<PERSON>
The cleverest thing that <PERSON> does with Babylon becomes apparent at the end of the film, when studio-climber <PERSON> watches Singin’ in the Rain in a movie theater. As we watch a couple brief segments of the film, namely <PERSON>’s overwrought “I love you, I love you, I love you” and a clip of <PERSON> speaking, we realize that these moments are based on the fictional events that transpire in Babylon. Clever as this is, however, it’s a bit ill-fitting; although <PERSON> sees these moments as cruel to his friends and the difficulties they faced, Babylon actually shares the same teleological belief in cinema and dismissal of the silent era as Singin’ in the Rain.
The silent cinema of Babylon is not worth saving or even grieving. It is not merely a bacchanalia that results in the death of countless apparently ungrieved extras, but it produces nothing of value. Babylon’s silent cinema is a peepshow and an overwrought spectacle, and though we are made to marvel at both the genuine talent of <PERSON> (<PERSON>) the material here is treated with the same seriousness as the pictorial sense of <PERSON> <PERSON>–none at all. Even as <PERSON> (<PERSON>) opines that the cinema is capable of high art equal to Europe’s Bauhaus architecture, there is no indication that the films of <PERSON>, <PERSON>, the Soviets, or even <PERSON>, <PERSON> and <PERSON> exist in this world. 285
If we are made to feel bad for either <PERSON> or <PERSON>, it’s because it is easy to feel bad for the downfall of a thoughtful and flawed but ultimately good-hearted man played by one of America’s most beloved actors and a charismatic and talented firecracker played by the closest thing American cinema has had to its own “It girl” in a long time. As in Singin’ in the Rain, we are asked to laugh at the difficulties of adjusting to sound pictures but ultimately to recognize them as the glorious future of cinema, which is glimpsed in a montage of some of the cinema’s great works, Avatar, and Babylon itself.
I mention Avatar on its own not merely to exclude it from the canonical films that comprise this montage, but also because its inclusion further suggests a fundamentally teleological view of cinema that Babylon endorses. Avatar is the great technical advancement in cinema, or so we are told; it is, like sound once was, the future. But cinema’s past is worth preserving and remembering not merely as history, but for its own artistic merits. This understanding is part of what separates Babylon from something like Hugo, which views cinema’s past not merely as romantic but valuable. I can’t imagine <PERSON> would react any more positively to Babylon than he does to Singin’ in the Rain. 529