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#lost film
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can't believe in a month it will be a one-year anniversary since tumblr reintroduced the greatest mafia movie ever made that was lost in the sands of time, Goncharov (1973).
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weirdlookindog · 9 months
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London After Midnight (1927)
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fibula-rasa · 6 months
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from the newly-recovered footage of Cleopatra (1917)  
[letterboxd | imdb | youtube]
Director: J. Gordon Edwards
Cinematographer: John W. Boyle, Rial Schellinger, & George Schneiderman
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hauntedbystorytelling · 5 months
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Lilyan Tashman costume by Erté
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Lilyan Tashman in the perfume bottle costume designed by Erté in the now lost silent film Bright Lights (Robert Z. Leonard, 1925) | src Grapefruitmoon gallery on eBay view more on wordPress
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Publicity still for the American romantic comedy film Bright Lights (Robert Z. Leonard, 1925)
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quatermasspitt · 6 months
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Still from An Old-Time Nightmare, a lost 1911 American silent film
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lisystrata · 7 months
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Harsh and dangerous
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1910scinema · 7 months
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Theda Bara The Queen of Vamps
In roughly 5 years she made almost 40 films, back to back. Most of them were lost to fires or what have you, but a few of them survived either in a complete form or fragments. For years I thought I would be able to see Cleopatra, but not too long ago a few seconds resurfaced.
The Stain (1914) her first role, which she denied for years.
A Fool There Was (1915)
East Lynne (1916)
Cleopatra (1917) fragment
Salome (1918) fragment
The Lure of Ambition (1919) fragment
The Unchastened Woman (1925) her comeback film!
Madame Mystery (1926)
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vermilllionsands · 5 months
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Still from the lost Japanese King Kong (1933)
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theda-bara-brabin · 6 months
Video
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Cleopatra (1917) - Newly Discovered Footage
Another excerpt from ‘Cleopatra’ (1917) has been found! After last year’s discovery of a small excerpt from Salome (1918) we now have another piece of film history.
The story goes that this piece of film was incuded in a lot of old film cuttings on ebay; once the byer had restored them, the call was put out on facebook for anyone who could recoginse the film.
I follow the thevintagecostumecollector on instagram who was able to identify Theda straightaway & is lucky enough to own a couple of Theda’s costume pieces himself!
It makes me so happy knowing there are gems still to be found over 100 years later & Theda’s legacy is a little less lost.
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belalugosi1882 · 3 months
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Bela Lugosi in a publicity still for The Veiled Woman (1929)
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ilovedamsels1962 · 1 year
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Lon Chaney and Edna Tichenor in the lost film, London After Midnight (1927)
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redhairclara · 4 months
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Gorgeous Clara Bow in Red Hair (1928). Although it's often presumed that only the Technicolor bit of this film remains, that is not the case. A few clips have surfaced over the years and are in the possession of the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Many thanks to David Stenn who helped fund these preservation efforts.
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weirdlookindog · 8 months
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London After Midnight (1927) - Publicity photos
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fibula-rasa · 3 months
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Lost, but Not Forgotten: The Dancer of the Nile (1923)
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Alternate Titles: Tut-ankh-amen, Tutankhamen of Luxor
Direction: William P.S. Earle
Scenario: William P.S. Earle
Original Story: Blanche Taylor Earle
Production Manager: Dick L’Estrange
Camera: Jules Cronjager & Joe Goodrich (assistant)
Scenic Artist: Xavier Mochado
Set Designer: Paul Dodge
Technical Advisor: Capt. Dudley S. Corlette
Studio: William P.S. Earle Pictures Corporation (Production) & Film Booking Offices of America (F.B.O.) (Distribution)
Performers: Carmel Myers, Bertram Thomas Grassby, Malcolm McGregor, Anthony Merlo, Sam de Grasse, Iris Ashton, June Elvidge, Paul Weigel, Howard Gaye, Mother/Nellie Anderson, Beatrice Marsh, & Earle Marsh
Premiere: 12 October 1923, Loew’s New York, New York, NY
Status: presumed entirely lost
Length: 6 reels,  5,787 feet
Synopsis (synthesized from magazine summaries of the plot):
Princess Ankhnespaton [sic] (June Elvidge), daughter of King Akhnaton [sic] (Howard Gaye), has a run in with a band of thieves while traveling. Prince Karmit (Malcolm McGregor) of Syria arrives, disguised as a merchant, and saves the princess. The princess becomes enamored with Karmit and invites him back to the royal residence in Thebes. 
While visiting the royal gardens, Karmit encounters a dancer, Arvia (Carmel Myers). He is instantly smitten. The princess is furious that Karmit has rebuffed her for a mere dancer.
Meanwhile, tension between those loyal to the king and those loyal to the old gods erupt when the seasonal flooding of the Nile river doesn’t occur. The princess finds in this situation an opportunity to get her revenge on Arvia. 
