Throughout August, the BFI has organised nationwide screenings of this assorted collection of serials, comedies, songs, and newsreels from 1914 and allowing people with the inclination but without the opportunity to get a taste of what cinema was like a hundred years ago when film as an industry and a national pastime was just beginning.
Interested in early cinema, I was very excited when I heard the BFI was putting this on, and there were certainly some good choices in the line-up (from more familiar fare like Charlie Chaplin to the now more obscure Fred Evans) and a nice mix of documentary and entertainment, with scenes from the trenches at Christmas 1914 (gently skirting around the Christmas Truce) and images of pioneering aviators looping-the-loop played alongside the adventures of Pearl White’s ‘Pauline’.
Some highlights included a serial heroine called ‘Daisy Doodad’ in ‘Daisy’s Dial’, which concerned her attempts to defeat her husband in a face-making competition, while Fred Evans’ ‘Lieutenant Pimple’ retrieved a new top-notch submarine from the usurping clutches of pesky ‘foreign spies’.
The collection also included a filmed performance of the song ‘The Rollicking Rajah’, which used to be projected on the cinema screen while a record was played to provide the audio and allow the audience to sing along. The footage, like all parts of the production, had been lovingly restored and music and vocals had been recorded from surviving fragments of the the score, offering a different experience for the modern audience.
However, this is where we meet the project’s limitations . The novelty of this last example would have been considerably more interesting with a live performance or live recording of the music and vocals, allowing the audience to join in, as would have been the case a century ago. In the introduction to the film local archivist Dennis Howells emphasised that, in 1914, audiences would frequently chatter and get involved with what they were viewing because the action was all silent and participation was often encouraged by the proprietors and sometimes even the filmmakers.
Maybe it was too much to ask given the changing nature of audience sensibilities at the cinema – and I must admit it is annoying when people chatter during a film nowadays – but I feel that, when offering your audience an experience of what cinema was like in 1914, that you should fully follow through.
The whole show could have been lifted by live musical accompaniment, which the Broadway Cinema have provided before (when they screened Tod Browning’s The Unknown in November last year with a wonderful live score by 8mm Orchestra). I don’t know if, when Night at the Cinema was screened at the BFI Southbank at the beginning of August, there was a live score, but, in my humble opinion, it’s the best way to celebrate early cinema.
Unfortunately, instead of a cinema screening, it felt more like a museum exhibit, with almost half-hearted ordering of the material and a sudden ending at the finale of the Chaplin feature. The showing felt slightly sterile and less an experience, more of a curiosity. Maybe expectations were too high, and there are obviously budget constraints with something relatively niche, but I did want more from it.
Unfortunately, instead of a cinema screening, it felt more like a museum exhibit
I maintain, however, that these kind of events are always well worth seeing (and funding) and the BFI is the greatest film institution in Britain so while sounding disappointed, one couldn’t help but have a little smile that these kind of things happen and that the cinema of 100 years ago is still allowed to remain fresh and breathe new life in a new era.
Jake Leonard
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