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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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Classic films and our collective memory: the current status of preservation and availability
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Classic films and our collective memory: the current status of preservation and availability
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Content
CLASSIC FILMS AND OUR COLLECTIVE MEMORY: THE CURRENT STATUS OF
PRESERVATION AND AVAILABILITY
By
BRIAN MARKS
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM: THE ARTS)
May 2017
Copyright 2017 Brian Marks
2
Acknowledgments
I am extremely grateful for the guidance of Kenneth Turan, who helped hone this project
and left me with even more facets of film preservation to explore. I am greatly indebted to Sasha
Anawalt, whose boundless enthusiasm and generosity spur me toward greater things. Many
thanks to Howard Rosenberg, who spotted the flaws I had overlooked for months. Much
gratitude is owed to Tim Page, who supported the initial conception of my thesis and provided
invaluable feedback in its early stages. All four have contributed immensely to my writing and
the development of my voice. Finally, this thesis is dedicated to the memory of my friend, Hari
Vasu. He was gone before I began this project, but his life inspired me to start mine anew and
pursue my passions.
3
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments 2
Abstract 4
Introduction 5
The State of Home Video and Classic Film Availability 8
Vidiots: Video Store as Film Archive 17
The Perils of Streaming Video 22
Hope for Streaming and Physical Media 25
Repertory Theaters and Los Angeles Film Culture 30
Conclusion 37
Bibliography 39
4
Abstract
The current state of film preservation has made it considerably easier for audiences to
stream or download old and classic films online. However, this ease of availability masks the
number of films that are currently inaccessible. A great number of movies have been completely
lost or destroyed, whereas others continue to exist in a state of limbo, without any home video or
online release. A film that cannot be viewed by anyone serves little purpose.
This thesis examines and elucidates the current state of film preservation and availability.
The state of the home video market (DVD and Blu-ray) is discussed, as is the impact of
streaming services that cater to fans of classic movies. Repertory theaters are also considered as a
venue for exhibiting films otherwise unavailable to viewers. These old films are a form of
cultural memory, and as they disappear, so does our understanding of the past.
5
Introduction
My grandfather is losing his mind. I first noticed the symptoms in the autumn of 2015.
He was always a man who spoke little, but now when he did talk it was mostly to recount
memories from decades earlier, his stories sometimes mixing up contemporary acquaintances
with men who were long dead. My maternal grandmother’s response seemed odd at first—she
was almost enraged by his failures of memory and his increasing fascination with bygone
decades. I came to believe her response was more from concern than anything else. She could
see my grandfather slowly losing the pieces of memory that made up his life.
In the summer of 2016 he was diagnosed with an early form of Alzheimer’s disease.
There were some medications available to help treat the condition, but my grandparents jointly
elected for him not to use them; my grandmother said the side effects were worse than the
disease. He was in his ‘90s, and she her late ‘80s, so perhaps it was no longer worth it.
I had already seen my other grandfather die from Alzheimer’s. After not seeing him for
years, I was cajoled into attending his final Thanksgiving dinner. He was belligerent and nasty,
and I was an unwelcome stranger to him.
I wanted to be more active in my maternal grandparents’ lives while there was still time,
knowing that I might be a conscious fixture of my grandfather’s life for only a short time more.
The newest memories are the first ones to go; I would be forgotten long before my mother or my
grandmother. Eventually I would be a stranger to him.
One way I’ve tried to connect with my grandfather is through classic films. I’ve been
obsessed with movies since I was in grade school, and I had already seen many of the essential
Hollywood movies before I was even in middle school. Throughout most of my childhood, my
6
family would take a yearly trip to Disney World. The attraction I most looked forward to was
The Great Movie Ride, in which tourists wearing shorts and fanny packs rode on lumbering
shuttles that meandered through scenes from iconic films. An animatronic Gene Kelly sang in
the rain while swinging from a light post and a waxy James Cagney threatened some dirty rat
hiding behind a locked door. The creature from Alien (1979) popped out of a spaceship’s
corridor straight into my nightmares. I would go on to seek out these movies, and they
exhilarated me. Each masterwork helped me to better appreciate the craftsmanship of newer
films that bore their influence. My grandfather and I had grown up on many of the same films,
displaced by nearly seventy years.
I gave him a copy of John Ford’s They Were Expendable (1945) one year as a gift. I
knew that he liked John Wayne films, and I would often find the TV turned to Turner Classic
Movies when I visited my grandparents, usually a western or a war picture. There was a drastic
change in his behavior when he watched it: he was completely present and focused on the movie
in a way he rarely was with anything. Afterward he was more energetic and lucid than usual. It’s
a fairly common phenomenon: culture from past decades has been used repeatedly to help people
with dementia live better quality lives (Block 2012; Siegel 2017).
I tried the same approach with another military film, Patton (1970). My grandfather had
served in the Korean War and (briefly) in the Second World War, and he was drawn to the tales
of heroism in American war films. When he told me that he had taken a psychology course with
the actress Jean Peters at Ohio State during one of his reminiscences, I found him a copy of the
only film of hers I was familiar with, Samuel Fuller’s Pickup on South Street (1953).
These films are a portal into an earlier time for my grandfather, but they are also a form
of historical memory, of national memory. They document the way people lived, the rhythm of
7
their lives throughout the 20
th
century (or at least how they liked to imagine their lives, which is
also meaningful). The American films my grandfather enjoys describe a certain kind of mid-
century American machismo, but other films tell the story of life in a French village or a
Senegalese town or a Mexican tourist trap. And like my grandfather’s memories, these filmic
memories are disappearing.
Trying to determine the status of film preservation and availability can be an incredibly
distressing task for someone with an emotional connection to movies. Every positive story is
followed by a negative rejoinder. That obscure Italian film may have finally gotten a well-
deserved home video release, but what about the French masterpiece abandoned by its own
distributor? It’s great to find a classic Hollywood film on Netflix, but what happens when the site
gives up the rights to shore up money to create another original show? Institutions such as film
archives exist to preserve important movies, but the path to releasing those films to the public
has been damaged. Even films in no danger of disappearing may remain behind locked doors.
8
The State of Home Video and Classic Film Availability
In August of 2016, Manohla Dargis, the co-chief film critic for The New York Times,
wrote a lengthy piece on the preservation of Lewis Milestone’s The Front Page, a newspaper
comedy from 1931 based on a popular stage play of the same name (it also inspired Howard
Hawks’s more successful gender-swapped version of the story, His Girl Friday). More than an
interesting anecdote, the restoration of The Front Page unexpectedly paints a portrait of early-
1930s film culture (Dargis 2016).
The Front Page was shot simultaneously in multiple versions and exists in several edits
discovered during the restoration. The most commonly seen one was the American version, but a
British version with bawdier humor also existed (in one scene, a character flashes his middle
finger, as opposed to the sarcastic salute he gives in the American version), and notes from the
studio indicated an international version was also printed. The restoration process does not just
bring a classic film into sharper focus—it paints a portrait of film industry practices and
international distribution strategies from the early years of sound (Dargis 2016).
