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In film circles, the phrase turns up constantly in the marketing of revivals: "new 4k restoration." New's good, right? Naturally. All new things must be good. Or, at any rate, new.

Before we get into the weirdest movie Humphrey Bogart ever made, let's talk about that "4k restoration" phrase. Then we'll get into how it applies to the newly restored, eternally brazen 1953 oddity "Beat the Devil," opening June 30 at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

"New 4k restoration" means a studio or an archive or a foundation has financed the cleanup and digital transfer of an existing movie. The restoration draws upon the best surviving elements of the film's original print negative, a duplicate negative and other materials.

The goal is to assemble "the fullest and best version of what's available," says Sony Pictures Executive Vice President Grover Crisp, who oversees the company's asset management, film restoration and digital mastering.

A 4k restoration refers to a horizontal screen resolution of approximately 4,000 pixels. The more pixels, the more complex the visual detail. The more complex the detail, the more you can appreciate the creases, contours and general fabulousness of Bogart's face, or the fabric of the suits his co-stars are wearing.

A typical 4k restoration offers no new footage. It's simply the sharpest digital iteration of a movie available. Whether or not it represents the optimal viewing experience is a debate for another article; the warmth of celluloid versus the harder, arguably more clinical edge of high-def digital constitutes an ongoing aesthetic battle. Recent 4k restorations of "The Third Man" or "Taxi Driver" or "Blood Simple" bring out additional shadow detail and a heightened contrast in tones and hues. But in terms of the film itself, there's nothing NEW-new about them.

Then there's "Beat the Devil," restored last year and currently making the rounds at the nation's art and specialty houses. It is a uniquely punch-drunk champion in the annals of rogue cinema. And thanks to the timely discovery of the film's uncensored international version in a London vault, contemporary curiosity-seekers are treated to four additional minutes of footage; a reordered narrative chronology; the removal of some really lazy voice-over narration spoken by Bogart; and a clearer, better, brighter visual palette than "Beat the Devil" has had in decades.

"Only phonies like it," Bogart said. (His production company put up much of the money, and lost it.) The source was a 1949 book by Anglo-Scots journalist-turned-novelist Claud Cockburn, writing under the pseudonym James Helvick because of his Communist past. His story concerned a ragtag group of international swindlers colluding and colliding along the French Riviera. The ringleader is an American, Billy Dannreuther, whom Bogart played in the screen version.

Director John Huston hated the screenplay he was stuck with. One week prior to filming on location, with all his actors lined up and ready, he nearly bailed. But David O. Selznick, the mogul husband of "Beat the Devil" co-star Jennifer Jones, suggested that a young writer named Truman Capote come to Ravello, near Naples, and take a whack at a rewrite. Along with Jones, the cast included Gina Lollobrigida as Billy's Anglophile wife; Robert Morley as one of the comical ruffians; Peter Lorre, his hair dyed to look like Capote's, as an ex-Nazi going by the name of O'Hara; and assorted other eccentrics.

Much has been written about the way "Beat the Devil" came together, barely. Capote rewrote as fast as he could, every day. Huston devised elaborate camera setups to kill time while waiting for the script pages. The cast, other than Bogart, didn't realize the ruse.

"John and I," Capote later said, referring to Huston, "decided to kid the story, to treat it as a parody." Co-star Jones, whose fabulist character speaks like an Oscar Wilde creation out of "The Importance of Being Earnest," never understood what her character was supposed to be thinking, or saying, or feeling. The plot, as recooked by Capote and Huston, moved the story's action (dominated by talk) from France to Italy. It focused on Bogart and company conspiring to sail to Africa to buy a uranium mine. In large part, "Beat the Devil" is a movie about a group of castoffs waiting for their boat to sail.

The plot wasn't a plot; Capote himself called it "a so-called plot." The tone was peculiar, amusing to some, baffling to others. A censored, reordered and even less comprehensible version played U.S. theaters. "Strange indeed" is how the Chicago Daily Tribune reviewed it.

Given the mass shrug greeting "Beat the Devil," how did it grow into a cult favorite, long before the latest restoration? Partly, it was due to a handful of critics (notably Pauline Kael) who responded to the movie's blithe artificiality and brazen indifference to playing by normal rules of screenwriting.

Last year, Sony Pictures' Crisp headed the restoration of "Beat the Devil," partnering with the Film Foundation and other funding sources.

