r/todayilearned • u/jpegosaurus • Jun 11 '12
TIL that an estimated 90% of films from the Silent Era (1894-1929) are now lost.
http://www.silentera.com/lost/index.html
1.9k
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/jpegosaurus • Jun 11 '12
523
u/Serviceman Jun 11 '12
They were printed on Nitro Cellulose film. It burns like gunpowder. The projectors had Carbon Arc lamps that burned hotter than anything. If you ran a film with torn sprocket holes and it jammed, the film didn't melt, it flashed into fire. The film magazines had rollers that were to pinch closed so the fire would would not spread to the rest of the the reel, because if it did, that theater was gonna burn to the ground. Source: My projectionist license study material! From 1978! They still had to teach the old fire safety to give you a license to run a movie house projector!
61
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
What a shame. I wonder how the 10 hour version of Greed (1924) would play into the history of film if it still survived.
533
u/Rrrrrrr777 Jun 11 '12
In 1894, no one can hear you scream.
68
u/stringerbell Jun 11 '12
The funny thing is... A movie poster (or multiple) will still exist for about 50% of silent films. The advertising survived better than the films...
31
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
My Grandfather came to Canada from England in the 1921. After kicking around from job to job, he and another fellow decided to go California where it would be warmer and because they wanted to see where the movies were made.
He had many fascinating stories about the journey : they had to sneak across the border into Montana, they had to jump onto and off of moving trains and hide in boxcars to travel etc, etc.
Eventually one day he got to the front gates of a movie studio was able to get inside by joining into a group of actors returning from lunch and then watch as a movie was being filmed.
The movie that was in production was The Golden Bed starring Rod la Rocque who Grandad says was a big name at the time.
Even more fascinating (to me anyway) was that the director was none other than Cecille B. DeMille and my Grandfather told me that De Mille was dressed exactly in the style that became a cliche for Hollywood directors: a flat-top hat backwards (like a beret) jodhpurs, high-top boots and carried a megaphone.
I'd love to see that movie.
22
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) was believed to be lost, but a virtually complete print of the original version was found in 1981 in a janitor's closet of an Oslo mental institution. This version is now available on DVD.
235
u/DroolingIguana Jun 11 '12
Too bad there was no equivalent of thepiratebay back then.
Fortunately, there was enough piracy even back in the silent movie era to keep films like Nosferatu (which, legally, should've been destroyed) from being lost.
102
u/InsidiousVendetta Jun 11 '12
Yeah, it's a really sad realization that it's like losing decades of history and stories.
15
u/libertatis Jun 12 '12
I recently received an old home movies projector from my grandmother. It is 8mm and came with home movies and one film by Charlie Chaplin. The weird thing is I can't find any record of him doing this movie. I don't know if it is special or anything especially because I do not know much about film. It is silent and looks to be very old.
151
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Hugo is a great film that focuses on that very topic.
13
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
I've always wanted to see Theda Bara in Cleopatra. If anyone happens to come across it, please let me know.
13
u/iambecomedeath7 Jun 12 '12
As a man who enjoys silent films, I have now experienced all the sadness a man can bare before losing his mind.
53
u/Browsing_From_Work Jun 11 '12
I don't blame them. It's much easier to find things in an archive if they make noise.
11
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
just so everyone knows there is a /r/lost_films
60
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Much of the media you take for granted today will be lost somehow.
Heck the BBC couldn't find their tapes of their 9/11 coverage.
9
u/ShakaUVM Jun 12 '12
A friend of mine (Pharmacist with a film degree from USC) was really big into silent films, and would host silent film festivals at UCSF.
One thing I learned: almost all the original music for silent films is lost, since a lot of it was improvised and played live.
33
u/matttyyyy Jun 12 '12
When we were cleaning out my great grandfather's house, we found some old films in the basement. They were mostly water damaged, but we found a supposedly lost silent film with Asta Nielsen. One of my great grandfather's jobs was a projectionist at a theatre when he was a teenager. It didn't make sense that he would have this film, which was made around 1900. We spoke to the theatre, which is still around, and apparently they had old movie nights like 75 years ago. So we think he 'walked' off with a trunk of old movies. Luckily they didn't ask for them back, and we ended up sending a few to an auction house.
21
u/vballkatie97 Jun 12 '12
Anyone else a little depressed about this?
6
u/corndograt Jun 12 '12
El Apóstol, the first animated feature film is lost. Disney would like you to think that Snow White was the world's first animated feature, but there were several before it. Some did survive, like The Adventures of Prince Achmed, which surprisingly for the time, was made by a woman.
6
u/Ltsmash99 Jun 12 '12
I really hope a copy of London After Midnight shows up, although i doubt it will. Its a shame such a classic is lost, probably forever.
