Lost Films

[Stefan Andersson]

On 8 June 2024, a fire broke out in the nitrate cellars of the Italian "Centro sperimentale di cinematografia" in Rome, the Italian National Film Library. 220 titles were lost.

List of lost films:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/ ... 5074&pli=1

More info and links:
https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36387

[tenia]

Saw this news only a few days ago, and was eager to see this list. Hopefully, most of these were copies, and not original (and/or unique) elements.

[Peacock]

Terrible news for Griffith, Feyder, Feuillade fans among others.

[Captain Paranoia]

Hopefully most of these were at least digitzed, or if they were original elements have duplicate prints available.

[spectre]

More about the rediscovery of the complete version of Captain Thunderbolt here:

https://www.nfsa.gov.au/latest/captain- ... ides-again

[Stefan Andersson]

Matrimony (1915) with John Gilbert found in Moscow:

https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36466

[JamesF]

John Ford’s The Scarlet Drop (1918), starring Harry Carey, found in Chile one day before almost being destroyed: https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-cu ... rop-chile/

[Stefan Andersson]

"Play Safe" (1925), starring Monty Banks, rediscovered in Berlin:
https://www.stummfilm-magazin.de/aktuel ... onty-banks

[captveg]

The Heart of Lincoln (1915), starring and directed by Francis Ford (John Ford's older brother) discovered in Long Island

[Stefan Andersson]

The Heart of Lincoln (1915), starring and directed by Francis Ford (John Ford's older brother) discovered in Long Island

Discussions:
https://www.hometheaterforum.com/commun ... ed.385253/
https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36924

Also:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-ne ... 180986041/

[Stefan Andersson]

Rediscovered: The two-reel “The Way of All Pants” (1927) starring Charley Chase:
"For decades only nine minutes of this film, missing most of the first reel, was the only version available /.../. A nearly complete print was recently discovered at the Library of Congress National Audio Visual Conservation Center.":
https://www.loc.gov/item/event-395482/

Update: this film is now on bluray:
https://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=34828

[Tuco]

The mentioned blu-ray set is really quite hilarious!

[Stefan Andersson]

A 16 mm Show-at-Home print of Taxi! Taxi! (1927), starring Edward Everett Horton, was rediscovered, in a private collection, in late 2024:

https://www.pianyc.net/event/silent-clo ... uditorium/

https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=37070

[Stefan Andersson]

Adrienne Lecouvreur (1912) starring Sarah Bernhardt, found in France:
https://classicinema.com/unearthed-trea ... ecouvreur/

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Here's something I didn't expect to see: an unsubtitled copy of the 1976 Chinese film Counterattack has surfaced on YouTube. This was one of several films made as part of the "counterattack against the right-deviationist reversal of verdicts," directed primarily against Deng Xiaoping and by this point aimed at keeping him out of power following Mao's death. These films were later dubbed "conspiracy films" and linked to the Gang of Four's alleged attempt to seize power, preempted by their downfall in October 1976. Counterattack had been completed only a few weeks earlier and was duly shelved, but it was briefly shown in 1977 as an "internal reference work"—for the specific purpose of being criticized in post-screening discussions—before seemingly vanishing for good. To make sure everybody got the right idea, the internal reference version added a nearly three-minute text scroll to the beginning, translated below:

Spoiler

The great leader and mentor Chairman Mao taught us: "Using novels to carry out anti-Party activities is a great invention. Anybody who wants to topple a regime must first build public opinion and carry out work on the ideological front. This goes for both the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary classes."

The counter-revolutionary film Counterattack, carefully planned and produced by the anti-Party clique of Wang Hongwen, Zhang Chunqiao, Jiang Qing, and Yao Wenyuan, is a great poisonous weed of counter-revolutionary propaganda, cultivated so they could usurp the Party and seize power.

During the production of Counterattack, the "Gang of Four" and their cronies proclaimed with wicked intentions that "To grasp Counterattack is a great affair," that it "must be incorporated into the broader political struggle," that it "can be sent to the Central Committee," and that it should be made into "a microcosm of society as a whole." Through the despicable method of "a thief shouting 'Stop, thief!'," they deliberately inverted the relationship between the enemy and ourselves. In this film, they concocted the figure of a provincial Party first secretary and imbued him with their deep hatred of the proletariat, compounded it with evils of the sort only they could commit, and sought in vain to create chaos to bring down those comrades upholding Marxism in the Party, the government, and the military. The so-called "main hero" of Counterattack is shown relentlessly carrying out anti-Party activities, while another so-called "hero" embodies the "Gang of Four"'s cabal of bourgeois conspirators and careerists. After shooting was completed, the "Gang of Four" boasted that this reactionary film was a "heavy artillery shell" and a "powerful earthquake," then prepared to release it across the nation at an opportune moment to bolster their plot to usurp supreme leadership of the Party and the state, bringing about their dream of a so-called "grand festival"* of counter-revolutionary restoration.

