Celluloid: Cinema & Plastics

In the world of plastics, there is one branch of the petrochemical tree that stands apart. Both hero and villain of its own story. A conduit to magical worlds of entertainment and adventure, while also a fiery and destructive consumer of early cinemas. This is the not-too-distant cousin of gun cotton and that magician’s stalwart, flash paper. A miraculous, flexible, transparent medium, a blessing and a curse to filmmakers and exhibitors for over 50 years.

Celluloid inhabits the monochrome world of the film noir. An anti-hero with a mercurial temper, mistreated it can turn on its handler, engulfing a projector in a deadly inferno. In Britain cinemas housed their projection equipment up in ‘the box’, a reference to the early fireproof, cramped, metal-lined rooms. A sweatbox for long shifts isolated from the audience behind a glass port and sliding steel shutters. Screen illumination came from an electric spark, leaping between two carbon rods, creating an incandescent ball of white-hot plasma. In the event of a film jamming in the projector gate, this intense heat source was barely a foot from the film. This mixture of camphor and nitrocellulose was like a blue touch paper that would transport the burn, travelling at lightning speed and devouring the reel, only sparing the fleetest of foot. Many a projectionist met an untimely demise as a result of a moment’s inattention or a poorly made splice of film.

And yet this same material entranced millions, entertaining, educating, and mystifying early cinemagoers. Weaving tales of romance and adventure, tragedy, and comedy. Knitting communities together with its hypnotic timeline of glittering silver particles. The film emulsion of frozen moments in time, transported on this wondrous flexible medium on its brief journey from top to bottom spool box. Delivering a shared experience and beguiling the masses.

Celluloid was far from a benign plastic, with an unparalleled capacity for self-destruction. What other material thought could engage and enthral us and embed itself in the fabric of our lives so successfully.

Photo Credit: Jill Marv