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Save That Film!
| Article
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19177 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1991 |
1,930 Words |
| Author
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Curtis Cate
Historian and biographer Curtis Cate was greatly aided in the
preparation of this article by Liane Villemont and Jacques
Deschamps of l'Institut national de l'audiovisuel. |
That the preservation of old films posed a serious problem people had been more or less aware of, but not until eleven years ago did the issue begin to assume dramatic proportions. The first warning signal could not have been more tragically spectacular. It was fired--literally--during the night of August 3, 1980, when the village of Le Pontel, some nine miles west of Versailles, was suddenly rocked by a series of explosions, followed by a fierce blaze.
At first the frightened villagers, some of whom crowded out into the square in pajamas and nightgowns, thought that a terrorist gang had gone into action. (Le Pontel is only a mile from Neuphle-le-Chateau, for years the home of the Ayatollah Khomeini. A year and a half, however, had passed since the exiled leader had returned to Iran.) A simpler explanation was the unfortunate proximity of electronic equipment in a warehouse where thousands of reels of film had been stored. The films belonged to the celebrated Cinematheque Francaise, created by Henri Langlois, the greatest film collector of all time.
Up In Smoke
No one will ever know just how many miles of precious films went up on smoke on that fateful night. Some estimates put the loss as high as 15,000 reels. Most film cans contain 300 meters of film, though some may have as much as 600 meters. A movie lasting eighty minutes usually requires 2,500 meters of film--enough to fill eight cans. Since many of the films stored at Le Pontel may have been short rather than feature-length, one can probably estimate the loss at between 2,500 and 3,000 titles. Vincent Pinel, the present director of the Cinematheque Francaise, which helps restore as well as screen old films, thinks that almost one-third of all the precious films Langlois had collected over forty years may have been lost on this occasion.
In 1934 Henri Langlois, at twenty a slim, highly idiosyncratic young man with a singular passion, went on a one-man crusade to save old films from destruction of oblivion. He dug out rare films by Melies, Lumiere, and other cinema pioneers from attics, old movie houses, the Flea Market, and on occasion, ash cans. His interests quickly spread to collecting contemporary films. He was soon joined in his mission by Georges Franju (who was to become a distinguished filmmaker in the sixties). They began one of the first cine clubs in Paris, renting lecture halls or sometimes using the Langlois family apartment for screenings. Langlois stored the films in his home even in the bathroom. By World War II, his collection was one of the largest
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