10 American Silent Films Returned Home from Russia

craig2010 · Post by **craig2010** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 2:57 pm

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/ ... und.films/

The ten films presented Thursday, their studios and production year include:

-- "Valley of the Giants" (Famous Players, 1919)

-- "You're Fired" (Famous Players, 1919)

-- "The Conquest of Canaan" (Famous Players, 1921)

-- "Kick In" (Famous Players, 1922)

-- "The Call of the Canyon" (Famous Players, 1923)

-- "Canyon of the Fools" (R-C Pictures, 1923)

-- "Circus Days" (First National, 1923)

-- "The Eternal Struggle" (Metro Pictures, Louis B. Mayer, 1923)

-- "The Arab" (Metro, 1924)

-- "Keep Smiling" (Monty Banks, 1925)

Jack Theakston · Post by **Jack Theakston** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 3:10 pm

Really looking forward to VALLEY OF THE GIANTS and KICK IN. It will be interesting to compare them to their remakes/counterparts.

drednm · Post by **drednm** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 3:18 pm

great news.... some big names

"Valley of the Giants" (Famous Players, 1919) Wallace Reid, Alice Terry

"You're Fired" (Famous Players, 1919) Wallace Reid, Wanda Hawley

"The Conquest of Canaan" (Famous Players, 1921) Thomas Meighan

"Kick In" (Famous Players, 1922) Betty Compson, May McAvoy

"The Call of the Canyon" (Famous Players, 1923) Richard Dix, Lois Wilson

"Canyon of the Fools" (R-C Pictures, 1923) Harry Carey

"Circus Days" (First National, 1923) Jackie Coogan, Claire McDowell

"The Eternal Struggle" (Metro Pictures, Louis B. Mayer, 1923)
Renee Adoree, Barbara LaMarr, Wallace Beery

"The Arab" (Metro, 1924) Ramon Novarro, Alice Terry

"Keep Smiling" (Monty Banks, 1925) Monty Banks, Anne Cornwall

Harold Aherne · Post by **Harold Aherne** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 3:24 pm

My cup runneth over to the Russian archivists who kept and preserved these films over the years. And I'm sure there are still more discoveries to be made.

-Harold

Post by **Christopher Jacobs** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 3:35 pm

It says they're all "digital preservation copies," rather than 35mm film prints made from digital restorations. I hope that means that at least the Public Domain titles will be made available on Blu-ray/DVD in the relatively near future, even if its DVD-R or BD-R. At least the film scanning and digital conversion has already been done! I wouldn't even mind if LoC made them available with no scores, but it would be great for Kino/Milestone/Flicker Alley, etc. to make some arrangement for at least a couple of them.

All sound well-worth seeing and I'm especially interested in the 1919 version of VALLEY OF THE GIANTS, which was the second feature to play at our sole surviving downtown movie house (the first, THE WITNESS FOR THE DEFENSE, also survives at Gosfilmofond).

--Christopher Jacobs
http://hpr1.com/film
http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs
http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs/Old ... BluRay.htm

drednm · Post by **drednm** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 3:40 pm

Put me down for the Betty Compson and also Ramon Novarro's answer to The Shiek.

rudyfan · Post by **rudyfan** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 4:01 pm

Well, that's pretty exciting news. Kewel!

Spasiba!

craig2010 · Post by **craig2010** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 4:10 pm

http://www.variety.com/article/VR111802 ... f=vertfilm

I suspect these films likely have Russian intertitles, so new English language titles will probably need to be made

dr.giraud · Post by **dr.giraud** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 5:16 pm

Christopher Jacobs wrote:It says they're all "digital preservation copies," rather than 35mm film prints made from digital restorations. I hope that means that at least the Public Domain titles will be made available on Blu-ray/DVD in the relatively near future, even if its DVD-R or BD-R. At least the film scanning and digital conversion has already been done! I wouldn't even mind if LoC made them available with no scores, but it would be great for Kino/Milestone/Flicker Alley, etc. to make some arrangement for at least a couple of them.

All sound well-worth seeing and I'm especially interested in the 1919 version of VALLEY OF THE GIANTS, which was the second feature to play at our sole surviving downtown movie house (the first, THE WITNESS FOR THE DEFENSE, also survives at Gosfilmofond).

