It would be a mistake to believe that all the categories of representational documents [1] which come to the aid of History have a place in Museums and Libraries. Unlike medallions, illuminated pottery, sculpture, etc., which are collected and classified, photography, for example, has no special department. To speak the truth, the documents it provides are rarely of a clearly historical nature, and above all, there are too many of them! Still, one day or another, someone will classify all the portraits of men who have had a marked influence on the life of their times. However, by then that will only be backtracking, and from now on the issue is to go forward in this direction; and official circles have already welcomed the idea of creating in Paris a Cinematographic Museum or Depository.
This collection, of necessity limited to begin with, would grow as the interest of cinematographic photographers moves from purely recreational or fantastic subjects toward actions and events of documentary interest; from the slice of life as human interest to the slice of life as the cross-section of a nation and a people. Animated photography will then have changed from a simple pastime to an agreeable method of studying the past; or rather, since it permits seeing the past directly, it will eliminate, at least at certain important points, the need for investigation and study.
In addition it could become a singularly effective teaching method. How many vague descriptions we will abandon the day a class can watch, projected in precise and moving images, the calm or troubled faces of a deliberating assembly, the meeting of chiefs of state ready to sign an alliance, the departure of troops and squadrons, or even the mobile and changing physiognomy of cities! But it may be a long time before we can draw upon this auxiliary source for teaching history. First we must accumulate these exterior manifestations of history so later they can be unfolded before the eyes of those who did not witness them.
One problem may trouble our thinking an instant – for the historic event does not always take place where it is expected. History is far from being composed uniquely of planned ceremonies, organized in advance and ready to pose for the cameras. There are the beginnings of action, initial movements, unexpected events which elude the camera exactly as they escape the news agencies.
No doubt the effects of history are always easier to seize than the causes. But one thing makes another clearer; these effects, fully brought into the light by the cinema, will provide clear insights into causes which heretofore have remained in semi-obscurity. And to lay hands not on everything that exists but on everything that can be grasped is already an excellent achievement for any source of information, scientific or historic. Even oral accounts and written documents do not give us the complete course of the events they describe, but nevertheless History exists, true after all, in the larger spectrum even if its details are often distorted. And then the cinematographic photographer is indiscreet by profession; on the lookout for any opening, his instinct will often make him guess where things are going to happen that later become historic causes. He is more likely to be criticized for his excess of zeal than lamented for his timidity! Natural curiosity or the lure of profit, or often a combination of the two, make him inventive and bold. Authorized to appear at somewhat ceremonious functions, he will rack his brains to insinuate himself without authority into others, and most of the time he will know how to find the occasions and places where tomorrow’s history is about to develop. He is not the sort to be frightened by a movement of the people or the beginnings of a riot, and even in a war it isn’t hard to imagine him bracing his camera against the same epaulements as the first-line guns, and catching at least part of the action. He’ll slip in wherever the sun touches . . . If only for the First Empire and the Revolution, to choose examples, we could reproduce the scenes which animated photography easily brings back to life, we could have resolved some perhaps accessory but nonetheless perplexing questions, and saved floods of useless ink!
Thus this cinematographic print in which a scene is made up of a thousand images, and which, unreeled between a focused light source and a white sheet makes the dead and the absent stand up and walk, this simple band of printed celluloid constitutes not only a proof of history but a fragment of history itself, and a history which has not grown faint, which does not need a genius to resuscitate it. It is there, barely asleep, and like those elementary organisms which after years of dormancy are revitalized by a bit of warmth and humidity, in order to reawaken and relive the hours of the past, it only needs a little light projected through a lens into the heart of darkness!
The cinematographer does not record the whole of history perhaps, but at least that part he gives us is uncontestable and of absolute truth. Ordinary photography can be retouched, even to the point of transformation. But just try to make identical changes on a thousand or twelve-hundred microscopic images! It can be said that intrinsic to animated photography is an authenticity, exactitude and precision which belong to it alone. It is the epitome of the truthful and infallible eye-witness. It can verify verbal testimony, and if human witnesses contradict each other about an event, it can resolve the disagreement by silencing the one it belies.
