TOM GUNNING
"ANIMATED PICTURES", TALES OF
CINEMA'S FORGOTTEN FUTURE
I. A Visit to the Kingdom of Shadows
If you only knew how strange it is
to be there.
-Maxim Gorky, 1896
In 1896 Maxim Gorky attended a showing of the latest novelty from
France at the All Russia Nizhi-Novorod Fair-motion pictures produced and exhibited by the Lumiere Brothers. The films were
shown at Charles Aumont's Theatre-concert Parisian, a recreation
of a cafe chantant touring Russia, offering the delights of Parisian
life.' A patron could enjoy the films in the company of any lady he
chose from the 120 French chorus girls Aumont featured (and who
reportedly offered less novel forms of entertainment to customers on
the upper floors). Gorky remarked a strong discrepancy between the
films shown and their "debauched" surroundings, displaying family
scenes and images of the "clean toiling life" of workers in a place
where "vice alone is being encouraged and popularized."2 However,
he predicted that the cinema would soon adapt to such surroundings
and offer "piquant scenes of the life of the Parisian demimonde."3
But it was not the place of exhibition alone that made Gorky
uneasy about his first experience of motion pictures. The specter-like
monochrome and silent films themselves disturbed him, appearing
like harbingers of an uncertain future:
It is terrifying to see this gray movement of gray shadows, noiseless
and silent. Mayn't this already be an intimation of life in the
future? Say what you will- but this is a strain on the nerves.4
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