--Christopher Jacobs
http://hpr1.com/film
http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs
http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs/Old ... BluRay.htm

Pola Negri's first Paramount movie, BELLA DONNA, is also at Gosfilmofond.

sepiatone · Post by **sepiatone** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 5:33 pm

I believe Mae Murray's IDOLS OF CLAY and THE RIGHT TO LOVE both directed by George Fitzmaurice are at Gosfilmofond. They seem to have a lot of Famous-Players, Paramount-Artcraft, titles there. VALLEY OF THE GIANTS is the film where Wally(Reid) was injured on the way to location and thus began his sad slide downward and addiction to morphine to deaden the pain. They never say what kind of injury Wally had. I so hope that Gosfilmofond has some PAULINE FREDERICK titles and more ELSIE FERGUSON.

*These finds are wonderful, but we seriously can't expect to find more treats like this as time goes on, or can we? I always said , if or when they find LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT it will be mislabeled in a place that's unexpected but right where it should be.

*Perhaps the Cold War got in the way of even retrieving these films from the Russians sooner. What did the Russians have of the silent studios that has succumbed to nitrate decompositiion in the years since. What other great titles lay waiting at Gosfilmofond?

sepiatone · Post by **sepiatone** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 5:43 pm

I wonder what good ole 'Gwyn Mac' would think if he were still here. Oh! he wouldn't think nothing of it, he's seen all of these films.

Post by **silentfilm** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 7:11 pm

http://www.variety.com/article/VR111802 ... id=13&cs=1

Silent films presented to Library of Congress
Russian archive submits 10 preserved pics
By PAUL HARRIS
Digitally preserved copies of 10 previously lost American silent films were presented to the Library of Congress Thursday by the Russian film archive Gosfilmofond, where they have been stored since their initial release more than 80 years ago. They represent the first of what was described as a "mother lode" of some 200 silent films believed to be missing that ultimately will be repatriated by the Russian archive.
The initial cache includes the 1923 pic "The Call of the Canyon" directed by Victor Fleming, the 1924 film "The Arab" helmed by Rex Ingram, and two films featuring actor Wallace Reid.

The Russian archive is thought to contain the largest cache of lost U.S. silent films outside the U.S., according to Patrick Loughney, chief of the Library of Congress' Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation. "This is the mother lode of lost U.S. silent films and is an important archeological discovery for American cinema," he said.

In a ceremony at the library, the digital copies were formally presented to Librarian of Congress James H. Billington by Vladimir I. Kozhin, head of management and administration of the President of the Russian Federation. Also attending were Alexander Vershinin, director general of the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library, and Nikolai Borodachev, director general of Gosfilmofond.

Billington praised the spirit of cooperation demonstrated by the Russian team during brief remarks at the ceremony. A noted Russian scholar, Billington has worked quietly for years to win repatriation of the missing silent films and to strengthen cultural relations between the two countries. Under his leadership, the Library of Congress has provided assistance to Russian libraries and cultural institutions, while also pursuing digital exchange.

Unlike in the U.S., where the vast majority of silent film reels and negatives were destroyed or lost through neglect and mishaps, films distributed to Russia for the most part were carefully maintained and stored. They were initially shown in Russian theaters and were given Russian language intertitles. In some cases, the names of the films were changed -- a practice that complicates U.S. research efforts.

During the past 20 years, the Library of Congress and others have sought to locate and repatriate missing U.S.-produced movies from a variety of foreign archives. For example, the library played a role in the recent repatriation agreement involving some 75 early U.S. films uncovered in the New Zealand Film Archive.

Loughney said the library is also working with film archives in France, Czechoslovakia and the Netherlands to uncover lost American pics believed to be housed in those countries.

He said the Russian archive presumably includes films stretching into the sound era. "Preliminary research indicates that as many as 200 films are contained in the Gosfilmofond archive, according to a list compiled by the International Federation of Film Archives based on data submitted from Russia," he said.

The digital copies received Thursday will become available for viewing at the library's Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation.

The 10 films that were presented to the library on Thursday are:

-- "The Arab" (Metro, 1924). Director: Rex Ingram. Cast: Ramon Navarro, Alice Terry. Jamil (Navarro), son of a Bedouin tribe leader, falls in love with the daughter of a Christian missionary. Ingram shot portions of the film on location in Algiers, using native Bedouins as extras. His career break came three years earlier when he directed "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," which made a star of Rudolph Valentino. Navarro's collaboration with Ingram on this and two earlier films propelled him to stardom.

-- "Kick In" (Famous Players, 1922). Director: George Fitzmaurice. Cast: Betty Compson, Bert Lytell, May McAvoy. Released from prison, thief Chick Hewes (Lytell) resolves to go straight but is harassed by police when he refuses to turn stool pigeon. "Kick In" was a successful Broadway play starring John Barrymore.