"There are two kinds of restorations," he says. "One makes the film look as good as possible. The other is when the film, sadly, is in disarray, and is either deteriorating or pretty badly damaged, as this film was. There were parts missing. Our U.K. distributor came up with some missing footage, and the version they found in a vault in London was a revelation. It had all this other material in it, four minutes' worth. And that version told us, effectively, how we should put it all back together."

Result: The new introductory scenes focus on Jones' character in an intriguing way. The Bogart narration vanishes. The flashback structure is no more. Certain sexual aspects of the so-called storyline come through more clearly now, including dialogue about Jones waiting for Bogart to make a pass at her, and a rhyming scene (the movie tiptoes up to a double infidelity) featuring an outrageous shot of Lollobrigida's cleavage, unseen by U.S. audiences in 1953.

Fans and detractors of "Beat the Devil" can probably agree: Huston's movie was more fun to make than it was to watch. The shoot never stopped stumbling. One night, Huston fell off a cliff, a 40-foot cliff, and somehow didn't hurt himself. Bogart messed up his teeth in a car accident.

The movie in progress became a party. Famous people dropped by for a few days, drank, made merry and left again. The young, unpaid clapper boy on the shoot was always playing piano when he could; his name was Stephen Sondheim. "He liked to tinkle away on the out-of-tune piano in the hotel," recalled script supervisor Angela Allen, years later. "I said, 'I think that young man is going to go a long way.' And everyone told me how stupid I was."

Like Orson Welles' "The Lady From Shanghai" a few years earlier, "Beat the Devil" bent and stretched audience expectations to the snapping point. This is why it works so weirdly well for some people today, especially in this 4k restoration.

"When I saw it this time," says the Film Center's associate programming director Martin Rubin, "I saw it very much as a postwar atomic age film. The world's a mess, it's all going to blow up, so anything goes. There's a playful nihilism in it. And it's so self-referential. The way these characters are trying to put together their uranium scheme is like Huston and Capote trying to put together 'Beat the Devil,' right there on the spot."

"Beat the Devil," June 30-July 5, Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.; www.siskelfilmcenter.org.

L’icône du cinéma américain Martin Scorsese, la fédération panafricaine des cinéastes (FEPACI) et l’UNESCO ont signé un accord de partenariat le 7 juin dernier à l'occasion du lancement du projet Héritage du film africain. Un moment historique pour le cinéma africain auquel VOA Afrique a assisté. Exclusivité.

Précédemment annoncé lors du dernier FESPACO par Martin Scorsese lui-même, le projet Héritage du Film Africain a officiellement vu le jour lors de la signature d’un partenariat entre l’UNESCO, la Film Foundation de Martin Scorsese et la Fédération panafricaine des cinéastes, FEPACI. Une cérémonie au cours de laquelle chaque partenaire a pu réitérer son attachement au dit projet.

Aboubakar Sanogo, secrétaire regional de la FEPACI serrant la main de Martin Scorsese

"Au départ, l’idée de la “World Cinema Foundation” était de restaurer et de rendre disponible de la meilleur façon possible, des films tournés dans des lieux qui n’ont pas les infrastructures nécessaires pour prendre soin de ces films et donc protéger leur héritage culturel." a déclaré Martin Scorsese dans son mot d'introduction. Il s'est ensuite estimé satisfait du travail déjà abattu. "Je suis très heureux que le travail ait déjà commencé au niveau du projet Héritage du Film Africain. Notre premier film restauré est “ Soleil O ” de Med Hondo, il a même été présenté au festival de Cannes cette année il y a quelques semaines de cela."

La directrice générale de l'UNESCO, Mme Irina Bokova s'est à son tour félicitée de ce nouveau partenariat qui s'inscrit selon elle en droite ligne des préoccupations de l'organisation onusienne.

"Je crois fermement au pouvoir de la culture, le pouvoir de la créativité, la liberté de créer. Et je pense qu'il n'y a rien de mieux aujourd'hui pour libérer ce potentiel de l'Afrique, que la culture et la créativité. Nous espérons qu'après leur restauration, nous pourrons les inscrire au registre de la mémoire du monde car ces films représentent l'autre pan de notre patrimoine commun. Je pense que nous ne ferons pas seulement justice à l'histoire et à la créativité africaine, mais nous encouragerons aussi les jeunes à continuer à se lancer dans de nouvelles aventures à travers des partenariats et à continuer de créer." Irina Bokova, Directrice Générale de l'UNESCO.

