Johnny Depp as Tonto in The Lone Ranger.

As more bad news swirls around Kodak, there’s still time to point out that film remains an important medium for motion pictures. Six of last year’s nine Best Picture nominees, for example, were shot on film.

But in this industry, as in all others, money talks, and digital has been judged cheaper than celluloid. Studios and exhibitors are dismantling the businesses that make and show film, replacing them with technologies whose flaws and drawbacks may not be immediately apparent. The digital juggernaut gains momentum every day, whether it’s new streaming deals that send hundreds of film titles to limbo or Adobe abandoning software sales for a cloud-based subscription model.

Speaking of money, May marks the start of Hollywood’s blockbuster season, which traditionally accounts for 40% of box-office revenue. It’s a season in which franchises and tentpoles from the Big Five studios jockey for a shrinking customer base. Disney and Marvel Entertainment have already sent out Iron Man 3, which set a second-best all-time opening record in part by charging viewers extra to watch it in post-conversion 3D. Over the Fourth of July weekend, Disney will release The Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp.

Universal is pinning its hopes on Fast & Furious 6, opening it against Warners’ The Hangover Part III over Memorial Day weekend. Paramount, meanwhile, has Star Trek Into Darkness, a sequel to the well-received 2009 franchise reboot.

What’s telling about Star Trek, Fast & Furious, and The Lone Ranger—movies that have a good chance of grabbing a significant portion of the summer’s box office—is that they were all photographed on film.

Paul Walker and Vin Diesel in Fast & Furious 6. Courtesy Universal.

“We shot all the exteriors on film,” Lone Ranger producer Jerry Bruckheimer said at a press event in New York this April. “We couldn’t get the blacks we wanted on digital. The interiors were done digitally because lighting was easier.” Bruckheimer agreed that film still provided the best visual look. “But film will be gone in two years.”

“There’s always going to be a special relationship between humans and film,” Justin Lin, director of Fast & Furious 6, said from his office in Los Angeles. He had to fight efforts by Universal to use 3D. “If Fast & Furious was going to be 3D, you would have to design the franchise very differently, visually.”

Director Justin Lin. Courtesy Universal.

Accountants wanted Lin to use digital cameras for Fast & Furious 6, but as the director pointed out, “For a big film like this, film is the cheapest of all costs. And it’s crazy, but it’s getting harder and harder to actually get film stock, to process it now. But it’s the only way for me to do this franchise.”

J.J. Abrams, the director of Star Trek Into Darkness, also resisted attempts to make the movie in 3D. “I was really against it at first,” he said. But after tests with stereographer Corey Turner, Abrams agreed to a post-conversion. “I would not want to do it on any movie, but certainly for this I thought it was the absolute right kind of movie to use that technology.”

What Abrams wouldn’t do was shoot Star Trek Into Darkness on digital. “I wouldn’t say I was pressured, but I know it was something that the studio would have preferred. But I knew that it was not the best thing for the movie.”

Abrams shot the 2009 Star Trek on film as well. “We got a wonderful analog reality to it, which was especially important for a movie that had quite a bit of digital effects,” he explained. Abrams insisted on shooting anamorphically, which ruled out photographing in 3D digital, and also wanted to use IMAX large-format equipment (which makes up about 30 minutes of the finished film).

“IMAX allowed us to shoot at a preposterously high resolution, which gave the movie I think an amazingly immersive and stunning look that we could not have gotten digitally,” Abrams added.

Abrams and Lin lament the passing of film, but they’re not Luddites about digital. “I am in no way anti-digital,” Abrams insists. “I embrace it, I love it, I own some RED cameras.”

As for Lin, “I’m not adverse to digital, but it has to be the right aesthetic, the right story. I ‘get’ digital if I’m shooting Better Luck Tomorrow, which I did for $250,000. I could shoot that film now for $25,000.”

But after he finished shooting Fast & Furious 6, Lin encountered problems in postproduction. “I had a lot of issues when I was in London, because a lot of visual effects are done digitally. It’s actually not taken into account that your stuff is shot in film so we had to go and kind of create a new language to be able to bring it back to the film world.”

(Left to right) Zachary Quinto is Spock, Benedict Cumberbatch is John Harrison, and Chris Pine is Kirk in Star Trek Into Darkness, from Paramount Pictures and Skydance Productions.

