Lost Films: Where Films Gone and Which Films Going to Be Sensational

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

It is now that any film, by whom and no matter how it was shot, has a place in the memory - if not humanity, then at least electronic digital devices. It has become more difficult, on the contrary, to destroy the footage without a trace. But not so long ago, one after the other, films and animation works disappeared into oblivion. The history of the first decades of these types of art is a history of numerous losses, fortunately, in some cases - replenishment.

Who is to blame for the loss of films?

There are several culprits - in the first place, perhaps, is the fire. Fires in film archives have become a real disaster from the point of view of the history of cinema. Even the vaults of the Hollywood studios Fox and MGM were on fire, and in the first case, the fire of 1937 destroyed all the original negatives shot by the studio until that time.

A fire in the storage facility of an Argentine studio in Valle in 1926 burned down the only surviving copy of the feature-length animated film The Apostle, created nine years earlier. It is noteworthy that the rest of the copies of the film were previously processed into celluloid combs. Films not only quickly deteriorated and died from exposure to fire and high temperatures, they themselves sometimes became a source of ignition. For a long time, the film substrate was made from nitrocellulose, a substance that flares up and explodes when the film storage conditions are violated. A substrate that is safe from this point of view was invented back in 1909, but its use was abandoned - it quickly dried out and became fragile and brittle.

In addition to these relatively objective reasons for the loss of films, there was one more. With the end of the silent film era, when films became sound films, both filmmakers and audiences have practically lost interest in old films. Who needs silent moving pictures when there are already real film performances, with the voices of actors, sounds of nature, music that comes not from the piano standing in the cinema hall, but directly from the cinema projector? The archives were simply liquidated, making room for new films. The storage of old films required both space and significant efforts - after all, non-observance of the conditions for handling old film could lead to sad consequences. Later, the same fate overtook the early sound films.

Why do you need a movie if you have television?

The advent of television in the life of mankind again had a radical impact on the film industry. It seemed that this art form was coming to an end - and instead of "senseless" storage of unnecessary films, they began to be recycled to extract silver.

The loss of countless old films was made up for by the once-existing tradition of taking a lot of photographs during the filming of films. A specially invited professional took dozens and hundreds of photographs to be used later for newspaper and magazine publications and in advertising. Subsequently, such photographs began to be used in the restoration of films - the pictures were turned into immutable, still frames of the film. The statistics are rather sad - according to various sources, from 70 to 80 percent of silent American films were lost forever. Sound films made in 1926-1931 also suffered, when the picture was recorded separately and the sound separately, it was saved on the gramophone record. Often, one of the two parts of the film was lost or seriously damaged. They realized it only in the sixties - then special programs were launched to preserve old films.

Sometimes the tapes were destroyed for other reasons, such as an outraged crowd or ideological restrictions. This, for example, happened with films in which the actor Roscoe Arbuckle took part. This popular comedian was charged in 1921 with the murder of the young actress Virginia Rapp. At the trial, his innocence was fully proven, the jury even decided to take an unprecedented step - they wrote an open letter stating that public opinion was extremely unfair to Arbuckle. But the curse of oblivion had already worked - films with his participation were withdrawn from the box office and destroyed.

In the Soviet Union, for obvious reasons, many worthy films and cartoons disappeared into oblivion. Most of the cartoon "The Tale of the Priest and His Worker Balda" directed by Mikhail Tsekhanovsky was lost. The music for the work was written by Dmitry Shostakovich. Critics did not appreciate the grotesque style of the cartoon, and after its creation, the film was sent to the Lenfilm archive, where several years later it was killed in the bombing of the city. But another cartoon by Tsekhanovsky, "Girl in the Jungle", created in 1956 by the artist Fyodor Khitruk, was considered lost until 2018, when it was accidentally discovered.

Movies Wanted

The list of lost films is huge, but there is reason for optimism: it is not so rare that it is possible to extract a film that seems to have disappeared from oblivion - most often by pure chance. One of the films with Charlie Chaplin's participation, entitled "The Dirigible" in 1916, was considered lost until recently, when someone decided to buy an old film in a tin box at an online auction - it was for this vintage packaging that he forked out, spending three pounds to buy a rare motion picture.

But the film "Woman by the Sea", in the creation of which Chaplin had already acted as a producer, was destroyed by the famous comedian himself. Considering his work weak, he burned the film in order to reduce the amount of taxes. No copies of the film have been found so far. Among the happily found films, one can mention "Frankenstein" in 1910, the film that became the first film adaptation of the novel by Mary Shelley, the first of the American feature films - "Richard III" in 1912.

Yes, and in the domestic cinema there is something to be happy about, one of the examples is the short film "Black Gloves", shot from scenes that were not included in the picture "Ivan Vasilyevich changes his profession." Now the technological possibilities of preserving old films are endless - the modern world can afford what Any number of photo and video experiments by both professionals and amateurs. Therefore, it makes sense to seek out what is lost or what is considered lost. Of course, different films enjoy different interests of researchers. There is a list of films that are specifically considered wanted - usually they were shot by famous directors, or with the participation of famous actors, or are innovative in their kind, for example, the first film "Lights Out" created by a woman (Dina Shurei).

One of the films whose discovery will become a real sensation is Alfred Hitchcock's "Mountain Eagle". The director filmed it in 1926 in the small Alpine village of Obergurgl. Hitchcock himself considered this silent film to be "terrible", the shooting itself was difficult, it was not possible to find a common language with the inhabitants of the village, which became the scenery for the plot. If Mountain Eagle, the Holy Grail of Cinema History, is found, it may become Hitchcock's tenth silent film to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Alfred Hitchcock is the creator of one of the most terrible scenes in the history of cinema according to the viewers.