Mais le plus heureux de la soirée c'était incontestablement le sécrétaire régional pour l'Amérique du nord de la FEPACI, Mr. Aboubakar Sanogo, lui même professeur de cinéma à l'université de Carlson à Ottawa au canada. Il representait M. Cheick Oumar Sissoko, sécrétaire général de la FEPACI.

Pour Mr. Sanogo, cet accord est l'aboutissement du travail commencé par les pères du cinema africain. "Nous espérons que ce partenariat permettra d’explorer les voies et moyens à travers lesquels, et l’Unesco jouera probablement un rôle important de par son action de définition du cadre et son discours sur l’héritage mondial, on pourra redonner une dimension éthique au business de la préservation cinématographique." a-t-il precisé avant que les trois ne passent à la signature proprement dite.

Ce sont au total cinquante films qui ont été initialement identifiés par un comité consultatif mis sur pied par la FEPACI. Cette dernière a en charge de mener une enquête exhaustive pour localiser les meilleurs éléments cinématographiques existants pour chaque titre, dans les cinémathèques africaines et les archives cinématographiques à travers le monde.

De la gauche ver la droite: Yemani Demessie, cinéaste, professeur de cinema a NYU, Fatou Zongo, actrice burkinabé vivant à New York, Aboubakar Sanogo (FEPACI)

Quelques acteurs du cinéma africain de New York City étaient présent. Ils s'agit de Mme. Mahen Bonetti, du festival du film africain de New York, Mr. Yemani Demessie, cinéaste éthiopien et professeur de cinema à l'université de New York (NYU), et Fatoumata Zongo, actrice burkinabè vivant à New York City.

"Plusieurs films africains produits au siècle dernier n’ont pas l’opportunité d’être vu par les cinéastes du monde, qu’ils soient africains australiens ou boliviens. C’est à travers de telles initiatives que ces films pourront faire partie du langage courant international." a soutenu Mr. Yemani Demessie.

Selon les mots du secrétaire régional de la FEPACI, "On peut retracer l’implication des africains dans le cinéma depuis au moins 1897. Nous espérons donc pouvoir avoir accès a cette partie occultée de notre histoire."

De la gauche ver la droite; Aboubakar Sanogo (FEPACI), Martin Scorsese (le Film Foundation), Irina Bokova (UNESCO)

Dans son interview exclusive avec VOA Afrique, Martin Scorsese est revenu sur les raisons qui le poussent à faire connaitre les films africains restaurés aux américains.

"Ces films ont été fait par les Africains, sur les africains, pour les africains, pour le monde. Et il est temps de considérer cela comme un autre aspect de la culture. La pensée créative, l’action créatrice du continent entier. Le but [maintenant] est d’en éliminer l’idée de l’altérité chez les cinéastes en Amérique, les jeunes. Oui, leur montrer le caractère unique de la culture, et de qui ils sont, mais de les accepter comme étant des sources d’apprentissage, et avant tout qu’ils soient capables d’apprécier ces films africains, de ne pas les rejeter. Je pense que cela pourrait être très fructueux pour les jeunes cinéastes."

Scorsese a ensuite expliquer l'importance de donner du temps à un public donne de s'habituer au film. "Certains films peuvent ne pas plaire à certaines parties de la population. Je n'oublierai jamais mon film « Mean Streets » en 1973. Mes amis et moi, nous nous sommes dit : le film a eu du succès au festival du film de New York, alors partagez le avec le reste du pays mais Le studio s’y est opposé en disant que le film devait être projeté dans un seul endroit, afin de permettre à un public de le connaître un peu plus. Mes amis m'ont convaincu et ont convaincu le studio de lancer une sortie nationale et nous l'avons fait, et le film est mort. Ils ne l'ont pas aimé au Texas. Le Texas est différent. Voyez-vous ce que je veux dire ? Il faut préparer le public pour accepter un film. Vous devez commencer quelque part et inviter d’autres personnes à le voir. Ne le rendez pas étranger, faites en quelque chose dont nous pouvons tous apprendre et dont nous pouvons faire partie. Donc il ne s’agit pas de se jeter à l’eau. Vous devez analyser ce qu'il faut faire." Martin Scorsese, président fondateur de la Film Foundation.

