The following is a list of notable films that are incomplete or partially lost. For films for which no footage (including trailers) is known to have survived, see List of lost films. For films that were never completed in the first place, see List of abandoned and unfinished films.
Films restored from different sources
Sometimes a film can be patched together from multiple sources to present the movie as intended.[citation needed]
In the case of horror films made in the 1980s, much of the gore was removed from films negatives and would only be retained on VHS tapes that chose to retain it. When restoring these films as intended, the VHS source mixed with 4K Ultra HD doesn't match well, and can never be re-watched in their optimal form. On this matter David Gregory, founder of the distribution company Severin Films, said: "When we find that an original camera negative has been cut for censorship, it’s gutting, because rarely are those cuts saved. If they’re cutting the [negative], then for whatever reason the producers decided that this was the version they wanted to survive into the future. With ’80s movies, it was often because the censorship climate changed, favouring less violence and gore as the decade went on."[1]
An exhibition fight filmed in the Edison Black Maria studio in 1894. Originally six one-minute rounds were filmed and shown on individual Kinetoscopes. Only two rounds survive.
American Mutoscope and Biograph film of 25-round heavyweight championship bout, 135 minutes in length. First film shot in artificial light, which was so hot that it singed the boxers' hair. A few minutes of degraded footage exists of this fight.
Early Australian film, produced by the Limelight Department of the Salvation Army.[5] It was a multimedia production which combined 200 lantern slides with 13-20 film reels of about 2 minutes each, a live oration and live orchestra. None of the film reels survive.
The first film adaption of Lewis Carroll's book originally ran about 12 minutes, according to the British Film Institute. The Institute's restoration is nine minutes and 35 seconds long.
First dramatic Sherlock Holmes adaptation on film and second overall Holmes film, the first one being the 30-second film Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1900). All that exists are short strips of scenes deposited for copyright purposes in the Library of Congress.
Only 17 minutes of this 70-minute feature survive; it is often considered to be the world's first feature-length motion picture. It was thought to be a lost film until fragments were found in 1976, with further fragments in 1978, 1980 and 2006.
Danish film that initiated a decade of anti-Mormonpropaganda films in America. Only about half of the 60-minute feature has been found, a copy of which is preserved at the LDS archive in Salt Lake City.
British documentary depicting celebrations in India for the coronation of George V. With a total running time of around 150 minutes, today only two reels survive, one showing a review of troops after the main ceremony and the other a procession in Calcutta from the end of the royal tour.
La Cineteca del Friuli film archive has the first of 13 episodes of the second American serial ever made. The EYE Film Institute Netherlands also has print fragments.
This is believed to be the longest serial ever made, 23.8 hours long with 119 12-minute episodes. Surviving episodes are scattered among various film archives, including the Library of Congress, the National Film and Television Archive and the International Museum of Photography and Film at George Eastman House.
Cody stars as himself in this early movie version of the Indian Wars; also stars Nelson Appleton Miles and Black Elk; released 1917. One minute and 58 seconds of footage is held by the McCracken Research Library or the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, and can be viewed online (see reference).
The story concerns Helen Marie, a woman on the run from the St. Petersburg police, who plots to assassinate the Tsar. Only about 45 seconds of this film exists. These fragments contain an extra mistakenly said to be Leon Trotsky. In fact, Trotsky was not yet in the United States when this was filmed.
Pro-armaments epic and the most expensive production undertaken by Vitagraph. One reel reported in Europe; fragments of battle scenes, culled from stock shot libraries, reside at George Eastman House.
Still frames from several scenes have survived and were incorporated into the print compiled by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. These scenes were probably part of the original cut of the film, but eliminated by Griffith in subsequent reissues.
It was considered a lost film, thought to have been destroyed in a vault fire. A "substantially complete" print with Dutch intertitles, missing a few scenes, was found in Amsterdam in 1992 and restored at George Eastman House.
Only 60 seconds of footage remain of Laurel's first film.[citation needed] Part of the short lives on in scenes inserted into the 1922 extant short Mixed Nuts.