And as Abrams points out, digital is still trying to look like film. “Film is really the benchmark for the best possible look. I’m sure there are those who say the benchmark shouldn’t be this, because look at what we’re able to do here. But there’s something inherently right about the way film looks to me. Film is still the highest quality, the warmest, most relatable image.”

Even if, or when, digital cameras catch to photochemical cameras, if the processes reach a point where, as Abrams admits, he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, “Film does work. It does function, and it functions great. A camera is a tool. Just the way you have a workshop with a number of different kinds of tools for the job, film is one of them. What will be heartbreaking and what seems inevitable, is that that tool is going to go away.”

“My dream will be to continue to use film for every movie I do,” Abrams added. “One of the reasons I really wanted to do Star Trek Into Darkness this way was that I was aware it may be the last time I’m ever given the opportunity to shoot on film.”

From Wedding Slips (1928) with Monte Collins

Pianist Ben Model has been accompanying silent films for almost thirty years, including a few of my National Film Registry screenings. Along with film historian Bruce Lawton, he launched the Silent Clowns Film Series in 1997, which this spring will focus on features and shorts by Harold Lloyd in screenings at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at New York’s Library for the Performing Arts.

Model has helped bring back to the public several long-neglected comedians. He’s also uncovered films so obscure that no one even knew they were lost.

In a new DVD, Accidentally Preserved, Model is making some of these films available again.

Here are the titles:

The Water Plug with Billy Franey (1920)
Cheer Up with Cliff Bowes (1924)
The House of Wonders—Elgin Watch Company (1931)
Loose Change with Jack Duffy (1928)
Mechanical Doll/The Dresden Doll—Fleischer cartoon (1922)
The Misfit with Clyde Cook (1924)
Shoot Straight with Paul [James] Parrott (1923)
Wedding Slips with Monte Collins (1928)
The Lost Laugh with Wallace Lupino (1928)

We spoke recently about the DVD and his other plans.

How can readers get the DVD?

The Accidentally Preserved DVD will be available from Amazon.com, probably in May. They are DVD-R discs, made on-demand using Amazon’s CreateSpace service for books, CDs and DVDs. CreateSpace is geared to be used by individual producers, but studios like Warner Home Archive use it for their releases. Sony’s DVD of Charley Chase Columbia shorts used this service as well.

How were they digitized?

The films have been transferred in HD at 1080p with the Sniper-16 HD Telecine. Higher resolution would’ve been prohibitively expensive, and probably unnecessary for this project. I wasn’t looking to spend hours and hours digitally restoring the films, but I did want them to look as good as possible on a budget. My goal was to be make them available for viewing in high-quality and affordable (for me) transfers with a proper musical score.

Where did you find these films?

Five of them came from eBay. They were items no one was interested in bidding on. The Wallace Lupino film was completely mis-labeled, but I recognized Lupino from frame grabs. The Fleischer cartoon was in a collection that I sort of inherited 16 years ago from a distant uncle. The other three came from a collector who was impressed with a YouTube series of these rarities I did last summer. He boxed up films from his collection and sent them to me.

In some cases are these the only existing prints?

Yes! The prints I have of WEDDING SLIPS, THE LOST LAUGH and THE HOUSE OF WONDERS are the only ones in existence, as far as I know. Some of the others, like CHEER UP, SHOOT STRAIGHT, and MECHANICAL DOLL, may be around somewhere, either in originals or dupes, but they’re not really available in the sense that you can see them.

Why haven’t they been preserved by a museum or archive?

I haven’t approached an archive about the one-of-a-kind prints as yet, although my plan is to donate them to the Library of Congress when the Accidentally Preserved project is done. The remaining rare titles may or may not be of interest to an archive for preservation work. There are thousands of films in need of preservation in every archive; between funding, staffing and now availability of film stock it’s impossible for any archive to keep up with the films they already own. One thing I’m trying to show with this project is that collectors as well as archives can preserve and exhibit vintage 16mm and 35mm prints.

A sponsored film made for the Elgin Watch Company.