L'avenir du patrimoine cinématographique africain est donc prometteur sous le regard de la légende hollywoodienne de soixante quatorze ans qui s'est récemment associé au géant de la video à la demande Netflix pour produire son tout prochain film, " The Irishman". Un film gangster dont le budget s’élève à plus de cent vingt-cinq millions de dollars.

The new initiative will support the restoration of 50 major African films.

Aboubakar Sanogo is a scholar of African cinema based out of Ottawa and works for the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI), but it took him years to see one of the major films from the continent: Med Hondo’s “Soleil O,” a 1969 portrait of a black immigrant in Paris, was long revered but widely unavailable; Sanogo didn’t see it until a print surfaced in Paris in 2006. “Even in Burkina, the capital city of African cinema, it wasn’t available,” Sanogo said in New York this week. “It’s a huge problem.”

Sanogo was addressing a broader challenge facing the preservation of African film history — and one that might be facing a brighter future. On June 7, FEPACI, UNESCO and Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation World Cinema Project signed a letter of agreement formalizing their partnership on the African Film Heritage Project, a joint initiative to preserve African cinema. But their work has already shown major results, with “Soleil O” screening in the Cannes Classics section last month.

The project  “will restore disseminate…in Africa and around the world, a collection of the films from Africa that are historically, artistically and culturally significant,” Scorsese said at the event. Later, he explained how his interest in African cinema grew out of his passion for Souleymane Cissé’s 1987 sorcerer drama “Yeelen,” which he saw on television. Eventually, he formed a relationship with Cissé and visited him in Mali. He was struck by a comment that Cissé made when they were both in Cannes for a different partnership in 2007. “He said, ‘If we don’t try and restore African cinema — made by Africans about Africans — then future generations will never know who they are,” Scorsese said. “Cinema is a perfect way to open up the mind, curiosity for other cultures.” (For more on Scorsese’s efforts to support the international film community, go here.)

For Sanogo, the new initiative opens up an opportunity to broaden awareness for African film history that has been marginalized for decades. With historical context, the older films can enjoy a new life in the classroom and repertory cinemas around the world. “In many ways, the auteurist tradition in Africa is an experimental cinema,” he said. “That is part of its problem — experimental cinema and audience appreciation don’t always go hand in hand. So we are trying to bring these images back, not only to filmmakers but Africans in general.”

He underscored a developing concern for educating film students in Africa about their heritage at a time in which film production has increased. “Filmmakers are making films in Africa every day,” Sanogo said. “The advent of digital has made the medium more accessible. I took my students to Burkina in 2012 to study Burkina cinema. They dreamed to one day hold a piece of celluloid film and shoot on it. In film school, they simply didn’t have celluloid to shoot on. But the energy and desire to make films has never been as high in Africa as it is today.”

UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova also attended the signing and added a broader context to the discussion. “Cinema is about history and storytelling,” she said. “African films are a [form of] cultural expression. It’s also about trying to change the narrative of this history, so it’s not from the point of view of Europe or anywhere else but your own. It’s a discovery of your own identity. I think cinema is probably one of the best ways for this search to find your roots…technology has given us an incredible opportunity to preserve it. This project is a testimony to that.”

Watch the entire signing ceremony, with statements from Scorsese, Sanogo and Bokova, below: 

In 2007, Martin Scorsese created the World Cinema Foundation, a non-profit organization that exists to preserve and restore films from around the world that might not otherwise not only fail to find an audience but even survive the brutal passage of time. Scorsese is widely acknowledged as one of history’s most essential filmmakers, but he is also a champion for the form overall, more deeply involved in the international film scene than even his hardcore fans may realize. The World Cinema Foundation has restored almost three dozen films already from around the world and six of them have been compiled in a box set from the Criterion Collection called “World Cinema Project, Vol. 2,” just released in a Blu-ray/DVD combo set. These films, and their supplemental material, offer something akin to a film course at a major college, allowing you to experience and appreciate works that you not only might not have otherwise seen but might have been unseen by anyone were it not for the WCF. As with any box set this ambitious, the quality varies from film to film, but it’s the cumulative impact of the six-movie experience that’s so valuable, reminding us of the variability of the art form more than anything else. I do wish the next box set would include a film by a female director, but it’s also nice to see Criterion reaching out of their typically European film-view to offer works from other parts of the world.

