BERLINALE CLASSICS & RETROSPECTIVES: A CONVERSATION ON THE ART OF RESTORATION BY MATTHEW GENTILE

“I always tell the people that the idea behind the classics and the retrospective screenings is not to show old films. The idea is to show good films.” — Doctor Rainer Rother, Head of Berlinale Retrospectives

I had a few reasons this year to attend the Berlinale. ,the premiere film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany and widely known as one of Europe’s “Big Three” Film Festivals alongside Venice and Cannes.

The first: I’m working in Europe at the moment and shopping two new features I wrote and am attached to direct with the producers of my debut feature at the European Film Market (a meeting place that takes place at Berlinale every year where buyers, studios, and filmmakers intersect in raising financing for feature films and television). 

The second: I love watching new films by great filmmakers on the big screen, especially at world premieres – where the excitement in the room is palpable and somehow makes you feel like you’re a part of this movie you’re about to see — even though you had nothing to do with its creation. This year I had the opportunity to see two: Gabriel Mascaro’s O ULTIMO AZUL (which won the Silver Bear for its filmmaker and Brazil) and ARI (the third feature from French filmmaker Leonor Sarailas) — both of which are beautiful and unique films that I highly recommend seeing when they are released this year. 

The third (which is the reason for this article’s existence): is my mission to work with Secret Movie Club to highlight classic films and retrospective cinema which have inspired me since I set out to become a filmmaker, and examine a spectacular section of the Berlinale that doesn’t often get the attention it deserves – the Classics and the Retrospectives. To shine a light on those who devote their work and life to preserving cinema, its history, and presenting it so we can see it where it was meant to be seen: on the big screen. 

A brief history of Berlinale: created at the beginning of the Cold War in 1951 as a showcase of the free world, the Berin International Film Festival is one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world. Drawing around 20,000+ industry attendees every year, programming about 400 films shown across multiple venues in the area around Potsdamer Platz, there are nine sections with around twenty films in the competition. 

The highest honor given is The Golden Bear, which has been awarded to many masterpieces dating back to the festival’s beginning (Clouzout’s THE WAGES OF FEAR, Lumet’s 12 ANGRY MEN, Lean’s HOBSON’S CHOICE, Bergman’s WILD STRAWBERRIES – just to name a few in the first decade of the festival’s existence. The list of great directors that have won the Golden or Silver Bear is full of auteurs and visionaries ranging from Paul Thomas Anderson to Satyajit Ray).

For this article, I interviewed one of the leading film archivists and historians in the world, Doctor Rainer Rother, the head of the Berlinale’s Retrospective (and has been since April 2006) who is also responsible for curating the Berlinale Classics which runs simultaneously as the rest of the festival. 

Doctor Rainer Rother, the head of the Berlinale’s Retrospective

This year, there are eight newly restored classics (chosen from all around the world): Howard Hughes’ HELL’S ANGELS, Leida Laius and Arvo Iho’s phenomenal SMILE AT LAST, Don Siegel’s DIRTY HARRY,  Alfred Hitchcock’s THE PARADINE CASE, Yasuzo Masumura’s THE WIFE OF SEISAKU, Wu Yonggang’s SHENNU (my personal favorite), and Konrad Wolf’s SOLO SUNNY as well as eight retrospectives/German genre films from the 1970s (including Uli Lommel’s THE TENDERNESS OF WOLVES  which was produced by and co-stars Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Wolfgang Petersen’s feature debut). 

Here is our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity: 

MG: Thank you for taking the time to sit down with me, Doctor Rainer. To start, can you tell me about your path and how you began your work in film preservation?

RR: I started an academic career in the late 1980s/early 90s, and then I was appointed the head of the Cinema at the German Historical Museum and we decided not to just show films that are connected to exhibitions but to real cinema and so I established contacts with the archival world, with Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, with Kevin Brownlow’s Photoplay Productions and Patrick Stanbury, and I invited them to present their new restorations. I was there to make a relationship between classic films and the audience. At the time these films were not digitized — that was 35 mm. And in 2006, I was appointed the head of the German Cinematheque, and that meant I was now responsible for a department that did indeed restore films. That was also 35 mm at that time. But then the digital change began in 2010, and there was the question: how can we prevent the old analog films from vanishing because there were only digital distribution channels that may be cinema or CD or DVD or Blu-Ray or streaming on television. And I was very involved in creating a program that was committed to rescuing films from being unseeable anymore. 

MG: How would you say digital technology changed the art of restoration? An art that many people don’t know about. 

