Upstream | |
---|---|
Directed by | John Ford |
Written by | Randall Faye Wallace Smith |
Starring | Nancy Nash Earle Foxe |
Cinematography | Charles G. Clarke |
Distributed by | Fox Film Corporation |
Release date |
|
Running time | 60 minutes |
Country | United States |
Languages | Silent English intertitles |
Upstream is a 1927 American comedy film directed by John Ford. A "backstage drama", [1] the film is about a Shakespearean actor and a woman from a knife-throwing act. The film was considered to be a lost film, [2] but in 2009 a print was discovered in the New Zealand Film Archive. [1]
It is considered to be the first Ford film to show some influence of German director F. W. Murnau, who began working at Fox Studios in 1926. From Murnau, Ford learned how to use forced perspectives and chiaroscuro lighting, which the American director then integrated into his own more naturalistic and direct filmmaking style. [1]
In 2009 at the invitation of the New Zealand Film Archive, the National Film Preservation Foundation sent consultants Brian Meacham and Leslie Ann Lewis to assess its holdings of long unseen nitrate film prints of American silent films. The cache was found to include astonishing treasures of at least 75 American silent films unknown to exist in the United States, including a complete tinted nitrate print of Upstream and a trailer for another lost John Ford feature, Strong Boy (1929). [3]
The New Zealand Film Archive turned out to have many American films that had never been shipped back to the United States after they ran in theaters. [1] The films were supposed to be destroyed at the end of their distribution run, but some were stashed away instead. [4] Upstream was considered so important that, unlike other films discovered in the New Zealand archive, it was restored in New Zealand. [4]
20th Century Fox, a descendant company of the studio that made the movie, supported the preservation of the film in collaboration with the National Film Preservation Foundation and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences film archive. Upstream received a "repremiere" at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in September 2010. [1] and a European screening at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone Italy in October 2010. Michael Mortilla wrote music for the AMPAS screening, and Donald Sosin for the Pordenone event.
Only 15% of Ford's silent films are known to have survived as of 2010. [4]
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound. Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements or key lines of dialogue may, when necessary, be conveyed by the use of inter-title cards.
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is a 1927 American silent romantic drama directed by German director F. W. Murnau and starring George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor, and Margaret Livingston. The story was adapted by Carl Mayer from the short story "The Excursion to Tilsit", from the 1917 collection with the same title by Hermann Sudermann.
Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, sometimes simply called Tabu, is a 1931 American silent film directed by F. W. Murnau. A docufiction, it is split into two chapters: The first, called "Paradise", depicts the lives of two lovers on a South Seas island until they are forced to escape the island when the girl is chosen as a holy maid to the gods. The second chapter, "Paradise Lost", depicts the couple's life on a colonised island and how they adapt to and are exploited by Western civilisation. The title comes from the Polynesian concept of tapu, from which is derived the English word "taboo".
Film preservation, or film restoration, describes a series of ongoing efforts among film historians, archivists, museums, cinematheques, and non-profit organizations to rescue decaying film stock and preserve the images they contain. In the widest sense, preservation assures that a movie will continue to exist in as close to its original form as possible.
The National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF) is an independent, nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress to help save America's film heritage. Growing from a national planning effort led by the Library of Congress, the NFPF began operations in 1997. It supports activities nationwide that preserve American films and improve film access for study, education, and exhibition. The NFPF's top priority is saving orphan films, so called because are not protected by commercial interests and are unlikely to survive without public support. Through its grant programs, the NFPF has helped archives, historical societies, libraries, museums, and universities from all 50 states preserve American films and make them available to the public.
Too Much Johnson is a 1938 American silent comedy film written and directed by Orson Welles. An unfinished film component of a stage production, it was made three years before Welles directed Citizen Kane, but it was never publicly screened. It was shot to be integrated into Welles's Mercury Theatre stage presentation of William Gillette's 1894 comedy, but the film sequences could not be shown due to the absence of projection facilities at the venue, the Stony Creek Theatre in Connecticut. The resulting plot confusion reportedly contributed to the stage production's failure.
