Venerable British film institution, the, er, British Film Institute (BFI), is marking 75 years of the National Film Archive, by compiling a list of the 75 ‘lost’ films they would most like to find. The full list is exhaustive in its detail, explaining what makes these titles important, and including all currently-known data about the films: who they featured, plot synopses, stills, when they were made/last seen, and contemporary reviews and comment.
The most wanted Most Wanted is a film by Alfred Hitchcock (seen pointing in set photo – even he was young once), his second directorial effort, in fact, a silent movie from 1926 called “The Mountain Eagle” — which, notwithstanding Hitch’s own comment in conversation with Francois Truffaut that it’s “a very bad movie” — is still a rather mouthwatering prospect for film historians and students alike. The film is a very early work from one of the acknowledged masters of the craft and the man who probably represents Britain’s single greatest contribution to modern cinema.
Other early curios to check your attic for: 1914’s “A Study in Scarlet,” which has some contemporary relevance in being the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes in a British film (though it’s unlikely Dr. Watson kicks in many doors in this version); 1929’s “The Last Post” – by Britain’s only female director of the period, who successfully sued fan magazine “Film Weekly” for claiming the film as evidence that women were incapable of directing (insert Bret Easton Ellis gag here); and the 1921 Dickens adaptation “The Adventures of Mr Pickwick” which was received with the kind of rave reviews that suggest it may indeed be a lost masterpiece, or at least a fascinating glimpse into how tastes have changed between then and now.
But it’s by no means only silent or otherwise obscure films and filmmakers on the list. Celebrated Brit director and Technicolor pioneer Michael Powell (“The Red Shoes,” “Black Narcissus,” “A Matter Of Life And Death”) has no less than three entries, including his 1931 debut, listed. Indeed the 30s,40s and 50s (that interesting pre- to post-war period when Britain’s film industry went into decline and Hollywood started to establish its preeminence) are well represented, as well as later films from 1972’s awful-looking “The Cherry Picker,” a sexpolitation comedy (with that title, what else?) starring Spike Milligan, Terry Thomas and Lulu, and 1968’s “Sleep is Lovely” by David Hart (aka ‘The English Godard’), all the way up to 1983’s “Where Is Parsifal?” whose starry cast (Tony Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Peter Lawford, Erik Estrada (!) and Orson frickin Welles) sounds genius even if the reviews stank.
These 75 represent only the tip of the lost film iceberg – so how does it happen? Making films has never been anything but a time-and-money consuming affair, so it’s hard to imagine how the finished product, representing so many man hours of work and so much investment dosh, can just…disappear. In some cases, dodgy VHS copies still exist, but the Archive (bless their completist hearts) considers a film lost if none of the original prints can be located. Lab fires, more prevalent back in the day than now, were responsible for many lost or irretrievably damaged early films, as well as their perceived unfashionability: in the years before film came to be looked on as artistically or historically valuable and therefore to be preserved, many silents were considered irrelevant to posterity and destroyed (melted down for the tiny quantities of silver the celluloid used to contain) when sound arrived. This slash ‘n’ burn ethos had more or less stopped by the late 30s, so since then fewer films have been deliberately destroyed, but accidents and carelessness have still claimed a large number. And there are also stories of films lost through less innocent means: from filmmakers sabotaging reels with which they were not happy, to MGM’s unsuccessful attempts to destroy all prints of the 1940 version of “Gaslight” in favour of their 1944 Ingrid Bergman remake, which the BFI cites as an example of attempted suppression by a studio. Apparently the “Gaslight” case was not unprecedented in that studios were often anxious to rid the world of previous versions of films for which they had gained remake rights.
The BFI last launched an initiative of this sort in 1992 and as a result of their efforts since then, have found and restored 14 titles, most of which are being screened in July and August of this year (Londoners at a loose end or wanting to impress a film nerd date book here). The rest of us must be content with just visiting the website to check out some of the stories behind the new 75, which we really recommend you do. From ‘Badger’s Green’ a silent adaptation of a musical, to Britain’s first 3D movie “The Diamond,” and featuring the lost screen debuts of Robert Donat and Errol Flynn, as well as James Mason, John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier-starrers, the list sports some surprisingly familiar names among its treasures and often makes for compelling anecdotal reading. Yes, in many cases the films aren’t the greatest, and they very well may be in genres and from an age in which we as contemporary filmgoers have little interest, but there is something romantic about this quest to reclaim these few flickering images and the stories they tell from the jaws of obscurity. Perhaps the greatest value is to film historians, archivists and theoreticians who have a more academic interest than you or I, but still it’s difficult not to be just a little moved by the idea of all those actors and extras and credited crew, many of whom are long since dead, having a tiny sliver of immortality restored to them.
