Lost Films of Silent Era Hollywood
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- Опубліковано 18 бер 2023
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Do you think London After Midnight will every be found?
#cleopatra #lostmedia #scifi - Розваги
I'm always amazed on how iconic the London After Midnight imagery has become despite the fact that no one here saw it
I knew the image of the man in the beaver hat from Blitzkid's "Trace of A Stranger"!
Monster magazines of the 50s and 60s had a big role in keeping that iconic image alive, and drumming up all the interest in finding a film that was deemed unremarkable in its time
And yet the ‘Vampire’ Chaney plays turns out to be a detective in disguise.
In the 1970's on Chicago's WGN-TV, an image of Chaney in the film accompanied by Henry Mancini's spine-tingling theme from the thriller *Experiment in Terror* (1962) was used as the title card for *Creature Features,* a program which ran many of the Universal horror classics.
Even the title "London After Midnight" was familiar to me.
“70% to 90% of silent films are completely lost”
I felt physical pain when I read that 💀
Us who lost 95 % of films made before 1975 during the cambodian genocide and war: first time?
@@ungbonhbot3662dang nice to see another Khmer here
The biggest shame is that even Silent films that are considered found are still mostly missing the sheet music that is meant to be played along with the movie.
Also what makes lost silent movies fun is you got confirmed as lost and believed lost.
With confirmed as found and believed lost scenes and confirmed as missing scenes.
So yes silent movies are an amazing topic with tons of twists and turns.
And the circumstances that take place when they are found is always crazy. I know a few lost films were recovered from a shipwreck and were in very good shape good enough to be scanned and restored in their entirety aside from the music. It makes me wonder if there are other wrecks with intact lost films or some old theater with a bunch of lost films stuck in a box in a back room.
My local art Kino, Babylon, has a house orchestra for silent films. They commission new arrangements based on the original soundtracks and wholly new soundtracks for films where its been lost. Many films had no standard soundtrack at all and every Kino organist/pianist had their own tropes they relied on. Babylon brings in many musicians to accompany their films. There's 3 that I enjoy a lot and go see whenever they play. One is very good at playing to Chaplin films, which is nice because Chaplin was very perfectionist about the music in his films.
One lost film I want to find is a 1917 Argentinian film called El Apostol. It was the first animated feature film, 20 years before Snow White.
There is also one animated film that came out 11 years before Snow White came out. However, that film isn’t lost and you can easily find it online. It’s called The Tales of Prince Achmed which was released in 1926 in Weimar Republic Germany and is now the oldest surviving animated feature length film in existence.
It's sad how many silent films are lost. I was really happy to see almost all footage from The Lost World 1925 was found and restored into the film in 2017
if you look at the building plans, yes it was so poorly designed to the point it should be one of the casualties in a warzone, but on the other; the electrical components were incredible managed that it had near-impossibility to cause a fire. late 20th century films are always suspected that some sort of sabotage from a rival group or worse nonsense treason from the directors hopped up on some human-killing narcotic. this is the primary reason why Hollywood and her daughter companies CAN'T work without public intervention!?
I'm a film student and it hurts me how many films are lost by many reasons, but in a way that makes the ones we still have as something very special...
In an university in Argentina, in which one if my teachers studied, was found the complete version of Metropolis. There's still hope!
And the worst part is that we'll DEFINITELY get into a new Mass Lost Media Period with all these streaming services making people having aversion to physical copies. Even in my country, ALL the companies that produced physical copies to send (CDs, DVDs, blu-rays, PlayStation/Xbox games) were closed for good, ending the physical copies industry forever, here.
Since I was a teenager, I always believed that we're gonna witness a digital blackout like the one on the short movie Blade Runner- Blackout 2022, but on the internet, that every online thing will just disappear... And seeing people just kissing physical stuff goodbye so easily just depresses me.
