This film was made in 1915 by the Lubin Company, one of the giants of the early film industry. Few Lubin films survive today because of a disastrous fire which wiped out the Lubin studios in the teens. Only one print of WHERE THE ROAD DIVIDED is known to have survived, and it was preserved by the American Film Institute during the 1970s. Unfortunately, by the time the film was found, it had already begun to deteriorate in several places.

This excerpt shows the devastation of nitrate film deterioration, as the picture turns into a series of black and white blotches.

Based on Thackeray's VANITY FAIR and directed by Rouben Mamoulian, BECKY SHARP (1935) was the first American feature-length film to be shot in the three-strip Technicolor process. Long available only in truncated and inferior Cinecolor (two-color) reissue prints, the film was restored in 1985 by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. With grant funds largely from the AFI/NEA Film Preservation Program, Robert Gitt of UCLA and Richard Dayton of YCM Laboratories matched sections of the film from numerous print sources, located missing footage, improved the soundtrack, and restored the three-strip Technicolor.

In this excerpt, the image goes from 16mm two-color to 35mm three-strip Technicolor in a dramatic transformation which also shows the results of archival restoration.