Major film preservation stories pop up every year or two, usually heralded by a new
discovery. The most consequential of the last decade or so was Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, a
German silent epic from 1927. The movie is one of the defining works of German expressionism
and one of the earliest feature-length science fiction films. (It was also the inspiration for the
design of C-3PO in 1977’s Star Wars ; Eisner 1976.) The original version of the movie, a little
over two and a half hours long, was cut down immediately after the premiere for international
distribution, and the version that most audiences saw for decades after was under ninety minutes.
A 2002 version of the film that brought the run time to slightly less than two hours was heralded
9
as the most complete and definitive version possible, but in 2010 a truly definitive version was
completed with the aid of a newly discovered print from Buenos Aires containing footage
thought destroyed nearly eighty years earlier (Scott 2002; Rohter 2010).
These feel-good stories about finding lost films are few and far between, and it is hard to
be optimistic about the future of classic film. One problem is that even the best technological
means for restoring films may be significantly flawed. In a 2014 piece for the now-defunct site
The Dissolve, Matthew Dessem delves into the process by which films are digitally preserved. A
high quality digital master is created by scanning the film’s negative, and that file can then be
digitally cleaned up. It is also possible to restore the physical film by cleaning it and printing a
new, sturdier negative, though this technique leaves behind many of the imperfections that can
be erased with a digital restoration (Dessem 2014). It’s a useful process, because of the superior
ability to restore films, and the fact that the digital file will never decay. But it opens up a host of
new issues.
As Dessem points out from The Digital Dilemma, a major report on the current state of
film preservation, digital versions of films need to be converted to new formats repeatedly in
order to remain accessible to contemporary technology. Even though the digital master of a film
will not decay, it has to be transferred to the newest hardware and file formats every five years or
so, otherwise it is difficult to find machines that can read the information. This is a far more
laborious process than preserving film—once an analogue negative or master has been
preserved, it can last for over 100 years if properly cared for (Science and Technology Council
2007).
Digital masters are copied in compressed digital cinema packages (DCPs), hard drives
that contain a somewhat lower quality version of the film. These DCPs are sent to cinemas, and
10
almost all movies that we see in theaters come from these digital versions. To prevent piracy, a
time-sensitive password is needed to access the film (Dessem 2014). After a certain time period,
the movie is no longer accessible, and the DCP is useless, a modern version of the self-
destructing tapes from the Mission: Impossible series. The DCPs are a far cry from film, which
can be used as long as it remains physically stable. Even if a 35mm projector isn’t available, the
film could always be scanned and a new digital version could be created. It’s not impossible to
think that future generations might find digital copies of lost masterworks in the vein of
Metropolis, but not be able to access them.
“I think the real problem right now is that people have the impression that there isn’t all
that much to classic film history, when TCM [Turner Classic Movies] shows just a tiny fraction
of American films,” said Dave Kehr, an Adjunct Curator of film at the Museum of Modern Art
and former film and DVD critic with the Chicago Reader and The New York Times.
1
Created in
1994, TCM originally had the rights to air only Warner Brothers films made prior to 1950 and
MGM films made prior to 1986 (Fabrikant 1986). In 1996, TCM also gained the rights to Warner
films made after 1950 (Fabrikant 1996). The channel later licensed select films from Paramount,
Sony, Twentieth Century Fox, and Universal, but broadcasts only a portion of those studios’
movies, as opposed to a broad array of MGM and Warner films (Dempsey 2003). Most of the
films airing are from the 1930s through the 1960s, although movies from the 1970s and on are
occasionally shown. The network does not censor its content, so more recent films with adult
content are shown late at night. “People have the idea that everything is on TCM—or even
worse, everything is on Netflix, which I hear all the time, and nothing could be further from the
truth,” said Kehr.
1
Dave Kehr, interview with author, December 16, 2016
11
“There is nothing on Netflix. It’s close to zero. And this is a very widespread impression,
even among professional critics,” said Kehr. Even some of the titans of popular film criticism
overestimate the availability of classic films. “I had a big argument with Roger Ebert a few years
ago about it, and there was no convincing him, because everything he had ever heard of was on
DVD at the time. I think his theory was ‘if I haven’t heard of it, then it’s no good.’ And that’s
just terrifying to me,” he said.
Long before the arrival of Netflix, or even DVDs or VHS tapes, collectors installed film
projectors in their homes to view movies. In A Thousand Cuts, Dennis Bartok and Jeff Joseph’s
2016 book, the authors recount the history of these collectors, people who held on to discarded
35mm and 16mm prints of movies. Often they had certain film obsessions that would define their
collections. Some snatched up old musicals. One man has collected numerous copies of the 1962
science fiction film Day of the Triffids and has been painstakingly restoring it for years (the film
is not currently available on any home video format in the US). Many of the prints owned by
collectors were rescued from dumpsters after theaters threw them away. After years of inaction,
Hollywood studios worked with the FBI and the Justice Department in the 1970s to arrest
collectors and confiscate their holdings. Although the studios had shown little interest in these
film prints, it was illegal to show them, even privately, without their permission (Bartok and
Joseph 2016).
The raids were an ironic move, considering what little respect the studios showed at the
time for film preservation. Some of the prints destroyed during this period may have been of
films that have now disappeared or exist only in shoddy transfers. These small groups of film
collectors were unlikely to have any significant impact on studio profits. By destroying these
prints, the studios made it more difficult to eventually preserve and restore their films. Many of
12
their own prints and negatives were destroyed over the years in fires or through mismanagement
(the most famous fire being the Fox vault fire in 1937, which destroyed nearly all of Fox’s silent
films; Slide 1992). The studios’ overzealous legal action against collectors decreased the
likelihood that outside parties would have the elements necessary to save older films.
This short-sighted action may have been due to the changing ownership of Hollywood.
Most of the major studios were bought by large conglomerates throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s:
Universal by MCA, MGM by Time-Life, Paramount by Gulf + Western, and Warner Brothers by
Kinney National Company (Casper 2011). Some of these corporations had no previous
connection to the entertainment industry, and they may have failed to comprehend how many of
their films were unavailable or in danger of being lost.
Beyond the preservation and restoration of classic films in poor shape, large numbers of
films currently reside in limbo, films that have been preserved in some form and are not in
danger of being lost, but have yet to be released on any current home video formats.
2
One of the
most famous examples is Orson Welles’s late career masterpiece Chimes at Midnight (1966).
Despite its critical reputation, the movie was unavailable on home video for decades in the US
until The Criterion Collection released it in 2016www.clips4sale.com/106888. Films like Chimes
are meant to be viewed, to be discussed and dissected by audiences. A film that cannot be seen
by anyone serves little purpose, and is not that dissimilar from a completely lost film. A film’s
prolonged absence may even increase the likelihood that it will never be rereleased; fewer and
fewer people who have actually seen the film will be left to advocate for it.
From the 1980s through the early 2000s, the prospects for home video seemed bright.