My goal here was accessibility. There are thousands of films that have been preserved than no one can see. I wanted to use the digital and VOD tools as a sort of 21st-century version of having people over to your house and showing them prints from your film collection. Fans of classic and silent film are interested in these rare films—you can see that by the success of my YouTube series, and the fact that my Kickstarter project for Accidentally Preserved went over its funding goal. In a way I’m taking the same approach Louis C.K. has. With Kickstarter and CreateSpace, I can get this content to fans who want it without working through a distributor.

Are there many more films like this out there?

Hundreds. I’ve got maybe 15 or so, but there are dozens of collectors whose private archives include rare or one-of-a-kind 16mm prints from the 1930s and 1940s. Films also turn up piecemeal at flea markets or estate sales, and sometimes you’ll hear from the widow of someone whose late husband had shelves of the stuff in their basement.

I will show film as long as I can. I hope Accidentally Preserved helps shine a light on titles that have survived because prints were made decades ago on 16mm safety stock. Incidentally, 16mm safety celebrates its 90th birthday this year.

Ben will have more to say about his collection as its release date approaches in May. Also, check the Accidentally Preserved website at: http://www.accidentallypreserved.com/

Saul Bass designed the title sequence for Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder, one of this year's Registry selections.

The Library of Congress announced the addition of 25 more movies to the National Film Registry, bringing the total up to 600 titles. This year’s additions include home movies, actualities, documentaries, industrials, a fight film, and experimental titles along with the usual mix of Hollywood features old and new.

New to the Registry: itinerant filmmaker Melton Barker, who enlisted local children into shorts that have been collected under the umbrella The Kidnappers Foil; Bob Clark, who wrote and directed the holiday perennial A Christmas Story based on Jean Shepherd’s reminiscences; Delmer Daves, who directed the Elmore Leonard-based 3:10 to Yuma; and Penny Marshall, the former television star who directed A League of Their Own.

Returnees to the Registry include Don Siegel (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), now also represented by Dirty Harry, a turning point in cop films. Director Maurice Tourneur, whose The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917), The Blue Bird (1918), and The Last of the Mohicans (1920) were already in the Registry, now has The Wishing Ring; An Idyll of Old England (1914), his American feature debut. (Tourneur’s son Jacques also has a Registry title: 1942′s Cat People.) Born Yesterday adds to other George Cukor movies like The Women (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Adam’s Rib (1949), and A Star Is Born (1954).

This year the Registry honors NFL Films, a hugely significant company that helped change the image of the sport and how it was documented. Founded by Ed Sabol in 1962, the company was run by his son Steve Sabol, who passed away this September from brain cancer.

The Middleton Family at the New York World’s Fair (1939) marks the second industrial film about Westinghouse on the Registry. (The first, Westinghouse Works, made by Biograph in 1904, documented a Westinghouse factory near Pittsburgh.) Kodachrome Color Motion Picture Tests (1922) marks an effort by Kodak to offer a commercial alternative to Technicolor. Kodachrome was the trade name for one of the most popular still photography color formats, and although Kodachrome was used in motion pictures Technicolor dominated the industry for decades.

Registry selections often honor filmmakers who were working well in the past. But Richard Linklater, whose Slacker (1991) was selected, is known for such recent movies as School of Rock (2003) and Bernie (2011), both starring Jack Black. Linklater’s next film, Before Midnight, completes a trilogy of romances starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.

Perhaps the most well-known movie on this year’s list is The Matrix (1999), the first in a science-fiction trilogy starring Keanu Reeves. It was directed by Andy and Larry (now Lana) Wachowski, who this year collaborated with German director Tom Tykwer on Cloud Atlas.

Most of this year’s titles are readily available for viewing. In future postings I’ll go describe some of the more obscure selections in greater detail. And eventually the selections from this year and from 2011 will appear in the third volume of my series America’s Film Legacy.

Shot over a hundred years ago, this print of A Pictorial History of Hiawatha was preserved and restored by Julia Nicoll at Colorlab.

My latest piece for The Atlantic, “With 35mm Film Dead, Will Classic Movies Ever Look the Same Again?”, describes the problems repertory theaters are facing in trying to schedule film prints—not digital versions—of classic movies.

I’ve been reporting on the transition from film to digital for over a year now. The pros and cons of the formats have become moot as film slides faster and faster into a niche category. But as someone who has worked in and around movies for thirty years, I am astonished at how quickly the movie industry has shifted.

