A lost John Ford film has reportedly been found in a Chilean warehouse

The 1918 Western The Scarlet Drop has reportedly been lost for more than 100 years.

By Mary Kate Carr | November 25, 2024 | 4:57pm

Screenshot: Turner Classic Movies/YouTube

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A lost John Ford film has reportedly been found in a Chilean warehouse

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Hey, at least there’s still good news to be had in the world of cinema: a John Ford film, reportedly “lost” for more than 100 years, has reportedly been discovered in a Chilean warehouse, according to the Spanish language outlet Cinetransit. Only 32 minutes of the film had been preserved within the Getty Images Archives, but apparently some anonymous film buff had a copy in his collection that has been languishing in this warehouse in Santiago for 40+ years since the collector died. But when the warehouse was scheduled for demolition, someone called Jaime Córdova of the University of Viña del Mar to assess the materials inside—and lo and behold, that included the 1918 film The Scarlet Drop.

The Scarlet Drop is one of more than a dozen Westerns Ford made with star Harry Carey. Cordova told the Chilean outlet that the film was quite damaged when it was found, possibly due to being shown so many times during its heyday but also from the regular wear and tear of age. A 4K scan of the newly discovered film was shown at Cine Recobrado de Valparaíso, or the Recovered Film Festival, in September.

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Ford’s film is hardly the only one lost to time. In fact, many silent films have been lost, including an estimated 90 percent of films from before 1929. That era featured a prolific amount of work from Ford—before he became an Academy Award winner (in fact, mostly before there were even Academy Awards). Though a lot of movies from that era may be gone forever, discoveries like that of The Scarlet Drop are not unheard of. A trove of 75 early American films—including Ford’s Upstream—was discovered at the New Zealand Film Archive, where the collection’s significance went unnoticed until 2010, according to The Guardian. So make sure you’re checking in on your local warehouses and rich old guys’ basements—you never know what you may find!