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San Francisco Silent Film Festival

San Francisco Silent Film Festival

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the public about silent film as an art form and as a culturally valuable historical record.

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Below the Surface

Directed by Irvin Willat
93 min | 1920 | United States
Program Essay Borrow Title
Available Formats 35mm, DCP

About the Film

What happens when a couple of city slickers try to scam a hard-working family on New England’s stony shore? Find out in Irvin V. Willat’s follow-up to Behind the Door, another action-packed melodrama headlined by the silent era’s most flinty-eyed no-nonsense protagonist, Hobart Bosworth.

About the Restoration

A 35mm original nitrate negative of Irvin Willat’s underwater melodrama was preserved by the Library of Congress and is the second Willat-directed film in SFSFF’s collection, along with 1919’s Behind the Door. Sections with nitrate damage were made up from a 35mm safety duplicate negative that had been struck from the negative prior to its deterioration. The added color is based on a tinted 35mm nitrate print preserved at Eye Filmmuseum in the Netherlands. For digital presentation, the coloring has been digitally rendered. The restored 35mm print has been chemically dye-tinted and toned. This restoration was made possible with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Details

Director
Irvin Willat
Country
United States
Year
1920
Runtime
93 min
Cast
Hobart Bosworth, Grace Darmond, Lloyd Hughes, George Webb, Gladys George
Production Company
Thomas H. Ince Productions
FPS
20
Intertitle Language
English
Year Added to SFSFF Collection
2022

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