Motion pictures, 1974

In Short

This volume is an official publication of the Library of Congress Copyright Office, acting as a public record of motion picture registrations. It lists thousands of individual works, ranging from feature-length motion pictures and television episodes to industrial training films, advertisements, and cartoons. By documenting the claimant, registration number, and date for each entry, it functions as a primary legal reference tool. Beyond its administrative utility, the text serves as a sprawling, unintentional historical map, cataloging the massive breadth of film production in the United States and capturing the diverse preoccupations of the era's visual culture.

The Story

The narrative arc of this book is not one of character development or traditional plot, but rather the relentless, systematic progression of the American film industry. The story begins with the formal instructions for legal registration, establishing the regulatory framework that governs the creation of these works. It then transitions into the main body of the text: a sequential, alphanumeric listing of entries that act as a census of mid-1970s media.

The "story" is told through the titles themselves, which aggregate to reveal the shifting tides of the American consciousness. One finds entries for major motion pictures like Serpico or High Plains Drifter sitting in the same ledger as short instructional films on child rearing, chemical properties, or the mechanics of a carburetor. As the reader moves through the pages, the scope expands to include the mundane and the specific: advertisements for soap, clips from news broadcasts featuring Walter Cronkite, and specialized medical training videos on the anatomy of the human eye.

The progression continues into the renewal section, which provides a retrospective look at the industry’s past. These entries offer a glimpse into the vintage landscape of 1947, documenting the copyright renewals of forgotten newsreels, shorts, and early feature films. The text reaches its conclusion with a series of technical corrections and lists of registration changes, reinforcing the book’s identity as a living, imperfect record. It ends not with a resolution, but with a note of caution that these entries are only a partial window into the full archives held by the Copyright Office. It is a document that never truly finishes its story, as it remains a frozen moment in the ongoing, multi-generational process of archiving the nation’s creative output.

How It Unfolds

The mandate of law The book opens by citing the authority of Title 17 of the United States Code. It establishes the catalog as prima facie evidence in legal disputes, setting a tone of dry, uncompromising administrative authority.

The census of creation The core of the text proceeds through a massive, structured list of registrations. Each entry serves as a microscopic biography of a film, detailing its runtime, sound, color format, and the claimant who sought to own the rights to the work.

The variety of the medium The narrative shifts rapidly between high-concept entertainment and utilitarian instructional content. A single column might group a documentary on the Smithsonian Institution, a television episode of Hawaii Five-O, and a training video on how to handle walk-in customers.

The echo of the past A distinct section is dedicated to the renewal of copyrights for older works. This provides a bridge to the late 1940s, offering a fleeting, cataloged memory of newsreels and animated shorts that were being renewed by their original holders nearly three decades later.

The administrative appendix The final pages focus on the mechanics of the record itself, including errata and notes on the transcription of names. It ends by directing the reader back to the Copyright Office, highlighting the limitations of the printed page in capturing the full, evolving scope of the law.

The People

While the book contains no human characters in the literary sense, it is populated by the "claimants"—the corporations, production companies, and individuals who stake their legal ownership over these works. These entities function as the book’s central figures, their names recurring like motifs throughout the pages.

There are the giants, such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Universal Pictures, and the Columbia Broadcasting System, who represent the industrial engine of the period. Their entries are voluminous, reflecting their dominance over the cultural landscape. Then there are the smaller, more specialized players—the Polymorph Films, the local universities, and independent producers—who represent the quiet, often forgotten corners of production, such as the makers of Childbirth or The Fayette Story.

The "people" also include the historical figures who appear in the titles themselves, such as the celebrities of the day, the politicians captured in newsreels, and the fictional characters like Mighty Mouse or the protagonists of the Hawaii Five-O series. They are stripped of their agency and transformed into mere data points, existing only as subjects of a copyright claim. The reader never meets these people as individuals; they are defined entirely by the works they produced or starred in, and their legacy is compressed into a registration number and a date, illustrating the cold, egalitarian reach of the law.

In Its Own Voice

The book documents the mundane details of legal filings, such as this notice regarding the documentation of a film:

The record of each copyright registration listed in the Catalog includes a description of the work copyrighted and data relating to the copyright claim.

The ledger entries demonstrate the breadth of content, ranging from popular feature films to technical instructional series:

Serpico. Artists Entertainment Complex, Inc. 130 min., sd., color, 35 mm.

The book also includes specialized entries for educational and medical media, such as this listing for a technical training video:

Manual positive pressure ventilation (bag and mask) American College of Physicians.

What It's Really About

At its core, this book is about the commodification of human expression. It represents the intersection of art and bureaucracy, where every creative spark—from a major motion picture to a thirty-second laundry soap advertisement—must be processed, categorized, and filed to be given the status of legal property. It raises silent questions about the nature of cultural preservation and the arbitrary line between what is considered "important" and what is "disposable." By treating a newsreel about a 1948 boxing match with the same level of granular detail as a feature film, the text argues that, in the eyes of the law, every recorded image is a valid piece of history. It serves as a testament to the sheer volume of output generated by a modern society and the exhausting, necessary labor of recording it all.

Why Read It Today

Reading this catalog is an exercise in historical immersion and structural appreciation. For the reader who loves to sift through the raw materials of the past, this book offers an unparalleled sense of discovery. It feels like wandering through the dusty, infinite archives of a basement library, where the trivial and the significant exist on the same shelf. It is not a book to be read for a plot, but for the rhythm of its lists and the strange, evocative power of its thousands of titles.

However, the reader must be prepared for the inherent difficulties of the text. It is, by design, repetitive and dense, offering no narrative relief from the columns of registration numbers and technical descriptions. It captures the bureaucratic language of 1974, which can feel alien to a modern reader accustomed to digital convenience. There is a distinct, rhythmic hum to its pages that rewards the patient observer—someone who finds beauty in order and the documentation of human activity. What stays with you is the overwhelming realization of how much we produce, how much we archive, and how the vast majority of our visual history is hidden in the quiet, precise, and often overlooked pages of official records. It is a humbling, grounding, and uniquely meditative reading experience.