Two prints were found of this previously lost comedy short, one in 1998 and one in 2002, and were combined to create a restored version. However, some scenes are still missing.
The original film was in four episodes with a film length of 5,250 metres (17,220 ft). The most complete reconstruction is 3,525 metres (11,565 ft) long.
The serial was considered to be lost in its entirety. However, most episodes have been found, although many are incomplete. The Masked Rider is considered to be the first film serial about a masked cowboy.
About three minutes survive, including two clips in compilation films released by Paramount: The House That Shadows Built (1931) and Movie Memories (1935).
A 24-minute segment was restored and edited from a surviving reel in Soviet Armenia. It was released in 2009 by the Armenian Genocide Resource Center of Northern California. Also known as Auction of Souls.
A copy containing about three fourths of this Australian production was found and combined with already known footage to produce a near-complete version. A five-minute sequence is still missing.
A five-minute fragment is housed in the WPA Film Library and the British Pathé film archive. The latter allows a clip of the final scene to be viewed online.
Thirty-eight seconds of footage from this Western, found in a mislabeled tin, were the subject of an investigation in a 2006 episode of the PBSseriesHistory Detectives.
Incomplete prints survive from the Raymond Rohauer Collection, currently scenes featuring Keaton working as a surgeon and a Wall Street stock broker are still missing from extant prints.
Long thought lost completely, it has been restored from various sources, but still lacks 10 minutes of the original running time of roughly one hour and 50 minutes.
The UCLA Film and Television Archive, under the supervision of Robert Gitt and Richard Dayton, restored the film from the 35mm, nitrate filmoriginal camera negative in 1985. As the final two reels were missing, Gitt and Dayton used "an original two-color Technicolor camera" to shoot a sunset on a California beach, "much as the film's original closing must have looked."
An incomplete 16mm reduction positive, missing the first third, resides in the Library of Moving Images. Turner Classic Movies financed a restoration using surviving footage from the film, and trailers, still photos and title cards to bridge the gaps.
An incomplete Belgian print was found by a film collector in Mansfield, England in May 2021. The surviving footage includes reels 1, 4, 5, and 6, although some of the extant reels have missing sections at the beginning and end of the reels.
The original version encompassed 32 reels, which ran for either seven and a half or nine hours (sources disagree). In 1924, Gance edited it down to two and a half hours for general distribution. A modern reconstruction from five different versions, available on DVD, is nearly four and a half hours long.
Alfred Hitchcock received his first screen credit, as a writer and assistant director. Three of the six reels were found in New Zealand in August 2011.
Initially running nine and a half hours, the film was cut by von Stroheim to just under four hours, and then trimmed by the studio to 140 minutes of surviving footage. The remaining footage was later accidentally discarded by a janitor while cleaning the vaults. A 240-minute version has been edited in 1999, including slides of the few stills from some of the lost scenes.
Originally running nine reels, it was cut to five reels to gain approval from New York censors. The surviving copy is based on the censor-approved, edited version; the original nine-reel version is considered lost.
The Bonehead Age
13 seconds were featured in the documentary Dinosaur Movies (1993)
It initially had a running time of 106 minutes. Though partially restored, the longest cut runs at approximately 100 minutes. [However, according to silentera.com, the 2017 Flicker Alley Blu-ray edition runs 110 minutes and "includes approximately eight minutes of recently-recovered footage."]
The Academy Film Archive preserved a short segment (around 30 seconds) in 2009.[141] Another segment (around 2 minutes, 45 seconds), purportedly from the Academy Film Archive, can be viewed on YouTube.[142]
Found by the director in his garden shed in 1970; he had buried it during World War II and forgotten it, but a third of the original footage is still missing.
For decades, the excerpt included in the 1957 compilation film The Golden Age of Comedy was thought to be the only remaining footage, until an incomplete print of the first reel (featuring a boxing match) was found in the late 1970s. 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. Two minutes of the film featuring a scene between the duo and Pallette from the end of reel one is still missing.
