Radiance

One must praise the independents, who simply ignored Edison and continued to make beautiful silent movies, more advanced and complex and heartbreaking than any throwaway studio talkie stinking up the summertime. I remember it: how slowly, then less slowly, sound ebbed away. Sooner rather than later, for an actor to talk on-screen became the mark of the Sellout—someone with deep enough pockets to pay Edison’s blood price. No True Artist, no Work of Quality, no Real Film would be caught dead making that kind of obnoxious noise. And bit by bit, the Big Boys on the Moon copied the starving artists so that they could convince the public of their Authenticity, their Great Aesthetic Merit, so that they could butter their bread on both sides. We are the People’s Entertainment! Bang, Smash, Yell, Crescendo! No, wait! We are Radical, Envelope-Pushing Artists! Hush, Hush, Soft Now. Win awards, stuff cannons with cash, bask in acclaim—and, hell, it saves money not having to deal with the devil in a back room, dithering over the price of a microphone.

And thus we find ourselves in an upside-down land where the technology exists, works beautifully, has even advanced—for no Edison can keep his hands to himself for long—but no fashionable soul would be caught dead using it. Men stand astride our world and call out: STOP. The System Works. They ask that everything stay the same forever, for Sameness is Profitable. Our Man Freddy E still bleeds filmmakers for exhibition rights, and we may all look the other way while he rolls piggily in his piles of lucre. Time passes, and we become accustomed to the status quo. Theatre Speaks, Vaudeville Sings, Radio Yammers Away Nonstop, but the movie hall is quiet as a church. Time passes, and audiences drink in this Truth with their mother’s milk. I have seen with my own eyes the recoil of audiences when faced with some flickie that sliced up its producers’ hearts at Edison’s golden table for the right to let poor Hamlet ask his famous question instead of staring dumbly at a plaster skull and waiting for the title card to do his job for him. Today’s moviegoer will get up and leave, convinced he has been swindled, rather than listen to a human voice.

What could it cost Friend Freddy to, quite simply, let us speak?

And yet, and yet. There is beauty in silence. I do not believe a film like Saul Amsel’s Bring Me the Heart of Titan would have been made in a world where every film chattered on to its contentment. What of The Moon of Arden? The Last Cannoneer? If I were to turn back the clock and pluck Fred Edison from his ill-gotten celluloid throne, I should lose these reels which wrapped my heart three times round. He has bound us to Prometheus’s rock—but have we not made friends with the eagle? Have we not learned to love life without our livers?

The Worlds’ Fair is a time of brotherhood and goodwill. It is an expression of Progress and Marvels of Modernity.

Let me put it baldly: Mr Edison, get out of the way.

Halfrid H

Editor-in-Chief

I am not willing to relinquish the rare and rough magic of our silent movie halls. They are silent as a church, yes. Because they are churches. Yet I am no less willing to never hear the dreary Dane fail to decide his own fate. For him, the question will ever remain: To be or not to be? For us, it is: To speak or not to speak?

I myself can put nothing baldly, for I feel quite hirsute on the matter, tangled, knotted. But I will say: Mr Edison, you have exiled us to an uncanny country of the mind. We cannot love you for it.

Algernon B

Editor-in-Chief

Look Down

Look down.