In the Spotlight

Tools
News & Features
A History in Dust
by Bob Reha
March 15, 2000
Click for audio RealAudio 3.0


Like it or not, one of the most powerful cultural institutions in recent U.S. history is Hollywood. Millions of Americans have spent countless hours sitting in the dark, being thrilled, scared, and amused by the celluloid antics of four generations of actors.

Now there is growing concern much of this cultural history is threatened because many of those films are literally falling to pieces. Time has destroyed thousands of early films. The Library of Congress is trying to raise public awareness of the problem.

The Library of Congress is bringing its Film Preservation Tour to the historic Fargo Theatre.
The so called "safety" film that took the place of nitrate film removed the chance of explosion, but now time - and thousands of showings - have damaged the fragile celluloid.
 


THIS FESTIVAL is a film fan's dream. Classics like Shane, On the Waterfront, The Searchers and Touch of Evil, directed by the legendary Orson Welles. Actress Janet Leigh starred with Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil. She'll be in Fargo for the opening of the tour. For Leigh, involvement in film preservation started a few years ago when she viewed a copy of her very first flick.

"I was shocked," Leigh said. "I almost wanted to cry because it was in such bad shape (that) you could see it; but visibly it was in disarray."

It's not an unusual situation. Rusty Casselton, the director of media studies at Concordia College in Moorhead, is also a film historian and preservationist, specializing in silent-era film. "Of the period of time during the silent era from 1927 - and earlier '28, and earlier - about 90 percent of all films made in America during that time are lost," Casselton said.

The causes? Nitrate film, the standard film stock of the silent years, shares the same chemical make-up as gun cotton, and was so unstable it was not unusual for films to spontaneously ignite. The so called "safety" film that took its place removed the chance of explosion, but now time - and thousands of showings - have damaged the fragile celluloid.

Casselton says one of the driving forces that is propelling a resurgence in film preservation is a medium that some thought would kill movie theaters - television. He says the tubes insatiable need for content is breathing new life into old movies. "If you would have told me 10 years ago that we'd be seeing 1930 and '31, '32 Warner Brothers pictures - kind of of second-rate Warner Brothers pictures - on television, I would have told you you were crazy," he says, "and yet they're playing regularly."

The film preservation tour's visit to Fargo is part of an effort to visit every state. At each stop someone associated with one of the films is brought in to speak about the importance of film preservation.

For more information on the exhibition, see the Fargo Theatre Web site.
 
Even with the best storage facilities available, old films can corrode turn an ugly rust color and - in the worst cases - literally crumble to dust. With new computer and digital technology old films are being saved and in some cases improved. But the process is not cheap. Casselton says the average cost of restoring an old film is about $10,000 per three minutes of film. He notes that when the Disney company restored Snow White it cost over $1 million.

Of course, not every film has Snow White's commercial appeal, and a lot of films are going to still fall victim to time. Deciding which to save raises questions of how to balance aesthetics and film history with commercial appeal.

The technology issue raises other ethical questions. Is a restored film, in fact, a new movie? Should the restorers of today try to augment the creations of the past, by adding colors, changing scenery or even including new characters?

But for actress Janet Leigh, the important thing is saving these movies for their educational value. "The visual impact is so rich and is so easily remembered even more than reading or just sort of talking about an era," she notes. "To see it, to have it come to life is very effective and lasting and I would hope that it would teach the future generations about a period in time that they didn't know."