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Tag: film preservation

  • 70% of U.S. Silent Films Have Been Lost Forever

    The U.S. Library of Congress this week revealed the troubling statistic that 70% of silent-era films made in the U.S. have been lost forever.

    In a report titled “The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912-1929,” the library has compiled information on all of the surviving films of that era. Though earlier reports have found that 10,919 different feature-length silent films, only a fraction of those movies have been cared for enough to survive in some form today. The report was commissioned by the National Film Presentation Board, and can be found on its website.

    “The Library of Congress can now authoritatively report that the loss of American silent-era feature films constitutes an alarming and irretrievable loss to our nation’s cultural record,” said James Billington, Librarian of Congress. “We have lost most of the creative record from the era that brought American movies to the pinnacle of world cinematic achievement in the 20th century.”

    The report found that only 14% of movies from the silent era have survived in their original format. Another 5% have survived in their original format, but are incomplete and 11% can only be found in lower quality or foreign formats.

    In addition to these survival estimates the report has compiled a database of existing silent films and their whereabouts. The report’s authors hope the list will help bring silent films found in other countries back to U.S. soil for preservation.

    “This report is invaluable because the artistry of silent film is essential to our culture,” said Martin Scorsese, film director and founder of The Film Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to film preservation. “Any time a silent picture by some miracle turns up, it reminds us of the treasures we’ve already lost. It also gives us hope that others may be discovered. The research presented in this report serves as a road map to finding silent films we once thought were gone forever and encourages creative partnerships between archives and the film industry to save silent cinema.”

  • Now Streaming: Rare Hitchcock Film “The White Shadow”

    Now Streaming: Rare Hitchcock Film “The White Shadow”

    Thanks to the efforts of the National Film Preservation Foundation, you can now watch a recently-recovered mid-twenties Alfred Hitchcock film for free online.

    Well, kind of and kind of.

    Hitchcock is not the credited director of the film, called The White Shadow. That honor goes to Graham Cutts, a popular British director of the era. Hitchcock worked with Cutts on the film, and is the writer, assistant director, editor, and production designer of the 1924 drama.

    And the film is incomplete. All that survived were 3 of 6 reels, making for a 42-minute running time. Still, a lot of it is there and it is definitely worth a view for any Hitchcock fans or simply fans of classic cinema.

    Originally made in six weeks as a vehicle for star-of-the-times Betty Compson, The White Shadow follows the success of 1923’s Woman to Woman. It didn’t receive the same box-office take, however. From the NFPF:

    “Dazzled by their own success, producers Michael Balcon and Victor Saville rushed a second Compson picture into production — The White Shadow — and whisked it to theaters with a conspicuously clunky advertising tag: ‘The same Star, Producer, Author, Hero, Cameraman, Scenic Artist, Staff, Studio, Renting Company as Woman to Woman.’ It also had the same Paris setting, and again Hitchcock’s scenario was based on a work by Michael Morton, this time his unpublished novel Children of Chance. The box-office results were definitely not the same, however: ‘It was as big a flop,’ Balcon wrote in his memoir, ‘as Woman to Woman had been a success.’ This notwithstanding, plans proceeded for three more Cutts-Hitchcock pictures, commencing with The Passionate Adventure in 1924.”

    Thought to be lost, the film was discovered in August 2011 among a bunch of nitrate prints which were said to have been left at the New Zealand Film Archive in 1989.

    You can watch the film on the NFPF site.

    [h/t The Verge]