The Spirits of Modernity – Dawson City: Frozen Time review

Bill Morrison, known for his ability to create sensitive, poetic found footage images, has produced an unique film. And not only because of the formula – Dawson City: Frozen Time is a picture composed almost exclusively of archival materials from the beginning of the 20th century, miraculously unearthed in Dawson (by the famous, associated with gold fever, Klondike River in Canada): old movies, as well as photographs and newspaper clippings – but also because of the topic: the new replacing the old, or brutal effects of the upcoming decisive steps of modernity.

The artist has put together the history of cinema and the last bumps of gold fever, efficiently capturing the moment of the birth of modern capitalism. So we will see, for example, the displacement of the remains of indigenous peoples and the appropriation of their land, the destruction of natural fisheries, mindless exploitation of underground deposits, great migrations caused by the delusion of rapid profit and wild business, which sometimes resorted to criminal methods (intentional arson, literal removal of competition, devastation and subsequent reconstruction – what only matter is where the profit lies). We will also learn, among other things, that Donald Trump’s ancestor, Fred Trump, built a family fortune by running a brothel.

All this is presented by Morrison kind of involuntarily. At first glance, it seems that more important in this slowly narrated movie is a story from the order of the history of cinema and a reconstruction of finding reels of old films from the early twentieth century and how it happened that these reels survived being buried underground for several decades (they were found in 1978). Among them, for example, were the only currently existing copies of some D.W. Griffith’s or Tod Browning’s movies. It is also worth adding that it is estimated that about 75% of all films ever shot on the nitrocellulose[1] film base were destroyed, so the find was priceless.

Telling the story of the cinema evolution at the turn of the century – from the Lumière Brothers, Thomas Edison, through the dangerously flammable tape used by the creators of silent cinema, to the invention of sound in film – the American documentary filmmaker also shows that cinema was an integral part of changes associated with modernity. Not only as one of the most important inventions of the era, but also as a silent observer unaware of its role as an archivist, and besides – in a sense – a victim of the same changes from which it evolved.

Efficiently selected and combined images make up a visual narrative and gain an extraordinary property. They are a narrative commentary, but also a testimony of those times. These are the faces of ordinary and extraordinary people, amateur and professional materials. One can see how many people, including many famous actors and businessmen of the time, have passed through Dawson. Fragments of these films have something magical inside them, a spark frozen in lifetime. There is something very disturbing about them, as if the characters one can see wanted to come out of the screen. As if they wanted to regain their lost lives. As if they wanted to take revenge for all those destroyed copies (many, as Morrison teaches us, were destroyed intentionally by owners, businessmen, entrepreneurs, for whom, with the appearance of sound, silent cinema began to lose any value).

Perhaps this impression is caused by the structural dimension of many Dawson’s movies. They are battered, indistinct, blurred, incomplete. Here, we do not recognize the object held by the figure, elsewhere the movement will seem strange to us, with odd jumps, unevenness, etc. As if something really wanted to get out of the picture. Perhaps it is due to the creator who consciously built a film with structural elements (i.e. showing the viewer fragments of the tape, filming process, etc.) and was able to depict the extraordinary vitality of the old cinema (let’s remember the legend of viewers fleeing from the train during the first, historical, admission paid cinema show of Lumière Brothers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station in 1896) is an impression of movement that has delighted the whole world for the first time over a century ago. Or is it the magical effect of these miraculously survived Dawson’s films?

Dawson City: Frozen Time was also adorned with the remarkably atmospheric music of Alex Somers (who also created music for Captain Fantastic, and songs for Black Mirror series). Dawson City is a charismatic, nostalgic journey to the roots of cinema and the birth of modernity. It is a memento and a reminder that a learning based on the errors of the past (wild capitalism) is the most difficult of the arts.

[1] Tapes of this type were highly flammable due to the fact that this material does not need oxygen for combustion, and were completely withdrawn from use in the 1950s.

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