RR: I think it has changed it in many ways. First of all, you don't lose quality because you are not going to another generation. And if you do have whatever kind of material is the start for your work, the quality of that material defines what quality you can achieve with digitization. And there are lots of tools to improve the image and there are directors and cinematographers who embrace that they like to have a result that looks better than the original ever had. And our restorers refuse to do that. They want to have a result that resembles, as much as possible, the original look of the film. There's a famous story when Martin Scorsese restored Taxi Driver, he did it with Grover Crisp from Sony Pictures and the film looked great. But the Paramount logo in the beginning was really in a terrible condition. Grover asked Marty: “shouldn’t we change it?” Marty scoffed: “No, that’s what it looked like back in old times.” So yes, this is something we have to be aware of. It’s a bit easier and there are challenges to do too much, but in the archival world — there is a common understanding that the film should look like the film it was back then. 

MG: This year, you chose and curated eight films for the classics and eight for the retrospectives, showing one of each day at the Berlinale. What goes into curating these specific films?

RR: We get suggestions. This year, we had eight slots to present films and I think we had more than 60 films that were given to us or they were asking if we can show them. So we had to look up to watch all these films and we decided just for the best. I mean that's the process and rapidly we were able to have a variety, not only of themes and genres, but also where the films come from. So it's from Japan, China, to the United States. It's the first time that we do have a film from Estonia [SMILE AT LAST]. And this selection of SHENNU, it's the first Chinese film we have in our Berlinale Classics. So we are very happy with the result of the process. 

MG: SHENNU (1934, Dir: Wu Yonggang) is an incredible film and my favorite of the classics. What do you think about this picture in particular makes it hold up 90 years later? It seems like it was very ahead of its time. 

SHENNU (1934, Dir: Wu Yonggang) with a startling bold performance by lead actress Ruan Lingyu

RR: It’s really a masterpiece. The female actress [Ruan Lingyu] is really, really something. She was a star and we are very glad the China Film Archive did a new restoration, which means that now you can see the film in high quality. It hasn’t been watched in decades. I always tell people that the idea behind the classics and the retrospective is not to show old films. The idea is to show good films. And I think with Berlinale — whether we are working for the competition, or for another section like Panorama, or Forum, or Classics — it doesn’t matter, we are looking for and longing for good films…so when we discover them, we are proud to present them. And I think that's what makes a film work with an audience…because it's a well-made film.

Sidebar on SHENNU: it is a silent film and one of the best-known of China’s cinematic golden age. Set in Shanghai, it focuses on a sex worker who is struggling to raise her son and get him an education. The restoration is nothing short of remarkable, recognition is deserved for the China Film Archive for going through painstaking efforts to restore this negative and allow us to see it as the filmmaker intended it. The film was directed by Wu Yonggang, in his feature debut — who had a long career with the Lianhua Film Company. In a way that reminds me of George Stevens, this film had incredible pathos for its titular character (the term Shennu means both goddess and is also an old euphemism for prostitute). The film has a bold visual language, there’s one low angle through the legs of the villainous character looking down on Shennu that exudes German Expressionism — yet doesn’t distract but rather expresses the subtext directly. And what ultimately holds this film together, as is the case for any great film, is the star Ruan Lingyu’s vulnerable performance (one of her last before she committed suicide after being brutally antagonized by gossip columnists in China). Wu Yonggang’s script is also remarkable when you consider the time this film was made in — as it treats this sex worker with so much empathy (in that regard, it feels in conversation with Sean Baker’s films — especially ANORA). 

MG: Given how prolific filmmakers used to be, especially in the silent and golden ages of cinema across the world — there must be so many films to choose from in terms of what to restore or what to program. What goes into selecting a film to restore or program? How do you discern or find the needle in the haystack? 

RR: To be able to restore a film means that you do have to have some rights. Archivists always do their best to rescue the film, but that doesn't mean that you're allowed to present the film… if it's about a presentation screening, then you have to have the rights, and then you first look: is it a film we can rescue or is it a film we also can present to the public? And for rescuing, if you don't have the money, the first step is to scan. And so perhaps then you think about going further or not, but at least you do have the material in a digitized format, which allows you to later on bring the film to a presentable quality. And if you do have some rights or we are negotiating with the right holders — the aim is to present it to the public. And that's the criteria. So you think: is it a film which we would like to present next year or in the coming years? So because you know that in our collection, and I think in most collections from all film heritage institutions in the world, you do have so many tiles that it will be almost impossible to digitize all of them, at least not in your professional lifetime. That means you have to prioritize. And the only criterion is do I want to present this film to the public? Is it a film? I like to be seen by as many people as possible. And if this is a film, you think it should be seen by many, then yeah, you have to digitize it, and restore it. 

MG: Similar to what goes into making a film. 

RR: [laughs] In a way, yes, exactly. 

MG: Let’s talk about TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES (1973, Dir: Ulli Lommel), because I did get to see it last night here as part of the Retrospectives and it is a wild film — it felt to me like M if it were directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder..and I wondered how I had never heard of this film as an ardent Fassbinder fan. 

