How to build an archive: inside the early years of the BFI’s National Film Library

There was a time when the idea of a film archive, a museum for movies, was alarmingly new. Until the mid-1930s there was no such thing, but from the British Film Institute’s founding in 1933, a National Film Library was part of the plan. The BFI envisaged an archive that would “preserve for record a copy of every film printed in England which had a possible documentary value; it would make available for study films of interest to students; it would distribute films not available through the ordinary agencies; and it would maintain an up-to-date catalogue of films of cultural and educational interest.”

By its Winter 1934 issue, Sight and Sound was becoming concerned: “Today there is still no library, and the need is daily growing more urgent.” After the National Film Library was established in 1935, Ernest Lindgren, its first curator, who remained in post until 1973, began to write bulletins on his work for Sight and Sound. They tell the story, in real time, of how to build a film archive from scratch.

To begin with, a copy of The Great Train Robbery (Edwin S. Porter, 1903) – “believed to be the only one in existence” – had been entrusted to the BFI for preservation, but otherwise the shelves were bare. So, the first task was to collect some films.“ Today, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [1920] is unobtainable in this country,” wrote Lindgren. “The same is true of Fritz Lang’s Destiny [1921]; of The Covered Wagon, one of the few films of epic quality which America has given us, produced in 1923; of Flesh and the Devil [1926]; of any of the full-length Chaplin films; of the French film Michel Strogoff [1926]; of Metropolis [1927], Vaudeville [sic, possibly E.A. Dupont’s Variety, 1925], The Last Laugh [1924], or, indeed, of many others which one could easily name at random. It is inevitable that films will disappear if their preservation is left only to the vagaries of chance.” An appeal was launched, signed by the Duke of Sutherland, entreating the film world to send their prints to the library.

The response was impressive, and by the end of the year, the library catalogue listed 50 titles, “covering such subjects as geography, travel, mathematics, agriculture and such industrial subjects as canning, brewing, tyres, oil, cars, fountain pens, tin and tar”. A year later, the total exceeded 700, with donations of a precious Chaplin film (The Champion, 1915), and a Hitchcock (Blackmail, 1929), as well as gifts from filmmaker Adrian Brunel and the psychic researcher Harry Price, chair of the NFL committee, plus a raft of newsreels of notable (mostly royal) occasions and political films from the Conservative party. Most gratifyingly, in the winter of 1936 Lindgren reported that films were being regularly borrowed from the library, “and the prints of early films illustrating the history of the cinema have been in especial demand”, as film societies across the country sated their curiosity about silent movies.

In autumn 1938, the library was delighted to accept more than 200 films from Stoll Pictures, which was leaving its Cricklewood premises, both of the studio’s own output and many international films. These included gems such as “The Glorious Adventure [1922], the famous colour film in which Diana Manners appeared; Guns of Loos [1928], Madeleine Carroll’s first film; Hearts of the World [1918], D.W. Griffith’s film featuring Lillian and Dorothy Gish, and many others… But for the Library’s existence, it is almost certain that these films, like many others in the past, would have been irreparably lost.”

The outbreak of World War II posed a very real threat to the increasingly precious collection. Lindgren assured readers in the winter of 1939, “The 2,000,000-odd feet of film which have been collected by the National Film Library for permanent preservation were removed on the outbreak of hostilities to a rustic sanctuary ‘somewhere in Sussex’.” A more permanent location was found in Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire, where the collection would be transferred in 1940, to live in a temperature-controlled environment, and “each film will be kept in an ordinary commercial film tin, but will be wrapped in stout waxed paper to avoid possible contamination from rust”.

During the war, the archive grew (“The National Film Library has what is believed to be the world’s best collection of early Chaplin films, for it now possesses 29 out of a possible 34 examples”), and the Ministry of Information and British Council both began to deposit their reels there. Lindgren noted in his dispatches the rationale for the feature films that he selected for preservation. So, Hitchcock’s Jamaica Inn (1939) was preserved “as an outstandingly successful Charles Laughton film” while Pastor Hall (Roy Boulting, 1940) was saved as an example of propaganda and Confessions of a Nazi Spy (Anatole Litvak, 1939) for inaugurating “a new trend in American political films”.

Business boomed in wartime, with loans increasing fast; by 1941 more than half of the bookings for screenings came from Army units. In 1942, Lindgren proudly wrote that “the National Film Library is now for the first time in a position to obtain films on request from all the principal producers and distributors.” The library had succeeded in its mission to save, and to show, films of international importance. And to prove the value of its existence.

This article was produced with the support of the BFI Screen Heritage Fund, awarding National Lottery funding.