Old Story: Tricks of the trade

So over the weekend I was at a BBQ and was reminded of an old story I'll retell here.

YEars ago I started my professional career (or sorts) at a well known Archives. I had been identifying some old Hammer or maybe it Ealing film from the early 50's that Republic had acquired and then donated to the Archives years later. The film itself was original B&W negative, but Republic had decided to recut new titles into the film for some odd reason. Anyway, as I'm winding threw the film in question the new titles are easily identifiable as safety based film from 1954. But the actual original negative film only has "Kodak - France" printed on it. No year, no identifiable "Nitrate" or "Safety" on it at all. Even after checking each cut I hoped they might have changed stock. No such luck.

So based on what skills I had, I know that you have to be careful with films from the early 1950s as this was a transitional period. Even if you can trace the film title to a film that was finished in let's say 1955, you have to check ever part of the film because the production might have used older stock which could be nitrate based. The film stock feels thicker and more durable, which can possibly be nitrate as the early diacitate safety stocks tend to be thinner and more pliable.

That having been said, this isn't a sure fired way to identify nitrate. There's really only one way to really identify nitrate if you don't have etch coding, that is you need to break out a nitrate test kit and well, burn some if it. In order to test it of course you need to destroy a small piece of the it and this being original negative, well I'm just an assistant archivist and really shouldn't be tearing apart original negative. Plus, the head and tail end of the reel are slugged with safety duped titles. I can't tear a piece from the end to start where it won't be missed. But I'm pretty sure nitrate, but I just don't know. Worse of all, my boss is out of town so I can't get him to OK from him and I'm not comfortable just doing it myself. So I go looking for help and I know the expertise is still here in the building to make this call. So I go looking for someone in Preservation department as they deal with stuff like this every day.

A quick trip down the hall and I can make out the head of the department is in his office talking to the Feature film archivist. At this point I should point out I'm not going to name any names here, but the head of preservation department is a world renoun person here, while the feature film archivist is a nearly complete windbag that I've rarely ever seen work, let alone ever touch a piece of film in the two years I've been working at the archive. His only real call to fame is having played a small bit part in a really fun film where he beaten by gang of Mods with a baseball bats. Anyway, I knock on the door and ask for some help. Both come out the film bench I'm working at and look at the film elements. Mr Preservation winds the film and is as dumb founded as I am about it's true nature. After 5 minutes or so, he throws his hands up and walks away. This leaves me with Mr Windbag, who tells me wind to the end titles. So I do so, and point out that they are dupes and identified as safety based film. Mr windbag reach over met and promptly rips a 2-3 foot section of film from the end of the original negative where it meets the dupes titles from the Oneg. I am stunned, perfectly stunned. Mr Windbag tells met follow him outside where to lights not small section of this 2-3 foot of original negative, but lights it all. Guess what, it's Nitrate. I'm told to get it out of the safety area and lock in a vault at that point.

What I learned. Just because someone has a big title and advanced degree, doesn't mean they know shit.