For this list of lost films, a lost film is defined as one of which no part of a print is known to have survived. For films in which any portion of the footage remains (including trailers), see List of incomplete or partially lost films.
Films may go missing for a number of reasons. One major reason is the widespread use of nitrate film until the early 1950s. This type of film was extremely flammable, resulting in several fires, such as the 1967 MGM Vault fire and the 1937 Fox Pictures' vault fire. Nitrate film was also melted down for its silver content. Films may also become lost because production companies went bankrupt, or because no one thought the movies were worth saving. Occasionally studios would remake a film and destroy the earlier version.
This is necessarily an incomplete list. Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation claims that "half of all American films made before 1950 and over 90% of films made before 1929 are lost forever." Deutsche Kinemathek estimates that 80-90% of silent movies are gone; the film archive's own list contains over 3500 lost films. While others dispute whether the percentage is quite that high, it is impractical to enumerate any but the more notable and those that can be sourced.
Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, lost and/or films:
“I made a list of things I have
to remember and a list
of things I want to forget,
but I see they are the same list.”
—Linda Pastan (b. 1932)
“We saw the machinery where murderers are now executed. Seven have been executed. The plan is better than the old one. It is quietly done. Only a few, at the most about thirty or forty, can witness [an execution]. It excites nobody outside of the list permitted to attend. I think the time for capital punishment has passed. I would abolish it. But while it lasts this is the best mode.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“If the world is a precipitation of human nature, so to speak, then the divine world is a sublimation of the same. Both occur in one act. No precipitation without sublimation. What goes lost there in agility, is won here.”
—Novalis [Friedrich Von Hardenberg] (1772–1801)
“Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)