Flicker (94 page)

When he'd recovered, I raised a subject that I knew would interest
him despite the weariness I could see taking hold of him. “I noticed you had a few Simon Dunkle films in your collection.” He squinted at me, not understanding.
“Big Stuffer. Sub Sub.”

He recognized the titles. “Yes, yes. Student projects. Very rough, very primitive. Also quite clever, though still immature. Rather too strong for my taste.”

This from the man who found Todd Browning's
Freaks
redeemingly humorous. How Simon would have appreciated the compliment. I explained, “He's primitive because he
wants
to be, not because he has to be. Also he's immature because he
wants
to be. His films are meant for a young audience. For kids.”

He was genuinely startled. “These films are being shown? Children see them? With the nakedness, the exploding bodies?”

“These films are a great success. Children love them. You see how it is? Less and less has to be hidden. Everything's coming to the surface. All your old subliminal techniques—not necessary. Nothing's forbidden. You should send back a request for more of Dunkle's movies. I'm sure the orphans can supply you with all his work.”

“He's an important man, you believe?”

“Not a man. A boy. Hardly twenty. As young as yourself when you started.” When he had taken that in, I let him know the rest, the one item of news I had left to tell him. “He's your disciple and successor.” He cocked his head inquisitively. “The first director the church has trained since its misadventure with you.”

“He is one of the orphans?”

“Like yourself. Only they've given him his own private studio at St. James School. Everything he needs—except, of course, his freedom.”

He reflected a long while on what I had told him. “After me I didn't think they would ever try again.”

“They have him well under control—at least for now. They plan to use him to invade television.”

“Television?”

“Movies at home. It's an invention that became popular after the war. Everybody in the world watches television now—even the Eskimos in their igloos.”

“Yes, the little box. I've come across it in many movies. Tell me, where do the pictures come from?”

“Out of thin air. They're broadcast like radio waves.”

“But then it isn't a projection. Where is the flicker?”

“I can't explain the technicalities. But television is still an art of light and shadow. There is a flicker. It's sort of braided into the picture. Dunkle uses it very effectively.”

“Movies in the home. How remarkable. What will happen to all the picture palaces?”

“Going out of business.”

He gave a bemoaning sigh for an era that had long since passed from the scene. “When they watch in the home, do they turn out the lights?”

“No, they leave them on. They eat supper, do homework, have arguments, carry on.”

“But that changes everything. There can be no feeling of isolation. For the flicker, you need darkness, like in a temple, a cave. Every person alone with his fantasies.”

“It works differently with television. The image projects itself directly on the viewer. The picture tube is like an eye that looks into its audience, a sort of hypnotic stare. Even together in the same room, people can be isolated, vulnerable.”

“Ah! Interesting.”

“Dunkle claims the video flicker drives every effect in deeper. The real screen is the retina of the eye—inside the skull. The skull is the cave. Imagine the psyche sitting inside there in its own dark, private theater.”

I could see he was impressed. Nodding thoughtfully, he said, “There are possibilities here.”

“I think you'd appreciate Dunkle's work. I know he admires yours. He plans to remake some of your films.
Count Lazarus, House of Blood.”

“My films? Remarkable.”

“He regards you as a prophet of the church.” He let out an incredulous little gasp, then waved his hand dismissively; but I could see he was moved by Simon's judgment. “Dunkle asked me not to let anyone know that. But I guess it's safe to tell you.”

“Well, well. A pity he won't be able to see my finest effort. That privilege seems to have fallen to you, my friend. Are you ready for the prophet's last prophecy?” He gestured back toward the shed. “The studio is yours for as long as you need. There is plenty of coal for the generator.” He rose and trudged off toward the bungalow. “I
look forward to hearing your opinion. If you care to nominate me for an Oscar, I will be highly honored.”

Astonished, I called after him. “Aren't you going to run the film for me?”

“No, no. Too tired. Time for my siesta.”

“Don't you want to watch with me?”

“No need to. I have it all up here.” He tapped his forehead. “The pure original. To tell the truth, I'm afraid what you find on the film may not live up to what I intended.”

