| Submitted by: Evelyn C. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 11 February 2005 |
|
 |
|
I had never seen or read this play before, but there were familiar sections ('This other Eden, demi-paradise, / This fortress built by Nature for herself / Against infection and the hand of war, / This happy breed of men, this little world, / This precious stone set in the silver sea, / Which serves it in the office of a wall / Or as a moat defensive to a house, / Against the envy of less happier lands, / This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.' et al). Jacobi was, of course, good and I enjoyed seeing a new (to me) Shakespeare play. (We could have chosen RICHARD III, but Mark wanted something new.) I won't review the play, but will leave that for Mark, though he may feel that he needn't review a Shakespeare play as thoroughly as a newer work.
The safety curtain was the most ornate we've seen. Theatres are obliged to lower the safety curtain at least once during each performance and usually do so during the interval (intermission). Some are plain, some have a flowered border, but this one looked like a medieval tapestry with an elaborate hunting scene.
After the play we had a snack at Garfunkel's, and then walked back to the hotel. Many people recommend the Transit Card (unlimited use of the Underground for 1, 3, 4, or 7 days), but we find it doesn't pay because walking is so interesting that we don't take the tube enough to make it worthwhile. (Four trips a day is the break-even point.) For non-walkers, it's a good deal. Probably if it were raining, it would be a good deal for us too.
March 31, 1989: Breakfast at 7:30 AM, then a rest until 9:30, when we took the tube down to the Embankment. Susan got off earlier to see Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey, etc., but the rest of us were heading for the Museum of the Moving Image. To get there we crossed the Thames on the Hungerford Foot Bridge, which afforded us a marvelous view of London, including Cleopatra's Needle and St. Paul's. There also were a lot of homeless people begging near the bridge. This phenomenon was much more noticeable than on past trips, though not at the level one finds in New York. Mark commented that he thought the British public assistance system would have precluded this--we may ask our guide.
We spent three hours in the Museum and, while we could have spent longer, I think we saw most everything. (The additional time would have been spent watching more newsreels, Laurel and Hardy films, documentaries, or early television in the exhibits running them.)
The Museum starts out with early experiments: anamorphic art, camera obscura, fantasmagorie, and so forth. Then there is a section on the early pioneers such as Muybridge, Marey, Edison, and Reynaud. Larger sections follow devoted to Lumiere and Melies. One of the 'moving' exhibits--an anthology of segments from early silent films--is next, and then a sequence of exhibits documenting the spread of cinema world-wide and the 'Birth of Hollywood' (actually prompted by the filmmakers' desire to get away from the trusts on the East Coast), as well as the 'Temple of the Gods,' a tribute to such screen idols as Rudolph Valentino and Clara Bow. A special section is devoted to Chaplin; the changing exhibit at the end was also about Chaplin in celebration of the 100th anniversary of his birth. (Did you know he played Billy, the page boy, in William Gillette's SHERLOCK HOLMES? Did you care?)
The next exhibit is one of the most interesting and one where more time would have been welcome: the Russian agit-train. This is a mock-up of a train car such as was used to show propaganda films during and after the Revolution (the Russian Revolution, of course). There are six or seven different films they were showing excerpts from in a cycle, including some Eisenstein and some Dovzhenko. A museum employee dressed as a Russian revolutionary stands outside the train haranguing the visitors to come in and then describes the film being shown in a thick Russian accent. Apparently the 'filthy capitalist pigs' (as he calls them) refused to sell film stock to the Russians after the Revolution, so already existing footage was used and re-used as much as possible (sounds like Roger Corman). We watched a film (newsreel?) about a cream separator. There were more exciting films coming up (BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, OCTOBER, EARTH, and STRIKE), but we needed to press on.
The avant-garde cinema exhibit, including the showing of 'Un Chien Andalou' (which I did not watch) is next. I spent my time instead looking at the German Expressionism display, complete with photographs of METROPOLIS and even a large model of Maria.
The 'coming of sound' exhibit is more like the 'history of sound,' from the early piano accompaniment through early sound recording all the way through Dolby sound. Each stage is demonstrated with film and sound using that technique, and makes the information more immediate than just a written description would have.
The censorship section tells more about British censorship than one normally hears in the United States. The first 'production code' consisted of two rules: 1) No nudity, and 2) No depiction of Christ. The latter was synchronistic with our recent discussion of the silent BEN HUR in which Niblo (the director) had to go to great lengths to avoid showing more than just an arm or a foot. (In the Last Supper sequence he was forced to position Christ in the center rather than off to one side, and so had to put a waiter in front of Him, blocking Him for the whole scene.)
(Time for a totally irrelevant sidebar here. When Jews are writing about Jesus, should they call him Jesus or Christ? For that matter, should it be 'He' and 'Him' or 'he' and 'him'?)
(We now return you to your normally scheduled log.)
Anyway, as I was saying, gradually more and more rules were added, until the head of the British censorship board was able to say that the public could rest assured that it was impossible to do a film about any of the important issues of the day. Those times are past; now they could make films about the important issues today, but they don't want to, because no one would go see them.
