"Lisa Goldstein - Dark Rooms" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goldstein Lisa)

DARK ROOMS
by Lisa Goldstein

Lisa Goldstein offers us a poignant look at the magic of Georges
Méliés, one of science fiction’s first filmmakers. The story was
inspired by “a photograph of an elderly Méliés selling toys in a train
station. As soon as I saw the image, I knew there was a story in it.”

****

Nathan Stevens first saw Georges Méliés in 1896, in the basement of the
Grand Café in Paris. There, in the Salon des Indiens, the Lumiére brothers
had opened the first moving picture theatre, and Stevens watched,
entranced, as a train arrived at a station, a man watered his garden, a
blacksmith worked at his forge.

The pictures ended and the lights came up. The glow from the
gaslamps was not harsh, but he sat there blinking, dazzled, his eyes filled
with motion, with smoke and waves and wind-blown leaves. For a moment
he wondered that his surroundings remained the same, that the train did not
roar through the small room, flattening chairs as it went, or the sea crash
through the walls and drown them all.

Near him people were picking up their purses and canes, putting on
their coats, stepping over his legs as they headed for the door. Finally the
theatre, so crowded a few moments ago, was nearly empty.

One other man had not moved. He was balding, with a drooping
mustache and a trim goatee. He was blinking as Stevens himself had done,
as if he were just waking from a dream, or loosed from some enchantment.

Then he smiled, perhaps at Stevens, perhaps at a lingering memory
from the pictures they had seen together. It was a kind smile, Stevens
thought; you might see an uncle smile just that way as he gave a present to
his favorite niece. But there was something else in it too, something deeper
and more serious, and Stevens thought the man might know more about
these films, perhaps even know how they were made.

The man stood. “One minute, please,” Stevens said.

The other man turned, a polite expression on his face. Suddenly
Stevens could think of nothing to say, though he had been in Paris for six
months and his French was nearly fluent. “A—an amazing thing, isn’t it?” he
said finally.
 “We will all be changed,” the man said, or Stevens thought he said.
He put on his hat.

“Wait,” Stevens said. “Do you know about these—these pictures? Do
you know how it’s done?”