A lost film is a feature or short film that no longer exists in any studio archive, private collection or public archive.
The Sentimental Bloke is a 1918 Australian silent film based on the 1915 verse novel The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke by C. J. Dennis. Produced and directed by Raymond Longford, the film stars Arthur Tauchert, Gilbert Emery, and Lottie Lyell, who also co-wrote the film with Longford.
A film base is a transparent substrate which acts as a support medium for the photosensitive emulsion that lies atop it. Despite the numerous layers and coatings associated with the emulsion layer, the base generally accounts for the vast majority of the thickness of any given film stock. Since the late 19th century, there have been three major types of film base in use: nitrate, acetate, and polyester.
4 Devils is a 1928 American silent drama film directed by German director F. W. Murnau and starring Janet Gaynor. It is considered to be lost.
Le Giornate del cinema muto is an annual festival of silent film held in October in Pordenone, northern Italy. It is the first, largest and most important international festival dedicated to silent film and also is present in the list of the top 50 unmissable film festivals in the world according to Variety. The Pordenone Silent Film Festival is a non-profit association, whose president is Livio Jacob. The director from 1997 until 2015 was David Robinson. In 2016, Jay Weissberg became director. Other members of the festival board are Paolo Cherchi Usai, Lorenzo Codelli, Piero Colussi, Luciano De Giusti, Carlo Montanaro, Piera Patat.
Treasure Island is a 1920 silent film adaptation of the 1883 novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, directed by Maurice Tourneur, and released by Paramount Pictures. Lon Chaney played two different pirate roles in this production, "Blind Pew" and "Merry", and stills exist showing him in both makeups. Charles Ogle, who had played Frankenstein's Monster in the first filmed version of Frankenstein a decade earlier at Edison Studios, portrayed Long John Silver. Wallace Beery was supposed to play Israel Hands, but that role went to Joseph Singleton instead. The film was chosen as one of the Top Forty Pictures of the Year by the National Board of Review.
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival is a film festival first held in 1996 and presented annually at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, California, United States. It is the largest silent film festival in the United States, although the largest silent film festival in the world remains the Giornate del cinema muto in Pordenone, northern Italy.
On August 10, 1965, a fire erupted in Vault 7, a storage facility, at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio (MGM) backlot in Culver City, California. It was caused by an electrical short explosively igniting stored nitrate film. The initial explosion reportedly killed at least one person, and the resulting fire destroyed the entire contents of the vault, archived prints of silent and early sound films produced by MGM and its predecessors. The only known copies of hundreds of films were destroyed.
The White Shadow, also known as White Shadows in the United States, is a 1923 British drama film directed by Graham Cutts and starring Betty Compson, Clive Brook, and Henry Victor.
My Lady's Lips is a 1925 American silent drama film written by John F. Goodrich and directed by James P. Hogan for B.P. Schulberg and his company Preferred Pictures. The film stars Alyce Mills, and represents an early role for actress Clara Bow. It is the tenth ever film for William Powell, and the first of only two films where Powell and Bow worked together.
The Carpet from Bagdad is a 1915 American silent adventure film directed by Colin Campbell and based on Harold MacGrath's 1911 eponymous novel. In the story, Horace Wadsworth, one of a gang of criminals also planning a bank robbery in New York, steals the titular prayer rug from its Baghdad mosque. He sells the carpet to antique dealer George Jones to fund the robbery scheme. But the theft places both men and Fortune Chedsoye, the innocent daughter of another conspirator, in danger from the carpet's guardian.
The New Zealand Film Archive was established in 1981. On 1 August 2014 the archive was amalgamated with Sound Archives Ngā Taonga Kōrero and the Television New Zealand Archive to form Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision.
A major fire broke out in a 20th Century-Fox film-storage facility in Little Ferry, New Jersey, United States, on July 9, 1937. Flammable nitrate film had previously contributed to several fires in film-industry laboratories, studios, and vaults, although the precise causes were often unknown. In Little Ferry, gases produced by decaying film, combined with high temperatures and inadequate ventilation, resulted in spontaneous combustion.