Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective

List of lost films

List of film with no parts surviving From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

List of lost films
Remove ads

For this list of lost films, a lost film is defined as one of which no part of a print is known to have survived. For films in which any portion of the footage remains (including trailers), see List of incomplete or partially lost films.

Thumb
Lon Chaney appeared in numerous now-lost films. This still is from The Miracle Man (1919), a mostly lost film.
Thumb
At one time a popular player at Fox, all of Valeska Suratt's Fox films are lost.
Remove ads

Reasons for loss

Films may go missing for a number of reasons. One major contributing factor is the common use of nitrate film until the early 1950s. This type of film is highly flammable, and there have been several devastating fires, such as the 1914 Lubin vault fire, the Universal Pictures fire in 1924, the Warner Bros. First National fire in 1933, the British and Dominions Imperial Studios fire in 1936, the 1937 Fox vault fire, and the 1965 MGM vault fire.[1]

Black-and-white film prints judged to be otherwise worthless were sometimes incinerated to salvage the meager scrap value of the silver image particles in their emulsions.[2] Silent films in particular were once seen as having no further commercial value and were simply junked to clear out expensive storage space.[3] Occasionally, a studio would remake a film and destroy the earlier version.[2] Films have also disappeared when production companies went bankrupt.[2]

Remove ads

Statistics on lost films

Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation claimed in 2017 that "half of all American films made before 1950 and over 90% of films made before 1929 are lost forever".[4] Deutsche Kinemathek estimates that 80–90% of silent films are gone;[5] the film archive's own list contains over 3,500 lost films.

A study by the Library of Congress of 2013 states that 75% of all silent films are lost.[6] While others dispute whether the percentage is quite that high,[7] it is impractical to enumerate here any but the more notable and those which can be sourced.

For example, roughly 200 out of over 500 Méliès films and 350 out of over 1,000 of Alice Guy's films survive. Of the roughly 1,100 films made in India between 1912 and 1931, only 29 are known to have survived.[8]

Remove ads

Notable lost films

Among the films commonly mourned among critics and film historians are early films by noted directors and films of unique cultural importance. The Mountain Eagle (1926) is the second film directed by Alfred Hitchcock; the silent melodrama has been described by the British Film Institute as their "most wanted" lost film.[9] London After Midnight, starring Lon Chaney and directed by Tod Browning in 1927, was a silent-era mystery-thriller pseudo-vampire film that is now considered to be the "holy grail" of lost films by collectors.[10] Hollywood, a 1923 silent comedy film directed by James Cruze, featured over 30 cameo appearances from major stars of the day, including Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Astor and Pola Negri, but no footage exists.[11]

Silent films

Summarize
Perspective

1890s

More information Year, Film ...

1900s

More information Year, Film ...

1910s

1920s

Remove ads

Sound films

From 1929 on, films are "all-talking" unless otherwise specified.

1920s

More information Year, Film ...

1930s

More information Year, Film ...

1940s

More information Year, Film ...

1960s

More information Year, Film ...

1970s

More information Year, Film ...

1980s

More information Year, Film ...
Remove ads

References

Loading related searches...

Wikiwand - on

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.

Remove ads