Cleopatra (partially found drama film; 1917)

From The Lost Media Wiki
Revision as of 23:11, 8 May 2022 by Smartbomb (talk | contribs)
Jump to: navigation, search

Nsfw.png


This article has been tagged as NSFW due to its sexually explicit content.



ThedaBaraCleopatra-InfoboxPoster.jpg

A poster for the film.

Status: Partially Found

Cleopatra is a 1917 silent film starring Theda Bara. This is one of her many silent-era films to be lost (only four are still known to exist). Of this two-and-a-half hour long film, only 20 seconds have survived.[1][2]

Many believe the film to be among the most elaborate and expensive of its time.[3] Despite its success at the box office, the last known copies of the film were destroyed in fires. One was at the Fox studio vault fire in 1937, and the other fire was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1958.[4][5] The film has never been seen in its entirety since.[6][7]

No surviving footage other than the aforementioned twenty-second clip is known to exist. It has fallen into a category with 1922 Stroheim Director's Cut of Greed as a "holy grail" amongst movie collectors.

Phillip Dye started a failed Indiegogo project to reconstruct the film, but (as of September 2016) he has found over 400 film stills and counting. On February 8th, 2017, Dye screened Lost Cleopatra at a Hollywood museum.[8]

Surviving Footage

The surviving 20 seconds (footage starts ~0:42).

Reference

  1. Solomon, Aubrey (2011). The Fox Film Corporation, 1915-1935: A History and Filmography. McFarland. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-786-48610-6.
  2. http://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/C/Cleopatra1917.html
  3. Silent Era article. Retrieved 15 Mar '16.
  4. Solomon, Aubrey (2011). The Fox Film Corporation, 1915-1935: A History and Filmography. McFarland. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-786-48610-6.
  5. Klepper, Robert K. (1996). Silent Films On Video: A Filmography Of Over 700 Silent Features Available On Videocassette, With a Directory Of Sources. McFarland & Co. p. 8. ISBN 0-786-40157-5.
  6. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.mbrs.sfdb.4321/default.html
  7. https://web.archive.org/web/20141225003106/http://www.thegreatstars.com/lost_film_wanted.htm
  8. https://web.archive.org/web/20170501083710/http://laist.com/2017/02/06/20_of_the_coolest_events_happening_2.php

External Links