@@RodrickMarsMoon People seem to be pretty divided on physical media at the moment. While a lot of people are passing on owning physical copies, I have met people who've gone back to physical because they're fed up of having to subscribe to so many different streaming services.
as in THE complete metropolis from nowadays? neat
@@RodrickMarsMoon woah as a big fan of the blade runner movies i hadn't known about the short, thank you for talking about it!!
I know some lost films have been found again some were recovered from a shipwreck almost 100 years after it sank and were able to be restored and scanned. It was extremely lucky that they were preserved in such a way. There are many other lost films I hope are one day found in the back room of an old theater.
That's why I despise when anyone ever says "Hollywood has run out of ideas." Remakes, sequels, and adaptions have ALWAYS been a part of cinema. But now I come to find out that making a sequel to a horror film a parody/comedic version of the first is also something a century old. And then a prequel for the third one, too.
My favorite part of Cleopatra is how “obscene” they made the costumes. Like, they aren’t even that bad yet 1917 was a different time
Imagine them surviving up to 1950, seeing scantily clad of a bikini
Some of the costumes from the lost footage apparently made it easy to see all of her lady parts. The costumes we can see today are from publicity stills, which didn’t show the more risqué stuff.
You’d be surprised how horny ye olde times were lol.
People think our generation is soft but older generations couldn't handle kissing or swearing whatsoever
showing someone from that era 50 shades of grey would probably send them into a fuckin coma
I'm a huge fan of silent cinema, so it saddens me that so many films have been lost.
lost media is actually what got me into silent films, which i’m a huuuuge fan of. id love to see you cover babe comes home and also the patriot!!!
Wait, Babe comes home?? Like, Babe as in that film series about the talking pet pig?
@@guldobean1217 no, the 1927 silent film starring babe ruth
@@aquasomethingyouknowwhatever Whoa, I didn't know Babe Ruth was in a film! Tbh I'm actually really new to lost media in general. I first got into the topic cuz of a video essay I stumbled on regarding a lost Nintendo DS "game" that was actually a McDonald's Training program.
@@guldobean1217 welcome to the community!
@@aquasomethingyouknowwhatever Thanks! It's been a fun adventure so far!
5:50 another interesting fact about Tenderloin: its star, Dolores Costello, is the grandmother of Drew Barrymore. Really puts into perspective how recent this history actually is.
She plays "Dearest," the mother of the title character in *Little Lord Fauntleroy* (1936).
@@oliverbrownlow5615 Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Little Lord Flauntleroy is also the source of a Nippon animation anime show called Cedie.
It's honestly devastating how so many of these films are just Gone from our history, like a 19th and 20th century Library of Alexandria
#1 on my wishlist is 1921’s “The Mechanical Man”, one of the first films to feature a fully-realized robot _(two_ in fact), and of which only about half still exists. Also, the two lost Japanese King Kong-inspired films of the 1930s, plus 1934’s “The Great Buddha Arrival”, about the giant statue going for a stroll across Japan, which recently got a remake/tribute movie. Only a few stills & promotional images from contemporary newspaper articles exist for these ☹️
It is truly tragic how many films from this era are lost. I feel like there's so much historical significance to these movies from the earliest age of cinema, like there's so much insight to be gained about the medium as a whole in silent films and it's a shame how much of that content we will never see 😢 of course at the time, people's ability to preserve things like this was quite limited regardless of whether or not the desire was there, and due to the sheer age of these films the chances of finding salvageable film reels is slim. However, the rediscovery and subsequent preservation of significant films like Metropolis and The Passion of Joan of Arc does give me and others some hope! As a huge fan of horror movies I pray London After Midnight might resurface someday! 🙏
Anyways, a great video 😊 I think more vids on older stuff like these would be really interesting!
Not to mention all of the gd studio fires
I hope London After Midnight is found! I desperately want to see Lon Chaney as a detective trying to catch a killer by pretending to be a shark toothed vampire! What a bonkers concept! But if anyone could pull it off, it would be Chaney (him or Conrad Veidt!).
