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Lost film

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See also: Found film

A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or the archive of, for instance, the Library of Congress where all American films are deposited for copyright reasons. The phrase "lost film" is also used in a literal sense for instances where footage of deleted scenes, unedited and alternate versions of feature films are known to have been created but can no longer be accounted for.

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 about 1894 to 1930.[1] Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation estimates that 80 percent of the films from this era are lost.

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 all the original negatives of Fox Pictures's pre-1935 movies.[2] In addition, film can deteriorate rapidly if not preserved in temperature and humidity controlled storage.

But the largest cause of silent film loss was intentional destruction, as silent films had little or no commercial value after the silent era ended in 1930. As film preservationist Robert A. Harris has said,

"Most of the early films did not survive because of wholesale junking by the studios. There was no thought of ever saving these films. They simply needed vault space and the materials were expensive to house."[3]

Many early talkies from Warner Bros. and First National 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 the reel a virtually worthless "mute print", and consequently they were often thrown away. This all changed by 1930, when those studios converted to a sound-on-film process.

Before the eras of television and later home video, films were viewed as having little value after their theatrical run ended. Thus, many films were deliberately destroyed by the studios as a space-saving maneuver. Many old Technicolor two-color negatives from the 1920s and 1930s were thrown out as a space-clearing measure when the studios refused to reclaim their films still being held by Technicolor in its vaults. Many films were recycled for their silver content. Some prints were sold either intact or broken into short clips to individuals who bought early novelty home projection machines and wanted scenes from their favorite movies to play for guests or family members.

In order to preserve films with a nitrate base, they can be copied to safety film or digitized.

Particularly striking is the case of Theda Bara: of the 40 films she made, only three and a half survive. However, this was still better than the fate of her vamp rival at Fox, Valeska Suratt; not one of the many films she made at that studio survives. More typical is the case of Clara Bow: of her 57 movies, 20 are completely lost and five more are incomplete.[4]

There are occasional exceptions. All of Charlie Chaplin's films from his entire career have survived as well as extensive amounts of unused footage dating back to 1916, save for A Woman of the Sea (which he destroyed himself as a tax writeoff) and one of his early Keystone films, Her Friend The Bandit. (see Unknown Chaplin). The filmography of D.W. Griffith is more or less complete as many of his early films pre-1915 were deposited in the Library of Congress in paper print form. Mary Pickford's filmography is very much complete especially films produced after she gained control of her own productions. Stars like Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks enjoyed stupendous popularity and their films were reissued over and over throughout the silent era. Pickford and Harold Lloyd were early champions of film preservation. Lloyd lost a lot of his work in a vault fire in the 1940s.

Later lost films

Thirty-five millimeter safety film was introduced in 1949; it was much more stable than nitrate film and consequently, 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 this time.

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

  • Cult favorite Herschell Gordon Lewis' 1969 films, Ecstasies of Women and Linda and Abilene, have disappeared.
  • Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s 1972 film, The Undergraduate, has been lost along with his 1970 film Take It Out In Trade, which exists only in fragments without sound. Wood's 1971 film Necromania was believed lost for years until an edited version resurfaced at a yard sale in 1992, followed by a complete unedited print in 2001.[5] A complete print of the previously lost Wood pornographic film The Young Marrieds was discovered in 2004.
  • Tom Graeff's first feature film, The Noble Experiment (1955), in which director/writer Graeff plays a misunderstood genius scientist, was considered lost until found by Elle Schneider during the production of a documentary about Graeff entitled The Boy from Out of This World.
  • Most of Andy Milligan's early films are considered lost.
  • Many short sponsored films—films made for educational, training, or religious purposes—from the 1940s through the 1970s are also lost, as they were thought of as disposable or upgradeable.

Sometimes only certain aspects of films may be lost. Early color films such as Lucien Hubbard's The Mysterious Island and John G. Adolfi's 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 created on black and white stock. Two 3-D films from 1954, 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 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. [citation needed]

Lost film soundtracks

Some films produced in 1926–1930 in sound-on-disc systems such as Vitaphone, where the sound discs are separate from the film element, are now considered lost because the sound discs were damaged or destroyed, while the picture element was not. Conversely, some Vitaphone films survive only as sound, with the film missing (such as 1930's The Man from Blankley's, starring John Barrymore).

