This is a list of rediscovered film footage, i.e. for incomplete films for which missing parts were found. See List of incomplete or partially lost films and List of rediscovered films for films which were thought to have been entirely lost.
This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (July 2015)
Year
Film
Director
Cast
Notes
Ref
1923
Lost and Found on a South Sea Island
Raoul Walsh
House Peters, Pauline Starke
Originally, only one reel was known to have survived, according to a recent biography of Walsh. However, a complete print was found in the Italian archive Cineteca Del Friuli in Gemona.
[1]
Rosita
Ernst Lubitsch
Mary Pickford
While Mary Pickford carefully preserved most of her filmography, she allowed Rosita to decay, save for the film's fourth reel, and no complete prints of the film were thought to exist. However, in the 1960s a nitrate print was discovered in the Russian film archives and repatriated by the Museum of Modern Art. A safety preservation negative was made from the nitrate print, but no further work was done on the film.
[2]
1924
Detained
Scott Pembroke, Joe Rock
Stan Laurel
Missing scenes found and restored by Fries Film Archief, Netherlands, 2017.
[3]
1927
The Battle of the Century
Clyde Bruckman
Laurel and Hardy
For decades, the excerpt included in the 1957 compilation film The Golden Age of Comedy was thought to be the only remaining footage, until the first reel (featuring a boxing match) was found in the late 1970s, but scenes featuring Eugene Pallette, and a final climactic gag showing a cop receiving a pie in the face were missing until the second reel was discovered in a private collection in June 2015.
[4][5]
Metropolis
Fritz Lang
Gustav Fröhlich, Brigitte Helm
After the German premiere, nearly a quarter of Metropolis was cut. Over the years, some of the missing footage resurfaced. In 2008, two different versions of the film were found: one by Museo del Cine from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and another in the National Film Archive of New Zealand. Both versions were then edited into one cut to get as near the original version as possible.
Napoléon
Abel Gance
Albert Dieudonné, Gina Manès, Antonin Artaud, Edmond Van Daële
Gance destroyed the original uncut negatives that lasted 6 hours in the 1950s, but film historian Kevin Brownlow tracked down various prints of the film and made a final cut lasting 5 hours.
1928
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Carl Theodor Dreyer
Renée Jeanne Falconetti
The truncated reissue was thought all that remained, until Dreyer's original cut was found in 1981 in the closet of a Norwegian mental institution.
[6]
1929
The Mysterious Island
Lucien Hubbard
Lionel Barrymore
Until recently, only one reel with a color sequence was thought to have survived, until the complete Technicolor print was discovered in Prague in December 2013.
[7]
1962
King Kong vs. Godzilla
Ishirō Honda
Tomoyuki Tanaka, Shinichi Sekizawa
A few years later after its release in Japan, Toho made extensive cuts to the film and re-released it. Later, Toho made even more cuts for future re-releases, and the removed footage then went lost. During the 1980s, numerous efforts were made to find the missing scenes, but nothing turned up until the 1990s and 2000s, when all these scenes were found. After recovery, Toho re-released the film once more, with all the missing footage restored.
1982
The Last Horror Film
David Winters
Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro
After its initial release much of the film's gore was edited out from the original negative. For its 2023 Ultra HD Blu-ray re-release, a 35mm print of the film in excellent condition was located, allowing for the director's original vision to be released.
[8]
^The Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Catalog: Lost and Found on a South Sea Island
^"Restoration Premiere, Ernst Lubitsch's Rosita". Museum of Modern Art. May 25, 2018. Retrieved June 2, 2022.
^"Frisian film archive finds missing scenes from Stan Laurel solo film". DutchNews.nl. January 12, 2018. Retrieved May 18, 2018.
^Barry, Dan (July 8, 2015). "Comedy's Sweet Weapon: The Cream Pie". The New York Times. Retrieved July 8, 2015.
^Dessem, Matthew (June 17, 2015). "The Greatest Pie Fight in Cinematic History Has Been Found". Slate.
^"The Passion of Joan of Arc". whatculture.com. August 25, 2013. Retrieved 2014-04-03.
^"US film historians find treasure in Czech archive". Radio Prague International. December 13, 2013. Retrieved 2023-08-30.
^"Joe Spinell's "THE LAST HORROR FILM" coming to Severin 4K UHD/Blu-ray, uncut at last; full art, details & restoration comments". Rue Morgue. June 22, 2023. Archived from the original on June 27, 2023.
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