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By PAUL BRENNER
"More Treasures from
American Film Archives 1894-1931," the National
Film Preservation Board's follow up to its
glorious 2000 collection, is even more glorious,
concentrating on American silent film during the
short silent film era from 1894 to 1931. Fifty
films are represented in the collection, spread
over three discs, beautifully preserved through
U.S. film archives including The Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences, George Eastman House,
The Library of Congress, The Museum of Modern Art,
and the UCLA Film and Television Archives.
And treasures these fifty films are indeed.
Shifting through this trove of treasures is both
exhilarating and melancholic.
The exhilaration comes from bathing in the
dizzying depth and range of silent film, not only
the features, but animation, experimental,
industrial, serials, advertising, comedy shorts,
union sponsored films, sound and color
experiments, trailers, and tantalizing fragments
of lost films. Viewing this gluttonous smorgasbord
of cinematic treats is like taking a slow, easy
journey through the sweet smelling underbrush of
American film art.
Because of the varied wonders to behold in this
collection, watching the fifty preserved films is
a bittersweet experience since the majority of
American silent films are lost. As is pointed out
in the commentary, only a mere 20% of the silent
films from the 1920s and 10% from the 1910s
survive, and many of the surviving films survive
in only fragmentary form. In this new 20th century
art form, the film archives are waging an
hourglass battle against time and decay. When even
films like "Vertigo" and "My Fair Lady" have to be
rescued from oblivion, how much more precarious
and precious is the silent film backbone of
American cinema. The evanescence of an art is no
more apparent than in film. Thankfully, the
dedication and love of archivists and
preservationists are doing what they can to
preserve a fragile legacy.
The three are discs are divided into programs, all
sampling the variety of forms and showcasing
exceptional silent film features and curiosities.
The highlights of Program One include a collection
of early advertising films: an evocative D.W.
Griffith short from 1909 called "The Country
Doctor;" a 1916 programmer, "Gretchen the
Greenhorn" (starring Griffith alumnus Dorothy
Gish); and an impressive Thomas H. Ince western
from 1912, "The Invaders," directed by John Ford's
brother and silent film star Francis Ford, which
takes an atypically pro-Indian stance in its tale
of broken treaties and battles with the U.S.
Cavalry.
Program Two's potpourri includes of Hale's Tour
point-of-view train robbery from 1908 ("From
Leadville to Aspen"); a cute and grizzly Edwin S.
Porter fairy tale and "Straw Dogs" precursor
called "The Teddy Bears," which starts out sweet
and cuddly and ends up in a bloodbath as a Teddy
Roosevelt look-alike guns down Momma and Poppa
Bear; a progressive film from the Edison company,
"Children Who Labor" from 1912, on the evils of
child labor; early color film tests; a thoroughly
surreal Charles Bowers short from 1928 ("There It
Is"); a rousing Rin Tin Tin film from 1925 called
"Clash of the Wolves" (with florid titles like
"The High Sierras -- whose sheltering paradise of
green changes to an inferno of terror -- when
nature puts on he garments of red"); and, last but
not least, an early sound film featuring Gus
Visser and his Singing Duck (I won't tell you how
Gus gets his duck to quack; I can only tell you
that it ain't pretty).
The centerpiece of Program Three is Ernst
Lubitsch's witty and sparkling 1925 "Lady
Windermere's Fan" with "the Lubitsch touch"
shining through even from this early date. The
other highlights include Alice Guy-Blanche's
impressive 1912 drama "Falling Leaves;" fieldwork
footage of poor black workers and their families
from the South, filmed by Zora Neale Hurston in
1928; and a collection of trailers from lost films
(amongst them that rarest-of-rare films, the
Lubitsch/Jannings film "The Patriot).
And this just scratches the surface of a DVD
collection of innumerable value and necessity.
The collection includes a thick booklet of
extensive program notes; interactive notes on the
discs; and audio commentary on most of the films
on the discs with a vast array of the finest
archivists and film historians in the country --
Rick Prelinger, Steven Ross, Paolo Cherchi Usai,
Stephen Gong, Jay Carr, Carla Kaplan, Patrick
Loughney, Stephen Higgins, Tom Gunning, Rennard
Strickland, Jennifer M. Bean, Blain M. Bartell,
and Elena Pinto Simon. |
