FORGOTTEN SILVER

Forgotten Silver is New Zealand’s finest, most brilliant and most inventive film – a cinematic masterpiece. Much of its brilliance resides in the adroit inclusion of short additional film excerpts either alleged “real” footage or additional feature footage, composed for the occasion. As an example of meta-film making, it is breathtaking. The film as a whole is the most astonishingly rich 53 minutes of cinema ever filmed. It is a film that rewards multiple viewings. This ingenious mockumentary caused howls of rage when it was revealed that the great film pioneer whose life was explored was mythical. It was as if we had been introduced to a new Edmund Hillary of film-making only to be informed it was all done in a hangar at Whenuapai and that this new Hillary had never existed. What a rotten trick!

Forgotten Silver breathlessly unfolds the (literally) incredible story of how a young New Zealand film maker with the epically ordinary name of Colin McKenzie created a Bible-based masterpiece  called Salome and several silent comedies about Stan the Man. He also invented a camera powered by a bicycle, yet another powered by a massive steam engine and a third, hidden in a suitcase. Kiwi ingenuity at its best. Even at this early stage of the film suspicions should have flared that this was a leg pull. If the Heath Robinson-style camera did not provoke scepticism, how about 2000 times 12 = 24,000  (twenty four thousand!) eggs stolen to make a film? Then there were the exotic Tahitian berries - 4 and half tons to make 22 seconds of film (!). Plus the truly great cinematic-technological inventions –  the wedding of sound and image in 1908 alas rendered in Chinese, the first colour film which by virtue of involving several topless Polynesian maidens wound up ensuring Colin was arrested for smut and consequently sent to jail for six months. It is well known that sound arrived in cinema in 1927 with Al Jolson’s detestable voice warbling scratchily. If sound had been invented  nearly 20 years earlier, this would be a revolution in cinematic history. Because of this innovation, prominent film personalities like Leonard Maltin and Harvey Weinstein earnestly told us that Colin McKenzie should now join the pantheon that included Edison, the Lumiere Brothers and D.W.Griffith. The presence of such famous film entities served to back up the affirmation of our own local celebrity, Peter Jackson, that a forgotten cinematic genius had been re-discovered. But what about the 24 thousand eggs? Can someone unscramble this delightful omelette?

One of the many delights of Forgotten Silver is the complex historical layering – most of it faked. When the film begins, the presentation of a solemn Jackson offers no clues as to the historic hoodwinking that is to follow.  Following the bedazzlement of eggs, berries, invention of colour, close up, tracking shot etc, we have Rex Solomon of Majestic Lion (presumably a take-off of MGM  and Cecil B de Mille) which has McKenzie deploying an army of 15,000 extras (see footnote) running around in the remote bush of Fiordland. If such an event had ever taken place, it could not possibly have been forgotten. For those familiar with New Zealand history at a more detailed level, the picture of Colin’s “father” would have been recognised as Arawata Bill, a well-known figure in South Island folklore who died in1947 and was celebrated posthumously in a ballad by poet Denis Glover in 1953. Arawata Bill spent many decades unsuccessfully prospecting for gold. Other stills were similarly moved from their true register in history into the reinvented folklore of the film.

One of the sad things about its reception was that the few (or were they many?) who believed Forgotten Silver’s celebrated protagonist, film maker Colin McKenzie was real, became furious when they discovered he was not. I’m Not Laughing of Hamilton writes, “I know that everyone (!) was fooled so I am not embarrassed to admit I was too and I don’t think it’s funny. It has made me unable to trust anything that TV1 put on again.” Sad, sad, sad. Everyone was not fooled and I’m Not Laughing should be embarrassed at his own historical ignorance.  Anyone familiar with our cultural or film history would not have been fooled.  In fact, they would have been delighted by the wittiness of the spoof. What is truly amazing – which defies credulity – is that several people believed it to be authentic. Some of these letters may have been written tongue in cheek. For TV cognoscenti, Montana Theatre on Sunday night always screened a feature not a documentary. Of course the casual TV browser (thousands, perhaps) may have been unaware of this. Keith Harrison wrote to The Otago Daily Times that “The whole presentation lacked humour, lacked purpose, lacked shape and lacked talent”. I strongly disagree with every point: it was the funniest NZ film I’ve seen, it had sublime creative purpose, it was exquisitely constructed and showed that Costa Botes and Peter Jackson are possessed of formidable talent. Possibly, Keith was unwittingly writing about the bone people?  The critic contributors to Rotten Tomatoes gave it 100 per cent rating – a rare accolade.

