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Jan-Sept 1999

Editorial: Copyright in the AV industry

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"The bloke" (Arthur Tauchert) and his "doreen" (Lottie Lyell) in a scene from The Sentimental Bloke (1919) - screened at the 1995 Melbourne International Film Festival.

The ScreenSound Australia has all but given up hope of finding Australia's most cherished silent film The Sentimental Bloke that crossed the Pacific in 1920. The nitrate negative sent to US distributors also vanished. Its whereabouts remained a mystery until screen archivist Ray Edmondson visited George Eastman House in Rochester and began sifting through old canisters.

He finally espied six cans subtitled Story of a Tough Guy, but Edmondson knew he was on the right track when he dusted down the main label. It read: The Sentimental Blonde. "There is no thrill like finding a long-lost film", he says. "It's one of life's great experiences". Edmondson who is deputy director of ScreenSound Australia (formerly NFSA) is bent on rebuilding the Bloke. The archive, dedicated to "preserving Australia's screen and recorded sound heritage", has had Raymond Longford's masterpiece in its collection since a single nitrate release print survived a film vault fire in Melbourne 50 years ago. A duplicate negative made from this print in the 1950's became the main preservation copy. The nitrate print has now disintegrated.

The negative Edmondson found in New York has also passed its use by date, but the Americans made a quality copy of their Bloke in the 1980s. As soon as it was repatriated to Canberra in 1997, Edmondson knew he possessed something special.

Closer scrutiny revealed that American film editors had rearranged some scenes and deleted others, probably to conform with censorship standards of the day or to meet audience expectations. They also had tampered with the inter titles, the caption cards spliced between scenes. Longford's movie borrowed the larrikin slang that colored Dennis' book, Songs of the Sentimental Bloke, but the American bowdlerized this verse.

Cultural historian Marilyn Dooley was appalled. "One of the things I love about the Bloke is its language", she says. "Using the original poems in the inter titles was a masterstroke".

". . . what it [the Bloke] says about Australian identity is truly signifi-cant . . . And that significance will endure as long as we give credence to our heritage."

To the keeper of Australia's national memory, the answer was obvious: scan each copy , select the best images, and combine them in a single workprint. But asking the staff to edit two versions of the same film to achieve one master copy is something else. In the past 12 months alone, film preservation officer Julie Hefferman has selected 448 separate scenes and compared every frame. "Some things we managed to put back," she says. " But if a scene was out of focus, we couldn't change it."

Printing the film has been another challenge. Longford's cameraman, Arthur Higgins, shot the Bloke at 16 to 18 frames a second, but today's projectors run at a faster speed. To slow the film down and prevent it from looking jerky, technician Steve Clark printed some frames twice - a painstaking job made harder by the knowledge he was handling a cultural icon. "The Bloke is far and away our best made and most enduring silent film", Marilyn Dooley says. This view is widely shared. The movie also touches the enduring Australian themes such as mateship, the larrikin, the city, and the bush. "What it says about Australian identity is truly significant," Dooley says. "And that significance will endure as long as we give credence to our heritage."

Sadly, most of Australia's silent films are lost forever. Out of 259 features made between 1906 and 1931, only 67 survive and many of these are incomplete or fragmentary.

Two crucial steps need to be taken, however, before the Bloke is ready for release in cinemas. First, the film needs a soundtrack. Second, it has to be colored. Longford's film was originally tinted and toned. Night scenes were in blue, interior scenes were amber. To reestablish these tones, expensive color printing has to be done.

The archive possesses a recording of the music which originally accompanied the Bloke, but Edmondson hopes a new score might be composed.

Making these sound and screen additions will cost about $250,000. Critics might balk at the price, given Longford's original budget was only 2000 pounds, but Dooley believes the Bloke is literally priceless. "It's a quirk of history that the film has survived at all", she says. Edmondson agrees. Recalling the long and rewinding road taken so far, he says. "Every Australian ought to see The Sentimental Bloke at its best. Actually, if you've never ever seen a silent film before, this will be the one to see".

ScreenSound Australia is seeking sponsors for its work on The Sentimental Bloke. Phone Ray Edmondson on (612) 6248-2040, fax no. (612) 6248-2165 and email address at Ray_Edmondson@screensound.gov.au.