LEONARD MALTIN IN FOCUS – Cinema's Crown Jewels – 1996

On my recent trip to Dayton, Ohio to see Cinerama, I made a sidetrip that was almost as exciting.  I got to see, even handle, some of America's crown jewels. They weren't on display in a museum, or under glass in a public building. 

Some nitrate prints of short subjects housed in Dayton.

They are kept inside a chilly bunker in the midst of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, because they're highly flammable—and could even explode.

If you haven't already guessed, I am describing the nitrate negatives for thousands of American films–short subjects, feature films, trailers, cartoons, outtakes, even home movies–all part of the Library of Congress nitrate collection.

Here you'll find the precious original negatives for decades of Warner Bros., Columbia, and RKO films, the Mary Pickford collection, the Paramount silent films, and scores of other isolated titles and libraries–at least 150,000 reels in all, with another 20,000 due to arrive before the end of the year.

Nitrate specialist George Willeman was kind enough to give me a personal tour.  We read so much about "vaults" that it's a bit daunting to actually step into one and realize how mundane it is.  It's little more than a heavy–duty closet, but in that closet is held some extraordinary material.  George pulled out a reel of film, looking much like any other, then explained to me that it was the original camera negative for The Great Train Robbery, from 1903! 

The nitrate cellulose stock on which all 35mm movies were shot and printed, until the early 1950s, was and remains highly volatile material.  It doesn't take much to catch on fire—a spark from a torn frame passing through a projector can set it off, for instance.  (Did you see the projection booth fire in Cinema Paradiso?  That was no exaggeration.)  And, in certain circumstances, nitrate can spontaneously combust.

That's why these vaults are specially constructed of very thick concrete walls, with a chimney, so smoke and flames can be directed away from the films–and any people who might be around.  The chimneys, too, are made of very heavy reinforced concrete.  The back of each vault has a lightweight blow-out panel that keeps the vault secure, but would blow out backwards under any pressure, and allow flames to go up and out the chimney.

Each vault is self-contained.  The air system has dampers in case of a fire that will close off all the air ducts in to the vault—to prevent more oxygen from fueling the flames, and to keep that fire from spreading into the ventilation system.

Everything about the facility is designed to contain the fire in a single section.  Water can't extinguish a nitrate fire, believe it or not, but sprinklers are designed to go on to deluge the cans with cold water, so their temperature won't rise to cumbustion level.   The sprinklers would also, hopefully, give any people on the premises time to get out.

"Safety is our number-one priority," Willeman told me, "next to actual film preservation…safety of the collection and of the people.  We monitor our temperature and humidity every day, and so does the base."

The confounding thing about nitrate film is that there's no real way to predict its life span.  George told me, "We have nitrate film back to 1894 that shows no sign of deterioration; it doesn't even smell bad.

This is what you DON'T want to find when you open a can of nitrate negative. Not a pretty picture.

  On the other hand, we have the negative for The Thing (from Another World), from 1951, which is rotting away.  It's really strange.  Sometimes within a film one reel will go completely bad, or even within a reel, if you have two mixed film stocks."

This may beg the question, Why bother to save such dangerous material if a safety copy has already been made?

The answer:  because there is only one original negative, and as long as it exists, new prints can be made that will look every bit as good as the first.  A safety-film copy is important to have as well, but as long as we can hold onto that original, why shouldn't we?   As long as the nitrate original exists, there is a master source for new copies in whatever new medium—or high-tech printing system–may be invented.

No such master exists for Citizen Kane.  Its original nitrate negative burned years ago; that's why all contemporary prints of the movie are slightly inferior to those that circulated as little as twenty-five years ago.  It seems unthinkable, but it's true.  That's why the Library's facility in Dayton is like a cultural treasure trove.

America's library didn't set out to collect films, at first.  They acquired them in the earliest years of this century as proof of copyright–often not on film at all, but in paper prints made in film-sized strips off the original negative.  That process was discontinued in the teens.  Then, in 1942, the Library realized it had been lax in requesting prints of films and began accumulating them once more, as part of a copyright deposit collection.

Around the time of  the formation of the American Film Institute in the late 1960s (also Washington-based at that time) a more concerted effort was initiated to acquire films from the Hollywood studios.  Thus, in a fairly short span of time, the Library's collection (including AFI acquistions) mushroomed, and with it the need to properly store the volatile nitrate prints and negatives. 

Originally, the Library collection was housed at the Suitland Federal Center in Suitland, Maryland [see footnote]; that's where the National Archives keeps its collection of government-made films and millions of feet of newsreels.  But the Library quickly outgrew this home, and when it learned of an abandoned facility at Wright-Patterson, for many years the home of the Army Air Corps Motion Picture Lab, it made a deal with the Air Force and moved in.

Today, the Library has consolidated its laboratory and storage services under this one expansive roof, with about twenty people on staff, most of them devoted to inspecting, repairing, restoring, and reprinting vintage films.  The lab gives true meaning to the words state of the art, with all sorts of specialized equipment to enable these dedicated technicians to make the best new prints and negatives they can.

Archivists like James Cozart may spend months or years on a single project, like the Library's recent restoration on All Quiet on the Western Front.  Says George Willeman, "It's as if you've never seen this movie before; no scratches, no hissy soundtrack; the explosions in the battle scenes are really big and full." This version, unlike all previous restorations, includes a famous Last Supper sequence on the battlefield, shot for the silent version of this early-talkie, and scored with music.  "It's a beautiful scene where all these characters are in the trenches; they have a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine and they pass it around."

Which films to preserve, given the limited funding nowadays, is often a matter of consensus among the Washington and Dayton staff members, and sometimes is hastened by a particular researcher's request for a film.  "More than once," George told me, "those little nudges have gotten interesting things preserved."

There is also a constant process of discovery.  "A lot of stuff ended up on the shelves unidentified," Willeman told me.  "One of my big tasks is going through these shelves and figuring out what's there.  That goes on all the time; we find little snippets of things tucked away here and there."  The Library even has Marion Davies' home movies, which in the 1950s she even had filmed in a widescreen process!

It's difficult for a visitor to spend too much time in the vaults, because they're deliberately kept cold.  For a staff member it's even tougher.  "I have terrible sinus problems," George admitted, "and this makes them worse.  I always sound like I have a cold; whenever I go away on vacation it always clears up. 

"If we have reels that are really powdery or bad I do have a respirator.  Almost worse than the powder is the smell of deteriorating nitrate, which smells like dirty socks, an incredibly disgusting smell."

But George calls it "a small price to pay," because like everyone else on the staff at Dayton, he feels as if he has a special privilege and responsibility.  "When I was in college, like everyone else in film school, I dreamed of going to Hollywood and making films.  When I got this job, originally part time, I thought it was kind of neat, and as things went along, I realized, Hollywood can wait.  This does seem to be a calling; this is where I'm supposed to be."

[I asked George if this article needed any updating, and he replied, "you might add that Suitland was finally closed in September of 2002 and torn down. We had to absorb 9800 cans of the Fox Movietone News library and nitrate stills from Prints & Photographs! So we're feeling a little full...

"Also, I received a promotion, of sorts. I am now the "Nitrate Vault Leader". Basically, I am in charge of the day to day workings of the vaults and its staff."]