IOW: Days of grey and Méliès
How green I was 20 years ago when I visited England and France to partake in a travel course for my studies at Illinois Wesleyan University. I don’t have to read much of my notebook from the class, filled with more diary entries than actual notes, to realize it. However, I did understand certain things back then which have not wavered in my soul to this day. One is to never be afraid to pay one’s respects to one’s spiritual elders. I did exactly that when classmates and I stole away to walk the Père-Lachaise Cemetery on the east end of Paris. We made the expected pilgrimage to the final resting place of the Lizard King, Jim Morrison, but we also had skimmed through a “famous people” placard inside the entranceway. One particular name struck my fancy so I decided to briefly venture out on my own.
There, dwarfed against numerous adjacent monuments and solemnly facing the iron fence encircling the cemetery perimeter, sat a marker for the “Createur du Spectacle Cinematographique.” Apart from a solitary pink tulip left by a previous admirer, the only color to be found here was a sickly blue cascading down the front of his headstone, courtesy of decades-long punishment by rain water to the bust up top. I stood silently with hands in pockets, wondering what it meant to be an artist in his time, a creative force known throughout the world for infusing that novelty, the motion picture, with illusion and wonderment and, most importantly, life. I also wondered why I had only found one token of appreciation on his grave that sullen, overcast day. I then said “thank you” and took my leave.
Scholars, archivists, super-fans, and the industry struggle today not only with interesting upcoming generations in the early history of filmmaking but also the physical and costly preservation of the same, whatever remains of it. As depicted in Martin Scorsese’s gorgeous feature-length love letter to the beginnings of cinema, HUGO, numerous factors decimated the catalog of Georges Méliès (1861-1938) beyond sheer neglect and we’re lucky to be able to watch the roughly 200 titles which still exist. As the researcher Rene Tabard (Michael Stuhlbarg) says bluntly to Hugo (Asa Butterfield) and Isabelle (Chlöe Grace Moretz) in his artifact-adorned office, “Time has not been kind to old movies.”
While Méliès’ revolutionary output is worthy of the academic assessment it received late in his life, as well as the care afforded its surviving portion for decades after his death, so much other and “lesser” photographic ephemera will never receive even the barest preservation and documentation unless we make a concentrated effort to pick up the slack, from vital historical recordings down to the family home movie. Every spool of film captures a combination of time, place, and detail – including deceptively rickety special-effects transformations in the fantastic vein of Méliès – from which our descendents can learn.
Please make sure to pick up the next issue of C-U Confidential in April, from which you will learn about both a Champaign silent and series of Urbana soundtracks that figure prominently in our local filmography – at the least, in your humble editor’s non-humble opinion.
~ Jason Pankoke