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Lost Films
92 pages, Unknown Binding
Published January 1, 1970
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 14, 2019
An early, and now woefully out-of-date survey from 1970 of American films of the 1920s thought to be lost forever. Outdated because several of the films listed in the book have since either been fully or partially recovered.
Nonetheless, this was an eye-opening early personal encounter with the concept of vanished art. I first checked this thing out from the college library way back around 1980. At the time I had become a big classic film buff, and the book introduced me to the disheartening notion that films on a large scale had been lost through natural processes/decay, accidental or deliberate destruction, or sheer neglect or apathy. This might have been the first book written on the subject. By that the time, the bulk of movies of the silent period had already disappeared, and indeed, the rot and destruction were well under way in the 1930s. Some classics that still existed and were still screened as late as the 1940s didn't make it to the 1950s. Various vault fires ignited by explosive nitrate film stock took care of many more, and entire movies that did exist up to the '60s and '70s were junked forever into barrels of water to minimize fire risk once rot had contaminated the reels and made them too expensive to repair.
But already the world's archives had started to catalog and work together in relatively coordinated fashion to take stock and prioritize which films would get the meager resources to save. Restoration technologies have since improved quite markedly, with the initial efforts four decades ago focusing on transferring as much nitrate-based film stock (films made before 1950) to stable modern safety film.
Gary Carey does not go into great detail about the history of film destruction in this book; several books since, as well as the internet, have done a far more complete job of that --but provides a short introduction covering a slide presentation on the issue he did in New York that led to the compilation of this book, which highlights 30 interesting films thought to be lost forever. The text is basic, offering essential credits, plot description and some context about the film's place in the artists' work and some other tidbits. The only reason to even seek out this book is for the beautiful, richly saturated black-and-white stills.
As a little exercise to satisfy my curiosity and bring the book up to date, I went over to the website Silentera.com to consult their definitive list of extant and lost silent movies.
Possibly the most important movie the movie claims as lost is director Frank Borzage's Street Angel (1928) with the cinema's most popular romantic duo of the time, Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. But that movie was found and exists in pretty much complete form.
Other films said to be lost in this book that are now said to exist in archives include: The Show (1927), directed by Tod Browning and starring John Gilbert; Man, Woman and Sin (1927) with Jeanne Eagels; Mockery (1927); Fazil (1928), directed by Howard Hawks; The Garden of Allah (1927), directed by Rex Ingram; The Enemy (1927), starring Lillian Gish and mostly complete apart from one missing reel; The Cradle Snatchers (1927), directed by Howard Hawks with six of its seven reels extant; and Confessions of a Queen (1925) directed by Victor Seastrom, and starring Alice Terry as Frederika, the queen (it exists in an incomplete print). Several other films are rumored to exist in European archives, including One Glorious Day (1922) and The Tower of Lies (1925) another Seastrom, starring Norma Shearer. Fragmentary bits exist of The Patriot (1928) (a film that was last screened publicly in the 1940s before its disintegration, and is one of the most egregious losses); The Popular Sin (1926); The Case of Lena Smith (1929), directed by Josef von Sternberg; and The Divine Woman (1927), starring Greta Garbo.
Among the truly missing are some of great interest, and their status has not changed in the five decades since this book's publication. Mary Pickord's 1924 version of Tess of the D’Urbervilles has offered no traces. Josef Von Sternberg's early gangster film, The Drag Net is still lost. Perhaps most tantalizing among the missing is the 1927 adaptation of Anita Loos' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a movie about flappers made in the flapper era, starring Ruth Taylor as Lorelei Lee, and Alice White as Dorothy Shaw.
This book can be found and borrowed for free at the Archive.org website but be aware that the donated and scanned copy there is missing four pages because some vandal long ago ripped some pages (38-41) devoted to the lost Lon Chaney horror thriller, London After Midnight, a film that gained near mythical proportions in the 1960s in the geek-o-verse when Forrest Ackerman printed stills from it and talked it up in his pulp monster magazines. Evidence suggests that the movie was not that great, but the hype around it fueled an irresistible mystique.
So, while things seems to have looked up for some of the titles listed in this, the status of even some of the found ones may be precarious.
