The Material History of a Nitrate Film, Part 1: Exhibition - Text 3
Amazing as they are, these episodes are not isolated examples of where film preservation begins. Nitrate prints can turn up anywhere, from construction sites to landfills and basements; they are often found when it is too late to give them shelter. What has safely reached the vaults of museums and archives is only the tip of what used to be a slowly thawing and volatile iceberg, most of which no longer exists. Its sheer dimensions may be better appreciated by turning it upside down and viewing it as a genealogical tree, at the apex of which are the camera negatives used to make distribution prints at the time of a film’s commercial release.
An imaginary but plausible case study
It could have been appropriate to illustrate the point by using a landmark silent film such as Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon; Georges Méliès, 1902) as a real-life case study. However, the film was so hugely successful that we have no idea of how many prints were made over the years; the following scenario should serve as an imaginary but plausible substitute to what could have been applied to Méliès’ masterwork. Let us imagine, for argument’s sake, that two parallel black and white camera negatives of an American feature film were made in 1914. The first negative was to be used for the domestic market; for the purposes of this demonstration, we shall assume that the second negative was recut before being dispatched to London for overseas distribution.
In our fictional account, we will suppose that 19 positive prints (tinted and toned) were made from the first negative (A) in the United States, while 16 copies of the edited version were struck abroad from the second negative (B), with title cards translated into various languages and with different tinting and toning schemes for each country in which the film was shown (only print 22 is in black and white, as a distributor decided to leave it as it was). By the end of World War I, both camera negatives had vanished. After being dormant for a decade, one of the ‘domestic’ projection prints was used in 1925 to create a duplicate negative (C) for a reissue of the film.
The second chapter in our simulated material history of the film continues with the discovery of a corporate document, proving that twelve positive copies, all in black and white, were struck from the duplicate negative of second generation (C). In 1936, a private collector found one of these prints, liked the film very much, and made another duplicate negative (D) in addition to three prints: one for private use, the other two for trade with fellow collectors. Another decade elapsed. The collector disappeared from sight; so did the three nitrate prints derived from the 1925 negative (D). In 1948, an independent distributor took possession of another copy from the 1925 reissue with the intention of renting it to local film societies. Some footage was removed because of wear and tear at the beginning and end of each reel; a cheap laboratory took the nitrate print, from which yet another duplicate negative (E) and ten abridged copies were hastily made.
The image on the new duplicating element and the resulting prints was cropped on one side: the laboratory’s machines had been set up with aperture gates for the reproduction of sound films. One of these prints was borrowed in 1952 by a film club, whose owner kept it long enough to send it to another laboratory and make a 16mm reduction negative (F). Five projection prints came out of this process; four were sold to schools and film libraries after removing some title cards from each copy (their racial slurs were deemed inappropriate); the fifth was kept intact.
The story could go on until the present time, but it is best to interrupt it at this point; its plot is visually represented in this diagram.
