Despite my lateness I was as confident as ever of the usual warm, if somewhat slightly reserved, welcome: The Connoisseur was punctilious in his observances of what he considered to be the common decencies and courtesies that are extended to friends. But even so, I knew that he valued punctuality highly, and I couldn’t help but feel that, somehow, my tardiness would be remarked upon.
But of course I need not have worried. My friend opened the door just as I raised my hand to the antique knocker, the story of which he had entertained me with on another memorable evening.
‘Come in, come in. I was admiring the sunset when I chanced to look down into the street and saw you hurrying along. Yes, you are a few minutes late, but what does that really matter? Time is such a slippery and liquid concept, is it not? Come, sit down. Talking of liquid concepts, I think that this might interest you… .’
The Connoisseur handed me a slim crystal glass containing a dusky grey liquid. I sipped it cautiously. It had a smoky taste, with a hint of heat concealing an aftertaste of chill. It was certainly appropriate for the season. I made the appropriate approving responses.
‘Now,’ my friend said, when he too had settled himself in his usual chair, ‘tell me why you were rushing across the square earlier. It was most unlike you.’
I explained I had been detained by a visit to the local cinema. Because of the advertising features, the film had started later than I had anticipated, and therefore I had left the building later than planned. And then I had been collared by a group of enthusiasts who had wanted me to sign a petition to gain the cinema listed status.
He raised an eyebrow and smiled enigmatically. ‘I hope that you did sign it,’ he said. ‘I have already done so. Those old picture palaces were indeed palaces, built so that the masses, and not just the masses, could be transported into new realms of the imagination, and experience the art of film in the most attractive and opulent surroundings obtainable. An Imaginative surrounding engenders an imagination.’ He sipped his autumnal liquor. ‘Yet there is an even finer example of its type not far from here. It is in what might be termed the Art Deco and New Egyptian styles.’
The Connoisseur lapsed into silence. Outside his high windows, the last of the sunset was draining from the sky, leaving a tempestuous mass of grey clouds, darkening by the second, silhouetted against an electric lemon-yellow background. This was also dimming fast.
‘Have you ever heard of the Temple Cinema? No, I wouldn’t expect you to have had. It was a small place, run by a dedicated group of film and architecture fanatics, although it was open to the public and highly regarded in the locality. I knew one of the members of the Trust that ran the cinema.’
My friend got up and switched on a light. The room was bathed in a warm glow. He refilled our glasses. I knew that an account of one of his curious experiences was about to follow.
‘I have some postcards of it somewhere,’ he said. He opened a drawer and took out an album bound in midnight-blue leather and tooled in silver with Egyptian designs on the cover and spine. ‘Here.’
I looked at the open book. There were four black and white or sepia postcards attached to the page. They showed a sharply-defined, four-square building, surrounded by bushes and shrubs. The building was clearly brand new and constructed of white stone or concrete. It reminded me of the London tube stations designed by Charles Holden during the 1930s.
‘The cinema was indeed originally a Temple. It was built for some theosophical sub-cult or other, by a wealthy, and dotty, benefactor. As you can see, it stood in a garden. By the time the place was in use as a cinema, much of the garden had been sold and built on. However, access to the cinema was easily gained through a door in the garden wall. The committee had ensured that the cinema was well sign-posted, and they laid a brick path from the garden door to the entrance. The building itself, as you can observe, was built in that mixture of the Art Deco and Egypto-classical that was so popular for so many different buildings at that time. Even so, no expense had been spared in ensuring that the Egyptian detailing, where it was employed, was authentic. In short, it was a most attractive and interesting building, and its preservation, through conversion into a small but popular cinema, was applauded.
‘The stretches of brick wall that enclosed the surviving part of the garden, where the cinema was, were clearly very old. The entrance that led to the cinema had been cut through with precision. There had been no attempt to disguise the new work: it was in brick, but clearly contemporary, with as much glass and metal as was necessary. The overall effect was of modernity, but not aggressively so.
‘A small poster by the entrance read: Aeon—epochal films in a garden temple. A garden temple, indeed! It would have been hard to resist such an invitation, even if I had not already been planning to see it. I bought my ticket, and strolled along the path to the cinema. As I approached it I could see that it had been built in a sort of New Egyptian style, in what was by now rather mildewed concrete. This gave it an even more interesting effect, as if the place had been recently discovered and rescued from jungle that had encroached upon and then swallowed it. There were two elegant tapering pillars at the entrance, and a winged sun on the lintel. I felt that the building—former summer house, folly, temple, whatever—had an austere geometry to it which was very pleasing in a somewhat gloomy, chilly kind of way.
‘I went inside, and watched the film. The auditorium was small and well laid-out, with a gently sloping floor that descended towards the screen. Such details as I could make out in the dim lighting were Art Deco, with the motif of the winged sun picked out in gold over the arch above the screen. What I saw was entitled Afterlife, and it had a simple, though subtly-conveyed premise: what if when we die our first task is to choose and then recreate the moment when we were happiest? What would you choose? Why? How can that moment be made again? When the film ended, and all the acknowledgements had risen from the screen, and the lights were up, I sat in thoughtful silence for many moments. Nor was I alone. A young woman, several rows ahead of me, also remained. At length we both rose to go about the same time and I felt obliged to make some remark about the power of the film. She hesitated, then agreed, and cast a further long look at the screen. I said something else about how, with a truly great film, the images seem to stay on with one afterwards. Trite, I’m sure: but she seemed startled, and sat back down again. Then, she said this was all too true. And she told me a curious story.
