These Amazing Shadows Page #3

from the W.C. Fields film,

it's a gift, where they go

to this rich man's estate

and the family basically has a picnic

on the lawn and makes a mess.

Look out where you're going!

Oh! Look what you've done!

She ran right in front of the car!

When I first saw W.C. Fields in this film,

his humor, his sort of laconic behavior

and kind of slovenliness,

it spoke to me

as a man and as a human being.

- Stop it!

- Oh, you idiot.

Those were my mother's feathers.

Stop it.

Never knew your mother had feathers.

Probably the most amazing

and unique thing about the Packard campus

is that it is part of

the Library of Congress.

We are fortunate

in that we get a part of a budget...

from Congress every year

and part of that budget,

and a fairly good-sized chunk,

goes to preservation.

In the late 1890s,

the nitrocellulose film was developed.

The... sort of uniqueness of...

of the nitrate film

is why they actually have a manager

for just the nitrate film collection.

So much of the nitrate film collection

is unknown,

so we are constantly working on the collection

to try and identify those little bits of film

that might be something really important,

but we have no idea what they are.

The major problem with nitrate

is that it is very flammable.

And when I say "very flammable",

I mean it is very flammable.

It is like setting a fuse

on a piece of dynamite.

We continued using nitrate

up until the 1950s,

when the triacetate safety came out

and was deemed just or almost as good

as the nitrate film that preceded it.

Well, this is my little world here.

We call this "nitrate land."

These are the nitrate vaults

of the Library of Congress.

We have 124 climate-controlled vaults.

They're maintained

at about 39 degrees fahrenheit,

about 30% relative humidity.

Within these vaults, we have...

130,000, approximately,

rolls of nitrate motion picture film

dating from about 1894 to about 1952.

It is a truly amazing collection

and one of a kind.

See what else we got here.

Nah...

P-eww!

this is our triage area of films that...

the other staff find

that are questionable,

and they're brought to me

to do inspection on. This is a can...

of small fragments.

Normally, with a film

you should be able to,

like, it should give somewhat

and be somewhat loosely wound.

This one is solid as a rock.

This is what we refer to

as a hockey puck.

It has been wet.

It is probably very stuck together,

so I'm going to see

if I can at least peel something off

to tell what it was...

ah!

Oh... darn.

Look at that... wow.

Through a variety of reasons, through...

basic neglect or...

deterioration especially,

many of our early films, and actually

some more recent ones, are lost forever.

I mean, there's nothing left.

I know of one Academy Award winning film

called The Patriot

and all that survives on it

are a few trailers and stills.

The other reason a lot of them

don't survive, of course,

is just because the studios

didn't really care about 'em.

They were just product, and once

they were done and made their money,

they went on the shelf.

One studio destroyed all their

silent negatives in the '40s because

they didn't think anyone was ever

going to want to see them again.

I got involved in film archiving

'cause I saw Gone with the Wind when I was 12.

And to think that I might have a part

in somebody, some other 12-year-old girl

seeing a movie that changes their life

is really exciting to me.

I volunteered at the library

for a month before I applied for a job

and while I was volunteering,

Warner Brothers was doing a restoration

of Gone with the Wind,

and sure enough, I walked into

one of the back rooms one day

to find a stack of negatives

and I got really excited

and I remember running

into a couple people's offices,

I mean, like, "Look at this! Look at this!"

And they knew exactly why I was excited

'cause they'd found their favorite movies

and had the same feeling.

My favorite part of the job

is spending a whole day saving a film,

you know, a film that comes

in that's torn and no one can watch

and it's up to me to make sure that

it gets to a point where

it can be rescued.

It's kind of like a lost puppy that...

needs to be taken care of.

Ah, nice.

Nice splice job... oh...

Is it a piece of...?

Oh, that's great.

So we have a piece of scotch tape

that someone just...

stuck on the film to repair a rip.

...that's my job and to know

that because of me spending hours

staring at tiny frames and working with,

you know, small pieces of tape,

that future generations are gonna see it,

is very exciting.

A friend of mine had a 16-millimeter print.

He said, "you have to see this film.

I want you to see this film.

It's, like, this amazing film."

There were no DVDs in those days,

no videotapes, nothing.

I had a Bell & Howell projector,

I put the film on, I watched it and I went...

"Oh, my God!"

Yay!

Hello, Bedford Falls!

- Merry Christmas!

- Merry Christmas, George!

Merry Christmas, George!

What struck me more than anything

was the emotion of it. I cried.

Is this the ear you can't hear on?

George Bailey,

I'll love you till the day I die.

I'm going out exploring someday...

you watch.

I cried when Jimmy Stewart grabbed her

and they were listening to the phone together

and he grabbed her and it was one take.

No cutaways, one take, and said...

Now, you listen to me.

I don't want any plastics

and I don't want any ground floors

and I don't want to get married ever

to anyone... you understand that?

I wanna do what I wanna do,

and you're... and you're...

Oh, Mary... Mary...

George, George, George...

It is my favorite film

because it's a film that

celebrates the value of life,

and there is nothing greater than us all

appreciating the value of our lives

and other lives.

...Auld Lang Syne

We'll drink a cup

of kindness yet

for Auld Lang Syne.

Film should be an experience.

Reality outside the frame

is your everyday life.

The reality inside the frame

is whatever you want to create it to be.

Some films definitely give you

access to a dream world.

I think musicals probably do that

better than most.

Follow the yellow brick road.

Follow the yellow brick road.

Follow the yellow brick road,

follow the yellow brick road

follow, follow...

It immediately takes you out of reality.

It's something that

could only happen in your dreams,

but that doesn't make it less worthwhile.

In fact, for me

it frequently makes it more worthwhile.

It's not a place

you can get to by a boat or a train.

It's far, far away.

I would watch Wizard of Oz

every day when I was two.

I had a really hard time understanding...

that I couldn't go into the film,

'cause it felt so real to me.

Somewhere

over the rainbow...

It's a wonderful universal story.

I mean, if you look at the Wizard of Oz,

It takes a reality,

which is the beginning of the movie,

and it turns it into a mythology.

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