I was born in 1968. When I was a young boy growing up in the 1970s I somehow perceived that the world was in colour. To me, any event that occurred before I was born happened in black and white. Most news footage from the years prior to 1968 were in black and white. Most movies and television re-runs before the year 1968 were in black and white. Absurdly I also believed that people walked faster in the old days. Naturally I was real young when these notions crossed my juvenile mind, but I still remember having them. I was nothing but a mere product of my limited experiences. The world evolved from the black and white state to that of colour the moment that I was born. Alas! Everything emerged from the darkness on that September day back in 1968. Should not the whole world thank me for giving them colour? It was an absurd and ludicrous notion, yet to me it was real.
The other day I was going through a few old cardboard boxes and found a DVD that my brother Jay had given me a few years back. Jay likes the old silent movies from the 1920s, especially Lon Chaney movies. I don't believe that he has watched anything on the screen that was made after 1930, but I can't be sure of this. The movie that I pulled out of the box was called The Student of Prague. I can remember Jay raving about it a few years back, but I had never gotten around to watching it. I guess that I was just too busy to sit down and watch a movie that was made the year my grandmother was born. That's right...The Student of Prague was filmed in 1913, a year before the Great War. It is a German film, sort of a gothic/horror that tells the tale of a poor university student named Balduin (played by Paul Wegener) who makes a bargain with a shady sorcerer in which he receives gold in return for his reflection. Balduin spends most of the movie running from his reflection, and at the end of the movie gets the not so bright idea of shooting it with a dueling pistol...which...of course ends up killing him! Not too smart, but hey, if I were running from my reflection I might resort to the same desperate act. Don't we all at some point in our own mundane lives run from our own reflections?
(The Student of Prague) 1913
The movie was only about 40 minutes long and I watched it with my 9 year old son who thought it was interesting. I told him that his great-great grandmother played the organ for silent movies when they were in the theatre those many years ago. He asked me if she played for this movie, but of course I had to answer that I had no way of knowing that. Her name was Cora. I can remember my grandmother talking about her. She died of a Brain Abscess at the tender age of 27 back in 1920. My grandmother who as I already mentioned was born in 1913 had very few memories of her. Although she died 48 years before I was born...when the world was still black and white, an image has formed in my mind. There she sits with her hands on the black and white keys of her chosen instrument. She plays a dirge as Paul Wegener glances in horror at the looking glass and is horrified to see that his black and white reflection is not there! Cora observes the reaction of the black and white audience who sit spellbound by the performance. Eventually the movie ends, as does the scene and the act that makes up the duration of Cora's short life. However,... before the scene closes.... as she leaves the theatre, and walks outside into the balmy air of her black and white world, a faint smile crosses her face as a vision of a futuristic world comes to her....a world of colour, a world perhaps where people will no longer have to run from their own reflections.
(1892-1920)
