Forgotten films

[dkane]

It would be fascinating to look at some short lists [say six or seven] of pictures

that are most urgently in need of rescue from their undeserved oblivion. I mean

of course films that were once considered to have a degree of importance or value and which have not been shown anywhere, not by Turner, or PBS, or the net-

works, or on vhs for years or even decades. Are they lost, merely overlooked,

deliberately suppressed, or what? My nominations are:

 

The Trial of Mary Dugan {first genuine all talkie]

Angel Baby [Elmer Gantry for adults]

A Cold Wind in August [who was that teenage super?]

The Moon is Down [Norway occupied by super actors]

Guest in the House {Anne Baxter vs. Ruth Warrick]

[feaito]

"Madonna of the Seven Moons"

[karlofffan]

> It would be fascinating to look at some short lists

> [say six or seven] of pictures

> that are most urgently in need of rescue from their

> undeserved oblivion.

 

 

 

My nominations

> are:

>

> The Trial of Mary Dugan

> {first genuine all talkie]

 

Lights of New York (1928) is considered the first all talkie. Was Trial of Mary Dugan the first _MGM_ talkie?

[GOS]

I don't think The Moon is Down (1943) or Angel Baby (1961) are lost. I can remember seeing both of them on tv within the last five years.

[dkane]

I envy GOS who was lucky enough to have seen Moon is Down and Angel Baby

in "the last five years" To put that into perspective, let',s just imagine the number

of opportunities any living American over the age of twelve has had even in the

last one year to see Bringing Up Baby, The Quiet Man, or A Star Is Born. The

Thin Man! They"re inescapable. It's time, in my opinion, to give many of the

overexposed classics a rest, and to dig a little deeper. If not, great pictures that

for the moment seem to be forgotten , could suffer serious neglect and become

truly lost.

[Wayne]

Message sent in error

[Wayne]

"Journey's End" (1930) ---- Colin Clive, David Manners. And the directorial debut of James Whale.

 

About five years ago, AMC showed "Soup to Nuts" (1930), the big screen debut of The Three Stooges, back when they were Ted Healy's Stooges. It's an early Fox film that I always assumed was lost. I was pleasantly surprised to see it resurface and have hopes for a similar comeback for "Journey's End."

[lzcutter]

Dkane,

 

One of the big problems is that we are now living in a digital age. Films that were shown even five years ago now have to be remastered on a digital format so that TCM and other channels can show them.

 

Films that were mastered on laserdisc have to be remastered for DVD and, in some cases, the vaults have to be scoured for extras.

 

Some films often show up in overseas archives or found in towns that were once end of the line for film distribution. These films and elements have to be preserved and restored and incorporated into the original or existing film elements and remastered.

 

None of this is cheap. Film preservation and restoration is an expensive process and can take years. Warner Bros, for example, won't release certain films until the original release versions can be found or proven non-existant. They also will shelf films that are in the restoration process because they don't want people seeing inferior prints and thinking they are the restored versions. That causes people not to spend the money on the real restored versions..

 

And have no doubt, money is a factor in all this. Any studio can make more money releasing boxed sets of old television series than it can off of releasing boxed sets of films from its vaults.

 

However, some studios such as WBros and Fox realize that there is money and prestige to be made in releasing the classics. Those $$$ will never compete with the tv boxed sets but often the prestige makes up for it.

 

We classic filmlovers are a niche market and we have to be marketed to in a special way to sell the discs and boxed sets.

 

We should keep clamoring for more releases from all the studios because that gets the attention that there is a market for those beloved films, especially those that discs or sets that go the extra mile with extras.

 

However, we also have to keep in mind that we don't always get what we want, when we want it, but if we are patient, we often get everything over a period of time.

[FredCDobbs]

Izzy, maybe you can explain something to me. Years ago TV film projectors ran a film at 24 fps and the TV pickup tube (and video tape) recorded it at 30 fps. This old incompatible method caused a two-frame double exposure during the TV video tape recording process. Two of every few film frames were double exposed (printed over each other) on the video tape. You can see this by running an old movie slow on video tape.

 

But I?ve noticed that many movies shown on network TV today and also on TCM, have no double-exposed frames, and in fact the video process captures three frames in a row once, and every fourth frame is captured twice. That converts the 24 fps of film into 30 fps of video with no double exposed film frames. No one notices that every fourth film frame is shown twice on the TV screen. This method avoids the blurry double-exposed film frames.

 

I assume that some kind of new TV film projector has been invented that accomplishes this. What do you know about it?