READ THIS BOOK #9

Mary Pickford Rediscovered

Written by Kevin Brownlow

Published by Harry N. Abrams

1999

         This coffee table volume – written by the world’s preeminent film historian – will be of interest to everyone involved with cinematography.  Mary Pickford is mostly forgotten today, but for a period of about twenty years beginning in 1912, she was as big a star as it has ever been possible to be.  To our modern sensibilities, her fame would’ve been comparable to that of Taylor Swift, yet in a time when the only modes of mass communication were motion pictures and print journalism, she somehow exceeded that.  By all accounts, she was known in every crevice on the planet.  This attests not just to her enormous talent and charisma, but to the profoundly affective nature of the moving image.  Despite illiteracy or difference in language, silent films spoke to everyone in the same way.

         And like all the greats, she knew how important lighting and camera were to creating and maintaining her success.  Pickford was the first performer to put a cinematographer under personal contract; Charles Rosher, one of the ASC’s founders, shot twenty-six films in which she starred between 1918 and 1927.  Her popularity continued for many years thereafter and is worth following up on, if only for a look at how real stars used to do it, long before the internet made it easy for any doofus to blow their own horn.

         But the salient point is this: People tend to think of silent film photography as primitive, unsophisticated and unartful.  Nothing could be further from the truth – and this book confirms it!  Virtually every technique we use today was pioneered during that time, if only in principle.  I’ll let Brownlow’s words bolster the point.

         “Historians talk of how deep focus was introduced by Gregg Toland in Citizen Kane (1941).  Photographed by the long-forgotten cameraman Emmett A. Williams, 1914’s The Eagle’s Mate contained an astonishing shot, during a big shootout, in which the camera looks over Marv’s shoulder at a battle raging in the distant valley.  Thomas H. Ince had shown distant battles, but never in so striking a setup.  The films of the 1910s may not be as advanced technically as those of the 1920s, but they often contained more surprises.”

         On a number of occasions, I’ve had the pleasure of viewing film prints freshly-struck from century-old negatives, projected on the big screen.  The details were sharp, grain was minimal and the black and white was luminous in every sense of the term.  Any thoughts of those films being inferior were banished forever.  With the sad state of the industry’s current archival efforts, it’s unfortunate that future audiences will likely be deprived of a similar experience regarding so much of the work we’re doing today.

         Wielding the authority of someone who has dedicated their life to impeccable research, Brownlow uses all his power to place Pickford and the art of cinematography in their rightful historical context.  We should only wish that other scholars take up from a similar angle.

         The book is generously illustrated with beautiful stills that on their own make it worth the price.  Copies are available through Amazon, so go get one now!  After this rave review, what in the world are you waiting for?