VHS, which was introduced in the mid-1970s but only came to prominence in the early 1980s,
2
Ibid
13
finally offered the average viewer the freedom to see recent and classic films outside the
confines of the theater system (Gomes 2006). Previously, when a film finished its theatrical run,
there were few ways to see it, unless the studio chose to rerelease it in theaters or a repertory
theater screened it. Starting in 1956, the major television networks began to lease theatrical films
made prior to 1948 (films made after 1948 required additional residual payments for actors, and
were therefore less cost-effective). Starting in 1961, the networks began airing films made after
1948, which proved to be popular enough to justify their additional cost. By the mid-‘60s one
could find a movie airing every night of the week on television. However, the networks began to
deplete their supply of theatrical films, and made-for-television movies proved to be just as
successful as theatrical films, so the saturation of films on television dried out in the 1970s.
Local stations would continue to air old movies late at night or early in the morning, though this
practice has all but disappeared (Edgerton 2007). Now movies on television are relegated to
cable channels like FX or HBO that almost exclusively show more recent films that are easily
accessible via physical media or streaming. As televised films became less common, home video
gave consumers another way to experience the films they grew up with anew, or to simply catch
up on last year’s hit movies.
Further advances in home video formats brought additional benefits beyond convenience
and access. The advent of DVDs in the late 1990s provided higher quality images and slowed
decay more than VHS tapes, which experience a certain amount of wear and tear from normal
use. Blu-ray discs feature dramatically improved picture and sound quality, and are also more
durable and scratch-resistant than DVDs. The newest physical format, Ultra HD 4K Blu-rays,
play at the same resolution as the digital files that are shown in most movie theaters, and offer
more dynamic colors and lighting than regular Blu-ray discs. (They also require large, cost-
14
prohibitive 4K resolution televisions to get the full effect; Mesnik 2016). But even as the
technical innovations of home video formats increase, the number of available films has been
drastically curtailed.
Dave Kehr estimates from decades of reviewing home video release that only about half
of the films made available on a given format are carried over to the next format to replace it.
3
Around fifty percent of the films released on VHS were later released on DVD, and only about a
quarter of those films have ever been released as Blu-ray discs. The rise of streaming video and
the wide-spread availability of illegally downloaded films may have made physical media less
attractive to viewers.
Some of the movies currently unavailable are classics of world cinema, such as Abel
Gance’s 1927 silent epic Napoleon, or The Mother and the Whore (1973), Jean Eustache’s four
hour film from the last years of the French New Wave. Eric Von Stroheim’s butchered silent
masterpiece, 1924’s Greed, only exists in Latin American DVD editions that would sputter
uselessly in a North American DVD player. John Ford and Howard Hawks are among the most
well-regarded of classic Hollywood directors and have inspired generations of critics and
filmmakers, yet some of their movies are still not available on home video. Hawks’s first sound
film, The Air Circus (1928) is unavailable in any format, as is John Ford’s Salute from 1929, one
of his earliest collaborations with John Wayne.
All films made prior to 1923 have now aged into the public domain, as have films from
the middle of the century that never had their copyrights renewed or were incorrectly
copyrighted, including Stanley Donen’s 1963 spy thriller, Charade (Pierce 2007). These publicly
available films have allowed for a new crop of DVDs and Blu-rays to emerge. But many of these
3
Ibid
15
films exist in terrible quality DVDs, such as Anthony Mann’s film noir thriller, T Men (1947),
with its ghostly, blurry images and a hissing soundtrack that threatens to drown out the dialogue.
Even movies still copyrighted can fall victim to these subpar DVDs. Orson Welles’s
second film, The Magnificent Ambersons, is universally regarded as a masterpiece, even in the
truncated version that currently exists, yet the film’s only official physical release in the current
century was in a barebones, poorly restored DVD, originally offered with the Blu-ray release of
his first film, Citizen Kane. Prior to that, it had only been available in more primitive formats
from the 1980s: two VHS releases (one in the original black and white and a colorized
bastardization that supplanted it) and a laser disc from The Voyager Company, the precursor to
The Criterion Collection. The movie’s shoddy release shows a startling lack of respect for one of
the greatest American films.
Over the last decade, profits from physical media have shrunk, in large part due to the
popularity of streamed media. Most recently, the value of Sony Pictures’ film division was
written down by $1 billion, in large part due to weak DVD and Blu-ray sales (Sweney 2017). As
profits from physical media have shrunk, major film studios are wary of releasing their catalogue
of films on DVD, and especially newer formats like Blu-ray. Despite Woody Allen’s popularity
among critics and art house audiences, only his four best known films were released by MGM on
the current Blu-ray format (out of the forty-seven films Allen has directed). This is compared to
the early years of the DVD format, when nearly all of his films were released in large boxed sets,
which allowed viewers to track his artistic development and also isolate specific periods of his
work. But future releases would appear on a much smaller label, Twilight Time.
Twilight Time is sold through Screen Archives Entertainment, an online marketplace
dealing in Blu-ray and DVD releases and film score recordings. They released the remaining
16
Woody Allen films from his classic period in anemic print runs of only 3,000 copies. The label
has also released films by François Truffaut, John Ford, and Otto Preminger, as well as less
essential oddities such as Count Yorga, Vampire and Scream and Scream Again (both 1970).
Twilight Time’s visibility is limited, and the tiny print runs of films result in movies that quickly
go out of print and are once more unavailable. It’s better to have these films released than to be
locked away in a vault, but small printings or poor versions are not an ideal way to keep a movie
alive for the public, and the impact of Twilight Time’s commendable releases is diluted by their
focus on grindhouse exploitation films.
Because physical releases can be so fleeting, it is increasingly important to find archival
ways to preserve these films, even if they are not what we traditionally think of as archives.
More storied institutions, like the UCLA Film and Television Archive, or the archive at the
Cineteca di Bologna, are responsible for protecting and preserving rare and important film
elements. They have also helped restore countless films. UCLA is responsible for restoring
works by important filmmakers like George Cukor, Raoul Walsh, and Stanley Kubrick, whereas
the Cineteca di Bologna has partnered with Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation to
preserve and restore lesser seen films from across the globe. These organizations are essential,
but it’s easy to lose sight of more accessible kinds of archives, such as video stores.
17
Vidiots: Video Store as Film Archive
As necessary as film archives are for preserving movies, they do little to improve the
accessibility of older films—the average person is unable to peruse their wealth of movies.
Vidiots, located in Santa Monica, is a necessary addition to traditional archives. The organization
is dedicated to preserving underseen and important films, and more importantly, Vidiots wants
any customer to be able to access its films.
The idea of a video rental store now seems quaint to many people. It evokes memories of
wandering through a Blockbuster or a Hollywood Video after a night on the town. Nearly half
the inventory was devoted to a few recent films of dubious quality, whereas the rest of the
movies were a mishmash of genres. If you were seeking classic films, you could probably find
some—but not necessarily the movies you wanted. In all but the fanciest places there was no
sense of curation to inform the selections. Vidiots remains an antidote to all those bad memories,
a temple in honor of classic films. It’s not just a place to find a fun movie for the weekend, but
also a home for films that are nearly impossible to find in any other format.
