Time travel back a century to 1920s New York, Paris and Berlin. Roaring 20s flappers, fashion and bob hairstyles galore. Colorized up-scaled restoration using deep learning and manual techniques.

0:10 New York in the 1920s

Roaring 20s New York was a melting pot of excitement, innovation, and contradictions, shaping the course of American culture and society for decades to come. Fifth Avenue thronged with women in cloche hats and silk dresses, men in suits, and children in their finest. People, regardless of their economic background, mingled and dined at cafes. New York City surged with vitality, becoming the epitome of the Roaring Twenties.

0:35 New York Nightlife in the 1920s

In the 1920s, New York City's nightlife had an electrifying energy, characterized by speakeasies, jazz clubs, and vibrant social scenes. Prohibition fueled a clandestine culture of underground bars, where flappers and dapper gentlemen danced the Charleston and indulged in bootleg liquor. Iconic venues like the Cotton Club in Harlem showcased the talents of legendary musicians like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, while downtown hotspots such as the Stork Club attracted the city's elite.


0:55 A Day in 1920s Paris

The Paris of Coco Chanel, Picasso, Hemingway and Joyce.
In this film, we spot silent movie actress Pola Negri. Dining at the now long forgotten treehouse restaurant bar - Robinson Pavillon Lafontaine. We get a glimpse of the still iconic Cafe de la Paix and Le Dôme Café in the Latin quarter.

1:07 1920s Paris Nightlife

In the 1920s, Parisian nightlife thrived with an air of liberation and excitement. The city became a beacon for artists, writers, and intellectuals from around the world, flocking to vibrant cabarets like the Moulin Rouge and Le Boeuf sur le Toit. Jazz music filled the smoky halls, accompanied by the clinking of glasses and lively conversation. Speakeasies and clandestine clubs offered a haven for revelers seeking to escape prohibition laws elsewhere. Paris was a playground of hedonism and creativity, a place where boundaries blurred, and new ideas flourished under the moonlit skies of Montmartre and the Left Bank.


1:24 Roaring 20s Berlin

Weimar Berlin is best remembered for its infamous cabaret scene. Featuring countless notorious clubs and musical venues. In this film we see roadside cafes, street trams, the famous Hotel Excelsior. A city bustling with diverse life but also rising political tension and underground crime. Darker days lay ahead in the 1930s.

1:46 Berlin Nightlife

Rare footage of the infamous El Dorado nightclub included. Berlin's roaring 20s nightlife thrived as a vibrant hub of cultural and artistic expression. Cabarets like the featured Eldorado and Moka Efti offered risqué performances, jazz music, and flamboyant costumes, attracting a diverse crowd of intellectuals, artists, and socialites.
The atmosphere was charged with a sense of freedom and experimentation, reflecting the city's liberal attitudes towards sexuality and identity.

Published 2024
AI Enhanced Film by Glamourdaze

Huge thanks to coder Bo Chang, who has helped me navigate his amazing deep machine learning machine. Read his teams paper on Deep Exemplar-based Video Colorization here:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.09909

The Film Restoration Process

I take early fragments of silent 16fps footage and restore them to life by a combination of manual frame by frame colorization as well as the use of deep exemplar-based video colorization techniques. The footage is upscaled and the frames interpolated to a higher frame rate ( in most cases 60 frames per second.) Finally I produce a soundtrack which helps build a new immersive experience for the viewer.
Together, these processes revive old fragments of footage, offering audiences a more
vivid and engaging glimpse of lives long since lived in the distant past.

Watch extended films here on our channel:

Roaring 20s Babylon Berlin: 1927 AI Color Film Restored to Life
A Day in Paris 1927: Roaring 20s Film Restored to Life
Roaring 20s New York Life: Restored to Amazing Color

NEW YORK FOOTAGE

Fifth Avenue attracts Easter parades--outtakes.
(Fox News Story C9386.) Fox Movietone News Collection.
Moving Image Research Collections.
University of South Carolina.

Chorus girls in NYC--outtakes. (Fox News Story B8972.)
Fox Movietone News Collection. Moving Image Research Collections.
University of South Carolina.
https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/co...

New York Life building cafeteria--outtakes.
(Fox Movietone News Story 1-696.) Fox Movietone News Collection.

New York Nightclub Scenes | GD Collection

PARIS FOOTAGE

Paris Scenes - Burton Holmes
Archival footage supplied by Internet Archive (at archive.org) in association with Prelinger Archives.

Paris by Night / Original BW footage from US National Archives.

BERLIN FOOTAGE

Original silent bw footage
Symphony of a Metropolis 1927 - Walter Ruttmann