Kevin Brownlow
![Kevin Brownlow](/assets/img/authors/kevin-brownlow.jpg)
Kevin Brownlow
Kevin Brownlowis a British film historian, television documentary-maker, filmmaker, author, and film editor. Brownlow is best known for his work documenting the history of the silent era. Brownlow became interested in silent film at the age of eleven. This interest grew into a career spent documenting and restoring film. He has rescued many silent films and their history. His initiative in interviewing many largely forgotten, elderly film pioneers in the 1960s and 1970s preserved a legacy of cinema. Brownlow received...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth2 June 1938
Friends told me not to bother with the silents - they're jerky, poorly photographed and ludicrously badly acted. But I was immediately struck by the freshness and vitality of these films.
Somebody said that part of my reaction to British cinema is actually, paradoxically, a patriotic one. I'm so disappointed that we're not better.
I was sent to boarding school - a grim place. The only good thing the headmaster did for us was every Sunday evening in the winter he would show us films in the chapel. He couldn't afford a sound projector, so we saw silent films, which you could then still rent from photographic shops.
There was Garbo coming home with her shopping from the supermarket. So we were turned into pillars of salt, ... she would have fled.
In a sense those tests conveyed more of her personality than anything else we've seen. . . . You suddenly see what it must have been like just to sit next to her.
I realised that you could easily turn any room into a cinema with a projector, so I went on and on at my parents for one. They eventually got me a projector for Christmas when I was ten, and I realised I'd made a ridiculous mistake - I'd forgotten to say 'movie' projector; I got a still one.
Some directors were brilliant in the silent era but never felt at home in sound. It's like a sculptor being forced to take up painting.
To me, film is a religion. I don't expect to get paid to make it, but I do expect total dedication.
It was 1953, and I was still at school. I'd borrowed a silent French film from the library for my 9.5mm projector. It was by Jean Epstein, and it was awful. So I rang the library and asked if they had anything else. They said they had 'Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Revolution.'
My first restoration was on 'Napoleon,' trying to put the French version in with the English version, and it was most unsatisfactory.
I decided to restore 'Napoleon' after a widescreen festival at the Odeon Leicester Square in 1968. It was run by Richard Arnell and George Dunning, who animated and directed 'Yellow Submarine,' and they'd got their hands on the last scene, the triptychs. They just showed that part, without music and with the projectors misaligned.
The reason I put so much energy into it at the beginning was that while there were plenty of people looking after the talkies, almost nobody was doing the same for the silents. Now there are plenty of very good historians and restorers.