This also all reminds me of the "Lister's Rache" creepypasta, which I'm still not convinced isn't at least partly real. Carl May is a real person. A major producer in both Weimar Germany and early Hollywood. The Lord Lister books were very popular, especially among the crowds that read Arsene Lupin. There's no proof that a Lord Lister serial wasn't produced. But my research turned up no results for the supposed director in that story, which is the real key to it. If he's real, the story is a gross exaggeration of something true. If not, it's the best "lost episode" creepypasta ever written
Dude, silent movies have a creepy vibe in general. Think about it, movies from 100 years ago almost, all the people in those movies are gone, nobody's talking, it's cinema history, but there's just something off, but fascinating about it all.
It’s so tragic that so many silent films are lost! I’d love for the rest of Clara Bow’s filmography to be found, especially.
Over the last few years, I've been purchasing any reel of nitrate film (the highly flamable film used during the silent era) that I come across. So far, I've built up a collection of around 150 small reels of film. I would say about half of the films that I've actually scanned and been able to identify are otherwise lost or unavailable. Most of these have been very obscure productions without much historical significance but I have found the odd clip that has a real artistic flair or just an interesting vibe to it. My favourite of the bunch might be a segment of "A Lover's Oath" from 1924. You can find a lot of this stuff on my channel although a good portion of the films still need scanned and uploaded.
Where do you find these old film reels?
@@panzerknightgaming4280 Auctions, online and in person
Oh wow. Lol cool.
Definitely one of my fav lost media subjects. Thank you so much for covering it!
Whenever a lost silent film is found, it’s like finding the Holy Grail!
Loved the speech cards at the beginning mike! a nice touch for this topic
I'm one of those people who think that London After Midnight, if rediscovered, would probably end up being a disappointment.
But you still want to see it, don't you?
@@oliverbrownlow5615 Oh yeah, of course!
A key reason, the Great Gatsby is known as it is today is because it was one of the books published for US servicemen in WWII by the Council on Books in Wartime. The popularity of among the military encouraged critics and scholars to re-examine the work.
It helps that it’s been public domain in Australia for about thirty two years now. I don’t mind! It’s also been PD in Germany for twelve years.
@@SlapstickGenius23 Probably is something to it being public domain in some places. Easy to print and keeps it in the public eye.
I always find it funny how adaptations and remakes are considered a modern thing that Hollywood does too much, but you're right, if you read up on your film history you see that most silent films are just that, adaptations and remakes of earlier films. Hell, The Cat Creeps was made like 4 times prior to the 1950's.
You're right but it's not the same thing. At the time it was impossible to watch a movie outside of the original run, so it was more convenient for them to remake the movie with modern technologies than re-release it. Dracula even has a spanish-speaking remake made alongside the american movie because it was easier to do that than dub the movie in spanish.
Most of early Disney movies (up until the 60's) were never re-released outside of some exclusives screenings before the 90's VCR.
@@ahok1937 Incorrect. Re-releases were very common, hence why the Universal monsters saw a great revival in the 60's and why double billings and matinees showing older films were fairly common across the country in the 40's. All you needed was a print, which were far easier to produce than a film. What you're describing was about adapting existing films with updated tech such as how Phantom got multiple releases during the silent era and right at the start of the talkies with dubbing. Even Hitch's Blackmail did it too. It wasn't that they couldn't distribute, it was a matter of meeting audience expectations from the silent era, to the talkies, to the technicolor eras and beyond. Dracula was a very rare case. Funny enough, they over dubbed films from the 30's a lot in the 50's, lots of John Wayne films got that treatment.
More Lost Media! I love learning about this: the history, the chases to try and search for it, and the research for it is really cool!
I love your videos dude!
Laurel & Hardy's "Hats Off" (1927 or 28)- an early version of their Oscar winning sound short "The Music Box" this missing gem features Stan N Ollie moving a 20s washing machine up a large flight of stairs- in fact, the exact same flight of stairs! The film has NOT been seen since 1929/30 and Laurel & Hardy fans (like myself) REALLY want this one back! (All that exists is a shooting script and several stills.)
