A few weeks ago, I saw a brand new print of “Duffy,” an energetic but otherwise justifiably forgotten 1960s crime caper at the Walter Reade Theater. A few days later, I watched an equally pristine print of “The Burglar,” a well made “French Connection” rip-off from the ’70s at Film Forum. Suddenly it dawned on me that in New York’s repertory houses, at least, the movies are better than ever.

Last week, Anthology Film Archives ran a new print of Jacques Demy’s late-career oddity “The Pied Piper.” Next week, MoMA will present a new print of Richard Fleisher’s “The Boston Strangler,” one of the more obscure yet most ambitiously visualized widescreen American films of the ’60s.

Beloved fun city institutions face the wrecking ball daily. Unstoppable growth threatens to mute the character-defining voice of the city’s past. But if you like old movies, dear reader, these are boom times in New York. If visiting with sturdily made Hollywood product of the past in an actual theater is your idea of a good use of time, this remains the city for you.

Beginning today, Film Forum will continue to make yesterday’s filmic orphans today’s repertory bonus babies when they unveil new 35 mm prints of six films that have remained unseen for 50 years. The program, titled “RKO: Lost and Found,” which will showcase six RKO Radio releases, is the result of equal amounts of legal wrangling and archive scouring by the folks at Turner Classics. And if the films aren’t all masterpieces, they are all at the very least restored to their original premiere condition.

Well, almost. Garson Kanin’s “A Man To Remember” has been absent from movie and TV screens in any form since 1938. Though a prolific and successful theater director in New York (he directed the original run of “Diary of Anne Frank”), Kanin’s Hollywood reputation is based on his co-authoring (with wife Ruth Gordon) the scripts to two of the best Tracy and Hepburn pictures, and for having originated the Judy Holliday vehicle “Born Yesterday.”

As it did for many Broadway writers and directors of the 1930s, Hollywood lured Kanin west. “A Man To Remember” was not just Kanin’s first film, it was his first credit. As a playwright, he was mentored by Thorton Wilder. As a film director, he was a devout admirer of Frank Capra. “I’d rather be Capra than God, if there is a Capra,” Kanin once said. Not surprisingly then, “A Man To Remember,” is both a portrait of a small town community and the story of a selfless all-American idealist.

What is surprising is that the Turner restoration, though immaculately crisp in both picture and soundtrack, is subtitled in Dutch. After Turner’s legal department cleared the ownership rights to “A Man To Remember” and the other films in this series, they still needed to come up with usable materials from which to fashion their new copies. The good news was that they found a Nitrate stock release print in the Netherlands Filmmuseam. The weird news was that it bore burnt-in subtitles from its original Dutch theatrical run.

The story of an altruistic small town physician told in flashback from his funeral, “A Man To Remember” is a mild rebuke of capitalism adapted by one of the original Hollywood 10, the screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. Though not short on earnestness, “A Man To Remember” has nowhere near the humor of Kanin’s future screenplay triumphs, nor the unsentimental psychological depth of Trumbo’s fronted 1950s work like “Gun Crazy” or “The Prowler.” It nevertheless remains a fascinating curio.

The other films gathered in “RKO: Lost and Found” series run the genre gamut. William Wellman’s 1934 Australian Outback musical “Stingaree” is one of nearly a dozen films Wellman made between 1932 and 1934. Despite its patently absurd vision of 19th-Century Oz, “Stingaree,” like much of Wellman’s contract work of the 1930s, exhibits flashes of the unique film sense that Wellman demonstrated earlier and more abundantly in “Wings” and “The Public Enemy,” and subsequently in “Nothing Sacred” and “The Ox-Bow Incident.”

In addition to “One Man’s Journey,” an earlier adaptation of the same source material as “A Man To Remember” starring Lionel Barrymore, “RKO Lost and Found” includes two crackerjack pre-Code comedies — “Rafter Romance” and “Double Harness.” The marvelous thing about a program of films this rare reborn in such pristine condition is that they can be viewed not as fossils but as products of the industry and the times that created them. Tonight’s showing of “Double Harness” will provide even more context. The screening will be introduced by director John Cromwell’s son, James. Mr. Cromwell is the Oscar-nominated actor who played Farmer Hoggett in “Babe” and can be currently seen on screen as Prince Phillip in “The Queen.”

Through March 1 (209 W. Houston St., between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street, 212-727-8110).