The Murnau Foundation put a ton of work into piecing the film back together. Then they had to go and blow two years of work by “restoring” it.

Editing errors

Carmen was reconstructed from multiple prints. Many, many gaps were filled in from lesser sources, often no more than a few frames. However, the technicians were a little sloppy, repeating frames they already had, resulting in added stutter, microloops, and reduced picture quality.

In this sample, the technicians appended three frames to the end of the shot. Two of the frames were already present, resulting in a microloop:

Interpolation

Full-frame interpolation:

Even when it’s “subtle,” interpolation destroys grain and looks terrible in motion.

Sometimes, only a fraction of the original image remains.

Screen tearing with interpolation

Nearly every cement splice was crudely removed. Sometimes, the entire top half of the frame is interpolated. Matching tends to be poor. Seams are smeary.

Body parts tear and distort.

Damage that was previously only one frame now lasts longer.

Backgrounds distort.

General interpolated repairs

A good rule to follow if you feel the desire to repair water: DON’T.

Just plain terrible

Incompetence:

Scrolling text turns into a tilting still:

Frozen temporal cloning

I’m not saying where. Click to see the images full-size and find the frozen spots on your own.

Microlooped repairs

By displaying affected frames consecutively, microlooped repairs become obvious.

Unnecessary subtitling

If foreign languages aren’t translated in the original, then they shouldn’t be subtitled. Spanish in Carmen wasn’t translated to German, so it shouldn’t be translated to English.

Stuttering

Not unique to Carmen, stuttering affects every speed-corrected silent that’s encoded at 24fps.

Rotating stabilization

Carmen was processed by L’Immagine Ritrovata.