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The Godfather is remembered as a dark picture. But over the years it has become less dark than intended.

The opening scene of the best-picture Oscar winner is the ultimate example. Emerging from shadow is the face of Bonasera (Salvatore Corsitto), the father who asks Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) for a favor on the day of the Don’s daughter’s wedding.

But when director Francis Ford Coppola saw the 1972 film on a screen for its 25th anniversary, he thought, “Gee, the picture doesn’t look like I remember it looking. This very, very beautiful photography of (cinematographer) Gordon Willis over the years had faded.”

The movie is back to its inky finest — thanks to an assist from Steven Spielberg — on The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration.

The Godfather was a victim of its own success. It earned $135 million in the USA.  To meet demand, Paramount quickly made large numbers of copies to ship to theaters. As a result, the negative was ultimately destroyed through the practice of printing it so much.

A decade ago, Paramount stored all its Godfather film elements in a cold vault to help preserve them until a full digital makeover was possible. No matter how seriously the studio wished to solve the problems at that time, it would not be possible until digital technology provided the tools.

Fast-forward to 2005: Coppola, looking to renew the preservation effort, wrote to Spielberg when DreamWorks was acquired by Paramount. Could Spielberg, who had been involved in restoring Lawrence of Arabia, spur on the project? It was an offer Spielberg could not refuse. He set into motion the two-year process.

No single usable Godfather negative remained that was suitable as a source. In the end, Harris and the preservation team gathered a bunch of backup film elements and an Italian-subtitled print used as a color reference.

Over months, the restoration technicians carefully scanned the material and then began cleaning up the footage in its digital form, 4K files (meaning the video is made up of 4,000 lines of horizontal resolution, more than four times the quality of HDTV).

In addition to digitally removing scratches and repairing damage — more than 1,000 man-hours of dirt removal was performed on The Godfather— the technicians were able to fix errors that were more than three decades old.

This just goes to show you the power of digital technology as it is applied to restoring motion picture film. At iMemories, we deploy similar technology to restoring everday home movies, that are priceless and treasured to everyday people.