The Patriot
The lost 1928 film
It earned five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, yet most of the film no longer exists.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Officially Gone
- Peak stage
- general availability
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
Ernst Lubitsch's part-talking historical drama about Tsar Paul I, released by Paramount Pictures.
The Patriot was a major studio release with synchronized music, sound effects and spoken sequences during cinema's transition to sound. Its prestige did not ensure preservation: Paramount's nitrate elements and circulating prints failed to survive intact.
Existence timeline
Paramount distributes Lubitsch's semi-sound historical drama.
The film receives five nominations and wins for writing.
Known complete nitrate copies fail to survive.
The Library of Congress lists it among notable films lost in complete form.
Ernst Lubitsch completes the historical drama during Hollywood's transition to sound.
Why it ended
Only fragments, including trailers and several reels or sections held by archives, are known. No complete or near-complete version has been recovered.
Last confirmed trace
The UCLA Film & Television Archive and other collections hold partial footage, while stills, reviews and award records document the missing whole.
What it left behind
It is the only Best Picture nominee without a complete or near-complete surviving copy, exposing the gap between cultural recognition and material preservation.
How we classified it
The archive unit reached normal public release or operation and is no longer available in its original public form.
The archive unit reached normal public availability, so Arrival Score V1 assigns 100.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.