Commissioned by the Tourist Office of Lausanne, Alice in Switzerland was directed by the internationally renowned director Alberto Cavalcanti to show the treasures of Romandie’s part of Switzerland, following the journey of a young girl across all the regional sights. The film does not use the Swiss technique “Montreuxcolor film”, but the conventional process “Dufaycolor”: the prints were indeed all made in England, where the film was to be primarily distributed. The Association of Interests of Lausanne justifies its technical choice by taking the example of another commissioned film, Le Léman, arguing that the chromatic results of Montreux-color were a disaster.

As the colour reproduction was impossible by photochemical methods, the restoration was done from a 4K scan of the original negative on the basis of an original print whose colours were well preserved. The digital proved to be very close to the colour range of Dufaycolor, without losing the original look of the mosaic that characterizes this technique.

Caroline Fournier