This Australian film was reconstructed from incomplete Australian and American prints and other sources. The remaining gaps were covered by new titles and montages of stills.
About a quarter of the film was believed to have been lost forever prior to 2008, when an almost-complete print was discovered in Argentina. All but five minutes of the film is now intact and restored. The five minutes comprise two short scenes that were missing from the Argentinian print. Also, a portion of the top and left sides of each frame were missing from the Argentina print.
Gance's film was released in a number of versions with a wide range of running times, up to nine hours and 22 minutes for the version définitive. The latest reconstruction by Georges Mourier runs seven hours and five minutes
Part of the BFI 75 Most Wanted missing films. The British Film Institute has noted, however, that an "incomplete and deteriorating nitrate print ... was apparently viewed prior to July 2008".
One reel was found in a Russian film archive and has been shown on Turner Classic Movies. Another short excerpt was found in a Swedish newsreel and has been shown at Filmhuset in Sweden.
Includes a bit part by Bela Lugosi, and the only known screen appearance by George Herriman, the creator of the comic strip Krazy Kat. The Library of Congress has a "digital file containing 300 ft. 16mm fragment from one reel (r1) loaned by collector".
A one-minute montage sequence, "Skyline Dance" by Slavko Vorkapich, was released in October 2005 in the DVD collection Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941.
A few fragments and a trailer survive at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. A six-minute reel was found in the Portuguese Archive and copied to safety stock.
Stroheim's first rough cut was 11 hours long. He intended to turn it into a two-part film, with the second part to be called The Honeymoon. The Honeymoon is presumed lost.
Reels one, two and 11 of this part-talkie survive, as do an almost complete set of soundtrack discs and the soundtrack of the trailer.[clarification needed]
After the premiere of this part-talkie, Warner Bros. made extensive revisions, including cutting about half an hour. The original 135-minute version is believed to be lost. A partial restoration is 108 minutes long.
The preview ran 140 minutes, and was edited to 96 minutes for general release. Extant prints run just over 93 minutes, the missing footage is presumed lost.
The first all-talkie film released by Columbia Pictures. A mute print of this film survives in the Library of Congress, but the soundtrack, which was recorded on discs, is not known to survive. The sound disc for the trailer exists but the film does not.
One reel featuring a stage performance of the opera Faust was located in 2003 and included as an extra on the 2 DVD set of The Phantom of the Opera (1925), released by the Milestone Collection.
The first all-Technicolor, all-talking feature, only a black-and-white version remains, although a very brief clip of color footage was found in a toy projector.
Originally produced in two-strip Technicolor, today the film survives only in black and white, save for a two-and-a-half-minute sequence from the 'Wild Rose' musical number and a 29 second fragment from the first reel.
Only montage sequences by Slavko Vorkapich survive. One of these has been issued in October 2005 in the DVD collection Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant Garde Film 1894–1941.
Originally released as a musical as Waiting for the Bride or Waiting at the Church in Technicolor, it was re-released under the new title with the musical parts cut. Only an incomplete black-and-white copy of the cut version seems to have survived.[citation needed]
For many years, Deluge was thought to be a lost film, but a print dubbed in Italian was found in a film archive in Italy in the late 1980s. Before the discovery, the only part of the film known to have survived was the impressive footage of the tidal wave destroying New York City, which was used in the Republic Pictures serials Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc. (1941) and King of the Rocket Men (1949). In 2016, a 35mm nitrate dupe negative with the English soundtrack was discovered. A 2K scan restoration was made by Lobster Films, and this restoration was picked up for a limited theatrical re-release by Kino Repertory, and a home media release by Kino Lorber Studio Classics in February 2017.
The most complete existing version of this film runs 96 minutes, compared with its original running time of 117 minutes upon submission to the BBFC. A reconstructed version using extant film, production stills and extracts from the script is available on DVD.
