Thursday, September 01, 2011

Top 10 Lost Films

Top 10 Lost Films: A lost film is one for which there is no known print to exhibit. Most of these films come, roughly, from around the turn of the century into the fifties, when less flammable film stock was adopted by the motion picture industry. It is estimated that more silent pictures are lost than survive, and there are scores of talking pictures from the thirties that are missing, as well. There are many reasons that a film becomes lost. The early film stock was flammable, and film warehouse fires were not uncommon. Sometimes studios destroyed the films themselves, through neglect, silver recovery processes or simply throwing them away. Additionally, old film stock turned to goo, even when properly stored, and films have been lost to film degradation. This is especially true of silent pictures. There are exceptions: Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton have only one or two lost films each.

3 comments:

Dan_Luft said...

Since they weren't mentioned I can still look for the original silent version of Great Gatsby and the Alan Ladd remake in the 1940s. I've never met anyone who's seen them

Anonymous said...

The article is fascinating, but I won't be visiting Listverse again except under duress. The swarm of pop-up and float-by ads is maddening!
A.S.

Anonymous said...

Wow, no mention of Murnau's 4 Devils.