LYRICAL NITRATE
*** (A must-see)
The full title of this compilation, put together in Holland by Peter Delpeut in 1990, is Lyrical Nitrate, 1905-1915: Fragments From the Distribution Catalogue of Jean Desmet. Desmet bought all the films between 1905 and 1920 for his movie theater in Amsterdam, the Cinema Parisien, and stored them in the theater’s attic until his death in 1956; since then they have been housed at the Nederlands Filmmuseum. The films aren’t identified by title or date until the final credits. Judging from those credits, there are more than just Dutch films here–French, German, and English titles are also prevalent, and it’s possible (though hard to tell from the fast-moving list of titles) that films of other nations are represented as well.
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The lush tones of the cinematography (which includes some wonderful uses of deep focus) combine with the excitement of getting fugitive peeks at life in various parts of the world during the early part of this century. If the film’s fascination often seems deliciously prurient, it may simply be because of the tyranny of current movies, which makes the raw past a territory still waiting to be explored–an undiscovered country made to seem all the more poignant and precious when we see it disintegrating right before our eyes.
Because nearly all of the clips are used to make certain cinematographic points, some of their other qualities are understandably given short shrift. For example, we glimpse the hero’s walk through the marshes at the beginning of Sunrise (1927)–which coincidentally I mentioned last week in my review of The Long Day Closes as an example of a visual depiction of the movement of thought–but all we see is the final moment and not most of what makes that shot so subversive. On the other hand, one of the most astonishing clips used here, coming from a Hollywood feature I’ve never seen, Possessed (1931)–Joan Crawford watching a passing train from a railroad platform, with each car and its inhabitants individually lit like a separate stage setting–has a poetic power that, for all I know, may be diluted or displaced in the context of the feature itself.
