Mamba

This movie was the first all-talking all-colour movie ever made. Murray Matthews, a projectionist who is dedicated to the preservation of movies, projection equipment and cinema memorabilia, and his wife Pat own a complete print of 'Mamba' in remarkably good condition. In 2001, Pat discovered that the film was listed as lost except for fragments and notified the Vitaphone Project that they had a complete copy of the film and an incomplete set of sound disks, but almost no interest was shown by anyone in the USA.

In 2008, Sydney film historian Paul Brennan came to Adelaide especially to view the film. Realising its importance, he put in train restoration efforts which included enlisting the aid of another film historian, Swedish Jonas Nordin. He owned a complete set of the sound disks and undertook the complicated task of synchronizing them with the film, and making a digital version which was shown at a gala premiere on 21st November, 2011, in the Astor Theatre, Melbourne, when Murray, Pat and Paul were introduced to the acclamation of a delighted audience

The American Film Institute and the Australian National Film Archive have shown little interest in making the film widely available despite its historic importance and strong production values. It is a good and entertaining movie, with the great actor Jean Hersholt playing an African colonial villain despised alike by his German compatriots, British neighbours and the native population.

As was common in the early sound era, the film was released in both sound-on-film and sound-on-disk versions.

At the very least, 'Mamba' should be restored for BlueRay and added to the libraries of those world-wide enthusiasts for quality films and those like me who consider Technicolor to be the finest colour process of all. This two colour step in the path to the full three strip masterpieces shows how very pleasing it can be.

It is to the legion of film enthusiasts who preserved films destined for destruction while never misusing them for commercial purposes that we owe the existence today of many great movies of that golden era from the silents to the wide screen films of the mid twentieth century. We should all be grateful for their efforts.