RR: The script was written by the main actor, Kurt Raab. Fassbinder read the script and suggested that Ulli Lommel direct the film. Ulli Lommel then shot other films in Germany, before he went to the United States, and had a career there. And he was always a director who was very much influenced by genre. And you can see it. It’s a very perfect description to say that it’s Fassbinder plus M because it’s based on the same story, made with the Fassbinder crew [the film features many Fassbinder regulars including Margit Carstensen, Ingrid Carven, Brigitte Mira, and Fassbinder himself acts in it], but with a different director.  And you can see it because Lommel was more interested in genre than Fassbinder was at that time. He was trying to present something that was satisfying to genre fans. That was never Fassbinder’s priority. But it was Lommel’s priority and that makes the film so special. So he's not afraid of blood. He is not afraid of shocking scenes.

TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES (1973, Dir: Ulli Lommel) with a producing assist from enfant terrible German auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

MG: The film keeps you on the edge with him, and it’s a very captivating performance by Kurt Raab that’s in the vein of Peter Lorre. What Lommel did with the same story as Fritz Lang did with M reminded me of how Brian DePalma and Claude Chabrol took the mantle from Hitchcock in terms of the subject matter they pursued in their films yet were empowered by their times to be more transgressive, bold, violent, sexual, and psychological. Yet with this film — the shots are composed in a classical way which counterpoints the depravity. I loved it. The film isn’t very well known outside of Germany, correct? 

RR: Yes. None of the films in the retrospectives are very famous titles. Back in March of 2024, we had some ideas, about how many films we could show — because it’s also a budget question. And the budget for the Berlinale in 2024 didn’t look very good. We knew that there would be a necessity to present fewer films. And then we thought, well, if it has to be 15 films, we have to reduce one of our favorite themes which had the working title of Guilty Pleasures — and that was genre. We were looking for a period that was challenging for us, and the 1970s was interesting because it was a time of unrest — and it’s the decade of film where the genre tradition changed. It’s the decade of the auteur. There are no longer 32 films based on Edgar Wallace things or 25 films based on Kamai or so, it’s not the serial kind — these are unique films. And when looking through these films, the first we had thought was — these are wild films and they are bloody. And when we were looking at the East German Production because DIFA was a real studio, but a studio in a socialist country. So making bloody films — that wasn’t their thing. Which is a real quality of independent filmmaking. When you think about the early new Hollywood films by Scorsese and Coppola they were not produced by the studios — they were produced by Roger Corman or others — so these were small companies. So ‘Wild and Bloody’ was not a perfect expression of what the quality of the DIFA films was, but they are all a bit over the top. So that’s why we came up with the theme. 

MG: As someone whose life is devoted to working in film preservation, what do you feel young filmmakers, cinephiles, and film fans can learn or get from classic and retrospective cinema? 

RR: I think I could answer that by describing what a film needs to be chosen by us. We had so many films and there were many good films, no doubt. But if you watch a film and we see something…which is unusual, maybe we've never seen before, or it has a theme or it has a kind of twist, which is something we think it's very unconventional or something which doesn't resemble other films…a unique quality…then we choose a film. So we say that these are good films, but they also, all of them, have a unique part which we think the audience will like.

MG: As you were deciding to have a career in film/film preservation, was there one film or a series of movies that you saw early on that made you decide this was what you wanted to do? 

RR: I was about twenty-five and studying in Hanover, and there was a cinema there where they presented a program of one or two films per day. In just one week or so, I saw STRANGERS ON A TRAIN by Hitchcock, CITY LIGHTS by Chaplin, and BLOW UP by Antonioni, and I thought: well, if film can be that different and every film I saw is so good that I have to think about it — then I thought I should concentrate more on film. And that’s why. 

MG: And my experience going to revival films on the big screen at Secret Movie Club, the New Beverly, the American Cinematheque, and the Film Forum among others is precisely why I’m doing this interview with you. Can you talk about why cinephiles with geographical access to arthouse and revival theaters should seek out seeing restored and classic films on the big screen? Why it’s special? 

RR: To see a film with an audience — it’s a really different kind of experience. You can’t see the film on your flatscreen. It’s still the same film, but it’s not the same experience. It's not only because the silver screen is bigger; it's because you're there in a room with strangers. And if it's a good film, then you will have a very intense experience because you're not only reacting to what you see — you’re also reacting to your neighbors which is like an amplification of the experience… a common mood of watching the film…and this is really what makes the cinema experience so great.

Writer & filmmaker, Matthew Gentile

MATTHEW GENTILE is a director and screenwriter based in Los Angeles. His first feature, AMERICAN MURDERER, stars Tom Pelphrey, Ryan Phillippe, Idina Menzel, and Jacki Weaver and was distributed by Lionsgate/Saban and Universal. You can follow him on Instagram at @matthewgentiledirector or his website: www.matthewgentiledirector.com