Public Domain films on Blu-ray Thread

[solaris72]

Some of these are tricky! For example, the film "A Farewell to Arms" may technically be a public domain film, but it's a derivative work. A similar example: the film "It's a Wonderful Life" fell into the public domain, but the studio was able to assert ownership because they owned the rights to the story it was based on. So each individual frame and the elements of the soundtrack would I suppose be considered public domain, but the film in sequence which tells a story derived from the Hemingway novel would still be owned by someone. (Although, barring another legislative intervention by Disney, the novel will fall into the public domain in 6 years.) The Last Man on Earth and the Superman cartoons seem like they would also fall under this category.

EDIT: This is a great idea for a thread and I'm not trying to argue that the films I've mentioned above should be removed from the list.

[goathead1]

Originally Posted by solaris72

Some of these are tricky! For example, the film "A Farewell to Arms" may technically be a public domain film, but it's a derivative work. A similar example: the film "It's a Wonderful Life" fell into the public domain, but the studio was able to assert ownership because they owned the rights to the story it was based on. So each individual frame and the elements of the soundtrack would I suppose be considered public domain, but the film in sequence which tells a story derived from the Hemingway novel would still be owned by someone. (Although, barring another legislative intervention by Disney, the novel will fall into the public domain in 6 years.) The Last Man on Earth and the Superman cartoons seem like they would also fall under this category.

EDIT: This is a great idea for a thread and I'm not trying to argue that the films I've mentioned above should be removed from the list.

There are a few other films in the same situation that I included in the list:

-Charade (1963) the story and soundtrack are still copyrighted
-His Girl Friday (1940) and The Front Page (1931) are both based on the 1928 play The Front Page, which is still under copyright until 2024 so the films cannot be used without permission.
-The Superman cartoons still have ancillary rights attached to them since Superman is a trademarked character and the 35mm master prints are held by Warner Bros. who owns DC Comics. I believe the distributor must have received permission to release the blu-ray but they are sourced from '80s 1" video masters (used for VHS production) and not the 35mm master prints which may have helped in getting them released.

Theoretically if altered somehow to remove those copyrighted elements, then the films affected would be completely in the public domain. In the case of It's A Wonderful Life the film would have to be completely re-edited to remove the story and only then would it be completely in the public domain.

I specifically excluded The Trial (1962) and It's A Wonderful Life (1946) since those titles have been successfully "rescued" from the public domain.