CHARLEY BRADY
H.P. Lovecraft (1890 – 1937), the Pale Prince of Providence himself, was known to send out mixed signals when talking about the cinema of his day. In a 1935 letter, he wrote:
“I first saw a play at the age of 6. Later, when the cinema appeared as a separate institution (it had been part of the Keith vaudeville since 1898 or 1899), I attended it often with other fellows, but never took it seriously. By the time of the first cinema shows (March 1906, in Providence) I knew too much of literature and drama not to recognise the utter and unrequited hokum of the moving picture.”
Yes, but…
As the world’s leading Lovecraftian scholar, S. T. Joshi has pointed out, Lovecraft’s private letters tell a different story: that of his considerable enjoyment of the fledgling art form in the 1910s and 1920s.
[I myself have written on Lovecraft’s relationship to film in The Lovecraft eZine, and have reprinted his 1915 Chaplin poem ‘To Charlie of the Comics’ elsewhere in Silent Times. HPL also did a take on the artistic merits of Chaplin when compared to Douglas Fairbanks.]
Lovecraft had something to say about Cinephile Paradiso’s chosen presentation (in conjunction with Silent Cinema Galway) of The Phantom of the Opera on 12th October. He once caught a showing in 1925, during his disastrous New York stay:
“…what a spectacle it was! It was about a presence haunting the great Paris opera house… but was developed so slowly that I actually fell asleep…during the first part. Then the second part began – horror lifted its grisly visage — & I could not have been made drowsy by all the opiates under heaven! Ugh!!! The face was revealed when the mask was pulled off… & the nameless legion of things that cloudily appeared beside & behind the owner of that face…”
IS THERE A THERAPIST IN THE HOUSE?
To the best of my knowledge, Lovecraft never saw our offering for October 19th, The Doll (1919). Neither did I. In fact, I sometimes wonder where Adam finds these.* It’s about a guy who marries a mechanical doll. And being at least marginally sane, that kind of thing creeps me out a bit. Well, a lot. Call me old fashioned but I’m still recovering from Mannequin – and there was a film that could only have been made in the 1980s! I saw it at the time and I’m still not the better for it. Put it this way: the band Starship had a song in it and that can never be a good thing. It was about a fella who fell in love with the mannequin that he had created.
Admittedly Kim Cattrall (Samantha from Sex and the City) plays the mannequin. And she is gorgeous. But still – HE FALLS IN LOVE WITH A FIGURE HE PUT TOGETHER FROM A MODEL KIT!
I can feel one of my funny headaches coming on.
Was it inspired by The Doll? You’ll have to ask Adam. He writes of that film:
“Let’s be real, this film feels like it could be the concept for an adult movie script. Perhaps it only exists in our minds, and if that’s the case, let’s just move on.”
Uh… what?!? Adam, we’ve become kind of friends over the past two years, but I gotta tell you, man… you’ve got issues.
MOVING SWIFTLY ON…
I was going to say that there can be no argument about our Halloween offering – this one showing at Pálás Cinema – on October 26th. If you are the least bit interested in film, then you’ve already seen The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari from 1920. And if you’ve already seen it then you probably want to see it again.
But perhaps it’s not quite accurate to say of it: ‘There can be no argument’…
The late, great Ivan Butler, who saw so many of our beloved silents on their actual release, has written of it:
“It is claimed to have influenced almost the whole aftermath of cinema, yet in itself to have been a dead end – much as, in the field of the novel, James Joyce’s towering masterpiece, Ulysses, changed the world of fiction but led only to Finnegan’s Wake. It has been described as a fine example of Expressionism transferred to the screen and equally staunchly held up as Surrealist and not Expressionist at all; as the seminal horror film; as a foreshadowing of the Nazi mentality; as an anti-authoritarian plea for pacifism; as a study of insanity – all of which, together with other interpretations, may well be partly true.”
Howard Philips Lovecraft – incredibly, given his interests – sadly didn’t get to see it. And it just wasn’t as easy back then to catch up with films that had been missed. In a letter to fellow writer and Lovecraft disciple August Derleth, dated 16th December 1926, he noted:
“Too bad we both missed ‘Dr. Caligari’, for it was by all accounts the best fantastic cinema ever produced.”
And since it will no doubt be discussed and reinterpreted in the Pálás bar afterwards, I’ll drink to that – and hope to have you join me.
Works consulted:
Primal Sources: Essays on H.P. Lovecraft by S.T. Joshi, Hippocampus Press.
Silent Magic: Rediscovering the Silent Film Era by Ivan Butler, Columbus Books.
charleybrady@gmail.com
*I hope, Charley, that my therapist will help me find the answer to this question! [AS]
