Month: April 2014

Bioscoop

Source: Louis Couperus, ‘Bioscoop’, Haagsche Post, 2 December 1916, English translation by Ivo Blom in ‘North and South: two early texts about cinema-going by Louis Couperus’, Film History vol. 20, issue 2 (2008), pp. 127-132

Text: The contrast between North and South manifests itself in many different ways. At the Bioscoop, too. First of all, in the South the Bioscoop is called Cinematografo in Italy or Cine in Spain. Well, this difference is negligible. But in both southern countries the difference is great as compared with cinema in Germany and the Netherlands. As soon as we go North, the cinema becomes something of a theater, becomes pretentiously heavy. You are received by employees in braided frocks, your coat and stick are taken from you, you are allocated a certain, fixed seat, you are not allowed to stand up, you notice everyone around you in the shimmering darkness in their seats for hours, there is an intermission … Nothing of all this in Italy or Spain. Not only is the cinematografo or the cine much cheaper than the bioscoop, but the whole interior is more light-hearted, comfortable, accommodating. The illuminated foyer which you can see from the street is inviting, with a salon orchestra (albeit not very attractive to me personally), and a reading table. To enter when it rains, when I don’t want to go to a bar, when I have paraded around enough, when I am tired, bored … I pay 30 centimes and whenever I want to look rich, 50 centimes. I cannot go above that, unless for a world famous film such as Quo Vadis? Even for 50 centimes – both in Italy and Spain – my seat is too chic, so terribly chic, that I prefer to pay 30 centimes … Around me are casual, very decent people, so decent that if I want to see the less decent, I need to descend into places where I pay only 20 or 15 or 10 centimes. I see the same films, but … one week later. But everywhere the experience is light and capricious, an ephemeral joy, while in the North cinema has shut itself inside an impenetrable shell. Really, when I walk into a cinema I want to do it in a light-hearted and casual way. I’ll stand up for a quarter of an hour if necessary, just to see Max Linder or a scene of the war, and then leave again. Dear heavens, you really notice when you are in the North, as soon as you are away from Italy: in Munich or … The Hague. There is no question of standing up; everything is so solemn and heavy, that your first casual impulse to see a film is immediately crushed. In Italy I saw the whole war in Tripoli screened before me, surrounded by a decent officer-with-family audience, without reserving seats and always for 30 centimes each day. Here, I am hesitant to go and see The Battle of the Somme because I don’t want to reserve a seat. I want to keep my coat on, even keep my wet umbrella with me; I’d rather stand than sit; in particular I don’t want to turn my cinema joy into a solemn visit; rather I desire an unpretentious, casual ‘walking in’, a passing pleasure, which should not last more than twenty minutes at the most.

Oh North and South, not even in the bioscoop and cinematograph do you have anything in common.

But now the analysis. Why is it so different in the North and the South? Because of the heavy soul of the Northerners? Of course, but also because ‘street life’ does not exist in the North and because in the South ‘walking into a cinema’ is a part of everyday life. Just as in the North it is not allowed in a lunchroom bar to toss off a little glass of vermouth standing up, so it is not normal to consider the cinema as a short halt in your flanerie, as a shelter from the rain, as a short, oh, so short, distraction from the melancholy which can so affect the flaneur when he is lonely, wandering among the busy crowd. And so he longs for Max Linder or Charles Prince; yes, even some lively pictures of actuality, whose photographic ugliness, teasing and screeching, scratch the silently suffering soul of the purposeless street wanderer when the winter twilight hour nears, when the shopping lights and street lanterns are starting to flame and the pain of wistfulness hurts him, without really knowing why …

It is then that you lose yourself – not in a bar where the electric light shines mercilessly – and where you need to drink something; it is then that you lose yourself, in the South, in the cinematograph, where you can watch pictures as if still on your mother’s lap.

