Gucci To Help Restore La Dolce Vita And The Leopard

It’s not every day when you hear that a top clothing designer is contributing very handsomely to a film foundation, but this is the year 2010 and we’ve already seen some fantastic things occur in these short few months. Gucci has committed $900,000 to Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation to help in the restoration in two classic Italian films: Luchino Visconti’s Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (1963) and Frederico Fellini’s very own La Dolce Vita (1960), which we have discussed many times on this site.

The Leopard is being restored using the new 4K digital restoration and will be having it’s world premiere at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival on May 14th. Also, La Dolce Vita is getting the same treatment to digitally restore it, especially in time for its 50th anniversary.

With Gucci’s monetary commitment in the arts, and with the help of Cineteca di Bologna, L’Immagine Ritrovata, The Film Foundation, Pathé, Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé, Twentieth Century Fox, and Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia-Cineteca Nazionale, this film is getting the treatment it so rightly deserves. This is a month and a half before the re-release on Blu-Ray on June 29th from The Criterion Collection.

Martin Scorsese has said, “Gucci deserves our deepest gratitude for its ongoing commitment to the restoration of works like /Il Gattopardo/ and /La Dolce Vita./ Visconti and Fellini are filmmakers whose impact on cinema has been enormous, and both these films are as powerful today as when they were first released.”

With The Leopard already being (and an announced Blu-ray for June) in the Criterion Collection and with Scorsese’s own hand in the restoration of The Red Shoes, which is coming out again through Criterion in the beautiful new print, this might be another hint that we’ll be seeing one of Fellini’s finest achievements in cinema within the walls of the elite? Fellini is already a fan favorite in the Collection, so I believe I will make a prediction and say this announcement is in the works.

Source: Frillr

[Note from the Editor: With this new restored print of the Leopard in the works, will that affect your purchasing of the upcoming Blu-ray from Criterion?]