NEW YORK, NY.- Before Christopher Nolan became a celebrated director before Inception penetrated the land of dreams, Interstellar played with the laws of physics and Tenet warped all sense of chronology there was Larceny.
In 1995, Nolan directed Larceny with a group of friends he had met through the film society at University College London. It is about 8 minutes long, was shot in black and white with 16-mm cameras and involves an apartment burglary.
That is essentially all the public information about the film. After a screening at the Cambridge Film Festival in 1996, it vanished.
In the decades since, Nolan, 53, has become known for his expansive cinematography and mind-bending plots in movies such as Memento, the Dark Knight trilogy and Dunkirk. He is expected to win his first Oscar on Sunday for Oppenheimer, a three-hour biopic about a theoretical physicist that made nearly $1 billion.
The popularity of Nolans work has made the elusiveness of Larceny maddening for fans who want to watch his entire filmography, and perhaps gain insight into his early development as a filmmaker.
When I meet God, I wont ask about the scrolls from the Library of Alexandria, Ill shake him down for this lost film, Dan DeLaPorte wrote on Letterboxd, a website where people rate and review movies.
DeLaPorte said in an interview that he had scrolled through pages and pages of Google search results and combed through Reddit, Vimeo and underground media sites to try to find Larceny.
Nolans decision to keep Larceny private while publicizing Doodlebug, a 3-minute short from 1997, has fueled speculation among his fans. Is he planning to transform Larceny into a full-length feature? Embarrassed by his work as a young filmmaker? Nervous about some of its content?
In English literature theres this term, juvenilia, which is great artists younger works when they were teenagers or apprentices, said Matthew Tempest, who was secretary of the universitys film society when Nolan was its president. Frustrating as it might be for fans, I think they have a right to destroy or withdraw it.
In 2021, a fan tracked down a copy of another of Nolans early short films, Tarantella (1990), with the help of a Chicago public television station. After the film was posted on Vimeo, Nolans production company filed a copyright infringement claim to have it removed. Even so, the discovery renewed hope among Nolan fans.
Could Larceny be unearthed next?
A Training Exercise
In the 1990s, the film society at University College London met weekly in a cluttered theater basement where strips of film hung from the ceiling. Nolan and the groups other members, including Emma Thomas, his future wife, had access to cameras, tripods, dolly tracks and other filmmaking tools. He continued to use the equipment after graduating in 1993.
While most students wore jeans, sweaters and denim jackets, Nolan dressed meticulously in button-down shirts and suit jackets. He was also dedicated to the granular details of filmmaking. Tempest recalled seeing Nolan try to create a distortion effect with a glass bowl.
He was really interested in the physical mechanics of cameras and lights and equipment, Tempest said.
The film society, Tempest said, would screen movies like Ridley Scotts Blade Runner in the theater upstairs to help fund its members filmmaking.
Student films provide opportunities for budding filmmakers to experiment with their craft and forge partnerships with actors and crew members, said Christopher Chan Roberson, who teaches cinematography at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
The idea of making a student film is a notion of process, Roberson said. Its just a process of going, OK, maybe I didnt make the best film, but I really love working with this cinematographer and this is my cinematographer for life.
Jeremy Theobald, who played the occupant of the apartment in Larceny, also starred in Nolans debut feature, Following, about an aspiring writer who meets a professional burglar. David Julyan, who created the music for Larceny, later worked with Nolan on Memento, Insomnia and The Prestige.
Theobald told Darren Mooney, the author of Christopher Nolan: A Critical Study of the Films, that Nolans script for Larceny differed from the surreal film society scripts he had read.
This was witty, Theobald said. It was funny, it was pithy and it was dark. It had a great twist at the end.
The plot involves an encounter during which a burglar is disturbed by the homeowner, Julyan said. In an interview with Empire magazine, Theobald said his character was arguing with another about a woman when a third man bursts out of the cupboard.
This story may have been inspired by Nolans personal life. He had recently returned home from work to find his apartment door kicked in and his place a mess, according to Ian Nathans book Christopher Nolan: The Iconic Filmmaker and His Work.
Larceny was shot over one weekend at Nolans apartment, Julyan said, and features percussion loops, electric piano and bass guitar from a synthesizer Julyan had borrowed.
In an interview with Vice published in 2014, Nolan recalled treating Larceny and Doodlebug as opportunities to experiment with filmmaking techniques before applying those skills to Following.
Can you create a very stripped-down, very tight production machine that would then be applied to making a feature film? Nolan said. He added, When we came to do Following, we were sort of shooting a short film every weekend. So it would be a 2-minute, 3-minute chunk of the film done every weekend.
A Very Controlled Artist
Tarantella lives on in the recesses of the internet, and Doodlebug is included on the Criterion edition of Following. But very few people have seen Larceny, and that seems unlikely to change.
Directors sometimes avoid releasing their early work out of concern that it could reflect poorly on them, Roberson said.
I think Chris Nolan doesnt want to make himself vulnerable, Roberson said, adding, Why share incomplete stuff youre not proud of, versus Oppenheimer?
In Mooneys book, Theobald said: I think Chris thought it was too similar to Following, that people would think that it was a test bed for Following.
A spokesperson for Nolan declined to comment.
Robert Coren, a former archivist for the University College London film society, said he was not aware of any copies of Larceny in its archives. And a former director of the Cambridge Film Festival said no copies were in the festival archives. Julyan said he had a VHS tape of the film but would not share it.
Other people who worked on Larceny were circumspect about the film.
As its not publicly available Im not going to divulge what its about, Ivan Cornell, who has a producing credit on Larceny, wrote in an email. Theobald told The New York Times that because Nolan never released Larceny after the film festival, I am unable to talk about its content. The other actors in the short, Dave Savva and Mark Deighton, could not be reached.
Chris is a very controlled artist, a controlled filmmaker, said Nigel Karikari, the assistant director of Larceny, recalling how Nolan would use a camcorder to take rehearsal shots before filming. Him not wanting to release that is just another extension of that.
For DeLaPorte, there is a silver lining to the mysterious, unwatchable nature of Larceny.
Theres lore with it now, he said. Its almost bigger than it would have been if it was available. Theres this unattainable thing that just keeps the hunt going.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.