Cathy Tauber, co-founder of Vidiots, initially saw the need for a higher-quality video
store after visiting stores with paltry selections. “I didn’t even have a VCR, but when I would go
into video stores with friends, I wasn’t finding anything that was interesting enough to make me
even want to get a VCR, because either I had seen it, or I never wanted to see it.” After reading
an article about a flourishing group of video stores stocked with classic and avant garde films,
Tauber and her business partner Patty Polinger decided to start their own video store.
4
4
Cathy Tauber, interview with author, November 29, 2016
18
The most dominant of video stores, Blockbuster, was also founded in 1985, but would
not become ubiquitous until the 1990s. Throughout much of the 1980s Vidiots was only
competing with other independent video stores; their contemporary equivalents include places
like Cinefile or Vidéothèque. The VHS and Betamax wars were ongoing at the time of Vidiots’s
birth, and the store stuck with the eventual winner, VHS (although some customers preferred
what they considered the better picture quality of Betamax).
Over the years, Vidiots expanded, gradually buying up more and more of the neighboring
building to house its constantly growing collection of movies. The rise of Blockbuster was a
perverse benefit for Vidiots. As the number of chain stores increased, smaller independent video
stores were put out of business. However, their displaced customers were still looking for films
that were not stocked by the major chains, so they started frequenting the much larger Vidiots
instead. Only a handful of Blockbuster stores remain now, but Vidiots lives on thanks to a loyal
base of customers and members.
The scale of Vidiots isn’t immediately apparent when walking into the store.
Documentaries are first up on your right, and what initially looks like a few shelves of DVDs
turns out to be an entire rack devoted to nonfiction films, far more than what could be found in
most contemporary video stores. That single rack turns out to be only a fraction of the
documentary section, which wraps around in a circle. The overwhelming number of films seems
more fitting for an archive than for a video rental store. There are similarly sized sections
devoted to other genres, as well as a series of racks for Blu-ray discs. The store already seems
quite large, but only after stopping at the checkout desk does the most interesting area come into
view: the VHS section, composed of ten-foot-tall shelves filled with 11,000 VHS tapes.
19
Most of the titles are obscure; more familiar movies that were upgraded to DVD or Blu-
ray have been discarded. Some of the remaining tapes are films that exist on a newer format, yet
were critically reviled and don’t warrant upgrading (e.g., the Flintstones movie or Flipper).
Many of the titles exist solely on VHS. They remain moldering in their aging cardboard boxes
with shredded corners, or bruised plastic clamshell cases. A ladder is required to reach the titles
toward the top of the shelves. Maggie Mackay, executive director of Vidiots, draws my attention
to one example: UFOria (1985), starring Harry Dean Stanton, which was never transferred to
DVD or Blu-ray because of music licensing issues. The store recently held an award ceremony
dedicated to Stanton’s long career.
Filmmakers and actors are an important part of Vidiots’s clientele, and some have their
own shelves of recommended movies. Brett Ratner, best known for directing a series of
forgettable action comedies, curates a shelf devoted to essential tough guy films: Enter the
Dragon (1973), Raging Bull (1980), The Godfather Part II (1974), and two copies each of
Chinatown (1974) and Goodfellas (1990). Laura Dern, who starred in Jurassic Park (1993) and
multiple David Lynch films, takes a more thoughtful approach. Her selection is comprised of
films that also serve as acting masterclasses: The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), A
Streetcar Named Desire (1951), and A Woman under the Influence (1974), to name a few.
The store has assembled a library bearing the director David O. Russell’s name, a rack
full of film books donated by himself and other filmmakers. Vidiots also has a screening room,
which visiting filmmakers can commandeer. The director Mike Mills held an advance screening
there of his film 20
th
Century Women in late 2016. Others have chosen to program the most
obscure films from Vidiots’s vast inventory.
20
Because Vidiots has been in business over thirty years, its staff has seen just how many
films have never been upgraded, languishing on obsolete formats. They plan to launch a film
preservation project, in which they would license their movies that only exist on VHS to create
new digital versions, which would halt much of a film’s decay. But the preservation project isn’t
just about protecting VHS films. Some filmmakers whose movies never received proper physical
(or even theatrical) releases have donated DVD or Blu-ray copies to Vidiots. These films can
then be made available to the public, and also preserved in the Vidiots archive.
“With distribution levels the way they are now, there are a lot of people making great
work, and it’s not available,” said Mackay. “We talked to two filmmakers yesterday whose work
is incredible, but they never made a DVD or a Blu-ray of their films. So now at my urging they
have both made one, specifically for us. So we’ll have one and it’ll become part of the permanent
library.”
Mackay goes on to mention a friend whose movie was purchased by Oscilloscope Films,
an independent movie distributor. After buying the distribution rights, Oscilloscope chose not to
show the film theatrically and didn’t pursue a home video or streaming release. The director was
prohibited from releasing a version of the film because Oscilloscope now owns it.
5
After initially calling their business a video store, Tauber and Mackay began referring to
it as a library and an archive. Those terms seem fitting. Many people still rent films from Vidiots
as they would at any other video store, but the store’s focus on preservation puts it in line with
UCLA and the Cineteca di Bologna’s archives. Vidiots isn’t merely a place to rent a film on a
lazy Saturday night; it’s a center for film preservation. But even the support of rich benefactors
has not been enough to completely insulate Vidiots from financial strains that have dogged it.
5
Maggie Mackay, interview with author, November 29, 2016
21
After years of losses, Tauber and Polinger announced in early 2015 that Vidiots would
soon close. A last minute donation from film producer Megan Ellison, the founder of Annapurna
Pictures, helped keep the store open. Ellison is the daughter of Larry Ellison, co-founder of
Oracle, the world’s second-largest software manufacturer (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2017). She
is responsible for producing some of the most critically acclaimed films of the past decade,
including The Master (2011), Her (2013), and Zero Dark Thirty (2012). Co-founder Tauber
mentions that it was the director David O. Russell who initially convinced the owners to turn
Vidiots into a non-profit organization. With Ellison’s support, Vidiots became a non-profit
organization, allowing it to substantially decrease its tax burden and organize fundraising and
donation efforts (Gardner 2015).
The store’s new status allowed it to accrue donations and paid memberships, in addition
to rental profits. An Indiegogo fundraising campaign was also launched to keep Vidiots afloat,
but the total donations fell short of the $65,000 goal (Mackay 2016). Then, in late January, 2017,
Vidiots announced it would soon close its doors. Once again, Ellison and Annapurna Pictures
stepped in to save the foundation. They would continue to finance Vidiots while a new, more
economical location was found for a projected opening in 2018. The Mary Pickford Screening
Room at the Ace Hotel will have screenings put on by Vidiots during its hiatus, and the store will
also put on pop up events where people can still rent from a modest portion of Vidiots’s library.
