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www.postmagazine.com 26 POST NOVEMBER 2017 RESTORATION famed screen gangster and the first of the modern zombies were the subjects of recent sound and picture restorations to preserve their tales for future generations of filmgoers. Scarface (1932) and Night of the Living Dead (1968) have undergone full 4K restorations to return the classic films to their original glory. SCARFACE The iconic gangster film Scarface celebrates its 85th anniversary this year with a 4K restoration, which had its US premiere in August at The Reel Thing Technical Symposium XLI, the preservation and restoration symposium co-founded by Grover Crisp and Michael Friend. The international premiere was at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, Italy, in June, and the UK premiere was hosted by the BFI London Film Festival last month. The third, chronologically, of the 1930s gang- ster film trio that includes Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, Scarface was produced by Howard Hughes and Howard Hawks, and directed by Hawks. It was adapted from a book loosely based on the rise and fall of Al Capone and starred Paul Muni as Tony Camonte. NBCUniversal's restoration program had Scarface on its short list. The usual restoration criteria of age and historical significance was bolstered by NBCUniversal's remake of the title — the third in the picture's history — scheduled for 2018 with a screenplay by the Coen Brothers. Over the years, the copy stored in the NBCUniversal library has been remastered to keep abreast of evolving formats. Now Scarface was in line for remastering at 4K and a full restoration to bring the title back to its original condition. "The original negative no longer exists, so we scoured the globe for elements that might be in better shape than our copy," says Peter Schade, vice president of content management at NBCUniversal's Global Media Operations. "We ended up using a duplicate negative from the British Film Institute. A BRINGING BIG-SCREEN GANGSTERS & GHOULS BACK TO LIFE SCARFACE AND NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD GET 4K PICTURE AND SOUND RESTORATIONS BY CHRISTINE BUNISH