Even in poor condition, A Pictorial History of Hiawatha had enough visual information for a restoration. Both photos courtesy Julia Nicoll.

Last December I talked to director Alexander Payne about competing formats in “Thinking About the End of Film.” “Flicker is better than glow,” was his conclusion, even as he was fighting studio executives for the right to shoot his next project on film.

In “Film vs. Digital: The IMAX Edition,” esteemed large-format director Greg MacGillivray spoke about the shortcomings to digital formats. A companion piece, “Film vs. Digital: Archivists Speak Out,” addressed concerns about the costs and durability of digital preservation.

No one in the movie industry knows how the digital transition will ultimately shake out. But in the coming weeks and months I’ll try to keep tabs on all the setbacks, advances, and other milestones in the effort to save our film heritage.

Betty Compson in The White Shadow. Courtesy NFPF.

From now through January 25, the National Film Preservation Foundation is offering you the opportunity to stream, for free, what survives from The White Shadow (1924). Directed by Graham Cutts and starring Betty Compson and Clive Brook, this moody, convoluted melodrama is also the earliest extant credit for Alfred Hitchcock. Twenty-four-years old, he was credited as art director and assistant director. More important, he wrote the screenplay and edited the film.

I wrote about the rediscovery of The White Shadow earlier in “Behind the Lost Hitchcock Film.” But although the surviving elements—about forty minutes, roughly the first half of the story—have been preserved, the film itself has not been easy to see. Now, thanks to the NFPF, Fandor, and the For the Love of Film Blogathon, everyone can see and judge The White Shadow.

Critics of the time found the story to The White Shadow preposterous, and it’s hard to defend a plot that inflicts so much damage on twin sisters Nancy (a girl without a soul, or “white shadow”) and Georgina (a prim, retiring type who nevertheless tries to steal her sister’s lover). For good measure, there’s a heartless father who goes insane and a mother driven to death by her family’s theatrics.

A.B. Imeson plays the father to Brent twins Nancy and Georgina (Betty Compson in dual roles).

It’s tempting to look for clues to Hitchcock’s later career while watching The White Shadow. Does the Brent twins’ country estate in Devon resemble Manderley in Rebecca, or Bruno’s mansion in Strangers on a Train? When Hitchcock constructed a nightclub climax for Young and Innocent, did he remember The Cat Who Laughs cabaret here? Would Hitchcock find inspiration later on from The White Shadow‘s tense and expertly staged horse jumping scene? Maybe, maybe not.

It’s important to remember that this is a Graham Cutts film, not a Hitchcock film, and that Cutts had ultimate say over how scenes would play and actors perform. The director obtained restrained, realistic performances from his stars at a time when some films still had actors gesticulating wildly. Cutts favored two camera set-ups: far away from the action, and even farther away. While there are occasional close-ups and angled shots, The White Shadow never quite overcomes a dead-on, straight-ahead point-of-view, as if viewers were watching actors on a stage. Within just a few years, Hitchcock would be employing a much more wide-ranging, cinematic point-of-view in films like The Lodger.

Clive Brook and Betty Compson.

Watching The White Shadow, we’re reminded how much easier it was on certain levels to make silent films. Without much effort, Betty Compson, an American actress, could play British, and the British Clive Brook could pretend to be American. When the twins’ parents (A.B. Imeson and Daisy Campbell) have an argument, they can say anything they want—all we see are their lips moving. And all it took for a director to introduce a character was a static close-up. Want to take everyone to Paris? Just add an intertitle (“In Paris at the Cabaret of The Cat Who Laughs”) and a wide shot of a studio set, and there you are.

Today we can be impressed by the film’s tinting scheme, its fairly sophisticated split-screen techniques (to allow both twins to appear in the same frame), and a persuasive use of day-for-night cinematography. More worrisome is the nitrate decomposition, especially evident in the opening shots. (Also of note: Michael Mortilla’s excellent score for piano, violin, and percussion.)

Hitchcock continued to make overwrought melodramas like this throughout his career. He just learned to disguise their improbable narrative twists with black humor and bravura pieces of “pure cinema,” the breathtaking sequences that earned him the nickname “Master of Suspense.”