‘The week before, it seems, she was playing through a film she planned to show—she’s a volunteer at the cinema, and I had better keep her anonymous—to check it was working all right: there had been a few minor hitches before. It was Things to Come, the great Wells/Korda film from 1936. She had put it on, not meaning to watch it all the way through, but to see to a few other things around the place, and just keep an occasional eye on the quality and ensure there were no problems. But she was soon caught up in it. From the solemn opening music, with its cascading chords, all so full of foreboding, to the final scenes with their mounting tension and cosmic ending, she said she had hardly moved from where she sat.
‘I said that, well, it is in some ways a failure, and a tragic one: an attempted over-achievement, a true vision imperfectly realised. Yet its scope is immense.
‘She nodded. Then, she said, it was hard to describe what happened after the film ended. She saw to the equipment and turned everything off, but, just as that night I met her, could not quite draw herself away, and sat for a fair while in the quiet darkness, turning over and over in her mind the future that Wells put before us in the film, and the other one which was put before us by the stimulation of being left to our imagination. And the music seemed to linger too, as if she were hearing echoes from distant places.
‘And then: it was as if another film began to play. She said, of course she thought that she must have fallen asleep and dreamt. That is what she would like to believe. But, try as she might, that is not how it seemed then or how she remembered it now. She was in fact full
y alert. The film was still running in her head. And she said that even though everything was already so silent, a greater hush fell, and she felt as if the flesh of her face and arms had been brushed by the merest slightest passing of some intangible thing—dust, perhaps, or a cobweb, or a feather. It was enough to make her shiver. And she shivered again as she sat there and relived the scene
‘Because soon the images began. At first, there was only a wasteland, like the scenes of Ypres or the other World War I battlefields: just bare earth and blasted craters and pools of mud. Then futuristic tanks, as in Things to Come, trundled across the landscape, crushing ruins and what few living things—human and otherwise—that could be seen.
‘She felt a sense of vertigo. It wasn’t to do with height, but time. This war had been going on for decades, as in Things to Come. She forced herself to turn away and to stare at some of the sculpted frieze that runs around the chamber, to shake off what she was seeing. And when she turned back, there was a different scene.
‘The tanks had gone, but a few ruins remained. And people wandered around and through them, poor desperate people who had lost everything. She saw rough buildings grow up against the stone and concrete remnants of their city. It was like barbarians moving into the ruins of ancient Rome. But these people were not barbarians—they were the survivors, humbled and destitute.
‘Time seemed to speed up. The ruined city was rebuilt. Streets and squares covered the devastated landscape. A city of huge towers grew up. Industry was restored. The air was black with smoke and steam. She saw days and nights flash by. Lurid lights glowed by day and night. Gigantic screens—as in the film—constantly displayed a face that seemed familiar, but which she couldn’t place, and which surely had no place there. Crowds filled the treeless boulevards and squares, and huddled beneath the screens. She heard Arthur Bliss’ music from the film, the part when The Chief, the local warlord who had seized power (played by Ralph Richardson) returned from one of his campaigns. The music is triumphant, yet full of menace, with the empty glory of totalitarianism and brute gangsterism masquerading as patriotism.
‘Some time later, for the first time, there was sound. There was a vast subdued roar. She saw a new tower, and it was the tallest of all. And then saw that it was not a tower. It was like the Space Gun in Things to Come. But she knew that there was no-one inside the missile in it, and that it was not destined for outer space. The crowds that surrounded the rocket were cheering at more great screens erected nearby. The face ranted at them. There was more cheering. The rocket was to be fired for destruction. The screens shut off, like the curtains coming down in the cinema. (At least she could remember that.) The people streamed away from the rocket, back to the city. She blinked, and then saw the city again. It was in ruins. A sea of ruins again. That was all she could see. Where the rocket had been was a gigantic pit. The desolate Bliss music for the ruined landscape and blasted city was in her head.
‘Perhaps, she admitted, she did fall asleep for a while. It might have been a long time, or just a few seconds. Time can be so subjective. Then she saw the same vision as before: the ruined, desolate landscape, the decades-long war moving painfully backwards and forwards across it. Again, time sped on. The ruined city was rebuilt. But the vision became a new one. It was closer to the reborn city of Things to Come. A white city spread out over the landscape, it was a clean and bright city. Much of it was underground, leaving the surface green and pleasant. The resources of the world reborn after the war were used to create a functional beauty. The world was indeed harvested, but not attacked. Other crowds gathered in vast squares in front of great public screens. The face on the screens was venerable, and worthy of veneration. Another new tower appeared, another Space Gun, but this was constructed for science and exploration. The city expanded, but never overflowed its green hills … Her vision ended there.’
The Connoisseur fell silent. At length he spoke again.