This was way more than I wanted to say about this book, but there it is.
eg.kr '19
Nonetheless, this was an eye-opening early personal encounter with the concept of vanished art. I first checked this thing out from the college library way back around 1980. At the time I had become a big classic film buff, and the book introduced me to the disheartening notion that films on a large scale had been lost through natural processes/decay, accidental or deliberate destruction, or sheer neglect or apathy. This might have been the first book written on the subject. By that the time, the bulk of movies of the silent period had already disappeared, and indeed, the rot and destruction were well under way in the 1930s. Some classics that still existed and were still screened as late as the 1940s didn't make it to the 1950s. Various vault fires ignited by explosive nitrate film stock took care of many more, and entire movies that did exist up to the '60s and '70s were junked forever into barrels of water to minimize fire risk once rot had contaminated the reels and made them too expensive to repair.
But already the world's archives had started to catalog and work together in relatively coordinated fashion to take stock and prioritize which films would get the meager resources to save. Restoration technologies have since improved quite markedly, with the initial efforts four decades ago focusing on transferring as much nitrate-based film stock (films made before 1950) to stable modern safety film.
Gary Carey does not go into great detail about the history of film destruction in this book; several books since, as well as the internet, have done a far more complete job of that --but provides a short introduction covering a slide presentation on the issue he did in New York that led to the compilation of this book, which highlights 30 interesting films thought to be lost forever. The text is basic, offering essential credits, plot description and some context about the film's place in the artists' work and some other tidbits. The only reason to even seek out this book is for the beautiful, richly saturated black-and-white stills.
As a little exercise to satisfy my curiosity and bring the book up to date, I went over to the website Silentera.com to consult their definitive list of extant and lost silent movies.
Possibly the most important movie the movie claims as lost is director Frank Borzage's Street Angel (1928) with the cinema's most popular romantic duo of the time, Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. But that movie was found and exists in pretty much complete form.
Other films said to be lost in this book that are now said to exist in archives include: The Show (1927), directed by Tod Browning and starring John Gilbert; Man, Woman and Sin (1927) with Jeanne Eagels; Mockery (1927); Fazil (1928), directed by Howard Hawks; The Garden of Allah (1927), directed by Rex Ingram; The Enemy (1927), starring Lillian Gish and mostly complete apart from one missing reel; The Cradle Snatchers (1927), directed by Howard Hawks with six of its seven reels extant; and Confessions of a Queen (1925) directed by Victor Seastrom, and starring Alice Terry as Frederika, the queen (it exists in an incomplete print). Several other films are rumored to exist in European archives, including One Glorious Day (1922) and The Tower of Lies (1925) another Seastrom, starring Norma Shearer. Fragmentary bits exist of The Patriot (1928) (a film that was last screened publicly in the 1940s before its disintegration, and is one of the most egregious losses); The Popular Sin (1926); The Case of Lena Smith (1929), directed by Josef von Sternberg; and The Divine Woman (1927), starring Greta Garbo.
Among the truly missing are some of great interest, and their status has not changed in the five decades since this book's publication. Mary Pickord's 1924 version of Tess of the D’Urbervilles has offered no traces. Josef Von Sternberg's early gangster film, The Drag Net is still lost. Perhaps most tantalizing among the missing is the 1927 adaptation of Anita Loos' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a movie about flappers made in the flapper era, starring Ruth Taylor as Lorelei Lee, and Alice White as Dorothy Shaw.
This book can be found and borrowed for free at the Archive.org website but be aware that the donated and scanned copy there is missing four pages because some vandal long ago ripped some pages (38-41) devoted to the lost Lon Chaney horror thriller, London After Midnight, a film that gained near mythical proportions in the 1960s in the geek-o-verse when Forrest Ackerman printed stills from it and talked it up in his pulp monster magazines. Evidence suggests that the movie was not that great, but the hype around it fueled an irresistible mystique.
So, while things seems to have looked up for some of the titles listed in this, the status of even some of the found ones may be precarious.
This was way more than I wanted to say about this book, but there it is.
eg.kr '19
March 8, 2008
Published through the Museum of Modern Art in New York its still fairly up to date some 38 years after the fact. Sadly many of these films still remained lost. Its a good read for film buffs though.
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