Simon Stern plays Haller, the business official who has been patiently watching Cooke on his television screens. Stem’s portrayal of the character is as otherworldly as his surroundings. He never gets up from his chair behind the long hardwood desk, and he is perfectly calm in Cooke’s presence. When the burglar pulls a gun on him, he only smiles. Clearly he is so far above the visitor in rank, in resources, and in subtlety that he is beyond fear. But in a way it seems that Haller hardly sees the other man, almost as if there is a barrier between them that makes it ultimately impossible for him to believe that Cooke exists. Meanwhile, the future which is on his side, the lofty panorama of the city behind him, arouse an overwhelming jealousy and hatred in his opponent. Before Haller can react, Cooke has shot him with his gun. Surprise and disbelief cross his face; now we see for the first time an almost featureless white box that Haller breathily refers to as “the tracer.” Haller’s blood stains his tan suit; he watches as Cooke makes off with the box.
The camera allows us plenty of time to appreciate Rehage’s car of the future. It and two others were built upon the frames of racing cars and all are driveable. Cooke’s car was made by fastening a specially formed sheet-metal body to the chassis of a 1930 Alfa Romeo GS sports car, the new body extending far over the front and rear wheels and having a high solid roof. Pictures of this car have already appeared in magazines; it is truly a dream car. Some additional futuristic touches: extra-wide tires and solid wheel covers, adding to the sleekness of the design, ornamental strips of chromium-plated trim for streamlining, and a wide one-piece windshield. The last of these presented a difficult problem for the production crew. In order to set his cars apart from those on the road today, Rehage decided to equip them with curved glass on front and back that would follow the shape of the body. His technicians, succeeded in producing a number of curved windshields by bending plate glass around carbon molds, and six of these were selected for the cars.
In addition, Rehage built a cutaway interior for Cooke’s car and equipped it with a removable front seat, removable roof and doors, and a molded rubber dashboard that stretches the width of the car. In the dashboard were mounted a variety of manually operated dials, lights and buzzers, some of which were never used during the actual filming. For road footage to be used in conjunction with this interior set, Rehage experimented with techniques that would produce an exceptionally smooth ride. That effect was finally achieved by using a camera operating at twice normal speed, mounted on a racing car traveling at seventy or eighty miles an hour. When the film is slowed down, motion is very calm and more like that of a ship than of an automobile.
Other driving footage was shot by a camera moving on rails among Rehage’s miniatures, which display the same attention to detail as those he used in his films about the 1933 World’s fair. The miniature models of houses and storefronts, traffic signals and cars, were also combined with movies of the actual cars in motion, using an interesting and effective process: the film of car and road was printed frame-by-frame onto a sequence of paper proofs, which were then pasted over with photographs of the models. Because of the size of the artwork, Rehage could exercise a great deal of control over its composition and animation. Finally, the completed frames were rephotographed onto movie film, live action and miniatures combined.
Cooke never finds out the pivotal reason for his downfall, that the “tracer” on the seat at his side is nothing more than a radio transmitter which will lead the police right to him. This fact we are told by the police captain. In a series of impressive shots, Rehage shows us the modern police station and its machinery. Like the offices of Olympian, the rooms of the station are decked out with real-looking radios, telephones, switchboards, and in this case maps of a future Chicago. We see the helicopter equipment that locates Cooke’s car on a suburban highway, and underneath the copter, a beautiful painting of lit streets that reemphasizes for us the scale of Rehage’s imagination. Returning to Cooke’s level, we pan back and see the lights of a police car.
The chase is a masterpiece. Still using miniatures to augment the action, Rehage leads the three powerful cars through an all-out test of their abilities. The police cars, with their flashing beacons and the dubbed-in purring of their engines, are a frightening spectacle. Rehage took thousands of feet of film of the pursuit, cars attaining speeds of up to ninety miles an hour. Frequent repairs had to be made during the shooting. The chase scene itself lasts only sixteen minutes on the screen, and ends on the parking lot of the supermarket which is the only outdoor set used in the film.
The supermarket was constructed out of concrete, aluminum and plate glass, under the guidance of Graham Keane. It is thirty feet high at each apex and one hundred twenty feet across. It predominant design features are a pair of huge wooden arches covered with four hundred square feet each of sheet aluminum, and a row of gigantic windows that make up most of the front wall. The parking lot is illuminated by five floodlight towers, around which the drivers race their cars, laying rubber on the new asphalt surface and filling the air with smoke. One policeman in the film fires a specially designed pistol with a wide nozzle, and the rear window of Cooke’s car is shattered. Angrily, his visibility badly impaired, Cooke spins his car around. His collision with the first police car was captured by three cameras and two additional sound recorders; even so, the sound of the crash was augmented later for the film. Repairs had to be made on Cooke’s car so that it could be driven. Before Cooke can turn the car around, one of the police in the third car fires a teargas grenade through his back window. Cooke charges at the other police car, is deflected, and crashes through the supermarket.
