One need not be an enthusiast of silent-era cinema to
find Bill Morrison’s illuminating Dawson
City: Frozen Time a totally engrossing, masterfully assembled
documentary.Anyone with even a passing
interest in the history of the 19th and 20th centuries,
of the Klondike Gold Rush, of film preservation, or of time-capsule newsreel
footage will find this film absolutely fascinating and rewarding.Aside from a bit of on-screen prefatory and postscript
talking-head commentary - courtesy of the two surviving and earliest on-site “lost
film†investigators - most of Morrison’s two-hour long film is presented to us as
an intriguing mosaic; an emotive montage expertly combining the imagery of
long-lost vintage newsreels, miraculously salvaged snippets of silent film
footage, and an astonishing series of rescued glass-plate negative photographs –
the latter courtesy of Klondike Gold Rush chronicler Eric Hegg (1867-1947).
There is, perhaps surprisingly, no accompanying audio
narration present on the soundtrack, as combination director/editor/writer Morrison
chose to share the tale almost exclusively through visuals alone.His documentary, in a sense, mimics how a vintage
silent film itself would unspool before us.It’s this composite of photographs, film reels, broadsides, and vintage
newspaper clippings alone that propel the narrative forward. Morrison’s own succinctly
composed inter-titles are overlaid images to provide necessary detail or to impart
historical context.Alex Somers’ moody
and evocative musical score perfectly underpins the gentle historical drama.
The film begins, fittingly, in 1978, more or less at the mystery’s
starting point in a remote Canadian township.It was in the summer of that year when a backhoe operated by the town’s
Pentecostal minister unearthed a most curious discovery:hundreds upon hundreds of film canisters dating
1903 through 1929 were found buried in the permafrost beneath Dawson City’s moribund
recreation center.Thankfully, and with
the gratitude of scholars and filmgoers worldwide, the backhoe operator chose to
engage a work stoppage.Rather than
plough the canisters forever and for all time into oblivion, he decided it prudent
to contact local authorities about this mysterious trove of unearthed film reels.This unusual cache of film prints – most in
various stages of decomposition - was first brought to the attention of Michael
Gates of the Canadian Parks Service.Sensing this find might be an important one, Gates brought in an expert,
Sam Kula, director of Canada’s National Film, Television, and Sound Archives.Shortly after, Kathy Jones, the director of
the Dawson City Museum, was also brought in to assist and help monitor the
excavation.
Ultimately some 1,500 reels of film were excavated from
the construction site, though – frustratingly - only three hundred and
seventy-two or so of these were eventually deemed salvageable.The enormity of the find - combined with the
fact that many of the unearthed films were identified as early Hollywood
productions - caused the National Archives of Canada to enlist the assistance
of the U.S. Library of Congress.Together the cultural branches of both Canada and the U.S. were able to
save and restore some 533 reels – to one degree or another – salvaging what an
inter-title describes as the “last remnants of 372 silent film titles.â€The 372 reels that did survive were found
beneath a former ice skating rink/swimming pool housed inside the old community
recreation center, once owned and operated by the Dawson Amateur Athletic
Association.It was in 1929 that the
film canisters were ingloriously deposited as landfill under the rink at center-ice,
a clumsily engineered attempt to smooth over the complaints of skaters fretting
about the unevenness of the surface at midpoint.
Of course this is merely the simplest and most basic
synopsis of the near unbelievable story of the Dawson City silent film find.The documentary also beautifully and expertly
imparts the history of the region.It
begins with the indigenous “First Nations†people driven from their lands
following the discovery of gold, of the desperate people who traveled to the frozen
Yukon in the late 1800s to make their fortunes in gold claims, of the
succession of boomtown main streets periodically built and rebuilt time and
time again due to a dizzying streak of fires and floods, of the collective good
and bad times of the settlers.Simultaneously,
the documentary captures the early history of moving pictures distribution and of
the humble, clapboard movie “palaces†that sprung up in rural Dawson City.The films were imported to momentarily entertain
and distract the prospectors, merchants and families who built this remote
community in the wilderness while chasing the dream of gold.
It is undeniably head-scratching that so many future real
estate developers, Captains-of-Industry, and movie palace moguls would make
their first fortunes in this remote hamlet, an area that few Canadians had even
heard of.Frederick Trump Sr., the
grandfather of current U.S. President Donald J. Trump, made his initial fortune
in the real estate business in Dawson City.The first films brought to the area came courtesy of Alexander Pantages,
who operated a theater in Dawson City for nine years running.He would later oversee the operations of
seventy cinemas across North America, including the gilded and famed Pantages
Theatre in Los Angeles.Sid Grauman, who
would open Hollywood’s famed Grauman’s Chinese Theater in 1927, first operated
a theater in Dawson City.Tex Rickard
the founder of the New York Rangers and a co-founder of Madison Square Garden
was also a theater owner in Dawson.By
1910 the brothers Guggenheim moved into town, swiftly taking control of every
facet of the area’s mining operations, destroying huge swathes of the landscape
through ruthless industrial dredging.These are a few of the entrepreneurs who realized there was a lot of
money to made by exploiting those foolish or brave enough travel north to dreamily
pan handle bits of gold from the banks of Bonanza Creek.
