Flicker (53 page)

He seemed surprised by the request. Glancing ostentatiously at his watch, he agreed. “Why, yes, of course … if it would interest you. I believe I can spare a short time.”

He led me on the brief tour himself, offering little more than minimal identification of the rooms and facilities along the way. Mainly there were classrooms where small groups of somber students sat at desks while one of the priests or nuns conducted the lesson. There was a good-sized though dismal library, a gymnasium, a few science labs that seemed quite well-equipped.

After perhaps an hour, we arrived at a lower level of the main building. Dr. Byx opened a door and ushered me into a brightly lit, freshly painted room that had been recently renovated. If I didn't know a thing or two about the orphans, I would have been astonished by what I saw: row upon row of worktables, and on each a moviola. Several children were working with maximum concentration at the equipment, many of them with obvious great competence. Suddenly the medieval solemnity of the orphanage had given way to the hubbub of a modern trade school.

Dr. Byx allowed me to wander through the room, stopping here and there to observe students at work. He seemed curious to register my responses to what I saw. The children carried on at their chores almost oblivious to my presence. Each was scrutinizing a film on the moviola, running it fast, slow, stopping at certain frames, taking notes. A few were being shown how to cut and splice. We paused beside a table where a girl of perhaps sixteen was intently studying a film, flicking it along frame by frame. The images were those of a man and woman swimming. She ran some thirty seconds of the movie, then rewound and played the sequence through again and then again. Since she didn't seem to mind, I bent closer to the moviola screen and suddenly recognized a face. It was Joel McCrea, the film star. He was cavorting in the water with … I stared at the screen again. What was her name … ? Ah yes. Dolores Del Rio.

“I know that movie,” I announced to Dr. Byx. “It's …” But I couldn't recall the title.

Dr. Byx turned to the girl at the machine, questioning her in German.
“Der Paradiesvögel,”
she answered.

“Bird of Paradise”
he told me.

“Oh yes.” I'd seen the film years ago on late-night television, an old Hollywood romance of the islands. A totally undistinguished film. I wondered why the girl should be studying material like this so attentively.

“Hardly a classic,” I commented tactfully.

“You must understand,” Dr. Byx answered, “our emphasis here is on the technical aspect of film. Also we draw as often as possible upon the work of our own graduates for instructional purposes.”

“One of your students worked on this film?”

“Many years ago. Before my time. In this case, the lighting as well as the editing, I would guess.”

“Do you mean that if I looked up the credits on this movie I'd find the names of your alumni there?”

Dr. Byx assumed a dubious expression. “Possibly. But also, perhaps not. Often, in the studios, during this early period—especially in America—it was difficult to say who worked on the technical elements of a film. Many times our students went unrecognized for their efforts. In this case, the underwater swimming sequence is rather highly regarded by our teachers. Technically speaking, it is something of a ‘classic.'”

I stared again at the moviola screen. Over and over again the girl at the controls was watching Joel McCrea dive and swim out from under the keel of a boat, finally catching Dolores Del Rio in his arms. Then the two splashed and laughed and swam offscreen. As I looked, the scene did seem to take on a certain mesmeric effect. It was the water. It lit the little screen with stripes and spangles of light that were distinctly reminiscent. I'd seen Max Castle use water like that in more than a few of his movies.

When I looked up, Dr. Byx was wearing a small, wry smile. “It has a certain quality, don't you find?”

I turned back to the girl at the moviola, still hard at work, unmindful of my presence. Now she'd taken out an instrument and was holding it to her eye. With it, she was studying the film as it passed in slow motion. I recognized the instrument at once, though it was somewhat different from the one I'd used in Zip Lipsky's screening room: longer and made of some form of plastic, clearly a new product.

“That's a sallyrand, isn't it?” I asked. I could see Dr. Byx didn't understand the term. “The viewing device …”

He gave me a surprised look. “You've seen one of these elsewhere?”

