27 October 2010

Russia Gives U.S. Restored Copies of “Lost” Silent Films

Vladimir I. Kozhin (right), the Russian president's chief of staff, presents copies of U.S. silent films to Librarian of Congress James H. Billington (center).

By Sally Rountree
Staff Writer

Washington — Some of America’s early film history that was thought to have been lost forever has been recovered, thanks to the joint effort of dedicated film restorers in Russia and the perseverance of film scholars at the Library of Congress in Washington. Ten films from Hollywood’s silent film era have been found in Gosfilmofond, the Russian state film archive, restored, copied and presented to the Library of Congress on October 21.

“This is like finding a lost Picasso,” Pat Loughney, chief of the library’s $200 million Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation, told America.gov. “It’s that important.”

The Library of Congress, led by its chief librarian, James Billington, a cultural historian and specialist in Russian culture, has tried to repatriate the American films from Russia for decades. Working with other film sleuths, the library has tried to find and recover these lost films from archives worldwide. “The Library is committed to reclaiming America’s cinematic patrimony,” said Billington in a press release. “I am grateful to the dedicated staff of Gosfilmofond for their efforts to save these important artifacts of U.S. film history.”

The films represent some of the biggest names from early Hollywood, including The Arab (1915), by Cecil B. DeMille; The Eternal Struggle (1923), by Louis B. Mayer and starring Wallace Beery; and The Call of the Canyon (1923), directed by Victor Fleming, who went on to direct such American classics as Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. Scholars have been looking for films directed by such Hollywood legends as Fleming, Rex Ingram and James Cruze for years, according to Loughney.

These 10 films are the first installment of nearly 200 American movies that may exist only in the Russian archive, according to preliminary research by the Library of Congress. The library is planning to send a Russian-speaking film historian to Gosfilmofond to further the research process, with “the hope of receiving a steady stream of films over the next 18 months to two years and the balance by 2012,” according to Loughney.

The American cinema made more films in the 20th century than the rest of the world combined, Loughney said. Yet, because of neglect and deterioration, less than 20 percent of American silent movie–era films (1893–1930) still exist in the United States.

While dominating the world market, the American studios produced films for both American and foreign audiences. Owning all rights, the studios “very strictly” did their own translations for foreign distribution, Loughney said. While the translations may have been faithful, the films’ titles were often changed for foreign markets. “We may have asked the Russian archive for our film You’re Fired,” Loughney explained, “and they would say, ‘No, we don’t have it,’ since their title was completely different.”

Retrieving these films was the direct result of the Library of Congress working on digital exchanges with libraries in Russia, and the Russian Federation creating an all-digital presidential library in 2007. The new library, the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library, opened in 2009 in St. Petersburg, and signed a memorandum of cooperation last year with the Library of Congress.

Vladimir I. Kozhin, chief of staff for Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev, officially presented the films to the Library of Congress. He was accompanied by Nikolay Borodachev, general director of Gosfilmofond, and Alexander Vershinin, general director of the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library.

With the films in hand, the Library of Congress is now working to recover the American subtitles and restore the prints to original American format for eventual theatrical release. In the interim, the films “may be viewable as early as Thanksgiving [November 25],” says Loughney, by appointment only, at the Motion Picture and Television Reading Room at the Library of Congress in Washington.

The 1922 crime drama Kick In was among the early Hollywood movies restored by Russian film archivists and presented to the Library of Congress.

The Library of Congress, with more than 200,000 films, has the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of American and foreign-produced films. As the leading film preservation archive in the United States, it has preserved more than 20,000 feature films and short subjects in the past 30 years.

For more information, visit the Library of Congress website, or the Library of Congress’ interactive exhibits.

These are the 10 films presented by Gosfilmofond to the Library of Congress:

• The Arab (Metro, 1924). Director: Rex Ingram. Cast: Ramon Novarro, Alice Terry.

• Kick In (Famous Players, 1922). Director: George Fitzmaurice. Cast: Betty Compson, Bert Lytell, May McAvoy.

• The Conquest of Canaan (Famous Players, 1921). Director: Roy William Neill. Cast: Thomas Meighan, Doris Kenyon.

• The Eternal Struggle (Metro Pictures, Louis B. Mayer, 1923) Director: Reginald Barker. Cast: Renée Adorée, Earle Williams, Barbara La Marr, Wallace Beery, Pat O’Malley.

• You’re Fired (Famous Players, 1919). Director: James Cruze. Cast: Wallace Reid, Wanda Hawley.

• Keep Smiling (Monty Banks, 1925) Directors: Albert Austin, Gilbert Pratt. Cast: Monty Banks, Glen Cavender.

• The Call of the Canyon (Famous Players, 1923). Director: Victor Fleming. Cast: Richard Dix, Lois Wilson, Ricardo Cortez, Marjorie Daw.

• Canyon of the Fools, (R-C Pictures, 1923). Director: Val Paul. Cast: Harry Carey, Marguerite Clayton.

• Circus Days, (First National, 1923). Director: Edward F. Cline. Cast: Jackie Coogan, Barbara Tennant, Russell Simpson, Claire McDowell.

• Valley of the Giants, (Famous Players, 1919). Director: James Cruze. Cast: Wallace Reid, Grace Darmond.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)