The Past Is a Moving Picture: Preserving the Twentieth Century on Film

1. What to Show the World

WHAT TO SHOW THE WORLD In the first decade of the twenty-first century, moving image archivists and preservationists are in general agreement about the purpose and cultural significance of their work. The National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF), the nonprofit created by the United States Congress to help protect the country’s cinematic heritage, concisely articulates this agreed upon philosophy. The NFPF notes that Americans have been documenting their worlds with the motion picture camera since 1893. “They captured , with the immediacy unique to the moving image, how generations of Americans have lived, worked, and dreamed,” the foundation’s website explains.“Bypreservingthesefilmswesaveacenturyofhistory.”1 Formost archivists it seems to go without saying that films are critically important artifacts of the twentieth century. But archivists rarely focus their public conversations on what seems to be the obvious importance of the moving image historical record; instead they frequently stress that much of the filmic past has vanished and what remains of the cinematic record has the very real potential of disappearing. While no one knows how many films have disappeared entirely, the archival community generally agrees that approximately 10 percent of the films made between 1910 and 1920 still exist; 20 percent of the films made in the 1920s have survived, and only 50 percent of the feature films produced before 1950 remain at least partially intact. There is no way for the archivists 1 1 1 1 1 26 · Part I. Archives in Formation to know how many documentaries, shorts, and independent films have entirely disappeared from the cinematic record because their filmmakers rarely left behind documentation and trade magazines infrequently published material about them. The reasons for these numbers are varied, but the fragility and flammability of nitrate film stock and the early studios’ general disregard for films after their theatrical run are often noted as primary culprits. During the first years of the twentieth century, films were generally regarded as lowbrow entertainment with little cultural significance . Because they were not valued as an art form or an important part of theculturallandscape,studios,exhibitors,andaudiencesrarelyconsidered older films worthy of reissuing or preserving. Recounting her first trip to Hollywood to secure films for the Museum of Modern Art’s Film Library, Iris Barry wrote “we soon realized that, perhaps understandably, no one cared a button about ‘old’ films, not even his own last-but-one, but was solely concerned with his new film now in prospect .”2 Production companies did not want to pay to store the films they released, so negatives and prints were routinely destroyed. Because nitrate film stock was regarded as having more value than the images recorded on them, nitrate film was sold for the silver in its film base. The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company was an important exception. Reissuing short films, primarily D. W. Griffith’s films made between the years of 1908–13, the company added new titles to one-reel productions. Film historianAnthonySlideexplainstheyreissued thefilmsnotonlyto double the length of their newer reels, but also because they discovered that audiencesenjoyedwatchingthefilmsofscreenstarssuchasMary Pickfordand Lillian Gish when they were still anonymous actors. “It is perhaps exactly because these American Biograph productions had reissue value that they were cared for and survived,” Slide argues, “almost in their entirety, with the majority preserved today at the Museum of Modern Art.”3 While estimations of nitrate films that have disappeared are frequently cited to support the importance of the archival mission, many films made after the 1950s are missing and are at risk. Eastman Kodak replaced nitrate stock with acetate-based safety film in 1949 in an effort to prevent dangerous nitrate fires and explosions, but safety film, like nitrate, also deteriorates without proper and expensive storage. A disappearing record that archivists believe is as integral to history making as the printed word compels them to collect, protect, preserve, restore, and provide access What to Show the World · 27 to the nation’s cinematic remains. The coddling of cinematic ruins may seem obvious to the reader, but present-day archivists and preservationists could just as well explain that their mission is to manage the great volume of moving images in their care. Rather than focusing on the absence of cinematic artifacts, they could legitimately state that their mission is to manage an overwhelming amount of material that falls into their hands. We need only glance at some of the features of the new Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio...