TCM salutes the Library of Congress

Turner Classic Movies salutes the nation’s film archive on Mount Pony with “A Tribute to the Library of Congress,” beginning tonight.

Patrick Loughney, chief of the audio visual conservation center in Culpeper, said the 24 hours of special programming – 13 movies and six shorts – represents the best of the best of the millions of films preserved by the LOC. The purpose of the program is to highlight the importance of movie conservation.

“People take movies for granted,” Loughney said. “If you don’t preserve them, eventually you can’t see them.”

A prime example of that is 1943’s “The Constant Nymph,” a romantic drama starring Joan Fontaine in an Oscar-nominated role. The film kicks off the LOC tribute in a rare screening at 8 p.m.

Based on the novel by Margaret Kennedy and directed by Edmund Goulding, the film was not seen publicly since the 1950s until very recently. That’s because eight years following the original Warner Bros. release, the rights reverted back to the author, per the contract. TCM negotiated with the author’s estate to bring the classic movie back to the public, featuring it earlier this year at the TCM Classic Film Festival.

Author Matthew Kennedy (“Edmund Goulding’s Dark Victory”) spoke about the disappearance of “The Constant Nymph” in a 2008 interview with Alt Film Guide: “Apparently the will of Margaret Kennedy … states that the film is only to be shown at universities and museums following its original theatrical run. Here is another of those misfortunes in the legal history of Hollywood. I saw the movie thanks to a collector who shall remain nameless, and bootleg copies are available out there. But until the issue is resolved, ‘The Constant Nymph’ will remain out of circulation.”

The LOC restored the nearly 70-year-old film using original camera and track negatives, Loughney said. Last August, it showed in the Packard Campus Theater. In it, Fontaine plays a teenager desperately in love with a handsome composer (Charles Boyer) and it all eventually turns into a love triangle, Loughney said.

He said the film was aimed at the female audience, and features a beautiful score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, another reason why “The Constant Nymph” is considered important. In fact, one audience member traveled three hours to Culpeper just to hear the score at last year’s screening.

The LOC holds many of the physical film elements owned by TCM, Loughney said, noting that the Culpeper facility houses some of the best surviving archival versions.

“TCM has been interested in supporting the work of film archive so they asked if they could run a series featuring films that we have preserved,” he said of how the collaboration came about.

Film conservation is preservation of history and culture, Loughney said.

“We are a culture that has been largely shaped by motion pictures over the last century along with recorded sound and television,” he said. “Movies are just as important as books and newspapers and need to be saved so future generations can learn what it was like in the past.”

Loughney co-hosts “A Tribute to the Library of Congress” with critic and author Leonard Maltin, a member of the LOC National Film Preservation Board. The two discuss selected movies in four segments airing throughout the 24-hour programming, beginning at 8 p.m. Loughney encouraged everyone to watch to “see their Library of Congress at work.”

Other films from the Packard Campus archive showing on TCM for the special tribute include: “Baby Face” from 1933 (tonight at 10 p.m.); the “silent” version of “All Quiet on the Western Front” from 1930 (Thursday at 12:45 a.m.); Mary Pickford’s silent “Sparrows” from 1926 (Thursday at 5:15 a.m.); “Will Rogers in Dublin” short from 1927 (Thursday at 7 a.m.); Laurel and Hardy in “Towed in a Hole” from 1932 (Thursday at 10:15 a.m.); 1940s’ jazz musicians in “Jammin’ the Blues” (Thursday at 3 p.m.) and King Vidor’s “Street Scene” from 1931 (Thursday at 5 p.m.). Check out the full schedule at tcm.com.

Want to watch?

Check out Turner Classic Movies’ “Salute to the Library of Congress” film archive on Mount Pony starting tonight at 8 p.m.