We might enumerate three ways that a filmmaker has of making his objects appear real. They are: 1) by using them, 2) by ignoring them, and 3) by destroying them. The televisions, radios and automobiles in The Tracer appear real because we see them work. Meticulously constructed appliances that are ignored by the actors, on the other hand, appear real because of the very lack of interest. To the film crew these objects are works of art, but inside the film they are part of the background of everyday life. Similarly, by destroying expensive machinery and sets that were made for the film, the director tells us that the supermarket is just another supermarket, the cars are just cars, and the man is just another man.
Lights in the market are turned on, clouds of tear gas rise from the wreckage toward the high ceiling, and we see Rehage’s last constructed evidence of the future. Early in production, the plan of this sequence was fixed. Rehage contracted with popular soap manufacturers, and with several independent advertising firms, and collected more than one hundred futuristic package designs. These were carefully drawn and used in the final scenes. Framed by these fairy tales and by broken glass, the wreckage is grotesque and an intrusion. Blood was applied to the metal edges, and all post-collision evidences of the car’s fake construction were concealed.
We must be honest in appraisingThe Tracer as a film. Its strength lies not in acting, nor even in the dramatic use of camera and music. It is most impressive, truly impressive, for its realism and technical perfection. Rehage’s special effects, whatever their foundation, are ultimately convincing. We may sympathize with the protagonist, but it is not sympathy or sadness at his end that fills our hearts. For, even as he was devoured by a superior future to which he did not belong, so we of the present are devoured by Rehage’s awesome vision. People who have seen this film have walked out of the theatre with their eyes on fire, and talk in their heads of the time when men will fly in rocket ships.
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* * * *
John Barfoot
COILS
CHERRY ORDERED the carcase of the Negro woman to be lowered into the white toilet. The carcase was a shapeless lump of lardy white, ridged with gristle. The block and tackle creaked as the two workmen hauled at it, hand by hand, and Cherry made little sounds with his mouth as he directed the lowering.
She said,
—Cherry, why are you doing this
to her?
He replied,
—Because she is black.
—But she’s white, she’s all white, except for those brown patches of blood.
—She is black,
said Cherry.
The greasy carcase was almost entirely inside the toilet now. She saw a hair stuck on the fat. The carcase disappeared and the workmen disengaged the hook and pulled up the chain. The hook had little lumps of fat stuck onto it.
—Cherry, I feel sick.
—Go away,
he said, and when she did not move,
—GO AWAY,
he roared.
The sound of his voice traveled out and out to the distant walls of the huge room and bounced and reverberated back. The air was vibrating and the great space was webbed with sound.
—AYAYAYAYAY,
came the sound of the room.
Cherry was looking into the gleaming toilet bowl and muttering to himself. The workmen were looking on uninterestedly.
She ran away from them, skimming over the radiant floor, birdlike, cloudy folds of white robe floating around her. She drove her legs hard against the floor, resilient, ran and ran, until the hazy walls took on definition and she saw a door. The door was so huge that the handle was out of her reach. She pressed hard against the smooth surface and it opened, silently. She looked back. Far away, at the other end of the enormous room the little group stood, almost hidden in the glimmer of light. Cherry was talking to the workmen and the distorted words of their conversation babbled from the walls.
She pushed the door with all her might and it swung slowly back into its housing.
—THOOOOMMM,
it sounded, dull surf-thunder.
A bell began to ring. If Cherry came after her . . .
She leaned over and switched off the alarm clock. Feet tangled in sheets and nightdress damp with sweat. If Cherry came after her . . .
Already, the unpredictable coils of dream were giving way to the ordered lines of existence. She closed her eyes against the day and tried to go back into her dream. But the lines were driven too deep for escape; her mind was already trundling along well-worn tracks, meeting no resistance, no retardation of steady, constant speed. She stumbled groaning out of bed.
She walked into the living room.
She cooked breakfast.
She ate breakfast.
She washed her face, neck, ears, arms up to the elbow.
She dressed.
She combed and arranged her hair.
She put on her coat.
She went to work.
At work, Mrs. Cox said to her,
—You’re looking a bit haggard, dear. Bags under your eyes. Not getting enough sleep, I expect. My Ronnie’s the same—out till all hours doing God knows what. I tell him the same as you—you need more sleep, my lad, instead of gallivanting God knows where in the middle of the night. But does he listen? Talk to the wall.