Thank you for covering this topic as I believe it's little talked about within the lost media community, due to the fact that many people in it are millennials and Gen z and are only gonna talk about things that are relevant to them understandably. The discovery of lost silent films is something that has fascinated me for years. Movies that I wished were found are all those early film directed by Black filmmakers; they were called "Race Films". Black filmmakers like Oscar Micheaux did them on a very little budget, they were among the first independent movies, and in the south were screened at times when only Black people were allowed in theaters. Sadly like a lot of movies of that era most of them are lost, as they were in very poor quality even after sound came in. Finding them it's very important as it would help us to understand a little bit more about the history of African American cinema.
When it comes to classic silent comedy, there are many lost films. Some I want to see include the early films of Moe Howard of The Three Stooges from Vitagraph Studios (1908-1911) (up to 40 films lost), Humor Risk with the Marx Brothers (1921), and Laurel and Hardy’s Hats Off (1927).
I don't know if you know this, but the Spring Break 2002 episode of Fear Factor you discussed in an earlier video has been found.
Also, you could make an entire video dedicated to Eddsworld lost media, there is just so much (there's even a Twitter account and UA-cam Channel dedicated to it)
Lmao, back in 1917 the costumes to Cleopatra weren't approved; time was different back then. But London at Midnight and The Golem are the most fascinating in my eyes, as I am affectionate towards supernatural and sci-fi horror flicks. The mysteries surrounding silent movies sure are something.
I really liked the intro to this one. You gotta experiment with your intros more often!
An excellent presentation giving enough background for folks a hundred years later to put these lost films into context. Well done!
No mention of the Laurel and Hardy movie Hats Off? Thats one of the holy grails of lost movies, yet no one ever covers it.
I've always been interested in finding the first movie about the Titanic, which came the same year the ship sank and had one of the survivors as an actress.
Mine is The Ghost of Slumber Mountain. It’s the first feature film from Willis O’Brian, the guy who animated King Kong. It was cut from 40 minutes to around 20. Same happened to his follow up The Lost World, but that one is almost, or fully complete. Same for the 1925 version of Phantom of the Opera. I hope the original color sequences and a better print are found. Or the missing 5 minutes of Metropolis. There’s too many, but Slumber Mountain is my pick.
For the London After Midnight remake, i think it's brillant that the twist ending is that the movie is also a remake to lure the original killer. It's obviously made in purpose, and if the original movie was not lost nobody would dislike it i think.
Lost media is particularly interesting to me. Keep up the great work! Glad to have a channel dedicated to this.
I really wanna see a video going into detail about all of these studio fires.
It breaks my heart how many old films are gone forever. The fact that we have any at all is a miracle. In that regard, there is some hope that more will turn up. But unfortunately some are most certainly gone from this world forever.
You did such a great job on this. Early cinema is one of my favorite categories of lost media. Keep up the good work!
Surprised to didn't cover the original 8 hour cut of Greed or the alternative versions of Phantom of The Opera. Those don't really get enough attention as stuff like London After Midnight. Still a good list. Thanks Mike
I heard of the 8 hour Greed cut often enough to not be surprised it's not on here. Though I'm pretty sure I've only heard of the Phantom's lost scenes like once on UA-cam.
If you haven’t seen it, check out Dark Corners Reviews’ video about lost silents from a few years ago here on YT, they discuss Greed as well as many other outstanding films.
A lost silent movie is the first bulgarian movie EVER made in 1915, it's called Bulgaran is a gallant (Българан е галант) with a run time of 60min. The film was almost entirely (one frame is all that's left) destroyed during the World War II bombardment of Sofia is the official theory. It's more likely that the original print was saved but the communists burned it for depicting bourgeoisie Sofia.
