Missing Reels

by Farran S Nehme

  “Oh,” she said, sighing. “Fred.” She punched a button on the telephone. “Fred. Did you make an appointment today? … Yes, now … Yes. Standing in front of me … All right. Yes, all right.” She put down the phone. “You can have a seat. He’s coming down.” She took their coats, disappearing with them through one side door and reappearing through another right next to it, which was odd. Ceinwen tried, but failed, to get a glimpse of more interior. Matthew sat down, but Ceinwen kept walking around, partly because her feet were damp and her toes were numb and she needed to get the blood back in them, and partly because she was thrilling to the sound of her heels clicking on the marble. She looked at the poster on one wall—A Woman of Paris. She crossed to look at the other—La Bohème. Ah wait, that was Vidor. Harry wanted her to see that one.

  A man, pale and slight, with intensely dark eyes and a couple of days of beard growth, bolted down the shallow marble steps two at a time. She was still glad she had dressed up, but he must be used to the place, with his faded jeans, sweater, and frayed sneakers.

  “Yeah, Kelly, sorry. Isabel’s, ah, gonna be late. I’m supposed to, um, fill out some stuff.”

  “I don’t have anything on my calendar.”

  “I told Isabel but, uh, I guess I forgot to tell you.”

  “I guess you did.” Fred’s shaggy hair was damp along the line of his forehead, he was breathing hard and shifting back and forth on his feet, and she seemed to take pity on him. “Telling Isabel’s the important part.”

  Fred shook hands, folded one arm and tapped the other hand against his elbow. “I, ah, filled out the request but there’s this, um, form that I was supposed to complete that has some more, ah, details. So I told Isabel, um, she’s the director, and she’s supposed to be here soon, but in the meantime I’m supposed to take you back and, um, get stuff in order. So. Yeah. We can go to her office.”

  “Isabel’s office?” That was the receptionist, sounding as though Fred were proposing they all meet in the ladies’ room.

  “That’s what she told me.”

  Kelly picked up a letter opener and sliced into an envelope from a stack on the desk. “All right. If you say so.”

  They followed Fred upstairs to an office with casement windows overlooking the street. There was a huge fireplace at one end, unlit, and another antique desk across the room, an immense leather swivel chair behind it, the desk’s surface bare except for a few papers on the blotter. The walls were lined with enough film books to restock the Strand. She craned her neck at one shelf, to check out what looked like every “Films of” book ever published, when she caught a look from Matthew and reluctantly put her eyes back on Fred. He had stopped alongside them, behind the two low-backed gilt chairs in front of the desk.

  “Where would you us like to sit?” asked Matthew.

  “Oh. Yeah. I’ll go back here.” They took their seats as Fred walked around to the swivel chair, observed it for a second, sat down carefully, rolled the chair to the desk, placed one hand on either side of the papers without touching them, and squinted down. “Um, right. These are the forms. And, um, I’m supposed to fill in the stuff about the project. I was, um, supposed to do that on the phone, but, well.” He looked at the center drawer, drew a breath, pulled it open and came up with an enameled pen. “I, ah, guess it’s okay to use this,” he muttered.

  “Should simplify matters,” said Matthew.

  She was glad Fred didn’t seem to have taken that in. “You’re, um, the first request I’ve had for this one. And my first request from a mathematician. So, yeah. Unusual. But I’ve only been here a couple of years.” He posed the pen over the paper. “Okay. I guess you can, uh, start telling me what you’re working on.”

  “This is a personal project,” said Matthew. “I have a notion that there are places where the sciences and humanities intersect. I’m pursuing it in my spare time. But I do hope to publish.” Fred scribbled and looked up.

  “Come to think of it, I went to film school at Tisch and I, ah, did occasionally run into a Courant professor. Name of Engelman.”

  “I know him well.”

  “Yeah, he’d show up for screenings from time to time. Never spoke to him. So, um … first thing I’m supposed to ask …” He trailed off as he read the dense block of small print on the form. Finally he looked up and said brightly, “What’s the interest here?”

  “The project’s about lost films,” said Matthew.

  More writing. “Trying to, ah, reconstruct this one?”