Many of the angry letters came from Timaru (or the South Island) and thought the film had done a disservice to Richard Pearse. The fake footage of Pearse was an affectionate rendering of his alleged flight – brilliantly rendered in blotchy black and white. The computer enhancement of the newspaper in someone’s back pocket “proving” that the Pearse flight preceded that of the Wright Brothers is beyond praise. I still laugh thinking about it. The Pearse episode – and the would-be aviator was always clear that the Wright brothers had achieved controlled flight before him - was only a small amount of the rich cinematic texture which included in its 53 minutes several other films, most notably the hilarious Stan the Man and McKenzie’s alleged masterwork, Salome, based on the Bible. The five Stan the Man films which successfully aped the overacting of the silent comedy, reinforce the notion that much slapstick comedy contains an element of cruelty which in real life (as opposed to reel life) could only provoke outrage. No matter, the hoped for comic effect is gloriously achieved when Stan plasters the face of the Prime Minster Coates with a custard pie and receives a trouncing with several truncheons. Cinema verite comedy surrealistically framed by not so inspired film comedy. This sequence echoes in construction and tone the crashed flight of Pearse trying to avoid cameraman Colin.

Salome, the forgotten masterpiece of Colin McKenzie was only seven-eight minutes long. Again surely its brevity would have indicated this was a hoax, or what you will. In the ensuing furore, Jackson wittily making reference to the opening sequence said that possibly they had been leading people down the garden path. This may have been extemporised (I suspect) for the interview occasion but it is an arguable aspect.

Surely the hoaxed indignant should have been wacking their foreheads with their palms and proclaiming “Silly me! Sucked in! Hoodwinked!” Yet in their defence, if they had been tuned in after the film had started and heard Leonard Maltin, the famous American film critic, proclaiming that Colin McKenzie was in the pantheon with Lumiere and D. W. Griffith, then belief in the documentary (actually, a mockumentary) was reasonable. However, for those who knew their history, suspicion would surely have crept in. If Colin McKenzie was as famous as the film asserted why had no one – literally - heard of him? Obviously, because he did not exist. All his achievements and his vast horde of extras would surely have been remembered.

A hoax is to be contrasted with a fraud. The fraudster pulls the wool over his victim’s eyes in order to extract money. The hoaxer wants to perpetrate a trick beyond that of any magician’s sleight of hand. The hoaxer wants to show us something about our credulity, our willingness to believe the fantastic, the unusual, the improbable, is real. The hoaxer does not want our money but our minds. To make matters worse or - depending on the generosity of your perspective - better, journalists and the media and Lindsay Shelton of the Film Commission were all in on the Forgotten Silver hoax. New Zealand being small, centralised, and eager to be up to date – and above all eager for new heroes to affirm itself as participant in world culture - was in fact the perfect country or culture in which to hoodwink a gullible public. In general, the New Zealand cultural scene is permanently ossified in provincial mode. Forgotten Silver transcended this stance and liberated our cultural psyche from the boggy ponds of localism into the heady waters of international cinema art.

The explicit and implicit agenda of Forgotten Silver was complex yet clear. It was a spoof on celebrity and forgotten heroes, a playful reinvention of history, a leg pull to test our gullibility in the face of apparent authority and indirectly a criticism and celebration of the heroic dedication needed to fund and finish a film.  It is well to remember Forgotten Silver was made several years before the triumphal trilogy of Lord of the Rings which was to bring Jackson fame and fortune.

While a huge debt of credit must goes to Jackson let us not forget Costa Botes who both co-wrote, co-directed and co-acted in the film. The original ideas and raft of the script came from Botes. Thus, Forgotten Silver is in some sense more of a Botes film than a Jackson film – though this is not to deny Jackson’s enormous part in the making of the film. Besides, the two have been close friends since they were young men and as with many an art work, the closeness of kindred spirits energises the enterprise.

The genius of Botes was to reverse the customary historical fabulation of moving famous persons person to times and locales that they have not inhabited or lived through, by inventing a mythical famous person. The effect is to create temporary myth rather than say a more enduring one like that of the Christian emperor Prester John, thought to be heroically waiting in the wings to save the European Christian world from Muslim invasion. Alas, there was no Prester John, and alas no Colin McKenzie, and the great innovators of early cinema remain French and American – not New Zealand.

At this point in cultural and film history an innocent viewer of this great film would be hard to find. The hoax is out of the can (and if you have read this blog), then Forgotten Silver has, like a modernist building, had its inner construction revealed. But if you haven’t seen it, please remedy this lack as soon as possible. It is a rich treasure trove of all the tricks of the cinema minus spectacular special effects.

Forgotten Silver is rediscovered gold, cultural bullion. It is our treasure and our triumph.

Footnote:

Nicholas Reid noted in 2000 that Peter Jackson had 15,000 extras for the Lord of the Rings. QED: In a former life Peter Jackson was Colin McKenzie.