by Allan Fish
This post is a contribution to the third annual For the Love of Film blogathon and fundraiser, which will be running from May 13-18. This year, hosts Marilyn Ferdinand, Farran Smith Nehme and Roderick Heath have dedicated the week to Alfred Hitchcock, whose early (non-directorial) work “The White Shadow” will be the beneficiary of any money earned during the event. The film preservation theme of course is at the center of this cinematic lament. We can certainly hope for a miracle. Be sure to donate!]
In discussions regarding film preservation, what often gets lost in the mélée is at what cost our slowly awakening ourselves to the problem has come. Lost films are a source of anguish to film connoisseurs and historians. A read through the timelines on this site’s right menus will showcase just what treasures have been lost to us. The degree of loss varies, of course. In most cases the entire film is lost. In others it’s only a portion that’s lost, in a few we have snippets surviving, from the 10 seconds or so of the Theda Bara Cleopatra (1917) to the one or two scenes of The Way of All Flesh (1927) – with the only lost Academy Award winning performance, by Emil Jannings – to films whose trailers survive and whose films do not. The documentary Fragments (2011), financed by TCM, showcased many of these lost films and what footage we have of them. In the spirit of that programme, I present a personal choice of 25 lost films most mourned by this writer. I leave aside the legendary lost cuts of Foolish Wives (1921), Greed (1924), The River (1929), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Red Badge of Courage (1951) and the original six hour Cleopatra (1962) as we at least have them in butchered versions through to their conclusions. These 25 were not so fortunate.
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