Many stereophonic soundtracks from the early-to-mid 1950s that were either played in interlock on a 35 mm 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 House of Wax, 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 adhering magnetic particles to the tri-acetate film base eventually caused the autocatalytic breakdown of the film (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 figuratively to films that do survive in their entirety, but have never been made available to the public in consumer formats such as VHS and DVD and in some cases have never been broadcast on television (a few of these are available on bootlegs of varying quality):

List of lost films

Main article: List of lost films

List of incomplete or partially lost films

Main article: List of incomplete or partially lost films

List of rediscovered films

Main article: List of rediscovered films

Occasionally, prints of films and television broadcasts considered lost have been rediscovered. An example is the 1910 version of Frankenstein which was believed lost for decades until the existence of a print (which had been in the hands of an unwitting collector for years) was discovered in the 1970s. A print of Richard III (1912) was found in 1996 and restored by the American Film Institute. Similarly, a number of videotaped episodes of Doctor Who previously thought lost have been recovered as overseas film prints from private collectors and various other sources over the years, such as The Tomb of the Cybermen.

Beyond the Rocks (1922) with Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino was considered a lost film for several decades. Swanson lamented the loss of this and other films in her 1980 memoirs, but optimistically concluded, "I do not believe these films are gone forever". In 2000, a print was found in the Netherlands and restored by the Nederlands Filmmuseum and the Haghefilm Conservation. It turned up among about 2000 rusty film canisters donated by an eccentric Dutch collector, Joop van Liempd, of Haarlem. It was given its first modern screening in 2005, and has since been aired on Turner Classic Movies.

Sometimes a film believed lost in its original state has been restored, either through the process of colorization, or other restoration methods. The Cage, the original 1964 pilot film for Star Trek, survived only in a black and white print until 1987 when color elements were discovered that allowed a full-color version to be recreated.

In the early 2000s, the 1927 German film Metropolis — which had been distributed in many different edits over the years — was restored to as close to the original version as possible by reinstating edited footage and using computer technology to repair damaged footage. At that point, however, approximately a quarter of the original film footage was considered lost, according to Kino Video's DVD release of the restored film. On July 1, 2008 Berlin film experts announced that a copy of the film had been discovered in the archives of the film museum Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which contained all but one of the scenes still missing from the 2002 restoration.[6][7]

The 1951 pilot of I Love Lucy was long believed lost, but in 1990 the widow of one of the actors found a copy. It has since been shown on television.

Lost film in film

Several films have been made with lost film fragments incorporated into the work. Decasia (2002) used nothing but decaying film footage as an abstract tone poem of light and darkness, much like Peter Delpeut's more historical Lyrisch Nitraat (Lyrical Nitrate, 1990) which contained only footage from canisters found stored in an Amsterdam cinema. In 1993, Delpeut released Forbidden Quest, combining early film footage and archival photographs with new material to tell the fictional story of an ill-fated Antarctic expedition.

Peter Jackson's mockumentary Forgotten Silver purports to show recovered footage of early films. Instead, the filmmakers used newly-shot film sequences treated to look like lost film.

In Robert Rodriguez's film Planet Terror a missing reel is used as a plot device.

See also

References

  1. ^ Silent Era: Presumed Lost
  2. ^ "$45,000 Fire Drives Families From Homes in Little Ferry", Bergen Evening Record, July 9, 1937, p. 1. Quoted by Richard Koszarski in Fort Lee: The Film Town, Indiana University Press, 2005, pp. 339-341. ISBN 9780861966523.
  3. ^ Robert A. Harris, public hearing statement to the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., February 1993.
  4. ^ Clara Bow.net
  5. ^ New Yorker:In the Vault
  6. ^ Metropolis Reborn
  7. ^ The Local - Lost scenes of 'Metropolis' discovered in Argentina
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