LoC study shows startling loss of silent films

[Lzcutter]

How many American films from the silent era still exist?

Over the years, the numbers have been all over the place. Vault fires, the studios need for storage space, the need for silver during WWII, the studio moguls' belief that there was no money in those old films all contributed to the loss of film prints and negatives from an era that few can now remember first hand.

The Library of Congress decided to undertake a research study to determine how many films from the silent era still exist, where they are and what shape they are in.

The study startled even film preservationist/director Martin Scorsese.

How many? Of 10,919 films produced by major studios, 14% exist in their original 35mm or other form . Another 11% exist in full-length foreign versions.

The report says that while 2,749 American silent films survive in full form, 3,311 survive in some form with 151 films having a single reel missing and another 275 with two reels missing.

That means approximately 25-30% of the silent films produced still survive in complete form.

Lost titles include Lon Chaney in London After Midnight which was lost in a MGM vault fire in the mid-1960s, Cleopatra starring Theda Bara (lost in a Fox vault fire in the 1930s), The Great Gatsby and many more.

Of the major studios, only MGM had the foresight (and some say it was because Louis B. Mayer wanted to keep the MGM lab running during slow times) to transfer a number of their films from nitrate stock to safety film over the years. 113 silent films from MGM were saved. The studio also gave negatives and prints to other archives, notably the George Eastman House and that helped their survival rate.

By contrast, Paramount, perhaps the dominant studio in the 1920s has far fewer silent films still in existence. Of the 1,222 silent films produced by the studio only 29% survive. That's in part because director Cecil B. Demille had in his contract that he would receive a print of his films when production was finished. DeMille stored the films in a concrete vault under his home in Los Feliz.

The study focused on archives and private collections around the world. A database was created listing not only which elements exist but where they are stored.

It enables the Library to authoritatively report that “we have lost 75 percent of the creative record from the era that brought American movies to the pinnacle of world cinematic achievement in the 20th century.”

432 titles exist only in 16mm. The largest unexplored cache may very well be unfound at this point, films printed on smaller gauge film stock.

The study also includes a call to action for initiatives to be launched to identified titles in both American and foreign archives and collections.

Examples of discovering American silent films in other places include a “mother lode” of some 200 missing silent films that have been stored for more than 80 years by the Russian film archive Gosfilmofond. The Russian archive is thought to contain the largest cache of lost U.S. silent films outside the U.S.

Also, a number of films, including John Ford's Upstream long considered lost, were repatriated from a New Zealand archive.


Hopefully, that kind of work will continue!

For more on the report:

http://variety.com/2013/film/news/libra ... 200915020/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movi ... t/3866383/

http://www.thewrap.com/library-of-congr ... rcent-gone

[moira finnie]

I'm pretty surprised that 25-30% of silents do exist in some form, Lynn. If only rotating teams from the LoC, The Eastman House, MoMA, the BFI or some other institution could roam the globe checking the archives in various countries. Based on the discoveries in New Zealand, Russia, Italy and other spots in recent years, it seems likely that some some silents we now consider lost are out there somewhere.