got a more natural tone and all green became light blue.
The negatives in the Technicolor camera were black & white film to represent the primary colours. But the orthochromatic b&w negative film of the day meant that blue could not be represented. (This is why 1920s b&w silent film scenes shot outdoors show an obviously bright sky as white). It wasn't until a couple of years later, in the early 1930s, that the wider range panchromatic b&w film became available and Technicolor could progress its "three-strip" process to give all the colours of the spectrum on a film print, not just red and green. Cheers
I'm sorry but this is a little off. Orthochromatic film stock, sensitive to blue light only, was the natural state of film emulsion since the beginning of film photography. The necessary chemicals were added to the emulsion to make it also sensitive to green light circa 1875. Truly panchromatic stock (which included sensitivity to red light as well as blue and green) was developed sometime around 1900. Two-color photography used panchromatic stock always, which is how it was able to capture the red and green portions of the spectrum. Since panchromatic black and white film was used, the colors of the release print relied on dyes and not the light sensitivity of the film itself.
i hate rhapsody in blue but this is REALLY cool, antique set design, it's so flashy and i love the art deco feel of things from this era. seeing them in set design and in costume design, despite only being two-color, is awesome!
Awesome!
VERY cool!!!!!
outstanding - with the man himself on piano - Bing Crosby's first film - does the movie musical 'Words and Music' survive - it dates from 1929 - Duke Morrison has a supporting role - a year later he would change his name to John Wayne
Roy Bargy is on piano
@@perfectjazz78 Yes, I realized I was wrong on closer inspection - however, I am delighted to find out the name of the gentleman - thank you.
A friend of mine has a Vitaphone disc for a deleted sketch - Paul comes across a guy who wants to "jump' to his death, but Paul talks him out of it with stuff about the wonders of Music ... then the guy plays his instrument (I forget which) and Paul expresses extreme displeasure & pushes the guy out the window, anyway. They could put that back into the new release, even if only with some "stills" and the soundtrack ....
I believe the instrument was a flute
Is this really a restoration of the original 2-color-print? There´s a lot of very neutral gray, so to me it looks more like a colorized black-and-white-print.
Anyway, the definition and clearness of the pictures are amazing!
It's a real 2 strip techy movie
those sets look very expensive
they were....the final cost was well over 2 million dollars in 1930....
I'm surprised by the contrast and how good the grays look. They initially used a black and white "key" image in three strip to get decent contrast but I don't think that was possible with the two strip process.
At 2:00, one musician must need special attention, the conductor is leading a single player
excellent color and density. where can I get a copy of this restored film?
The pianist Roy bargy was really a great pianist and composer, his novelty rags are the egual of Gershwin or anyone else.
Is there any way to see this version of the film? This looks strikingly different that the Criterion version, which is slightly blue-shifted and with flatter gamma- though it could be in my head.
What is most surprising is the tempo!
Gershwin's recordings and piano rolls indicate brisk tempi. Classical players of jazz-inflected works tend to linger and overdo the rubato. Possibly the opening glissando of the Rhapsody is a satirical warning against overdoing the 'rhapsodical' and Chopinesque.
Syncopation is essentially rigorous; despite all the contemporary talk of wild jungle rhythms, jazz began as 'strict' dance music, easy for amateurs to follow. It never lost the compressed, relentless drive one hears in Ellington's Cotton Club three-minute masterpieces or even back in the ODJB and King Oliver recordings.
Gershwin's concert hall ventures elongated and loosened up the form but did not lose the strict, crisp keyboarding that had delighted Stravinsky when he heard Tin Pan Alley jazz. Both maestri treated the piano almost as percussion, and a Stravinsky piece such as 'Tango' is as satisfyingly succinct as 'Some of These Days'.
0:22 is that George Gershwin himself in the film ? he would have been about the age of 32 at the time, 6 years before his passing.
I think it is...Compare the film's piano player with images of Gershwin. Hair, nose, eyebrows, build are all a match.
@@Raughwe Not him.
