# Scorsese's Film Foundation: Saving Cinema from Decay

*Film, TV & Music · Marcus Reed · 2026-08-07*

## TL;DR

Martin Scorsese founded The Film Foundation in 1990 after seeing a faded print of The Seven Year Itch, which showed him how rapidly color film stock deteriorates. The nonprofit works with archives to restore and preserve classic films, ensuring they survive for future generations to experience on the big screen.

## Key facts

- Scorsese established The Film Foundation in 1990 as a nonprofit dedicated to film preservation and restoration.
- The director's inspiration came from viewing a severely faded print of Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch, which demonstrated the fragility of color film stock.
- The Film Foundation collaborates with major archives to restore classic films and make them available to the public.
- The organization also educates filmmakers and the public about the importance of preserving cinematic history.
- Through its work, The Film Foundation has helped save numerous titles that might otherwise have been lost to decay.

## Why an Oscar-winning director started a crusade to save old movies

Martin Scorsese co-founded The Film Foundation in 1990 after a single shocking screening in the late 1970s revealed how badly film archives could fail. The trigger was a studio archive print of Billy Wilder's 1955 comedy *The Seven Year Itch*, starring Marilyn Monroe, shown at a time when nobody expected much from old reels. What he saw that night changed how he thought about cinema forever.

The lights went down, the projector rolled, and the audience sat in stunned silence. The Eastmancolor dye had faded so dramatically that the actors' eyes looked like stained brown or blue globes. Marilyn Monroe's iconic white-dress moment, captured just over two decades earlier, was nearly unwatchable. Scorsese realized the problem went far beyond ugly colors: the performances, the characters, and the emotional connections between them had vanished along with the pigment. The actors walked across the screen like ghosts, and the entire narrative collapsed. In essence, the film itself was gone.

That night, everyone in the room understood that something had to be done. Scorsese soon learned that Eastmancolor stock was especially unstable and prone to fading, while the Technicolor process held up far better. He also discovered the staggering scale of the loss: 50% of American cinema made before 1950 and 80% of American silent cinema had disappeared entirely, destroyed by chemical decay, wear, fire, or simple neglect. These figures come from Library of Congress reports and the National Film Preservation Foundation, and they still shock anyone who loves movies.

So in 1990, Scorsese gathered some of the most famous directors in Hollywood to fix the problem. The Film Foundation was born with Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Sydney Pollack, Robert Redford, and Steven Spielberg as founding board members. Stanley Kubrick was not among the original founders. Since then, the nonprofit and its partners have enabled the restoration of more than 800 films from around the world, and it insists on creating real film elements, a new negative and a projection print, for every restoration it undertakes.

## The shocking math: half of American cinema before 1950 is gone

What Scorsese uncovered next stopped him cold: half of all American films made before 1950, and 80% of American silent films, are gone forever. That staggering figure comes from research by the Library of Congress and the National Film Preservation Foundation, and it includes movies that won multiple Oscars.

That night in the late 1970s, sitting in that darkened screening room watching *The Seven Year Itch* fade to ghosts, Scorsese realized he needed to understand exactly what was killing these films. He gave himself a crash course in film chemistry, and what he learned was sobering. Eastmancolor, the dye-based stock Billy Wilder used for that 1955 Marilyn Monroe classic, is notoriously unstable and prone to fading. Technicolor, with its dye-transfer process, holds up far better. But every print, whether color or black-and-white, is vulnerable to chemical decay if it isn't stored in dry, cool conditions.

The film base itself tells a story of two eras. Before 1948, most films were shot on nitrate, a highly flammable material that could literally burst into flames. After 1948, acetate took over. And acetate has its own nasty trick: when it deteriorates, it develops what archivists call vinegar syndrome. The print starts to smell like vinegar, then turns brittle, warps, and shrinks. Once vinegar syndrome sets in, the decay cannot be reversed, only slowed by better storage.

Here's where the numbers get truly brutal. When Scorsese dug into the archives, he found that chemical decomposition, wear and tear, and fires had already claimed half of American cinema made before 1950. Silent films fared even worse, with 80% lost entirely. These weren't obscure B-movies either. Multiple Oscar-winning pictures had vanished, celebrated in their day but now existing only in still photographs and faded memories.

For Scorsese, this was personal. He had grown up on these films, studied them, drawn inspiration from their directors. To learn that most of that history had simply evaporated, while Hollywood threw lavish parties celebrating its golden age, felt almost absurd. The gap between the industry's self-image and its actual neglect was staggering. That realization, more than anything else, is what pushed him toward action, and it would eventually lead him to co-found The Film Foundation in 1990 with a group of fellow directors.

## How The Film Foundation came together in 1990

Martin Scorsese co-founded The Film Foundation in 1990 alongside Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Sydney Pollack, Robert Redford, and Steven Spielberg. The nonprofit was born from a shared alarm over how quickly cinema was vanishing, and it has since enabled the restoration of more than 800 films from around the world.

The path to that founding boardroom started with a color problem. In the late 1970s, Scorsese attended a screening of Billy Wilder's *The Seven Year Itch*, shot on Eastmancolor stock in the mid-1950s. The studio archive print had faded so badly that Marilyn Monroe's iconic white dress scene was nearly unwatchable. The actors' eyes had turned into blotchy brown or blue spheres, severing their emotional connection to the audience. Scorsese realized the film itself had disappeared, not just its colors.

He launched a campaign for a more stable color film stock, which put him in touch with Bob Rosen, then director of the UCLA Film & Television Archives. Together they worked to bridge the gap between independent archives and the major studios, laying the groundwork for a coordinated preservation effort.

One common misconception deserves correction: Stanley Kubrick is often listed among the founders, but he was not a founding board member. The seven directors named above were the original group. As for reports of Scorsese working with German-Turkish filmmaker Fatih Akin on rescuing films, no reliable source confirms that specific partnership.