Of course for the cineastes the most valuable gold mined
was to be found in the trove of film canisters left behind.This discovery of this cache of silent films
was an important one, not merely a fortunate curiosity or footnote.It is reckoned only 25% of silent films have
survived since the first motion picture cameras began to crank.An inter-title tells us early on that “film
was born of an explosive,†and this statement is not mere hyperbole.The earliest silent films were composed of
cellulose nitrate, a highly combustible and dangerous element.It wasn’t until 1910 that safety film was invented,
but the use of cellulose nitrate was still widespread among the many picture
companies feverishly churning out two and three reelers.As Dawson City sat a mere 165 miles south of the
Arctic Circle, Dawson City was the de facto final stop in the film distribution
chain; both feature films and British/Canadian newsreels would arrive at this
frontier outpost some two or three years following their initial release.
The tattered film prints that dribbled late into Dawson
City were no longer of interest to the distributors.These films had already run to the end of their
commercial prospect, and the return carriage freight costs from the Yukon back
to Hollywood was so prohibitive that the studios simply instructed cinema
owners to destroy the canisters of combustible films that had accumulated over
time.Such wanton abandonment didn’t
happen right away.Some of Dawson City’s
cinema owners chose to – perhaps unwisely - store the canisters in the basement
of the abandoned Carnegie library building.This was a potential fire hazard as the unstable cellulose nitrate
prints would often spontaneously combust.When film distributors learned that films were being held in storage
against their instructions, they contracted a local bank in Dawson City to
oversee those stashed films were properly locked down.The distributors were not particularly
concerned with the safekeeping of films, the perseveration of historic materials
or even the prevention of cellulose nitrate fires.Their only concern was that films previously
licensed to cinemas were not screened beyond the parameters of original rental
agreements.
The distributors need not have worried as the housing of expired
film lease rentals were becoming problematic.By 1929, the former library’s shelves had reached maximum capacity, so
the films were summarily brought to the river and – much as the community had
done time and time again with their garbage collections - the canisters were
unceremoniously tossed into the cold waters to wash downstream.By 1931 when “talking pictures†would first
arrive in Dawson City, it is estimated that already “several tons†of silent
films were dumped into the river.In
1932, still another cache of silent films housed in a city waterfront storage
facility, caught fire, destroying all prints held.
This Kino Lorber Blu-Ray edition of Dawson City: Frozen Time is offered here in 1920 x1080p, with 5.1
Surround Sound and with an aspect ratio of 1:33.1.The disc offers ten chapter selections and
removable English sub-titles.The supplements
included with set are both generous and illuminative.Bonus items include two short films “Dawson
City: Postscript†and “An Interview with filmmaker Bill Morrison,†as well as
the documentary’s original theatrical trailer.Also included is an intriguing sampling of early films exhumed from excavated
reels.These films include both vintage
newsreels as well as extended snippets of such previously believed lost films
from such directors as Tod Browning (“The Exquisite Thief,†1919) and D.W.
Griffith (“Brutality,†1912) as well early works from the pioneering east coast
studios of Thomas Edison (“The Butler and the Maid,†1912) and Edwin Thanhauser
(“The Girl of the Northern Woods,†1910).
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Two the films remarkably plucked and rescued from the
arctic permafrost of Dawson City appear on a new release from Ben Model’s NYC
based Undercrank Productions label.Model is both a historian of early cinema as well as professional
musician who specializes in silent film accompaniment: he was mentored in this
trade by famed silent film-era organist Lee Erwin.Aficionados from the New York City area will
presumably know of Model through his programming of and performing at the
monthly Silent Clowns film series at
Manhattan’s Lincoln Center.Model founded
his Undercrank Productions DVD label in 2012, eventually assembling collections
of rare silent-era dramas and comedies from such mostly forgotten pioneers of
cinema as Marion Davies, Baby Peggy and Marcel Perez.In contrast, the company’s most recent
release features a name far more familiar to silent film enthusiasts: the great Lon Chaney.
