Movies can be little time capsules that not only tell us a lot about how the world was at a certain point in time, but also what people thought about the future at that precise point in time.

This was discovered by a group of friends in Leipzig who had bought tickets for Paul Verhoeven's "Total Recall" in spring, when the cinemas reopened after the pandemic.

They were all in their early thirties, younger than the film itself, which was first released in cinemas in 1990.

"Those early '90s action blockbusters that are loud and bangy and flaunt special effects are made for the big screen," said one young man, confirming that none of his friends had seen the sci-fi classic in cinemas before .

Maria Wiesner

Editor in the “Society & Style” department.

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The fact that the film appeared briefly in the regular program of a Leipzig multiplex cinema in 2022 is due to a trend that attentive cinema program readers have been observing in their city for several months: from David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" (2002) to Luc Besson's "Leon , der Profi” (1996) to Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” (1960), which has now been shown again, films suddenly haunt the programs that film lovers previously only found in the program series of film museums or cinematheques.

Since November 2021, for example, the Studiocanal distributor has been bringing selected classics from the archives to be shown again every month in the “Best of Cinema” series.

The series is an initiative on the part of various cinema operators, according to the distributor.

When there were no restarts during the pandemic, classics were used.

"After a lot of positive feedback on repertoire assignments during the Corona lockdowns, the cinema operators wanted to set a new focus," says Studiocanal.

Around 300 cinemas in Germany show the selected film classics.

The titles are selected together with the operators.

They have their audience in mind, so the focus here is a little more on cult films and classics than is the case, for example, with the re-releases of restored classic films, according to Studiocanal.

But this series is not the only reason why more and more classics are showing in the current cinema programme.

Some film distributors also take the filmmakers' anniversaries or birthdays as an opportunity to restore archive material and make it available to a wider audience again.

One person who sifts through archive treasures for such data is Andrea Kalas.

She is director of the film archive at Paramount and has been working for the American film studio and distributor since 2009.

Around five years ago, she and the restoration team began preparing for the anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola's classic mafia film "The Godfather".

The film was first shown in cinemas in 1972, since then it has developed into a cult and has become a point of reference in pop and film culture.

The 50th anniversary of the performance was considered a reason not only to release a newly restored version as a special DVD edition, but also to show it in the cinema.

“These films are otherwise only shown in cinematheques or film schools.

Anyone who saw 'Godfather' regularly in the cinema would probably be around 75 years old today.

So there is a large audience of all ages who have now been able to see this film on the big screen for the first time,” Kalas told the newspaper.

She was assisted by James Mockoski, archivist at Francis Ford Coppola's own production label Zoetrope.

"Coppola was then working on 'The Godfather' under contract to Paramount, so the rights belonged to the studio as opposed to the films he later produced for his own Zoetrope label," explains Mockoski.

The director Coppola is known for keeping all the material from his films and releasing them again later in revised, longer versions.

When working on The Godfather, Kalas' team had to exercise the utmost care.

“This is how every restoration process begins: a general inspection of the existing material.

If you find that the film is torn or damaged in some places, then of course you shouldn't damage it further in the further processing process, after all it's an artifact that you have to protect," says Kalas.

Together with chemists and audio experts, Kalas and Mockoski worked their way through the film scene by scene.

"There's always more to see on the negatives than people normally see," enthuses Mockoski.

"My favorite scene is the customs post where Sonny is riddled with machine gun fire," says Kalas, referring to the iconic appearance of the recently deceased James Caan, who died in that scene as the eldest son of New York's godfather Corleone in a hail of bullets from hostile family clans.

"Outside the frame, that is, outside of the frame chosen for the film, you can still see the effects guys shooting bullets into the windshield of the car on the original footage."

A look at the number of viewers shows how large the godfather's fan base still is today.

When The Godfather premiered in 156 American theaters at the end of February, it was the weekend's best-selling film there.

Studiocanal also confirmed that large re-releases "can easily generate five-digit visitor numbers".

However, due to the range of titles, a general statement cannot be made for all re-releases, it was said cautiously, the classics follow different rules than new releases.

At a time when cinemas are still a long way from seeing visitor numbers like they did before the pandemic, the re-release of classics seems like an experiment in courting viewers.