The foundation's approach has been hands-on from the start. Every restoration it supports must result in real film elements, both a negative and a positive, not just a digital file. That insistence reflects a hard truth Scorsese learned early: the clock is always ticking on every neglected print, and even digital transfers can vanish without warning.

## From photochemical to digital: how restoration has changed

Until the mid-1990s, film restoration was done photochemically, recreating prints through traditional laboratory processes. A common example often cited is Frank Capra's silent film *The Matinee Idol*, which was actually restored photochemically and completed in 2003. Digital techniques emerged around the same era, allowing damaged frames to be scanned and repaired using information cloned from cleaner frames. A picture that had previously been shown in fragments or heavily cut could finally be seen close to its original form. It was a genuine leap forward.

Since then, nearly all restoration work has gone digital, and the change brings both gifts and complications. On one hand, films can be given new life that often fulfills, and sometimes exceeds, what the filmmaker originally intended. On the other, technology sometimes drives the restoration choices, when it should be the other way around. The tools can become the master rather than the servant.

Today, few film laboratories remain in the world. Almost all films are shot on digital cameras, and even productions shot on actual film are edited, color-graded, and finished digitally. When a new or restored film is printed and projected, it has become something of an event. The film you watch in a cinema now usually arrives as a digital cinema package, or DCP, a file delivered to the theater over the internet or on a drive plugged into the projector, activated by a code from the distributor. Those drives are the same kind of external hard drives you might use at home to store photos. And as everyone knows, digital information sometimes simply vanishes. That has happened to more than one major studio film.

## Why digital isn't enough: the case for real film elements

Digital files can vanish. It has happened to several major studio films, their data simply gone. This is why The Film Foundation's preservation work insists on something most people never think about: every restoration must also produce a physical, tangible film element.

Think about how you store your own photos. The external drive fails, the cloud account gets closed, the format becomes obsolete. Now multiply that by the entire history of cinema. The drives used to deliver digital cinema packages to theaters are the same kind you might plug into your laptop at home. And as anyone who has lost a hard drive knows, digital information has a way of disappearing.

The current goal is systematic migration, moving a film from one digital format to the next as technology evolves. But that requires constant vigilance, a never-ending chain of transfers that depends on someone always paying attention. Miss one step, and the film could be locked in a format no machine can read anymore.

Streaming has changed how we watch movies, and Scorsese believes the standards for restoration and preservation have loosened as a result. When most people view films on laptops and home screens, the bar for what counts as acceptable drops. The memory of what real film looks like, he argues, will one day need to be preserved as carefully as an ancient artifact in a museum.

That is why The Film Foundation, the organization Scorsese co-founded in 1990, has a firm policy for every project it touches. Each restoration must result in the creation of real film elements: a new negative and a projection print. Not just digital files, but actual physical film that can be stored, handled, and projected.

Modern film stock, now made on a sturdy Mylar base, remains the most reliable and durable way to preserve cinema. It does not depend on software updates or compatible hardware. It does not crash. And Scorsese is clear that even after a film has been digitized, the clock is still ticking. Film preservation is always urgent, whether the original is on nitrate, acetate, or a server somewhere. The work never really ends.


## Frequently asked questions

**What prompted Martin Scorsese to start The Film Foundation?**

Martin Scorsese co-founded The Film Foundation in 1990 after a late-1970s screening of a faded print of Billy Wilder's "The Seven Year Itch" shocked him. The colors had deteriorated so badly that the actors' eyes looked like stained brown or blue spheres, and the emotional connections between characters vanished. That night, he realized something had to be done.

**How many films has The Film Foundation restored?**

The Film Foundation has enabled the restoration of more than 800 films from around the world since its founding in 1990. That number covers everything from silent-era treasures to mid-century studio pictures. Each one required careful work with archives, laboratories, and filmmakers to bring the images back to life.

**Why do old color films fade over time?**

Eastmancolor film stock, introduced in the 1950s, is dye-based and particularly unstable, making it prone to fading. Technicolor's dye-transfer process, by contrast, is much more stable. Scorsese learned this after watching that faded print of "The Seven Year Itch" in the late 1970s and launched a campaign for more stable color stock.

**What is vinegar syndrome in film preservation?**

Vinegar syndrome occurs when the acetate film base, used after 1948, deteriorates. The print starts to smell like vinegar, then becomes brittle, warped, and shrunken. Once a print develops vinegar syndrome, the decay is irreversible, though proper cold, dry storage can slow the process down significantly.

**Who co-founded The Film Foundation with Scorsese?**

Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Sydney Pollack, Robert Redford, and Steven Spielberg co-founded The Film Foundation with Martin Scorsese in 1990. Stanley Kubrick is often mistakenly listed as a founding member, but he was not part of the original board. The group came together after Scorsese connected with Bob Rosen, then director of the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

**How does digital restoration differ from photochemical restoration?**

Photochemical restoration works directly with the original film elements, while digital restoration scans damaged frames and repairs them using information cloned from cleaner frames. Digital tools can sometimes exceed what the filmmaker originally intended. The example of Frank Capra's silent film "The Matinee Idol" is sometimes cited as an early digital restoration, but that project was actually completed photochemically in 2003.

**What percentage of American silent films are lost forever?**

Eighty percent of American silent films and 50 percent of American films made before 1950 are lost forever, according to Library of Congress reports. They vanished through chemical decomposition, wear, fire, or simple neglect. Scorsese found this staggering, especially given how many Oscar-winning films were among the casualties, and it became a driving force behind his preservation work.

Canonical: https://curio.madeda.com/scorsese-s-film-foundation-saving-cinema-from-decay/