Capra's initial 210-minute version was cut down to 132 minutes after a preview screening of the film went badly. In his autobiography, Capra claims to have personally destroyed the first two reels. Subsequent re-releases were further edited to downplay allegedly Communist elements, as well as hints of swinging and various scenes which were felt to present the native children in too positive a light. While a complete soundtrack of the original 132-minute release has survived, no complete print is known to exist. A restoration substituted still photos and individual frames for the seven minutes of missing footage. One minute of footage has been found and added to a Blu-ray release of the film.
Mieshi Bando, Donguriboya, Masako Fujimura, Akiko Fujimura, Mari Ko
A seriously compromised print of Earth was discovered in Germany in 1968. It suffers from decomposition and is missing the first and last reels and includes German subtitles. The original film was 142 minutes long; this version runs 93 minutes. A 119-minute version of the film, with subtitles in Russian, was discovered in Russia around the turn of the millennium. It, too, is missing the last reel.
For its 60th anniversary DVD release in 2000, Disney's manager of film restoration, Scott MacQueen, supervised a restoration and reconstruction of the original 125-minute roadshow version of Fantasia. The visual elements from the Deems Taylor segments that had been cut from the film in 1942 and 1946 were restored, as was the intermission. However, the original nitrate audio negatives for the long-unseen Taylor scenes had deteriorated several decades earlier, so Disney brought in voice actor Corey Burton to dub all of Taylor's lines. Although it was advertised as the "original uncut" version, the Sunflower edit in Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 made in 1969 was maintained. In this version, it was accomplished by digitally zooming in on certain frames to avoid showing the black centaurette character.
Forty-four minutes were cut by RKO Pictures from Welles' version after an unsuccessful preview, with RKO filming a new ending and destroying the deleted footage. A handful of shots from the original version exist in the film's original trailer, which has survived.
According to the Toho Studios introduction to the 1952 re-release of this film, 1,845 feet (17 minutes) were cut in 1944 due to government demands. The missing footage could not be found for the 1952 re-release and is considered lost.
Placed on the BFI 75 Most Wanted list of lost films. A cut-down version titled Be Kind Sergeant was later offered for sale on eBay. A two-and-a-half minute trailer also survives.
Kurosawa wanted the original 265-minute version to be shown in two parts. When the studio balked, the film was cut to 180 minutes. After the poorly received premiere, the picture was cut, against Kurosawa's wishes, to 166 minutes. No print of the 265-minute version is known to exist; Kurosawa supposedly spent a week looking through the studio archives for the original cut when he returned to Shochiku Studios 40 years later to make Rhapsody in August.
Huston had high hopes for the movie, even considering the original two-hour cut of the film as the best he had ever made as a director. After a power struggle at the top of MGM management, the film was cut from a two-hour epic to the 69-minute version released to theaters, in response to its alleged universally disastrous previews. It was never released as an "A" feature but was shown as a second-feature "B" picture. Both Huston and star Audie Murphy tried unsuccessfully to purchase the film so that it could be re-edited to its original length. Huston did not waste any time fighting over it, as he was focused on the pre-production of his next picture, The African Queen. The studio claimed that the cut footage was destroyed, probably in the 1965 MGM vault fire. In 1975, MGM asked Huston whether he had an original cut of the film, which the studio wanted to re-release. He had actually struck a 16mm print, but by that time, it had been lost.
The Australian National Film and Sound Archive has what it believes is the 53-minute version edited for television, but is still searching for the full 69-minute original.
Originally premiering at 181 minutes, Warner Bros. cut the film down to 154 minutes for general release. For a 1983 restoration, running 176 minutes, the original multiple track, stereophonic sound was restored, along with some scenes that had been cut; production stills filled in for other missing scenes. A complete print is rumored to exist.[citation needed]
Nikkatsu, the studio that commissioned the film, released it in Japan in two parts, three weeks apart. Part one (running 63 minutes) opened on January 21, 1956, and part two (80 minutes) opened on February 12. Both were accompanied by B movies. The total running time of 143 minutes was cut to 116 for later re-release and export, reputedly over Ichikawa's objection. The original 143-minute version is lost.
