Yesterday I dusted off my copy of Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2001) and went on a quick spree through nearly half-a-century of cinema. I came away impressed, once again, by a number of things — such as the sincere panic underlying Peter Sellers’ seemingly glib performance as the President in Dr. Strangelove (1964), which underscores what I’ve always said about comedy being funniest when it’s serious — but what jumped out at me in particular this time were the candle-lit scenes in Barry Lyndon (1975; my comments). This sadly under-rated film is worth seeing for any number of reasons, but surely one of the biggest has to be the way it takes us back to a time when light was not so easy to come by, especially indoors or late at night.
It is always startling to be reminded of just how dark the world was up until a century or so ago. The other day, I was watching Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth (1988) — which I had never seen before, and which I found over-rated, mainly for the reasons Steven Hart gets into here — but I was struck by the sequence where Campbell discusses those French caves with the prehistoric paintings of bulls and whatnot. I had seen photographs of these paintings, of course, but I had never before seen moving footage of people walking deep into these dark and dangerously jagged caverns, barely illuminating the portraits here and there with their tiny electric lights. I had not realized just how far removed from sunlight these paintings were. And of course, the people who painted them would have had to rely on primitive, flickering torches, rather than the steady glow used by modern film crews.
In an age where every room is fully lit by incandescent or fluorescent lights — to say nothing of movie screens, televisions, and laptop monitors — it is easy to forget what things used to be like. And it’s kind of ironic that it should be films that point this out to me, isn’t it? Actually, I am reminded of a trip I took to Galiano Island with my sister a few years ago; during a meeting late at night at a house that is owned, I think, by some people at Regent College, I stepped out into the backyard and walked only a few steps before I realized how absolutely dark the area was, even with the light emanating from the house behind me. No nearby house lights, and nothing but moonlight reflected in the waters visible through the trees. I need more moments like that.
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