Gaumont’s Treasures Initiative Highlights the Company’s Restoration Program and Preserves Its History Over 130 Years
To celebrate its 130th anniversary, Gaumont has launched Gaumont’s Treasures, a century-spanning retrospective showcasing 600 DCP film restorations made available throughout the year to exhibitors, film clubs and festival programmers. Of course, given Gaumont’s status as the world’s oldest film house, this year’s retrospective only scratches the surface of a library that quite neatly tracks the full history of cinema.
From 1896 to 1929, the company produced nearly 7,000 narrative shorts, and despite the losses to deterioration, the studio has nevertheless been able to preserve about half those titles — making for one of the most expansive records of the silent movie era.
Alongside these works, Gaumont’s collection also includes roughly 15,000 hours of restored newsreel footage, a unique visual record of the early 20th century that is in constant demand by news outlets and documentary filmmakers. Full ownership of this archive allows Gaumont to license it repeatedly and royalty-free, making for a valuable asset whose revenues are often reinvested into further restoration.“These are truly exceptional images, all worthy of museum display,” says Manuela Padoan, president of GP Archives. “Over time, they’ll be seen as masterpieces — just as essential and priceless as anything in the Louvre. That’s why our work demands such care and precision.”
Preservation also requires serious infrastructure. Gaumont maintains over 4,300 square yards of refrigerated storage for original negatives, distributed across three industrial-grade coolers. Costing more than $114,000 to maintain annually, the refrigerated facility is essential to safeguard nitrate and acetate film stock.
Since 2013, Gaumont has also invested heavily in digitization, operating two film scanners full-time. Each film title is scanned in 2K or 4K — sometimes in HDR for enhanced detail — directly from the original camera negatives, reel by reel, then color graded and returned to storage. This meticulous “zero defect” restoration process takes about two weeks for black-and-white films and up to four weeks for color, followed by an equally detailed grading phase.
Working from a catalog of just over 1,100 available features — with another 250 currently off-limits due to rights issues — Gaumont’s restoration team delivers around 40 films per year as DCPs, forming the backbone of Gaumont’s Treasures, and accounting for all 610 titles.
Sometimes, the team discovers wholly new treasures — or at least films as good as new to anyone now living.
Currently in restoration is “La Guerre des Gosses,” a 1936 adventure once thought lost. It features a young Charles Aznavour in his screen debut.
Even rarer is “Esmeralda,” the first-ever “Hunchback of Notre-Dame” adaptation, directed by Alice Guy in 1905 and long forgotten — until an Italian collector delivered Gaumont the last surviving print.“In the end, the goal of any studio with a library like ours is to make these works accessible,” says Gaumont Library France president Jérôme Soulet. “If we leave them on a shelf, we’re not doing our job.”In that spirit, Gaumont launched its own boutique streaming service in 2022, dedicated exclusively to French black-and-white cinema. Developed in-house, Gaumont Classique will soon boast 400 restored titles and 100,000 single month subscriptions. (Directors Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino are both said to have accounts.)
From 1896 to 1929, the company produced nearly 7,000 narrative shorts, and despite the losses to deterioration, the studio has nevertheless been able to preserve about half those titles — making for one of the most expansive records of the silent movie era.
Alongside these works, Gaumont’s collection also includes roughly 15,000 hours of restored newsreel footage, a unique visual record of the early 20th century that is in constant demand by news outlets and documentary filmmakers. Full ownership of this archive allows Gaumont to license it repeatedly and royalty-free, making for a valuable asset whose revenues are often reinvested into further restoration.“These are truly exceptional images, all worthy of museum display,” says Manuela Padoan, president of GP Archives. “Over time, they’ll be seen as masterpieces — just as essential and priceless as anything in the Louvre. That’s why our work demands such care and precision.”
Preservation also requires serious infrastructure. Gaumont maintains over 4,300 square yards of refrigerated storage for original negatives, distributed across three industrial-grade coolers. Costing more than $114,000 to maintain annually, the refrigerated facility is essential to safeguard nitrate and acetate film stock.
Since 2013, Gaumont has also invested heavily in digitization, operating two film scanners full-time. Each film title is scanned in 2K or 4K — sometimes in HDR for enhanced detail — directly from the original camera negatives, reel by reel, then color graded and returned to storage. This meticulous “zero defect” restoration process takes about two weeks for black-and-white films and up to four weeks for color, followed by an equally detailed grading phase.
Working from a catalog of just over 1,100 available features — with another 250 currently off-limits due to rights issues — Gaumont’s restoration team delivers around 40 films per year as DCPs, forming the backbone of Gaumont’s Treasures, and accounting for all 610 titles.
Sometimes, the team discovers wholly new treasures — or at least films as good as new to anyone now living.
Currently in restoration is “La Guerre des Gosses,” a 1936 adventure once thought lost. It features a young Charles Aznavour in his screen debut.
Even rarer is “Esmeralda,” the first-ever “Hunchback of Notre-Dame” adaptation, directed by Alice Guy in 1905 and long forgotten — until an Italian collector delivered Gaumont the last surviving print.“In the end, the goal of any studio with a library like ours is to make these works accessible,” says Gaumont Library France president Jérôme Soulet. “If we leave them on a shelf, we’re not doing our job.”In that spirit, Gaumont launched its own boutique streaming service in 2022, dedicated exclusively to French black-and-white cinema. Developed in-house, Gaumont Classique will soon boast 400 restored titles and 100,000 single month subscriptions. (Directors Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino are both said to have accounts.)