Top 10 Lost Films

Top 10 Lost Films: A lost film is one for which there is no known print to exhibit. Most of these films come, roughly, from around the turn of the century into the fifties, when less flammable film stock was adopted by the motion picture industry. It is estimated that more silent pictures are lost than survive, and there are scores of talking pictures from the thirties that are missing, as well. There are many reasons that a film becomes lost. The early film stock was flammable, and film warehouse fires were not uncommon. Sometimes studios destroyed the films themselves, through neglect, silver recovery processes or simply throwing them away. Additionally, old film stock turned to goo, even when properly stored, and films have been lost to film degradation. This is especially true of silent pictures. There are exceptions: Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton have only one or two lost films each.