Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

qualité exceptionnelle, soulève
beaucoup de questions par rapport à
l’usage des archives en cet époque du
numérique. Ce n’est pas leur moindre
intérêt.
El «city film», casi un género, todavía
tiene un futuro prometedor ante
sí, según el texto que el cineasta
Don McWilliams consagra a cuatro
películas recientes que proclaman
su pertenencia a esta categoría. Pero
si Berlín, sinfonía de una gran ciudad
(1927) de Ruttman, que es considerada,
convencionalmente, como la primera
película del género, retrata una ciudad
tal como era en el momento del rodaje,
las películas que aquí se presentan
evocan hoy una ciudad cual había sido
en otros tiempos.
El autor, que recurre a menudo a los
archivos en sus películas, examina
las obras en cuestión con una mirada
interesada y, a la vez, crítica, definiendo
el desafío que enfrenta el cineasta
como una forma de ir más allá de la
superficie de las cosas para descubrir la
realidad que se oculta bajo imágenes
de otra época.
Las tres primeras películas comentadas
por McWilliams recurren al cine como
historia, y no, como sucede a menudo
en televisión, para ilustrar la historia.
Es más, las tres películas, exploraciones
eminentemente personales de la
historia, han sido realizadas por
cineastas sensibles y de talento.
La Mémoire des anges (Luc Bourdon,
2008) está construida a partir de 120
películas producidas por el Office
national du film de Canadá en los años
50 y 60 y de materiales de archivo.
Montadas con habilidad, alternando
de manera casi imperceptible el blanco
y negro y el color, sin comentario, y
manteniendo la banda sonora original,
estas películas constituyen la narración
de 20 años de la vida de Montréal.
La música, en especial las canciones,
es un elemento determinante en
la construcción de la película y el
cineasta llega a afirmar que se había
propuesto realizar un «musical». Por
cierto, el uso oportuno de canciones
de época agrega cierta levedad
a los momentos más serios de la
película. Sin lugar a dudas, Bourdon
es un humanista y logra acercarnos a
not just too much of Davies’ explanations of the film and his rationale for
some viewers. Some mystery has to be left. After all, there is very often
a difference between what a filmmaker intends or thinks and what an
audience sees and thinks. Yet, one of the strengths of such in-depth extras
is that viewers are at liberty to dig as deep as they choose. There is one
film extra, the wonderful Listen to Britain, directed by Humphrey Jennings
and Stuart McAllister in 1942. This film is cited by Davies as an enormous
influence on him.
Of Time and the City is a film about Liverpool. As in La Mémoire, change is
a major theme. In this case the period is that of the life of the filmmaker,
Terence Davies. Born in Liverpool in 1945, he left in 1973. Davies has
made five semi-autobiographical films. The first three are a remarkable,
low-budget black-and-white trilogy about childhood and growing-up,
reminiscent in their honesty and seeming simplicity of the Bill Douglas
trilogy; and the widely seen Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes.
Davies is a singular voice, and like Douglas not one of those filmmakers to
whom financiers run. After an eight-year absence from the big screen, he
had the opportunity to return to Liverpool and make this commissioned
documentary. Thankfully, Davies was given a free hand and unquestioning
collaborative support. Around 80% of the film consists of archival material.
The soundtrack is a narration written and read by Davies. The narration is an
interweaving of original text, poems by Davies, and poetry by others such
as T.S. Eliot, quotes, and snippets of sound from BBC radio. So well married
are these elements that one does not really know where one ends and
another begins. For my last viewing of the film, I watched it with the hardof-hearing
text switched on. I found myself appreciating even more the skill
of the narration track. Like Bourdon in La Mémoire, Davies has used music
as a thread. But, unlike Bourdon, Davies has not drawn the music from the
original sources. It is really a galaxy of Davies’ favourite music, used with
great skill and sometimes in heartbreaking counterpoint to the imagery.
One sees a Liverpool of slums and a life where happiness is grabbed on the
wing. These slums are demolished in a great step forward in the late 1950s
and 60s. They are replaced by high-rise apartments, which themselves will
become slums. This imagery is the visual timeline of Davies’ ruminations
in hindsight on topics such as mortality, joy, religion, monarchy, his
homosexuality, and cinema. One senses in Davies a horror and anger at
how people had to live, yet also a knowledge that even then there were
magic moments of joy in street life or on the front stoop, a sort of joy
which the high-rises eradicated. Speaking for myself, some of my happiest
childhood memories come from the times spent in my grandmother’s poor,
condemned terrace house in Felling, in the north-east of England. Davies’
ambivalence is a potent reminder that there is no causative connection
between economic progress and happiness. Like Bourdon in Montréal,
Davies’ film shows a love for those unknown people on the streets of
Liverpool as they wend their way between the two darknesses.
Helsinki Forever (2008) is very different from both La Mémoire and Of Time
and the City. Like them, it tells a story of change. The narration, however,
shows more interest in archival footage per se. Von Bagh used not just
archival footage, but also sequences from fiction films shot in Helsinki,
as well as paintings from before and after the advent of cinema that
provide the colour missing from the black-and-white archival footage.
60 Journal of Film Preservation / 81 / 2009