‘Of course, I felt that I had to investigate a little further. Eventually I was able to find out a few things. In the 1920s the old house was bought by someone called Carneiro—he doesn’t seem to have had a first name. I got the feeling that he was rather a sort of an Aleister Crowley figure. He founded and led a group devoted to Aeonic Magic. Have you heard of that?’
I shook my head.
‘Well, it’s all very obscure, but the main point is that its rituals and ceremonies were concerned with influencing the distant future. They were convinced that, by employing the right ceremonial with the prescribed rite, and at a specific time, they could change the outcome of the future. It all seems rather modern in tone in some ways, now. In effect, they threw a stone into the stream of time, which sent its ripples outward and along it, thus changing the future. There were many reasons evinced for why their actions did not, or could not, also flow back down the time-stream, and thus also influence the past. For whatever reason, they believed that the ripples introduced into the time-stream could only travel in the direction of the future. Maybe Nature had a way of ensuring that paradoxes could not happen, ironing them out as it were, as speculated in the works of many writers of science-fiction.
‘Now, under the leadership of their mage, the group built an Egyptian-style temple for themselves. You’ve seen the postcards. Ironically, the group didn’t last very long, and there were numerous scandals while it was in existence. The members of the group fell away one by one, and after a very few years it had dispersed completely. One is tempted to wonder why they did not influence their own future, and ensure their survival, but maybe that was considered to be too close. Or too selfish. I’ve seen a few photos of them, all assembled for one of their ceremonies. Carneiro looked like a mage from central casting, as you might say: he had thick, bristly silver hair, and apparently a voice and demeanour to match. But it seems he was a real maverick—or unbalanced. I suppose that it all depends upon how you look at it.
‘I examined accounts of their rites and ceremonies, including their Book of Transcending Aeons. You know, I’m convinced that Carneiro himself actually believed every word of it all. He really was trying to influence the future.’
‘For good or ill, do you think?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ my friend said. ‘And who is to say what is good or what is ill?’
‘True. I would’ve thought that with such a thing as the means to influence the future, Carneiro would’ve made more effort to keep the group together, especially as he was their leader. It was a time of great uncertainty, as Things to Come captured well. I would’ve thought that there’d be no shortage of potential members. Some people will go in for anything, especially when they think the world’s going down the drain. They want certainty, a real future. Maybe someone should start it up again. I bet there’s money in it.’
‘It is a great pity to see such cynicism in one so young,’ The Connoisseur said, not however without the ghost of a smile.
‘In reading through the group’s documents, letters, and so forth, I certainly gained the impression that Carneiro, although possibly unbalanced yet possessed of much charisma and charm, able to influence people as he wished, was no mere mountebank or charlatan. As I said, I formed the impression that he believed in the rites contained in The Book of Transcending Aeons, and was ready to exercise his judgement of how precisely the future should be influenced for what he considered the best result. And the scandals that beset the group were purely financial, and did not seem to directly involve Carneiro, although of course he was affected by them.
‘There are hints in letters that the group finally disintegrated as the result of a failed “coup” against the mage. It seems that whatever Carneiro was, he had a genuine concern that the magic be used for the common good. You will be reasonably familiar with the political developments of the 1930s. It seems that a few of the group members were enthusiastic members of the prevailing “isms” of the time: Communism and Fascism. They sought to put pressure on Carneiro and his faction within the group to use their ceremon
ies to in effect influence the future so that their own particular philosophy, if I may call it that, would prevail.
‘To his credit Carneiro would have none of that. He refused to use the rites contained in the sealed part of The Book of Transcending Aeons, and expelled several members of the group. The final scandal was a burglary at the house, and the attempted theft of the mage’s own copy of the book, with the forbidden rites. Violence was used; and although the newspaper reports were highly circumspect, it is clear from other sources that there was at least one death as a result. Shortly afterwards, Carneiro and his special copy of the book vanished. He left instructions to his last disciples about what was to become of the group and its resources. I believe that these were contested, with the eventual result we know today: the sale of the house and most of the garden, but with the lucky retention of the temple as a cinema. Not the most obvious outcome, I should have thought, but a not inappropriate one in the circumstances.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, cinema is noted for its subversive powers. Not so much most of the films that now emanate from Hollywood, or those that win the major awards. But the world of film does still allow the unorthodox, the strange, the subtle, and indeed the sane, to flourish and put across their concerns. It is an art for the discerning, well, connoisseur! The Aeonic Magic group, at its best under Carneiro’s leadership, it seems to me, sought to inject a little subversion into their contemporary scheme of things, a scheme that was like a juggernaut out of control, and crushing anything in its path. They might not have been able to deflect the path, but they could enable the survival, in some small fashion, of what would have otherwise been totally crushed. Fascism and Communism, all the “isms”—tyranny and intolerance in some of their many guises—fought each other and the “free” world. But the Temple Cinema came into being and has survived. That future need not have come to pass, but it did. And I saw an excellent film, the premise of which still haunts me. By the way, I do highly recommend Afterlife. I also met a most interesting young woman and found out something of a most fascinating story, as I hope you will agree.
The Collected Connoisseur Page 28