Classic 1922 film unearthed

The Dutch national film archive says it has discovered a complete copy of the long-lost 1922 silent classic “Beyond the Rocks,” starring Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson, in a private collection.

“Film historians and restorers have been looking for ‘Beyond the Rocks’ -- a classic melodrama about impossible love -- for almost three-quarters of a century,” the Filmmuseum, the Dutch national center for cinematography, said in a statement.

Jan van den Brink, a film historian and Valentino expert who works for the Filmmuseum, said the movie had turned up among more than 2,000 film canisters bequeathed to the archive in 2000 after the death of a collector in the town of Haarlem.

The Filmmuseum is restoring the film, repairing scratches and other minor damage, and has asked Dutch composers to write a new score to be performed live when it shows the silent movie at its festival in Amsterdam next year.