Vertigo: 50th Anniversary Edition

Vertigo suffers from having been shot on Eastmancolor. Kodak introduced single-negative colour film in 1950, a huge improvement on Technicoior as it could be shot using smaller cameras such as the Arri. Technicolor had to be shot using its own triple-negative cameras which were expensive to rent and exposed three times the amount of film that a black-and-white camera used. Eastmancolor was as easy to use as black-and-white film and produced excellent results (which looked even better once Technicolor's labs had finished with it.)

The original negative was 5247, superceded in 1952 by Emulsion 5248. 5248's chemistry was tinkered with over the next eight years until in 1962 the latest negative was christened 5251, and the problems that Eastman had built into their negatives were (possibly unknowingly) solved.

Although there were no apparent problems at the time, the studios would eventually discover that films made on 5248 between 1954 and 1961 had a whole bunch of problems that would plague film restorers in years to come.

The big problem was in dark scenes - remember that if the image is dark on the print, the image on the negative is light and vice-versa. If you had, say, a day for night scene shot with a heavy blue filter to simulate twilight, the image on the negative will be a) very light and b) yellow (the complementary colour to blue). And that was 5248's big problem - the yellow dye was unstable and faded over time. Eventually, you would end up with a black frame with no detail at all. Of course, the fading effect would not only affect dark scenes. Every shot in the movie would be affected in some way by the yellow layer failure. A healthy suntan would turn lobster pink, shadows would be green or a weird blue colour rather than a proper black.

5248 affects a number of movies other than Vertigo. North by Northwest, Pollyanna, Spartacus, The Alamo, Can-Can, Porgy and Bess, Exodus and The Nun's Story as well as hundreds of other movies are all potentially in trouble, unless the Studio had the foresight to have a set of colour separation negatives made from the Original Camera Negative, and for many films the Studios didn't...

Mark, you're a veritable goldmine of information...

Just so long as I'm not a suppository of all human knowledge. :D