The Tragic History of Lost Films, From a Hitchcock Feature to a John Wayne Western (2024)

The recent cancellation of Batgirl has sent shockwaves through the industry on an unprecedented scale. Films getting the axe before they hit cinemas is nothing new, but for a studio to spend $90 million on a project that was just a few months away from completion, only to get cold feet and scrap the entire thing in a tax write-off, is unheard of. It’s heartbreaking to imagine all of the work its cast and crew have put in that now will be confined to the vaults of Warner Bros. forever, a dour image that conjures memories of other canceled films such as The Fantastic Four and The Day The Clown Cried. It’s a tragic destination for any film, but fans can at least take comfort in the idea that there does exist the slightest shred of hope that it may still see the light of day. A bootlegged version of The Fantastic Four has floated around the piracy circles for decades, and there’s always a chance (albeit very small) that the constellations will align and Batgirl will find some way to escape its confinement.

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75% of Silent-Era FIlms Are Lost

The same cannot be said of another type of film, however, in one of the greatest tragedies to have graced cinema: lost films. Unlike Batgirl, which never made it past the all-seeing eye of Hollywood producers, lost films were completed and released just like anything else, but now no surviving copy of them remains. Reasons for this vary from problems related to the volatile nature of early film stock to intentional destruction on the part of studios, but the results were always the same. It’s estimated that 75% of all silent-era films are lost forever, alongside half of all American sound films made before 1950. Those are shocking statistics, and the impact of such a large percentage of cinema’s history being completely and utterly eradicated extends far beyond just feeling sorry for everyone who worked on them.

The silent era is the most important period of cinema's development and marked its transition from a five-cent novelty to a fully realized art form. The fundamental language of filmmaking was developed during this time, and the inability to properly document this has proven immensely damaging. How are historians supposed to study a period where so much of our information is based on second-hand accounts of films long since departed, resulting in large question marks hanging over every piece of academic work that has been conducted (is our perception of D. W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin as two of silent cinema's most supreme talents clouded by them being two of the only directors whose filmographies have survived largely intact?) Advances in film stock and the industry’s shift to the digital world mean this is unlikely to ever happen again, a comfort that will prevent a repeat of one of cinema’s greatest mishaps.

How Do These Films Become Lost?

There are many reasons why films became lost, but chief among them was intentional destruction. Film preservation was not an important consideration during the early days of cinema (films were still viewed as a commercial product rather than art, as decided by the US Supreme Court in 1915), and after they had completed their theatrical run, it was assumed their usefulness had expired. Since they were cumbersome to store and expensive to maintain, many studios chose to recycle their film stock to claim back some easy money. The subsequent rise of sound films hastened the demise of all those "worthless" silent films that were clogging up storage space, with studios presuming that no one would want to go back to such an archaic way of filmmaking. The sensitive nature of the nitrate film used in 35mm prints is also to blame, with fires caused by spontaneous combustion responsible for the destruction of entire achieves of films (most notably the 1937 and 1965 vault fires at 20th Century Fox and MGM, respectively). While some lost films have been rediscovered in the hands of private collectors, the sheer amount of time between their conception and today will have now rendered all but the most expertly preserved films degraded beyond use, making it unlikely many more will be found.

Notable Lost FIlms

It's a true shame because there are several lost films that hold great historical significance to critics. Just a few examples include: The Mountain Eagle (the second film directed by Alfred Hitchcock), London After Midnight (a horror film by future Dracula director Tod Browning), Too Many Crooks (Laurence Olivier's screen debut), Two Crowded Hours (Michael Powell's directing debut), The Oregon Trail (a John Wayne western), and The Patriot (the only Best Picture nominee to be considered lost). But this is just a fraction of the thousands of films that are considered lost, with other notable absentees included on lists such as the British Film Institute’s 75 Most Wanted (of which nineteen have been found in a complete form). But even for films that do not hold much significance, nothing deserves such a fate. Every film holds its own unique place in the annals of history, serving as an archive of the state of film at the moment of its creation that builds upon the foundations of its predecessors while paving the way for its successors. The discovery of anything, from a forgotten masterpiece to a middling B movie, is worthy of celebration.