The turbulent recent history of Vidiots is concerning for lovers of hard to find films. One
of the benefits of a traditional archive is that it can be trusted to store and preserve important
movies, and Vidiots lacks that degree of stability. But the store’s physical hibernation may only
be prelude to a metamorphosis. Now that Ellison’s wealth is behind Vidiots, the store, and the
films it helps to preserve, have the possibility of returning in more stable condition.
22
The Perils of Streaming Video
There has been a pervasive belief among many viewers (and even some esteemed critics
like the late Roger Ebert) that streaming is the solution to keeping classic films available.
Streaming removes the cost of printing and shipping DVDs or Blu-rays, making it easier to turn
a profit, and might increase the number of films studios would be willing to rerelease. But those
are overly simplistic assumptions that ignore some of the incentives against releasing films
online, both for the studios that own films and the services that stream them.
“[Netflix is] very blunt about the fact that they feel their subscriber base is not interested
in old movies, or movies that are perceived as old,” said Glenn Kenny, a film critic who has
written about physical media releases for decades and currently writes a column on streaming for
The New York Times.
6
“They were very frank when I discussed it with them that they see their
mission as curatorial—everybody sees their mission as curatorial now—but they don’t see it as
conservational. And they’re really not interested. They don’t have a mission of saving the
classics.
“[Netflix cares] about serving their audience. They are not interested in education—I
imagine they would shriek in horror if the word was even mentioned,” said Kenny. “Love of
classic film is not something that has been a mainstream concern [until recently].” Netflix’s
current catalogue bears this sentiment out—the site features over 4,000 movies and television
shows, yet now only thirty-eight of its films were made prior to 1960.
Some studios have no financial incentive to even allow streaming services to license their
films. “Sometimes the studio doesn’t care or just doesn’t want to go through the trouble. They
6
Glenn Kenny, interview with author, February 2, 2017
23
don’t even want to get the lawyer in there to make the deal because paying the lawyer to make
the deal will actually cost more than they anticipate making from the licensing deal,” he said.
Among the films in limbo because of poor financial incentives are movies currently
owned by MGM that were distributed by Cannon Films, such as Jean-Luc Godard’s King Lear.
7
MGM has shown little interest in licensing those movies. In the case of King Lear, the shame is
particular. Godard’s Lear never received an official US theatrical release. The film’s strange
amalgam of a cast would also surely be a selling point: it stars Molly Ringwald at the height of
her Brat Pack heyday, as well as Norman Mailer, Burgess Meredith, the opera director Peter
Sellars (who co-wrote the film), and Woody Allen, a Godard disciple in his own right.
The film, one of Godard’s most abstract, is more a meditation on King Lear than an
adaptation; few of Shakespeare’s lines are used. Originally envisioned as a gangster epic,
Norman Mailer wrote a screenplay and was cast as Lear, but left after only three hours when it
became clear that he and Godard were incompatible collaborators. (Godard filmed Mailer
complaining to his daughter about the shoot and used it as the movie’s introductory scene.) The
meat of the film follows Sellars as a modern descendant of Shakespeare trying to restore his
forefather’s place in a post-apocalyptic culture that has mostly forgotten him. The story is told in
a convoluted, chopped-up manner. As challenging as King Lear is, it also finds Godard’s eye for
capturing beauty in fine form.
In addition to their lack of interest in licensing classic films, streaming services are also
poor ways of keeping classic films in public view. Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu all change their
catalogues every month, adding some items and subtracting others. Often a film will simply
move from one platform to another, as when The Shining left Amazon Prime streaming and was
7
Ibid
24
picked up by Netflix. But it’s not always the case that another service licenses the film;
sometimes a movie leaves one service and simply disappears.
Less known by many users of streaming services is the impermanence of the streaming
rights that they have purchased. Even when someone pays to buy a copy of a film, which allows
them to download the movie or stream it whenever they choose, they never actually own the
film. The original rights holder or the streaming service can choose to remove that film from the
buyer’s library at any time, for any reason. Amazon has removed Christmas-themed Disney
videos that customers had purchased so that they could be shown exclusively on the Disney
Channel (Hern 2013).
These disappearances underscore why it is so important for classic films to be released on
physical formats: DVDs and Blu-rays are more permanent means of keeping these films
available. A person who collects DVDs and Blu-rays has access to those films as long as the
physical materials will last, whereas someone who relies on streaming has no guarantee of how
long the films they care about will be available. Those movies could disappear with little
warning. (It’s now common for entertainment news sites to publish what films will be leaving
various streaming cites at the end of the month; for an example, see Lapin 2017.)
25
Hope for Streaming and Physical Media
Despite the inherent problems of streaming film, there are still some commendable
services that show difficult to find films. Unlike Netflix’s style of curation, which seems
designed for no one other than people who watch television shows on the website, services like
Mubi, FilmStruck, Fandor, and Warner Instant Archive are all clearly curated for lovers of
classic film.
Mubi operates by unabashedly exploiting cinephiles’ fear of losing classic films. The
service only has thirty films available at any given time. One film is added each day, and is only
available for thirty days, at which point it disappears. The site primarily focuses on arthouse
cinema and experimental videos, although it occasionally features mainstream hits and
Hollywood classics. Mubi often has films that are not currently available on any format in the
US, and because the films are only available for a month, subscribers have to be vigilant, lest
they risk missing out (Kenny 2017). Because its films only stream for one month, Mubi can
license films at more affordable rates than larger sites such as Netflix or Hulu, which sign
multiyear streaming deals.
8
FilmStruck, a streaming service created by TCM and The Criterion Collection, is pitched
toward lovers of classic films and contemporary art cinema, and uses a degree of curation that far
exceeds most other streaming services. The homepage features a number of rotating film
playlists: at the time of this writing, there are collections of films by independent director John
Sayles and French experimentalist Chris Marker, as well as films painting critical portraits of life
in the Soviet Union. New playlists are added often and allow programmers to address
8
Ibid
26
contemporary events. Less than a week after Donald Trump’s executive order banning travel
from residents of seven Muslim-majority nations, the site had collections of Iranian films, films
about immigrants, and a variety of world cinema classics displayed on the home page.
Michael Sragow is a film critic and programmer for FilmStruck. He says part of what
makes FilmStruck stand out it is how it mimics the feel of having a high quality DVD or Blu-ray
of a film.
9
“I think Blu-ray is still the best reproduction and the greatest way if you’ve got a
decent system to see a movie,” said Sragow. But FilmStruck, unlike almost all streaming
services, includes special features like documentaries and commentaries that originally appeared
on the Criterion Collection Blu-rays and DVDs, as well as some new features recorded
specifically for the channel. “We’re putting up [guest curation] by Jonathan Lethem, the novelist.
We have a lot of these guest curators. [Former Saturday Night Live star] Bill Hader was the first
one—they’re called ‘Adventures in Movie Going.’ All the original stuff that we produce we’re
putting up on the channel. We just started to do things like supplement-only themes,” said
Sragow, referring to themes devoted only to special features, like director interviews or behind-
the-scenes documentaries.