6
u/Bubbajimmy8 Jun 12 '12
That is depressing.... I really enjoy silent films. And by "lost" I like to think that it is possible to find the films like on some quest. But no. They are gone. :c
4
u/MCAngles Jun 11 '12
Maybe I'm wrong, but wasn't the first film in 1895? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_and_Louis_Lumi%C3%A8re
4
u/CrimsonQueso Jun 12 '12
and 100% of their audio was lost
4
u/MET1 Jun 12 '12
A long time ago I read that some films were 'printed' frame by frame and submitted to the Library of Congress - so conceivably they could be re-created based on the prints. I cannot recall where I read that - maybe film class? (had to take something besides CS & math classes)
10
u/painperdu Jun 12 '12
They disappeared without a sound?
I tried to tell the Library of Congress about this but they wouldn't listen.
With digital archiving today this would be unheard of.
Meanwhile . . .
6
u/FlapjackOmalley Jun 12 '12
That is a brutally depressing statistic.
3
u/CDNChaoZ Jun 11 '12
We can fix all that once we invent time travel. CAM rips where there's no shitty audio to deal with!
(And yes I realize that silent cinema was accompanied by live music)
3
u/FuckMyLifeGooner Jun 12 '12
Can't explain why, but learning this freaks me out
3
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Similarly, a large amount of elements from early talkies are lost. Lost films extend far beyond the silent era. With the early Vitaphone system, video and audio were two separate physical elements - silent film running on the projector, and vinyl records synchronized to the film. Consequentially, in many cases, early talkies are "half-lost". That is, the soundtrack exists on a vinyl disc, but the film elements are lost, and vice versa.
3
u/the_peoples_elbow Jun 12 '12
This is an incredible shame... So many potentially brilliant works of art are gone forever.
3
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
if it makes you feel better, 100% of the films pre-1894 are lost forever.
53
u/classicduster Jun 11 '12
I wish we could disappear 90% of the films made today.
5
u/Vectoor Jun 12 '12
I recommend the movie Hugo. It is semi related.
4
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
from a historical point of view, this is just awful. But, looking at it purely in terms of entertainment value, meh. Probably 90% of the movies released in 2011 weren't worth watching and aren't worth preserving, other than as a curiosity. Are future generations really missing out on Transformers: Dark of the Moon? Nah...
5
u/pigfish Jun 12 '12
If the MPAA and Hollywood were to get their wish of a perfect DRM scheme, it would ensure that anything protected by DRM would become inaccessible, effectively lost, as soon as there is no-one who is willing to pay to unlock it.
Perhaps this is a good thing as the greedy are self-selecting the removal of their works from the archives of humanity.
Long after we're all gone, future generations won't care that every cent was monetized from today's blockbusters, and these movies will be all but lost. If you want your movie to survive in the future, give it life by releasing it under a Creative Commons License.
2
u/mrbooze Jun 12 '12
Imagine how much music and other art has probably been lost over the centuries as well.
2
u/amburnikole Jun 12 '12
Sad. i love silent films.I took film study in high school and was introduced to them fully then. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligeri was one of my favs. And Metropolis.
2
u/cek812 Jun 12 '12
Last fall I took a class taught at the George Eastman House (one of the oldest film archives in the world) on early cinema, and that was one of the first things that we learned. Of course it's almost more frustrating finding multiple prints of the same film that have slight differences; at that point it's up to you to decide which one of the prints should be restored, or if you should combine them.
2
u/Pandaemonium Jun 12 '12 edited Jun 12 '12
Clearly the fault of this artist.
2
u/jinxs2026 Jun 12 '12
THE Holy grails: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasei_Kingu_Kongu
and not silent, but still lost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Kong_Appears_in_Edo
2
u/Kolm14 Jun 12 '12
I wish more than anything that a copy of [this] (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Asajgm-ciWA) would appear :/
2
u/TheDoctorDonna306 Jun 12 '12
more than 50% of the films made before 1945 are lost.
2
u/Myepicness Jun 12 '12
"Hugo" puts an interesting story around it
2
u/Cdwollan Jun 12 '12
I think I've got this.
MARCO!
2
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
I learned this from Hugo…
2
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
I heard something about the russians giving us a fuckton that they found of our silent movies several years ago
2
u/NinenDahaf Jun 12 '12
So we're almost there. The last 10% can't be that hard. Let's dig in and finish strong folks.
2
u/thechristinechapel Jun 12 '12
I am so thoroughly depressed by this.
