This Wednesday "Upstream" (1927), a silent comedy thought long lost by American director John Ford, is screened at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater on Wilshire Blvd. The film was one of many important silent films put into cold storage by the New Zealand Film Archive. Because New Zealand marked the last stop in the global circuit for most films, many American films stayed there due to the expense of shipping and are only now being rediscovered thanks to ambitious conservation efforts.
Stills from "Upstream"
Samuel Goldwyn Theater
“Upstream” (1927) is one of 75 American films recently discovered in the New Zealand Film Archive. These “lost” films will be preserved over the next several years at five major American archives, including the Academy’s, in collaboration with the National Film Preservation Foundation. “Upstream” is the first of the features to be preserved and screened for the public. The preservation work was carried out by Park Road Post Production in Wellington, New Zealand, under the direction of Twentieth Century Fox and the Academy Film Archive.
“Upstream” focuses on a love triangle involving an egotistical actor and a young couple who partner in a vaudeville knife-throwing act. The film is from an interesting chapter in the career of Ford, as he admitted that during this time he was strongly influenced by the work of German director F.W. Murnau, who had immigrated to the United States to make films for the Fox studios, enabling Ford to study his working methods first hand.