Comments: Louis Couperus (1863-1923) was a Dutch novelist and poet and is considered one of the leading figures in Dutch literature. He wrote about films in his regular ‘Bioscoop’ column for the Dutch newspaper Haagsche Post. The films referred to are Quo Vadis? (Italy 1913) and The Battle of the Somme (UK 1916). Max Linder and Charles Prince were French film comedians, the latter known on-screen as Rigadin. Bioscoop is the Dutch word for a cinema building, taken from the English word Bioscope. My thanks to Ivo Blom for his permission to reproduce his translation, and to Deac Rossell for alerting me to the Film History article. Ellipses are as given in the Film History translation.

Ten Days That Shook the World

Source: John Reed, Ten Days That Shook the World (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1919), pp. 59-60

Text: The city was nervous, starting at every sharp sound. But still no sign from the Bolsheviki; the soldiers stayed in the barracks, the workmen in the factories … We went to a moving picture show near the Kazan Cathedral – a bloody Italian film of passion and intrigue. Down front were some soldiers and sailors, staring at the screen in childlike wonder, totally unable to comprehend why there should be so much violent running about, and so much homicide …

Comments: John Reed (1887-1920) was an American journalist and socialist whose first-hand account of the Russian Revolution of October 1917 in Ten Days That Shook the World is one of the most vivid and closely-observed accounts of the epoch-making events. It served at the inspiration for Sergei Eisenstein’s film October (USSR 1928) and John Reed’s story was told in the film Reds (USA 1981) with Reed played by Warren Beatty. The city referred to here is Petrograd, now St Petersburg. The period is just before the fall of the Russian Provisional Government and the takeover by the Bolsheviks.

Il Cinematografo

Source: Louis Couperus, ‘Il Cinematografo’, Het Vaderland, 22 April 1911, pp. 1-2, English translation by Ivo Blom in ‘North and South: two early texts about cinema-going by Louis Couperus’, Film History vol. 20, issue 2 (2008), pp. 127-132

Text: The following night, while my wife is exchanging small talk with the German Generals’ wives and Majors’ widows – in the drawing room of the pension house – I am walking around at a loose end, ‘with my soul under my arm’, and with that same soul I walk into a cinematografo, for the sum of 20 Centesimi. I just happen to like contrasts. I just happen to like to sit one night, chic, with my wife, on a rather expensive poltrone in a gala performance, and the next night visit those public amusements where the common man for a few Soldi gives himself the illusion of something very beautiful sad, gay, and in particular sentimental. I once read that Edison invented the cinema to give the common-man his theater. I entirely agree with that, but … But what I want to say, I won’t say right away. First I will describe what the waiting room looks like … because, if you have paid 30 Centesimi, you don’t wait: there are always places, however, if you want something cheaper, for two Soldi less, you need to wait … in the waiting room. You’ll understand, dear reader, that I am frugal that I will wait, right … [e]specially because the waiting amuses me, or rather interest me … This waiting room is very dirty. People often spit on the ground with great gobs, and nobody minds. The ground is covered not only with saliva but also with tangerine peel, used matches, cigarette butts and torn entrance tickets. On a platform is a palm-court orchestra of some pale girls dressed in white. All around are test-your-strength machines, shooting galleries, candy automats …Chairs are against the wall; every chair is taken; the place is full to the brim. Look at all those tired faces that sharply light up like ghosts in the cruel and stark electric light. These are not the Roman marchionesses, princesses, loaded with their family jewels; these are not gentlemen in tails and elegant lieutenants shining in gold; this is not the noble spawn of the Duke of the Abruzzi. This is the tired waiting of the ‘common man’ – with wife and kids, often with babies – after the common man has finished working. He is out, he is going to amuse himself; he wants above all to see something. When he is out with his family, it easily costs him almost a Lira. But he gets a lot in return. He starts with resting on a chair, in front of an enormous ‘mirror’, which, ghostlike, reflects to him his pale, tired face. He also perceives electric light on walls with art nouveau patterns and he hears the din of the palm-court orchestra. When he is finally allowed to enter, then he, his worn-out wife and worldly-wise children, first see a dal vero: a parade or an instructive industry film or a trip through Norway or Switzerland. Secondly, a sentimental drama, which moves their petty bourgeois souls to tears in such a marvellous way: stolen children, noble little chimney sweeps, virtue especially rewarded … And now and then something of opera or true comedy, but without the words and with no more music thank the plonky piano accompaniment. And as life is so merry and gay, the delicious show ends with a farce, which often consists of drunken men and people tumbling over each other and running after one other through fields and roads: oh such merry farces, drawn from lovely merry life! The little citizen, for his four soldi, is educated, has a tear squeezed from the eye, and has his ‘laughing muscle’ tickled. Alright, I allow him that. I allow him this cheap theater of Edison. But … And now I will say it … Why, after he is educated, cannot the tear be squeezed from his eye with beauty; the laughing muscle tickled … with grace? Does it have to happen – is it not possible to let it happen – but with coarse, false, weepy sentimentality … and with an even more coarse, more false, drunkard’s burlesque?

