The New Bootlegs: Open Mat­te Films & Unof­fi­cial Scans

We want art, and artists, both pol­ished and messy, remote but coy. We want them human­ised in a pri­vate way, not over­shar­ing online, but some­thing unseen yet not hid­den. A new­ly uncov­ered record­ing, an unpub­lished inter­view – things that hap­pened to be cap­tured in their time, and authen­tic because of it. When it comes to the art of the cin­e­ma, our desire for authen­tic­i­ty in the dig­i­tal age is often to look back­ward at the beau­ty of ana­logue tech­nolo­gies, and the tac­til­i­ty of film grain. Sad­ly, such ana­logue curios­i­ty is not shared by most of those in charge of offi­cial releas­es. Blu-Ray restora­tions of films like The Shin­ing and Taxi Dri­ver flat­ten the colours, offer­ing up shiny dig­i­tal ver­sions. These releas­es feel much less vital to behold than they could oth­er­wise have been. 

In the past sev­er­al years there has been a small mar­ket of cinephiles seek­ing out unof­fi­cial, often open mat­te, 35mm scans of some very famous films. These are cinema’s bootlegs, unique ephemera cre­at­ed by enthu­si­asts wish­ing to pre­serve film his­to­ry with its blem­ish­es intact. Recent­ly, I’ve found myself obsessed with unof­fi­cial releas­es – The Shin­ing, Taxi Dri­ver, Psy­cho, Ver­ti­go, and oth­ers, have all been made available. 

_​_​_​STEADY_​PAYWALL_​_​_​Open mat­te refers to the way the films were shot, in Acad­e­my ratio, with the inten­tion that the top and bot­tom parts of the screen be ​‘mat­ted’ out by the pro­jec­tion­ist for widescreen release. This was done to pre­serve a native aspect ratio for home video and tele­vi­sion broad­cast. It was also done sim­ply to pre­serve the res­o­lu­tion dur­ing shoot­ing. Open mat­te pulls aside the cur­tain, reveal­ing things that were not meant to be seen. In the unof­fi­cial scan of Taxi Dri­ver, when Travis (Robert De Niro) and Andy the gun deal­er (Steven Prince) enter a hotel room, the cam­era pans to reveal the ceil­ing, out­fit­ted with a sim­ple light­ing rig. In The Shin­ing, a boom mic bobs above Jack’s (Jack Nichol­son) head in the Col­orado Lounge. The prints are brim­ming with the visu­al ephemera of film itself, replete with the round­ed cor­ners of film stock, and the run­ning of the leader before the fea­ture. Some­times the colour grad­ing is off. The scan of Ver­ti­go appears as if through a mud­dy brown fil­ter. The films are often miss­ing frames, or even whole scenes. In Psy­cho, the scene where Nor­man Bates (Antho­ny Perkins) mur­ders P.I. Arbo­gast (Mar­tin Bal­sam) is absent, and The Shin­ing is miss­ing sev­er­al frames when Jack approach­es the Gold Room at the halfway point. 

Rumours and claims swirl around these unof­fi­cial releas­es. I’ve heard tell there is a scan of Eyes Wide Shut where a naked Tom Cruise can be seen clear­ly wear­ing nude-coloured pants. But I haven’t seen that one. While research­ing this arti­cle, I found the gen­er­al feel­ing among film enthu­si­asts was some­where between awe, and revul­sion. Many con­sid­er the scans to be sub­par, if not out­right abom­i­na­tions, view­ing them as essen­tial­ly man­gled fan prod­ucts. I am inclined to agree. The films are man­gled fan prod­ucts, and yet I can­not look away. Unveil­ings of film sets or spe­cious nude under­pants are not my purview or con­cern. For what­ev­er rea­son, being able to see the light­ing rig in Taxi Dri­ver does not dis­rupt my verisimil­i­tude, though I’m sure Scors­ese would hate it. Most­ly, I find myself con­cerned with the expe­ri­ence of view­ing it, and its pro­duc­tion of authen­tic­i­ty through tac­til­i­ty. What these scans have to offer is some­thing akin to the expe­ri­ence watch­ing a film in the cin­e­ma on a 35mm pro­jec­tor years after its ini­tial release. These man­gled fan prod­ucts exude mate­ri­al­i­ty. And though they con­found dig­i­tal sheen, they would be impos­si­ble to obtain with­out dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies – assum­ing one hap­pens to be with­out a 35mm pro­jec­tor. The dis­tri­b­u­tion of these scans is a beau­ti­ful exam­ple of the pos­si­bil­i­ties cre­at­ed through the meld of ana­logue and dig­i­tal. Yes, they are messy, they are man­gled, and yet they are able to do some­thing remark­able: by alter­ing the way they are pre­sent­ed, these well-worn films are made anew in the eyes of the view­er, and made tac­tile through their native imperfections. 

My intro­duc­tion to these films came when a fel­low cinephile and friend sug­gest­ed I check out the open mat­te ver­sion of The Shin­ing after I men­tioned I was writ­ing an essay on my favourite Kubrick film. It felt like view­ing The Shin­ing for the very first time. Unmat­ted, the implic­it sym­me­try of the mise-en-scène leaps off the screen. The square frame seems cus­tom-fit for Danny’s Big Wheel rides through the hexag­o­nal hall­ways of The Over­look. The colours are rich and deep. It is a rich­ness that belies the imper­fec­tions: a green line runs through the screen often, and the film is very scratched. Being able to see the grain, the scratch­es, and even the edge of the film vibrat­ing near the top of the screen, comes to feel much more authen­tic than a dig­i­tal restora­tion ever could. 

Some­times, these imper­fec­tions cre­ate com­pli­men­ta­ry mean­ing. The frames miss­ing from The Shin­ing occur after Dan­ny is attacked in Room 237. In the next scene, Jack walks down the warm­ly-lit hall to the Gold Room. In the offi­cial release, the cam­era main­tains a con­tin­u­ous shot as Jack enters the Gold Room. In the unof­fi­cial release, the scene jump-cuts from Jack mut­ter­ing in the hall­way to his dark fig­ure stand­ing before the pitch-black Gold Room. The Shin­ing remains a deeply fright­en­ing film even after many view­ings, but this jump cut made my stom­ach drop. It unin­ten­tion­al­ly high­lights the dis­con­ti­nu­ity between light and dark that cod­i­fies the film – the extreme ten­sion between the actu­al demands of fam­i­ly life, and the seduc­tive dark­ness of the hotel. 

For me, the mean­ing of these unof­fi­cial scans does not depend on the way the films were ​‘meant to be seen’, though I am usu­al­ly all for autho­r­i­al inten­tion, and these ver­sions are cer­tain­ly not defin­i­tive. But I think what mat­ters is that the unof­fi­cial nature of these releas­es rep­re­sents a recall of the way films were orig­i­nal­ly seen in the prac­ti­cal sense – unre­stored, on a 35mm pro­jec­tor, scratched, loved. Such an expe­ri­ence is well mim­ic­ked in these scans, nev­er mind the unmat­ted frame. The scans also bleed into some­thing a lit­tle more ephemer­al and eso­teric that is unique to the movies: the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing a film is about as impor­tant as the film itself. Cin­e­ma is art media pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with visu­al per­cep­tion; so, it must pre­serve the essence of its past phe­nom­e­nal expe­ri­ence as part of its his­to­ry. Enthu­si­asts with the patience and the equip­ment to scan these unof­fi­cial films, have been doing just that.