“Haven't you ever looked at it?”

“I never looked at any of my work after it was finished. For that matter, I never really had to shoot the film. Once it was in my mind, it was complete, perfect. Of course, the studios insisted on having a product to sell.”

“You trust me to run the film myself? What if I damage it? It must be very delicate.”

He laughed. “Damage it? I expect you to
destroy
it. The splices could never go through the projector more than once. Maybe not even once. For all I know, some of the film may already have decayed. Thirty years in the can. Pity. It would be best if you could see the whole thing, take in the total structure. But it will be enough if you see reel thirty-seven—about ten minutes in, the parody on Dovzhenko. And the end of reel sixteen. Also the material from Lubitsch in reel twenty-one, toward the end. Notice how I have managed to touch up his lighting; the man never knew how to use shadows properly. And, ah yes, there is a sequence in reel twenty-nine—the best use of the flicker I ever put on film. Watch for Busby Berkeley at the Crucifixion. You can't miss it. Very irreverent—but only on the surface.”

He turned and started away again. I stared after him in disbelief. “You mean this is going to be the
only
screening?”

He stopped to look back, giving me his gap-toothed grin. “Did you think I was waiting to have an opening at Grauman's Chinese? In this case, my premiere is my derniére.”

Almost imploringly, I stammered, “Please, it's too much of a responsibility. I don't want to be the one to destroy your work.”

“What responsibility? Please. Be my guest. Enjoy yourself. There is an old American folk saying: It's only a movie,' right? Let it fall to pieces, burn to a crisp. I told you, the only film that matters is in here.” Again he tapped his forehead. He turned the corner of the
bungalow and was out of sight—but only for a moment. Then he stepped back into view, looking deeply thoughtful, something on his mind. “Is it still there?” he asked. “Grauman's Chinese?”

I waited a long while before I approached the little shed against the hillside. Despite the curiosity that bubbled inside me, I wasn't eager to enter. In my bones, I knew what I'd find there. More for his sake than mine, I wanted to put off the moment of dread discovery. Meanwhile, I let my thoughts drift back in time, remembering … I'd first encountered the great man's work in one sort of cave—a funky cinematic crypt called The Classic. Now, so many years later, somewhere at the crumbling edge of the world, I was entering another cave—a real one—to see what he regarded as his masterpiece. My quest would seem to have brought me full circle. But not really. The circle had turned into a descending spiral and I was riding it down and down toward unfathomed depths.

When I finally returned to the shelf of cartons that held his last movie, I looked for one of the numbers he'd recommended. Reel twenty-one came to hand; I quickly pried open the dusty, moldenshrouded box. It was like opening a coffin expecting to find a corpse … and finding a corpse. Not shocking, just sickening. As I feared, reel twenty-one, exposed to the light perhaps for the first time in years, turned out to be a wild tangle of curled, split, and corkscrewed film stock. It stuck out of its spool at all points like a dead porcupine flattened in the road. At the touch, shreds and coils of film came away in my fingers.

What else could I expect? He'd started with decayed film, had cut and pared it with crude instruments, smeared it with cement, and stuck it away to molder in a musty dungeon. Hopeless.

I opened another carton. Reel thirty-seven, which he told me improved
on Dovzhenko. At first the half spool of film I found in the box looked to be in better shape—until I touched it and found it annealed into a solid disk of nitrate, never to be peeled apart and threaded through a projector. After that, I despaired of finding as much as a few yards of viewable footage; still, I continued opening cartons. Each revealed a new plastic pathology. Film reduced to crumbs, to jelly, to dust. Film melting into goo, cracked into splinters, shredded into black spaghetti. I was learning all over again how fragile this greatest of all art forms is, a dream drawn by light on an evanescent polymer ribbon. As I explored the ruins, I was treated to a nasal montage of odors, the smell of old chemicals yielding to rancid organic vapors where he'd used one of his experimental cements—bird droppings perhaps, or resin. One carton, at my touch, set my skin to crawling—literally. My hand came back covered with ants. The carton, once opened, proved to be filled with them, busily devouring some sticky juice or tree sap he had spread over his splices.

