Home Movie Resources

During the past two weeks, we’ve barely skimmed the surface of the complex subject of home movie preservation.  Fortunately, there are several good internet resources available that plunge into the technical depths and offer truly practical information.

Snowden Becker, co-founder of the annual international Home Movie Day event and the nonprofit Center for Home Movies, recommends checking out the Transfer Page at the Center for Home Movies:  “It’s a great guide to home movie preservation and transfer options that addresses these questions and many more, as well as a geographically-organized listing of labs and vendors that offer film-to-video transfer services.”

In addition, Snowden notes two other reliable sites to visit:  “The Home Film Preservation Guide, which you can browse or download, has excellent information for the kitchen-table film archivist; so does the Film Preservation Guide: The Basics for Libraries, Archives, and Museums, which is also available for free download.”

When obtaining permission from Reed Sturtevant to use one of his photos for Monday’s blog entry, Reed alerted me to his very relevant internet project:  the Super 8 Wiki.  Here you can find 2,046 articles covering every facet of this once-very-popular home movie format.

My very sincere thanks to Snowden Becker for helping me out not once but twice.  First, she worked with me on the home movie entries for our participation in the Film Preservation Blogathon and now she’s provided the expert advice for this two-week series on home movie preservation.  It is always an honor to work with the best!

© 2011 Lee Price

The Market for Home Movies



Archivist Andrea McCarty inspecting film for Home Movie Day, Boston, 2005.
Photo credit: Reed Sturtevant, Super 8 Wiki.

Contrary to the impression sometimes inadvertently created by popular shows like Antiques Roadshow, most old items are not valuable.  I always assumed that this was particularly true regarding home movies.  Who wants to see my family dressed in out-of-date clothes, clumsily posing for the camera?

Nevertheless, I asked Snowden Becker about the value of home movies, expecting that her answer would be that they had no value, aside from sentimental value.  But that’s not what Snowden replied.  In fact, her answer genuinely surprised me:

Could my old films be valuable?

Snowden:  “In a word, yes.  However, it’s very important to distinguish between historical value and cash value, and be aware that they are not always directly related – and sometimes maximizing one means destroying the other.

“While there is a collector’s market for home movies at flea markets, swap meets, and online auction sites like eBay, most films don’t fetch very much money.  Maximizing profit will usually require that an intact collection be broken up and sold as individual reels, which can destroy much of their context and continuity, making them less meaningful as historical records.  Furthermore, film is not a liquid asset – its specific storage needs, and the cost of transferring the film to a format where it can easily be used by contemporary producers, mean that a significant investment must be made in any film footage before its contents can be licensed for reuse.

“Copyright is another complicating factor, particularly for film of unknown origins.  Many people assume that home movies are copyright-free or in the public domain, but that’s not the case.  Most of the time, they fall into the same legal category as unpublished diaries, letters, or photographs – that is, they don’t enter the public domain until 70 years after the death of their creator, or 120 years from the date of their creation if the creator is unknown or unidentifiable. That’s NOT a typo – unpublished materials currently take over a century to enter the public domain.

“Footage containing images of celebrities may enhance its commercial value, but it can also increase the legal risks involved with using it.  Even ordinary people who appear in home movie footage have rights that should be considered, especially if the footage depicts intimate activities or religious rituals that would normally not be accessible to outsiders.

“The primary value that most home movies will have for your family and the larger public is cultural and historical, not financial, but every kind of value they have will be increased by proper storage, careful handling, and the responsible provision of access to their contents.”

© 2011 Lee Price

A Whiff of Film

Feeding home movie film into a projector for a screening at
Home Movie Day at the Urbana Free Library in October 2008.
Photo courtesy of the Preservation Working Group at the
University of Illinois.

People involved with film preservation and restoration are well acquainted with the palette of odors common to film.  Most are bad.  You catch a whiff and you know there’s something wrong.  Film is not supposed to smell like that.

