Cinematic Investigations: At the Picturehouse… | Little White Lies

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Cin­e­mat­ic Inves­ti­ga­tions: At the Pic­ture­house with Wittgenstein

03 Mar 2023

Words by Lillian Crawford

A man in a coat stands at the front of a classroom, addressing students seated in colourful chairs.
A man in a coat stands at the front of a classroom, addressing students seated in colourful chairs.
A film crit­ic traces the con­nec­tions between philoso­pher Lud­wig Wittgenstein’s escapist eccen­tric­i­ties and her own for­ma­tive expe­ri­ences as a cinephile.

Do not be put off by the title. This is by no means a paper look­ing at Wittgen­stein­ian phi­los­o­phy in rela­tion to cin­e­ma – I am not advanced enough to attempt such an essay, and there is already a book ded­i­cat­ed to that sub­ject. My rea­sons for writ­ing about cin­e­ma and the Aus­tri­an philoso­pher Lud­wig Wittgen­stein are entire­ly per­son­al. There are some strange par­al­lels between my for­ma­tive expe­ri­ences as a cinephile and Wittgenstein’s life which may res­onate with oth­ers who take com­fort in the qui­etude of the pic­ture­house. Allow me this moment of philo­soph­i­cal self-investigation.

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Wittgen­stein was born in Vien­na in 1889. Over a cen­tu­ry lat­er, in 1998, I came into the world. Wittgen­stein first arrived at Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Cam­bridge in 1911. I began my under­grad­u­ate stud­ies there as a his­to­ry stu­dent in 2016. It’s a ten­u­ous con­nec­tion, not least because our back­grounds could not be more dif­fer­ent; how­ev­er, among the college’s alum­ni, Wittgen­stein was one with whom I felt an affin­i­ty. I expect it part­ly came from read­ing him as a teenag­er, but most­ly from see­ing Derek Jarman’s 1993 film Wittgen­stein inspired by his life. I was giv­en a copy by my grand­moth­er and we dis­cussed it while walk­ing through Jarman’s gar­den at Dun­ge­ness, one of the mem­o­ries I hold clos­est to my heart. My grandmother’s inter­est in Jar­man, and her shar­ing of his films with me as a teenag­er, con­tin­ues to puz­zle and fas­ci­nate me, though I am immense­ly grate­ful that she did.

The film, orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by lit­er­ary the­o­rist Ter­ry Eagle­ton and changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly by Jar­man, cre­ates an avant-garde dou­ble of Trin­i­ty Col­lege cast against black back­drops with bright­ly coloured cos­tumes and props. Karl John­son plays the adult Wittgen­stein, with Michael Gough as fel­low philoso­pher Bertrand Rus­sell and Til­da Swin­ton as his lover, Lady Otto­line Mor­rell. Jar­man brought out Wittgenstein’s queer­ness, known to have been in love with at least three men dur­ing his life.

Wittgen­stein the film cap­tures the aus­tere sur­round­ings of Wittgen­stein the man. After sub­mit­ting his Trac­ta­tus Logi­co-Philo­soph­i­cus to obtain a PhD, Wittgen­stein became a fel­low of Trin­i­ty until his death in 1951. Dur­ing the 1930s he lived in rooms in the tow­er of Whewell’s Court with­in the col­lege, which philoso­pher G.E. Moore described as sparse­ly fur­nished with a large view of the sky and also of Cam­bridge roofs”. I spent two years in Whewell’s, although my approach to dec­o­ra­tion was rather less min­i­mal­ist. I ignored the college’s pol­i­cy against pin­ning images on the walls, cov­er­ing mine with posters I had res­cued from the rub­bish pile of the Cam­bridge Arts Picturehouse.

My time at uni­ver­si­ty was com­pli­cat­ed by my men­tal health, a sub­ject I have pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten about for Lit­tle White Lies, and being autis­tic which made it dif­fi­cult to socialise. I immersed myself in my stud­ies, as well as my bur­geon­ing appetite for film. My career as a crit­ic began dur­ing my first year, review­ing the doc­u­men­tary O.J.: Made in Amer­i­ca (2016) for the stu­dent news­pa­per, Var­si­ty, and I found myself hooked. I soon became edi­tor of the film sec­tion, a post I some­how retained for two years despite it sup­pos­ed­ly being a termly role. The great­est perquisite of the role was my press pass to the Arts Pic­ture­house, which became my pri­vate library.

Every Fri­day I gath­ered my week­ly read­ing and head­ed out of Whewell’s Court to the Arts where I’d set up camp in the mid­dle of Screen One. Often I didn’t check what was show­ing that day, but I would sit through each of the week’s releas­es in turn and review them for the paper in the inter­mis­sions. If the film was good, I would be rapt, but if it wasn’t my atten­tion would turn back to books on the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion or Medi­ae­val queen­ship. So many hours were spent in that room that I knew how to switch the lights off when the pro­jec­tion­ist for­got, and once had to run out to find them when the pro­jec­tor fell down. The cin­e­ma sat above a Wether­spoons called The Regal, and if it was a late screen­ing you could feel the vibra­tions of the music ris­ing up through the floor. When you spend so much time at a sin­gle venue, these quirks become a part of the charm.

Wittgen­stein shared my escapist eccen­tric­i­ties. He too felt over­whelmed by uni­ver­si­ty life, and fled his Trin­i­ty rooms for the Kine­ma which used to be sit­u­at­ed on Mill Road, now the loca­tion of the Var­si­ty offices. Wittgen­stein always sat in the cen­tre of the front row to be as total­ly immersed as pos­si­ble. The clas­si­cal schol­ar H.D.P. Lee reflect­ed that Wittgen­stein detest­ed high­brow films or Eng­lish films” and liked the Kine­ma because they most­ly showed Amer­i­can Wild West films”. Jar­man shows Wittgen­stein watch­ing a West­ern in his film, draw­ing par­al­lels between the young boy wear­ing a Native Amer­i­can head­dress at a table with the adult Wittgen­stein find­ing that child-like joy again to present a more human ver­sion of a philoso­pher whose writ­ing is often deemed impen­e­tra­ble. In these moments Jar­man gives us a way in to con­nect with the man himself.

Until I was at uni­ver­si­ty, I hadn’t realised that films had much val­ue beyond enter­tain­ment. As I saw more inter­na­tion­al cin­e­ma and explored Trinity’s film library, I became fas­ci­nat­ed by the the­o­ret­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties cin­e­ma holds. This informed my writ­ing for the stu­dent paper, exper­i­ment­ing with styles and approach­es to the sev­enth art which even­tu­al­ly led me to stay­ing at Cam­bridge for a fourth year to com­plete a master’s in film and screen stud­ies. Per­haps this real­i­sa­tion also came through revis­it­ing Jarman’s Wittgen­stein, and see­ing the depic­tion of the philoso­pher at the cinema.

Mid­way through the film, the cam­era pans through a mocked-up ver­sion of the Kine­ma with Wittgen­stein sit­ting in the front row. He’s not alone how­ev­er – a stu­dent sits beside him after a class on lan­guage games’ writ­ing ideas in a blue note­book as the project whirrs behind them. A sim­i­lar shot lat­er shows a moment of emo­tion­al inten­si­ty in their spec­ta­tor­ship, and the cam­era clos­es on their hands as they touch. As much as there is a joy to being alone at the cin­e­ma, I have since found it to be an expe­ri­ence worth shar­ing with those I care about. In voiceover, John­son says, There was no com­pe­ti­tion between the cin­e­ma and sem­i­nar.” Unlike Wittgen­stein, my time at Cam­bridge made me realise the two were not so dif­fer­ent after all.

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