Films (And Why they Randomly Explode)

I didn't get to write a proper blogpost for Halloween, and this one is quite late to its own due date as well; however, I figured that this was as good of a time as any to continue a tradition of my writing I've had since high school, being writing about cinema at Halloween. Any other year, that might be a 'top 10 zombie flicks' or 'my favorite Kaijus' blog, but this year I feel especially autistic (and sleep deprived) so we're gonna take a look at something I find eerie for no reason in particular; the volatile, chemical nature of film reels themselves.

Onlookers watch as the National Archives' newsreel collection goes up in flames, 1978. Thankfully, there were no life-threatening injuries. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Up until the 1950s, films were primarily recorded and stored on Nitrate film. If you're not familiar with the word 'nitrate', it means that these films used the same chemicals as fireworks and gunpowder, and it showed, as Nitrate film was highly volatile and easy to ignite; temperature imbalance in buildings and electrical shorts, as well as the fact that Nitrate film physically degrades over time regardless of how well its stored.

Degrading Nitrate film reel. Gross. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Naturally, there were a handful of times that people would screw up in handling these tapes, especially in the era of silent film; the 20th Century Fox fire in 1937, for example, wiped out hundreds of films, literally erasing the careers of several actors from history and absolutely devastating most of the company's catalogue. The idea that Nitrate film could potentially self-combust had only recently been considered, even though Nitrate fires had been reported as far back as 1897. The Fox fire was especially destructive, as neighboring homes caught on fire as well, with the fire killing the son of a local resident, and the idea of self-ignition in nitrate film was finally known. While reforms to the film itself did not come about as a result, storage facilities for nitrate films at least began to be separated from residential areas.

One might think that the 1937 fire would inspire film executives to start transferring their old reels to 'safety' celluloid film, but the studios sat twiddling their thumbs for nearly 30 years until a fire at MGM's storage facility in Culver City, CA wiped out decades of silent films that MGM had produced. Thankfully, MGM took their loss less flippantly than Fox, working to preserve all the silent films that had not been lost in the fire, and soon the National Film Preservation Board was born to start saving the films that hadn't already been recovered.

The Library of Congress estimates that 70% of silent films have been permanently lost; thankfully, the development of celluloid film has lowered that number, but there's still something eerie about the idea of lost media. As we see physical film make a resurgence, including the recent incident surrounding a film reel for Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another" burning up on 2 separate occasions, one must think about these lost films and the cost of technological advancement.