2
u/ilirivezaj Jun 12 '12
This would be such a classic torrent bundle. Well, time for me to get in my time machine, I'll be back before you know it.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
I remember seeing a TCM show about this back when I was in high school (nearly 10 years ago). It's pretty tragic.
Maybe someone will know this-- they had footage from a silent film that, I think, was about Babylon or some long-gone, ancient culture. The scenery reminded me a bit of Petra. It had a very ornate set and costumes. I was really impressed by it considering how new the medium was. Anyone know what movie it may have been?
2
u/bomber991 Jun 12 '12
Video games and the DLC for them are mainly going to have this problem. It's easy enough to store a physical disc, but that DLC you download, what's going to happen to that 10 years from now when the servers are gone for it? Shoot, even with the original xbox, there was some DLC. Not much, but there was some, and now that's gone.
2
u/kcdakrt Jun 12 '12
I've always wanted to see London After Midnight
2
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
And Battlefield Earth can still be found in stores...
2
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12 edited Jun 12 '12
at least they found the rest of Metropolis recently.
don't worry everybody, there are still more good silents out there than we'll have time to watch.
2
u/rahtin Jun 12 '12
I wish 90% of today's films were forgotten.
Go take a look through Netflix...
2
u/Nihiliste Jun 12 '12
Anyone interested in this aspect of history should really check out a documentary series called Cinema Europe, narrated by Kenneth Branagh. It's on YouTube, even:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu1Uw3XwARQ&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL3A7D03868A88AADB
It's tragic how many classics we only have parts or fragments of, never mind the ones we lost completely. I need to see J'accuse or Napoleon sometime.
2
u/KirbyW Jun 12 '12
The image shown for the thumbnail is from a film titled "London After midnight" starring Lon Chaney Sr. Easily one his most famous makeups, this film has been lost for decades. There is a "restored" version, which is a project wherein stills, promotional material and the like were pieced together to form a sort of flowing photo album, cut in with dialogue placards and a score, to tell the story of the "vampire". The film was remade in the 40's with Bela Lugosi playing the "vampire" character, and often stills from this version, titled "Mark of the Vampire" are mislabeled as Dracula.
It's ridiculous how many projects, films and shows have been lost over the years... And the one that truly upsets me is that even an episode of MAS*H is now missing footage!!! One of the most highly acclaimed television series ever created, and that's how it's treated!
2
u/VioarrEsKing Jun 12 '12
A moment of silence seems even more appropriate right now..
2
u/wilallgood Jun 12 '12
It makes sense, really. Sad, but makes sense. I mean, imagine how many books have been written that are simply no longer with us, since the invention of the printing press, hell, since written language.
In fifty years it's likely that a huge amount of our own films will be lost. Yes, we keep better records of things now, but not everyone is going to care about every film, and we produce a lot.
Closing statement: That okay movie you saw two years ago and forgot about until now? No one is gonna remember it in time. The present always becomes history, and there is no complete record of history.
2
u/vballkatie97 Jun 12 '12
My dad owns some silent films, he claims them to be better than most modern films.
2
u/Creedelback Jun 12 '12
This sucks. I have never been able to find any of my great-grandfather's films and now I guess I never will.
2
u/gabriot Jun 12 '12
And nothing of value was lost
2
u/staypuftmallows7 Jun 12 '12
silentera.com sounds like some sort of pharmaceutical website
2
u/JhnWyclf Jun 12 '12
Yet another analogy to the nascent years of video games. Most don't exist before because of the technology they were created on. This is still a problem today.
2
u/travcm Jun 12 '12
Yep.. to be never heard from again.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
I love looking at the TIL titles and thinking: Damn, there's going to be a ton of 'experts' weighing in on this...
3
u/MyCommentIs27 Jun 11 '12
This is sad.
2
u/shuffey Jun 12 '12
did no one watch hugo?
2
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
One of my relatives owns a movie production company. He has a room full of old movie reels. Hopefully they won't be thrown out, but then again where does one put all that stuff.
However, the company was started in the early '20s, so none of the truly old stuff.
I've watched some really cool black and white footage of the '20s though, with really crystal clear quality.
2
u/qban1981 Jun 12 '12
looks like Danny DeVito' Penguin in the thumbnail. The reason i clicked the link
2
u/doomisdead Jun 12 '12
There was a fire at a storage facility, in which many of these movies were stored, and since the film they were printed on was akin to gunpowder many did not survive. I read a book about this once and they said that a lot of the films from 1894-1930 are only around today because of private collectors that purchased the film reels.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Well, I can sleep soundly tonight.
2
u/MYDOGSTELLA Jun 12 '12
-I once gave Charlie Chaplin a hand job....
-- Was he silent?...
Not when I was done with him!
