In the First Place

The cinema's centenary is a time for reflection. My thoughts would be cooler were it not for the fact that I have been studying the silent era longer than it lasted. To put it another wayfor the second half of the century I've been obsessed by its first third. I am often asked if I'm interested in anything else. Do I go to modern films? Of course, I reply between clenched teeth. Do they imagine a scholar of ancient Rome refuses to read a newspaper? Anyway, I'm not a scholar. I've had no academic training and none of my work has been remotely "correct," either politically or theoretically. (I only hope some of it has been historically!) Another question I am often asked is, "How did you get interested in the first place?" And it is the answer to that I would like to share with you on this auspicious occasion. You have seen those films about English public schools. Long shadows across vast lawns, cut-glass accents, impeccable behavior. They all tend to be absurdly nostalgic; the public school was designed to train men for public service, for the colonies, and for a life at sea; and most were very tough indeed. Before boys went to public school, they were indoctrinated in preparatory schools. These had the object of getting as many boys as possible through the public school entrance exam, and upon that rested their reputations. They tended to be educational battery-farms. Certainly, mine was. It was situated on Crowborough, Sussex-a mile or two from the town, and close to a golf course. This was significant, because if you were foolish enough to run away, you were quickly spotted by the tradesmen's vans which roared out in pursuit like a sheriff's posse. Boys ran away quite frequently because the regime was exceedingly unpleasant, and I recall the sound of those motors as the vehicles gathered in the drive, and the sound of the beating administered to the culprit when their mission had been successfully completed. One joined this school at seven. I had come from a relatively relaxed institution, run by three Victorian ladies as war work. I had been sent there at three because of the bombing in London, where my parents lived. I was transferred to the new place early in 1947, when I was eight. It was a shock to pass from a place where everyone was friendly to an institution, run on military lines, where you called the master "sir" and where the prevailing mood seemed to be fear. Besides, the winter of 1947 proved to be the coldest of the century, and post-war austerity measures meant that we had practically no heat. Not that that meant anything to our headmaster-a stout man, jolly but brutal. He felt he should toughen us up, and sent us out to the football pitch wearing nothing but football kit. That would not have been so insane had we been playing football, but we were merely watching from the touchlines while the school team played a rival prep school in temperatures way below zero. Far worse than standing shivering in the snow were the aches and chilblains that resulted from contact with the one hike-warm radiator. The chapel was turned into a cinema-which seems appropriate in retrospect-and the headmaster mounted a Pathescope 9.5mm projector on a high desk. He rented the films from the Wallace Heaton film library, and he selected the dramas, comedies, and cartoons from the Pathescope catalogue. I knew what "cinema" meant. My mother had taken me to Snow White, and I had run out as soon as I had seen the witch. (That was the only occasion that anyone had to plead with me to get back into a cinema.) I had even sat unblinking through the newsreel of the liberation of Belsen, being terrified out of my wits not by that which I could not understand, but by the Russian fairy tale which followed. So I knew the cinema was a place for powerful emotions. These shows were silent. The headmaster could not, apparently, afford a sound projector (despite our extortionate fees), and so what we saw were the films of our parents' era. …