Somewhere in the labyrinth of our memories are films that we have seen and cannot forget but frustratingly may never see again because they have mysteriously vanished from the public domain. They may be hidden away in a film studio's vault, buried beneath the floorboards of a filmmaker's home, imprisoned by some ancient legality, refused release at a director's whim or simply not optioned by a distributor.
This book brings back to life 101 films that are entombed in a cinema cemetery and in so doing unearths a film noir masterpiece, a French classic, a Mastroianni feature comparable to Cinema Paradiso, a pioneering Independent film of the fifties, a Joan Crawford headliner, an amazing Nicholas Ray experimental feature, Italian comedies by Nichetti and lost gems by Widerberg, Hitchcock, Lang, Ford, Lubitsch, Litvak, Dmytryk, Kazan, Cacoyannis, Boetticher, Zinnemann, Ray, Huston and many more luminaries of the silver screen.
No film is guaranteed a general release whether screened at Sundance or Cannes and though critics may acclaim them, audiences applaud them, too many disappear into oblivion. This book pays homage to those lost films that deserve to be exhibited beyond the screen of our mind.
