Frames (8 page)

She blew on her nails. “They’re shorter than most baseball games.”

“Baseball too? What about apple pie?”

“I never eat dessert.”

“Why do you work here, Ruth? You must be miserable all the time.” Which would explain a great deal.

“It’s better than my third marriage. He played shortstop for the Dodgers; that’s what brought him out here from Brooklyn. That’s why I don’t like baseball.” She looked up at him. Her face was like fine painted china. He had the impression that if someone struck it, it would crack apart, like Vincent Price’s in
House of Wax.
She said, “You’re young, it doesn’t matter how many hours you waste, day after day. A man Dr. Broadhead’s age ought to make the best of the time he has left.”

“What
is
Dr. Broadhead’s age?”

“If I had to go by how he looked when I came in, I’d say a hundred and fifty.”

“He was here when you came in? Even he never makes it that early.”

“He never went home. He was here all night.” She screwed the cap back on the bottle of polish adeptly, sparing contact with her nails. No arthritis there. “It’s not healthy to keep so much company with dead people. That comes soon enough.”

Valentino went to the laboratory building, a sleek example of ultramodern architecture more in keeping with
Angry Red Planet
than West Coast Ivy League. Through the thick glass inside he saw technicians working in the lab, in smocks and shiny neoprene gloves, some wearing hoods to protect them from the toxic fumes coming from film in the third stage of decomposition and beyond—haz-mat suits indeed, as Anklemire had said. Valentino thought fleetingly of Harriet Johansen in her breathing mask. He couldn’t forget her smile, once he’d finally coaxed it into the open.

“There you are.” Broadhead sounded irritated. “When did you start keeping banker’s hours?”

The professor had just stepped into the hall from the projection room, as if he’d been waiting at the open door. He looked more unpressed than usual in the clothes he’d worn the day before. His face sagged like a deflated balloon. He looked a hundred and fifty easy.

“I had a meeting with Henry Anklemire. Ruth said you were here all night. I thought you were going home to take a bath and watch
Survivor.
”

“I came to the conclusion it would survive without me. You didn’t bring that little
fisher
with you, did you?”

“No.”

“Good. This would be wasted on him, along with table manners and the Queen’s English.” He placed a hand on Valentino’s back and shoved him toward the open door. There was nothing wrong with the old pedant’s stores of adrenaline.

The projection room looked like an ordinary college classroom, which it was much of the time, with rows of desks for film students to sit and watch movies and make notes. A stout projector stood on a table facing a collapsible screen. They crossed the room without stopping. Broadhead entered a code into a wall panel, opened a steel fire door on the buzzer, and held it for Valentino. A pneumatic tube pulled it shut behind them.

This was the room reserved for projecting cellulose nitrate, air-conditioned to an even seventy degrees year-round, and enclosed entirely with firewall, so that if the film caught fire, the blaze would destroy only the projectionist and his audience instead of spreading beyond the room. To slow down that process, heat-sensitive sprinklers pierced the ceiling and there was an extinguisher illuminated on every wall. The projector, a permanent fixture bolted to a steel stand, was several times larger than the one in the outer room, with oversize Mickey Mouse—ear magazines to contain the reels and seal them off from outside catalysts. It, too, was equipped with an air-cooling system capable of regulating the temperature in a building of modest size.

The facility had cost as much to install as a plush private theater with all the extravagant trimmings, but all the money had gone into technology and fire prevention. It was just big enough to throw a clear image on the flame-retardant screen, the palette was industrial beige, and folding metal chairs provided seating. Indirect lighting came from behind ceiling soffits, not to enhance mood, but to prevent the heat of the bulbs from coming into contact with the stock. It fell upon a flat can lying open and empty on the worktable beside the projector stand, like a clamshell that had given up its meat. Valentino picked up the lid, turned it over, and read the label. His heart bumped.

“You can project it?”

