Question

Passage

The physical archives of early cinema are notoriously fragile. Cellulose nitrate film, the standard medium until the mid-twentieth century, was not merely unstable; it was essentially a slow-burning fuse. Archival vaults, once regarded as simple storehouses, had to be reimagined as high-stakes laboratories. Preservationists were tasked with arresting a process of chemical decay that threatened to reduce early film history to a pile of toxic dust.

To slow this decline, archives kept the reels in freezing temperatures, a method that effectively put the films into a state of suspended animation. Yet, even under these conditions, the clock was ticking. The archives could not afford to let these artifacts sleep forever; they had to be digitised. However, early digital transfer techniques were clumsy, often scrubbing away the unique grain of the film. To the purist, this digital alteration was a double-edged sword: it saved the content but killed the soul of the work. Only recently, with advanced laser scanning, have archivists managed to bridge the gap between preservation and fidelity, ensuring that the ghosts of early cinema can continue to haunt the screen without losing their texture.

Question

Based on the passage, match each bolded figurative or metaphorical expression with its correct contextual meaning.