In the last year the Austrian Film Archive was going to reconstruct the Austrian silent film Erzherzog Johann. In our archive we had a full frame lavender copy and from this a full frame safety negative, but without any intertitles and credits. Some parts were damaged and/or destroyed. In the Russian Film Archive, Gosfilmofond, in Moscow we found a safety copy with German intertitles, but reels 5 and 7 were copied in sound frame format and therefore the intertitles were cropped.

Unfortunately, reel 7 of our negative was in a very bad condition, so we made from the Russian material a blow-up-copy from sound frame format to full frame format.

From reels 5 and 7 we made full frame intertitles and new credits. From the other intertitles of the Russian copy we made a safety negative and all this we put on our safety negative. At last we made a full frame safety copy and finally an optical reduction safety copy.

Dr Walter Fritz

La restauration de "Erzherzog Johann" illustre bien l'intérêt de la collaboration entre archives dans la reconstruction d'oeuvres qu'on croyait à jamais perdues ou incomplètes. Grâce à la collaboration entre les Archives du Film d'Autriche et les Archives du film de Russie, ce film muet autrichien a été reporté sur support "safety".