A study in scientific white, as if the Pope were in an Easter Sunday performance of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
his surplice swiping along the film's surface as he scampers among the
beakers and tubes, rows of bottles behind him in reliquian solidity, the
whole thing ridiculous but necessary, the final layer of
performance-artifice. It is an imitation of Edison by Edison,
as real (and as imagined) as his comment that "everything comes to him
who hustles while he waits." And as we watch him hustle, we find
ourselves waiting for yet another moving image--always more, if not
better--and it seems we have not asked for much better, but may turn
away from cinematographics, satiated with vaudeville acts and
actualities, waiting for Edison to get to some new consecration—or to
leave the altar and go back to the drawing room. In any case, I'm glad
to have seen the Old Guy, in a typical motion: preparing some novel
explosion, one hopes, to rouse the almost-dormant Parliaments of cinema.
A study in scientific white, as if the Pope were in an Easter Sunday performance of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
his surplice swiping along the film's surface as he scampers among the
beakers and tubes, rows of bottles behind him in reliquian solidity, the
whole thing ridiculous but necessary, the final layer of
performance-artifice. It is an imitation of Edison by Edison,
as real (and as imagined) as his comment that "everything comes to him
who hustles while he waits." And as we watch him hustle, we find
ourselves waiting for yet another moving image--always more, if not
better--and it seems we have not asked for much better, but may turn
away from cinematographics, satiated with vaudeville acts and
actualities, waiting for Edison to get to some new consecration—or to
leave the altar and go back to the drawing room. In any case, I'm glad
to have seen the Old Guy, in a typical motion: preparing some novel
explosion, one hopes, to rouse the almost-dormant Parliaments of cinema.
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