Jonathan Melville - Reel Time

Published on Monday 25 April 2011 17:01

TAKE a walk along Hollywood Boulevard today and the evidence of modern cinema is impossible to miss.

There are posters for blockbuster movies splashed across billboards and film souvenir emporiums that make the tartan tat shops on Princes Street look restrained.

Keep going a little past Grauman's Chinese Theatre, where many an Oscar ceremony has taken place, and you'll find Cahuenga Boulevard, an unassuming street with a pizzeria on one corner and a newsagent on the other.

For silent movie fans this road is something special, used by such greats as Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd in the 1920s to film scenes for their pictures.

I was privy to a personal tour from author John Bengtson, whose 1999 book, Silent Echoes, looks back 90 years to compare Silent Hollywood with today's.

Though some buildings have come and gone, it was amazing to see close-up where a chase sequence from 1921's The Goat was shot, the old fire station seen in 1923's Three Ages and where Keaton grabs a car, one-handed, in 1922's Cops.

I'll admit it's a niche tour and not the sort that any big companies are offering, but, thanks to John's research and now Google Maps, film fans can piece together the past for themselves, creating a tour that doesn't cost a fortune.

As you read this I'll be soaking up more classic cinema at Grauman's with the TCM Film Festival, an event that invites fans to mingle with celebrities and experts while 70 movies unspool in the background.

Unlike our own Edinburgh International Film Festival, TCM revels in a bit of glitz and glamour and I'm interested to see how it's done over here before the new-look EIFF launches this June.

Keep an eye on the blog at www.edinburghnews.com/reeltimefor more on TCM

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