Pathé Restores Coppola's 'Marie Antoinette' in 4K as Seydoux Honored in Lyon

By Daniel Okafor

A 4K restoration of Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette" arrives Nov. 25, exactly 20 years after the film's original release and just ahead of a dedicated exhibition at the Château de Versailles. Pathé announced the restoration in Lyon, where owners Jérôme and Sophie Seydoux are being honored at the Lumière Film Festival's International Classic Film Market (MIFC).

The timing is tidy. The studio turns 130 this year. So does the calendar note the 20th anniversary of the Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé Fondation. Sony Pictures Entertainment supervises the Coppola restoration in collaboration with American Zoetrope, following the late Eleanor Coppola's documentary "Making Marie Antoinette."

Who else is back on screen?

The Lumière Festival is also showcasing three restored works by Louis Daquin, whom the festival calls "a unique figure in French cinema, for whom filmmaking and political commitment were one and the same." Daquin directed features during the German occupation while active in the Communist Resistance.

The lineup:

• "Nous les gosses" (1941) — a portrait of schoolchildren, screening in restored 2K, readable as a veiled call for resistance.
• "The Opportunists" (1960) — a Balzac adaptation (from "La Rabouilleuse") about a former Napoleonic officer's greed, in 4K.
• "Premier de Cordée" (1944) — shot largely on location in the Chamonix Valley, in 4K.

Pathé calls "Premier de Cordée" a technical feat under occupation. "Its themes of struggle, perseverance and self-transcendence resonated strongly with audiences in occupied France," the studio says. The Daquin retrospective is, in Pathé's words, "an opportunity to rediscover a filmmaker who captured working-class France, made films under the very nose of the occupying forces."

What did Jérôme Seydoux say about blockbusters?

Speaking Friday at the Pathé Bellecour theater, the chairman defended big-budget production as a survival mechanism. Pathé's recent slate includes "De Gaulle: Résistance," "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "The Three Musketeers – Part I: D'Artagnan."

"It is essential that there are films that are called locomotives in France, which Americans call blockbusters," Seydoux said. "We at Pathé said to ourselves that we are not going to make cars, we are going to make locomotives. But it's difficult. These are often bigger budgets. So, you can't make too many mistakes."

He quoted filmmaker Claude Berri's motto: "When making a film, what matters is not what it costs, it's what it brings in."

On cinema's rumored death, Seydoux was blunt. He listed the prognosticators, from the Lumière Brothers to "the head of Netflix, and more recently, Sylvester Stallone." His verdict: "Cinema will resist, no matter what happens." People, he argued, still need to gather and share emotions. "I am an absolutely unshakeable believer in the survival of cinema."

He also predicted Netflix will move into theatrical releases. "In a few years Netflix will make movies that will be released in theaters," he said, because "it is difficult to make an event only on television." And the platforms are natural partners: "The people who have money are the platforms. So yes, we will definitely work with the platforms. It's mandatory."

Why print restorations back onto film?

Sophie Seydoux, president of the foundation, drew a hard line on preservation. Once a film is restored and digitized, it goes back to film stock — a practice called a conservation shoot. Film, she noted, has proven durable for 120 years; digital's shelf life is unknown, and format shifts can erase files overnight.

"At Pathé, it's really a golden rule," she said. "We reprint on film for all the restorations we do. There is never the slightest shadow of hesitation about it."

She also champions early film education. The foundation runs workshops built around silent film, with hands-on handling of the medium. "It is very, very, very important to show young people films from early childhood because it will give them this desire to continue to see films," she said.

Her case rests on company history. Charles Pathé designed his cameras around the cameraman's gestures, around what hands could do. The workshop children, in effect, inherit that logic — while Lyon spends the week celebrating the archive that keeps it alive.