Journal of Film Preservation N° 60/61 - FIAF

James Card
James Card falleció el 15 de enero de este
año, en un hospital en Syracuse. Fue a la
vez uno de los talentosos salvadores del cine
de los primeros tiempos (junto con Iris
Barry, William K. Everson, Ernest Lindgren,
Jacques Ledoux, Henri Langlois y Vladimir
Pogacic), y un hombre que vivió
intensamente su vida. Fue él quien resucitó
la leyenda de Louise Brooks, luego de su
encuentro con ella en New York en 1955.
Card fundó el Motion Picture Department at
George Eastman House en 1949, y a partir
de ese momento se valorizaron numerosos
tesoros y talentos del cine mudo en la
pantalla. En 1972, con Tom Luddy, Card
tuvo la idea de crear un festival al que el
sólo llegar ya constituía una hazaña mayor:
Telluride. Card se retiró discretamente
cuando el festival se popularizó.
Card había forjado su universo en 1955,
cuando creó el premio George Eastman, con
el que distinguió a genios como Mary
Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, John Ford, King
Vidor y Frank Borzage. Este premio se sigue
otorgando cada dos años. Lo recibió Meryl
Streep en 1999.
El único libro publicado de Card, Seductive
Cinema (1994), debía ser una historia del
cine mudo y terminó siendo una suerte de
autobiografía. Las auténticas memorias de
James Card, empero, se encuentran en las
imágenes de las películas que ayudó a
rescatar, en sus mapas viales anotados de
Colorado, en su epistolario con Louise
Brooks. Algunas cartas de la actriz aún se
conservan bajo sellado en cajas de archivos
de la George Eastman House. Louise había
pedido que estas cajas no se abrieran antes
del 2006.
and distributed to a select group of friends. I was honored and, at the
same time, a bit worried at having become part of that circle. Card
greeted me by the front door of his house in some sort of fox hunt
attire, wearing riding boots and carrying a whip in his right hand.
This he wielded with all the theatrical presence of Von Stroheim at
his teutonic best . With the same display of understated yet evident
authority, he let me in with the implication that my presence there
was a privilege I ought to acknowledge. My concern grew further
when Card started asking me questions about the silent films I had
seen. Clearly, he was testing me. I must have given the right answers,
because within half an hour his dictatorial allure melted into an
attitude of sheer complicity. He explained that the collection he had
put together at the George Eastman House was his own answer to the
politique des auteurs developed by Iris Barry at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York. “Griffith didn’t invent anything”, he would
argue, “but MoMA is committed to some sort of cult of the
personality. But you know, there wasn’t only Griffith. There were
Ince, Tourneur, Collins. There were all the pioneers of Pathé, Edison,
Gaumont. Have you seen the Messter Alabastra shorts I found?
They’re at the Museum, you know. Without all these people, Griffith
would not have existed as a director.”
That’s true, Griffith isn’t the whole history of silent cinema. Saying
this today is common sense. Suggesting it in 1950, when the vast
majority of people could not undersand what was the point of
rummaging through basements in order to retrieve pieces of rotten
celluloid, was an act of cultural guerrilla warfare. The collection of
silent films deposited at George Eastman House is certainly not the
only demonstration that he was right, but it probably was the first to
provide direct evidence of this point. The fact that such a message
was delivered by a man who loved women, wine and vintage
automobiles is far from being a paradox. The only book ever
published by Card, Seductive Cinema (1994), begins with the
following words of advice: “You will look in vain for a section of
notes of the sort that try to validate every statement the author makes
throughout the text. Have faith. This writer was there”. His book was
meant to be a history of silent cinema, but it became in fact an
autobiography. Still, the real memoirs of James Card are buried in the
images of the films he helped save, in the roadmaps of Colorado, in
the letters to Louise Brooks. Some of her replies are still kept in a
sealed box in the George Eastman House archives. Louise had asked
that the seal should not be broken until 2006.
70 Journal of Film Preservation / 60/61 / 2000