One of those supplement-only themes is built around film historian and special effects
expert Craig Barron, who puts together programs detailing the creation of the effects in films like
Chaplin’s The Gold Rush. Beyond just a place to find classic films and otherwise unavailable
movies, FilmStruck’s plethora of documentaries and features about the films indicate the
importance of film education as part of its mission.
In addition to his programming for FilmStruck, Sragow also writes critical essays for
FilmStruck’s parent organization, the Criterion Collection, including an appreciation of the
9
Michael Sragow, interview with author, January 6, 2017
27
aforementioned The Front Page, which the company released with His Girl Friday. Criterion
bills itself as “a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films.” It partners with
Janus Films, a theatrical distribution company responsible for first introducing American
audiences to masterworks by Fellini, Bergman, and Kurosawa, among numerous other influential
foreign directors.
The Criterion Collection’s early releases were primarily from the Janus catalogue,
although it also licenses films from other studios and distribution companies for release. It is best
known among cinephiles for the quality of its DVDs and Blu-rays (all films undergo a
restoration from Criterion, sometimes in conjunction with major film preservation organizations)
and for its use of high quality special features. Perhaps most importantly, Criterion often releases
films that previously haven’t been available in the US. Most recently, it made Orson Welles’s
Chimes of Midnight available. The movie one of his most acclaimed (and least seen) films and
could previously only be found in a blurry video uploaded to Youtube.
Peter Becker, president of the Criterion Collection, says that the company only releases
films under the Criterion label if the elements are in fairly good condition. However, Criterion is
still interested in releasing films that don’t meet that standard. “It’s always been important for us
to have a second track where we can make films available and not have our own production style
become a reason that films aren’t being seen,” said Becker. “So we would rather make films
available in whatever form they’re viewable now. So we think all of our films need to be seen,
and we want to make that the best existing version available.”
10
The Eclipse label was started in 2007 to release films that Criterion has the rights to but
that can’t be restored to their normal standards, or don’t have enough accompanying special
10
Peter Becker, interview with author, December 21, 2016
28
features to fit in with normal Criterion editions. “If our restoration team isn’t happy with the
available film elements on a French classic from the ‘30s, we don’t think that’s a good reason for
you not to be watching it,” said Becker. The Eclipse releases are all multi-DVD sets, usually
built around the work of a single director or a studio. Past sets have explored lesser-known films
by renowned directors like Ingmar Bergman and Yasujiro Ozu, as well as important yet obscure
filmmakers like Basil Dearden and Jean Grémillon.
During a brief conversation, film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum weighed in on why classic
films are so often poorly served by home video. Part of his response was that viewers simply
don’t know when they’re missing out on a great movie if it hasn’t been made available to them.
11
He wasn’t referring to Criterion’s Eclipse films, though in some ways they address that problem.
Many of its films are obscure, or are forgotten works by great directors, but their obscurity isn’t
due to a lack of quality. Often, it is a consequence of poor preservation or stifling licensing
agreements. The average fan of classic movies is unlikely to know about these films at all until
they are released.
Of course, there are other home video companies giving fresh visibility to forgotten
films. Olive Films has been able to license many older films from large studios due to the
lowered prices of licensing, such as Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon and John Ford’s The Quiet
Man (both from 1952). Kino Lorber has released a number of important silent and early sound
films that are in the public domain and much cheaper to acquire, including F. W. Murnau’s
Nosferatu (1922) and Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925). Neither label has quite the
prestige of Criterion, yet both companies nonetheless make important films available again.
11
Jonathan Rosenbaum, interview with author, December 14, 2016
29
Unlike most of the remaining major studios, Warner Brothers has made an admirable
attempt to put out their classic catalogue via on-demand DVDs. The discs are only printed after
being ordered, using a cheaper and lower quality process; the result is a DVD not too dissimilar
from one you might burn yourself. They scratch easily (the on-demand DVDs are missing an
extra layer of protective coating found on commercially manufactured discs), but it is a small
price to pay for rare movies. The studio also runs the Warner Instant Archive, a streaming
service for its film and television catalogue. In its early days, the service featured a variety of
hard to find films, mostly movies that had not entered the critical pantheon. Now it features a
greater number of well-regarded films. Warner Brothers has also stepped up Blu-ray upgrades of
films by directors including Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, and John Ford.
Other companies focus almost exclusively on films that have entered the public domain.
Flicker Alley has released film noir thrillers in association with the UCLA Film and Television
archive, as well as early Charlie Chaplin shorts and a collection of films by Russian visionary
Dziga Vertov. Alpha Video’s releases lean more toward forgotten films from the 1930s and ‘40s,
plus a large helping of titillating exploitation pictures. Alpha Video’s releases are often of fairly
poor quality, but they nonetheless keep hard to find films circulating.
30
Repertory Theaters and Los Angeles Film Culture
Beyond home video, repertory theaters and art house cinemas play an important role in
keeping classic films alive. Emily Woodburne is the head of theatrical and nontheatrical
distribution for Janus Films, which specializes in classic American and foreign films. Janus is
best known for introducing some of the great classics of world cinema to American audiences in
the late ‘50s and ‘60s, including François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven
Samurai, and Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura. Over time the company focused more on
classic films over time, but in 2009 it released Revanche, an Austrian thriller and its first first-run
film since the 1980s. Janus now releases a small number of new films, although the bulk of its
activities are devoted to distributing its older films.
The absence of any home video releases for many classic films makes those more
appealing for Woodburne to release. “I think that something that is well known but hard to see—
those are very appealing,” said Woodburne.
12
“We like discoveries. Periodically we’ll have a
film that was never released in the states.” She cites I Knew Her Well, an Italian film from 1965
that was never released in the US until Janus distributed it to theaters. Another recent release was
John Waters’s Multiple Maniacs, which had been hard to see aside from poor quality prints and
bootleg DVDs.
Woodburne is able to give repertory theaters flexibility when it comes to showing classic
films, more so than a first-run theater. Instead of having to release films on Fridays for a full
week, repertory theaters can often program classic films for specific days of the week (“French
Tuesday”) or as part of a special series of films. These more accommodating arrangements allow
12
Emily Woodburne, interview with author, January 12, 2017
31
the repertories to curate their selection with the viewer in mind, rather than merely fulfilling the
wishes of theatrical distributors.
Many viewers are now accustomed to watching films at home on computers, or even
mobile phones, despite the superior experience offered by seeing a film in a darkened theater.
We live in a world of myriad distractions; when you watch a film at home, it’s nearly impossible
to avoid looking at every unimportant message or alert on your phone, or to check your email or
Facebook if you’re watching on a computer. If we’re too comfortable, we drift off to sleep while
the movie plays on without us.
The theatrical experience allows viewers to see films, often in the best available quality,
without distraction. Even if someone doesn’t turn off his phone (it’s surprisingly liberating to
turn off the device for two hours), the social stigma that comes from whipping out a brightly lit
screen in a dark theater prevents many people from allowing themselves to be distracted.
