on the archive paradox

The Langlois/Lindgren & Card/Barry Debates

Time isn’t time— It is space.

Henri Langlois

What to save?

This is the daunting question which faces all who work in any of the fields dealing in cultural preservation.

This ideal of cultural preservation is likely shared by most who work in the field: to save everything and provide access to everyone.

But this is an ideal which will never become a reality. Realistically, curators have to choose to prioritize certain materials over others and have to face the perplexing dilemma of whether to prioritize access or preservation.

This issue was the predominant intellectual clash in the world of film preservation and found its most important figures in the likes of Ernest Lindgren and Henri Langlois. We will consider the curatorial philosophies of these two figures as two opposite ends on a single spectrum, while considering other important figures such as Iris Berry and James Card. From this debate, we can draw some important terminology and apply the reasoning of Lindgren and Langlois in the realm of electronic game preservation in order to have a productive perspective on the future of archival preservation of audiovisual media.

Langloisian Cinephiliac Hoarding

Langlois was a voracious cinephile who began his ventures into preservation as a collector. Langlois' priority always lay with access. He amassed a gigantic collection of films, co-founded the Cinémathèque Française and became known for his prolific film screenings. His importance to the history of French cinema cannot be underestimated. As he was not only responsible for the survival of numerous classic films, but his screenings also inspired a group dubbed the "les enfants de la cinémathèque"-- a group of filmmakers who eventually became responsible for the French new wave. Langlois' approach, to focus on actively and consistently on film exhibition paid off in a cultural sense. He heralded in a new era of French film while also drawing attention to the need for film preservation. There is no doubt that his prominent public persona and promiscuous charm helped bolster the field. But Langlois' background as a collector had mixed results for his preservation efforts. He apparently did little cataloging and would actively trade films and project unique prints at the cost of damaging them.

still from “Lindgren & Langlois: The Archive Paradox”

This is what Lindgren criticized as a "stamp collector's mentality". As such archives "were swapping among themselves inferior copies of classic films rather than making an effort to get the best copies available". The split between the Lindgren and Langlois mentalities is articulated well by David Francis,

"Langlois believed passionately that an archive's role was to put film on the screen. Lindgren believed with equal conviction that the role of an archive was to ensure that the films in its collection were preserved for posterity. It was unfortunately easier to make fun of Ernest by saying that the initials N.F.A. stood for "no film available" or that "his posterity would never come", than to criticize Langlois for showing films his constituency wanted to see even though he was destroying them in the process." (Francis 71)

The rivalry between the approaches of these two men came to a head when they both became founding members of FIAF. At the beginning of its existence, FIAF's main purpose was to "legitimize film archives" and "protect its members" by being an international organization recognizing that film collection and preservation was not piracy and was worthy of federal funding. But Lindgren saw the organization of FIAF as an opportunity to also develop a body of standards by which the field could abide.

Lindgrenian Bureaucratic Gatekeeping

Ernest Lindgren was not a film collector like Henri Langlois. "He would not permit unique archival prints to be projected, and was more concerned with the long-term survival of the collection than its short-term accessibility." (ibid. 21) This is the heart of the Lindgrenian philosophy: retaining a preservation master. This concept grew out of Lindgren's desire to use FIAF as a platform to develop field-wide standards in order to,

"make film archives' work as valid as that of national galleries and museums. This is why [Lindgren] was so concerned with procedures, and stuck grimly to the idea that a print could never be projected until a preservation master of the title had been made. Existing museums had similar rules for safeguarding their collections, and if film archives were to receive the same respect, they would have to follow their lead." (ibid. 71)

The development of the concept of a preservation master in the world of film archives has been essential to maintaining the pristine condition of numerous classic films.

dudes were just on that British grindset that the French will never understand

The main counterpoint to Lindgren's method was his selective practices and tendency to destroy deteriorating copies. It must be clarified that Lindgren did express an interest in the broadest possible goals of preservation, as he explicitly stated the goal of the institution was as follows: "the Film Institute, within the limits of what is technically and financially possible, would preserve for record a copy of every film printed in England which had possible documentary value" (25). Although this was the stated goal, Lindgren realized that he would never be able to preserve everything he acquired. So his institution developed a selection committee which would actually select the films it deemed were worthy of preservation, even if they were not able to obtain a copy of it. This committee bears similarities to the Library of Congress' National Film Registry, but operated as a form of gatekeeping for the archive itself.

Although Lindgren was committed to the robust ideal of the "preservation master", he did not see this as synonymous with the original copy that came into his possession. This was one of the main critiques Langlois and Card had of him, who were upset by the practice of cutting out "holes" in nitrate originals in order to test the film base for deterioration. After a copy had been made on safety stock which he was assured would not deteriorate, Lindgren had no problem destroying the original nitrate copies. Original nitrate films, due to the practices of the film industry, are rarely not deteriorating and are highly flammable, which Lindgren saw as the greater risk to preservation, "any form of criticism from Langlois was not taken very seriously by Ernest, because he felt Langlois did far more damage by projecting unique nitrate prints or destroying them in fires, a rather common occurrence at the Cinematheque" (30).

not only is preservation necessary for posterity, it ensures things like these don’t become haunted

The apotheosis of the Lindgren and Langlois divide in approaches can be seen in Langlois' Musée de la Cinémathèque. This was a remarkable museum full of unique artifacts from film history: from the sets of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to the dresses of Marilyn Monroe. The museum was aesthetically and intellectually remarkable but was haphazardly maintained. The neighboring building caught fire and the Cinémathèque's wanted to move the museum's materials to a safer location. But the museum was legally considered "unquestionably the creative work of one man and therefore protected under the law". Thereby the preservation of these materials was threatened by Langlois' refusal to follow standard museum practices.

