Lost film

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Lost film is a term used to describe any feature film that no longer exists in either studio archives or private collections. Lost film is also used in a literal sense for instances where footage of deleted scenes, unedited and alternate versions of feature films, and recordings of early television programming 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".

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Most lost films are from the silent film and early talkie era, from about 1894 to 1930. Silent Era.com[1] and Martin Scorsese's Film Preservation Foundation estimate 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 the original negatives of pre-1935 movies from Fox Pictures.[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. 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 a mute print virtually worthless 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 home video and television, 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, although the former is preferred over the latter in the archival community because of its proven longevity and approximation of original format.

Particularly striking is the case of Theda Bara: of the 40 films she made, only three and a half survive. 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 1914, save for one film, A Woman of the Sea that he destroyed himself as a tax write-off, and one of his early Keystone films, Her Friend The Bandit. (see Unknown Chaplin).

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.

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 unknown, but some films by noted cult directors have been lost as well:

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

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. 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.

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.

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 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, 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.

The term "lost films" has also been applied erroneously 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 do circulate on bootleg copies of varying quality.

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 — first used in 1956 after its introduction by Ampex Corporation — was erased and re-used by the network. Most episodes of important, popular shows like Captain Video 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 and its kinescope recordings of programming were supposedly dumped into Upper New York Bay.
  • 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. Audio recordings exist for all of the lost episodes, however, many of which have been released commercially by the BBC, and two episodes of the serial The Invasion which survive only in audio form were reconstructed using animation for the serial's DVD release in 2006[6].
  • 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.[citation needed] Selected sequences from Carson's 1962–72 era do survive and were often replayed by Carson himself (particularly in the months preceding his retirement in 1992) and have been released to home video. Some Paar episodes also survive and have been released to DVD.
  • 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.
  • Many of the original master tapes of the controversial and anarchic British children's Saturday morning television series Tiswas were wiped after the series was canceled in 1983. This was apparently due to a television executive's belief that the series was an embarrassment to the network. When a series of Tiswas highlight compilation tapes were released on video in the early 1990s (followed in 2006 by a DVD), much of the footage appeared to have been culled from the off-air recordings of private archivists.
  • 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. Owing 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 videotapes 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 image made by a television camera aimed at a live monitor, relayed from an Australian receiving station.[7]
  • 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 and the location footage which features at the start of the episode. The original recording took place on November 13, 1970 and was in monochrome due to a dispute with studio technicians who refused to work with colour recording equipment as part of a work-to-rule. The following five episodes were also recorded in monochrome before the dispute ended with the recording of episode 6 in color on February 12, 1971. After the entire thirteen-episode season run had been recorded, it was decided to re-record the first episode in color to gain the highest possible audience for its first UK transmission and to help with overseas sales. The re-recording took place on May 21, 1971 and the series' UK debut was on October 10, 1971[8]. The original monochrome recording was never transmitted and has since been wiped. All of the other five black & white episodes from series one survive.

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. Similarly, a number of previously-thought lost episodes of Doctor Who have been recovered from private collectors and various other sources over the years, such as Tomb of the Cybermen.

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, only survived in a black and white print until the 1980s when color elements were discovered that allowed a full-color version to be recreated. And 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; even so approximately a quarter of the original film footage is considered lost, according to Kino Video's DVD release of the restored film.

See also: List of recovered silent films previously believed lost

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

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.

The 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.

  1. ^ http://www.silentera.com/lost/index.html
  2. ^ Little Ferry, New Jersey, July 18, 1937.
  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. ^ List of missing Doctor Who episodes at the BBC
  7. ^ The Saga Of the Lost Space Tapes
  8. ^ Upstairs Downstairs programme guide [1]
  9. ^ [2]
  10. ^ Sinister Cinema
  11. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdsxZJ791Xg&mode=related&search=

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