Film Comment (2013) - Lost and Found: American Treasures from the New Zealand Film Archive
Details
- magazine article: Lost and Found: American Treasures from the New Zealand Film Archive
- author(s): Max Nelson
- journal: Film Comment (01/Sep/2013)
- issue: volume 49, issue 5, page 74
- journal ISSN: 0015-119X
- publisher: Film Society of Lincoln Center
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Archives & records, Graham Cutts, Motion picture directors & producers, New York City, New York, The White Shadow (1924), Video recording reviews, Video recordings
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Abstract
Highlights include the 1923 animated short Happy-Go-Luckies, memorable, among other things, for the sight of a man carrying a dachshund over his shoulder like a plank of wood; The Love Charm (28), a dewy South Seas romance shot in stunning two-strip Technicolor and marked by some expectedly unfortunate racial politics; the surreal 1920 educational whatsit Birth of a Hat (whose opening title card solemnly declares that "the origin of hats is unknown"); Won in a Cupboard (14), an early Keystone romp from pioneering writer-director-comedienne Mabel Normand; and Virginian Types (26), a meticulously hand-tinted twominute sketch of rural Appalachian life.
Article
ARCHIVE PICK: Lost & Found: American Treasures from the New Zealand Film Archive (National Film Preservation Foundation, $24.98)
The latest installment in the National Film Preservation Foundation's Treasures series is a single‑disc gold mine of long‑lost American silents from the collections of the New Zealand Film Archive. It's both a tribute to the diversity and vitality of early American cinema and a snapshot of an especially urgent moment in film preservation.
Highlights include the 1923 animated short Happy‑Go‑Luckies, memorable, among other things, for the sight of a man carrying a dachshund over his shoulder like a plank of wood; The Love Charm (28), a dewy South Seas romance shot in stunning two‑strip Technicolor and marked by some expectedly unfortunate racial politics; the surreal 1920 educational whatsit Birth of a Hat (whose opening title card solemnly declares that "the origin of hats is unknown"); Won in a Cupboard (14), an early Keystone romp from pioneering writer‑director‑comedienne Mabel Normand; and Virginian Types (26), a meticulously hand‑tinted twominute sketch of rural Appalachian life. The closing selection, The White Shadow, co‑produced in 1924 by director Graham Cutts and his 25‑year‑old assistant Alfred Hitchcock, only exists in fragments, but the beautifully restored footage reveals traces of future Hitch motifs: shifting and mistaken identities, mysterious doublings, and the blindness of romantic love.
The...
