Venice Film Festival / BEST RESTORED FILM 2019

Extase (1932) is one of the foremost Czechoslovak films of the 1930s. Extase was originally produced in three language versions, Czech, German and French. Numerous later versions appeared due to censorship cuts, editorial decisions and other reasons. The goal of this digital restoration was to make the film available in the original Czech language version released in 1933 and screened at Venice Film Festival in 1934. Therefore, many different elements needed to be combined both for the image and sound reconstruction.

The image and sound restoration aimed at harmonizing the various sources without introducing digital artifacts or using elements not present in the original Czech release. Most of the Czech dialogue sequences have not been preserved in their original image aspect ratio 1:1.19, and had to be substituted by elements from later releases with ratio 1:1.37. To achieve a continuous experience of the film, these sequences were further adjusted by means of cropping for this presentation.

Three prints preserved by the Cinémathèque suisse, the Danish Film Institute and the Filmmuseum München served as sources for the restoration, together with a duplicate negative and a duplicate positive preserved by Národní filmový archiv, Prague. A print which is a courtesy of Gaumont, preserved by CNC, was used for the opening title.

The digital restoration of this film was made possible by a donation from Mrs. Milada Kučerová and Mr. Eduard Kučera and was realized in 2019 at L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna, under the supervision of Národní filmový archiv, Prague, with the support of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Partners contributing to the restoration were British Film Institute, Cinémathèque16, Cinémathèque suisse, CNC, Danish Film Institute, Filmarchiv Austria, Filmmuseum München, Gaumont, and Slovak Film Institute.

About film: [ Ссылка ]
Trailer: Jakub Jirka, 2019

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