@@peterwilson2080 ok.
@@Raughwe Roy Bargy, a Whiteman foot soldier who looked like GG. Bargy had been the first to record Gershwin's piano concerto in 1928 (arranged by Ferdy Grofe, orchestrator of the Rhapsody) so he had the musical chops to sit in for the composer, as well as the physical likeness. By 1930 Gershwin and Whiteman were not getting along, though.
Writers must have been tripping hard when they wrote this scene.
hahaha
Very avant-gard
Where's the rest of it?
Would it be possible, to change the color green to blue, because I guess, would they have used 3-strip Techniclor, everything would be blue?
when is it due to be published - late to know about this crowd funding but would love to buy the book - see my comment below - thanks
All the original tricks of using blue where a trade secret at the time, but blue/red was well known to Technicolor as they printed the Multicolor negs, in the days before Multicolor (later Trucolor/Cinecolor) developed a low contrast duplicating film from Ansco.
If blues were needed the Studio had to pay extra! The girls dressed in blue and black in some examples, so that the resultant green areas where in fact blue, so they just changes the inks to blue, Skin tones were the same in red green and red blue, Technicolor could also print in yellow to give a gold tone, which was used in the finale of King of Jazz
Whoppee and The Cuckoos both had blues printed in.
I am very surprised that the restorers do not know how to identify the dyes, simply scratch gently an out of frame black area and the dyes show in layers, Technicolor dyes simply do not fade, it the gelatine that shrinks that is a problem. The fade look of some Technicolor is simply wear and tear of the printed ink causing shifts and colour flashes.
And when 3 Color Technicolor
came into existence, the rest was history. But Any Color film history, is important!
The Criterion Collection is releasing a fully restored version in March of 2018; DVD and Blu-ray. It can be pre-ordered from Criterion - or Amazon:
www.criterion.com/films/29389-king-of-jazz
So, we can finally kiss ancient and inferior transfers "goodbye."
I'm pretty sure that everything that is green in this clip should have been blue but they fu*ked up majorly during the restoration
Good news! KING OF JAZZ will be released on blu-ray by Criterion in March 2018.
That's great news! Will it be released on DVD too?
Yes! :) Both formats are available on Amazon.
Beautiful production. I can only imagine what those Astaire Rogers musicals must have been like in color! But those cheap narrow minded executives chose profit over creating timeless art in color as it was meant to be
I am glad there is a book, but when can I see the restored film. Tell me about THAT.
Adding to what LordRufus said in the comments, this looks like a cut scene from the Emerald City from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
I really wish to watch a full version of restored "KING OF JAZZ".
me too.
Is that George Gershwin (the composer) on the piano?
Nope
Looks almost like three colour Technicolor.
YES! I agree! It DOES almost look like 3-strip Technicolor.. That the first thing that sprang to my mind upon first viewing it. The faces of the actors are so REALISTIC! It really punches you doesn't it!
Whoa! So I'm not the only one who thought that! That actually came to mind earlier today when I was walking (I tend to think about random things when I'm not busy) and I thought "You know, King of Jazz looks a lot like 3-strip Technicolor." It looks a decade newer than other 2-color films like Gold Diggers of Broadway and Show of Shows, even though it was released less than a year after those films.
I dunno. Looks like 2 color process to me.
Two-color Technicolor chose red and green first so they could accurately reproduce skin tones and foliage, so the engineers had made sure beforehand that human flesh would look good on film.
Thanks for providing this video! It's pretty cool to not only see the two-color process, but also to be able to see the Whiteman orchestra in color.
That the provision. ALMOST!
Rhapsody in Blue presented with a green color palette! Some comments argue that ageing of the nitrate film caused a color shift. But I question that since the flesh tones are correct and the neutrals in some of the props and background are also as close to neutral as two-strip ever got. On the other hand in this clip th-cam.com/video/oadzppD9Rv8/w-d-xo.html of the same scene the color is a light blue (cyan). Maybe Universal used the wrong dye bandpass for the blue-green strip? This clip is sharper of the two, but the other clip is probably a better rendition of the color seen at the time.