The show is over. I have stayed until the end. And not like yesterday, in the chic Opera, left before the end. It is because I wanted to see that distressing exodus of common men, with their pale, spent faces, arm in arm with their worn-out wives, behind them their worldly-wise children. And they seemed even more tired than when I saw them in the waiting room. They didn’t seem to be cheered up by the vulgar drunkard’s farce. Reader, forgive me that I led you to a gala night of the Cinematografo … I like contrasts, you know.

Comments: Louis Couperus (1863-1923) was a Dutch novelist and poet and is considered one of the leading figures in Dutch literature. He wrote about films in his regular ‘Bioscoop’ column for the Dutch newspaper Haagsche Post, and occasionally elsewhere as in this piece on visiting a Rome cinema for Het Vaderland, which is part of a series ‘Pages from my diary’. The previous ‘diary’ article had covered a visit to the Teatro Costanzi in Rome to see Verdi’s opera Macbeth, alluded to here (the Roman marchionesses etc). My thanks to Ivo Blom for his permission to reproduce his translation, and to Deac Rossell for alerting me to the Film History article. Ellipses are as given in the Film History translation.

From the Bosphorus to Bagdad and Beyond

Source: Extract of letter from Frederick Thompson Wright to Dr L. These, 13 June 1914, reproduced in Frederick Thompson Wright, From the Bosphorus to Bagdad and beyond, an epistolatory epitome of an expedition from Constantinople to the Caspian (Douglas Arizona, 1915), p. 49

Text: Bagdad, June 13.

Last night I was at dinner with Major Scott, the medical man connected with the British Consulate. The others were Captain Scott, who commands the dinky little gun-boat the English keep here, Mrs. Scott and Mr. Richarz. After dinner we all went to the cinema show; they make a great deal of it, being the only amusement they have. The pictures were mostly American.

Comments: Frederick Thompson Wright was an American traveller. His account of a journey through the ‘Near East’ in 1914 was published privately in the form of letters sent to a colleague. Cinema shows are thought to have started in Baghdad in 1909.

Links: Copy at Hathi Trust

Let's Go to the Pictures

Source: Iris Barry, Let’s Go to the Pictures (London: Chatto & Windus, 1926), pp. 165-166

Text: The next handicap the cinema as a whole has is its mutability. A film appears, say in the Charing Cross Road, for three days. One hears about it a day too late. Where can one look for it? There is no means of knowing. Those who know the ropes can, of course, by discovering the name of the company that owns it, ring them up and find out where it is to be seen. But the public doesn’t know that trick, and in any case why should it? Can one imagine for a moment that if Nigel Playfair had put The Beggar’s Opera on for three days at Hammersmith, then moved it to Shepherd’s Bush for another three, then to Euston, then to Whitechapel, and so on, that it would have run for more than a few performances? I feel very strongly about it. When I wanted to see Coster Bill of Paris again (not because it was an adaptation from Anatole France’s Crainquebille) but because Maurice de Feraudy’s acting of the title role was so superb and the trick photography particularly happy) I just missed it at the Super Cinema in Charing Cross Road, and then again in Bayswater. I have never seen it a second time. I probably never shall. I have never seen The Birth of a Nation. I know it is a very old film, but I wish it could be revived for a week. Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness by a happy accident I found about a couple of years late at the St. James’ in Buckingham Palace Road, where it was showing for one Sunday night only. Now all these films were definite landmarks in the artistic development of the cinema: they were as important to the cinema as the production of Back to Methuselah and The Adding Machine were to the modern stage. They were of course all, in a sense, high-brow films; that is to say, they were not stereotyped and they did appeal to a higher mentality than the average film. I am always being told that the cinema is not and never can be high-brow. That is just nonsense (or a misunderstanding of the word high-brow). Charlie Chaplin is very sophisticated, so is Felix the Cat (both of them are popular enough) and I call them distinctly high-brow. Very few of the films that have marked a definite development in cinematography during the past years have been roaring financial successes, except Griffith’s perhaps, but such films have been made and always will be made from time to time. I am simply complaining of the mutability of films which makes it impossible for many of those people who would appreciate the most novel, interesting, original films, ever to see them. It is important, really, that they should see them.