In terms of the interactions of these two men, they did indeed have great intellectual clashes. They helped co-found FIAF together, but eventually had a tremendous, bitter falling out. They did not regularly directly communicate but each seemed to think of the other as their genuine intellectual foil. This is captured in a brilliant, short script called “Lindgren & Langlois: The Archive Paradox” that is based on real and/or paraphrased comments they made on one another and reimagines these comments as direct correspondence between the two men as ghosts. The pdf is available here. Well worth a read.

Card Contra Barry & A Tremendous Compromise

If Langlois and Lindgren represent one dichotomy, allow me to set up another: that of James Card and Iris Barry. Both of these figures worked as curators in America, Card at the George Eastman Museum and Barry at the MoMA. If we were to place these two figures on the Langlois-Lindgren spectrum, Card would find himself placed further towards the Langlois side and Barry would would be nearer Lindgren. My rationale for this is primarily due to their selection processes. Barry and Lindgren were selective, deliberate, and even elitist; Card and Langlois were far more populist and omnivorous. But if we were entertain another axis other than curation, that of preservation priorities, we would find Card offers us a middle path through the Langlois-Lindgren divide.

While Lindgren seems to have adopted his selection strategy with some reluctance, Barry was far more willing to relish in a truly limited conception of what deserves to be selected for preservation. We might see this divide as rooted in Lindgren's background in english literature and Barry's background as a film critic. For Barry, refined taste was a priority, but if a film were included within her refined tastes, its chances for long-term preservation were more or less sealed. James Card remarks in in Seductive Cinema that "any film chosen by Iris Barry for the Museum of Modern Art Film library had the best possible chance of survival. Her rejection of any film for preservation was tantamount to condemning it to death" (Card 103). Card claims that Barry saw MoMA as a "colonial outpost of the British Film Archive" (a statement which also reflects his disdain for a Lindgrenian approach), meaning that it only saved films "considered worthy by [the] curator" (ibid. 102). The drawbacks of such an approach are obvious, as totally non-artistic works can, of course be of deep historical importance. It made it convenient for MoMA to focus on preservation, however, in a way that a more compulsive film collector such as Langlois never could.

classy yet toxic, the MoMA way…

Card notes that Dick Griffith, assistant to Iris Barry, referred to the Eastman Museum disparagingly as an "archive of trivia."

"He complained that Jim Card and his counterpart in Paris, Henri Langlois, were not really film historians, but merely film buffs. Perhaps he was right, but hundreds of great films that exist today would not be available but for our buffdom. And when the Museum of Modern Art began borrowing and exhibiting our "trivia" in 1952, we knew they finally recognized our catholic approach had been quite right" (121).

A key example Card cites is that of the films of Cecil B. DeMille, one of film history's most famous directors, but who nonetheless had a disparaged reputation among film critics such as Iris Barry, resulting in only one of his film's being included at MoMA (214). Many of the early DeMille films only exist today due to James Card's inferior tastes in film.

All this does not mean his archive simply became a public depository. His journey as a film collector is rendered in his book Seductive Cinema, in which he describes his pursuit of films. He is best understood as an obsessive film collector who sought out very specific films, such as 1924's Peter Pan; when he found the print of Peter Pan stored in a forgotten repository in the back of the Eastman theater, he accepted all of the films from that haul into his collection. This is indicative of his approach: prioritizing certain films based on personal taste, while collecting everything he could on the way there. He even admits to collecting certain films "not because it was a great film, but because I was infatuated with its lead actress". In this way, he was a bit less omnivorous than Langlois but just as wide-ranging in his collections.

James Card, like all cinephiles, was also a bit perverse

But one of the key distinctions between all these figures comes in their approach to duplication. Card saw duplication as a priority, to the same extent that Lingren did, while also insisting that one should not destroy the originals. Much of the collection of the George Eastman Museum was actually stored at MoMA on a temporary loan as the Eastman House was being established as a museum. Card described the issues with MoMA's approach as follows: "Back they finally came, after much diplomatic importuning. Good thing too; the museum had not copied a single one of them. We immediately began making dupe negatives" (ibid. 120).

So…

(1) Barry had the foresight to keep the nitrate originals but failed to duplicate films,

(2) Lindgren had the foresight to duplicate films but failed to keep the originals,

(3) Langlois did neither.

(4) James card kept the originals and duplicated them.

It seems of these four axiomatic founding figures, that only James Card recognized the importance of duplications and originals.

It should also be noted that Card's middle path can be seen in his approach to exhibition. It became the policy of the Eastman Museum to not consider a film "preserved" until it had been duplicated onto safety stock and then projected to an audience. While Lindgren's approach meant retaining copies which were never intended to be projected whatsoever, Card saw the audience as part of the film itself, much like our previous discussion of the need for a game to be played in order for it to be preserved.

Ultimately, such a compromise on the Langlois-Lindgren issue became the norm for the field of film preservation, as articulated in the 1998 FIAF Code of Ethics,  

"Film archives recognize that their primary commitment is to preserve the materials in their care and— provided always that such activity will not compromise this commitment— to make them permanently available for research study and public screening" (Francis 41).

I retain from Lindgren the importance of having a defined, standardized practice of maintaining a master copy of an object, while I also make use of Langlois' emphasis on access as a form of preservation, which is all the more pertinent for ludic objects. However, in the spirit of cultural preservation, I must defend Lindgren’s approach as more vital than Langlois'.

Though I'd personally rather work for a madman than a bureaucrat.

sources

1. Francis, David. “From Parchment to Pictures to Pixels - Ernest Lindgren and the National Film Archive, 70 Years On”. Journal of Film Preservation #71.

2. Card, James. Seductive Cinema.