I’m not very sure how I came across the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum; it certainly isn’t mentioned in any of my guidebooks to British museums, nor did it come up in my research for interesting things to explore in Exeter (I should have checked the tourist website). I suspect I noticed the museum symbol on the OS map and wondered what it might be. I still wasn’t sure what to expect when I turned up, as well as getting a little lost trying to find the right way in. What I discovered was a treasure-trove of artefacts and memorabilia going back through the history of cinema and centuries before. The core of the archive is from Bill Douglas, ‘a voracious collector of books, memorabilia and artefacts relating to the history and prehistory of cinema’ (Wickham 2010: 15), added to over the years from others such as Don Boyd, James Mackay, Robert Dunbar and Gavrik Losey (son of Joseph Losey), and it is all online to explore.
There are certainly objects in this collection that I could single out and probably deserve a blog-post each of their own. I was particularly struck by the panoramic view of London from the Albion Mills, a copy of Magick in XX books, and James Mason’s Bluebird stockings. As soon as you arrive in the first room you get a sense of the eclectic nature of the collection. But it is also a little misleading; the overwhelming abundance of material in this room is the sort of merchandise which the Hollywood blockbuster now surrounds itself; the games and toys, images and (as with the stockings) the most tenuous links to the film. There are some classic posters. But it is when you reach the lower gallery that the treasures truly become apparent.
In some ways this is not a Cinema museum; I’m sure the archives contain much material on the development of the Cinema and the Hollywood film. In fact what you discover here is the history of the moving image, with historic artefacts connected with shadow puppets, the first stirrings of animation in the kaleidoscopes, anamorphis and hidden images generated through history. Slides which reveal another image when a light is shone through, or when the angle of vision is shifted. There are peep shows and magic lanterns, one of which would be wildly inappropriate if made today and which, through the act of solitary viewing, retains even now a strong impact.
The famous work of Eadweard Muybridge and the 19th century zoetropes add an element of interaction, with models you can use and some artefacts you can handle. But this is not generally a hands-on exhibition, more’s the pity. Many of the beautiful and clever slides and machines do make you want to go away and make your own. But what also did this for me is seeing the script for Comrades, the Bill Douglas film. Although I live across the car park from the site of the cinema where both I and Lesley Halliwell had much of our early cinematic experiences (not at the same time, I should clarify) I am not a film buff, I was not aware of the work of Bill Douglas, but seeing his work laid out was inspiring and sent me away with new ideas and greater clarity on what I might want to creatively explore next, and if a museum can do that then it must have succeeded in something. When Anthony Lane repeats “that movies deserve journalism” he is in part setting himself up against the scholarly tomes with which film studies is filled. But the ephemera and essential mechanics of film making is the full context in which film lovers experience their favourite work, and it also deserves its space. When the young Oliver Hardy spent three formative years working as projectionist at the Electric Theatre, who knew then what the world of film would become.
Reference Anthony Lane 2002 Nobody’s Perfect Picador: London Paul Merton 2007 Silent Cinema Random House: London Phil Whickham 2010 The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum Guide Book University of Exeter: Exeter
The England Project 