  “No,” said Matthew, “not at all. The premise is that lost films fortify our ideal of cinema.”

  Fred set down the pen. His hand rubbed his stubble a couple of times and dropped back on the desk. “They do?”

  “Yes. They’re part of the Romantic notion of doomed artistry, that’s capital-R of course. The films that are lost are much better in our minds than the ones we actually have. So they’re in tune with our Platonic ideals, and in that sense, we need lost films. They’re an important element of our conception of cinema as art.”

  Fred’s eyes lit on Ceinwen, as if to check whether she was on board with this. “Don’t think I’ve, ah, ever heard it put that way. Working in an archive, we tend to think of lost films as, you know, a bad thing.”

  “I’m trying to encourage a broader perspective.” Matthew was enjoying himself way too much.

  Fred blinked. “Okay.” He readjusted the chair and scratched his neck. “So, um, repeat that for me, please.” Matthew repeated it, and Fred repeated it back as he wrote it all down, right up to “… encourage … a … broader … perspective.” He put down the pen and re-read the form. “Um. So. Professor. I have to wonder why you want to, ah, see this fragment, if your thesis is that it’s better to just, you know, imagine it.”

  “That’s where the mathematics comes in,” said Matthew, slouching back and tapping the side of his nose, as one who’s revealing the heart of the matter. “What percentage of a lost film do you need to see, in order to have enough to create a meaningful image of the film in your mind.”

  This was the longest pause yet, but when it ended, Fred wrote that down, too. Then he grabbed his neck again, recrossed his legs and rolled through an “ah” and an “um,” possibly in preparation for telling Matthew he had rocks in his head. Then the door opened and Fred started so hard his chair rolled back about a foot from the desk.

  The woman who entered had on a pale-green suit with gold buttons, and a black braid trim. Her height was hard to tell, as her heels were at least an inch taller than anything Ceinwen ever had worn herself.

  “I’m Isabel Chung. How do you do.” Her shiny, stick-straight hair swayed as she strode across the office.

  “Matthew Hill. From NYU. This is Ceinwen Reilly.”

  “I was filling out the forms,” said Fred, holding them up like a shield. He’d already moved halfway around the desk.

  “Thanks, I’ll have a look.” She took the papers from him and they all sat down, except Fred, who no longer had a chair. Isabel laid them on the desk and read intently for a couple of minutes. “Fred. I can’t read your writing. It looks like this says lost films fortify our ideal of cinema. Is that supposed to be forfeit? or forsake?”

  “No. Fortify.” Isabel put her chin on her hand. Fred’s foot began to tap and his deep voice took on a slightly higher key. “Fortify. Right, Professor Hill?”

  “Matthew. Yes, that’s right.”

  Isabel’s black-lined eyes swept from Matthew, to Ceinwen, then back to the paper. “Unusual perspective.”

  “I like to think so.”

  “Should you happen to get this published,” said Isabel, in a tone that suggested such an event would correspond with raining frogs, “we’ll be interested in seeing it.”

  “I’ll send you a reprint.”

  “Fred, I don’t see where you filled in their IDs.”

  “Oh sh—sorry.” He rocked slightly on his toes.

  “How did they get in here?”

  “I,
um, took them upstairs?”

  Isabel sighed. “All right. You can give me your IDs now.” Matthew took out his wallet. “The university ones.”

  “I’m not at NYU,” said Ceinwen.

  “You’re not a student?”

  “She’s assisting me part-time,” said Matthew. “It’s a project outside my university duties, as I said.”

  At that, not only did Isabel check out Ceinwen, from the roots of her hair down to her ankle straps, but Fred quit moving and looked hard, too.

  “It seems Fred didn’t make this clear,” said Isabel, “but ideally both parties are supposed to be affiliated with an academic institution. However. Since you’re here, and since this project is …” She glanced back at the forms. “Since this project is somewhat atypical, I can accept a driver’s license.”

  Ceinwen pulled out her license. Isabel began to write down the numbers, then stopped.

  “Miss Reilly. This is expired.”