The Lucky Ones

Thankfully, many films that were feared lost have been found. One of the greatest examples is Wings, the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, which was considered lost for decades until a copy was found in the Cinémathèque Française archive in 1992. Its realistic depiction of aerial combat that involved real aircraft being flown by the leading actors laid the groundwork for a century of action films, with its impact still being felt as recently as Top Gun: Maverick. Similarly, many films that existed in a cutdown capacity have been restored to their former glory with the discovery of their original versions. Metropolis and The Passion of Joan of Arc are two of silent cinema's crowning achievements, but for decades only truncated versions of both were viewable until their original versions were eventually located (the latter being discovered in a janitor’s closet in a Norwegian psychiatric hospital of all places), allowing them to reclaim their place in the upper echelons of cinema.

Why Film Preservation Is So Important

But the tragedy of lost films extends far beyond the simple inconvenience of no longer being able to watch them. Preservation is essential for any medium, and being able to reflect and build upon their direct ancestors is vital for all creators who wish to develop their craft. Art is a constant cycle of repetition and iteration, with artists taking inspiration from a whole range of sources that combine to create their particular contribution to this niche of human culture, in turn doing their part to inspire the next generation. No film exists in a vacuum, instead being the product of a hundred years’ worth of refinement that will continue to evolve for as long as the medium exists. Sure, being able to trace the lineage of Top Gun: Maverick might sound like just a novelty to some people, but being able to see the throughline that led to its creation allows for greater critical analysis than would otherwise be possible. Every film – from the great to the mediocre to the downright terrible – leaves an impact, even if it’s just by providing the tiniest spark of inspiration to one budding filmmaker and being able to see how the seeds planted by one film can blossom into an entire forest is of great importance.

Except we cannot do this, because entire legions of films from the most pivotal years of the format's development are gone, likely forever. While knowledge about some lost films has ensured them a legacy anyway (London After Midnight has become a far more noteworthy film than it ever was while it was still viewable, for example), most have vanished into the history books with only a title to remind us that they even existed. The consequences of this on film criticism are dire and extend well beyond the individual films themselves. Any analysis of the works of Alfred Hitchcock will always operate under the lingering shadow that no living soul has watched his entire filmography, and while surviving reviews of The Mountain Eagle indicate that it was nothing special (Hitchcock himself referred to it as “awful”), the quality of the film is irrelevant when viewing it with the knowledge that it was one of the earliest directing ventures from one of cinema’s most beloved minds. Few artists burst onto the scene already producing their best work and seeing how they develop their craft is vital when putting their body of work into a larger context. Besides, Vertigo and Psycho both earned mixed reviews before undergoing re-evaluations – who’s to say we don’t have another Hitchcockian masterpiece out of our reach with The Mountain Eagle?

But we’ll probably never know. Even after an extensive search by the BFI, only a few photographs are known to exist, with the film marked as missing, “presumed lost.” It’s a title it shares with thousands of other films, each of which should be entitled to their place in cinema history, which is instead occupied by dust and fading memories. The advent of safer film stock and a renewed interest in preservation has resulted in few films released since the 1950s being considered lost, a miracle only neutered by it not coming a few decades earlier. Films are an archive of their time, and losing the ability to look back on the medium’s history will do nothing but hinder future growth. We should be thankful as many as 25% of silent films survived because the consequences could easily have been worse. But even beyond that, there’s something inherently sad about a team of passionate creators putting months or years of their lives into a project that then vanishes off the face of the earth. Artists deserve to have their work seen, regardless of its quality. Hopefully, these early pioneers, without whom this medium would not even exist, will one day receive that honor once again.