Lost Film:
A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or public archives such as the Library of Congress, where all American films are deposited and catalogued for copyright reasons. Of American silent films far more have been lost than have survived, and of American sound films made from 1927 to 1950, perhaps half have been lost.
The phrase "lost film" is also used in a literal sense for instances where footage of deleted scenes, unedited and alternative versions of feature films are known to have been created but can no longer be accounted for.
Sometimes a copy of a lost film is rediscovered. A film that has not been recovered in its entirety is called a partially lost film.
Quite often a lost film of a major production studio may have still photographs, shot at the time of production, often on glass negative. Glass negatives if properly maintained can last indefinitely preserving image fidelity.
Reasons for film loss:
Most lost films are from the silent film and early talkie era, from about 1894 to 1930. Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation estimates that 80 percent of the American from this era are lost.
Many early motion pictures are lost because the nitrate film used in that era was extremely flammable. Fires have destroyed entire archives of films; for example, a storage vault fire in 1937 destroyed all the original negatives of Fox Pictures pre-1935 movies. Nitrate film is also chemically unstable over time, and can decay rapidly if not preserved in temperature and humidity controlled storage. Films with a nitrate base can be preserved by being copied to safety film or digitized.
Eastman Kodak introduced a nonflammable 35mm film stock in spring 1909. However, the plasticizers used to make the film flexible evaporated too quickly, making the film dry and brittle, causing splices to part and perforations to tear. By 1911 the major American film studios were back to using nitrate stock. "Safety film" was relegated to sub-35 mm formats such as 16 mm and 8 mm until improvements were made in the late 1940s.
The phrase "lost film" is also used in a literal sense for instances where footage of deleted scenes, unedited and alternative versions of feature films are known to have been created but can no longer be accounted for.
Sometimes a copy of a lost film is rediscovered. A film that has not been recovered in its entirety is called a partially lost film.
Quite often a lost film of a major production studio may have still photographs, shot at the time of production, often on glass negative. Glass negatives if properly maintained can last indefinitely preserving image fidelity.
Reasons for film loss:
Most lost films are from the silent film and early talkie era, from about 1894 to 1930. Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation estimates that 80 percent of the American from this era are lost.
Eastman Kodak introduced a nonflammable 35mm film stock in spring 1909. However, the plasticizers used to make the film flexible evaporated too quickly, making the film dry and brittle, causing splices to part and perforations to tear. By 1911 the major American film studios were back to using nitrate stock. "Safety film" was relegated to sub-35 mm formats such as 16 mm and 8 mm until improvements were made in the late 1940s.