Comments: Iris Barry (1895-1969) was a British film critic and film curator. She was the founder of the film department at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In the 1920s she wrote on films for The Spectator, Vogue and the Daily Mail. Her book Let’s Go to the Pictures was a work of popular criticism, and helped lay the groundwork for her later work as a film curator. The films she refers to are Crainquebille (France 1922, English title Coster Bill of Paris), Körkarlen (Sweden 1920, English titles Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness and The Phantom Carriage) and The Birth of a Nation (USA 1915).

Let’s Go to the Pictures

Source: Iris Barry, Let’s Go to the Pictures (London: Chatto & Windus, 1926), pp. 165-166

Text: The next handicap the cinema as a whole has is its mutability. A film appears, say in the Charing Cross Road, for three days. One hears about it a day too late. Where can one look for it? There is no means of knowing. Those who know the ropes can, of course, by discovering the name of the company that owns it, ring them up and find out where it is to be seen. But the public doesn’t know that trick, and in any case why should it? Can one imagine for a moment that if Nigel Playfair had put The Beggar’s Opera on for three days at Hammersmith, then moved it to Shepherd’s Bush for another three, then to Euston, then to Whitechapel, and so on, that it would have run for more than a few performances? I feel very strongly about it. When I wanted to see Coster Bill of Paris again (not because it was an adaptation from Anatole France’s Crainquebille) but because Maurice de Feraudy’s acting of the title role was so superb and the trick photography particularly happy) I just missed it at the Super Cinema in Charing Cross Road, and then again in Bayswater. I have never seen it a second time. I probably never shall. I have never seen The Birth of a Nation. I know it is a very old film, but I wish it could be revived for a week. Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness by a happy accident I found about a couple of years late at the St. James’ in Buckingham Palace Road, where it was showing for one Sunday night only. Now all these films were definite landmarks in the artistic development of the cinema: they were as important to the cinema as the production of Back to Methuselah and The Adding Machine were to the modern stage. They were of course all, in a sense, high-brow films; that is to say, they were not stereotyped and they did appeal to a higher mentality than the average film. I am always being told that the cinema is not and never can be high-brow. That is just nonsense (or a misunderstanding of the word high-brow). Charlie Chaplin is very sophisticated, so is Felix the Cat (both of them are popular enough) and I call them distinctly high-brow. Very few of the films that have marked a definite development in cinematography during the past years have been roaring financial successes, except Griffith’s perhaps, but such films have been made and always will be made from time to time. I am simply complaining of the mutability of films which makes it impossible for many of those people who would appreciate the most novel, interesting, original films, ever to see them. It is important, really, that they should see them.

Comments: Iris Barry (1895-1969) was a British film critic and film curator. She was the founder of the film department at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In the 1920s she wrote on films for The Spectator, Vogue and the Daily Mail. Her book Let’s Go to the Pictures was a work of popular criticism, and helped lay the groundwork for her later work as a film curator. The films she refers to are Crainquebille (France 1922, English title Coster Bill of Paris), Körkarlen (Sweden 1920, English titles Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness and The Phantom Carriage) and The Birth of a Nation (USA 1915).