MovieChat Forums > The Mysterious Island (1929) Discussion > Missing credit sequence: Technicolor?

Missing credit sequence: Technicolor?

posted 11 years ago by hobnob53
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The opening credits of this movie clearly have one section cut out (as I recall the music also "jumps", indicating a cut in the film). Thinking it over I suspect this may have been the credit stating the film was shot in Technicolor, as no such credit is now shown. If so, I suppose it was spliced out many years after the film's initial release, after the color prints had been lost, so as not to "confuse" people into thinking they should be seeing it in color.

Too bad the orignal print is lost. It would have been fantastic to be able to see some of the amazing effects sequences in color, even primitive two-color Technicolor.

I also wonder whether the lack of an original color print is why this film has never been released on home video of any kind. While the loss of the color print is regrettable, better to have the film in an imperfect form than not at all. The trivia section says there is one surviving color reel in the UCLA Film Archives. That would be a nice extra on a DVD release, if the reel could be duplicated without destroying it.

Perhaps one day we'll have a surprise and find the original color film preserved in an archive somewhere in the world. But, probably not.

[–] robin_l 10 years ago

A colour copy has just been found.

http://www.radio.cz/en/section/arts/us-film-historians-find-treasure-i n-czech-archive

[–] hobnob53 10 years ago

Thank you for the link, robin_l!

This is great news -- curious that this happens just months after I started this thread. The Czech Film Archives has long been a treasure trove of seemingly lost films, one mined for many years. I had long thought if anyone had a color print it would be the Czechs, but after so many years of people combing through the Archives I had given up hope of The Mysterious Island being discovered. I figured such a title would have long since turned up, and I'm still a bit surprised it didn't surface sooner.

A couple of odd things about the news item. First, although it's implicit throughout the article, nowhere does it specifically state that the print discovered is in color. Presumably it is, of course, and the person from Eastman House, which specializes in restoring old color films, probably wouldn't be talking about restoration unless it was in color. Still, a flat-out statement that the print is indeed in Technicolor seems to have been an obvious one to make, and the absence of such a statement is strange.

Second, the article states this is the only print of the film in the world. But I've seen the film several times, albeit in black and white. It does exist -- just not (until, apparently, now) in two-strip Technicolor. So clearly the one found in Prague can't be the only print "in the world"...simply the only one in Technicolor. (And perhaps it'll still show up someplace else -- New Zealand, for example, where many old American films have been discovered in recent years.)

Anyway, hopefully this film can and will be restored and once again turn up in its original Technicolor glory. It's such a fascinating and bizarre film that one has to see it in its original form. And if they do restore and market it (probably two or three years off at least), presumably it won't come with some God-awful rock score in place of the original music, as has happened to several completely silent films such as A Trip to the Moon and Metropolis. Since the music for The Mysterious Island is on its actual soundtrack it should remain intact. It's actually a terrible score, but worth hearing for its dreary weirdness alone!

If you run across anything else can you please post that news here too? Thanks again.

Oh, a PS: I was amused to see the name of the late B-western star Rex Bell misspelled "Belle" in the article. As a self-styled "macho" cowboy, rancher and owner of stores selling "western"-style apparel to eastern "dudes", and later a politician (he served as Lieutenant Governor of Nevada from 1955-1962 and dropped dead after attending a Fourth-of-July barbecue kicking off his campaign for Governor in 1962), I'm sure he'd have had a fit seeing his name feminized that way!