  Matthew fastened a hand on the arm of his chair. “Expired. Really. May I see?” He took it. “Aha,” he said, with an indulgent little smile for Ceinwen that involved only the corners of his mouth and left his eyes boring into her skull. “I see the trouble. You gave them your Mississippi license. Where’s the New York?”

  “New York what?”

  “Your New York State driver’s license. The one you got when this one expired eight months ago. Did you mistake one for the other?”

  A pro forma wallet search was performed. “Must have, I guess.”

  “Do you have anything else?” asked Isabel. “A passport?” She caught herself before she laughed and shook her head. “All right.” Isabel took the card back and shook her head. “Since your employer’s ID is in order, I suppose I’ll accept this.” Ceinwen told herself she’d imagined the tiny hesitation before the word “employer.” “I don’t want anyone running all the way back downtown. But if you want to arrange further viewings you’ll need proper ID.”

  They had to sign and date the forms in two places. “Fred, did you bring brochures?”

  He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “I was just gonna ask where those things are living these days.”

  She rolled open a drawer and set out two. “Did you tell them anything about the Brody?”

  “Um …” Fred was staring out the window, as if to assess how far it was to the sidewalk.

  Isabel pushed her hair back and gave a tiny shake of her head. “The Brody Institute for Cinephilia and Preservation was founded eighteen years ago on the death of Herbert Brody, who had an extensive collection of pre-1940 films, stretching well back into the silent era. This was his house. He’d made a fortune in business.”

  “Safety razors,” said Fred, happy to contribute at last.

  “Yes. Grooming products,” said Isabel, and her eyes stayed resolutely away from Fred and his stubble. “But movie collecting was his passion. He left his money to establish this nonprofit organization to preserve and curate his holdings. The mission of the Institute is primarily educational, hence the viewing restrictions. Mr. Brody believed the collection was best used by those well-versed in cinema. However, in recent years some funds have also been used for acquisitions, in order to further our preservation goals, and the Arnheim fragment was part of a collection we acquired from a gentleman in Vermont whose wife decided he no longer had the space.”

  A sudden chuckle from Fred. “He was storing them in his tool shed.”

  “And,” said Isabel crisply, “since they were predominantly silents, and on celluloid nitrate stock, we were lucky to get them before they completely deteriorated.”

  “Before MoMA got there,” murmured Fred, steepling his fingers.

  “The collection had attracted interest, as Fred says. Was there something else you wanted to add?”

  “No,” he squeaked.

  “Fred’s predecessor was involved in obtaining the films, and he transferred some that were in particularly bad shape. This was the only surviving part of one reel, and we found no other part of the movie.” Isabel checked her watch. “Fred is reasonably familiar with the rest of the provenance, so if you have further questions you can ask him after he takes you to the viewing room.” They got up to go. “Don’t forget the brochures.”

  As Fred climbed another flight of stairs ahead of them Matthew bent to her ear and whispered, “Expired, for god’s sake. You’re such a child.”

  “How was I supposed to know we needed ID?”

  “Most working adults have it as a matter of course.”

  “Why? This isn’t Casablanca,” she hissed back. “I don’t have to have my letters of transit.”

  “Still on your way back there?” called Fred.

  “Right behind you,” Matthew called back.

  Fred showed them into a small room with blackout shades drawn. A viewing machine sat on a table; it had a reel of film laid flat and connected to a small screen. “So. Yeah. Time to see what’s left of this one,” he said, as they sat down.

  His tone worried her. Fred seemed like a nice guy, in his stammering, perpetually fidgety kind of way, and Matthew hadn’t exactly bothered to make a good impression. She said, firmly, “I hope it’s clear that Matthew isn’t arguing that we want films to be lost. We both admire the work that you do here.” A beat. “Very much.” She waited again, then added, “Don’t we, Matthew.”

  “Certainly. Don’t know how you do it.”

  Fred looked straight past Matthew to address Ceinwen. “Um, well. Not easy,” he said, foot tapping. “Never enough time, never enough money. So we, ah, tend to work on the most urgent cases, and that means the, uh, stuff with known artistic or historic interest. To tell you the truth I’m, um, not sure why this fragment got transferred in the first place. I assume that Chris, you know, must have liked it.”

  “Do you like it?”

