1930s
Year | Film | Director | Cast | Notes | Ref |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1930 | The Bat Whispers | Roland West | One of the first films shot in widescreen. A complete print was discovered and restored in the late 1990s. | ||
1930 | Bed and Breakfast | Walter Forde | Jane Baxter Richard Cooper Sari Maritza Alf Goddard |
It was found as a result of a 1992 British Film Institute campaign to search for lost films. | |
1930 | Limite | Mário Peixoto | Experimental silent feature made in Brazil. The restored complete version had its U.S. premiere in Brooklyn, New York in November 2010. | ||
1930 | Mamba | Albert S. Rogell | Jean Hersholt Eleanor Boardman Ralph Forbes |
Footage from the final reel (stored at the UCLA Film and Television Archive) and all the Vitaphone soundtrack discs for this Technicolor film were originally thought to be the only elements from the film to survive. A complete print of the film, running nine reels, and four soundtrack discs were discovered in Australia in 2009. | |
1930 | Wara Wara | José Maria Velasco Maidana | The only known surviving Bolivian film of the silent era. Discovered in a La Paz basement in 1989, it required over a decade of restoration and was not released until 2010. | ||
1931 | Dick & Doof - Spuk um Mitternacht | James Parrott | Stan Laurel Oliver Hardy |
German version (spoken by Laurel and Hardy) of Laurel & Hardy's Berth Marks/The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case, found 2004 in Moscow's film archive. | |
1931 | The Ghost Train | Walter Forde | Jack Hulbert Cicely Courtneidge Ann Todd Cyril Raymond |
It was found as a result of a 1992 British Film Institute campaign to search for lost films. | |
1931 | Love and Duty | Bu Wancang | Ruan Lingyu | Silent film made in China, and rediscovered in Uruguay in the 1990s. | |
1931 | The Smiling Lieutenant | Ernst Lubitsch | Rediscovered in Denmark in the 1980s. | ||
1931 | The Stolen Jools | William C. McGann | All-star cast | Made for a charity, film was discovered in the UK under its alternate title The Slippery Pearls. | |
1932 | Condemned to Death | Walter Forde | Arthur Wontner Gillian Lind Gordon Harker Cyril Raymond |
It was found as a result of a 1992 British Film Institute campaign to search for lost films. | |
1932 | Doctor X | Michael Curtiz | Lee Tracy Fay Wray |
Technicolor version found in personal vault of Jack L. Warner. | |
1932 | His Lordship | Michael Powell | Jerry Verno Janet McGrew |
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1932 | The Most Dangerous Game | Irving Pichel Ernest B. Schoedsack |
Fay Wray | A horror movie filmed on the same set as King Kong. | |
1932 | The Old Dark House | James Whale | Boris Karloff Melvyn Douglas Gloria Stuart |
Thought lost for decades, filmmaker Curtis Harrington discovered a print in the Universal Studios vault, which was restored by Eastman House. | |
1932 | Rynox | Michael Powell | Stuart Rome John Longden |
Found in the vaults of Pinewood Studios in 1990. | |
1933 | Berkeley Square | Frank Lloyd | Leslie Howard Heather Angel Valerie Taylor |
Rediscovered in the 1970s. | |
1933 | The Ghoul | T. Hayes Hunter | Boris Karloff, Ernest Thesiger | A damaged, incomplete print was found in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, and was thought to be the only surviving copy until a nearly-pristine one was found in the archives of the British Film Institute. | |
1933 | Hello Pop! | Jack Cummings | Ted Healy, The Three Stooges | Full Technicolor print found in Sydney, Australia in January 2013. | |
1933 | Mystery of the Wax Museum | Michael Curtiz | Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray | Technicolor version found in personal vault of Jack L. Warner. | |
1933 | Der Sieg des Glaubens | Leni Riefenstahl | Adolf Hitler | This 64-minute documentary was ordered destroyed by Hitler for showing Nazi party member Ernst Röhm, who had been murdered on Hitler's orders. A copy was found in Britain in the 1990s. | |
1933 | The Power and the Glory | William K. Howard | Spencer Tracy | By 1971, the negative had deteriorated and only fragments were available. Was later restored. | |
1933 | Ojo Okichi (Miss Okichi) | Kenji Mizoguchi | Isuz Yamada | This film did not actually appear in official filmographies of Mizoguchi until a print was discovered in the vaults of Shochiku studios in 2008. | |
1934 | Of Human Bondage | John Cromwell | Leslie Howard, Bette Davis | The negative was discovered to have been destroyed in 1964 when actress Kim Novak requested a print. A copy was recovered several years later. | |
1935 | Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht | Leni Riefenstahl | Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler | Thought to have been lost following World War II, an incomplete print running 28 minutes was discovered in the 1970s. | |
1936 | Border Vengeance | Ray Heinz | Reb Russell, Mary Jane Carey, Kenneth MacDonald | Formerly listed on the Internet Movie Database as a lost film, a copy was made available as a free download circa 2004 as part of the collection of the Internet Archive. | |
1937 | Slaves in Bondage | Elmer Clifton | Lona Andre, Donald Reed, Wheeler Oakman, Florence Dudley | Long listed on the Internet Movie Database as a lost film, it resurfaced on DVD in the mid-2000s. | |
1939 | Le Jour Se Lève | Marcel Carné | Jean Gabin, Jules Berry & Arletty | When RKO acquired the distribution rights to Le Jour se lève in preparation for remaking it as The Long Night, they also sought to buy up and destroy all available prints of the original film. For a time, it was thought that the French film had been lost completely, but copies re-appeared in the 1950s and its classic status was re-established. | |
1939 | Smith | Michael Powell | Ralph Richardson & Flora Robson | A short film made in 1939 to promote an ex-servicemen's charity. It got caught up in the start of World War II and wasn't shown publicly. It wasn't even mentioned by Powell in his autobiography. A copy was found in 2003 and it had its first public screening in the UK in 2004. 65 years after it was completed. | |
1939 | Tevya | Maurice Schwartz | Maurice Schwartz Julius Adler |
Long thought lost, a print was discovered and restored in 1978. |
Read more about this topic: List Of Rediscovered Films, Sound Era