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Lost film

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A lost film is a film which, for any of several reasons, is no longer in existence.

Sometimes a copy of a "lost film" is rediscovered; these have been referred to as "Lazarus" films. A film that has not been recovered in its entirety is called a "partially lost film."

Reasons for film loss

Most lost films are from the silent film and early talkie era, from the 1890s to 1930. Some estimates suggest that most of the films from this era are lost. Particularly striking is the case of Theda Bara: Of the 40 films she made, only three and a half survive. Similarly, of the 57 movies made by Clara Bow, 20 are completely lost and five more are incomplete [1]. Many early talkies were lost because they used a sound-on-disk process which utilized separate soundtracks on special phonograph records. These records were often lost or misplaced, thereby making a mute print virtually worthless and consequently they were often thrown away. This all changed by 1931, when most of the industry converted to a sound-on-film process.

Many early motion pictures are lost because the nitrate film used in that era was extremely unstable and flammable. Fires have destroyed entire archives of films. For example, a storage vault fire in 1937 destroyed the original negatives of pre-1935 movies from Fox Pictures. In addition, film can deteriorate rapidly if not preserved in temperature and humidity controlled storage.

Before the eras of home video and television, films were viewed as having little value after their theatrical run ended. Thus, many films were deliberately destroyed, either by the studios as a space-saving maneuver, or in some cases by the cast and crew themselves. Many films were recycled for their silver content or ignited to create explosion special effects in other films.

In order to preserve films with a nitrate base, they can be copied to safety film or digitized, although the former is preferred over the latter in the archival community because of its proven longevity and approximation of original format.

Later lost films

35mm safety film was introduced in 1949; it was much more stable than early nitrate film and as a result, there are comparatively few lost films from after about 1950. However, color fading of certain color stocks and vinegar syndrome threaten the preservation of films made since about 1950. In the mid-1950's, many old Technicolor prints were thrown out, when the studios refused to reclaim prints of their films still being held by Technicolor in its vaults.

Most mainstream movies from the 1950s and beyond survive today, but several early pornographic films and some B-Movies are lost. In most cases these obscure films go unnoticed and unmissed, but some films by noted cult directors have been lost as well:

  • Many classroom educational, training, and religious short films of the 1940s through 1970s are also lost as they were thought of as "disposable" or upgradable.

Some aspects of recent films may be lost, too. Early color films such as The Mysterious Island and The Show of Shows exist only partially or not at all in color because the copies that were made of the film that exist were done so on black and white stock. The 3-D films Top Banana and Southwest Passage both exist only in their flat form because only one print made for either the left or right eye to see exists.

Almost lost films

Many, many important silent-era films, and films which involve important actors, directors, and creative talent, exist in single prints in museums, archives, and private collections — single prints which have not been copied, digitized, or preserved in any way. The possibility of losing these films forever is very real, unless they are preserved.

Tod Browning's London After Midnight still existed in 1967 — as a single print in a MGM warehouse that was destroyed by fire in that year. London has since come to be regarded as one of the most important lost films.

Lost Film Soundtracks

Some films produced in sound-on-disc systems such as Vitaphone, where the sound disc is separate from the film element, are now considered lost because they were damaged or destroyed, while the picture element was not. Some surviving Vitaphone films exist in picture only, while the soundtracks, which were played from a disc, are lost. Conversely, some Vitaphone films survive only in the disc, with the film missing.

Many stereophonic soundtracks from the early-to-mid 1950s that were either played in interlock on a 35mm fullcoat magnetic reel or single-strip magnetic film (such as Fox's four-track magnetic, which became the standard of mag stereophonic sound) are now lost. Films such as The Caddy, The War of the Worlds, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, and From Here to Eternity that were originally available with 3-track, magnetic sound are now available only with a monophonic optical soundtrack. The chemistry behind adhesing magnetic particles to the tri-acetate film base eventually caused the autocatalytic breakdown of the film, in what is now known as vinegar syndrome. As long as studios had a monaural optical negative that could be printed, studio executives felt no need to preserve the stereophonic versions of the soundtracks.

