IVREA, Italy — In August 1943, a fire broke out at a luxurious 45,000-square-foot mansion in the hills of Beverly Hills. The flames were fueled by the nitrate film stock stored in a vault, followed by an explosion. The house belonged to Harold Lloyd, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, who was rescued by his wife. But part of his film collection was lost forever. A piece of cinema history went up in smoke, with damage estimated at $2 million at the time.

More than 80 years later, thousands of miles from California, a black-and-white 35mm film reel arrived at the National Archive of Industrial Cinema in Ivrea, Italy. The metal canister, the familiar round container known in Italian as a pizza, bore a simple label: “Comedies.” The reel was part of a collection deposited by Milan’s National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci for 5K digitization.

The surprise came when technicians unwound and screened the film.

“What immediately struck us was its condition: almost perfect for a film more than a century old,” says Ilaria Magni, Laboratory Technician. No record of the title, Come andò la faccenda (“How the Matter Turned Out”), could be found in any archive. The only documentation was a censorship certificate issued by Italy’s Fascist regime in 1924.

Identifying the star of the short film, however, proved easy. Just a few frames were enough. The technicians were astonished: the actor was Harold Lloyd, one of the defining stars of the silent-film era.

Research into the film’s history led them to its original title: Kicking the Germ out of Germany, released in 1918. The film was believed to have been lost in the 1943 fire.

“We immediately reported the discovery to a worldwide network of film archives, asking whether any other copies existed,” says Elena Testa, Head of the Ivrea Archive. “No one has ever confirmed that another copy survives.”

The significance of the find is clear to those who work with film history. “A discovery of this magnitude, given both the stature of the filmmaker and the importance of the recovery, is extremely rare in a career,” says Archivist Diego Pozzato.

Even the National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci in Milan had no idea what its collection contained.

Stills from the rediscovered film

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“It was a great surprise for us, too,” says Simona Casonato, Curator of the Museum’s Media Technology Collections.

Across the Atlantic, the news prompted equal excitement. Contacted by email, Suzanne Lloyd, the actor’s granddaughter and the holder of the rights to all his films, welcomed the discovery.

“Our archive contains only small fragments of that film, which was used to raise funds for the war effort. I am extremely grateful to the National Archive of Industrial Cinema for giving this lost film a new life,” she says. “I can’t wait to see it.”

Forgotten for more than a century, the film is significant both cinematically and historically. At just under 15 minutes, it makes no secret of its propagandistic purpose, beginning with its title. The wordplay in Kicking the Germ out of Germany — a pun lost in the Italian title, Come andò la faccenda — reflects the anti-German sentiment of the time.

The United States had entered World War I, and Hollywood comedy, too, was being enlisted in the war effort, blending entertainment, history and propaganda. Lloyd plays a soldier who embarks on a dangerous mission to rescue a Red Cross nurse, played by Bebe Daniels, from the clutches of the Kaiser. As the gags unfold, the audience discovers that the protagonist’s daring adventure is a dream.

It is one of the many outlandish escapades undertaken by Lloyd’s signature screen persona, the “boy with the glasses,” throughout his career.

By the 1920s, Lloyd had become one of Hollywood’s most popular and highest-paid actors.

One image, captured in 1923, secured his place in cinema history. In Safety Last! — released in Italy as Preferisco l’ascensore! (“I Prefer the Elevator!”) — he leaves audiences holding their breath as he clings to the hands of an enormous clock high above the street, with traffic moving below. The scene became one of the most iconic images of the silent-film era. In 1953, after appearing in more than 200 films, Lloyd received an honorary Academy Award in recognition of his contribution to cinema.

His comedy differed from that of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, the other two giants of silent film. Chaplin, star of The Great Dictator, blended humor with the melancholy of society’s outsiders. Keaton moved through chaos with an impassive expression. Lloyd, by contrast, embodied the ordinary man determined to get ahead: an ambitious young man who stumbles, picks himself up and tries again. His screen persona captured the spirit of the American dream during the Roaring Twenties.

Now the National Archive of Industrial Cinema in Ivrea can claim to have rescued a lost film by an Academy Award-winning Hollywood star from oblivion.

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