Monday, October 19, 2009

When I was young.....

Yeah o.k......maybe not when I was young.
But back in the good old days when they watched a movie at home, I'm sure it looked a little like this.

We went to a fabulous antique emporium on the weekend and picked up this spiffy projector.
Best of all it had some reels of film in it.

At first I was excited at the beautifully sculptural camera with case included, then I became all the more intrigued, pondering what might be on the film included.

Could it be a happy birthday from days of old, a Hollywood great....or something more sinister like some young lovers late night jaunts....or worse....could it be a travesty, a secret, a murder.... filmed like it was in that gruesome movie with Nicholas cage '8mm'

We had to know!

So home it came.

The machine switched on, it whirred and hummed just like it should. The light shone bright, ready to tell the tale of the little film reels within. But alas, the rubber belt that made the wheel turn was goo. So, so old it had deteriorated into goo.

Determined to unveil the images of old, Mr Finki had an idea!
We had picked up a vintage editing splicer at some garage sale ages ago, for no other purpose than it's vintage geeky appeal.

But being the uber geek that Mr.Finki is...he actually knew what it did and how to work it. So he popped on the reels, plugged it an and wound the handle.

As the picture went flicka...flicka, a yellowed image..... a man, walked on to the screen.
He struggled to carry a large hessian bag that was leaving a trail of something behind as it scraped it's way across the floor. We lent in closer to see if it was, what we thought it was and at that very moment, the bag dropped and out rolled a head....
Do you believe me? Nahhhh...

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is....the movie was a 1922 Hollywood flick called weak end driver. About a man and his motor car. An old model T ford.


So cute to watch.

It's nice to have little bits of history around our house and even nicer that some of it works too.

4 comments:

  1. wow, that's soo good. we have one aswell packed away at my mums, along with my box cameras. they are great pieces of history that I could never part with.

    edited - word verification : vidio

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  2. That Mr Finki is an absolute genius! He can make or fix anything.

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  3. What a lovely story : ) I went antiquing on the weekend too - so much fun! I snapped up a great pair of vintage scissors and am hoping they sharpen up ok : )

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  4. I love this post! I wanted to skip to the end to see what the film was! How cool that you have an old projector and were ableto fix it.

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