Review by Graham Johnstone
Cinema Purgatorio is an under-the-radar late addition to Alan Moore’s extensive comics bibliography.
It’s both a celluloid negative of beloved movie Cinema Paradiso, and an unofficial cinematic companion to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The latter was a hugely ambitious metafiction, creating a single universe where all fictional worlds and characters could interact. It was both pastiche and parody – sometimes affectionate, sometimes savage. Cinema Purgatorio is similar, but is it as good?
Each episode screens an invented film that comments on, parodies, or satirises, some observed aspect of the medium, so creating an alternate history of cinema. Moore spans decades of celluloid evolution, with stories of stars, directors and producers. His sweep of subjects is similarly wide, (even ‘Cinemascope’), ranging from enduring genres, to cult classics. Moods also vary, from the slapstick of The Keystone Cops, to the black comedy of studio bosses Warner Brothers recast as the Marx Brothers. Episodes set in Ancient Roman and American Western contexts are less funny, more bleak, apparently manifestations of a captive viewer’s troubled psyche. Cinema Purgatorio is another ‘extraordinary’ achievement by Moore, but one that’s easier to admire than enjoy.
The appeal of each ‘film’ will depend on the reader’s prior knowledge. ‘Freaks of the Lens’ seems a fair biography of cult director Tod Browning, as told by a cast member of his Freaks. Britain’s worthy Children’s Film Foundation, is mashed up with H.P. Lovecraft. That’s amusing, (“your mispronunciation is adorable”), at least if you grew up in Britain at the right time. ‘The Abandoned Sunset’ uses the neat device of a conversation in a morgue between Hollywood fatalities, with visuals alternating between chilled setting and chilling stories. It nods to noir comedy Sunset Boulevard, and reads tolerably for casual cinephiles, with, no doubt, cryptic clues to be deciphered by devotees. So who is this book aimed at? It’s no beginners guide, and readers familiar with all Moore’s subjects may prove a niche audience. The proverbial alien visitors could learn much from Cinema Purgatorio about the extremes of human behaviour, but may still be left unsure what’s fact or fiction, and generally puzzled by Earth art forms.
Each ‘film’ is wrapped in an ongoing frame story of an unnamed narrator, returning, with increasing reluctance, to the menacingly named theatre. Moore’s narrative economy is impressive, completing episodes in eight pages. Individual films chime with the frame story, notably the ‘adorable’ children’s aunt owning a cinema that is cursed. Some of the scenarios seem manifestations of the unnamed cinema-goer’s troubled psyche. Yet over eighteen episodes, the frame story is drawn-out, and the pay off hardly a surprise.
Moore and artist co-creator Kevin O’Neill both reached state pension age, on completion of the final League volume, and duly retired from comics. Knowing that, it’s tempting to see Cinema Purgatorio as Moore keeping his artist pal suitably occupied until then. In any event, the art exudes a joy that the story lacks. O’Neill honed and extended his craft over five decades, and this is a welcome opportunity to enjoy his art in retro back and white. The frame story is rendered in ink washes, with the films in his astounding twist on period engravings. The reverse may have better evoked celluloid shades, but this allows more pages of O’Neill’s phenomenal ink artistry. Cinema Purgatorio would be desirable for the art alone, but Moore certainly succeeds in providing endless grotesque delights for O’Neill to bring to glorious and ghastly (un)life.
Cinema Purgatorio, will fulfil a few film freaks’ fantasies. Otherwise, it’s a fascinating curio, and footnote to the far more accessible League. Best start here.
