A Cup of Coffee

The ghosts of the Keystone Cops

It was the year of 1905. Something happened then that changed the history of movies. By this time, motion pictures used to be an attraction in fairs and wandering amusement parks, like the bearded woman and the strong man. Then, in Pittsburgh, in a working class neighborhood, someone had a bright idea. They turned an old empty warehouse into a movie place to show a piece called "The Great Train Robbery". It didn't seemed to be that bright an idea then. Movies had to be roaming around to find an audience. People easily got tired of them, it seemed the general consensus. The general consensus was wrong. Immediately, people flocked to see that movie in a way that the owners had to start showing the movie at 8 am till midnight daily. In his book, "History of World Motion Pictures", the French critic Georges Sadoul compares this event to the finding of gold in California in 1847. Realizing the huge potential movies had, new "theaters" started opening all over, all in search of one nickel per head. To appease the huge hunger for new movies, some of the exhibitors started producing their own pictures. A new industry was born.

I have been doing my homework over this weekend, reading and writing my first assignment for my Graduate school program. I also found out that it is pretty feasible for me to try to get to a master's program next year in the university with my project. It is pretty exciting, but I still feel constrained by my limitations of means here. I need books desperately, and not only the limited bibliography my orientator suggested. My Amazon wish list is getting longer and longer. I need to see more movies too, so I can really experience what I am talking about. In those DVDs days, it is hard to imagine how someone used to write books about movies in the 60s and 70s.

The most incredible coincidence was this. Yesterday, as I was zapping TV channells, I stumbled into a documentary about silent movies. It was half way gone when I found it, and it didn't seem to be a well of information, but even then I got very, very excited. I saw Mack (and Mabel). I saw the backstage of a Chaplin filming. I saw the Keystone Cops running after some poor fellow. I couldn't keep an objective, unpassionate eye, though. It is silly, but when I see these old, old movies, I keep thinking of all these people on them. They are all long gone now, but they still make me laugh. I wonder what happened to each one of the Cops, if they had happy lives, if anyone of them hit it big in the movies later, if their kids and grandkids saw their early antics and got a kick out of it. I wonder if later they regarded those times nostalgically or bitterly, as they went through the Big Depression and then the Second World War.

Some cultures don't see photographs and films with a good eye. They believe that by being photographed or filmed, the soul is forever captured in a piece of paper or celluloid. Watching the cops run, almost 100 years later, I think that this might be right.

posted by Livia de Almeida @ 10:51 AM