You don’t need to be professionally trained or overly sensitive to detect these smells.  Snowden Becker, co-founder of the annual international Home Movie Day event and the nonprofit Center for Home Movies, outlined four of the most prominent film smells for me:

1. Mold:  If the film has been stored in damp conditions, or exposed to flood waters, leaky pipes, etc., mold may be a serious problem for it and for you.  Soaked cardboard is an ideal environment for mold and mildew to grow, so you may see signs of it on film boxes, and even on the film itself.  Black spots, or whitish or grayish fluffy or crystalline matter on your film materials are warning signs;  musty or swampy smells are, too.  Inhaling mold spores can be a serious health risk, and moldy film probably needs professional cleaning before it’s safe to view or transfer.

2. Vinegar Syndrome:  This smell is particularly indicative of condition problems in older film – vinegar odor is one of the first detectable signs of vinegar syndrome, or acetate deterioration.  As safety film ages, especially in too-hot or too-moist storage conditions, it breaks down and starts to release acetic acid compounds that are not only harmful to the film but harsh on the delicate tissues in your eyes, nose, and throat.  A strong whiff of vinegar when you open a can or box is a good sign that it needs professional help, and soon!

3. Dust:  Dust from old cardboard boxes and crumbling pieces of paper that might be stored with the films gets everywhere – including your nose or lungs!  Sneezing is an occupational hazard for the film archivist who handles home movies. If you’re prone to asthma or allergies, be especially careful that you're working in a well-ventilated area if and when you examine your old films.

4. Wintergreen:  You may also detect mothball-y camphor or wintergreen odors in film collections, but those are often good signs – oil of wintergreen and oil of camphor were sometimes applied to paper inserts in film cans as plasticizing agents and can actually help stabilize the material.

© 2011 Lee Price

Rusty Film Cans and Broken Reels

The recovery of long-neglected family items from poor storage conditions is nearly always a time of regret.  When you strain to pry open a rusty film can or feel the desiccated rubber band disintegrate as you attempt to remove it, it’s natural to wonder why you put the task off for so long.

Press on.  Things will never get better without intervention, so rescue what you can while there’s still time.

Snowden Becker, co-founder of the annual international Home Movie Day event and the nonprofit Center for Home Movies, notes that the storage of old home movies can be very problematic, sometimes creating problems that will need to be addressed before the film can be recovered.  Snowden walked me through a typical situation:

“Abandoned or neglected film may have been hastily tossed in a box or not properly prepared for long-term storage, so you may encounter reels of film that are over-full with loose ends unwinding and crumpling up, or boxes of film fresh from the processing lab with rubber bands securing the outer wrap of the reel.  Or at least, the rubber bands would be securing the reel if they weren’t crumbling into little bits that work their way down between the film pack and the reel, where they stubbornly lodge themselves until they have the opportunity to come loose and muck up a projector’s workings!

“Film cans may be rusting and difficult to open if they’re metal, or cracked and prone to scratching film (and hands!) with sharp fragments if they’re plastic.  Bent or broken reels may crush the film pack or abrade the surface of film when it's unwound.

“Leaders – lengths of blank film at the beginning and end of a reel – may be too short, damaged, or missing altogether, leaving the outer wraps of a reel of film unprotected and especially vulnerable to scratches, dirt, and moisture.”

In cases like these, remove the films to a stable environment where you can calmly examine the items to determine appropriate next steps.

© 2011 Lee Price

Home Movies and Their Projectors

It’s been several decades since projectors were a normal part of our family life.  Back in the 1960s, I remember times when we would set up a projector and a roll-up tripod screen in my grandparents’ living room.  My grandfather would show us home movies and trick special effects scenes that he’d shoot with the family, as well as some professional reels that he must have bought somewhere (I vividly remember one that showed a lion or tiger being caught in a pit and then lunging toward the camera to escape!).

Within the family, we had 8mm, Super8, Dual 8, and 16mm projectors.  Even under the best conditions, these machines would occasionally malfunction.  The film would jam, or the splices would break, or the pickup reel would neglect to turn and film would spool onto the floor.

Now let’s say you find some old film in the basement, conveniently stored away with the dusty old projector.  Is it time to blow off the dust, plug in the projector, and let the good times unreel?

I asked Snowden Becker, co-founder of the annual international Home Movie Day event and the nonprofit Center for Home Movies, about the risks of loading an old film onto an old projector.  She recommended extreme caution:

“It’s quite common for people to find a projector and other equipment in the attic along with that box of films.  My general recommendation, though, is NOT to just throw those reels on that projector.  Although film was made to be projected, and is comparatively durable, older film is still subject to shrinkage, torn sprocket holes, and brittleness that makes running it through a projector without careful inspection and preparation extremely risky.

