A time machine for the moving image

Press, 4 April 1989, Page 25

A time machine for the moving image

MAVIS AIREY recently visited in London a museum dedicated to the artists and artisans of cinema and television who have entertained, informed and educated for more than a century.

MOMI is a museum like no other. In London’s new Museum of the Moving Image, you can fly like Superman, read the news on television, try your hand at animation, argue with Alf Garnett. Not only is MOMI very much a hands-on museum, it aims to be interactive, getting visitors to take part in the various film and television-making processes and appreciate what lies behind the image on the screen. So instead of the obligatory security corps, actors have been hired to be museum guides in character with the exhibits they supervise. “Oh Miss Simmonds, ma’am, how wonderful you look today,” gushes a young actor, opening the glittering doors to Hollywood and endeavouring to engage the startled visitor in conversation. “Would you put in a word for me with Mr Selznick?” he pleads as we move on.

The museum was opened last September, on the South Bank next to the National Film Theatre. Its 50 exhibition areas chart the history of the moving image from early shadow plays to the latest disc technology.

It was the brainchild of Leslie Hardcastle, controller of the British Film Institute, and David Francis, curator of the National Film Archive.

"Cinema and television have had such a pervasive influence this century to shape as well as reflect our perceptions of history, of change, of each other,” says Hardcastle. . MOMI took nearly 20 years and $3O million of privately raised funds to complete.

The site — tucked under Waterloo Bridge — was a logical choice, but a logistical nightmare. “When I started this scheme, I said I hoped the museum was going to be about Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Mouse and Einstein, but it’s been as much about drains, quantity surveyors and more drains,” Hardcastle admits.

Contriving to be conspicuous despite the location, the glass and steel building sports red borders reminiscent of gigantic film reels.

Inside, it is equally imaginative.

In an environment intended to capture the “dark, experimental beginnings” of the movies are exhibits of persistence-of-vision toys — thaumatropes and zoetropes, magic lanterns and phantasmagoria (the eye continues to see an image after it has gone). Some are locked safely behind glass, but most are there to be played with. Working models of the devices used by Edison and the Lumiere brothers have been reproduced in detail to reveal how they actually worked. American screen gods and goddesses of the 19205, like Valentino and Mary Pickford, are statues bearing the roof of a Temple to the Gods, making a feature of what is otherwise simply a staircase to the upper level.

At the top of the stairs, a Red Army soldier bullies visitors into climbing on board a Russian railway truck of the 1920 s to view early agit-prop films. Agit trains such as this were used to carry the message of Lenin’s revolution across the Soviet Union.

In a Hollywood studio, complete with wardrobe and makeup departments, a manic, gesticulating director presides over a studio lot littered with lights and cameras. Dali’s scarlet sofa in the shape of Mae West’s lips, the false Maria from Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” Charlie Chaplin’s hat and cane, and Marilyn Monroe’s “shimmy” dress from “Some Like It Hot” are among movie mementoes imaginatively ' displayed.

Advances in laser technology

In the space devoted to animation, cartoon images bounce round the walls, reflected from dozens of angled mirrors, and a resident animator shows how the drawings are painstakingly assembled.

In the Youth Culture exhibit, a 20-foot high juke box offers a push-button selection from 100 film and TV clips. Below it lies a 1950 s American drive-in, complete with Chevrolets, snack bar and screen.

Further on, a television floor manager guides a young visitor through an interview with film commentator Barry Norman, and there are opportunities to work behind the camera, editing, mix,ing and applying video effects. Although the hands-on ap-

proach obviously appeals particularly to children, the museum has to try to satisfy both the casual visitor and the enthusiast the organisers acknowledge. It is a compromise between the archivist and the showman, David Francis. That the compromise works so well is in part due to advances in laser technology in the last five years. With disc players, there is no rewind time. Images can be repeated in a matter of seconds. More than 1000 film and television extracts are shown continuously in the museum. In the control room, banks of screens monitor the flow of visitors. If a bottle-neck occurs, the extracts can be shortened at the touch of a button. The great thing about MOMI is that it is so stimulating, it leaves the visitor hungry for more. My children would happily have twiddled and fiddled, played and replayed, marvelled and exclaimed for hours. While they did, we could wallow in nostalgia with the Lavender Hill Mob, Clark Gable not giving a damn, and Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind. We could be shocked all over again by Jean-Luc Godard and shake our heads over the increasing dominance of television advertising. It is the only museum I have ever been to where everyone — parents and children — came out looking as fresh as they went in and no-one muttered grumpily “Can’t we go now?”