14 Films That May Be Lost Forever | sourcebrew

14 Films That May Be Lost Forever

not 15 my bad on the editing error :(

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#LostMedia

[youtubeisawfulunlikeyourco]

That MGM fire is honestly the cinematic equivalent to the burning of the library of Alexandria

[higginswalsan]

Number 15 is so lost it wasn’t even on the list

[michaellisinski]

Re: the first movie being popular even though it had a strange plot, it actually made me think about how many film concepts we take for granted because they're successful but are actually really odd on paper.

Imagine if Batman had been lost, for instance: "It takes place in this city called Gotham where crime is really high, and the main character is a super rich guy who decides to go out into the night dressed as a bat in order to fight off the criminals. At one point he also fights a clown? It sounds super strange, but apparently it was popular in its day."

[rosera]

My grandma swears up-and-down that when she was a kid in the late 40's she was in an independent film with some actor that had some reknown. I tried researching it and found nothing, so I just assumed it was a story. Maybe it was real and is just lost, huh...

[Lucirby]

That's exactly why some friends of mine and I are buying old vhs and laserdisc so that nothing will be lost anymore. Great video man.

[JoshuaRastia]

Watching the full 8+ hour version of Greed would be an interesting experience. I remember watching the HBO silent Hollywood documentary where some people who worked on it and saw it talked about how watching the whole thing was physically and mentally exhausting, but one of the greatest motion picture experiences they had ever had and would never forget

[gabriellevalentine]

It's interesting how lost silent film searches reveal how small we are. There's so much land and buildings to traverse that it takes people years just to find one single piece of lost film. Not to mention that a lot of old movies and snippets end up somewhere completely different than expected.

[sgpproductions]

The lost film I most want to see is The First Men in the Moon (1919). It was the first feature length movie based on an H.G. Wells novel, and one of the earliest spaceflight films. I'm sad it's often overlooked, possibly because the source material isn't as well known as other Wells novels, despite being my favorite of his works. Fortunately, a decent number of stills and a summary survived, but it only makes me wish even more that I could see the full film. At least I'll always have Ray Harryhausen and Mark Gatiss' versions.

[ScatteredCollector]

14:01 There's also an unconfirmed film that was shot while the Titanic was on sea by filmmaker William Harbeck. Now, this is coming from second class passenger and school teacher, Lawrence Beesley when he recalled what he saw while the ship was in motion - he noted in his book, "The Loss of the SS Titanic" that he witnessed a passenger filming the ship just as she had a near collision with the New York. Assumingely, if this was Harbeck, when the ship collided with the iceberg, and everyone had to evacuate the ship, he left his camera in his cabin. Sadly, Harbeck did not survive the night and his camera was lost forever. Now, this is the only lost Titanic film as other than the Harbeck footage, she was also filmed from 1909 to 1911. Out of these 5 films, only 1 survives and that's when she's leaving Southampton, just prior to her maiden voyage. The speculated reason these films were lost was due to the Belfast Blitz during World War 2 when the Harland and Wolff offices were bombed and a large portion of their archive was destroyed.

[l.salisbury]

There are two Laurel & Hardy films that belong on this list: "Hats Off" (1927) and "The Rogue's Song" (1930).
"Hats Off" was an early version of their Oscar winning short "The Music Box" (1932)- even filmed on the same flight of steps! Only stills and a shooting script exist.

"Rogue's Song" was mainly a vehicle for Opera star Lawrence Tibbett. Stan & Ollie were added after the movie had already been put to bed- it was decided the movie was too dark and needed some comic relief! It was also one of the first Technicolor epics and the unstable nature of that nitrate pretty much guaranteed it would NOT be preserved! The soundtrack survived! A few individual scenes have been discovered (one- a Laurel & Hardy gag- is on YouTube!) but a complete print has yet to turn up... and this late-in-the-game probably never will...!

[turbos]

Film is art. Anytime art is lost, its a tragedy.

[mattguy]

Those films will be a fine addition to our collection if we find them

[aadamtx]

I still have a VHS copy of GREED that I captured from the only time it was shown on tv (TBS, I think). However, since I don't have a

[Jared_Wignall]

So many films have been lost that it’s quite sad, especially when hearing the description for some of them as well as having some films of the cast and crew around to watch, such as Lon Chaney, and we can see how talented they were. Let’s hope someday, some if not all of these films will be found and be able to be viewed again. Great video man!

[CalderTF]

First entry and I'm already sad. Hate when I can't watch all of Lon Chaney.

[DrawtoonzStudio]

You should do more videos dedicated to movies like this. Old lost films are always an interesting topic.

[vilstef]

In a film class in the 70s, I saw the 140 minute cut of Greed. I'm a big fan of silent film, but Greed failed to knock me out! I liked films like Metropolis, The General and City Lights much more!

[themangoman]

Convention city is proof that warner bros has always been the more edgy studio compared to Disney or MGM

[wardarcade]

Of course there were two big factors that would cull down the number of saved movies before 1950. One is that they were made from nitrate stock which is so combustible, films were known to melt into goo and/or even burn up on their own for no apparent reason. Secondly, the studios often would meltdown old film stock to try to reuse it or even deliberately destroy older movies when a performer fell out of favor. The latter happened to Peggy-Jean Montgomery (later Diana Serra Cary) (1918-2020) who made over a hundred films as 'Baby Peggy' from the time she was eighteen months to five-years-old but her father angered the wrong studio head one time too many and not only did she get fired but almost all her films got delberately destroyed by the studio! Then when movies went to sound in 1929, a lot of silents were destroyed because the studios wanted to show how modern they were!

[Pioneers_Of_Cinema]

Well researched. Otherwise thought-lost films do turn up. I recently was given a reel of 35mm nitrate film from the 1928 'Tropic Madness' which I scanned, edited and uploaded. Luckily with knowledge of the complete plot the single 13 minute reel stands alone as a coherent work. Quite touching it is too. This is listed as a lost film by the Library of Congress. Luckily have been able to scan and save a few otherwise considered lost segments.