It was common practice to shoot multiple versions in the silent era, one for the domestic market and the rest for export. Talking pictures complicated matters, and, with subtitling and dubbing not yet a workable solution, companies shot multiple-language versions. In the case of “The Front Page,” the multiples may have been shot more for cultural and censorship reasons, which may be why the middle finger isn’t in the American version. The best takes were reserved for the American version: That’s the one in which the camera crew keeps pace with a speed-walking Adolphe Menjou, as Burns; in another version, he slips out of frame. The other version is good, yes, but the American is the film at its greatest.

The academy archive restores 40 to 70 movies a year, which means that the staff is usually handling several titles at once. When Mr. Pogorzelski and Ms. Linville started on “The Front Page,” she was already several years into restoring “Cock of the Air,” another Hughes title. Directed by Tom Buckingham, this delightful 1932 sex comedy is largely a vehicle for its female star, Billie Dove, who was Hughes’s lover back in an especially frenetic time in his movie career. She plays a French actress partial to low-cut gowns, Champagne and conquests, and the film is one long teasing encounter between her and a pilot and Lothario (Chester Morris).

More frothy than scandalous, the film is best explained by the scene in which Dove runs around in a metal suit of armor while chased by Morris, who’s holding a can opener. Hughes managed to get “Cock of the Air” into theaters for its initial release despite the objections of the Production Code’s bluenoses (one deemed it “obscene and immoral”), but eventually it was heavily censored. The film’s history of censorship woes help explain how the academy preservationists ended up dealing with an uncensored yet silent master and a separate, censored audio source.