-- "The Conquest of Canaan" (Famous Players, 1921). Director: Roy William Neill. Cast: Thomas Meighan, Doris Kenyon. Defiant of polite society and friendly with corrupt town leaders, Joe Louden (Meighan) is encouraged by his friend Ariel (Kenyon), a recent heiress, to succeed. Previously filmed in 1916, "Canaan" was based on a novel by Booth Tarkington.

-- "The Eternal Struggle" (Metro Pictures, Louis B. Mayer, 1923). Director: Reginald Barker. Cast: Renee Adoree, Earle Williams, Barbara La Marr, Wallace Beery, Pat O'Malley. Engaged to Canadian Mountie Neil Tempest (Williams), Andree (Renee) falls in love with one of her fiance's underlings, Bucky O'Hara (O'Malley). This is one of the last films produced or released by Louis B. Mayer's Metro Pictures Corp. before he helped establish MGM in 1924.

-- "You're Fired" (Famous Players, 1919). Director: James Cruze. Cast: Wallace Reid, Wanda Hawley. In order to win the hand of Helen Rogers (Hawley), wealthy idler Billy Deering (Reid) agrees to her father's wager -- if Billy can keep a job for one month, the father will agree to the marriage. The comedy's screenplay was based on O. Henry's story, "The Halberdier."

-- "Keep Smiling" (Monty Banks, 1925). Directors: Albert Austin, Gilbert Pratt. Cast: Monty Banks, Glen Cavender. An unnamed boy (Banks), who is afraid of water, invents a life preserver that inflates when it hits water.

© Copyright 2010 RBI, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.

Brooksie · Post by **Brooksie** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 7:26 pm

sepiatone wrote:*These finds are wonderful, but we seriously can't expect to find more treats like this as time goes on, or can we? I always said, if or when they find LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT it will be mislabeled in a place that's unexpected but right where it should be.

The ability of film archives have to actually identify footage they already have has increased enormously over the past few years - it's a real boon for silent films.

I've heard some grumblings (for example, in regards to the recent repatriation of films from New Zealand) that archives have been lazy or incompetent in not identifying these films sooner. The simple fact is, if you have a strip of film with no titles, little notion of where it belongs in the continuity, acted by strangers - it's needle-in-a-haystack time. It could be five precious minutes from a lost masterpiece, or it could be something relatively inconsequential. One person might be able to identify it immediately, but that person needs to see it in the first place. In the past, that would have involved travelling to an obscure foreign archive. Today, it can be nothing more than visiting a website like the Lost Films section of the Deusche Kinemathek museum(https://www.lost-films.eu/identify). Exciting stuff!

rogerskarsten · Post by **rogerskarsten** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 10:07 pm

This is great news, since it means that these films will be made available to researchers at the Library of Congress, but I bristle a bit at the article's insinuation that these were previously considered "lost films." Every one of these titles was already listed in the FIAF database, with Gosfilmofond (and in some cases, other European archives) credited as the holding institution; these films were not deliberately kept secret or misidentified or "lost." I can understand that the survival status of many films is unknown to the general public (and even to major film buffs), but every participating member of FIAF has access to this database, so there was never any mystery--at least among film archivists--regarding where these films were located. The repatriation is a worthy enough news story; why perpetuate the idea that the archives don't know what they have in their storage units? (I know, sometimes the archives don't know, but that simply was not the case this time.)

Just a minor carp; otherwise my reaction to this news is "hooray"!

~Roger

Gagman 66 · Post by **Gagman 66** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 10:38 pm

Wow! What a surprise! I had not heard anything about this before. I just wish there were some Colleen Moore and Corinne Griffith titles in there. But hey another film with Renee Adoree! Lots of other good stuff too. Seems like quite a bit of Alice Terry material has been found in recent years. Just perhaps the rest of Victor Seastrom's CONFESSIONS OF A QUEEN is in there someplace? Not to mention LOVERS? And for Renee how about A CERTAIN YOUNG MAN or TIN GODS?

WaverBoy · Post by **WaverBoy** » Thu Oct 21, 2010 10:42 pm

Good news then, but not nearly as big of news as I thought. These films were most certainly not previously considered lost. I wonder if there are any uncatalogued or miscatalogued titles at Gosfilmofond that are actually considered "lost" or "missing"...? LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT, A BLIND BARGAIN, THE MIRACLE MAN, FLAMING YOUTH and RED HAIR, I'm talking about you.

