When last heard from, Beverly in Movieland had just toured
the storage vaults at Hollywood’s
Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study. It was a fascinating
experience, but there was much more to come. After we enjoyed the musical
pleasures of the American Fotoplayer (complete with auto horn and whoopee
whistle interjections), we were ushered into the spacious Linwood Dunn Theater
for a demonstration of what the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
does best.
The Academy has preserved films of many nations, everything
from Rashomon to Bambi Meets Godzilla. But one of its proudest achievements has been
restoring the work of the great Bengali director, Satyajit Ray. Ray’s Apu
Trilogy consists of three films (beginning with 1955’s Pather Panchali) that capture life in rural India in glowing
black-and-white. The films, which had been hailed by cinephiles the world over,
suffered a devastating blow when the British facility in which the original
negatives were stored caught fire. An Academy-produced documentary, Saving the Apu Trilogy, showed us just
how badly the films were damaged: their sprockets were gone, and many sections
were warped or fused together. Whole reels looked like they’d been barbecued to
a crisp. The Academy poured its resources into the problem, and – with the help
of a special lab in Bologna, Italy – managed to save the bulk of Ray’s
masterwork.
An unexpected part of the Academy archive is its collection
of home movies, which show Hollywood’s legendary movers and shakers at work and
at play. We saw Gary Cooper and famous art director Cedric Gibbons on the
tennis court, Marlene Dietrich socializing with friends, and Marilyn Monroe
cozying up to a fluffy pup on the set of The
Misfits. Early images of a sleepy Hollywood Blvd. were priceless. And the
son of the great Fayard Nicholas (one of two tap-dancing Nicholas brothers) came
up to the podium to introduce footage of his father hanging out with his uncle
Harold, and Harold’s beautiful bride, Dorothy Dandridge.
Because the Academy is also interested in cinematic
innovation, we watched a 1956 short called “The Miracle of Todd-AO,” designed
to promote a new wide-screen 70mm format. Inevitably, we were taken along on a
queasy-making roller-coaster ride, watched skiers swoosh down the slopes of Sun
Valley, and joined in a motorcycle chase through the hills of San Francisco,
more than a decade before Bullitt. The
whole thing ended in an unexpected commercial for an upcoming Todd-AO release,
the screen version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!
I also delighted in two short films from the Academy
collection, both of them featuring cats. One, made by Gus Van Sant, was a
live-action short capturing a pet feline trying to chase down a patch of
sunlight. The other, done in spectacularly fluid animation by Sara Petty back
in 1978, shows two Siamese cats cavorting in a delightfully sinister way. It’s
called “Furies,” and I could see why. Petty apparently made many animated
shorts in the course of her career, but a break-in at her storage locker tragically
robbed the world of much of her talent. Just one more reason that we need film
archives as repositories for great works of cinematic art.
The big news for film lovers is that the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences is finally taking steps to share its priceless
collections with the public. For years Angelenos have bemoaned the lack of a
serious movie museum in the town that movies built. Now construction is
actually underway on L.A.’s Miracle Mile. We‘re promised an “immersive environment”
that will help visitors explore the dream factory.
Bulletins as they break!
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| From Sara Petty's "Furies" |
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