The September 29, 2025 issue of The New Yorker contains an article by Anthony Lane entitled “Cinema Paradiso” about the Il Cinema Ritrovato film festival held each year in Bologna and the restoration of 20th century films at the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in that city. Lane describes the work that goes on in the lab, discussing how such issues as “vinegar syndrome” are treated. But, his article is also a meditation on artists’ rights and artistic intent and the impossibility of recapturing the original. Describing the issues that are raised by a screening of the restored version of Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 silent film, “The Gold Rush” he notes that in the mid-1950s, Chaplin wrote: “I decided that the old silent version of 1925 was no longer to be used, and ordered the destruction of the original negative and fine grain thereof.” While explaining how the lab can alter film frames by modifying the colors and tone, he notes that film director Wong Kai-wai wanted the tones of his films changed while they were being restored saying, “I’m not the person I was at the time. I’ve changed. I have the right to change the film.”
After pondering whether someone today can experience an art work of the past as its first audience did, Lane concludes that the past really is another country and we can never live there; at best we can pay a courtesy call.
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