The Red Shoes (1948). Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Cinematography by Jack Cardiff.

The Red Shoes underwent a meticulous restoration which The UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation began working on in the fall of 2006.

Robert Gitt, preservation officer at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, spent 2 1/2 years supervising a painstaking restoration of this landmark three-strip Technicolor film.

Gitt explains: “In the restoration process, the entire film has been turned into ones and zeros, repaired, and then converted back into a motion picture again. In order to achieve a proper film ‘look,’ we compared the new digital images with those in an original Technicolor dye transfer print and in a new Eastman color test print struck by Cinetech Laboratories directly from the YCM camera negatives. Careful adjustments were made in the finalized digital version to combine the best qualities of modern color film (greater image sharpness, more sparkle in highlights) with the most pleasing attributes of vintage Technicolor dye transfer prints (bold colors, deep blacks, gentle contrast with a pleasing range of tones in actors’ faces). The end result is a restoration that combines the best of the past with our digital present.”