Posted on 08/03/2011 10:45:15 AM PDT by nickcarraway
In a twist the Master of Suspense himself would have been proud of Alfred Hitchcock's earliest surviving movie has been found languishing in a vault in New Zealand.
All copies of The White Shadow, a silent feature film released by Hollywood in 1924, had been thought lost to posterity, and cinema historians have described the discovery as "priceless".
Three dusty reels containing the first half of the film – about 30 minutes of footage – had been stored deep in the bowels of the New Zealand Film Archive, where the search is continuing for the other three reels. th The acclaimed director was 24 when he worked on what was billed as a "wild, atmospheric melodrama" starring actress Betty Compson as twin sisters, one angelic and the other "without a soul". He was credited as assistant director and also wrote the scenario, designed the sets and edited the footage.
At the time silent Hollywood films were distributed worldwide and, while many prints were discarded and lost in the US, others survived abroad where they were kept after runs in cinemas had finished.
The White Shadow owes its survival to Jack Murtagh, a projectionist in the provincial New Zealand town of Hastings, who was regarded as an eccentric collector of films, cigarette cards, stamps and coins.
Cultural Olympiad: modern scores for early Hitchcocks 04 Jul 2011 Why I Love... Alfred Hitchcock 24 Mar 2011 The de-kinking of Alfred Hitchcock 15 Dec 2003 After his death in 1989 Mr Murtagh's private collection of highly flammable nitrate film prints was sent for safekeeping to the national archives in Wellington by his grandson Tony Osborne.
Mr Osborne said "He would be quietly amused by all the attention now generated by these important film discoveries." Other lost films rediscovered in the collection have included a
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Ping
Oh, wait ...
Hey Nick I troll TCM Forum and they said they found more Hitchcock in all place somewhere in Russia they doing music score right now and restoring them that pretty good find
Is that the one about a white basketball coach, coaching in a mostly black school?
Missed it by THAT much!
Think we dated ourselves here?
*possible ping of interest*
(And no Ken Howard jokes, please)
Which is worse - to have lost the film, or to have found it but not be able to see how it ends?
Ha! Definitely! :-)
Theda Bara, for instance, was a very famous silent star, but few know about her today. Most of her films were lost. Her most famous one, "Cleopatra", was lost. She made at least forty, and I've seen varying numbers that only about three or six remain.
Also some early Laurel and Hardys are lost.
ping
By the way, last year on TMC I saw a very interesting showing of “A Star Is Born” - an incredible movie with Judy Garland. Seems a lot of footage was lost from the middle of it, so instead of cutting it out, they put in stills from that part and kept playing the intact soundtrack.
I’d rather watch a movie like that than see it cut up. I HATE overedited movies. The new trend to release “extended editions” is something I really enjoy.
You will probably be disappointed to learn that the exotic villa Bara built for herself here in Cincinnati, her hometown, was razed by its latest owner Xavier University just a few weeks ago.
Yes, I will. They put historic designations on everything else, but I guess a college can get such things put aside.
But back to the films -Theda Bara was very exotic, and her films were known for their revealing costumes. The type of things posterity fixes on. (Isn’t it amazing how some artists live forever, and some you never hear about, even though they were huge at the time?)
If more of her films had survived, especially the opulent Cleopatra, I’ll bet they would have been more likely to keep her home.
Funny how we were talking about the Silent Movie house just recently.
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