“Home movies are typically shot on reversal stock; that is, the film exposed in the camera is processed to become the positive element that you run through the projector.  This means that the reel you hold in your hands is a unique original, with no associated negative or copies.  For this reason, it’s especially precious.

“Home movie collections often include film in multiple formats – a mix of 8mm and Super8 is quite common, for instance, and the differences are not immediately evident to someone who doesn't handle film often.  Even if you have a Dual 8 projector, which can run either of the 8mm formats, you must be very careful to configure the projector properly before you run a reel through it.  Improperly projected film can be quite efficiently destroyed.  And even if you know how to use the projector you find in your attic (I know there are lots of A/V Club alumni out there who can still thread up an old Bell & Howell Filmosound!), chances are that if it’s been sitting unused for a long time it’s in need of new belts, bulbs, fuses, or just a good cleaning and lubrication before it is safe to use with even the most pristine film.

“At Home Movie Day events, the first step is careful inspection and preparation of the films brought in by participants, including cleaning, identification and replacement of unstable splices, checking for shrinkage or other dimensional instability, and application of fresh leader at the beginning and end of the reels.  Films in projectable condition are then shown on clean, well-maintained equipment by people who know how to operate them.  If you want to see your family films under the safest possible conditions, the best thing to do is to find a Home Movie Day event in your area and take advantage of that once-a-year opportunity to get free expert advice and helpful information.  You can also share those images with members of your local community, who can help you identify people, places, and activities in your movies that might be a mystery to you!”

© 2011 Lee Price

The Variety of Home Movie Formats

Courtesy Image Services, UO Libraries

My maternal grandfather (that would be Grandpa Anderson) first used 16mm film for his home movies, later moving to 8mm in the 1960s.  I remember shooting 8mm in the early 1970s and advancing to the new Super8 format, probably around 1973.  We had a dual projector that could show either 8mm or Super8, just by plugging in a few accessory pieces.  Moving to Super8 felt pretty sophisticated at the time – like upscaling from DVD to Blu-ray today.

When you find these standard “home movie” formats – 8 mm,  Super8, 9.5mm, and 16mm – in your basement or attic, you can safely assume they are cellulose acetate (safety) film as opposed to that infamous, unstable cellulose nitrate film.  Safety film has its own set of preservation challenges, but at least it won’t blow up your house.

So what formats do you have?  Snowden Becker, co-founder of the annual international Home Movie Day event and the nonprofit Center for Home Movies, suggests using a “rule of thumb” in identifying film formats commonly found in family collections:

“Identifying formats is quite easy; there are several online guides that include visual examples, such as the Film ID Card from Northeast Historic Film.

“An even easier method, if you don’t have a ruler or an ID card handy when you find your films, is literally a rule of thumb:  Film that’s about as wide as your thumbnail is probably 16mm, while film about the width of your little fingernail is probably 8mm or Super8.  (If you can fit your little fingertip into the hole in the middle of the reel, and it has tiny perforations – sprocket  holes – along the edge that a toothpick wouldn’t fit through, it’s Super8.)  A 35mm film will be about the width of your index and middle finger held together, while 28mm is a bit smaller – perhaps the width of your ring finger and pinkie.  Some reels may have convenient markings on them to indicate footage.  If these markings are absent, this simple guide from a transfer house is useful for estimating footage capacity based on the diameter of the reel.

“These cellulose acetate (safety) films were introduced with the 28mm home-viewing format in 1912. While they have their own inherent vices, safety stock has the significant advantage of not being liable to burn your house down when you watched your home movies in the living room!  The commercial film industry eventually transitioned to acetate-based safety film, too, and then to polyester-based safety stock, which is still used today.”

© 2011 Lee Price

Is Old Film Safe?

 

Flamable nitrate film in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009).

 

In the museum business, it’s not that unusual to hear stories of the discovery of unexploded ordnance in a collection.  It’s been sitting there in storage for decades (perhaps since the Civil War or World War I) and then suddenly – in the blink of an eye – it’s a crisis.  Police are called;  the building is evacuated.

