[xtypo_dropcap]H[/xtypo_dropcap]istory in film is dying every day; windows of yesterday’s world fading and decomposing into a fine dust, unusable and never to be seen again.
In the 1930s the film industry was booming, and more than 100 million Americans were going to the movie theater each week. In the time before TV, theaters were run much differently. Viewers would get several short flicks and maybe two movies; normally including a news reel, an entertainment short, and a feature film. [Click here to read the rest of the article]
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To fill the demand, filmmakers were filling the reels with a flow of movies, and news coverage, which now composes some of the most thorough preservations of modern American history—preparations for World War II, scenes from the Great Depression, famous speeches, and cultures, which are long gone.
“What’s interesting about film is that half of all movies made before 1950 no longer exist, because of nitrate decomposition and just neglect. So there is so much of motion picture history and American culture history that is gone,” said Mark Punswick.
Punswick and his wife, Mary Riley, are the last remaining private owners of major Hollywood studio film libraries. From their Los Angeles home, the two formed Shields Pictures, and have made it their life’s work to restore and preserve their collection of nearly 200 short films.
The films, all surviving in their original 35mm silver nitrate print form, include the full libraries of Unusual Occupations, Speaking of Animals, and the iconic Popular Science series.
“I grew up having a love of film,” said Punswick.
He grew up in the ‘70s, which he regards as the “golden age of Hollywood renaissance,” at a time when betamax video was just catching on, there were just a few TV channels, and the Internet was still a little-known project.
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[xtypo_dropcap]P[/xtypo_dropcap]unswick’s interest in movies led him into the film collector’s subculture. “It was basically a black market that existed because the studios—with the exception of United Artists for a brief period in the ‘50s—they never released films to the public, to the collectors market,” he said.
Some of the TV stations at the time would run films, and these films would then occasionally leak into the film collectors market, and they would then be bought and sold like trading cards. Riley added, “When he says film culture, I’m telling you you’ve never seen such characters.”
Punswick’s connections later led him to the Director’s Guild of America, which represents more than 1,000 directors in cinema, TV, and radio. He later met filmmaker, Jerry Fairbanks, who sold him three film libraries.
The libraries of Popular Science, Speaking of Animals, and Unusual Occupations are entertainment shorts, and due to their historical value, Punswick and Riley take the films’ preservation as their personal responsibilities.
When the United States was gearing up for World War II, one of Fairbanks’s good friends, General Douglas MacArthur, called him by phone and told him, “I want the American people to know that when our men and women go into battle, they are going to be so well prepared,” according to Punswick.
Fairbanks was given exclusive access to behind the scenes preparations, and his footage is included in one of the Popular Science shorts.
In the video, soldiers from America’s 1st Armored Division at Fort Knox in Kentucky are shown training for battle. Tanks roll over trees as they plow through forests. Views from inside the tanks show how they are operated, while other segments show how the $70,000 tanks were built.
One video in the Unusual Occupations series includes the earliest known footage of Dr. Seuss, before he was known for his children’s books. “At the time he was profiled because he made these bizarre animal heads, he took clay, antlers and stuff, and he mounted them so it looked like they were part of a trophy room,” said Riley.
A Delicate Art
Punswick was doing a film restoration at the Director’s Guild of America in the mid-1980s. The film, “Hunting Whales and Walrus” was made in 1903 and documented hunters harpooning whales.
About six months later, one of Punswick’s friends at the Guild showed him a film can. “I could tell it had been film, but it was all bubbly and gooey, and it was just gunk. I said eww, what is that, and he said that’s it. That’s ‘Hunting Whales and Walrus,’” said Punswick.
“The minute we opened the can, took it out and put it on the optical printer, the heat from the process was enough to trigger the decomposition,” he said.
Movies were once recorded on silver nitrate film, with nitric acid as one of its main components. The acid can slowly eat away at the film until all that remains is a pool of goo.
Fumes from rotting film can even infect other films, and spread like a virus through a library. The problem is most notable in acetate film—which came after silver nitrate film—in a process called “vinegar syndrome.”
Countless films have been lost to decomposition. It’s estimated that of the films from the silent film era, only 10 to 20 percent still exist. For many, the only records of them are movie posters, scripts, or reviews in newspapers.
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[xtypo_dropcap]S[/xtypo_dropcap]ilver nitrate is also flammable to the point that even water can’t put it out, since it can generate its own oxygen. Punswick noted that there was once a fire in the UCLA film library, where his films are stored, which was caused by a light bulb which was left on.
Many other films were simply destroyed. After they finished their tour through theaters, they were often disposed of, discarded like yesterday’s newspapers. Many films were also destroyed in the ‘70s for their silver.
Those that remain are mostly tucked into vaults, but even there many have been lost to fires or neglect.
In the documentary, “Keepers of the Frame,” Pamela Wintle from the Smithsonian Institute recalls visiting a vault in New Jersey while she was working at the American Film Institute.
“Some of the vaults had already exploded from summertime heat and deteriorated nitrate, and the shelves were just twisted, the doors were just hanging on a hinge,” Wintle said. “Not only that, but the local kids used to climb over the fence, and they’d get into the vaults, so there were cans all over, film all over the place.”
She added that one of her colleagues pointed to a film canister and said, “Look, that’s Citizen Kane.”
There are currently efforts taking place to preserve films, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and at the Library of Congress Motion Picture Conservation Center.
Although most of the films owned by Punswick and Riley have been transferred to standard definition, they are still not satisfied. They are trying to get all of the films transferred to HD format, which can reveal details that are otherwise lost.
Their films have been aired on several TV networks over the years, but after the media industry began consolidating at the end of the 1990s, airing them has become more difficult. Because of this, funding to complete the restoration work has been thin.
According to Punswick, he and Riley are considering selling Popular Science “because that would give us the funds to be able to do the real restoration work on the other two film libraries, but we want to make sure that whoever ends up with it has a real appreciation for the history of it, and does the preservation work on that series.”
Time is the real factor with the older films, and Riley shared her concern that, “at some point we’re going to find out we’re losing history.” She added that in regard to the films which have been lost, “I would hate for any of these series to join that group, because it’s irreplaceable.”
