Missing silent film from 1900 found in Swiss national film archives

A missing silent film found at the Cinémathèque suisse Keystone-SDA

A silent film, long thought to have disappeared, has been identified in the collections of the Cinémathèque suisse, the Swiss national film archives. The short film from 1900 has been restored and attributed to the British director Robert W. Paul.

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The film, Diving for Treasure, features two heavily equipped divers trying to recover a treasure chest buried in a shipwreck. It was put online last April on the Cinémathèque’s restored film platform under the title Scaphandriers.

This copy is very probably the only one in existence, according to Patrick Friel, the specialist who identified the work. For this professor at Columbia College in Chicago, it is a “major discovery”. “Robert W. Paul is a founding figure in the history of cinema and one of the most important British producers and filmmakers,” he explained on Monday in a press release.

The identification has also been confirmed by Ian Christie, Professor Emeritus at Birkbeck College, London, and author of a reference blog devoted to early British cinema. In an article devoted to this discovery, he stresses the historical importance of the film, particularly for its visual experiments.

The underwater scenes are recreated thanks to an ingenious device using an aquarium placed in front of the camera, a feat that won the admiration of the Prince of Wales on its release, he recounts. The film was restored in 2005 from a period nitrate print thanks to the collaboration of various laboratories and Swiss specialists, according to the Cinémathèque.

Diving for Treasure has had its tints restored using the Desmet process, a technique used to recreate the colours of silent films from the early 20th century. Digitised in 2021, this restored version is now accompanied on the piano by Enrico Camponovo and available free of charge External linkon the Swiss institution’s restored film platform.

Adapted from French by AI/ts

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