A copy of The Heart Of Lincoln, a 1915 silent film directed by and starring Francis Ford and thought to have been lost, has been discovered.
The film was discovered by a summer intern, Dan Martin, last year in a group of film cans donated to the Historic Films Archive in Greenport. “For someone going to school for film preservation, this is about the most rewarding outcome you can have sifting through those old film cans,” Martin said in an interview with NBC New York.
The Heart Of Lincoln had been listed on the Library of Congress’s list of some 7,200 completely lost American silent films. Estimates of up to nearly 90% of the motion pictures produced before the advent of sound are considered lost, mostly due to neglect on the part of the studios who crafted them, feeling that they were commercially unviable.
All three reels that comprise the film’s thirty-minute run time were found intact and digitally scanned by Historic Films Archive owner Joe Lauro. Lauro is looking to further restore the film before finding a way to making it available to be seen by the public.
The Heart Of Lincoln is not necessarily considered a seminal work from the director/actor, though with its rediscovery, its status in the director’s filmography may change. Ford’s overall success during the 1910s had lured his younger brother John Ford to Hollywood in 1914, a year before the release of The Heart Of Lincoln. John Ford would go on to be one of the primary architects of the western genre through his frequently collaborations with actor John Wayne.
The discovery of a copy of John Ford’s previously lost film The Scarlet Drop was announced last December.