  He smiled at her. “You’ve caught me. I haven’t seen it. There’s, ah, still some obscure and fragmentary stuff I haven’t seen, especially if it wasn’t something I worked on.” He got up and walked to the light switch. “Ready?” He switched off the light, walked back and punched a button on the machine.

  It was Miriam, sitting on a sofa with the man playing Count Morano. His body language was polite, formal even, but she was looking at him like he was a curled-up snake. She put up a hand as if to get him to stop talking, and he took it between both of his. She looked at him and said something, and it was evident that it was taking everything she had not to snatch her hand away. He said something else, and she did pull her hand back this time and crossed her arms against her body. She looked down at the table in front of them, refusing to meet his eyes. He made another move in her direction and she stood up, trembling a bit. She turned, looked at a point just past the camera and seemed about to ask something. The film ran out.

  Ceinwen had always admired Miriam’s cool, elegant stillness. There were no nervous movements with her in real life, and here was proof that that was also the case sixty years ago. Louis Delgado had made the light play across her, like Gloria Swanson in that Queen Kelly scene they showed in Sunset Boulevard. The shadows around the edges of the room made it seem vast, although Ceinwen realized the set probably wasn’t.

  She tried to shove away the feeling, but it wouldn’t leave. Disappointment; not huge, but there. Miriam said Emil loved to move the camera, and what was left of Mysteries was a standard medium shot. Not so much as a cut. Not a single close-up of that face he’d loved. After all he went through to reject stagey, static talkies.

  “Beautiful actress,” said Fred.

  “Stunning,” said Matthew, still staring at the blank screen.

  Fred half-smiled and pulled on his ear. “Might be nice to see more, yes? But that’s all we got.”

  At least Miriam was right about one thing, she wasn’t bad. A young girl’s terror of men, she’d said. But Ceinwen also saw anger in those small, contained gestures.

  “What’s she doing at the end?” asked Matthew.

  Fred
shrugged. “Can’t know without seeing what came after.”

  Emil had told Miriam to think about the casting offices.

  “Run it again,” said Ceinwen. Both men looked at her, and she realized she didn’t sound like an assistant. “Please, can you run it again? I want to look at her costume.”

  With swift, utterly fidget-free precision Fred rewound the reel, looped it back through and ran it again.

  “One more time? Please? This time, look at her chest.”

  “Anything you say,” said Matthew cheerfully. This time when the film ran, Ceinwen leaned forward and pointed.

  “The bodice is too big. Look how the fabric is sagging over the sash.”

  “Yeah, I see,” said Fred. “What’s that tell you?”

  “I don’t think this is a scene from the film. I think it’s a take from her screen test,” said Ceinwen. “Her costume was too big. She told—” Matthew’s foot nudged hers. “She told an interviewer that. In an article. That I read.” Matthew closed his eyes for a second. “I don’t remember where.”

  “Possible,” said Fred. “That would also explain why she looks like she’s about to ask something here. She, um, might have been asking for instructions. Or someone might have walked onto the set.” Miriam looked past the camera again and the film ran out. “If that’s what this is, it’s a rarity all right. Not a lot of screen tests from this era. Hardly anybody bothered to save them.”

  “If you found more of the film,” said Ceinwen, “would you be able to transfer it so people could watch it?”

  Fred’s fingers drummed on the machine. “We’d need the funds, of course. Every year we’re debating what to, um, allocate to which movies and like I said, we’re more or less forced to pick and choose. Triage, basically. With Arnheim, you know, there isn’t anything else surviving from him. So, yeah, I guess there’d be a fair amount of interest, even though nobody really knows what his films were like.”

  “How about you? Would you be interested?”

  His hand went back to his neck. “I’m interested in everything. That’s why I’m here, right? Framing’s good. The lighting is, um, not so typical of the period. Not at Civitas anyway. Shadowy, like actual candlelight. Actress, ah, gorgeous. And if that’s just a test, you know, the actual film is probably much better. Yeah, I’d totally want to give it some priority.” She smiled at him and he smiled back. “But I’m not the one who decides. There’s a lot of layers to, um, the bur—authorization, I mean.”