Imagine a military or naval manoeuvre whose phases have been collected on film by a cinematographer: any debate can be rapidly brought to a close, … he can establish with mathematical precision the distances separating places in the scenes he has photographed. Generally he has clear indications to back up his attestation of the time of day, season and climatic conditions surrounding the event. Even what escapes the naked eye – the imperceptible progress of things in motion – is seized by the lens at the distant horizon and followed up to the foreground. Ideally, other historic documents should possess the same degree of certainty and clarity.
The issue now is to give this perhaps privileged source of historical evidence the same authority, official existence and accessibility as other already well established archives. It is being arranged at the highest echelons of the government, and in addition the ways and means do not seem so difficult to find. It will be sufficient to give the cinematographic proofs of historical nature a section in a museum, a shelf in a library or a cupboard in the archives. Their official depository will be at the Bibliotheque Nationale, the library of the Institut de France, under the care of one of the Academies concerned with History, in the Archives Nationales, or even in the Musee de Versailles. It’s merely a question of choosing and deciding. Once it is established, there will be no lack of endowments as gifts or even motivated by financial interest. The price of cinematographic projection equipment, like reels of film themselves, very high at the outset, is diminishing rapidly and falling within the reach of mere amateurs of photography. Many of them, not even including the professionals, are beginning to be interested in the cinematographic applications of this art, and ask nothing better than to contribute to the constitution of History. Those who do not bring their collections themselves will leave them freely as a legacy. A competent committee will accept or reject the proposed documents according to their historic value. The negative reels it accepts will be sealed into marked, catalogued cases. They will be the prototypes which will not be touched. The same committee will decide the conditions under which positive copies may be lent out, and will put on reserve those which for special reasons of propriety can only be released to the public after a certain number of years. The same is done for certain public records. A curator of the chosen establishment will care for the originally limited new collection, and an institution of the future will be founded. Paris will have its Depository of Historical Cinematography.
The creation of this foundation is indispensable and will sooner or later come to pass in some great European city. I should like to contribute to its establishment here in Paris where I have been welcomed with such easy good grace. And at this point I modestly request to enter the picture.
As the photographer of the Emperor of Russia, and on his express orders, I have been able to catch a cinematographer’s-eye view of, among other curious tableaux, the important scenes and intimate incidents of the visit made by the President of the French Republic to St. Petersburg in September 1897. [2]
These shots, which the initiative of such a high authority permitted me to take, were projected before his very eyes, after which I was able, for some sixty consecutive showings, to offer the same spectacle to the soldiers in Parisian military bases. I was surprised and charmed by the effect they produced on these simple souls to whom I had the opportunity to show the physiognomy of a foreign land and its people, the concept of ceremonies so foreign to them, in short, the manifestations of a great nation.
I offer this not uninteresting series of cinematographic exposures as the basis for the establishment of the new Museum. I have had the good fortune to take films of persons of considerable importance, and with their support perhaps I will be able to see these archives of a new genre founded in Paris.
I have described why I augur a rapid and easy development for this depository. I shall contribute to it myself. In addition to the scenes I have mentioned, I already have a great many others to my credit: the coronation of His Majesty Nicolas II, the Russian visits of the two other emperors, and the Jubilee of Queen Victoria of England. Most recently I was able to photograph in Paris parts of completely unexpected and compelling events. I propose to collect throughout Europe reproductions of all scenes which would seem to me to be of historic interest, and to send them to the future Depository.
My example will be imitated . . . if you are only so good as to encourage this simple but new idea, making suggestions of your own to improve it, and above all giving it the wide publicity it needs to thrive and be fruitful.
Translated from French by Julia Bloch Frey
NOTES
[1] Words in italics appear thus in the original.
[2] It was discovered during a projection that one of these shots indiscutably refuted a false statement coming from abroad which alleged that an impropriety of conduct had been committed during these meetings. Certainly the affair was of small importance but it is nonetheless only one example of animated photography in the service of truth, verifying the testimony of men. A whole anecdotic side of history will hereafter escape the fantasy of narrators.