Treasures From American Film Archives: 50 Preserved Films

By "political" I mean that the goal clearly was to demonstrate the breadth (or, if you must, the "diversity") of American film culture, rather than presenting the best the participating archives had in their collections. So we get standard narratives, experimental shorts, home movies, propaganda, ethnic cinema, records of theatrical performances and documentaries, but what we for the most part do not get is a collection of outstanding films. You can practically feel the politically correct clerks checking off their demographic lists to be certain the collection is "inclusive." The bland results are the perfect bureaucratic solution: the discs won't offend anyone.

Some of the films are more famous than others, such as D.W. Griffith's short "The Lonedale Operator" or John Huston's "The Battle of San Pietro." Even these are not necessarily the filmmakers' best work, however, although it is nice to have copies of them for analytical purposes. The less well-known works vary widely in quality and interest. Many seem to have been included just because they are "rare." Rarity does not necessarily imply value, however. (Maybe I should apply for a National Endowment of the Arts grant to preserve *my* home movies.)

The navigation is simple, devoid of the gimmicks that can make DVDs more obnoxious than entertaining. With one major exception, the discs are well-produced and handsomely packaged. That exception is the musical accompaniment to most of the films. In small doses, it's passable, but if you watch more than a couple of the films at a time, the impersonal clackety-clack of the solo piano is enough to drive you mad. It makes Techno seem like Verdi by comparison.

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There is a lot of of curious stuff like Groucho Marx's Home Movies (!) for example, or a very early version of "Snow White from 1916 complete with green (!!) dwarfes, or an awafully dated William S.Hart western called "Hell's Hinges" (which was co-directed by its star !).

But its not all like that. "Treasures" also contains some utterly important films, like Scott Bartlett's pioneering avantgarde film "OffOn", and a short documentary called "The Wall" (about the building of the Berlin wall), which was never before seen in the US, or Joseph Cornell's wonderful, but also very rarely shown "Rose Hobart" (the great, great grandfather of the video clip !).

This set comes along with a 150 page booklet, in which you can research all the informations you need about the preserved films (you can also switch to the DVD menue for a narrated presentation of each one of the film archives.). It contains also notes about film preservation itself, as well as information about the musical accompaniments. And there we have the only flaw of the entire set: the muscial accompaniments of the silent pictures !
They are consisting only of piano music, which is, by any means, not very varied and at times terribly boring.
But that's just really one little weak spot in an almost perfect and tremendous project.

"Treasures from American Film Archives" is a great collection of forgotten silver and recommended mainly to those who are interested in film history. So appreciate it, buy it and love it !

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