It’s understandable to have a similar panicked reaction when old film stock is discovered.  Perhaps you’ve heard the stories of horrifying theater fires in the 1920s.  Or recently watched the mountain of discarded nitrate film erupt into flames at the climax of Inglourious Basterds.   Nobody wants to find a ticking film bomb in their attic.

Is this a reasonable fear?  I posed this question to Snowden Becker, one of the co-founders of the annual international Home Movie Day event and the nonprofit Center for Home Movies.  Snowden is a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas, Austin, School of Information where she is studying how home movies and amateur media become integrated into our larger cultural heritage.  She frequently consults on preservation issues for personal and institutional film collections.

Snowden’s answer was fairly reassuring – at least 99% of the time, there’s no reason to call the police or evacuate the building.

“If there's one thing an average person knows about old film, it’s that the cellulose nitrate stock used before 1950 was extremely flammable, unstable when deteriorating, and very dangerous to store in the home or under other uncontrolled conditions.  The fact that people are generally aware of this is a testament to the potency of the ‘nitrate won’t wait’ slogan of pioneering film preservationists who were desperately trying to save the disappearing treasures of early cinema.  The only downside of their successful messaging is that it may have made some people fearful of handling film they discover in their homes or institutional collections, because ‘it might blow up.’

“The good news is this:  Any 16mm film that you might encounter in your attic--as well as ALL of the other commonly encountered amateur film gauges such as 8mm, Super8, and 9.5mm--is what’s called SAFETY film.  Instead of cellulose nitrate, it’s cellulose acetate, a non-flammable alternative to the more dangerous nitrate film.  Chances are that any family films you find will be safety film.  HOWEVER…  if you do discover any 35mm film (it’ll be about two fingers wide, with matching perforations running down both edges), you should immediately contact your nearest film archive for advice and assistance.  They’re easy to find online.  A good place to start is this easy-to-access National Film Preservation Board directory.

“When rummaging through that box of films in your attic, basement, or closet, your only concerns should be inadvertently damaging the film material itself or possibly exposing yourself to some health risks related to the films’ storage conditions and state of preservation.  For instance, if you’re prone to asthma or allergies, be especially careful that you do these initial investigations in a well-ventilated area.  This can be dusty work and sneezing is an occupational hazard for the film archivist or anyone who handles home movies.”

© 2011 Lee Price

The Restoration of a Film (Hollywood or Home)

From February 14 through 21, Preserving a Family Collection is participating in For the Love of Film (Noir):  The Film Preservation Blogathon.  Through this blogathon, over 80 bloggers are hoping to raise significant funds to support the work of the Film Noir Foundation and restore The Sound of Fury, a 1950 film noir starring Lloyd Bridges.

Please contribute to this worthy cause by making a donation at  this link, the Maltese Falcon donation button, or through the donation buttons on host sites Ferdy on Films and the Self-Styled Siren.

Today is the final day of the For the Love of Film (Noir) blogathon.  We’ve been raising money to restore a deteriorating nitrate print of The Sound of Fury, a 1950 film noir starring Lloyd Bridges.  And this cause got me to wondering:  What are the differences and the similarities between restoring a professional Hollywood film like The Sound of Fury and the work that has been done to restore old home movies?

I posed this question to Snowden Becker, an expert on film preservation.  She is one of the co-founders of the annual international Home Movie Day event as well as the nonprofit Center for Home Movies.  Currently, Snowden is a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas, Austin, School of Information where she is studying how home movies and amateur media become integrated into our larger cultural heritage.

For our final contribution to the For the Love of Film blogathon, here are Snowden’s thoughts on the various challenges of film restoration:

“Fundamentally, the photochemical restoration of any film – whether it’s a commercial feature or amateur footage – is going to be the same:  Assess, stabilize, and repair the original film elements, then create the highest-quality intermediate elements possible. Sometimes these will be digital – for instance, if extensive soundtrack cleanup is needed, or if there is physical damage to specific frames or segments that can be repaired only using digital tools.  Those intermediates are then used to produce a new film print that resembles, as closely as possible, the film as it was originally shot or shown.  Archivists and lab staff working on a nitrate print must take into account the combustible nature of nitrate film when transporting and storing the preservation elements (which may come from several different institutions – feature film restoration often involves multiple members of the international film archive community, as this story in the New York Times describes).  Tinted, toned, or other early color films will typically present additional difficulties when it comes to making contemporary film stock match the look of the original.