Mrs. Cox went on like this all the time. Her conversation was like a continuous tape-recording, endlessly repeating itself, forever beginning again. You could dip in at any point and follow it quite easily. Mrs. Cox was a small, neat woman. On her right cheek was a large wart with hairs growing out of it. She gave off a stale musty odor, like potatoes too long in the earth.
She sometimes liked to listen to Mrs. Cox so that she could smell the odor. It was not pleasant but she liked to smell it while Mrs. Cox talked to her, in the way that she used to prod a painful tooth with her tongue when she was a child.
A pile of invoices stood before her and she began to work on them. After a short while she simply sat with a pen in her hand, held over the paper, dreaming of nothing she could put into words. Her eyes were glassy.
Mrs. Cox tapped her on the shoulder and said,
—Mr. Cherry wants to see you, dear. Shouldn’t worry—it can’t be anything serious. Gor, you do look tired.
Mr. Cherry said,
—Sit down, do, Miss Taylor. No, over here if you don’t mind. Where I can see you. Don’t get much chance to see a pretty face stuck behind this desk. Well, just a general chat, dear. Just to see how you’re getting on in the office, so to speak. How’re you doing then, eh? Any complaints?
—No,
she murmured.
—Nothing.
—Good, good. I like everyone to be happy. I’ve observed that—
his face became serious,
—people work much better if they’re happy. Don’t you agree? Mmmm? I’m happy—wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t. And I like my staff to be happy. Don’t like them moaning around with long faces all the time.
There was an underlying sense to his words, an unstated implication which she answered with an unintelligible sound. —We had a girl here once, about the same age as you in fact, moped about all day with a face as long as a fiddle. It depressed you just to look at her. Last in in the morning, first out at night type, no interest in her work, you know the kind I mean. Well, I let things go like, and pretty soon she was doing hardly any work at all, sat dreaming with her eyes out of the window all day. Mrs. Cox got sick, having to do most of her work for her, and I got sick, listening to Mrs. Cox’s complaints—outcome of it was I had to sack her, told her she was no use to the firm, getting a decent wage for nothing.
He paused and gave her a straight, honest, Northcountryman’s look, full in the face.
—I’ve never had to do that again, so far—learned my lesson, so to speak. I realized that besides doing the firm a bad service I was doing that girl a bad service as well, just letting her go on like, the way I did. She wanted someone to put her right, tell her she was doing wrong. Now if I see a young girl shaping up that way I always have her in for a little chat, just an informal talk, you understand, and I try and put her on the right path. Suggest a few little pointers, you know. It’s never failed yet.
Silence. Then he laughed heartily.
—Anyway, enough of that. If you’re happy that’s all right. Get out and enjoy yourself, have fun. I wish I had your life in front of me, yes I do. Okay then, Miss Taylor, that’s all I wanted. Just an informal talk, just to get to know staff better, you know. Feel free to pop in anytime you’ve got something on your mind, I’ll do my best to help you.
—Thank you, Mr. Cherry,
she said,
Beans on toast and a yoghurt for tea. Read for half an hour. Stare at the wall for half an hour, hugging her legs against the heat from the electric fire. Records, magazines, and a bedtime cocoa.
—The lecture tonight,
said Mrs. Cox,
—is entitled “Time and Humanity.” Dr. Cherry will speak for approx. half an hour and there will be a short period for questions afterwards. Dr. Cherry.
There was a spattering of light applause, in which she joined automatically.
—Thank you, thank you,
said Dr. Cherry, waiting modestly until the clapping died down.
—The subject of my lecture tonight is one which might easily daunt any man. Time in one form or another has been studied or conjectured upon since the—ahem, I was going to say since the beginning of time—
He paused for polite laughter.
—But of course we cannot imagine any beginning to Time, or to Space, for the two are sides of the same coin, so to speak. An infinity of Time and Space, an endless pool in which we, finite, short-lived, rude creatures of decay, dwell. Or perhaps a more apt metaphor would be that of a rushing river carrying us irresistibly onward for eternity.
The pedantic words walked jerkily on stilts above her. She gazed at Cherry’s face, at the blue jowls, the thick pudgy ears, the folds of neck hanging over the white collar of his shirt.
Something tickled her hand. She looked down and saw a mouse on her knee, nuzzling her folded hands. She gently disengaged one hand and stroked the little furry nose of the mouse. It narrowed its eyes with pleasure and sat perfectly still.
—But it has not been proved that there is something eternal in man, something to corres
pond with the endlessness of the cosmos, something that is not tumbled and rushed downstream by the river of Time, but sails calmly on its surface, completely at home.
Orbit 13 - [Anthology] Page 16
