Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released London After Midnight on 3 December 1927.
It is a silent film starring Lon Chaney — one of his last. And it has him in one of his most iconic looks as the Man In The Beaver Hat. Otherwise, the film is a decent little mystery with a nice love story and some very creepy visuals. Not that I’ve ever seen it. No one my age or younger has seen it.
The 1965 MGM vault fire destroyed the last known copy of London After Midnight. It also destroyed Lon Chaney’s earlier A Blind Bargain (1922) in addition to the Greta Garbo vehicle The Divine Woman (1928). So this is a sad loss all around. And no one will likely ever discover prints of these films. As it is, most studios took little care in preserving their silent films. And others had little reason to hang on to them. (TV stations often archived prints of sound films for possible broadcast.)
Remember the Iraq War back in 2003? Looters stole many ancient artifacts. (This is yet another reason not to start wars.) And I feel the same way about these lost films. Of course, all these films are in the public domain now. (They weren’t in the public domain when they were destroyed.) It’s kind of hard to believe. In a social sense, these films were certainly in the public domain by the 1940s.
But greed drove us to this. A film might make 99% of all the money in the first year of its release. But we distort the market. Corporations must wring every cent out of the property! The benefit to society at large be damned.
But corporations aren’t all bad. Turner Classic Movies created a 45-minute filmed version of the original using existing photos. Frankly, it’s like a Ken Burns documentary of the film (but without the folksy narration). And it is surprisingly engaging. And on this 98th anniversary of London After Midnight‘s release, let’s watch this reconstruction!
London After Midnight (1927) poster via Wikimedia. It is in the Public Domain.
That’s great that you point this out. Our film preservation has been shameful. Of course Criterion and TCM have been doing the Lord’s work, but so much damage has already been done. (TCM’s website is really a hopeless mess, though. I know they’ve had some budget issues of late with cable subscriptions tanking.)
It really bugs me when movie studios do stuff like that Nicole Kidman trailer talking about how Old Hollywood was the Dream Factory… bollocks! It’s always been about money, and studios don’t give One Poop about old classics unless they can get money from them!