US film historians find treasure in Czech archive

radio.cz ^ | December 13, 2013 | Jan Richter

[NYer]

Ping!

[BradyLS]

I wonder if the archive holds any other lost films?

[SeeSharp]

Maybe they’ll find the lost Doctor Who episodes.

[Moonmad27]

Ironically this week Technicolor closed its last plant in Simi Valley, CA (and probably anywhere) since the digital age is here. Two people I know just lost their jobs along with all the others.

[RayChuang88]

Thanks to modern digital technology, a lot of old films are being restored to essentially mint condition. That's how they were able to restore the full version of the legendary Sergei Eisenstein film Battleship Potemkin.

[SunkenCiv]

I wonder if they managed to preserve any of the Theda Bara's lost films (which is most of them)? Thanks NYer.

...the only surviving print of the 1929 US movie, the Mysterious Island... The epic American movie The Mysterious Island, loosely based on the French writer Jules Verne’s adventurous novel, was released in 1929. The Technicolor film starred, among others, the Oscar-winning actor Lionel Barrymore.

[Prospero]

Any sign of Lon Cheney’s “London After Midnight,” or missing scenes from “Greed”?

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

As an aside, Lionel Barrymore later played the villainous Mr. Potter in Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life.

A brilliant actor, for a few films he had played a saccharine, jovial, grandfatherly type individual, and was sick of it. So he decided to play the Mr. Potter role as a real villain. It worked. He is still rated as in the top 50 most villainous characters in screen history.

Now that’s acting.

[afraidfortherepublic]

...the only surviving print of the 1929 US movie, the Mysterious Island...

I have a 1929 Ford that runs just fine. That proves that Fords last longer than film...;^)

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6-CjhKknYs

[SunkenCiv]

(starts a little slow)

[sr4402]

Video: Mysterious Island 1929 Fragment

[NYer]

Ping!

[dfwgator]

I wonder if they have the lost ending of It’s A Wonderful Life.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/81249131/

[x]

I have a 1929 Ford that runs just fine. That proves that Fords last longer than film...;^)

Old nitrate film from the silent era and afterwards was highly flammable. So unless you drive a Pinto, your car probably would be safer and more durable than old movies.

And the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film is still around, while Kodak has gone bottom up. Not sure what lesson to draw from that.

[x]

Wikipedia's list of rediscovered films.

A lot of old films were rediscovered in the Yukon. It was the last stop in their distribution and the film companies decided it was cheaper to throw them out than to have them shipped back to Hollywood. The cold preserved them (to some extent) even after they'd been in a landfill for decades.

[lonevoice]

Get these films to Criterion, cuz I'd love to see them someday.

...the only surviving print of the 1929 US movie, the Mysterious Island... The epic American movie The Mysterious Island, loosely based on the French writer Jules Verne’s adventurous novel, was released in 1929. The Technicolor film starred, among others, the Oscar-winning actor Lionel Barrymore.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Not sure what that’s all about, but it is interesting.

[TXnMA]

I assume that this a film version of Jules Verne's "Mysterious Island" -- one of my all-time favorite books, and one I've re-read many times.

Here's hoping they do manage to restore and re-release the movie.

It certainly couldn't be more of an abomination than the absurdly SFX-bloated, (3) movie(s) Peter Jackson has fluffed-up from Tolkien's one, simple little book, "The Hobbit"!