Preserving the Treasure

Some years ago, a friend recalls, he was watching Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” on a local television station. Just as the film reached its final moments, with the camera slowly moving in to reveal the secret of “Rosebud,” it suddenly faded from the screen, to be replaced by a salesman praising the virtues of his used cars. Any viewer who hadn’t seen “Citizen Kane” before and so didn’t know the significance of “Rosebud” to the plot would have been left utterly baffled, frustrated and outraged by the station’s thoughtless treatment of this classic film.

The point of the story is that terrible things can and do happen to movies once they pass beyond the control of the people who make them. They are often cut without regard to their original artistic intent or continuity. If they were shot in black and white they can now be “colorized,” often to the debasement of their aesthetic values. Entire scenes and characters are eliminated in order to squeeze movies into arbitrary time segments.

It was to try to help protect the integrity and assure the survival of important films that Congress last year passed the National Film Preservation Act. One of its major provisions is for a National Film Registry within the Library of Congress. This will be a repository of significant movies--in as near to their original versions as can be achieved--that would generally be regarded as “an enduring part of our national cultural heritage.” The first 25 films have now been chosen. A further 50 will be selected in the next two years.

The initial choice, published in The Times on Wednesday, isn’t intended to be a ranking of the 25 best American films, although most would be accepted as classics. As Librarian of Congress James Billington noted, it is a selection of movies that first and foremost have been important to American culture and history. But selection and acquisition are only a part of what the Film Registry is all about. The Library, which already owns between 90,000 and 100,000 movie titles, is at least equally concerned with the restoration and preservation of films.

“The cold, hard fact,” noted Billington, “is that for all their popularity in America today, films are an endangered species for the America of tomorrow.” Half of all movies made before 1950 and 80% of those made before 1930 have disappeared forever, he noted, either through physical deterioration or careless editing that has caused important portions to be lost. The new National Film Registry is aimed at assuring that at least an important number of major American films will be available to future generations in definitive versions. That enterprise is most welcome.