The Times (20/Feb/1946) - 50 years of films in Britain
(c) The Times (20/Feb/1946)
CINEMA BIRTHDAY
FIFTY YEARS OF FILMS IN BRITAIN
A NEW KIND OF ARCHIVE
By Ernest Lindgren, Curator, National Film Library
On February 20, 1896, at the Polytechnic in Regent Street, the London public were invited to attend the first of a series of demonstrations of the French "Cinématographe" of MM. Auguste and Louis Lumiere. None of the films shown on this occasion ran for longer than a minute. In between the films a lecturer, Francis Pochet, gave a descriptive commentary, and announced the titles: "The arrival of a train in a country station," "Baby's lunch," "The demolition of a wall," "Teasing the gardener," "A game of cards," "Surf boat leaving a harbour." The subjects were simple enough, no more in fact than single moving photographs (single shots, as they would be described to-day) projected on to a screen to a piano accompaniment of improvisations on popular tunes; that the photographs did, in fact, move was in itself sufficient novelty. To-day the date is being commemorated as the first public exhibition of films to a paying audience in Britain and the birthday of the British film industry.
The Lumiere brothers were by no means alone in the field. The possibility of a marriage between photography on the one hand and on the other the optical toy (for example, the zoetrope) which took advantage of the persistence of vision to create an illusion of movement, both of which date from the eighteen-thirties, had suggested itself to numerous inventors. Of these Rudge, Friese-Greene, and Le Prince in Britain, Marey and Reynaud in France, and Muybridge and Edison in America, are the best known. Each has had champions to claim for him the title of "true and onlie begetter," but a final settlement of these conflicting claims has yet to be made.
All commercial development of the cinematograph (it is the Lumiere trade name which has survived) seems to have sprung from the kinetoscope, a peep-show machine patented by Edison in 1891, incorporating an endless band of celluloid film carrying some 640 individual pictures. It was the examination of a kinetoscope which led both the Lumieres in France and Robert Paul in London to conceive the idea of a projector. It so happened that Paul demonstrated his theatrograph (later the animatograph) to a private audience at the Finsbury Technical College on precisely the same day as the Lumiere show opened, February 20. Had Paul been sufficiently acquisitive to charge only a penny a head admission, he would to-day, presumably, be sharing honours with the Lumieres; by such minutiae are priorities decided in this confused history.
WORLD-WIDE INFLUENCE
The prodigious growth of the new infant was not immediately foreseen. Sir Augustus Harris telegraphed Paul to meet him at breakfast to discuss the immediate installation of a projector at Olympia, where he was manager of a big spectacle; he justified his haste by saying that he was sure popular interest in the latest novelty would die out within a few weeks. To-day the film industry is of world-wide importance, attracting a weekly cinema attendance of some 235,000,000 (of which 100,000,000 is accounted for by the United States and 25,000,000 by Great Britain). It has become a purveyor of entertainment and news, an instrument of propaganda, a tool of education and research.
It was recognized from the first, however, that the film is also something else. It is a new form of historical document by means of which we can hand on to future generations, not merely a record of our time in writing and static picture and the evidence of museum collections, but a very facsimile of everything we can see and hear. To-day's anniversary seems an appropriate moment to cast back over the last 50 years and review the services which the film has already been able to render in the field of historical record.
The most striking fact which emerges is that by far the greater number of the many thousands of films made since 1895 have already been destroyed, either by wear, accident, or deliberate purpose. Over much of this material no tears need be shed, but the loss of some of it must be cause for lasting regret.
The film can serve the purposes of historical record on one condition only. Adequate care must be taken to preserve the delicate photographic image, and the even more unstable cellulose support upon which it is carried. This demands storage under most carefully controlled conditions and expert technical surveillance. Occasionally museums have accepted films offered to them, but with secret embarrassment rather than gratification, for they have not the means either to preserve or use them. What is required for these new media of the age of recording, for sound records as well as for films, is a new type of archive specially created and endowed to furnish the specialist attention they require. It was to fulfil this need in respect of films that the National Film Library was created in 1936 as a department of the British Film Institute.
The National Film Library already has nearly 4,000 films of varying dates from 1895 onwards. Every month its selection committee sifts the current feature films, shorts and newsreels, copies of which, are generously presented by the film companies on request (not, as in the United States, and as here for books, by obligation of the copyright law). Prints of early films are also acquired where possible. These films are kept in specially built storage vaults at a constant temperature and subjected to routine chemical tests at regular intervals. They are never used for projection; for this purpose projection copies must be made. When a preservation print nears the end of its life, which at present may be 50 years or more, it must be copied and the new print is then preserved.
VALUE TO HISTORY
Broadly, there are two ways in which a film may have historical value. In the first place, it may be an outstanding example of film art, the work of a gifted film technician or actor, or representative of some important development in film industry. As examples in this class, the National Film Library has a complete copy of the first Lumiere programme already referred to, the most complete single collection of early Chaplin films known to exist, D. W. Griffith's famous Birth of a Nation (which President Woodrow Wilson, it will be remembered, described as "history written in lightning"), the early German classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and the first British sound-film, Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail, made in 1929.
Secondly, a film may have value solely as a historical document. Pre-eminent in this class, of course, are the newsreels. Among the library's collection are to be found Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, Robert Paul's The Derby of 1896, the coronation processions of King Edward VII, King George V, and King George VI, Suffragette Demonstrations in London, The Delhi Durbar of 1911, The Sidney Street Siege (with Mr. Churchill as Home Secretary directing operations), the Wright Brothers' first aeroplane flight at Kittyhawk, United States, in 1904, and Boillot winning the French motor Grand Prix in 1913 at 22 miles an hour, to instance only a few of the earliest. Into the same class fall such records as that of Captain Scott's last voyage to the Antarctic, taken by Herbert Ponting, the complete negative of which is being kept by the library for the trustees. An example of another type of film document is Miss Frances Pitt's substandard colour film of the heron, a unique record of bird life which the library had copied on the advice of the Natural History Museum.
In practice, however, it is often impossible to separate these two aspects. An entertainment film may also be an eloquent social document; and a documentary record may also be a fine piece of film craftsmanship — Flaherty's Nanook of the North or Basil Wright's Song of Ceylon come instantly to mind. Moreover, as the cinema develops in technique and in technical resources, so it becomes more valuable as an instrument of record. The film records of this last war, for example, are much more comprehensive and vivid than those of the preceding one.
SERVICE TO THE PUBLIC
It may well be asked how these films are made available to the public, especially if it is impossible to project them. Individual bona-fide students may examine them on an editola, a table viewing apparatus. The library has been able to copy a small number of its more notable films, illustrating the development and technique of the films as an art, so that they can be lent to educational institutions and film societies. This loan section could be extended. In addition, the library might have its own small cinema where shows of historical films of public interest could be given. The Museum of Modern Art Film Library in New York gives several such shows a day, changing its programme twice a week.
Such developments are not possible, however, as the library is at present constituted. It is difficult, in fact, to see how such an archive can ultimately acquire the facilities or status to fulfil its function except as a unit of the national museum system receiving Treasury support. By some such development those who celebrate the cinema's hundredth anniversary may be provided with a clearer and more comprehensive view into the immediate past than we can boast to-day.