Rhapsody in Blue was commissioned and premiered by Paul Whiteman in 1924, whom the movie is about and appears with his orchestra in this clip. Notice that the clarinetist in the clip is not actually playing the instrument. Practice was to record musical soundtracks then play them pack while musical scenes were shot starting with this film - something Whiteman insisted on. The rest of the orchestra is playing, but what you hear is not what they were playing when then scene was shot.
I believe the original release prints had additional blue color dyes applied manually after. So it would have benn blue in the theatres. This print simply restores the 2 color print. missing the blue.
So, the main question is : why does George Gershwin NOT play the piano ? King of jazz is all about Paul Whiteman, who ordered "rhapsody in blue" from George Gershwin, in 1924 , so, why ? ....
Will this ever get put out on Blu-ray in the near future? I'm not sure where I can see the rest of this in such excellent quality!
bellisimo
That girl in the background posing like a butterfly is going to get awfully tired.
JUST A REALLY GREAT FILM, WITH MY MENTOR, BING CROSBY!......JE..WEHO..7/2020
😊😊 😊 I'm very vpls to know I'm not the only one that loves😍 👆 the song but when last did you play it 💖
2-Strip turns it in "Rhapsody in Green"
“Rhapsody in Teal” is a good compromise lol :)
Great Restoration. Eddie Lang looks wonderful. Is Frankie Trumbauer in this?
It can not be Technicolor, but colorisation. The audio was recorded in the studio and 'lip synced' on stage. The production is gaudy and pure CORN. The dancers are cheesy! Rhapsody In Blue did not require this corn.
Moreover, when Bix Beiderbecke wrote "In A Mist" in 1928, he made 4 minutes of Jazz composition that blew George Gershwin out of the water. Not even Gershwin's Preludes can beat "In A Mist", "Flashes" or The Davenport Blues".
When this was made, Bix was dying in a small flat in Queens and he was not yet 30. By the time Bix was my age, he had been dead for 30 years.
It looks like they’re in the Emerald City
Every day was St. Patty's Day with 2 strip color.
Someone was taking some drugs.
I dunno, that dude at 3:22 is rocking the makeup
Kool 🎉 hope you are well God loves you deeply shalom 🤗🐼♥️✝️💐 Philippians 4:8
EL QUE TOCA EL PIANO ES GEORGE GERSHING. !!
It looks like someone misunderstood the original capabilities of Two-reel Technicolor. In original it's not was that green, I'm 100% sure. This green is unreal. For example early part of the film "The Aviator" emulates it right. Or see the same year film "Whoopee!".
Rapture Futuristics.. have a look at how they restored the film for your answers...it is worth a look.
I tend to agree with you. Rest assured that the restored version on the Criterion blu-ray looks much better (but even that may be a little too green during this sequence.) People must be under the impression that, because the red and green portions of the spectrum were photographed, that the resulting dyes on the release print were red and green as well but they were not. In subtractive color photography, the dyes are the complimentary colors of what is on the negative, so cyan is used for red and magenta is used for green. If it was three color, then there would also be a separate blue record represented by a yellow dye. Since a two-color image of cyan and magenta only would look unnatural, they compromised the image to fool the brain. They added yellow to the cyan and magenta dyes, making the cyan a blue-green and the magenta a red-orange. The colors weren't necessarily accurate to what was filmed but the resulting image was much more balanced and gave the "impression" of yellow even though none really existed.
Did George Gershwin himself play his music with a piano?
Roy Bargy, here
Bargy was Whiteman's pianist and one of his arrangers at the time.
imagine how it felt for that actor to hear Paul white in real life as they were waiting their turn Oops, they were mouthing their own music.
Why in the hell did I state that? It did not make sense.
You can see the expression on the faces of the violinists- I went to Julliard for this?
When performers had real talent! Most were triple threats: Dance, Sing, Act
One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small...