Premiering at 192 minutes, the movie was edited to 162 minutes for general release. In the late 1980s, 20 minutes of deleted footage were found in a warehouse which had been slated for demolition and restored to the film in 1991. The remaining lost roadshow footage was tracked down in 2013 as part of a restoration effort to return the film to its original roadshow length. A majority of the scenes found were complete; the remainder were missing either the sound or the visuals, as they were derived from original 70mm roadshow prints that were themselves edited down from Kramer's original cut. The original elements disappeared long ago.
This short film was originally shot in the 70mmTodd-AO widescreen process. Eleven 70mm prints were created, but none survive. The film exists in a 16mm version only.
The film was part of an exhibit at the 1964 New York World's Fair. Around 2016, a home movie held at Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archives was found to include three minutes of the 1964 version.
At least two completed sequences from this film, one in which Blondie foils Tuco with the aid of a Mexican prostitute and another in which Angel Eyes explains to Blondie how he learned of Jackson's gold, were cut from all releases, including the Italian premiere version, and are now believed to be lost. All that remains of the former sequence is a snippet of footage used in a French trailer for the film, while a small number of production photos provide evidence for both scenes' existence.
One of the longest films ever publicly screened, it ran for close to 25 hours at The Filmmaker's Cinemathèque in New York City on December 15–16, 1967. Based on extant data regarding the order of reels, films that still remain and projection information, a full reconstruction is not possible.
The original negative is thought to be lost and the original Korean-language version only exists in a 48-minute fragment. However, MGM owns a complete 35mm interpositive and textless 35mm elements for the opening and ending titles and was able to reconstruct the AIP-TV English-dubbed U.S. version in CinemaScope.
About 80 hours were shot, mostly bike riding, but also extra scenes. Hopper came up with versions of 240 minutes, 220 and 180 minutes, all considered too long for cinema release. He was sent on holiday to Taos, and the movie was cut by others, like Henry Jaglom, to 96 minutes. All take-outs are now believed to be lost due to a fire. A small number of production photos provide evidence for extras scenes, like a police chase,[219] and one of the Morganza café girls riding as passenger behind Fonda.[220]
The film was shortened after its premiere, from two and a half hours to 119 minutes. In 1996, a restoration effort was mounted, and most of the cut footage was found. However, most of the dialogue tracks for these scenes could not be recovered, so the scenes were dubbed by the original actors whenever possible. Footage of the song "A Step in the Right Direction", which was included on the original soundtrack album, has not been found.
After its Hong Kong run, the film was edited for Western release. Numerous cuts were made, mostly to remove the more graphic violence. Also removed was an explicit brothel scene in which Lee's character makes love to a Thai prostitute (Lee's only implied nude scene in his career). The missing footage has been rumored to still exist.
Many versions of this film exist (the best-known and most widely available being the 157-minute version), but several scenes are known to have been cut from every release and possibly survive only through production stills. These include a scene in which John is forced to march across a desert without water (similar to a scene in Leone's previous film, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) and one in which Dr. Villega is tortured for information by Colonel Reza.
This film was unusually graphic for its time and many cinema machinists made their own cuts. As a result, some scenes are missing from most versions of the film and the sound is missing from other scenes.
The original negative and film elements of Robin Hardy's 99-minute director's cut of The Wicker Man are lost and only survive on tape recordings. In 2013, StudioCanal launched a Facebook campaign to find missing material from the film, which resulted in the discovery of a 92-minute 35mm print at the Harvard Film Archive that saw a theatrical and home media release subtitled The Final Cut. This print, previously known as the "Middle Version", was assembled by Hardy for the film's then-U.S. distributor, Abraxas, for its 1979 U.S. theatrical re-release.
After being sold as a tax write-off, the film faded into obscurity for years until Encore Home Video rediscovered it in 1993 and released it on DVD several years later, claiming to have transferred their copy from the only known surviving print. This version runs 57 minutes and is considered incomplete.
