Paramount Preservation Website
The Mission

The motion picture as a narrative art has its roots firmly planted in the soil of the Greek drama and its descendents, the Miracle play of the middle ages and Shakespeare. By the time Shakespeare wrote Anthony and Cleopatra, the fluid dramatic structure, which we identify with the modern screenplay, was established.

The form of the drama changed very little over the centuries. It was a medium of words. The rhythmic movement of a story was propelled by words. Then came the motion picture and the rhythms of a story had to be told by purely visual means. Indeed, Ingmar Bergman has stated that the film has more in common with music than literature. At the heart of filmmaking is the visual grammar that we call film editing where each shot is like a bar of music.

Thus, unlike the drama, poetry and the novel, where the mere copying of words is preservation, the film image is so fragile that it is only with the greatest care and effort that the original integrity of the image can be maintained.

Of the visual arts, film is the most fragile.

It is the protection of the original integrity of that image and the supporting sound that is the goal of the Paramount Film Preservation Program.