Compson worked at Paramount back in the US, making a strong impression in Josef von Sternberg’s Docks of New York. Brook also worked with Sternberg, and Marlene Dietrich, on Shanghai Express. The White Shadow was released in the US as White Shadows by Lewis J. Selznick Enterprises. Years later, Selznick’s son David O. would bring Hitchcock to Hollywood to make Rebecca.

The White Shadow was not a success, either with critics or filmgoers. But it’s a good example of what could be found in the marketplace in 1924. The NFPF website offers several other films for streaming, some with musical accompaniment. They include cartoons, Westerns, travelogues, romances, and comedies. Try the captivating Tropical Nights, a Caribbean sojourn in color, or A Modern Cinderella, a 1910 updating of the fairy tale filmed in New York by Vitagraph.

And consider making a donation to the NFPF, a crucial organization that deserves your support.

A Trip Down Market Street. Courtesy Rick Prelinger.

Next Wednesday, October 24, I will be hosting a program of six short films selected from the National Film Registry at the Cinema Arts Centre at Huntington, Long Island.

This program indicates some of the breadth of the National Film Registry. The six shorts we will be showing span the years 1906–1996, and include an actuality, two animated shorts, a documentary, an amateur film, and an experimental film. The shorts are both silent and sound, B&W and color, and were filmed on 35mm and 16mm. We’re very lucky to have Ben Model, who will accompany two of the silent films on piano.

A Trip Down Market Street (12 min) 1906 – 35mm
In the first years of cinema, filmmakers traveled the world looking for locations to photograph. The four Miles Brothers, who made A Trip Down Market Street, were one of the first to bring movies to the West Coast. This film, intended to celebrate their new motion picture studio, placed a camera on the front of a Market Street cable car. For years historians thought the film may have been photographed in 1905, but through detective work by David Kiehn, a more accurate date was established two years ago. And that’s what makes this film so poignant today.

Study of a River. Courtesy Peter Hutton.

Study of a River (16 min) 1996 – 16mm
An experimental film by Peter Hutton, head of the cinema program at Bard. A former merchant marine, Hutton shoots landscape films that evoke the early days of cinema. Shot over several months, this title focuses on the Hudson River near Poughkeepsie.

Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor (16 min) 1936 – 16mm
One of the most popular animated characters, Popeye the Sailor first appeared in 1919. He became a movie star in 1933, when Betty Boop introduced him to the screen in Popeye the Sailor Man. Gruff but lovable, Popeye appeared in dozens of shorts made by the Fleischer Brothers, Max and Dave, in their studio in New York. This was his first color film, a Technicolor extravaganza twice as long as his usual cartoons. It was a phenomenal hit when it was released, with some theaters even billing it as their featured attraction.

Scratch and Crow. Courtesy Paul Gailiunas.

Scratch and Crow (5 min) 1995 – 16mm
An animated film by Helen Hill. She studied at CalArts and Harvard, and taught film in Nova Scotia before moving to New Orleans with her husband. Her work is quirky and exuberant, with bold colors and a strong sense of humor. She is a great example of “do it yourself” filmmaking, and became a role model for a new generation of animators who wanted to express themselves outside of the studio system.

The Jungle (22 min) 1967 – 16mm/DVD (TBC)
An unusual and gripping documentary about teen gangs in Northeast Philadelphia, The Jungle was initiated by Harold Haskins, an activist searching for a solution to increasing violence in underprivileged neighborhoods. Rather than hire outsiders who would impose their own narratives on local teens, Haskins recruited gang members to tell their own story. He had them trained in shooting, directing, and editing film, giving them the opportunity to tell their own story about gang violence from the inside. Rough in points, The Jungle gives an early account of what would evolve into hip hop culture.

Pass the Gravy (20 min) 1928 – 16mm
A silent short starring Max Davidson, supervised by Leo McCarey and photographed by George Stevens. McCarey worked with just about every significant film comedian, from Harold Lloyd to Cary Grant, and was responsible for teaming Laurel and Hardy. Davidson was a Jewish ethnic comedian who starred in a dozen or so films for the Hal Roach Studio, where McCarey ran the shorts department—and in the process defined what would become sitcoms. It’s a really funny film about feuding neighbors, a prize chicken, and a Sunday afternoon feast that turns sour.

Tickets are $10 Members / $15 Public (includes reception)
Tickets also available by calling 800-838-3006, or at the CAC Box Office