“Max Castle's old cameraman had one. He let me use it.”

“He still has it?”

“He's dead now. I don't know what became of the sallyrand. I gather that's not its proper name.”

“We call it an anamorphic multifilter. It allows a more complex analysis of the light. It is one of our own inventions.”

“May I … ?” I asked the girl at the moviola, reaching out to take the sallyrand from her. She looked up at Dr. Byx, seeking permission. He deliberated, then nodded yes, but first leaned forward to work the moviola.

“Let me adjust this for you,” he said. Quite expertly, he speeded the film forward several seconds. “There. You may find this of interest.”

He had moved the film beyond the encounter of Joel McCrea and Dolores Del Rio that the girl had been studying. That left me to wonder what he had elected to pass over before letting me apply the sallyrand. What I saw when I looked was an image with which I was very familiar: Max Castle's vortex of light, the all-consuming maelstrom that sucked everything on the screen down into darkness. As impressive as the effect was, I felt certain I'd missed something earlier. In the grammar of Castle's subliminal techniques, the whirlpool always punctuated the end of a run of images, finishing with a mood of intense depression or anxiety. In “adjusting” the film for me, Dr. Byx had raced by the material I might most have wanted to see.

“Very clever,” I said after observing several seconds of the movie. I returned the sallyrand to the girl. “Have you ever considered making your multifilter available commercially?”

Dr. Byx laughed off the suggestion. “Such a primitive little toy! I'm sure no professional filmmaker would find it of value. It is for us a teaching device, nothing more.”

“Would you be willing to sell me one?” I asked.

I could see him groping for an excuse to say no. “Just now … they are in short supply. We have too few for our own students. But I will keep your request in mind.” He wasn't even trying to do a good job of fibbing.

We stopped at the door for one last look back across the room.

“It's so unusual for an orphanage to teach filmmaking,” I commented, hoping to draw out some further explanation of this remarkable scene.

“And yet, why not?” Dr. Byx responded. “In the past, orphanages
always sought to teach their children useful trades. Carpentry, shoemaking, tailoring. In the modern world, filmmaking is a trade at which our pupils can expect to find employment in many parts of the world.”

“I wasn't criticizing,” I hastened to add. “In fact, I think it's admirable that you give your students the chance to do creative work.”

“Creative? I'm afraid not really so. As I have said, we limit our training to the technical side of cinema. Lighting, cinematography, editing. Especially editing. And, lately, special effects. We expect there will always be a job market for these skills.”

“But Max Castle was a director.”

“True. But that was a long while ago. You see, in those early days, one could have no idea that directing would ever become something more than a technical function. At first, the director was no more exalted a figure than the cameraman. Very soon, however, thanks to men like your Mr. Griffith, he took on a larger, more artistic role.”

“But what's wrong with artistry?”

He answered with a weary sigh. “With artistry comes temperament. And with temperament comes unpredictability. It is not easy to control temperamental people.”

“You want to control your students—even when they're out in the world on their own?”

Dr. Byx gave me a long, blank look. I felt he'd said more than he intended. He corrected himself. “Only in the sense that we wish to remain proud of our students' efforts. We want them to respect the highest standards. A man like Herr Kastell … he can become quite erratic.”

“So you no longer train directors?”

“Not for some time—mainly due to our experience with Herr Kastell. But the question has been under discussion now for many years. Perhaps one day again …”

As we left the film-editing lab, we passed a door with a small window in it. Through it, I saw a darkened room; the bright shaft of a projector beam cut through the blackness toward a screen I couldn't see. I asked Dr. Byx if I might go in. He weighed the request. “Do you speak German?” he asked.

”No”.

