I work for the Library of Congress’s motion picture, broadcast, and recorded sound division. Our facility, located in Culpeper, Virginia, has a specially built, well-appointed, and beautiful theater that seats just over 200. Every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, we show “vintage” films pulled straight from our vaults for free. Last month alone, we showed A Hard Day’s Night, Moonstruck, and Harold and Maude.
Many of the films we show are from the National Film Registry. Founded in 1989, the National Film Registry is like the “dean’s list” for American movie making. They are films deemed by the Library of Congress of such aesthetic, cultural, or historical importance that they demand permanent safeguarding within the walls of the Library of Congress.
Twenty-five films are named annually to the Registry. As of this writing, over 600 films are currently on the National Film Registry. While most are famous full-length feature films (Gone With the Wind, Singin’ in the Rain, The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, etc.), a significant portion are far shorter. Some films on the Registry are only half an hour long – or short – and some early experimental films might be only a few seconds long.
I wanted to present an evening of some of these “less-long” works in our theater so that they could be highlighted, celebrated, and better known. But after I chose the titles after their reels were pulled from cold storage and after the schedule had been posted and sent out, I was seized by a disturbing thought: Was I doing the right thing?
Unlike Gone With the Wind or E.T. or many of the other famous works on the Registry, about half of the 16 films I had chosen to show had seldom, if ever, been screened theatrically before. They were not made to be shown theatrically. For example, the very early and very short Blacksmith Scene, from 1893, was made to be shown in a kinetoscope; the US Government-produced civil defense film Duck and Cover, from 1951, was produced to be shown in schools; and a 1943 filmed performance of Martha Graham dancing one of her most famous compositions, “Lamentation,” was made only for her reference and the reference of her small band of students. And Stan Brakhage’s Dog Star Man, Part IV, is probably more accustomed to being viewed in a gallery than an actual movie theater.
As this settled in, various self-inflicted accusations and thoughts began to fill my head. By showing these films on the big screen—amplifying their image, am I perverting these works? By showing them stripped of their original context, am I disrespecting them and/or disrespecting the intentions of their creators? And, perhaps worst of all, am I dooming them to a certain visual and aesthetic failure since they would be seen (experienced) in a way they were never necessarily meant to be seen?
So many questions arose: Is what was interesting and special in a nickelodeon just going to be rendered silly inside a 200-seat theater in front of a rapt and fully focused audience? Was what played well to an intimate group destined to fall flat in front of 100 or more spectators?
In some ways, these issues are issues that are constantly plaguing film and film distribution. It is the silent film screened without live musical accompaniment or projected at the incorrect speed; it is the Cinemascope epic shown on a standard-size screen (or on television!); or something shot in Hi-Def shown in no-def, among other problems. (I recall once sitting in a dentist’s waiting room and seeing next to me a man watching 2002’s Spider-Man movie on a handheld device, its screen no bigger than a playing card. Doesn’t that lose a little something?)
This then begs the question: Is context then everything? If so, that spells disaster for us all as the mash-up of our advancing technology continues apace with how we increasingly consume movies and, indeed, all types of media.
I thought that if I was going to show these short films in some new, originally unintended way, I would be in good company and following a long tradition. I wonder how people felt the first time Gone With the Wind or The Wizard of Oz was shown on television, especially on screens that completely dwarfed so much of their original grandeur. We know how the world reacted when Ted Turner tried to “colorize” all the black-and-white classics.
But, then again, every time an artwork loses something, just as often, it gains something through new framing devices and being seen within a new context. It is Shakespeare in the Park. It is Jeff Buckley’s slowed-down take on Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. It is much of Christo’s underlying message as he temporarily obliterates and redesigns our architecture and vistas.
One of the films I chose to show for the night of short films from the National Registry is 1957’s Let’s All Go to the Lobby by Dave Fleisher. (It was named to the Registry in 2000.) It was, of course, created as a before-the-movie, big-screen commercial, a way for theater owners to get theatergoers out to the concession stand – “Let’s all go to the lobby / Let’s all go to the lobby / Let’s all go to the lobby / To get ourselves a treat!” Similarly, another selection for the evening, the Kodachrome Color Motion Picture Tests of 1922, was also basically a sales tool. But now—for better or worse—we would ask the audience to view them differently. We were going to elevate them, as the Registry had already done. We were going to say these ads are art, even if they weren’t originally intended to be.
Therefore, it all comes back to the art, doesn’t it? Is it, the art, strong enough to stand on its own? Is it strong enough to withstand the shifting sands around it? After all, a true work of art is a work of art, no matter where it is. A Picasso masterpiece is still a masterpiece whether it is hanging on the wall of the Louvre or over the pool table in your basement. Furthermore, museums around the world – including many of the showcases within the buildings of the Library of Congress – are full of objects that have been liberated from their original intent and are now being celebrated in a way their creators never expected:
– The beautifully colored, finely stitched crazy quilt has been pulled from the bed and suspended from the wall, which is the best way to observe its craftsmanship.
– The carefully woven Navajo basket has been emptied of its contents (annulled of its actual purpose) and now sits on a pedestal, domed by glass.
– The classic car that will never see the open highway again is now the exhibit hall’s centerpiece.
Music is played and enjoyed everywhere, and books, by their very nature, are created to be enjoyed wherever they might be read. Art’s job is to take you away from where you are at the moment, into your own world, and into the mindset of their author/creators.
The role of art is also to change our perspective of the world around us, even regarding things we’ve seen hundreds of times before. Consider Marcel Duchamp’s renaming of a urinal as “Fountain”, or Andy Warhol reproducing the label of a Campbell’s soup can or replicating newspaper cover photos. On the gallery wall, we come to them with a different eye than we do when we view them on the grocer’s shelf.
Am I, therefore, following in the footsteps of Warhol et al. with this handful of short films, albeit on a much smaller and far less important scale? Hasn’t the Registry itself kind of already done that for me?
In some ways, the world has already beaten all of us to the punch. Martha Graham’s 1943 performance of Lamentation has already broken out of the confines of her school to be embraced by dance fans and historians. George Lucas’ 1967 Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1378 4EB, his USC student film, has already extended beyond its primary role as the final requirement for his degree. I and the Packard Campus Theater continue what each film has already accomplished. If they have outlived their original intent, they have not outlived their importance or power.