Silent Classic Lit the Fuse..

It’s funny remembering the first moments of cinema you saw and the impact they had on you. My parents had gone off for the evening, leaving me in the care of two neighbours who were refugees from Stalinist Russia. From their choice of viewing it might be assumed Ivan and Katya were indulging in some clandestine political re-education of a progeny of the Capitalist West. Not so. In the relative comfort of our living room, warmth, food and drink and one another’s uninterrupted company, Ivan stared longingly into Katya’s eyes. She sighed a deep acquiescent sigh. Ivan walked over, switched on the television and then plonked me directly in front of it.

They did what they had to do while I sat riveted to Sergey Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. It is a silent film about a 1905 mutiny, released in 1925, so when the children were shot and dying mothers and babies were trodden on by the White Guard, no sounds echoed around our living room to alert my baby-sitters. I think I would have resisted any attempt to interrupt my viewing anyway. Clearly I had quickly grasped the point made by a film critic, that Potemkin was, ‘a work of extraordinary pictorial beauty and great elegance of form’.

The following year my parents took me with them to the village cinema. It was a strange experience:  huge screen, big sound and bright, bright colour. It had a plot that left me behind within the first few minutes and seemed to jump at any excuse to break into song and dance. Did I really understand any of it?

Parents: ‘White Christmas - Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye!  You’ll enjoy it!’

Child: ‘Who’s the lady with the glossy lips and shiny hair? Why is her hair so shiny? Why is she sad? Why do they keep singing?  Did they do that in the war?’

Parents:  ‘Be quiet!’

Child: ‘What kind of dancing is that? Are they on ice? Why has that lady got no skirt on?’

Parents: ‘Be quiet!’

But there was one moment of connectedness. The last scene is clearly climatic and full of symbolism. Suddenly someone shouts ‘It’s snowing!’ The doors behind the stage are pulled open, revealing a landscape covered in snow like a living postcard. Everyone including the cinema audience goes ‘Aawww!’ And then they break into a tear-jerking: ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the one….etc etc etc.

To me, the backdrop was obviously hurriedly painted and it drew my mind back to the first scene (depicting soldiers in WW2) with its cardboard buildings and lurid Van Gogh skies. Is that when the connectedness ended? Perhaps. Is that when my preference for location shoots began? Certainly. Even at the young age, I was much more convinced by Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin than I ever was by White Christmas. I’m just not sure which is the most healthy for a five-year-old to watch.