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Sparkle (3)
There’s the adage that we must study history so that we don't repeat the past, but we must study history to respect the past, too. Two of this year’s Best Picture nominees, Hugo and The Artist, celebrate filmmaking in its earliest days. They capture people and places long forgotten by most. For me, much of this history was familiar. These films follow the path of my own family, who began in film over 100 years ago. These odes to the history of cinema are close to my heart.
Image Courtesy of GK Films
(Mild spoilers ahead, just saying...) I was puzzled when I first heard Martin Scorsese was making a family film, and in 3D no less. Once I saw Hugo, the choice of subject made perfect sense. It is a tribute to the history of film by a man who has put almost as much passion into preserving film's past as to creating its future.
Adapting Brian Selznick's book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Scorsese introduces audiences of all ages to Georges Méliès, a filmmaker whose many innovations –- from lighting to camera to editing -– are still used today. Méliès made over 500 films, including the iconic A Trip to the Moon. Of his films, about 170 still exist. Incredible considering 90% of films made before 1929 are gone.
My great grandfather, E.M. Asher, was a San Francisco kid, whose cousins owned one of the first Nickelodeons in the city at the turn of the century. He was just beginning his career in "moving pictures" at the time Méliès was fading into obscurity -– and neither was working in Hollywood. In the early teens, most studios were still in the east and some near the Bay Area.
Hollywood happened for various reasons: there was sunshine, the beach to mountain landscapes for locations and distance from Thomas Edison who has patented so many devices that you had to pay him for every movie you made. Across the country, indie filmmakers worked "around" Edison. (I don't feel too bad for the man. He didn't do much to appreciate the artists. Méliès planned to release A Trip to the Moon in in the US, but Edison stole a copy, released it nationwide and made a fortune. While Hugo changes some aspects of Méliès story, it goes unchanged that he ended up penniless.)
By the late teens, a number of my relatives moved to Hollywoodland. My great grandfather went to work for Mack Sennett. He'd go on to become a producer and at the time of his early death, in 1937, was an executive at Universal, where he'd partnered with Carl Laemmle, Jr. to produce films like Frankenstein and Dracula.
Watching The Artist, which takes place in the late 1920s-early 30s, was like looking at old family albums, right down to actress Penelope Anne Miller's platinum pin curls and silk pajamas, which mirror shots of my great-grandmother lounging in the Malibu sun.
At the time The Artist begins (1929) my great grandfather had produced a number of films. Many of the titles from before 1930 won't be found on the IMDB, but I know of them from newspaper clippings and production notes. The IMDB has a hard time cataloging what has turned to dust.
And that's exactly what happened.
Film is fragile. Many silents were destroyed once talkies came along -- no one made money showing them anymore. So, whether film disintegrated or the celluloid was melted down, much has been lost.
The stats are staggering: 90% of films made before 1929 are gone. And half of those made before 1950. That's why The Film Foundation, a labor of love by Scorsese, is so important. As are films like these that honor the visionaries who learned how to make magic with tricks of the lens or took the risk of giving actors voices.
Whether one of these wins Best Picture, they've achieved something more valuable by entertaining audiences while showing them a glimpse of the past. Of how fleeting both technology and fame are.
The Essanay Silent Film Museum, home of the former studio where Chaplin began in the US, is located near Silicon Valley not Tinseltown –- reminding all of us that the epicenter of cool can be a fleeting thing. The Silicon Valley could one day be just like Essanay, replaced by some far-off city that becomes the darling of the Info Age. Only time will tell.
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