An Adventure in Space and Time (with Harold Lloyd)
Do you know there's a time machine in downtown Brussels?
You might have walked past the entrance a hundred times and not noticed it was there; the neon sign spelling “Cinematek” above the door only flashes on when it gets dark. This time machine is not always there, not always accessible, either, but if you’re lucky and you go on the right date, your time travel adventure only costs a couple of euros.
It has nothing to do with quantum entanglements or flux capacitors or faulty hot tubs. It’s just a room, a little black box down a flight of stairs with seats enough for maybe 30 people that smells musty like a backstage corridor. At one end is a large white screen facing a small porthole opposite. Below the screen is a patent black stand-up piano.
Once all the ticket holders have taken their seats, the lights dim and a wiry man shuffles in and takes his seat at the piano. The screen is illuminated by the projection of a soiled, jumpy film negative. A title card flashes up. The wiry man hammers down on the keys. From then until he relents an hour later, you have travelled back 100 years in time. It’s 1926, and Harold Lloyd’s “The Freshman” has just arrived in cinemas across Brussels.
For the next hour your attention switches between Lloyd’s bumbling college man on the screen, and the man on the piano in the corner of the room. He does not use sheet music, and he does not stop playing. He takes his queue from the action on the screen, sometimes soft and melodious, other times hard and anxious. He tinkles through the maudlin scenes where Lloyd tries to woo his college sweetheart, and rockets around the keys during the film’s climactic, salutary football match.
Sometimes you forget he’s there at all, fixated on trying to catch the text on the title cards before they disappear. Other times your attention can’t but be drawn to the piano, in wonder at his rhythm, consistency, and stamina. He must have done this so often that he knows every grimace and gurn and pratfall up on the screen, know how to play it on the piano and when to go quiet and when to ham it up. But still, the dexterity is something to marvel.
You don’t look at your phone, but you do check your watch - weren’t silent films supposed to be shorter? The only dissonant notes in the room are the electric green and white exit sign above the door and the French and Dutch subtitles on the screen. But even their language is stiffer, more formal, and even though no one is talking it’s hard sometimes to keep up.
It’s an uncanny experience at first, watching a silent film, like reading a book in an archaic version of a language you know but can’t quite translate, familiar but distant. The artifice soon fades, and soon you’re chortling along with the other members of your party.
And then, as the film crescendos with a victorious Harold Lloyd on the shoulders of his classmates, and the pianist bangs are and fast on the piano, the final title card flashes up: “Fine”.
The piano stops. The room applauds. The man does a shallow bow. The screen goes dark and the lights come on. You shuffle out of the room, up the stairs, onto the street, and back into 2024. Your adventure in space and time is over for another day.
Miscellaneous Notes
A short entry today, because I’ve been grappling with a migraine since Monday. Hope to write more soon on why Brussels might not be a great literary city, but is a great cinema town
You can see when you can catch an upcoming silent movie screening at Cinematek here.
Get yourself a Cineville card. You won’t regret it.
What’s Happening
Brasserie Surrealiste celebrates it’s third birthday this weekend
A new iteration of the Kokotte food pop-up has opened this week, just of the Spiegelplein in Jette. It’s Vietnamese, and I’m looking forward to seeing what it’s like soon.
It’s guinguette season - even if it isn’t quite guinguette weather just yet!
Check out Simon Taylor’s gig guide for The Brussels Times
Brussels’ only artisanal vinegar maker Odile is hosting an event on the history of vinegar-making - which is cooler than I’ve made it sound!