Gnostic Noir: Symbolism and The Dark City
Tuesday, March 28th, 2006“Can you ever remember doing anything in the daytime?… I think the sun doesn’t exist…”
John Murdoch to Inspector Bumstead, in Dark City
Since before the beginning, over a hundred years ago, science fiction has always been the cinema’s elder brother. Perhaps because the cinema is itself such a science fictional phenomenon. Sitting in the dark with a group of strangers entranced by flickering lights and whispering non-corporeal images would have smacked of witchcraft not too many centuries ago. Now, it’s entertainment. However, the science fictional qualities of the experience remain, no matter how commonplace it has become.
The cinema began on a blustery Friday evening, December 28, 1895, in a basement room, the ‘Salon Indien’ of the Grand Cafe at 14 boulevard des Capucines in Paris. Earlier in the year, the Lumiere brothers, August and Louis, patented a projector designed to illuminate what they called “chrono-photographiques.” At first they tried to find large public venues such as the wax museum, the Musee Grevin, and then the Foiles-Bergeres, but no one seemed interested. Eventually, they rented the Salon and plastered Paris with posters advertising such amazing moving pictures as a gardener being squirted in the face, a baby playing with a ball and the arrival of a train at a station. Perhaps that’s why only about thirty people paid their franc and came in out of the cold that evening.
