Around 80% of the movies made in Hollywood's early decades are considered lost forever, due to decay, neglect, and spontaneously combustible film stock. But a cache of 75 films in a New Zealand archive has yielded some surprises, chief of which is John Ford's 1927 silent **Upstream.
A "backstage comedy drama" starring Nancy Nash and Earle Fox, about a Shakespearean actor and a woman from a knife-throwing act, Upstream is one of about 60 films Ford made between 1917 and 1928, when he was learning the ropes from FW Murnau, long before Stagecoach or The Searchers. Only 10 are known to survive, although the NZ Archive contains a glimpse of another, in the form of a trailer for 1929's Strong Boy.
Also among the rediscovered films were some snapshots of American history (1910's The Sergeant was shot in Yosemite before it was a national park), and strong female lead roles, including vehicles for Clara Bow and Mable Normand, and The Active Life of Dolly of the Dailies (1914), featuring Mary Fuller as the ace reporter who always gets her scoop.
Fox have taken charge of Upstream, which will "premiere" (for the second time in its life) at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in September this year.
What else might be out there? Someone go out and find London After Midnight please.