With a single blow, the Party Central Committee, under the enlightened leadership of Comrade Hua Guofeng, smashed the "Gang of Four"'s wicked plot to usurp the Party and seize power. This reactionary film was quickly exposed by the broad revolutionary masses and became a document of the "Gang of Four"'s vain schemes to usurp the Party and seize power, subvert the dictatorship of the proletariat, and restore capitalism.

These internal screenings of the reactionary film Counterattack, with accompanying public criticism, have been organized for the purposes of revealing the true counter-revolutionary face of the extreme-rightist "Gang of Four" clique, transforming poisonous weeds into fertilizer, and allowing senior cadres and the masses to more deeply understand the great significance of smashing the Wang-Zhang-Jiang-Yao anti-Party clique, thereby carrying through to its end the great struggle to expose and criticize the "Gang of Four."

*This is the term (derived from Lenin: "Revolutions are the festivals of the oppressed and the exploited") that the Gang of Four supposedly used for their planned seizure of power. It was also the title of another "conspiracy film," directed by Xie Jin, which unlike Counterattack was still in production at the time of the Gang's fall and as such never completed.

The plot synopsis from Donald J. Marion's The Chinese Filmography:

Provincial Party secretary Han Ling, sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, is restored to his position and returns to Beijing. His first action is to conduct a comprehensive reorganization of units under his control, including pushing through the provincial committee a resolution opposing Yellow River University's "no exam" system for selecting new students, promoting an examination system instead. Han Ling's committee is criticized by the University's Party secretary Jiang Tao and provincial committee Director Zhao, who call Han's action "reversing a verdict." Even though he is jailed, Jiang Tao persists in his views, and the struggle continues. Shortly afterwards, the Central government issues two decisions supporting Jiang Tao and ordering his release, and the "counterattack rightist reversal of verdicts campaign" begins.

The uploader on YouTube claims this copy was sourced from an internal reference disc issued in 2012—why I have no idea, though at a stretch I can imagine a connection to the fall of Bo Xilai, who was often accused of reviving Cultural Revolution-style methods.

[hearthesilence]

Just announced by the Parajanov-Vartanov Institute, Sergei Parajanov’s lost 1952 student film (remade as Andriesh in 1954) has been found at Moscow’s Film Institute V.G.I.K.

[Stefan Andersson]

The Cat´s Meow, 1924, w/ Harry Langdon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOPBTMzIDos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5emaPTbCIog

Flickering Youth, 1924, w/ Langdon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtB9eAn3Nw0

https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic. ... 55#p309455

[Stefan Andersson]

Parts of The Cat Creeps (Rupert Julian, 1930) rediscovered, along with soundtrack discs:
https://www.ipm.org/news/2025-11-21/fil ... y-archives

[Stefan Andersson]

Arm of the Law (Monogram, 1932) w/ Rex Bell; OCN and soundtrack rediscovered:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DUoA1S3Eexj/?hl=en

[Stefan Andersson]

Gugusse et l´Automate, Méliès, 1897, 4K, at LoC:
https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=38573
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1201105085126666
https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2026/02/lost- ... e-library/

[soundchaser]

Film is Fabulous have recovered two missing episodes of the William Hartnell Doctor Who serial "The Daleks' Master Plan" in the holdings of a deceased film collector.

Full story here.

(This is VERY big news for fans, as it's the first recovery in nearly 13 years, and from a story with only one film print ever made.)

[knives]

That’s so incredibly good. I honestly feared we were never going to get another one. Two is an unbelievable joy!

[MichaelB]

I love the way that they lured surviving co-star Peter Purves to a screening under a pretext, and only broke the news to him when he arrived so they could clock his live reaction.

To say he was pleased would be the understatement of the millennium—he'd featured in a disproportionate number of the missing episodes thanks to his Dr Who period being slap bang in the middle of the era that was singled out for tape-wiping.

[Stefan Andersson]

Catch Me If You Can (Don Weis, 1959), apparently a lost film, "apparently not licensed for distribution in the USA until 1967, but even then seems never to have made it to the screen", re-found by the head programmer at the Hollywood Theatre, Portland, Oregon:
https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=38771
https://hollywoodtheatre.org/show/it-ca ... e-archive/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0310854/reference/

[domino harvey]

Wow!