Vasil Gendov and his later wife Jana were the leads and Vasil himself was director and writer
The original run time was 60min but there is a 5min remake on YT filmed back in 1998
My local paper archive goes back to 1875, so I searched up london after midnight, and it was shown in my town! Makes you wonder if there's a copy collecting dust in some nowhere town somewhere
As a film critic & lover, the fact some of these are so far gone genuinely makes me wanna cry. I fucking love cinema & film.
As of the case of the golem. People seem to forget that people are people and a hack lazy idea like the plot of Gollum two, is bound to happen when you are trying to stretch some thing for money. The reason that there aren’t insane sequels to the silent era films normally is because the institution of film itself wasn’t established enough for it to happen I firmly believe if you gave these film makers of the silent era, the amount of money, equivalent, to the amount of money that all of these slasher films in the 80s made they would’ve cranked out sequel after sequel.
The Better Films Board's response is so funny to me, considering how perverted so many of Ben Franklin's writings were. The guy's writings about why he preferred older women are anything but clean and decent.
The first fictional and first comedy movie of Finland is lost media. Salaviinanpolttajat (The Moonshiners) obviously told about illegal distillery. Very Finnish stuff. 😅 Only some newspaper ads and some other texts about that movie still exists. The movie used he same screenplay as a theater drama with the same name but the screenplay for that theater show is also lost media.
Of course some people at IMdB have reviewed it and made a 'plot' for it but it is all fake. 😂
Thanks for the video, hope everyone has a great day!
All Things Lost. I am Jay Ridders, a buff on animation. Recently, I learned about this rare British-Canadian CGI-puppet-hybrid show called Don’t Eat the Neighbours, or Big Teeth, Bad Breath as it was called in Canada. This is just an idea, but maybe look more into this, see what you can find.
Great video as always.
Can you make a video about the most wanted films?
Yooo fantastic video as always my man! It’s insane to me that such a influential part of modern culture is completely lost smh
I always found silent films to be so intriguing, and I really wish more lost media channels would cover them!
Why no mention of Dame Mae Fishman? She was a film actress who became famous alongside her friends Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand. She distanced herself from the Hollywood limelight and lived alone, but her peers still remembered her fondly. Ronald Reagan, another actor, called her the best actress of his time. Fishman died in 1981, and her legacy continues to inspire aspiring actors. She is an iconic figure who symbolizes an unforgettable era in film history.
the majority of films from the silent era, and beginning of sound era, no longer existing, i think they estimate, that 80 or 90 percent of films made prior to the years 1930 or 1929 are lost forever, i compare it to the burning of the library of alexandria from ancient times, as well as other library or lost destroyed works of architecture, art, from the centuries, milleniums past
Just seeing the intro of this… love it already.
Not sure if it's already been mentioned in the 100+ comments below, but movie studios in the 30's would often melt-down the old nitrate film for the silver content. The film-vault fires you mentioned made the studios wary about storing nitrate movies that (as far as they were concerned) no one would want to see, and that they'd never show again.
Very interesting presentation, thank you.
the intro was incredible lmao
Sadly, even if all of these films are found, the people who made them and starred in them will never know as they have already died
Hate to burst your bubble, but London After Midnight has virtually the same plot as Mark of the Vampire, but instead of one character (Chaney) playing the three in universe roles of a detective, a hypnotist, and a fake vampire, these roles were split into three characters for realism's sake. Of course, nothing about the premise is realistic, its all rather Scooby-Doo, except the guy in the mask is the good guy trying to scare the killer 😆
I'm revitalizing my lost media searches soon, mostly focused on various '90s content - let's do a collaboration!
London After Midnight has the exact same twist as Mark of the Vampire. The difference is the number of actors the characters got to play the vampires, with five in LAM, and just two in MotV.