“I
can, yes,” Broadhead said. “The dues I pay to the projectionists’ guild would keep me in mahogany, but it’s a lot more convenient than digging up someone with a card on short notice, and most of them don’t know the first thing about handling vintage. They might as well be twirling spaghetti.”

“I meant the film.”

“The stuff from the room next to the projection booth had me worried; conditions there were much less stable than the basement. Thank God we’re in a desert. When I saw there was no rust ring on the cans, I began to hope. I spent four hours last night with a techie in the lab, opening reel one, here, and unrolling it inch by inch. There was no adhesion, and only the odd amber spot.”

“Smell?”

“Like film.
Old
film—this isn’t science fiction—but not like vinegar.”

“Stage one?”

“Very early. More and more I think the old stuff’s reputation is undeserved. They’ve dug it out of landfills after ninety years with the footage on the outside of the reels shot to hell but the inside ready to show to the public. I’d like to see safety stock make that claim. I’ll crawl out on an academic limb and predict the basement reels are in as good a shape or better.”

Valentino hesitated, half afraid to ask the question. “Is it
Greed?”

Broadhead winked. “Possess thy soul in patience, my son. Lights!” He flipped the switch on the projector with a flourish. The screen glowed.

Valentino hastened to switch off the lights and sat down in the nearest chair. He watched the old familiar countdown, the numerals and characters jumping a little because of broken sprocket holes, from ten to one with a nearly unbearable mixture of anticipation and impatience laced with apprehension; it wouldn’t be out of character for his friend and tormentor to work him up to a fever pitch only to bring him crashing down with a Three Stooges short borrowed from the part of the archives that was available to every freshman.

The first image demolished that fear—and held him in thrall until the end of the reel. It was the golden-tinted Art Deco emblem, with reclining lion and sconces, announcing “A Metro Goldwyn Picture,” from that brief moment in time before Louis B. Mayer had added his name to the company that began with the merger of his studio with Samuel Goldwyn’s while
Greed
was in production. The sound era would replace the static image with an actual lion, turning its head toward the audience and roaring defiance at competitors and all other forms of entertainment. Many of the happiest hours in Valentino’s life had started with a glimpse of that noble beast, its maned visage encircled by a banner with the company motto: ARS GRATIA ARTIS (“Art for Art’s Sake”). Next came “Louis B. Mayer presents an Erich von Stroheim Production”; then, in great black capitals outlined in yellow upon a field of gold nuggets sinisterly sparkling:

GREED

He applauded explosively. He couldn’t help himself. A glance back over his shoulder revealed Broadhead’s round rumpled face set in a mask of supreme self-satisfaction, a clump of hair fallen over one eye, his unlit pipe in his mouth in the light escaping through the louvers in the projector. The professor never sat down while showing a film, but stood in a wrestler’s crouch for hours at a time, muscles tensed, ready to shut down the power the instant the machinery faltered; one jammed frame was all it took to start a fire.

Valentino had seen the picture before, in both the 133-minute truncated version released in 1925 and the four-hour restoration produced by Rick Schmidlin in 2000, using hundreds of stills and dialogue cards to provide some semblance of the original narrative; Valentino and Broadhead had contributed many of the photographs, acquired from estate auctions, overlooked library files, and junk shops whose owners had no idea of their significance. Von Stroheim’s own continuity script, found among his effects after his death in 1957, had been used to interpret their meaning and establish their order. But the result, for Valentino at least, had been a disappointment.

It was neither von Stroheim’s fault nor Schmidlin’s, nor that of anyone else involved at either end. The photographic team of Ben F. Reynolds and William H. Daniels was superb, the San Francisco and Death Valley locations were vivid, and the performances of leading players Zasu Pitts and Gibson Gowland reached beyond the screen and across eight decades to wrench the most jaded modern heart. It was a meticulous and sensitive reconstruction. But movies were meant to move. Nearly two hours of period snapshots inserted in long sections among the surviving action footage, with title cards to explain and connect, did less to reveal genius than it did to reduce the director’s version to a stultifying evening spent in front of an undiverting historical documentary on PBS.