“You may not find it very illuminating then. However …”

He led me to another door that opened into a projection booth where one of the priests was working the machines. There was a small auditorium out front where perhaps a few dozen students were sitting.
A lecture was in progress. I could follow none of it, but I recognized the movie that was its subject. Performing in jittery, stop-frame slow motion on the screen before me were little Shirley Temple and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. The excerpt was from
The Littlest Rebel,
a scene frequently reproduced in film histories and on movie posters, an enduring Hollywood icon. Clare, no Shirley Temple fan, had once shown it at The Classic as part of a tribute to Robinson, accompanying the screening with an essay on what even the best black talent had to put up with at the hands of the studios. Without music, Robinson and Shirley pranced up a short flight of stairs, turned, and tap-danced back down. Then the screen went dark, and the sequence, which had been looped in the projector, began again. As in the moviola room, this seemingly inconsequential scene, perhaps a minute long at regular speed, was being studied in fine-grained detail. The priest who was lecturing was pointing to areas of the screen where I could see nothing of special importance. At his direction, the projectionist would from time to time brighten the image or take it almost to total dark.

I did notice, as these transformations took place, that there was an interplay of light and shadow in the background of the shot that shifted across the figures of Shirley and Bojangles; it seemed to counterpoint the juxtaposition of the fair white child and the old black man. The crucial point in the sequence was apparently the moment when the two performers turned at the top of the stairs and started back down. This few seconds of film was shown over and over, with the priest briskly underscoring its importance. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, I could see a few of the students scrutinizing the screen through sallyrands. But even without the aid of the instrument, after four or five frame-by-frame repetitions I became aware of something unusual … a descending shadow between the girl and the man. It fell across a bright highlight on Bill Robinson's shiny dark brow and then seemed to curl oddly toward Shirley.

Experienced as I was in Max Castle's subliminal techniques, I flashed on this as the sort of effect he might have engineered in one of his films—or allowed to be placed there by the Reinking twins. Of course, without much closer study, I couldn't tell what might be concealed in the images I was watching, but clearly these students were being taught the same craft that Castle had learned two generations ago in his days at the orphanage. And one more thing. As so often when I viewed Castle's work, I felt a subtle unease coming
over me, a distaste that utterly undermined the intended innocence and good humor of the movie I saw before me. It was a queasiness that I would never have associated with the likes of Shirley Temple.

I bent toward Dr. Byx and asked in a low voice, “Was this film also worked on by some of your alumni?”

“Yes.”

“Another classic moment, I gather.”

He smiled back at me. “If one knows what to look for.” I had the distinct sense that he was toying with me, trying to discover how I reacted to the few examples of classroom instruction he had allowed me to observe. Dr. Byx had no idea how much more I knew about Max Castle's subliminal methods than I revealed in the writing he'd seen. Was he attempting to find out?

When we left the screening room, I asked, as casually as possible, “Are you familiar with a French film scholar named Victor SaintCyr?”

“Oh yes. He has also been studying Kastell's work lately. I have a paper of his. Very typically French. So arid, so geometrical.”

“I had a visit with him in Paris a few weeks ago. It was very instructive.”

Dr. Byx nodded. “No doubt. These days, film is studied so closely by so many experts. Who would ever have predicted that? It is really no longer possible to have one's little secrets.”

“The
Unenthüllte.
Is that what you mean?” The word didn't register with him, or at least he didn't let it show. “I believe that's what Castle called it. The Unrevealed.”

“Ah, I see. Very like Kastell to lay it on so thick. If you have read M. Saint-Cyr's paper, you know that his
Unenthülltin
were nothing more than so many optical illusions. Perhaps M. Saint-Cyr analyzed a few of these for you.”

“He did. And there were some others I'd already managed to uncover myself.”

“Then you recognized what our students were learning just now. A little exercise with split lighting.”

“Oh yes. Castle used it extensively. He learned these techniques at the orphanage, then?”

“Some of them, yes. And some we learned from him after he had left us. As the technology developed, he was able to find new devices. A clever man. Better than many of our editors. He would return from time to time to instruct our faculty—usually expecting to be well paid
for his lessons. At that time, such methods were known only to our school. That is why I referred to them as ‘secrets.' But now …”