jared case's Posts

I’ve been at the museum for 11 years now, first as an intern, then as a student at Eastman House’s L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation. I was hired as a curatorial assistant and then moved into the position of cataloger for the Motion Picture Department.

My wife hates it when I talk in terms of fractions, but it’s been more than one-quarter of my life spent here at Eastman House, and the thing that attracted me, inspired me and drives me to this day is the wonderful film preservation program that we all play a daily part in.

George Eastman House has collected close to 28,000 titles in the last 60 years, and has been preserving them on film for almost as long, keeping them in vaults that will make sure they are accessible to future generations for hundreds of years to come.

Robert Osborne with Eastman House's Jared Case on the TCM set, taping the Salute to George Eastman House, airing Dec. 14.

In my current role as Head of Collection Information and Access, I get to talk to people about these films, whether it’s for exhibition at our own Dryden Theatre, or researchers who come to Rochester to view films from the collection, or institutions around the world that borrow the prints and play them at their own venues. So, when I received the opportunity to talk about some of these films with a national audience, I jumped at the chance.

Turner Classic Movies chose George Eastman House to be the focus of a 24-hour salute, providing airtime for films that have been conserved, preserved, restored, and reconstructed by the Motion Picture Department. The highlight of this salute to George Eastman House will be the introductions provided by longtime TCM host Robert Osborne and, as a representative of the museum, myself. I visited the studio on Friday, Nov. 11, to tape the segments for broadcast.

The four movies highlighted with introductions are Stanley Kubrick’s Fear and Desire (1953), Technicolor gem Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), early action film Roaring Rails (1924), and the oldest-existing film version of Mark Twain’s classic Huckleberry Finn (1920).

I did a lot of research and preparation in advance of the trip. I made sure I knew about not only the films themselves, but also the preservations that George Eastman House provided for them – the history, the technical aspects, the materials used. I tried to anticipate any question about the films that might be asked, and even prepared short papers to structure the information in my mind.

"Huckleberry Finn" (1920)

But I needn’t have worried. Mr. Osborne and the entire crew at Turner Classic Movies are so kind, professional, and generous that they made the entire experience a joy. We sat down for an hour and a half and had casual (but informative!) conversations about the films, the George Eastman House, and preservation in general. The set looked gorgeous, staged for the holiday season, and I had a great time, from the first minute to the last.

As the tribute day approaches, I will blog again, in more detail about the salute, as to what will be on, and when to watch. But the date to remember is one month from today — Wednesday, December 14 — starting at 6:15 a.m. on Turner Classic Movies.

Film Noir has always stood with one foot firmly entrenched in literature. Early films noir based on novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and W.R. Burnett were the shining beacons of a new kind of crime film, while the term itself suggests ties to gothic Roman noir novels of the early 20th century and was inspired by the French Série noire reprints of hard-boiled novels in the 1940s.

Film noir’s style and content not only reflected the malaise of post-war letdown, it also insprired filmmakers to tell their stories in new ways, bringing about a classic period of filmmaking and providing the starting point for several offshoots into neo-noir.

Bogie and the famous bird from John Huston’s film noir masterpiece THE MALTESE FALCON (1941).

But it also inspired writers in the way they told their stories. The transformative mixture of hard-boiled content and filmic style created an atmosphere that authors have been striving to capture for decades. It is with this in mind that in January and February, the Dryden Theatre is presenting four contemporary authors (Shamus-winning author Sean Chercover, Turner Classic Movies’ scholar Shannon Chute, Edgar-winner Megan Abbott, and Edgar-nominated author Charles Benoit) inspired by the same films that inspire all of us. It is also a great reason to screen the well-known greats (The Maltese Falcon, Mildred Pierce, Gilda, The Asphalt Jungle) alongside little-seen films from the classic period (including a Don Siegel double feature: The Lineup and The Big Steal)— and talk about all things noir.

Starting tomorrow, the Syracuse Cinephile Society is hosting its 30^th Cinefest in Liverpool, NY and at the Capitol Theatre in Rome, NY. Each year, Cinefest consists of four straight days of watching rare, hard-to-find, and hard-to-believe classic-era films. George Eastman House has been involved from the beginning. Not only do we provide films to fill out the program, but some of our preservations even get their premiere at this festival. This year, we are sending 10 films to the event, including 35mm preservations of ROARING RAILS and THE GRASP OF GREED, as well as the 16mm preservation of FLY-LOW JACK AND THE GAME.

ROARING RAILS [above] is a 2009 preservation funded by the National Film Preservation Foundation. This 1924 film stars Harry Carey as a disgraced train engineer whose adopted son’s blindness prompts him to help a murderer that may be able to help his son find a cure. This preservation, done at Haghefilm Conservation in the Netherlands, restores the tinting to the original black-and-white film, and all the intertitles were newly created for this preservation, using the existing Dutch titles as a template.

THE GRASP OF GREED is an early Lon Chaney melodrama about an authoress shipwrecked on a desert isle with her skinflint ex-publisher. Haghefilm also restored the tinting to this 1915 film, and again the titles were re-created for this preservation from Dutch references. The Film Foundation provided the funding for this 2006 preservation.