“Where these processes differ most profoundly, however, is in the elements that may be available for a specific film – and, of course, in the budget at a restorer’s disposal! Home movies are often (though not always) reversal originals;  that is, the film that is exposed in the camera is processed to become the positive film screened in the projector, instead of a negative from which positive prints are made.  With reversal stock there is no negative;  the reversal stocks used for home movies are also much higher in contrast than negative and positive film and challenging to reproduce accurately, so copies are extremely rare.  An original home movie is therefore unique and

A still from the famous Zapruder
film of the Kennedy assassination.

irreplaceable.  (Just ask Abraham Zapruder, whose 8mm film of the Kennedy assassination was damaged shortly after its creation by a Life magazine photo technician.  Those notorious ‘missing frames’ have been speculated about by conspiracy theorists ever since.)

“Feature films, on the other hand, having been mass-produced for commercial exhibition, may have any number of different negative or positive elements surviving in good enough condition to be of use in a preservation or restoration project. These elements may include (in descending order of quality and desirability) an original camera negative, finegrain interpositives or "lavender prints" (so called because of the distinctive color of the low-contrast reproduction stock), internegatives or duplicate negatives, and release prints.  Any of these elements may vary in appearance, duration, or other particulars, such as foreign-language intertitles for silent works, or reflect the conditions under which they have been stored or screened since their creation.  For features, in other words, one may simply have much more material to work with.  Finding out what elements exist for a specific film, and then determining how to combine those elements to maximize their good qualities and minimize the effects of age or poor handling, is a big part of the restoration process.

“The size and length of the film being restored is the other major factor that differentiates commercial and amateur film preservation, and is the primary factor in its cost.  Home movies were typically shot on small-gauge film – 16mm, 9.5mm, 8mm, and Super8 being the most common – because it was cheaper, and because the correspondingly smaller cameras were more portable and convenient than the 35mm equipment and stock used by movie studios.  Small-gauge film reels and cartridges held anywhere from 25 to 100 feet of film, enough for about 2-3 minutes of memories;  a feature film, on the other hand, can run to a dozen 1,000-foot reels or more.  Foot for foot, 35mm film is more expensive than smaller gauges, and the proliferation of intermediate elements for feature material multiplies that cost further.  On the other hand, while 35mm film is preserved to the same format, it’s considered impractical to create 8mm or Super8 preservation copies of home movies.  Increasingly, they’re optically printed (blown up) to larger gauges – 16mm or 35mm – as part of the preservation, with a corresponding increase in cost.  Expert restoration work on a few minutes of home movie footage may run to a few thousand dollars, but feature restoration can easily cost ten times as much. Creating a lasting, stable preservation copy of a feature or a home movie isn’t cheap.”

I hope to return for more discussion with Snowden Becker in the near future as we fully turn our attention to strategies for preserving home movies.  In the meantime, I am very appreciative of her deeply informative contributions to this great blogathon effort.  Thank you, Snowden!

© 2011 Lee Price

Is There Such Thing as a Home Movie Noir?

From February 14 through 21, Preserving a Family Collection is participating in For the Love of Film (Noir):  The Film Preservation Blogathon.  Through this blogathon, over 80 bloggers are hoping to raise significant funds to support the work of the Film Noir Foundation and restore The Sound of Fury, a 1950 film noir starring Lloyd Bridges.

Please contribute to this worthy cause by making a donation at  this link, the Maltese Falcon donation button, or through the donation buttons on host sites Ferdy on Films and the Self-Styled Siren.

So far in this wide-ranging For the Love of Film (Noir) blogathon, we’ve seen blog entries on animated noirs, western noirs, science fiction noirs, horror noirs, and even (!!!) noirs with happy endings.

But what about home movies?  Can there be such a thing as a home movie noir?

I posed this question to Snowden Becker, one of the co-founders of the annual international Home Movie Day event and the nonprofit Center for Home Movies.  Snowden is a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas, Austin, School of Information where she is studying how home movies and amateur media become integrated into our larger cultural heritage.  She frequently consults on preservation issues for personal and institutional film collections.