While it’s almost certain that you haven’t heard of all six films in the set, there are at least two very familiar names: Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who would go on to helm the Palme d’Or-winning “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” and last year’s “Cemetery of Splendour,” and the incredible Chinese director Edward Yang, who helmed acknowledged modern classics “A Brighter Summer Day” and “Yi Yi (A One and a Two)”. They are joined in this set by films from Lino Brocka of the Philippines, Ermek Shirnabaev of Kazakhstan, Mário Peixoto of Brazil, and Lütfi Ö. Akad of Turkey. Again, Criterion has been accurately criticized for so heavily focusing their releases on Europe and North America, so it’s nice to see this set truly live up to the first word in its title: “World.” 

It’s also notable to consider the chronological diversity of this set. The Brazilian film, a stunning piece of lyrical silent filmmaking called “Limite,” was released, barely even, in 1931. Now recognized as arguably the best Brazilian film in history, it went virtually unseen for decades, even though Orson Welles claimed to have seen it near the time of its original release. The film was one of those works considered lost to history until it was restored by the WCP (although you should be warned that one of the reels is in such bad shape that it is still virtually unwatchable). It is a nearly-two-hour film that can best be described as dreamlike. Three people are on a boat, remembering their lives in poetic, evocative, black-and-white imagery. There is little plot or traditional dialogue cards one would see in a silent film. It is mesmerizing in its simplicity, as if you’re watching someone come up with their own language of cinema. 

On the other end of the geographical and cultural spectrum, there’s Lino Brocka’s incendiary “Insiang,” the first film from the Phillipines to play the Cannes Film Festival in 1976 and a fascinating blend of high melodrama and documentary-like detail. This character study takes place in the slums of Manila and is unsparing in its brutality, both in the documenting of the conditions there and the story of a young woman who takes bloody vengeance on her rapist. The restoration here is particularly remarkable, never revealing the film’s age or reportedly weak condition of source material. 

Of course, the two films from the recognized masters have notable value, even if they don’t quite hold up to their director’s best works. Weerasethakul’s “Mysterious Object at Noon” is a fascinating film experiment that blends documentary filmmaking and a classic storytelling game, the “exquisite corpse,” in which people continue the same story. It’s a surreal and strange film that works more as an experiment than a realized piece of cinema, but feels especially resonant given the works that its filmmaker would produce over the two decades since its release. Yang’s “Taipei Story,” made in collaboration with another Cannes favorite, Hou Hsiao-hsien, who stars in the film, is a characteristically detailed examination of a part of the world in flux, capturing Taiwan in the ‘80s in a way you haven’t really otherwise seen. 

The final two films in the set, the Turkish “Law of the Border” and Kazakh “Revenge” feel somewhat limited by their resources, especially the latter film, which seeks to tell generations of vengeance through one deeply philosophical story. Although its storytelling doesn’t quite work, it has some striking imagery, and I must admit to a lack of deep knowledge about films from this part of the world. In a sense, that’s what box sets like this are for.

The films themselves are the real draws for this box set but the special features are notable as well, particularly introductions from Scorsese himself that offer brief history and longer featurettes that provide more, such as when Walter Salles details the impact of “Limite” or Hou himself discusses “Taipei Story.” And the booklet is wonderful supplemental material, offering essays from critical luminaries like Kent Jones, Bilge Ebiri, and more. A full list is below: 

·  2K, 3K, or 4K digital restorations of all six films, presented courtesy of the World Cinema Project in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna, with uncompressed monaural or 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks on the Blu-rays

·  Remastered digital soundtrack for Limite, created from archival recordings

·  New introductions to the films by World Cinema Project founder Martin Scorsese

·  New interview programs featuring film historian Pierre Rissient (on "Insiang"), director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (on "Mysterious Object at Noon"), director Ermek Shinarbaev (on "Revenge"), filmmaker Walter Salles (on Limite), film producer Mevlüt Akkaya (on "Law of the Border"), and filmmakers Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edmond Wong in conversation (on "Taipei Story," which Hou cowrote and acted in)

·  Updated English subtitle translations

·  Three Blu-rays and six DVDs, with all content available in both formats

·  PLUS: A booklet featuring an introduction and essays on the films by Phillip Lopate, Dennis Lim, Kent Jones, Fábio Andrade, Bilge Ebiri, and Andrew Chan

To order your copy of Criterion's "World Cinema Project, Vol. 2," click here.