Kingdom of Shadows Maxim Gorky

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JULY 4, 1896
LUMIERE’S CINEMATOGRAPH
BY MAXIM GORKY
Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows.

If you only knew how strange it is to be there. It is a world without sound, without color. Every
thing there—the earth, the trees, the people, the water and the air—is dipped in monotonous
grey. Grey rays of the sun across the grey sky, grey eyes in grey faces, and the leaves of the trees
are ashen grey. It is not life but its shadow, It is not motion but its soundless specter.
Here I shall try to explain myself, lest I be suspected of madness or indulgence in symbolism. I
was at Aumont’s and saw Lumière’s cinematograph—moving photography. The extraordinary
impression it creates is so unique and complex that I doubt my ability to describe it with all its
nuances. However, I shall try to convey its fundamentals. When the lights go out in the room in
which Lumière’s invention is shown, there suddenly appears on the screen a large grey picture,
“A Street in Paris”—shadows of a bad engraving. As you gaze at it, you see carriages, buildings
and people in various poses, all frozen into immobility.
All this is in grey, and the sky above is also grey—you anticipate nothing new in this all too
familiar scene, for you have seen pictures of Paris streets more than once. But suddenly a strange
flicker passes through the screen and the picture stirs to life. Carriages coming from somewhere
in the perspective of the picture are moving straight at you, into the darkness in which you sit;
somewhere from afar people appear and loom larger as they come closer to you; in the
foreground children are playing with a dog, bicyclists tear along, and pedestrians cross the street
picking their way among the carriages. All this moves, teems with life and, upon approaching the
edge of the screen, vanishes somewhere beyond it.
And all this in strange silence where no rumble of the wheels is heard, no sound of footsteps or
of speech. Nothing. Not a single note of the intricate symphony that always accompanies the
movements of people. Noiselessly, the ashen-grey foliage of the trees sways in the wind, and the
grey silhouettes of the people, as though condemned to eternal silence and cruelly punished by
being deprived of all the colors of life, glide noiselessly along the grey ground.
Their smiles are lifeless, even though their movements are full of living energy and are so swift
as to be almost imperceptible. Their laughter is soundless although you see the muscles
contracting in their grey faces. Before you a life is surging, a life deprived of words and shorn of
the living spectrum of colors—the grey, the soundless, the bleak and dismal life.
It is terrifying to see, but it is the movement of shadows, only of shadows … Suddenly
something clicks, everything vanishes and a train appears on the screen. It speeds straight at you
—watch out!
It seems as though it will plunge into the darkness in which you sit, turning you into a ripped
sack full of lacerated flesh and splintered bones, and crushing into dust and into broken
fragments this hall and this building, so full of women, wine, music and vice.
But this, too, is but a train of shadows.
Noiselessly, the locomotive disappears beyond the edge of the screen. The train comes to a stop,
and grey figures silently emerge from the cars, soundlessly greet their friends, laugh, walk, run,
bustle, and … are gone. And here is another picture. Three men seated at the table, playing cards.
Their faces are tense, their hands move swiftly, The cupidity of the players is betrayed by the
trembling fingers and by the twitching of their facial muscles, They play … Suddenly, they break
into laughter, and the waiter who has stopped at their table with beer, laughs too. They laugh
until their sides split but not a sound is heard. It seems as if these people have died and their
shadows have been condemned to play cards in silence unto eternity. Another picture. A gardener
watering flowers. The light grey stream of water, issuing from a hose, breaks into a fine spray …
This mute, grey life finally begins to disturb and depress you. It seems as though it carries a
warning, fraught with a vague but sinister meaning that makes your heart grow faint. You are
forgetting where you are. Strange imaginings invade your mind and your consciousness begins to
wane and grow dim …
Besides those pictures I have already mentioned, is featured “The Family Breakfast,” an idyll of
three. A young couple with its chubby first-born is seated at the breakfast table. The two are so
much in love, and are so charming, gay and happy, and the baby is so amusing …
I am convinced that these pictures will soon be replaced by others of a genre more suited to the
general tone of the “Concert Parisien.” For example, they will show a picture titled: “As She
Undresses,” or “Madam at Her Bath,” or “A Woman in Stockings.” They could also depict a
sordid squabble between a husband and wife and serve it to the public under the heading of “The
Blessings of Family Life.”
Yes, no doubt, this is how it will be done. The bucolic and the idyll could not possibly find their
place in Russia’s markets thirsting for the piquant and the extravagant. I also could suggest a few
themes for development by means of a cinematograph and for the amusement of the market
place. For instance: to impale a fashionable parasite upon a picket fence, as is the way of the
Turks, photograph him, then show it.
It is not exactly piquant but quite edifying.

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Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows.

It is not exactly piquant but quite edifying.

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