Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

La reconstitución de films a partir de
elementos visuales
Se presume, entre los historiadores del cine,
que sólo 10% de las películas de la era del
así llamado cine mudo ha sobrevivido hasta
hoy. A la lectura de artículos de la época,
cabe preguntarse cómo eran estas películas.
Es lo que trata de hacer el autor del
artículo. Une vez el programa de copiado de
películas antiguas a safety completado en
1990, Daniel Woodruff, conservador de la
Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and
Sciences, comenzó a recosntituir la películas
mudas de las que no quedan sino fragmentos
y fotogramas aislados. Combinando la
información proviente de sinopsis (disponible
en publicaciones o conservados en los
archivos de los estudios) y de imágenes
(fotografías o fotogramas), se
reconstituyeron las películas en forma de
diaporama. La re-creación de las películas
así obtenida tenía un crácter a la vez
espectacular e informativo. Los documentos
utilizados para estas re-creaciones provienen
principalmente de dos colecciones : la
William N. Selig Collection (constituida
principalmente de fotogramas) y la Thomas
H. Ince Collection (fotografías de rodajes y
de familia). El artículo aborda también
aspectos históricos de las dos productoras
pioneras de los comienzos de nuestro siglo.
The Sergeant’s Boy (1912)
(Reconstructed and adapted from an original synopsis and
photographs) During an Indian raid near a Western post, all of the
adult settlers are killed, leaving a small boy an orphan.
The stills of The Sergeant’s Boy have been made available by the
Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences.
The Thomas H. Ince Collection spans the years 1912-1925. The
collection consists of production stills from 568 motion pictures and
biography stills. There are 11,171 still photographs in the collection.
The Thomas H. Ince Photograph Collection was received by the
Academy from Mrs. Ince in 1948. The history of this collection before it
came to the Academy is unclear. A listing of the photographs from
motion picture productions found in the Ince photo albums (apparently
made by Ince’s office) accompanied the collection. This listing, though
flawed, made it possible to retrieve photographs from almost all of the
individual films produced by Ince. These photo albums have been available
for study and reproduction at the Academy’s library for many years.
Unfortunately, the Ince photographs were glued into albums with
nonarchival acidic black pages that were causing deterioration of the
photos. Also, many photos were already or becoming bent and/or torn,
due to the manner in which they were affixed to the original album
pages. Some of the photographs had also become brittle and needed to
be removed from the albums and put in Mylar sleeves to prevent further
damage.
In the early 1970s, an attempt was made to remove the earliest
photographs from these books by soaking them off of the old scrapbook
paper, and then rewashing and redrying the photographs to remove any
harmful glue or chemical residue that might be causing deterioration.
The results were spectacular at first. However, soon it was discovered
that the emulsions on some of the earliest photographs (dating from
1912 to 1916) were sometimes unstable and could suffer emulsion
distortion in the rewashing process. Preservation efforts were
immediately halted until another practical way to conserve these
photographs could be determined.
By 1995, no new practical way of rewashing the earliest of the
original photographs had been discovered, and with deterioration
continuing, it was decided to remove the photographs dating from
1912 to 1916 from the acidic paper pages by hand in order to
arrest further damage. At this point, the old glue and small patches
of the black paper had to be left on the photos in this group.
However, photographs dating from 1916 to 1924 had stable
emulsions and were removed from the photo albums and
rewashed to remove any harmful residual glue and/or chemicals.
Most of the photographs in the collection are now in excellent
condition. As a further safeguard, because of the enormous
historical importance of the photographs, 8x10 preservation safety
copy negatives were made from all of the photographs from the
films of William S. Hart and of photographs depicting Thomas H.
Ince at his studio and home, and with visitors, friends, and family.
With the advancement of digital photography technology, further
photographic restoration and preservation of additional items in the
collection is possible when historians need specific images that might
have suffered some damage.
66 Journal of Film Preservation / 58/59 / 1999