Remastered Film: Paris in the 1920s

Ever wonder how the past really looked? Not the jerky, off-speed, black & white silent stuff, but as if you were really there? Some video restorers are trying to recreate those experiences.

Paris in the 1920s

There’s apparently a hobby among video folk to engage in a little ϜΤΦ, by remastering old film to modern frame rates so they don’t look so jerky, colorizing them, and adding sound. The results can be quite striking, since we can see people in the past moving like people, not the jerky, sped-up mannequins they otherwise resemble.

And so it is here, with videos of several minutes summarizing what it would have been like to experience Paris in the 1920s. The video itself is real; the colorization and added sound are plausible, but artificial.

They’re beautiful. Almost as beautiful as my cat in his previous incarnation, when he was catting around fin-de-siècle Paris. It kind of makes me long for an era which largely no longer exists, broken by war and modernity. Yes, I know that’s a fantasy. But it’s a fantasy that makes me want to heal the world (tikkun olam!) in a way that I’d like to keep going.

My father would have just been graduating from high school in those days. It’s a pleasant thought of an alternative universe, in which he’d have been fortunate enough to take a wanderjahr to experience Paris & train his considerable skills as an (amateur) artist.

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Notes & References

1: Nope.