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David Filipi, Director, Film/Video
Nov 19, 2018
This summer, I had the opportunity to see the new restoration of Andre De Toth’s None Shall Escape (1944) at il Cinema Ritrovato, an annual festival devoted to archival and newly restored films, organized by the Cineteca di Bologna. Among the dozens of films I saw, Toth’s resonated with me—and the audience—like few others at the fest. In short, the film traces the Nazification of a World War I vet, made bitter by the German defeat and its aftermath. Most point to it as the first Hollywood film to deal with Nazi atrocities. It is frank and, in one scene in particular, surprisingly brutal, especially considering the era in which it was made. The echo of this film—made nearly 75 years ago—heard today with the scapegoating (or worse) of immigrants, people of color, Jewish people, and GLBT people was lost on no one in the audience. It remains, unfortunately, ever timely and relevant.
I interviewed Rita Belda, Vice President of Asset Management, Film Restoration and Digital Mastering, Sony Pictures about the restoration of None Shall Escape, which we'll screen November 29-30. Belda is a past guest at our annual film restoration festival Cinema Revival, and she returns on February 23 to introduce their recent restoration of White Nights (1985) as part of our next fest. One note: Sony Pictures owns the Columbia Pictures library.
Dave Filipi: What prompted this digital restoration of None Shall Escape?
Rita Belda: Initially, it was just part of our larger project to do a comprehensive review of titles and elements in the studio archive and to create preservation material. When we got to None Shall Escape, I had no knowledge of the condition of the elements. That’s the case with most of our restoration work. We identify titles first and then proceed.
DF: When you introduced the film at il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna this summer, I remember you saying that you knew something was different about this film just from the archived elements.
RB: In my experience, the amount of material on titles from the nitrate era (pre-early 1950s) is pretty limited. We typically find the original negative and maybe one other nitrate element such as a fine grain master (struck from the original negative) or a dupe negative. So, normally two, maybe three elements at most, and sometimes we will reach out to archives such as UCLA or the British Film Institute to see if they have additional nitrate material we can access.
DF: So, what did you find for this title?
RB: What was interesting was that in addition to the original negative we had three full fine grains, all dated from 1944, which is really unusual. We don’t have much documentation on this, but it’s possible that there may have been more fine grains made for certain titles at Columbia back then but these elements don’t typically survive. It’s so strange that these all survived in our collection at the studio. If they were ever sent out (a dupe negative sent overseas to make release prints, for example), the studio made the decision to store them when they were sent back. Columbia handled this film differently, even compared to important classic films from that era.
DF: Do you have another title to which you can compare this one?
RB: For example, George Stevens’ The More the Merrier (1943), starring Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea, received seven Oscar nominations including Best Director, Picture, and Actress for Arthur, with Charles Coburn winning for Best Supporting Actor. We’re restoring it now and when we looked at the elements we found only two nitrate elements, the negative was in terrible condition, and we had to work with the BFI to get the best surviving material to do the restoration.
DF: Anything else unique about the elements for None Shall Escape?
RB: It’s hard to know when this was done, but at some point, the negative was lacquered as a way of preventing the negative from being scratched or further damaged. This was done with other titles as well—Orson Welles’ Lady from Shanghai (1947), for example—but it was definitely not the norm. The treatment was intended to protect the negative, but the application stained it, and this was one of the most difficult issues we faced during restoration. It could only be dealt with by finding other replacement sections, which is not a great option, or by using digital tools to remove the stains which we did for this restoration.
DF: Other than the elements, was there anything else unusual about this project for you?
RB: The interesting thing for me is that if you look at this title and compare it—excluding the subject matter—this is a B-movie. It was shot quickly and completely on Columbia studio locations, it features the Columbia stable of character actors, etc. This suggests that it wouldn’t be thought of as special in any way. But, it did have an emigre director (Andre De Toth) with a personal connection to the material, and other politically active people—including actress Marsha Hunt and screenwriter Lester Cole—who would eventually be blacklisted, and the subject matter was obviously important.
Columbia rushed the production through as they would a B-Western. It was a small production but an important one and one that they wanted to get out in the world as quickly as possible given the content.
The publicity from the time period suggests a scale that would normally have been reserved for more prestige pictures. It was far more a focus of the studio’s publicity machine than you would expect for a B level title. There was even a mock Nazi trial held in Boston as a publicity stunt.
DF: Why don’t more people know about this film?
RB: There was preservation material on this film, and it was maintained, but it has rarely been screened, and the few recent screenings were always from our chemical restorations. Now, with our new digital restoration, we were able to correct problems not possible with chemical processes.
It was a rewarding project. There was a lot that was familiar having worked on so many Columbia titles—the cast, the sets—but it was also shocking and surprising in terms of content and the way the story is told. It is so immediate and feels so real in a way that you don’t get from other films of the era. Films that dealt with the war had more over-the-top approaches, they felt more like propaganda. This film is subtle and has more of an impact. Every time I see it I still find it shocking. It’s always emotional for me.
