A nearly complete copy of The Scarlet Drop, the 1918 silent western directed by John Ford and previously thought to be partially lost, has been discovered in Chile. Prior to the discover, only about thirty minutes of The Scarlet Drop’s fifty-minute runtime existed in the Getty Archives.
The Nationalist is reporting that –
The movie was rediscovered by the owner of a warehouse in Santiago, a day before it was set to be demolished. While reviewing the building’s contents, the owner discovered a trove of films that were once owned by a local collector, left untouched for 40 years after his death.
The warehouse owner got into contact with Jaime Cordova director of the Valparaiso Recovered Film Festival, who had the film digitized and screened at the festival this past September. Cordova admitted that there is still restoration work needed to be done on the film. “The film was very damaged, which indicates that it was a very popular film at the time. It was shown a lot.”
For a glimpse at what the film looked like, see the trailer for its screening at the Valparaiso Recovered Film Festival below.
The find is significant as it helps to shed further light on Ford’s development as a director and one of the architects of the western genre. Not much of his silent film work still exits. The Scarlet Drop was the director’s thirteenth film of the sixty silent shorts and features he made over a ten year period between 1917 and 1927. Of those sixty films, forty-eight are either partially or totally lost. The film is also one of twenty-six collaborations between Ford and Carey produced between 1917 and 1921. Of those films, twenty remain lost and two only exist as incomplete prints.
There are currently no announced plans for further screenings, additional restoration or a home video release.