So many vault fires at studios. Must’ve been a sizable payout
Your channel is great
The original London After Midnight had the same twist more or less
I saw "Lost films of the silent era" and was surprised it wasn't a 9 hour video hahahaha
Good idea to just focus on your few faves
Well researched and well produced. The pre-1930 era is a special time in film art history. An art form all its own. Developed out of innovation, experimentation and huge talents drawn by the public's insatiable appetite for more and more productions.
Although up to 90% of the era's production is considered lost, gems are discovered even today. I've just scanned, edited, restored and uploaded an 18 minute piece of an otherwise lost 1928 film. 35mm nitrate.
I recently found about 100 to 200 reels in my attic. The person that lived here before was a hollywood editor. I just put them in a climate controlled situation in Festus Missouri. I saw Buster Keaton on one. I know he was an important actor but I just don't know how to preserve them. I can't handle them.
Vertov was on two reels?
I'm just wondering if...
Has anyone here ever heard of *Svengoolie?*
He'd host a block every Saturday of Creature Features! He'd mention everything from Rey Mysterio to a tuna sandwich, & somehow relate it to the films that were anywhere between 40 - 100 Years Old!
My grandfather was an early projectionist on the west coast, mainly SF, and i found 2 posters in a trunk of his recently. One is for Black Waters 1929 which claims to be the first British Talkie after previewing before Hitchcocks Blackmail was released to theaters.
i love ur channel bro
my headphones stopped working during the sponsor and I almost thought you straight up didn't record any audio for it
We need a Pokémon lost media vid!
there were two other silent frankenstein adaptations, both of which are lost. Life Without a Soul (1915) and Il Mostro di Frankenstein (1920)
What 1920 movie are you talking about?
1920 and we still got a sponsor
Now THIS is what I think of when I think of "lost media".
It is very serendipitous that the chronologically first Golem film is the only one in the trilogy that isn’t lost.
The Miracle Man! That’s my holy grail of lost media, as it was said to be one of the best movies of its era.
Weirdly enough, Lon Chaney’s character from London After Midnight was painted on a haunted house attraction at a pop up fair near where I live.
Where are those two clips from london after midnight from?
8:30 Yeah, pretty much
Laurel and Hardy's "Hats Off" is a silent comedy loss for sure.
Maaaaannnnnn. You can't be withholding your verbal greetings from us. I look forward to them. Your voice is really welcoming. Though, fair play, it does fit the subject.
I want some of these films to have remakes, be faithful & respect to the original material.
I got a question that has been tickling my cerebral cortex if anyone can answer it. How is it that lost films (such as "Cleopatra") have been destroyed in things such as fires, yet short clips and hundreds of film stills survive?
my english HS teacher is literally preparing us for the Great Gatsby
The Jazz Singer was, by far, not the first movie with recorded dialogue. The first feature length film following the big five agreement maybe. Many of the 1000 sound movies Deforest produced between 1920-1924 had spoken dialogue. Even entire comedy routines & speeches.
Does anyone know how that fire was started? Was it an accident, on purpose?
I never read The Great Gatsby in high school
Everything from Twisted Metal (Video Game) to The Simpsons (TV Show) has been influenced by these films in some, maybe even vague, way. Everything comes from somewhere! You need to appreciate the classics.
Can you make a vidoe about lost pieces of Mario Stuff since the Mario movie is coming
Should have left The Great Gatsby forgotten, it was painful to read the first page without falling asleep
make a video on lost onyx colony songs
I want to see "Saved From the Titanic" which premiered a month after the ship sank and starred Dorothy Gibson, who was actually rescued from the Titanic.
What a coincidence, I watched a couple silent movies today that aren't lost!
One of them has an outdated depiction of Asians however 😮💨
Yo why the thumbnail change a few times?
Oh,I was kinda expecting the whole video to be silent...
I wish one day I be able to watch the lost silent movies of Joan Crawford
I’m so disappointed that the Brilliant add wasn’t in the style of the opening. I want a transatlantic add read calling it swell
the character in ''london after midnight'' looks like ozzy osbourne lol
13:48 the woman of a 1000 faces is Tara strong