Commercially unavailable films

The term "lost films" has also been applied, inaccurately, to films that do survive in their entirety, but have never been made available to the public on VHS or DVD. In some cases, the films have never been aired on television either. Many of these "lost" films do circulate on bootleg copies of varying quality. The John Wayne film The High and the Mighty from 1954 was one famous example, until it was finally issued on DVD in 2005. Another well known example is Disney's Song of the South, which is not available in North America, supposedly due to concerns over its racial content. Such concerns do not stop Disney from selling the film in Europe and Asia. The made for television movie The Star Wars Holiday Special is one of the most widespread bootleg films of all time, yet has never been released on video due to George Lucas's desire for it to be forgotten.

Lost television broadcasts

See also: wiping.
  • Many early television series episodes were lost because they were aired live and no recording ever was made, because kinescopes that were made are now lost, or because the highly expensive early videotape was erased and re-used by the network. Most episodes of important, popular shows like Captain Video, The Quatermass Experiment, and Your Show of Shows are presumed lost. Episodes of TV shows from the DuMont network are particularly difficult to find since DuMont went out of business in 1955.
  • This practice of re-using video tape continued well into the 1970s: many episodes of the pioneering Australian prime time soap opera Number 96 are lost.
  • Over 100 early episodes of the cult BBC sci-fi show Doctor Who do not exist in the BBC's archives, though they have an ongoing appeal for help from viewers who may have recorded the shows during their original airings[3].
  • Many other BBC shows are missing from the archives, including the BBC studio footage from the Apollo 11 moon landings. Many series are missing in their entirety, while others only survive in fragments, such as A for Andromeda a science fiction series that was Julie Christie's first major role and The Vampira Show, the first television horror movie show. Also missing are episodes of The Avengers, Dad's Army, Hancock's Half Hour, Doomwatch, Out of the Unknown, Dixon of Dock Green, Z Cars, and many others.
  • Almost all of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jack Paar and the first ten years (1962-1972) hosted by Johnny Carson were taped over by the network and no longer exist. This is why Carson's The Tonight Show picture looked muddy during broadcast in the late 60s: the videotape was being used repeatedly. A single episode from Carson's first year on The Tonight Show turned up in a closet a few years ago.
  • With home VCRs being uncommon until the mid-1980s, it is unlikely that lost television episodes exist in the collections of individuals, though this occasionally happens. One well-known example is a clip of John Lennon visiting the announcers booth during a 1974 Monday Night Football broadcast. ABC lost the footage of this event, but a private collector's copy of the event appears in the Beatles Anthology.
  • Also lost is the broadcast of Super Bowl I, even though NBC and CBS both originally broadcast the game.
  • Many soap operas such as Search for Tomorrow and The Edge of Night have lost episodes. Due to archiving policies, episodes of All My Children produced between 1970 and 1975 exist only as black-and-white kinescopes although all episodes were originally produced in color.
  • NASA has admitted losing the original footage of the first manned moon landing in 1969. It is unknown if the original footage still exists today. What exists today is a considerably lower-quality film of the television broadcasts from the time. [4]
  • The original black & white first episode of series one of the British series Upstairs, Downstairs does not exist in any form with the possible exception of a few stills. It was reportedly wiped and the script of the first episode was reshot in colour when the show was being prepared to be broadcast in the United States on PBS's Masterpiece Theater. All of the other five black & white episodes from series one survive.

List of selected lost films

List of incomplete or partially lost films

List of found films

The following films were once thought to be lost but have now been recovered.

See also

References

  1. ^ Clara Bow.net
  2. ^ New Yorker:In the Vault
  3. ^ List of missing Doctor Who episodes at the BBC
  4. ^ The Saga Of the Lost Space Tapes
  5. ^ Sinister Cinema
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