Einstein’s Flying Car

“Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads!”

I’m reading and hugely enjoying West of Eden: An American Place, by Jean Stein, an oral history of Hollywood. I bought another oral history of Hollywood, Jeanette Basinger & Sam Wasson’s An Oral History of Hollywood, but this one, which cost me a tenth of the price second-hand, is the one I seem to be reading. It’s excellent. I’m learning tons.

We begin with the Doheny family saga, which incorporates oil, the Teapot Dome scandal, and homicide — bits of the true history were recycled in Sinclair Lewis’ Upton Sinclair’s Oil! and in the resulting film, THERE WILL BE BLOOD. I’m not sure I knew about the factual basis, and I certainly didn’t know that science fiction writer Larry Niven, interviewed herein, is a descendant of the Dohenys (Dohenies?).

Then we get on to Jack Warner and his clan, and one passing bit of info concerns the visit to Warner Bros of Albert Einstein and his wife Mileva. Jack Warner Jr tells the tale:

They took Einstein to the process department, where they had a Ford set up on a scaffolding. He and Mrs. Einstein sat in it and the cameramen filmed them while, unbeknownst to the Einsteins, projecting an aerial film of New York, Niagara Falls, Chicago and Los Angeles behind them. Then they developed this film of the Einsteins flying over America in a Ford and showed it. Einstein stared at it and kept saying in German, “My god, what have they done? I don’t understand it. My father said, “Relativity he understands!”

Brilliantly, the film was found five years ago so we can see it. Sadly, though, the story doesn’t quite hold up because we can see Albert and Mileva pointing at the images on the screen to their right. The only way for Albert to have been baffled would be if he were unable to understand how the camera, positioned as it was, made it look as if the car was flying. And Albert is not known for being particularly dense. So Jack Jr.’s tale seems to have been augmented at some point. A shame. How much funnier would the film be, if the Einsteins were just sitting staring blankly ahead, with Albert (who could not drive), giving the steering wheel an occasional quarter-turn?

It’s a lovely story, but you can’t have everything. You can’t even have a flying car.

Recalliery

Watching HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY I wondered if it appeared in time in 1941 to influence Orson Welles’ plans for THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS? (Welles being a big Ford fan after all. And there are thematic similarities in these accounts of a vanished past.) The idea to keep much of the narration from Richard Llewellyn’s source novel, and play it over dialogue-free scenes, and use montage to cover a story with a long span, apparently came from studio head Darryl Zanuck. It’s an approach which could easily be disastrous if applied clumsily, since you lose firmly dramatic scenes which grip, and gain, if you’re lucky/skilled, a more ethereal, intangible quality, poetic rather than dramatic.

Looking at Searching for John Ford by Joseph McBride, I learn about William Wyler’s crucial involvement, casting much of the picture and overseeing the design of the village, an incredible setting. Wyler chose Roddy McDowall for the lead — screenwriter Philip Dunne called Roddy the true auteur of the picture, and said “This solves our length problem, because they’ll never forgive us if we let that boy grow up.” The film was set to be four hours long and the kid was supposed to mature into Tyrone Power. Imagine. Technicolor was also considered at an early stage, Zanuck envisioning an epic to rival GONE WITH THE WIND. And, after all, it’s How GREEN Was My Valley, right?

Same year as KANE — and note the ceilings.

It’s all wondrous to think of, since although the book is the reason there’s a film, the principle things that make it a great film are Ford’s use of McDowall and the b&w cinematography of Arthur C. Miller, which is exquisite. Miller mostly wasted his gifts on indifferent Fox fodder. The Malibu Hills are not the Welsh Valleys, but the movie conjures its own version of Wales, complete with a cast of assorted accents — Donald Crisp, a cockney who affected Scottishness in real life, like Eric Campbell, Chaplin’s Goliath, makes the most consistent effort to sound right — Rhys Williams, playing blind boxer Dai Bando, is one of very few actual Welsh actors.

Another thing I wondered is if this movie invented the highlights reel — a closing set of flashback memories to certain golden moments in the preceding movie. When “Seems Like Old Times” plays for a second time in ANNIE HALL and we get glimpses of earlier scenes, that kind of thing. Reminding the audience how much they enjoyed the film, hopefully — with an indifferent film it’s infuriating — this movie is all flashbacks anyway, from a largely unseen present tense, so it’s a bold and interesting choice to repeat certain flashes. I can’t think of an earlier example. Of course it’s a clever Hollywood device to diffuse the downbeat effects of a tragic ending. Go into the magic past and end on something happier. Those memories will never fade. Things may be bad now, and uncertain to get better, but happiness is real — the past is still here. We just can’t quite step into it. Time may be an illusion, as Einstein said, but it’s a very persistent one. So this kind of Hollywood illusion is bittersweet — we’re presented with a joyful image but with a little thinking we can see past it.