The princess decrees that Arvia will be offered as a human sacrifice to the god Sobek, in order that the Nile will rise as expected. Arvia is adorned with a poisoned amulet to knock her out while she is fed to the crocodiles.
In an unexpected turn of events, the high priest Pasheri (Sam De Grasse) discovers that the intended sacrifice is his own daughter. Pasheri sneaks into the chamber where Arvia is to be sacrificed and saves her at the last moment. 
With Pasheri’s aid, Karmit whisks Arvia away. As the Nile rises, the new couple sail away to Karmit’s kingdom to live happily ever after.
The princess goes on to marry Prince Tutankhamen (Bertram Grassby). And, after the death of her father Prince Tut will become King Tut.
Additional sequence(s) featured in the film (but I’m not sure where they fit in the continuity):
The Temple of Amun-Re is also depicted in the film.
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Points of Interest:
While many contemporary reviewers of The Dancer of the Nile (DotN) didn’t mark it as an especially good film, props were given for the artistic effects achieved by Director Earle. Earle and his brother, Ferdinand Pinney Earle, were both pioneers of the era in special effects. 
Ferdinand was a painter who contributed matte paintings and art titles to many films of the 1910s and 1920s. While William was primarily a director, both brothers ambitiously created films that were on the cutting edge in regard to techniques of incorporating matte paintings with live actors/studio-shot footage. 
For William, it was DotN, and for Ferdinand it was A Lover’s Oath (1920/1925, presumed lost save for a few fragments), which was an adaptation of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat. (ATM, I’m planning on doing the next installment of this series on this film!)
(Explanatory note: One technique at use here involves double exposure. Part of the frame is obscured while filming, leaving the obscured part of the film unexposed. The film is then rewound, with the exposed part of the film obscured, to film another element. The final result is, hopefully, a cohesive sequence. 
Another technique is shooting through painted glass, which, if painted and lit correctly, results in the painting and the scene occurring behind it appearing as a singular space. 
For example, a fully painted environment with live actors moving across the scene. In DotN, there is at least one scene where a live actress ascends a set of stairs, which is a painting. These techniques require an amazing amount of precision, but when done right they can be really dazzling. The double-exposure matting technique has persisted through most of film history, albeit rarely at the scale the Earle brothers were using it! 
Below is an illustration of how a moving version of matte photography works from a 1926 issue of Photoplay, followed by some stills from DotN that used the multiple-exposure technique.
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I have a few posts coming up that go into more detail on how special effects were executed in films of the 1920s!)
William P.S. Earle’s focus on the artistic elements without much regard for story or characterization may have left many critics cold, but DotN did prove to be a lasting attraction, running in theatres around the world for years following its release.  DotN was produced hot on the heels of the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922 in Luxor, which launched a new wave of Egyptomania. On one hand, Earle was cashing in on a trend, but on the other, he took the opportunity offered by assured profitability to experiment. In addition to the special effects discussed above, Earle attempted to capture as much period accuracy as possible in the painted settings, props, and costumes. Balancing historical accuracy with perceived “authenticity” in period art is exceedingly difficult—Earle seemingly had mixed success. However, one contemporary review in the magazine Art and Archaeology by Dudley S. Corlett (also the film’s technical advisor) is highly complementary of DotN’s attention to historical and artistic detail. [You can find the review in the transcription section!]
After Earle had more or less finished DotN, F.B.O. bought “Tut-ankh-amen” for distribution. F.B.O. financed reshoots that shifted the narrative away from Tut and towards Arvia, the dancer—hence the title change. I guess F.B.O. believed that cashing in on the trend of movies about dancers would be more lucrative than cashing in on Tut-mania!
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Transcribed Sources & Annotations over on the WMM Blog!
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cinerotica · 1 year
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'Threesome' (1970).
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straydogofhv · 1 year
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MOVIE FACTS: In Goncharov (1973), at around 10 minutes 4 seconds into the film, what many fans have claimed to be a DeLorean can be seen for a few frames. This is thought to be in reference to Back to The Future (1985), considering the significance of clocks in the film's narrative.
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This mystery has puzzled fans and critics alike for decades, seeing as the DeLorean car was not yet on the market, and Back to The Future would not release for another 12 years. Some have even speculated on fan forums such as the Official Goncharov Wiki that director Martin Scorsese, Robert Zemeckis, and John DeLorean made a secret deal to place this impossible reference in the film to drum up excitement for Goncharov's rumored sequel, which was allegedly scheduled for release in December of 1985. However, talk of a sequel has neither been confirmed nor denied, as director Martin Scorsese has famously refused to comment on the alleged reference, claiming that fans are "looking too deep into this movie."
---Movie Facts, November 2022
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