Film Restored by Film Commission to be Screened at National Gallery of Art

A film shot in Fort Lee in 1912 and restored by the Fort Lee Film Commission, Eclair Studio's Robin Hood, will be screened at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 14. member Richard Koszarski will introduce the film and discuss Fort Lee's role with regard to the legacy of French filmmakers—and Eclair Studios—at the screening, the film commission announced.

The screening in D.C. kicks off a year in which Fort Lee will celebrate the centennial of a number of important film studios established in Fort Lee in 1912, and the film commission hopes to screen the restored version of Robin Hood locally sometime in the fall, according to Fort Lee Film Commission executive director Tom Meyers.

Meyers explained that the film commission established a relationship with a collector from Wisconsin, Al Detlaff, in the early 2000s, shortly after the film commission was established.

Detlaff had in his possession the only existing print of Edison’s Frankenstein (1910), and after about six months of negotiations, the film commission got him to bring it to Fort Lee and screen it at the Galaxy in Guttenberg, which at the time was operated by film commission member Nelson Page, and on the big screen at the Jersey Loews—an event Meyers described as “very successful” and said was extremely well attended and garnered a lot of press coverage.

Pleased with the success of the Frankenstein screenings, Detlaff  “kept telling us that he had this film, Robin Hood, that he would send to us,” according to Meyers.

“He started sending us snippets of 35mm nitrate film of Robin Hood that was shot in Fort Lee in 1912,” Meyers said. “So I called him up and said, ‘Al, just ship us the whole thing.’”

What Detlaff sent—and through the U.S. mail, no less—was a 16mm “safety print” and 35mm highly flammable nitrate film, “which at any point between [Wisconsin and Fort Lee] could have taken out multiple post offices,” Meyers said.

“This type of film was the cause of studio explosions in Fort Lee,” he added.

The film also came with a condition: that the Fort Lee Film Commission not use Eastman Kodak for the restoration, which is what they normally do.

“It costs a lot of money to restore films, and that’s not what we technically do,” Meyers said. “We don’t have a lot of discretionary money from our fundraising to restore films. We normally go to an archive house and get some credit for the restoration but let them do it. He apparently had a bad experience with one of the archive houses years ago, so the only way we would get it was if we restored it ourselves.”

The potentially dangerous nitrate film had to be destroyed; members of the film commission were told to submerge it in water before taking it to Bonded Film Storage on Main Street, where it was stored until it could be.

“What we were left with was the 16mm film and several frames from the 35mm nitrate,” Meyers said. “We took it to Sirk Productions.”

The digital film company is run by Fort Lee native Marc Perez, who started it in his hometown with some friends from Leonia and later moved to Manhattan.

“So we worked with Marc and his company, and basically we scanned the entire film, put it on the computer,” Meyers explained. “We basically took what was a puzzle, because this film was out of sequence, the title cards weren’t where they should be, we had elements of a 35mm negative that we wanted to incorporate, and we wanted to tint it properly. So we did all that. It took us close to a year, and then we ran off a 35mm print with Metropolis Labs in New York City.”

The restored film premiered at the Pordenone Film Festival in Italy—the “largest silent film festival in the world,” according to Meyers. In 2006, it was also screened at a silent film festival in Los Angeles about Fort Lee films before an audience that included Leonard Maltin.

“Since then, it’s made the rounds of several film festivals, including one in St. Louis, and now it’s down at the National Gallery,” Meyers said. “It’s a really good film. It’s indicative of what Éclair was doing in Fort Lee, and I like what they’re doing at the National Gallery. Pretty much there was a French invasion of Fort Lee, where there were a lot of French filmmakers, and that’s one of the reasons why Alice Guy Blache came to Fort Lee was because of Éclair. The year she came to Fort Lee was the year they shot Robin Hood.”

Meyers credited Detlaff, who died a few years ago, with helping the film commission “bring it back to life.”

“It was certainly worth the work we did,” Meyers said. “The restoration was paid for through our fundraising account, and it’s something we have and keep it stored in Fort Lee at Bonded, and we make it available to people who want to screen it so it’s certainly good for us.”

‘Universal Studio Way’

At Thursday’s executive session of the Fort Lee Mayor and Council, the governing body will take up the issue of commemoratively renaming the intersection of Main Street and Jones Road “Universal Studio Way” at Meyers’ behest and with the support of Fort Lee Councilman and liaison to the film commission Jan Goldberg.

“We have two commemorative street signs in Fort Lee,” Meyers said. “The first one we did was Theda Bara Way, which is on Linwood and Main and was dedicated to the first Fox star, and the studio was right across the street. We did John Barrymore Way a couple of years ago on the corner of Main and Central Road, where Barrymore made his stage debut, and we do our fundraiser there every year.”

Meyers said the film commission has “been getting a lot of cooperation” from Universal Studios in California, which has enable them to plan—and save a lot of money on—a number of projects throughout 2012, the 100th anniversary of the founding of Universal in Fort Lee.

Meyers said the film commission is working with Universal, which has agreed to waive license fees to screen films this summer—the film commission will select 10 Universal films to screen for its annual “Movies Under the Stars” series. Meyers said the company has also waived the fee to screen To Kill a Mockingbird, which the film commission will screen on April 13.

The 50th anniversary screening will take place in the Fort Lee Municipal Courtroom at 7 p.m. and will be followed on the evenings of April 14 and 15 with a live staging of To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) by the Hudson Shakespeare Company.

Also planned for 2012 is an exhibit at the Fort Lee Museum called “Universal Studios - From Fort Lee to Universal City, a Centennial of Motion Picture Magic,” which opens July 6 and runs through the end of the year.

Meyers said he’ll be keeping in touch with his contacts at Universal Studios throughout the year, sending them pictures and keeping the company abreast of the centennial events in Fort Lee.

“Right now, we’re hoping they include their own Fort Lee history in their own history out in California,” Meyers said. “Because there’s a period from 1912, when they’re incorporated, to 1915, when they go out to Universal City, that their studio activity was in Fort Lee, New Jersey. So we’re working to make them more aware of that through supplying photos and archival materials that we have at no charge. And in return, they’re being very kind to us and waiving a lot of fees that amount to several thousand dollars.”

Meyers said it’s the “first real relationship” the Fort Lee Film Commission has had with the studio “that was born in Fort Lee.”

He added, “We’re hoping that this will lead to bigger things in the future.”