The original cut of the film, bearing the title Cuckoo Clocks of Hell, was three hours in length. Although it was screened in 1974, this version has been lost; the original negatives are missing and may have been destroyed.
For the 1997 Special Edition release of the original trilogy, a deleted scene featuring Jabba, played by Declan Mulholland, was added to the new cut, with Mulholland being replaced by a computer-generated Jabba, which was updated in the 2004 DVD release. The original version of this scene only survives in low-quality snippets stuck together.
Re-cut version of William Friedkin's 1977 film Sorcerer for international release outside USA and France. Unauthorized work by CIC against Friedkin's wish in effort to make the film more appealing to audiences. All opening prologues were removed and reinserted as short flashbacks, reducing the runtime from 121 minutes to 88 minutes. Contains some alternative scenes not seen on the original cut, alternative takes of some scenes, different dubbing and dialogue in some scenes. Tangerine Dream's music is used much more, and the film has a happy ending compared to the original cut's darker ending. So far the original print of this version has not been resurfaced, but some fans have managed to obtain 35mm print from Czech Republic with Czech language subtitles burned to the image, and are restoring this cut.
In the book My Best Friend's Birthday: The Making of a Quentin Tarantino Film, Tarantino admits that some rolls of film were simply discarded by mistake, and Tarantino, unsatisfied with the final product, edited together the scenes he liked, leaving the project unfinished.
The original version of the film, which does not include VJ Emmie as the "Video Joker" was lost when the director erased his computer's hard drive to make his next film Tebaatusasula (see below). Even from the existing cut, all that survives is a low-resolution DVD master.
The original film was lost when the director's hard drive containing the original workprint crashed as a result of power outages in his neighborhood. It was later remade as Tebaatusasula: Ebola. A trailer containing footage from the film still exists.
^ abPike, A. & Cooper, R. (1980). Australian Film, 1900-1977 A Guide to Feature Film Production. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. p. 5. ISBN0195543327.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Malthête, Jacques; Mannoni, Laurent (2008), L'oeuvre de Georges Méliès, Paris: Éditions de La Martinière, p. 255, ISBN9782732437323
^Essai de reconstitution du catalogue français de la Star-Film; suivi d'une analyse catalographique des films de Georges Méliès recensés en France, Bois d'Arcy: Service des archives du film du Centre national de la cinématographie, 1981, pp. 324–25, ISBN2903053073
^Birchard, Richard S. (2009). Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood. University Press of Kentucky. p. 28. ISBN978-0813138299. Retrieved February 25, 2013. Unfortunately, only two reels of the original six reels of The Devil-Stone are known to survive in the American Film Institute Collection in the Library of Congress.
^"Crown v. Stevens (1936)". BFI Screenonline. His following assignment, The Man Behind The Mask (which does exist, but in a much truncated form with a private collector) was released only three weeks after Crown ...
^Renoir on Renoir: interviews, essays, and remarks; translated by Carol Volk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. p. 238. [From a filmed interview in 1961.]
^The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (2-Disc Collector's Edition) (Reconstructing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) (DVD). Los Angeles, California: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 1967.
^The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (2-Disc Collector's Edition) (The Sorroco Sequence: A Reconstruction) (DVD). Los Angeles, California: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 1967.
^Duck, You Sucker, AKA A Fistful of Dynamite (2-Disc Collector's Edition, Sorting Out the Versions) (DVD). Los Angeles, California: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 1972.
^Celluloid Crime of the Century, featurette documentary on the 2003 Anchor Bay DVD edition of The Last House on the Left
^Nabwana I.G.G. (2010). Who Killed Captain Alex?. Event occurs at 0:21. This is a lost film. All that survives is a low-resolution DVD master. This is due, in part, to the harsh working conditions, but Nabwana IGG also erased his computer to be able to make his next action film, Tebaatusasula.
^Nabwana I.G.G. Who Killed Captain Alex? (director's commentary).