Arndt · Post by **Arndt** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 1:50 am

WaverBoy wrote:Good news then, but not nearly as big of news as I thought. These films were most certainly not previously considered lost. I wonder if there are any uncatalogued or miscatalogued titles at Gosfilmofond that are actually considered "lost" or "missing"...? LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT, A BLIND BARGAIN, THE MIRACLE MAN, FLAMING YOUTH and RED HAIR, I'm talking about you.

Chances are that Gosfilmofond holds a lot of films presumed lost today. The Russians swiped the German film archive in 1945 and only returned some parts of it. Unfortunately they are very secretive about the content of their vaults. That may be because they themselves do not really know what they might contain. I have heard from a German with a good knowledge of Russian who did some research at Gosfilmofond. There were large sections of the archives they would not allow him access to.
It is my belief that the recently surfaced copies of THE THREE PASSIONS with German intertitles come from there. It is tantalizing to guess what else they might have.

Gagman 66 · Post by **Gagman 66** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 2:05 am

Arndt,

I'm not sure where the print of THE THREE PASSIONS came from. But I can tell you that Robert Israel was astonished to hear about it. As far as He was aware this was still a lost film. How about the version of LADY OF THE PAVEMENTS that has been floating around? Could it have come from the same place I wonder?

sc1957 · Post by **sc1957** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 6:43 am

I think this sentence from the CNN article is intriguing:

"These ten films are the first of hundreds that will be repatriated over time."

missdupont · Post by **missdupont** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 11:04 am

During the archives presentation at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival this summer, one of the speakers stated that there would be 200 films returned to this country from overseas. Perhaps this is what he was referring to.

buskeat · Post by **buskeat** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 12:13 pm

I understand that the existence of these films was known and thus not considered "lost" but has anyone ever had reasonable access to them? If not, that's as good as lost in my book and I'm thrilled.

Harlett O'Dowd · Post by **Harlett O'Dowd** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 1:13 pm

Gagman 66 wrote: Wow! What a surprise! I had not heard anything about this before. I just wish there were some Colleen Moore and Corinne Griffith titles in there. [/b]

Wow. You musta been Santa's favorite.

Darren Nemeth · Post by **Darren Nemeth** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 2:02 pm

Anyone know what kind of digital restoration was done on these?

Gagman 66 · Post by **Gagman 66** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 2:05 pm

I believe that all 10 of these movies had been listed as "Status Unknown" at least on the Silent Era website. So you could say that they had generally been considered as lost films. Any chance THE ROUGH RIDERS is in there? Or would that have been among the very first titles sent home?

drednm · Post by **drednm** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 2:12 pm

So several of these films are public domain and will be available for sale thru LOC....

The Blackbird · Post by **The Blackbird** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 2:54 pm

THE ARAB! I've always wanted to see that; here's hoping it gets released now....

Gagman 66 · Post by **Gagman 66** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 5:38 pm

Aaron,

I wonder about the Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky pairings THE DARK ANGEL (1925) and THE MAGIC FLAME (1927). Those are must finds. And how about a complete 35 Millimeter print of the original 1925 cut of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA? or even the 1923 HUNCHBACK? I'm not certain that WIFE OF THE CENTAUR is even really lost at all? I have read conflicting reports. Ditto THE EXQUISITE SINNER, But those would certainly be great ones too.

Hey, send me an E-mail. You got any Halloween photos?

Brooksie · Post by **Brooksie** » Fri Oct 22, 2010 7:45 pm

buskeat wrote:I understand that the existence of these films was known and thus not considered "lost" but has anyone ever had reasonable access to them? If not, that's as good as lost in my book and I'm thrilled.

I agree. Perhaps we need an additional designation - `Inaccessible'. There are tons of films that are known to exist in one archive of another - but if the likelihood of you or I ever getting to see them is next to nil, then they may as well be lost.

westegg · Post by **westegg** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 6:25 am

"Inaccessible" is all too true. I'd like to view, say, MR. LEMON OF ORANGE, currently residing at the UCLA archive, but unless TCM borrows it I'm afraid I'll have to settle for photos.

didi-5 · Post by **didi-5** » Sat Oct 23, 2010 7:25 am

Two Wallace Reid films in there - now that is exciting!

10 American Silent Films Returned Home from Russia

10 American Silent Films Returned Home from Russia

Variety: Silent films presented to Library of Congress