FLY-LOW JACK AND THE GAME [above] was shot right here in Rochester, NY. It is one of the first fiction films shot on 16mm film, by Marion Gleason, the wife of George Eastman’s personal organist. Testing out the viability of the 16mm camera and reversal film in 1927, Gleason said that “they wanted someone who knew absolutely nothing about movies so that they could be sure that anyone at all could load the camera.” This 2009 preservation was funded by the National Film Preservation Foundation, and the work was done at The Cinema Lab in Englewood, Colorado, from the reversal originals held here at George Eastman House.

Among the other films we’re sending to Cinefest:

LIFE’S HARMONY (1916), directed by Frank Borzage, is about an aging church organist who feels threatened by the new musician in town. In THE GIRL WITHOUT A SOUL (1917), Viola Dana plays twin sisters who try to thwart a conman who is after the church organ funds.

In LITTLE CHURCH AROUND THE CORNER (1923), [above] Hobart Bosworth and Claire Windsor are a mine-owner and his daughter who are trapped in the mine, and saved by minister Kenneth Harlan.

WHITE DESERT (1925) [above] is another Claire Windsor film, this time stranded due to an avalanche caused by blasting for a railroad tunnel.

THE VALIANT (1929) [above] stars Paul Muni in the title role, facing execution for a murder without damaging his family’s name.

A HOLY TERROR stars George O’Brien as a man searching for a murderer, and his father’s secret past, in Wyoming.

In the musical CHEER UP! (1937), [above] Stanley Lupino (Ida Lupino’s father) poses as a millionaire to get his stage show financed.

Most of the Motion Picture Department staff will be spending at least some time at Cinefest, mixing with industry professionals as well as film collectors and fans. We are really looking forward to this event— and to the next 30!  Look for a wrap-up blog from us after the fest…

At the Golden Globe Awards last week, Martin Scorsese was honored with the Cecil B DeMille Award by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The award is given for Lifetime Achievement in Film, and for Martin Scorsese that includes not only his Oscar-winning directing career, but also his dedication, support, and pursuit of film preservation. 

Scorsese's "Raging Bull," screening at the Dryden Theatre Jan. 27, is held in the collections along with home-movie footage taken during filming.

Mr. Scorsese has a long-standing relationship with George Eastman House. For almost twenty years now, he has been depositing his personal collections of 16mm and 35mm film in the state-of-the-art temperature- and humidity-controlled vaults on the East Avenue campus. The ever-growing collection now stands at over 3500 elements and represents the broad range of American film history over the last 90 years, as well as important international works from Italy, Japan, France, India and other countries. His collection has even been accessed for preservation purposes. BORN TO BE BAD (1950) with Joan Fontaine and Robert Ryan, a George Eastman House preservation project from 2005, and one of its most popular, started with an element from Scorsese’s collection. 

But Mr. Scorsese’s support of George Eastman House goes back even farther. In 1990 he spearheaded the formation of The Film Foundation, the leading entity dedicated to the advocacy and support of film preservation. Its founders include not only Scorsese, but legendary filmmakers Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Clint Eastwood, Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas, Sydney Pollack, Robert Redford, and Steven Spielberg. The Board of Directors was expanded in 2006 to accommodate filmmakers Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Curtis Hanson, Peter Jackson, Ang Lee and Alexander Payne. The Foundation provides generous financial assistance to the nation’s leading archives for preservation activities, and with its support George Eastman House has been able to preserve 133 film titles for future generations to appreciate and enjoy on the big screen. As of 2007, the films owned by The Film Foundation have also been deposited at George Eastman House. 

The legendary director that the award is named after, Cecil B. DeMille, a master showman, as Scorsese pointed out in his acceptance speech, also has a GEH connection. In 1968 the estate of the late director made a deposit of all DeMille’s personal collection of silent nitrate stock. This includes material on classics such as 1925’s THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, 1927’s THE KING OF KINGS, and 1929’s THE GODLESS GIRL, which was recently featured on the National Film Preservation Foundation’s DVD release “Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film.” This material is still held by GEH at the Louis B. Mayer Conservation Center in Chili, NY. 

One award. Three historic collections. All held at George Eastman House. 

To see Martin Scorsese’s tribute and acceptance speech: http://www.hulu.com/watch/121224/golden-globes-cecil-b-demille-award#x-4,vclip,4,0 

To learn more about The Film Foundation: http://www.film-foundation.org/common/11004/default.cfm?clientID=11004&homepage=1 

To learn more about Cecil B. DeMille: http://www.cecilbdemille.com/ 

To learn more about the National Film Preservation Foundation and its DVD releases: http://www.filmpreservation.org/ 

To learn more about the Dryden Theatre’s series of Scorsese/DeNiro screenings: http://dryden.eastmanhouse.org/program-highlights/eight-portraits-of-the-obsessive-the-films-of-robert-deniro-and-martin-scorsese/ 

To learn more about the Dryden Theatre’s series of Film Noir screenings, including Robert Ryan and Joan Fontaine double features:http://dryden.eastmanhouse.org/program-highlights/essential-film-noir-2010-edition/