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the “Harry Davidson Collection”. This honoured our original conditions of acquisition and
also celebrated Harry’s achievement – and legacy – as a collector.
While film archives often have the financial means, mostly unavailable to private
individuals, to copy, properly store and preserve nitrate film, it is more often than not the
collector who has the time, contacts and inclination to find the material in the first place.
It is a partnership, though the collector’s role is often unsung – and many collectors like
it that way. But the partnership depends on personal relationships, involving mutual
respect, a shared love of old film, and a willingness to accept the moral obligations
which come from being invited into – and perhaps ultimately assuming responsibility for
– a private world, the product of a lifetime of passion and persistence.

Some of the Ones that Got Away

Australia’s “big three” silent film directors – Raymond Longford, Franklyn Barrett and
Beaumont Smith – were prolific, each completing over 20 feature films during their
careers. Tragically, only remnants of their work now remain.

Of Longford’s work, only his
acknowledged masterpiece,
The Sentimental Bloke,
survives intact (see below).
Substantial, though incomplete
or shortened, versions of three
other films exist, along with
fragments of two more.
Longford worked for a series of
companies between and 1910
and 1934, and did not always
have either copyright or
physical control of his films.
They were held in a variety of
hands and survival has proved
largely a matter of chance.

Franklyn Barrett likewise worked for a variety of producers, later setting up his own
production company, and making his last film – A Rough Passage – in 1922. Only two
of his films – The Breaking of the Drought and A Girl of the Bush, both from 1920 –
survive. For many years he appears to have kept his prints and negatives in his garage,
and in the 1950s tried to awaken institutional interest in their preservation. But before
any progress could be made, his garage structurally collapsed; the films, along with the
rest of the contents, were carted away as debris.

From the outset, Beaumont Smith operated his own production company, making his
first film in 1917 and his last in 1934. Three of his features, and a fragment of a fourth,
are left to us. That we do not have his entire output is a result of timing and
circumstance. Upon Smith’s death in 1950, his brother inherited his surviving stock of
films and retained them for many years. But a chance discussion with someone from his
local fire brigade alerted him to both the practical and insurance dangers of keeping a
large stock of flammable nitrate film in his home or garage. On advice, he consented to
the destruction of the entire stock by the fire authorities. The National Library, then
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