'Lost' silent film rediscovered by 91�Թ� Libraries

The black-and-white murder mystery-melodrama comedy from the early 1920s boasts a cast of well-known actors from the time – James Kirkwood Sr., Madge Bellamy and ZaSu Pitts.

Titled Secrets of the Night, the film was discovered by Media Commons Assistant Media Archivist Christina Stewart as she was looking through a recent donation of silent films. The gift came from a family who had come into possession of the films when an Eaton's store in Winnipeg stopped offering silent film rentals in the 1940s.

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There is a 16 mm print of the film in a private collection, which is available digitally, but it does not contain the original opening credits and is missing three scenes from the ending, Stewart said. At the time, many studios like Universal lost a lot of the silent catalogue in vault fires.

“So to come by a Universal title makes this unique,” Silversides said.

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Blaché was a well known director at the time. His then-wife Alice Guy-Blaché, who also worked on the film, was one of the pioneering film directors at the time. Like most black-and-white films, it is actually tinted – amber colour for daytime and indoor scenes, and blue for night scenes.

The film and 14 others were donated by Richard and Wayne Scott. Most of the films were produced by Universal Studios.

Richard Scott was part of the screening last week, participating in a Q & A, following the movie.

“Back in the 1940s, my father worked for Eaton's in Winnipeg,” Richard Scott said. “Eaton's offered every product you can imagine, including a film library for people who wanted to rent out films. Eaton's decided to do away with the service and offered the films to employees to purchase, and that's what my father did. The 16 mm copies of what are now very rare films gave rise to the interest in the collection.

“It's been in the family for 70-odd years.”

A scene from Secrets of the Night (image courtesy of Robarts' Media Commons Library)

Preservation

'Lost' silent film rediscovered by 91�Թ� Libraries

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