One bastion of classic Hollywood films in Los Angeles County is Old Town Music Hall.
The box-like, pea green building is located on Richmond Street in El Segundo (there’s still free
street parking, a rarity in Los Angeles). Originally founded in 1921 as the El Segundo State
Theater, the building was renovated and reopened in 1968 as Old Town Music Hall by new
owners Bill Field and Bill Coffman. Field and Coffman upgraded the theater by purchasing a
Mighty Wurlitzer Theater Pipe Organ from the Fox West Theater in Long Beach and installing it
in their new building. An extended-range Bösendorfer piano was added in the 1970s.
The building’s front entrance is marked by an old-fashioned ticket booth and a
concessions stand. Classic Hollywood memorabilia, including Laurel and Hardy statuettes, adorn
the cramped lobby. The main theater features such tacky nostalgia as a poster of da Vinci’s The
Last Supper with Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, and Cary Grant standing in for Jesus and
32
his disciples. The campier decorations contrast with elegant chandeliers and Art Nouveau posters
on the walls. Old Town Music Hall goes to extremes on holidays; around Halloween, the theater
filled with tombstones and cobwebs and screaming toy monsters. They’re replaced by Christmas
decorations as soon as November rolls around.
At 188 seats, the theater qualifies as fairly small; volunteer manager James Moll calls it a
“mini-movie palace.”
13
Moll is a director and producer of documentary films; he won an
Academy Award for directing the Holocaust documentary Last Days (1998), and served as the
Founding Executive Director of Steven Spielberg’s USC Shoah Foundation, which he oversaw
from 1994 to 1998. The foundation is devoted to documenting the testimony of Holocaust
survivors. Moll is also a Tony award shy of an EGOT, the designation for people who have won
an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony.
As a child, Moll’s parents would regularly take him to Old Town Music Hall to see
classic films. “Before every screening of a movie, there’s another little show where the pipe
organ is played, the piano is played, there’s an audience sing-a-long, just like in the ‘20s and
‘30s, and also a short comedy, usually a silent accompanied live by the pipe organ,” he said.
Owner Bill Field performs the pre-film concert and sing-a-long at the organ (Coffman
died in 2001). Field rides up to the stage on a motorized scooter, then commences with a medley
of classic American songs from the early-20
th
century. Even the oldest members of the audience
might have difficulty naming all of the songs, but their melodies are vaguely familiar, as if they
have entered our collective consciousness. The performance shows off the unusual aspects of the
Wurlitzer; the xylophones and percussion instruments are more prominent in the mix than the
actual organ.
13
James Moll, interview with author, November 4, 2016
33
Old Town Music Hall specializes in films made prior to 1954, the year in which the
widescreen format became standard for American films (the screen isn’t large enough to
accommodate these wider films). In addition to sound films, the theater often plays silent films
which are accompanied by the Wurlitzer organ, an experience that has been all but forgotten.
In the days when film prints were projected, Old Town Music Hall and other theaters
showing classic films would rent prints from distributors for a small fee, plus a percentage of the
box office proceeds. But as film was replaced by digital projection, the ways in which repertory
theaters acquire films changed dramatically. It has led to a form of apathy on the part of film
studios and distributors that threatens the future of these theaters and the essential films they
show.
Like many theaters, Old Town Music Hall switched to digital projection once film
projectors began to die out. There are no companies that currently produce 35mm projectors, and
the more opulent 70mm projectors have been extinct for decades.
14
The film projectors currently
in use are all old, some cobbled together with parts from other decommissioned machines. When
Quentin Tarantino decided to show a special version of The Hateful Eight on 70mm film, the
film’s distributor searched through eBay and other sellers for parts to one hundred projectors in
working order, which were then loaned out to theaters that did not have their own (Yarm 2015).
Seeing a movie on film can give it greater clarity and more vibrant colors, but the ease of digital
projection has made it the standard in the vast majority of movie theaters.
The move to digital projection allowed theaters and distributors to cut costs by shipping a
hard drive with the full film, or even digitally transferring their new films to first run theaters via
14
Dave Kehr, interview with author, December 16, 2016
34
satellite or internet, which avoided the prohibitive cost of shipping a film print. But this new
method is of little benefit to theaters that specialize in classic films.
The studios have been slow to digitize their older films. This is partially because some
negatives are in a state of disrepair and require intensive, costly restorations to make a new print.
In many cases, studios may not perceive enough of a financial incentive to prioritize the
digitization of older films. Perennial favorites like Vertigo (1958) and To Kill a Mockingbird
(1962) are popular enough to warrant DCPs, but many older films don’t receive this treatment.
In the days of film, theaters would receive a print of the films they had obtained the rights
to screen. Now it is incredibly rare for distributors to rent out prints, unless for a large,
prestigious organization like the American Film Institute or the Film Forum. Theaters that still
have 35mm projectors can try to find prints that belong to boutique distributors, or are in the
hands of private collectors or archives, but theaters like Old Town have to rely on DVD and Blu-
ray copies of films, which the distributors do not provide. Instead, they sell the right to show the
film for a set period, and then leave it up to theaters to obtain a copy. Moll has sometimes had to
search for out-of-print or bootlegged copies of DVDs for movies that are not available in higher
quality Blu-ray editions.
In recent years, Old Town Music Hall’s requests to exhibit films owned by some of the
major studios have been complicated when the people employees responsible for theatrical
screenings have claimed not to own the requested films, even though Old Town had previously
rented the same films from them.
15
Bill Field, the theater’s owner, attributes this confusion to
layoffs at the studios that have significantly shrunk the theatrical rentals staff. The newer
employees aren’t aware of all the films the studio owns or the intricacies of licensing.
16
15
James Moll, interview with author, November 4, 2016
16
Bill Field, interview with author, October 15, 2016
35
These difficult interactions with distributors seem to show an industry that has little
interest in preserving or presenting its classic films. However, the situation is more tenuous with
one of the largest of the major studios, Warner Brothers. Theaters that show classic films owned
by Warner (which includes most repertory theaters, considering the riches of the studio’s
catalogue) receive emails with updates on all films that are considered “out of release.” These are
films that cannot be rented by anyone, usually because of an upcoming event. For instance,
Citizen Kane (1941) could not be legally exhibited in any market, either in the United States or
abroad, from July 1, 2016, to December 31, 2016. This was due to a single event at the American
Film Institute in Los Angeles on November 13. Citizen Kane is among the most popular and
well-regarded of all classic movies, and its disappearance from theaters globally for three and a
half months prior to a single screening in California seems unlikely to have increased the number
of paying customers. Nor does the prohibition on later screenings through the end of the year
make sense. Even harder to justify is an international ban on screenings of the film; a screening
in New York seems unlikely to affect one in California, much less a screening at the British Film
Institute or the Cinémathèque Française.
