“We can’t use Wet Gate on these films.” According to the label on the can, The Dreyfus Affair was made in 1899.
Sometimes I’m convinced Julius had a penchant for slickness in all its forms, that his apartment was coated with Formica and shellac, mirrors partially framed by cutouts from soft-core pornography printed on coated paper. As director of Alphabet he always preferred an image with as little visual static as possible, and so Julius loved Wet Gate, a substance that fills in abrasions and scratches. But Wet Gate, slippery and odorless, was no blessing. Every treatment has its risks, and it had been recognized for some time that old films treated with Wet Gate began to take on a Wet Gate look: images processed this way became too perfect and too sharp, as if photographed yesterday. Some felt it was a kind of fluid amber, but the image preserved underneath wasn’t necessarily true to the original.
“Drawn flames may be more believable when applied with dyes and chemicals than when photographed. We’ve seen it happen.” Julius preferred the synthetic choice more and more often. Like overheard conversation you repeat to one friend after another, the dialogue you invent may actually sound more realistic. “A little artificiality can enhance the image and restore accuracy,” he argued.
“1903, 1907.” I pointed to can after can, reading the dates out loud. “We agreed to interfere as little as possible in films made before 1940.” I shook my head in an attempt to make Julius appreciate the gravity of his decision. Some of the cans had notes on them, a short catalog of the other labs the films had passed through. The notes also described how they had been treated and what had been done to them. He held up a film labeled The Dreyfus Affair.
“Captain Dreyfus was tried in-camera.”
I told Julius I didn’t know what that meant.
“In a private, closed room, judged by a committee, not an open court.”
“A secret session.”
“Yes. Listen, no one remembers the Dreyfus trial, but I’ve got a lot of money riding on this project. And pay special attention to the last few feet of film.” Something had slipped. Julius Shute, known for his meticulousness, a conservator committed to each and every film, no matter how obscure the subject, now had glazed eyes. What was he hinting? Alphabet was in trouble and could afford to cut a few corners with multiple payments due, the exigencies and urgencies of the present were shoving Dreyfus and Méliès, Chaplin and Keaton onto a short moving sidewalk and out the door to make way for the next late blockbuster in need of a quick fix.
“Am I looking for codes about nineteenth-century military maneuvers, secret weapons munitions, buried treasure?” As a believer in signs, portents, conspiracy theories, the existence of the thing under the bed, I wasn’t being entirely sarcastic.
“Tell me first if you find anything unusual at the ends of the reels.” Julius was dead serious, his voice dry as bones.
He picked up his papers scattered on the table. Julius seemed oddly calm, like a man so sure of himself as he emerges from his personal helicopter that he forgets he shouldn’t get in the way of the blades when he stands up. Maybe it was a sedated kind of tranquility. Before leaving the room, he repeated the deadline for the restorations, and then I was left alone. It was night by the time I cleared my desk of previous projects and was able to turn to these very earliest of short, silent films. Instead of The Dreyfus Affair, one of the films Méliès made based on an actual event, I unspooled one of his “preconstructions,” those fantastical films that first introduced the idea of special effects.
Every Man His Own Cigar Lighter. A man, a pedestrian with good intentions, is unable to find someone who will light his cigar. He gestures to people on the street as if asking: puts his cigar in his mouth, pushes his face slightly in their direction, but he is ignored. Flaneurs, boulevardiers, and streetwalkers either don’t understand his gestures or think he’s deliberately offending them in some way — since there was no sound track, I was just guessing. Desperate, he creates a double of himself who will light the cigar for him. This one I liked. There are times when it’s impossible to ask anyone for anything, all you can do is rely on yourself, split yourself in two. On the street, you’re too paralyzed to get a word out, everyone passes you with extreme hostility: Who are you? Who do you think you are? Don’t interrupt me with petty needs such as an inquiry after the time or directions. I don’t like your face. Get lost!
In the dark, huddled over a light box holding a magnifying loupe, looking over a strip of film, I talk to myself. What happened to these actors? You’re supposed to be dead, I tell them, you came within an inch of being taken out with the trash years after being lost, stolen and forgotten, lying around in a warehouse or a Looney Tunes archive. They were filmed in a glass house, Méliès’s Star Film Studios on the outskirts of Paris, a building whose interior I imagine as frozen yet full of potential for movement, a structure like the Visible Man who could be assembled and studied, organs glued together or snapped apart. Open jars of paint are blood cells, and Georges Méliès himself is iris, retina, and cataract. Under his critical surveillance set designers who fabricate volcanos, lunar surfaces, underwater wrecks react to his criticism like nerve endings about to explode. I’ve had it, Georges! Piss off! The Oedipus of early cinema, Méliès destroyed many of his films himself, behaving like those long, flexible pencils you see in joke shops that can be bent around to leave a trail of erasure rather than a line of words. What am I looking at? A girl travels to the North Pole in a vehicle labeled Aérobus de I’ingénieur Maboul.
“Hello, is this Frances L. Baum?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Jack Kews of Omnibus Film Archives, London. I’m calling about a film entitled The Dreyfus Affair, which I believe your company is working on.”
“What did you say your name was?” He had said it quickly, as if sneezing one word run together, and he repeated his name just as fast.
“What do you want to know about the film?” I had just gotten to work and was surprised to get a call this early in the morning. I hadn’t yet shut the blinds in my studio or even visited the Mr. Coffee machine. A half-eaten orange lay beside the unused Steenbeck; I hadn’t looked at a newspaper or spoken to anyone in the office.
“I’m in New York, and I’d like to take a look at the footage in your possession.”
“I’ve never heard of Omnibus Film Archives, London.” If this place really existed, I would have known about it.
He rattled off an address that meant nothing to me. His voice sounded youngish, but the Cary Grant mid-Atlantic accent and the politesse of a stranger asking for a favor frayed, and the voice betrayed its American roots. “While Méliès was shooting The Affair, the man who played Dreyfus disappeared, maybe was killed, and I think there are some answers as to how and why in that footage.”
“Whatever you’re going to discover, it’s old information, and you’re talking about a thirteen-minute silent film in terrible condition. It’s not going to tell you much.” Taking off my shoe I rubbed loops into the carpet pile with my left toe. “Anyone alive in 1899 would be dead now anyway, and whoever murdered him would be long gone as well.”
He paused for a long time as if deciding what to answer, then I heard a long, drawn-out yes.
“Look, I know about you and I know about your work, Frances. A film sputters into life; it’s silent, black and white. The figures move in the choppy, disjointed fashion customary to films made in 1899. They wobble and jerk from the rue du Bac, past shop windows crowded with mannequins: half men in high-collared shirts and headless women in long dresses like fluted columns. The crowd turns down a street filled with cheap theaters, garish posters cover the walls with images of acrobats, huge, gaping, laughing mouths, freaks, and so on. Entrance tickets are only a few centimes, and there are a fair number of choices. Which one does the crowd pick?”
“You’re giving me a lot of detail for early cinema.”
“Stay