"Take for example the 1973 Oscar-winning best film "The Sting,"which had chemical stains over several frames in the original negative. Steven Spielberg's landmark 1975 shark thriller "Jaws" showed the ravages of time with nasty tears in the original negative, notably the scene in which Quint (Robert Shaw) arrives at the town meeting on Amity Island."
"These are some of the challenges facing technicians performing digital restorations of 13 classic movies as part of Universal Studios' 100th birthday celebration. Each of the films had to be painstakingly corrected because of color fading, scratches, dirt, tears and splicing problems even on relatively recent movies such as "The Sting" and "Jaws."
LATimes