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Classical antiquity (the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome) provided cinema from its inception with a powerfully privileged site for the exploration of a past perceived to be the origins and cultural heritage of the Western world. Silent cinema (encompassing a period from the 1890s to the 1920s) played a fundamental role in the modern creation and dissemination of knowledge about that past within and across national, cultural and linguistic boundaries. Cinema offered its global audiences a radically new, astonishingly creative, and swiftly iconic way of experiencing classical antiquity that was related to, but distinct from, its reconstruction in high cultural forms (such as the novel, theatre, opera, painting, dance and sculpture). The classical past was brought into the present day moving in time and space, embodied by actors, and emotionally coded by colour and musical accompaniment. Thanks to cinema, classical antiquity was rendered a powerfully immersive democratic dreamworld while, thanks to classical antiquity, cinema could lay claim to the status of an educative art - a 'museum of dreams' as in the title of this AHRC-funded project.
The Team comprises PI Maria Wyke (UCL), PDRA Aylin Atacan (UCL), Co-I Ivo Blom (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), and Co-I Bryony Dixon (BFI). We will produce a cohesive, interdisciplinary and comparative study of the encounter between classical antiquity and silent cinema. Museum of Dreams will ask how that encounter shaped both the cultural memory of classical antiquity in the modern world and the history of cinema as a global medium. It will investigate silent films concerning classical antiquity as aesthetic works, commercial forms of entertainment and instruments of mass education - an education that, in its frequent imaginative focus on women and slaves and address to audiences diverse in gender, ethnicity and class, appeared to challenge the authority of elite cultural institutions like the public school or museum. The project will use as a representative and manageable corpus the largest collection of surviving films, those in the British Film Institute's National Archive. At least 70 catalogued prints have ancient Greece or Rome as their focus and range widely in date, genre and country of origin. The project will be the first systematically to investigate these unparalleled holdings as engagements with classical antiquity. By these means, Museum of Dreams will establish a better understanding of both the modern reception of classical antiquity and the transnational history and cultural status of silent cinema. By focusing on the BFI holdings, the project will also situate the UK firmly within the global network that produced, exhibited, consumed, and curated the classical antiquity films of the early twentieth century, and establish for those films an important educational legacy in the twenty-first century.
Museum of Dreams will considerably enrich understanding of the role of classical antiquity in British culture in the early twentieth century compared to other countries and the process whereby access to it was democratised. It will provide deeper knowledge of the cultural function ascribed to silent cinema, its national characteristics, transnational exhibition and localised consumption. By presenting its findings in a linked-data research website that will also provide easy access to at least 30 digitised prints, and through other publications, workshops and screenings, the project will bring attention to the importance of the BFI holdings and stimulate further research into them and, more broadly, into how the distant past can be recalled through modern media. The project's interdisciplinary and comparative approach will directly benefit the international community of film archivists as well as multiple constituencies of scholars. Engagement in the project of professional stakeholders (architects, teachers, museum curators, and media practitioners) will better enable the creation of educational resources - and a legacy for these films that will last well beyond the lifetime of the project.
Eye Filmmuseum's Silent Films with Music Compilation by Co-I Ivo Blom; Desmet collection: Museum of Dream Worlds
The compilation was created by Ivo Blom and Elif Rongen within the framework of the project. Composer and concert pianist Daan van den Hurk wrote a new score for this compilation.
The compilation is now available to watch on the Eye Film Player.
Films in this programme
- Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei
Italy 1908 | director: Arturo Ambrosio, Luigi Maggi | 17 min.
First, we take you to the final days of ancient Pompeii, where a perfidious Egyptian priest kills one of his disciples in revenge and shifts the blame onto his rival in love. The story culminates in the catastrophic destruction of the Roman city.
- Phèdre
France 1909 | director: Oreste Gherardini | 9 min.
In the beautifully coloured Phèdre, we witness how the Greek queen Fedra takes revenge on her stepson Hippolytus after he rejects her advances. The lead role is played by Italia Vitaliani, cousin of the famed Eleonora Duse and herself a prominent stage actress. Eye previously rediscovered and restored her once-lost film La madre (1917).
- Le fils de Locuste
France 1911| director: Louis Feuillade | 15 min.
Nero plays a major role in the final two films in this compilation. In Le fils de Locuste, a subtly designed and coloured drama by Louis Feuillade, he orders the poisoner Locusta to deliver an amphora of poison disguised as wine to his rival Britannicus. Her son’s friends steal the amphora for their own party from which Locusta’s son unwittingly drinks. The drama centres not on Nero’s murderous plots but on Locusta’s grief, portrayed with restraint by actress Renée Carl.
- Agrippina
Italy 1911 | regie: Enrico Guazzoni | 17 min.
The final film, Agrippina, directed by Enrico Guazzoni, tells the story of the imperious Roman empress who, after murdering her husband, declares her son Nero emperor. However, she gradually loses her grip on power when Nero turns against her and proceeds with ruthless ambition to have her murdered.
Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei, Le fils de Locuste and Agrippina are part of Eye’s renowned Desmet Collection. Phèdre was restored by the Cineteca di Bologna, based on a nitrate print from Eye’s own collection.
by Co-I Bryony Dixon; 100 Silent Films provides an authoritative and accessible history of silent cinema through one hundred of its most interesting and significant films. As Bryony Dixon contends, silent cinema is not a genre; it is the first 35 years of film history, a complex negotiation between art and commerce and a union of creativity and technology. At its most grand - on the big screen with a full orchestral accompaniment - it is magnificent, permitting a depth of emotional engagement rarely found in other fields of cinema. Silent film was hugely popular in its day, and its success enabled the development of large-scale film production in the United States and Europe. It was the start of our fascination with the moving image as a disseminator of information and as mass entertainment with its consequent celebrity culture. The digital revolution in the last few years and the restoration and reissue of archival treasures have contributed to a huge resurgence of interest in silent cinema.
by Maria Wyke; Projecting the Past Brought vividly to life on screen, the myth of ancient Rome resonates through modern popular culture. Projecting the Past examines how the cinematic traditions of Hollywood and Italy have resurrected ancient Rome to address the concerns of the present. The book engages contemporary debates about the nature of the classical tradition, definitions of history, and the place of the past in historical film.