The death of Debbie Reynolds on December 28, 2016, ensured that her greatest film,
Singin’ in the Rain, would be sought out by many people, both longtime fans and neophytes. The
movie can still be found on DVD and Blu-ray, as well as through digital rentals online, but those
hoping to see the film on the big screen were forced to wait. Turner Classic Movies and Fathom
Events had country-wide screenings planned for January 15 and 18, 2017, and Warner Brothers
put an embargo on the film for all other theaters from mid-November through mid-February. Los
Angeles’s Cinefamily, which specializes in rare and classic films, previously had screenings
earlier in December as a tribute to the late Zsa Gabor, but similar screenings of Reynolds’s most
36
popular film would have been impossible. Warner Brothers has the ability to change embargo
dates, yet that kind of flexibility is only accorded to larger organizations like TCM or the AFI—
smaller theaters do not have the same kind of influence. Warner Brothers has even cancelled
exhibition contracts at smaller theaters prior to the screenings when these larger organizations
have expressed interest in exhibiting the same films.
Warner Brothers is by far the biggest offender among distributors of classic films. The
studio’s apathy regarding theatrical distribution is puzzling, considering that it has made greater
strides than any of the major studies in making its older films available on physical media and
through the Warner Instant Archive streaming platform. Even among the other rights holders of
classic films, there is a troubling shortsightedness.
These classic films are works of art; they have been studied at universities and archives
for decades. Movies are an essential part of American culture, and they have shaped the image of
America in the minds of countless foreigners who saw dubbed and subtitled prints throughout the
20
th
century. By making it so difficult to show these films in their ideal setting, a dark theater,
they harm their own legacies. A studio like Warner Brothers could be known by its greatest
successes—the studio responsible for films like Casablanca and Bonnie and Clyde. With those
films out of reach, they are more likely to be known for their latest fare, uninspiring big-budget
superhero flicks from 2016 such as Suicide Squad and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
These studios can choose what movies they want their reputations to rest with, but some of their
choices are downright puzzling. Perhaps audiences will revolt and force film studios to more
seriously preserve films in danger of being lost or to open their vaults and reveal the treasures
hidden inside.
37
Conclusion
I often think about Jean-Luc Godard’s King Lear in the context of film preservation and
availability. The movie is an unusual choice—few Americans have seen the film. It’s a
complicated and sometimes-frustrating French film that could not be further from the great
Hollywood tradition that created The Searchers or North by Northwest. I have been obsessed
with Godard’s films since an adolescent viewing of Contempt converted me; his movies showed
me cinematic possibilities I had never imagined. But King Lear was stubbornly out of reach. The
film was never given an official US release, possibly because of a devastating review by Vincent
Canby in The New York Times, which seemed explicitly designed to prevent people from seeing
the film (Canby 1988). King Lear was never released on a US DVD (nor even a French DVD),
and wasn’t available online anywhere. Even though the movie is much more recent than other
films missing in action (only a little over thirty years old), it has prematurely joined their ranks.
When I saw that The New Yorker’s Richard Brody was programming a Godard series at
Indiana University, my alma mater, I drove all the way from Alabama to see the film (I stuck
around for the other Godard films, but would have made the trip just to see King Lear). Stunned
by its challenging beauty, I had to mull it over in my mind for hours afterward. Luckily, I had
seen the movie in the best possible condition, at an excellent theater on a nearly pristine 35mm
print.
In the years since, I’ve often thought about King Lear. Extremely abstract, packed with
information and images hard to comprehend on first viewing, parts of the film are indelibly
stamped on my brain. I would have seen the film many times, but the apathy of its distributor has
denied me that opportunity. The film might be screened again, somewhere, but I cannot count on
38
something that uncertain. Some parts of the movie now only register as flashes of color or
peaceful images of Lake Geneva.
Now I remember the experience, how I felt seeing King Lear, rather than the actual film.
Time will continue to sand down the details, until that is all that remains. I hope to be able to see
King Lear again, just as I hope to experience so many other films hidden away. But I wouldn’t
bet on it.
Nearly a year has passed since I last saw my grandfather. Even in his best days he was
not one to talk on the phone, so there has been little communication. I hope to discover when I
visit that the degradation has been slow and mild, that he is still the same man I have known my
whole life.
Perhaps we will watch a movie together, a western starring John Wayne, or a war film.
He will interrupt to tell me his own war tales, his adventures in Japan. There will be stories of
men he knew, some left behind on the other side of the world, some only recently departed. His
eyes will light up with these vivid memories.
I will file this history away as best I can, but parts of it will inevitably be lost. When my
grandfather is gone, and my grandmother, those parts will disappear, forever forgotten. But I will
preserve what I can.
39
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Abstract (if available)
Abstract
The current state of film preservation has made it considerably easier for audiences to stream or download old and classic films online. However, this ease of availability masks the number of films that are currently inaccessible. A great number of movies have been completely lost or destroyed, whereas others continue to exist in a state of limbo, without any home video or online release. A film that cannot be viewed serves little purpose. ❧ This thesis examines and elucidates the current state of film preservation and availability. The state of the home video market (DVD and Blu-ray) is discussed, as is the impact of streaming services that cater to fans of classic movies. Repertory theaters are also considered as a venue for exhibiting films otherwise unavailable to viewers. These old films are a form of cultural memory, and as they disappear, so does our understanding of the past.
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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Marks, Brian T.
(author)
Core Title
Classic films and our collective memory: the current status of preservation and availability
School
Annenberg School for Communication
Degree
Master of Arts
Degree Program
Specialized Journalism (The Arts)
Publication Date
05/08/2018
Defense Date
03/31/2017
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
Amazon,archives,Blu-ray,cable,Cinema,classic film,Criterion Collection,decay,digital,DVD,Fandor,film,film critics,film preservation,FilmStruck,Glenn Kenny,home video,Hulu,James Moll,Jonathan Rosenbaum,Kenneth Turan,King Lear,Kino Lorber,Manohla Dargis,memory,Michael Sragow,movies,MUBI,Netflix,OAI-PMH Harvest,Old Town Music Hall,Olive Films,Peter Becker,repertory theaters,streaming,TCM,television,The Front Page,VHS,video rental,Vidiots,Warner Instant Archive
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Anawalt, Sasha (
committee chair
), Rosenberg, Howard (
committee member
), Turan, Kenneth (
committee member
)
Creator Email
briantma@usc.edu,marks.brian356@gmail.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-371159
Unique identifier
UC11257706
Identifier
etd-MarksBrian-5323.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-371159 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
etd-MarksBrian-5323.pdf
Dmrecord
371159
Document Type
Thesis
Rights
Marks, Brian T.
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...
Repository Name
University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA
Tags
archives
Blu-ray
cable
classic film
Criterion Collection
DVD
Fandor
film critics
film preservation
FilmStruck
Glenn Kenny
home video
Hulu
James Moll
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Kenneth Turan
King Lear
Kino Lorber
Manohla Dargis
memory
Michael Sragow
MUBI
Netflix
Old Town Music Hall
Olive Films
Peter Becker
repertory theaters
streaming
TCM
television
The Front Page
video rental
Vidiots
Warner Instant Archive