The newsreel exhibit consists of various newsreels of famous (and not so famous) events. They have the Hindenberg disaster, the liberation of Auschwitz (followed, in an unfortunate juxtaposition, by a cricket match), and other such sequences. The documentary section is another where more time could have been spent. On the other hand, French cinema of the 1930s interests me very little, so that exhibit didn't cost much time for me.
The animation display describes and illustrates the many techniques of animation. It also has several monitors showing various examples, including 'Gertie the Dinosaur.' Again, with more time we could have seen all the film clips.
The Hollywood exhibit is actually several, each on a different aspect of production (make-up, sets, costuming, etc.). The special effects display has a copy of the final scene of KING KONG (actually the penultimate scene, the final scene being on the ground) and one of the actual models used by Willis O'Brien for MIGHTY JOE YOUNG. They also run on a large screen a compilation of famous scenes which I've seen before, either before a film in New York or during an Academy Awards ceremony. (I lean towards the former, since I think we would have kept it on tape had it been the latter.) I can't recall absolutely the title, but I think it was something like 'Precious Images.'
The 'Birth of TV' is mostly about television in Britain, including Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, the first coronation broadcast live. Sets went for one hundred pounds each and that was when a pound was worth almost $5. King Edward V's coronation was the first one filmed; I know they filmed Queen Victoria's funeral procession.
A section on British cinema is followed by the MOMI cinema, a screening room where they were running old Laurel and Hardy shorts. The ushers kept waving their flashlights around and making loud comments about the patrons, possibly in an attempt to make it seem like a real 1950s movie house, but it was merely annoying and they kept getting shushed.
Much of the remainder of the Museum is devoted to television, including early television dramas such as the Quatermass series, which gets particular mention. It's hard to believe that they so enthralled the British public, but apparently they did. 1984 (with Richard Burton) caused such an uproar that the 'rerun' was canceled. (A rerun in the days of live television consisted of all the actors just doing it again.)
There is some science fiction in the television section ('Dr. Who' et al) and at the end a small display devoted just to science fiction and horror. This seemed in one sense strange since there is not a section devoted to Westerns, nor one to gangster films, nor any to any other genre. On the other hand, the Museum knows what's popular and sells.
We finished up browsing in the museum shop. I bought a couple of postcards and an exhibit catalogue; Mark bought a poster from THE FLY (the original one with Al Hedison).
Kate went off to the Tate Gallery in search of William Blake's engravings. She didn't find them, but they did have a collection of his paintings, so she was happy. We walked back toward the West End, passing the Sherlock Holmes Pub and Trafalgar Square. We had taken pictures of them previous trips, but always in the rain, and now it was bright and sunny. So we took more pictures.
We proceeded to Chinatown (surrounded by the theatre district) and selected a restaurant for lunch. Lunch was pork and abalone soup, squid in chili sauce, and Singapore fried rice noodles. We also had tea--unlike American Chinese restaurants, British ones charge separately for tea and for rice. It was all yummy (except possibly for the noodles, which were more gummy than yummy). And, as usual, we paid by credit card. It's easier here, they don't ask for your address or phone number each time. We changed only $200 in cash and probably won't need more--in fact, we sold some of our pounds to Susan.
We strolled back to the hotel after lunch, visiting all the Charing Cross Road bookstores we had skipped before. One of them had--in synchronicity with my comment of the previous day (see page 9)--a first edition of an Olaf Stapledon book I didn't have. (At least I don't think I do--it's only about 100 pages and could be part of one of the collections, but I don't think it is.) My first trip to London I also bought a 'new' Olaf Stapledon (NEBULA MAKER), but couldn't manage to find one last trip. So it's not quite a tradition yet.
84 Charing Cross Road is now, alas, a music store. It could be worse, I suppose--it could be a souvenir shop. There is a plaque on the outside wall, indicating it was once the home of Marks and Company, made famous by Helene Hanff.
Our last stop was the Samuel French Theatre Bookshop about four blocks from our hotel. Samuel French is a major publisher of playscripts in the United States (another is the Dramatists' Play Service--in both cases, they publish 5' by 7' chapbooks--you'd recognize them if you saw them). We bought five scripts here: BREAKING THE CODE (which we had seen on our last trip), SINGLE SPIES, LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES, SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE CURIOUS ADVENTURE OF THE CLOCKWORK PRINCE ('a Victorian romp'), and A WALK IN THE WOODS. It is a wonderful store--where New York theatre bookstores seem to concentrate on currently running plays and theatre souvenirs, Samuel French in London bypasses the souvenirs in favor of an exhaustive selection of current, older, and out-of-print plays. (For those of you who want something closer to the West End theatres, Foyles has quite a respectable playscript section as well.)
Before going back to the hotel, Mark showed me the Queen's Head and Artichoke Pub. It does exists but is a relatively new pub and has only a metal sign with a stylized Queen's head and artichoke on it. I was hoping for one of those wonderful painted pub signs of the Queen with an artichoke crown or some such.
When we got back to the hotel we changed clothes, rejoined Kate and Susan, and had dinner. |
|
| Copyright © - "Evelyn C. Leeper" |
|
 |
| Other travelogues by the same author: |
|
|
|