For Undercrank’s Lon
Chaney: Before The Thousand Faces, released last October, Model wisely
enlisted the assistance of Chaney historian Jon Mirsalis, the Library of
Congress and Greenbriar Picture Shows to make available - for the first time ever
on any home video format – three early Chaney appearances: two films long
thought lost before found amidst the remnants of the Dawson City excavation,
and one film impossibly rare and under curate at the Library of Congress.The excitement of having the opportunity to
experience these films for the first time in over a century is only dampened by
the fact that all three have survived only in partial form.The sleeve notes to this collection note,
rather grimly, that in the case of the celebrated “Man with a Thousand Faces,â€
“only 19 of the 118 films that Chaney made at Universal in the ‘teens survive,
and only 11 are complete.â€
The Undercrank DVD features what remains of two films, If My Country Should Call (Red Feather
Photoplays/Universal Film Manufacturing Co., originally released on September
25, 1916) and The Place Beyond the Winds
(Red Feather Photoplays/Universal Film Manufacturing Co., originally released
November 6, 1916).Both films were
salvaged from the Dawson City excavation site.If My Country Should Call, a
fever-dream patriotic film, tells the tale of a duplicitous if well-meaning pacifist
mother who worries over the fate of her military-minded husband and son.Despite her protestations, both men wish to
honorably serve the interests of protecting homeland in America’s World War I
and post-Mexican Revolution entanglements.
Sadly, only half of this five reel film has survived;
most of the film’s second and fifth reel, and a portion of reel 3, totaling
twenty-four minutes total.Chaney has a
small role in If My Country Should Call
portraying the white-haired and mustachioed Dr. George Ardrath, a physician who
has invented an elixir that artificially slows the beatings of the human heart.Chaney has a bit more screen time as
frontiersman and (now very politically incorrect) half-breed “Jerry Jo†in The Place Beyond the Winds.Here we get an early glimpse of Chaney’s gift
of mixing a suitor’s unrequited love with a dash of villainy, sadistically
trapping and threatening the beautiful Priscilla (Dorothy Phillips) in a
mountain cabin.Though also originally sent
out as a five-reel film, the first reel has been lost to time - though it’s
believed all of the Chaney footage is extant in the thirty-nine minutes that
have survived.
The one film in the new DVD set not sourced from the
Yukon find is, interestingly, also the earliest.A
Mother’s Atonement (Universal Film Manufacturing Co., released 10/17/1915)
was originally a three-reel film, though the last of these reels have – again -
been sadly lost to time.It is believed
that all of the footage featuring Chaney (appearing here as same character in
both middle age and as an unrecognizable bearded elder) has survived.With a running time of twenty minutes, the
melodramatic A Mother’s Atonement is
the shortest film of the collection.
Though reels are missing from all three films in the
Undercrank set, Mirsalis has provided the necessary bridging inter-titles that make
sense of the story arcs.As no other
prints of these films have survived, inter-title abridgments of the missing
footage have either been “reconstructed from a detailed synopsis found in the
film’s copyright record submission,†or else were taken from exhibitor reviews
culled from microfilm newspaper sources.The two films found in Dawson City also, as honestly described, “show
signs of significant nitrate decomposition and water damage.â€While true, the occasional splashes of water
and nitrate damage are not terribly distractive.Indeed, in some manner, the scarring is a
reminder how precious it is that this footage has stubbornly survived both the
passing of time and harsh elements.
Aside from the obvious rarity of these films, why are
these surviving fragments of such importance?Though Chaney would enjoy his first flush of true international notoriety
in a pair of Universal/Jewel productions of literary totems, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925), his
star was further burnished with a series of films produced under the aegis of
MGM.The most famous of these were his nine
late career collaborations with director Tod Browning (The Unholy Three (1925, silent), The Blackbird (1926), The
Road to Mandalay (1926), The Unknown
(1927), London After Midnight (1927),
The Big City (1928), West of Zanzibar (1928), Where East is East (1929), The Unholy Three (1930, sound).
With the exception of The
Hunchback of Notre Dame and The
Phantom of the Opera, two films awash with iconic pageantry, Chaney’s
collaborations with Browning are his most celebrated.This is partly due to an unmistakable synergy
between the two men – both men relished shining a light into the dark.But it’s also true that the Chaney/Browning
collaborations for MGM are simply the most studied as most of their work
together - London After Midnight
being the notable exception - has survived into the present day.But it’s important to note that Chaney came
to Browning and MGM nearly fully formed.
All of the films collected together here in the
Undercrank set were shot for Universal and directed by Joseph de Grasse with scenarios
penned by Ida May Park.That this trio
of surviving Chaney films was helmed by de Grasse and Park, a productive husband
and wife creative team on the early Universal lot, is no happy accident.De Grasse and Park were involved in no fewer
than sixty-four of Chaney’s films for Universal from 1914 through 1918.Most are now believed lost to time.Chaney biographer Michael F. Blake contends
it was de Grasse and Park who, from the beginning, tirelessly encouraged
Chaney’s work as a character actor, and there’s little doubt that the actor
learned the basic craft of filmmaking through these collaborations. As the
title suggests, this Undercrank collectionallows us a rare and fascinating peek into Chaney’s earliest filmography, a
decade before he’d transform from a humble and dependable character actor into
a big-screen icon celebrated internationally as the “Man of a Thousand Faces.â€