Click to return to the first page (Click to return to previous page) The British Film Institute Receives a Gift

This happened really quickly. In January 1953, the BFI received a gift of a brand-new 35mm diacetate or triacetate duplicating positive of The General. I have been assured that there are no surviving records to indicate who made this donation. Since I cannot see the records, I am, yet again, reduced to making guesses. My guess: United Artists, probably the London office, made this duplicating positive most likely directly from the camera negative. It was most likely the export edition, but that is not certain.

Click here for a little write-up about a more modern duplicating positive stock.

Let us take a look at the BFI’s card catalogue. If you want to go to the catalogue yourself, first click here to unlock the library catalogue so that you can reach this page.

See? It’s a duplicating positive. The length of 7,127' seems about right. That would be the 7,084' of film that reaches the screen plus the Part Titles and maybe leaders and tails that would usually not reach the screen. The difference of 43' (about half a minute) could also be the result of this being the export edition rather than the US edition, shot on a different camera with a slightly different cranking speed. Note that the corresponding projection print is 16mm. There is no copy negative, and so we can safely conclude that the 16mm projection print was a reversal (no negative needed).

The BFI, immediately upon receipt of this gift, scheduled some screenings.

To judge from the above blurbs, this would seem like a one-week booking, beginning on Sunday, 18 January 1953, followed by one-week bookings of five further films. That is far from definitive, though. By the time this news reached the States, the event was long over:

Penelope Houston saw fit to review the film afresh, but, of course, her review did not see print in Sight and Sound until the following issue in April, by which time the film was no longer playing. It is curious to read her review, because she misperceived so much.

Mysterious British Appearances

By 1953, The General was no longer commercially available in the UK, and no 16mm distributors offered copies to film societies. That is why we are surprised when we find the following:

Presented at the Ormskirk Grammar School. If you have an image of the auditorium, please share. Thanks!

Screenings at the Chantry Cinema. If you have an image of the auditorium, please share. Thanks!

Frodingham Parish Hall, 5 Church Lane, Scunthorpe DN15 7AB. Capacity: 160. The Hall first opened to the public on Monday, 15 September 1952.

The Derby Museum today is different from the Derby Museum in 1956. If you have any photographs, especially of the screening room, please send them along. Thanks!

Concert Hall first opened to the public on Saturday, 19 March 1927. 750 seats This is where the Bournville Film Society held its screenings every third Tuesday at 7:15pm, tickets 10/-.

(New) Shakespeare Theatre, 14-3 Fraser Street, Liverpool. Capacity: over 3,500. Opened to the public on Monday, 27 August 1888, absolutely fireproof. Largely destroyed by fire on Sunday, 21 March 1976, condemned on Thursday, 1 April 1976, and demolition completed probably by mid-April 1976. Methinks that the original fireproof design was severely compromised by years of alterations. Image shamelessly stolen from ArthurLloyd.co.uk, Liverpool Theatres Index.

Balcony (image stolen from ArthurLloyd.co.uk).

Lounge (image stolen from ArthurLloyd.co.uk).

Auditorium (image stolen from Liverpool Through The Years on Facebook).

Had there been only a single film-society screening of The General during these years, I would have guessed that the print was borrowed from overseas. But there were six screenings — at least six screenings — by at least six different British film societies. More than that, really. I keep running across more. Too much to document right now. My only guess is that they borrowed the BFI archive’s 16mm print. As a matter of fact, there is some circumstantial evidence to suggest that was indeed the case. Scroll back up and look at the archive catalogue. Note that item C-66806 has two stock dates: 1953, which one would expect, and 1957, which one would not expect. Apparently a reel had been damaged and so a replacement was printed. I suppose that Ormskirk Grammar School ran it on a standard classroom projector with a 1000W incandescent light source. Ditto when the movie played at Grimsby and Scunthorpe. No damage occurred. Ditto at Derby. But at Bournville and Liverpool, the machines needed to be a bit more industrial. They surely had carbon-arc light sources, and there were probably two projectors at each location to facilitate change-overs. Bournville probably had a licensed projectionist in a proper booth, but the Shakespeare in Liverpool likely had an amateur running a pair of machines placed on a table in the lower balcony. It was either during its sojourn to Bournville or to Liverpool that a reel got damaged somehow. My guess is that it was Liverpool that ruined a part of the movie. Just afterwards, a lab used some 1957 stock to run off a new reel (or two reels, or whatever) from the 35mm duplicating positive.

Australian Appearances

The June 1955 Sydney Film Festival in Australia presented The Navigator, and I can only assume that was a leftover print from the local exchange. A year later, the Festival presented The Balloonatic, and, again, I suppose it, too, was a leftover print from the exchange. The Navigator returned for a film-society meeting in January 1961, and I suppose that was a 16mm print, but from who-knows-where and copied from who-knows-what. I bet it was from a copy negative purchased from MoMA. It returned for a club showing in March 1964 and was back again for a film-society screening in May 1964. So, in Australia, at least, there was some fond memory. I wonder if those particular prints of The Balloonatic and The Navigator still exist. (And can somebody please make me feel either better or worse by telling me how the bears were wrangled in The Balloonatic? Oh. Duh. Never mind. At the critical moment, the bear on the left is a prop and the bear on the right is a stuntman. Duh. Need to get my eyes examined.)

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