Snowden’s response to my home movie question was enthusiastic and fascinating (and the clips are great!):

“As far as making a connection between film noir and home movies, I don’t think that'll be too hard.  I’ve definitely seen some examples that would fit the bill with very little stretching.  In fact, this footage of street-corner life shot in South Dakota in 1938 may easily be read as a proto-noir classic!

(Click here for video link – just first six minutes for street-corner life.)

Screen capture from "Britton,
South Dakota, 1938-39," filmed by
Ivan Besse.

“Strangers shoot suspicious glances as they hurry past the camera, then disappear into mysterious doorways.  Is that man waving a cheery hello?  Or hiding his face from view?  The bright winter sunlight makes the afternoon shadows longer and darker, and you can almost feel the deep chill in the air.  Something's not right in this town.  These people have secrets they want to keep hidden…  but this camera wants to find them out!

“There’s also Robbins Barstow’s Disneyland Dream – shot in 1956, not long after the theme park was opened – which is pretty much the ANTI-noir film:

(Click here for video link.)

“It was named to the National Film Registry in 2008, alongside the classic noir features The Killers (1946) and Johnny Guitar (1954) (often described as a “noir Western”). The contrast between the wholesome family life depicted in Barstow's film and Lionel Rogosin’s feature-length docudrama On the Bowery (1957), also named to the Registry that year, is a great illustration of the sunshine-and-shadow split in American filmmaking – and American life – which just got more and more complex as the postwar years deepened into the Cold War years and the Atomic Age.  Life, it seems, was never this simple again – although it really may never have been this simple in the first place.”

UPDATE:  A fun addendum to this entry: In the “Disneyland Dreams” anti-noir clip, the home movie catches Steve Martin working in Disneyland in 1956. He appears at the 20:20 minute, and he’s the guy walking left to right in the top hat.

And here’s Steve Martin sharing about being caught on film in a famous home movie, courtesy of the Cartoon Brew blog:
Steve-Martin-in-Disneyland-Dream

© 2011 Lee Price

Reels of Unidentified Film

From February 14 through 21, Preserving a Family Collection is participating in For the Love of Film (Noir):  The Film Preservation Blogathon.  Through this blogathon, over 80 bloggers are hoping to raise significant funds to support the work of the Film Noir Foundation and restore The Sound of Fury, a 1950 film noir starring Lloyd Bridges.  Please contribute to the effort by making a donation at  this link or through the donation buttons on host sites Ferdy on Films and the Self-Styled Siren.

Lost films turn up from time to time.  Just as when watching an episode of Antiques Roadshow thoughts naturally turn to your own family collection, the discovery of lost films can prompt renewed curiosity about that unidentified film in your basement or garage.  What could it be?  I think I may know, but first a brief digression on German expressionism and film noir.
It’s related to the subject at hand, I promise.

As it emerged in the American cinema of the 1940s, the visual language of film noir was deeply influenced by the German expressionist films of the 1920s.  There’s a direct line from early German horror masterpieces like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), The Golem (1920), Nosferatu (1922), and Metropolis (1927) to the look of full-blooded film noir movies like The Lady of Shanghai (1947), Sunset Blvd. (1950), and Out of the Past (1947).  You can clearly see the influence in the camera angles, the set designs, and the staging of the actors.  Of course, it’s not particularly surprising since so many of the 1920s German filmmakers escaped to Hollywood in the 1930s, where they profoundly influenced the look and feel of Hollywood films.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).

Above, a screen capture from the deeply influential

German expressionist classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).

 Below, Orson Welles' funhouse climax to The Lady from Shanghai (1947),

a truly classic film noir scene.   Note the similarities.  In each,

the world has gone mad and the insanity is expressed by the

strangely disorienting visual design.

The Lady from Shanghai (1947).

I became hooked on film way back when I was a kid in the early 1970s – an all-consuming interest sparked by the confluence of the PBS Orson Welles-hosted The Silent Years series in 1971 and my first purchase of a Famous Monsters of Filmland, which I still consider the greatest magazine of all time.