But
this
movie deleted every pixel of that unsatisfactory experience from his memory.

Based on Frank Norris’ turn-of-the-century novel
McTeague,
the film lingered over every line and nuance of the book to trace the descent of a dim-witted but good-natured brute into resentment, obsession, and double murder. Fallen upon hard times after marrying the woman of his dreams, the loutish dentist is at first elated by his bride’s lottery windfall, then puzzled by her miserly refusal to spend a penny of it to improve their lot. As bafflement deteriorates into rage, the sin of avarice turns deadly on several levels, dooming husband, wife, and best friend and ending in an irony as bleak as the desert where it takes place.

The first reel, of course, didn’t go that far, or even very far past the first plot point: the hulking dentist yielding to temptation and stealing a kiss from his pretty patient as she lies sedated in his chair—definitely an
ick
moment for moviegoers of the 1920s as well as today’s, but presented with a subtle compassion that encouraged pity rather than revulsion. Von Stroheim’s glacial pace, with slow camera pans and long close-ups of twitching faces, promised to take as much of his viewers’ time as if they had sat down and read the book from beginning to end. Everything about the approach was alien, yet hypnotic, like watching a rather shabby flower opening its petals in stop-motion. It gave the subject beauty.

The tailpiece flapped through the gate, the screen went blank. Valentino was still staring at it, transfixed by the ghosts that still inhabited it, when he realized Broadhead was talking. For a man who shared his protégé’s love for moving pictures, the older man seemed physically incapable of allowing the fantasy to fade before he charged ahead with his observations and opinions.

“. . . no reason to call Thalberg a philistine for crying editor,” he was saying. “The crazy Austrian expected audiences to catch the first four hours early in the evening, break for dinner, then come back and watch the rest until the milkmen came out. They put in ten hours on the job six days a week, and they weren’t about to spend all Saturday night watching other people get more and more miserable and then go to church a few hours later.”

Valentino rubbed his eyes. “They might have. The thing is we’ll never know. They hated the version MGM released, said it was sordid. But that was the studio’s film, not his. If they had the chance to see this version, his career might have gone the right way.”

“Some say it did. He held up production on
Merry Go Round
for days waiting for authentic Austrian Army underwear to arrive from Europe, and not a thread of it showed onscreen. By the time Gloria Swanson got him canned from
Queen Kelly,
he was already on his way out. If
Greed
were shown his way and made millions, he’d still have wound up playing Kraut heavies for lesser directors. Never underestimate the ability of a mad genius to crap himself in public.”

“So we’ve done it. Found
Greed.”
Valentino leaned sideways in his chair, feeling charged with energy and drained of emotion at the same time. “What’s next?”

Broadhead turned off the projector. The fans circulating cool air inside spun to a halt. “First, we get as much of it transferred as we can before the cops raid the joint.” He swung open the magazine and removed the full reel. “I gave the techie who helped me unwrap reel one a hundred bucks to print up reel two. I’d have gone in order, but then I wouldn’t have been able to show you the beginning, and I know how you feel about coming in after the credits. By the way, you owe me a hundred dollars.”

“Why me?”

“It’s your property, Rockefeller. Before the Oracle is through with you, you’re going to be hemorrhaging money like
Cleopatra.
You might as well get used to it now.” He placed the reel in its can. “What did Anklemire say?”

Valentino had decided emphatically not to mention that Anklemire had suggested solving the case for the police; Broadhead’s opinion of the man in Information Services was low enough as it was. “He said I should butter up Sergeant Clifford with a personal tour of our operation.”

“Interesting. Who’d have thought the little troll could make so much sense?”

“He also said I should call her first instead of waiting for her to make the first move, as if I were courting her. I don’t think his sensitivity training took.”