Definitely a lot of lost movies thanks to fires at various studios and—I think—early on, they used to destroy the film to get to the silver nitrate.
At least the latest restoration of Metropolis is actually pretty complete, missing about five minutes of 2 1/2 hours (cf. Greed, missing five hours of nine).
Chaney was amazing. Had he lived, he might well have been the 1931 Dracula, but 1927 was fairly “late” vampire-wise. Nosferatu was 1922 and, I think, the reason why we got Dracula, given the lawsuit filed by the Widow Stoker.
Silver nitrate degrades after a while. It’s not long-lasting like celluloid. A lot of those old films just disintegrated because they weren’t on better media for archiving.
I just thought of another one I’ve never seen that I wish I could have; The Descent.
But not because of the creepy bat people. Nope, I saw the trailers that showed the girls getting stuck in small tunnels underground and went, “NOPE”. Which really sucks, because it was such an interesting premise for a movie and I did want to see it, but honestly the thought of being buried underground while still alive is utterly and completely terrifying to me, and trying to squirm through tiny tunnels gives me hives and makes me start hyperventilating. So I’ve never seen that movie.
I have only seen bits and pieces of the first two Godfather movies. The length of those movies intimidate me, plus I have ADHD, which doesn’t help my attention span.
I don’t know if they have intermissions, but watching Lawrence of Arabia on TCM (as well as some other epic movies on that channel) with the intermission included helped me refocus/gave me time to go to the bathroom. If I’m ever in charge of a studio, I’ll require intermissions be added for any movie that’s over two hours long.
That’s one of those movies that, despite being four hours long, I thought, “I would go see that again tomorrow, if it were playing.” (I saw the 50th anniversary, and then it came around just pre-lockdown, IIRC.)
Now, my stepdad? He’s seen Shoah—which is NINE hours long—three times, and twice in the theater! (And having seen Last of the Unjust and The Four Sisters which are in the 3 1/2-4 hours long range, I would go see Shoah in a heartbeat
Actually there are a lot of old movies that one should see to prove American citizenship, like Lawrence of Arabia, Public Enemy, and stuff like that. I get more pleasure for finally getting around to one, like On the Waterfront.
When a movie grabs you the time just flies. Les Misérables, 1934, Directed by Raymond Bernard was like that. I wrote this is a review…
I’ve sat through 70 minute films that felt like an eternity. And movies that threatened to run into perpetuity, which sailed by like a breeze. Les Misérables -a nearly 5 hour epic- was mostly a breeze.
Seven Samurai, was shorter when I first saw it, but over the years they’d find a few minutes here, a few minutes there, it now runs 207 min and I wish they’d find more footage, because when it ends, I don’t want it to end.
But lets see… I’ve done Shoah (9 hrs 26 mins), Sátántangó (7 hr, 19 min), La Roue (6 hr, 53 min), The Best of Youth (6 hr, 6 min) and a bunch at the 5+ hour point.
But I honestly don’t understand why LoA works. It’s chock full of long shots of people slowly walking through the desert. How can that be so damn compelling?
At a guess, it is the visuals. There’s a very interesting post on a blog I follow that goes into why David Lean made the film the way he did (as well as the pitfalls he faced doing so). You can find it here (the other three parts to the blog post are compelling as well; the author was doing an in depth look into David Lean as a director and took four posts to cover everything in as much detail as he could) The Thinking Man’s Spectacle (Part 3) – Miracle Movies
It’s well worth a read, if you have the time. As are the rest of the posts on Lean. But the short answer is that Lean truly wanted to tell a story with his visuals as much as he did his dialogue in the film. And apparently he succeeded, considering Lawrence of Arabia is often cited as one of the great classics of film (along with two other Lean films, namely Doctor Zhivago and Bridge Over the River Kwai).
As an aside, I have yet to watch Lawrence, or really any of Lean’s films. But I fully intend to. I’ll have to see if they’re available on a streaming service, preferably at their full lengths so I can truly enjoy them.
I believe this is true of all the masters. (The commonality of every great director Peter Bogdanovich interviewed in Who The Devil Made It? was that they had all worked in silent movies first.)
Allowing for the various exigencies of, you know, reality, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to see this in an actual theater.
I also cannot sufficiently express my horror at the thought of an abridged version of Lean’s movies, though they certainly used to show them on TV in 4:3 format with commercials and…oy.
And if I find one playing any of them, I will, but in the meantime so I can at least get SOME idea of what I’ve been missing, I’ll go the streaming service route. At least that way I won’t HAVE to deal with commercials and the like. Plus, I have a 65" TV, so while it’s not cinema-sized, it’s at least a big screen!
You’re in for a treat. Of his non-epic/non-Dickens, my favorites are “Brief Encounter” (so many little details and vignettes), “Hobson’s Choice” (the humor worked for me) and “Summertime” if only for Venice-as-a-stage.
Just thought you’d like to know; I watched Bridge on the River Kwai last night. Definitely worthy of the title of “classic” film. I highly enjoyed it. Will probably move on to Lawrence of Arabia tonight.