Naturally if you crave silents and monsters, you’re going to fall big-time for German expressionism.  And since they didn’t show this stuff on TV very often, one of the few options for seeing these movies was to purchase copies, potentially creating your own classic film collection.  I spent hours poring over the Blackhawk Films catalog, dreaming of all the movies that I yearned to see one day.  Over time, I was able to get my hands on full-length 8 mm copies of Caligari, The Golem, and Nosferatu. 

I remember setting up the 8 mm projector on the ping pong table in the basement and projecting my beloved movies on one of those tripod roll-up movie screens.  There was no sound to accompany these silents except for the constant whir of the projector.  And if that sound stopped, it might mean that the film had jammed and a frame was probably liquefying from the heat of the bulb.  Those were the days!

So...  what does this have to do with the family collection?  Simply this -- if you run across some dusty old reels of film in your basement that look as if they were made by professionals, it probably isn't a valuable long-lost film.  Chances are extremely remote that it’s a pristine copy of The Sound of Fury (1950), or the director’s cut of Greed (1923), or Lon Chaney’s famous lost vampire act in London After Midnight (1927).  In reality, it’s probably a Blackhawk film and not really that rare or valuable at all.

© 2011 Lee Price

The Dark Side of Town

(Cross-posted on the June and Art blog…)

For the next week, February 14 through 21, I’m going to try my hardest to tie the entries on both “June and Art” and “Preserving a Family Collection” to the subject of film noir as part of “For the Love of Film (Noir): The Film Preservation Blogathon.”  Film noir was extremely popular in the post-war years that are remembered on “June and Art.”  As readers of the blog know, June and Art spent many evenings at the movies, often at double features.  Well, many of those movies they were watching would have been film noirs.

The world of film noir is the dark side of the city where femme fatales lure tough guys to their doom.  Some classic examples would be Double Indemnity (1944), Laura (1944), Out of the Past (1947), and The Big Heat (1953).  If you can picture Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, or Humphrey Bogart in a black-and-white drama laced with shadows and betrayals…  that’s noir.  (Note:  A movie like L.A. Confidential might be considered a modern day equivalent of the classic noirs of the 40s and 50s.)

Truthfully, June and Art weren’t film noir people.  Their tastes tended more toward a musical like On the Town (1949) rather than a film noir like The Third Man (1949).  Nevertheless, film noir is a potent part of the 1949-50 atmosphere – and with June living in the classic film noir location of New York City and with their mutual friend Bruno struggling through an archetypal film noir story (love betrayed – car accident – despair), I’d like to think it isn’t that great a stretch to celebrate film noir here on these blogs.

We’ve lost thousands of classic films to neglect over the past hundred years.  A few dedicated organizations, including the Film Noir Foundation, are dedicated to restoring the old deteriorating nitrate film stock of these films to their original silver screen glory.  This year’s “For the Love of Film (Noir): The Film Preservation Blogathon” is dedicated to restoring a nitrate print of The Sound of Fury (1950), starring Lloyd Bridges, Richard Carlson, and Kathleen Ryan.  Click on the "Donate Here" buttons to make a contribution to the cause.

Our gracious blogathon organizers and hosts are Marilyn Ferdinand of Ferdy on Films and the Self-Styled Siren.  If you love film, especially classic film, definitely check out their sites.

This is a great cause!  Please contribute to the restoration of The Sound of Fury (1950), and enjoy “June and Art” and “Preserving a Family Collection” during this week-long film noir celebration!

© 2011 Lee Price

For the Love of Film (Noir)

(Cross-posted on the June and Art blog…)

During the next week, February 14 through 21, both “June and Art” and “Preserving a Family Collection” will be participating in “For the Love of Film (Noir): The Film Preservation Blogathon.”  It will be a bit of a stretch for both blogs, but I love the cause and the time is right – and by that I mean the 1949-1951 period covered by “June and Art” is right smack at the dark heart of film noir’s classic period.  Therefore, the timing couldn’t be more perfect for looking at film noir.  We're talking New York City at night, lonely subway rides, and shootouts viewed from a bus (all of which have been covered in past letters!).

What’s film noir?  Check out this beautiful introduction to the blogathon by Greg Ferrara of Cinema Styles and I expect you’ll recognize film noir when you see it:

 

The blogathon fun starts tomorrow!

 

© 2011 Lee Price