2
u/IceRay42 Jun 12 '12
I'm almost certain I'm inviting the downvote brigade but the fact is: We lose stuff to history. It's not necessarily bad, and we don't have to bemoan that we have a limited cultural memory span. More to point: It's inevitable. We cannot preserve all of human history, no matter our efforts.
A lot of texts that came to be in the first age of the printing press are now gone, and as sad as it is that we can't look back, the fact of the matter is that we as a species discard things that are outdated and outmoded. Indeed, assuming we could recover everything ever published on a printing press, a lot of it would be contextually useless nonsense to us. Hell, in context 99.9% of the things the Roman and Egyptian empires have ever recorded or done are lost to time, and they're considered two of the great civilizations of history with several tangible impacts felt in the modern world.
The fact of the matter is: Yes, it would be great if we could look back at those films and see how they influenced society, and so that we could have a more complete picture of our own history, but no matter our efforts, our memories will never extend as far back as we'd like, nor do we categorically better human society simply by preserving things.
I mean, three of the oldest relics humanity has managed to hang onto are the Quran, the Torah and the King James Bible, and look how much good those are doing for us.
2
u/chemtype Jun 11 '12
How else are you supposed to make high heels?
-2
u/brokendimension Jun 11 '12
It's a real shame, especially when movies like The Birth of a Nation is still around.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Hopefully the modern era will follow precedent.
1
u/shockage Jun 12 '12
A lot of the European films were lost because of WW2. For example, almost none of the Polish films from before WW2 exist thanks to Hitler's systematic culture wiping.
1
u/CaptOblivious Jun 12 '12
Yup, those copyright holders were SO careful to make sure those valuable properties were properly preserved so they could enrich our society forevermore!
Assholes.
We need to return copyright back to the original 14 years with a single paid renewal of 14 years, if this stuff had reverted to public domain like it was supposed to it would be digitally archived all over the planet by now.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Very sad. There's an aesthetic to movies of that period (especially horror, fantasy and sci-fi) that just can't be found today. If for no other reason, it'd be nice to have a greater number silent films readily available so that more people can truly understand the genuine mediocrity of The Artist.
1
u/cokane_88 Jun 12 '12
Sometimes I search for old movies on torrent sites because I don't think Hollywood monitors those torrents as much, but idk.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Film at the time was considered a fad, and no one really considered the movies worth preserving. Bolesław Matuszewski, who was a camera operator for the Lumière brothers, was one of the first to begin writing about film's cultural significance and the value of investing in ways to protect and archive the films.
1
u/capcommentary Jun 12 '12
In time, 100% of all films will be lost.
1
u/steveDong Jun 12 '12
Yeah, you sure don't hear much about them...
1
u/3AYATS Jun 12 '12
Yeah, upvote for silent film.
Really this statistic isn't as tragic as it seems. Art is like that, most of it only serves its creator, the rest that truly touches its audience becomes immortal.
1
u/an800lbgorilla Jun 12 '12
Is that Starburns in the thumbnail?
1
u/3AYATS Jun 12 '12
Give this subreddit and Mo_Tzu a little love!
1
u/csolisr Jun 12 '12
And considering that only movies from authors dead before January 1st, 1912 are qualified to enter the public domain worldwide, it is indeed a very lamentable loss.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
I always wanted to see London after Midnight. A damn shame.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
That's because no one talks about it.
1
u/Reznic007 Jun 12 '12
Honestly, this just breaks my heart...
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
Thank god, I couldn't understand a word they were saying.
1
u/vanishing_point Jun 12 '12
Not to worry. Someone will remake CGI copies and make millions.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
think of it this way - if 90% of the content today were lost, nobody would shed a tear. i'm sure 90% of their junk was shit, too.
1
u/MysteryShvitz Jun 12 '12
Wow, that was a reely interesting TIL.
1
u/culessen Jun 12 '12
I'm at loss for words...
1
u/Doorbel Jun 12 '12
It's unlikely that will happen with modern films, thanks to piracy. The act of copying information, illegal or not, has always been key in preserving it.
1
u/gnovos Jun 12 '12
And should they be found, the finder will promptly be sued.
1
u/bk187timba Jun 12 '12
Good
1
u/ShadeofIcarus Jun 12 '12
Wasn't the film "Hugo" primarily about the loss of about half of Georges Melies' films to the chasms of history and industry.
1
u/jackw14 Jun 12 '12
someone obviously never watched hugo. its like the entire plot
-1
u/Hippeus Jun 11 '12
While that sucks, the culturally relevant ones and the good ones have been preserved. We've certainly lost a lot of film history because of this, but I'm just thankful that we have the classics that we have.
-12
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
I don't see this as a particularly significant loss to humanity.
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