I'd gone through some two dozen cartons before I stopped, heartsick. What was the point of searching further? The lower the numbers of the reels went, the more deteriorated their contents. For curiosity's sake, I hunted out box number one, presumably his earliest work. It was filled with a yellowish grit. Nothing recognizable as film survived; only scores, hundreds of pieces of the Mylar tape that had sealed his splices. Sifting through the rubble, I paused, my attention fixed upon what I found lying in my hand. How intricately, how fastidiously the tape had been cut; evidence of a maniacal precision. I'd never seen splices like these. They were sliced at bizarre angles, notched, pierced with holes, shaped into strange geometries. What had he been trying to do?

I searched back through the other cartons, looking for whatever remnants I could find of his editing craftsmanship. In one box I discovered a longish strip of newer film stock that still held together; it stretched out from the reel to some twelve feet in length before it cracked. Along the strip I found several oddly shaped splices both cement and tape. They made up a weird jigsaw of patterns. With infinite care, I lifted the strip to the editing bench and fitted one end into the viewer. I lit up the lens and delicately drew the film through, studying it frame by frame, especially at the splices, which in this case were at two or three points holding overlapping lengths of film in place—something no film editor would ever attempt to do. Staring
into the viewer, I was able to make out a familiar figure, though not at all what I might have expected to see.

Betty Boop.

The little mock-sexy vamp was doing her rubbery strut back and forth over a grainy background that, on closer inspection, turned out to be newsreel footage from one of the Nazi death camps. The scene was one of those hideous, slow panning shots of bodies, bodies, bodies laid out like broken dolls. I suppose that image holds a permanent place in the iconography of our time; but I've never been able to view the pictures without wincing and turning away—except this time. The juxtaposition of Betty Boop with this nauseating atrocity took stubborn hold of my attention. It was bizarre, even obscene. But it was so well done! Betty Boop, reaching down, skipping along, was gathering a bouquet of cartoon posies from the piled-up corpses, blithely gliding over horrors beneath her dainty, high-heeled feet. What I held in my hand couldn't have been more than a few minutes of a movie, yet it was enough to show me a prodigious skill at work fashioning virtuoso splices that produced a jarring marriage of images.

But what was the intention? Mockery? Sick humor? Or perhaps to capture in an offbeat way the sense of life renewing itself out of genocidal carnage? Without seeing more than this fragment, there was no way to know. For that matter, I would never have the chance to see this fragment again. As I cranked the film strip through the viewer, it was already disintegrating.

I went back to the cartons, searching for more samples. In reel twenty-nine I was able to salvage as much as three or four minutes of a sequence that featured Fred Astaire. I could recognize the scene. It was his famous “Puttin' on the Ritz” number from
Top Hat.
But here the high-spirited dance had been radically transformed. Tiny human figures had been etched along the bottom of the film. Under Fred's wildly tapping feet, they had been animated to flee for cover. When he pounded his cane on the floor, he seemed to be beating them flat. Sudden close-ups that had been spliced into his choreography showed anguished faces, broken bodies. Fred's face had been painted a lurid scarlet; he had become a cruel, punishing giant, laughing as he smashed and swatted in all directions. I guessed he was meant to represent the Cathar's unpitying Other God who lorded it over a suffering mankind. His lighthearted performance had become the bloody dance of Shiva.

In reel forty-two I found another several feet of film even more precariously patched together. In this case, he had achieved a longitudinal splice, two half films joined down the middle. The splice came apart in my hands even as I studied it, but I was able to feed the two halves into the viewer one by one. The left side of the film was an animal form—a panther on the prowl in a shadowy jungle. The right side was difficult to make out. Finally, after investing several minutes of eyestrain and using a magnifying glass I found in a drawer of the bench, I saw that it was a woman—or at least the lower torso of a woman—giving birth. I supposed this unsparingly clinical scene came from a medical documentary. The baby seemed to be struggling out of the womb directly into the claws of the hunting cat. Another familiar Cathar theme: we are born into death.