Roll away the reel world

An unsuspecting young man accepts the offer of some goat's milk fresh from the animal which has recently been persecuting him, when something extraordinary happens: horns burst from the top of his head and grow larger with each sip. Suddenly, he starts behaving like a goat - chasing passers by with his horns and butting into people, objects and buildings. He knocks down a brick wall and even a horse-drawn omnibus. We are in the magical world of early cinema, richly comic and fascinated with the fantastic potential of a new medium.

The film, 'A Glass of Goat's Milk' (1909) was shown to Dublin audiences in February 1910 at the new Cinema Volta as part of a programme of films put together by James Joyce, a young and then unknown aspiring writer. Delegates at our December 1910 Centenary Conference and intrepid Glaswegians prepared to brave the slippery pavements and thawing ice, were treated to a showing of this film last night at the Glasgow Film Theatre, along with other films shown at the Volta, including 'La Pouponnière', 'Monsieur Testardo' and 'Sapho! An Ancient Greek Drama'. This programme was assembled, introduced and presented by film historian Luke McKernan and excellent live piano accompaniment was provided by Forrester Pyke.

The Cinema Volta is an unusual episode in James Joyce's life. As part of his self-imposed exile from Ireland, he moved to the European continent in 1904 with his partner, Nora Barnacle and eventually settled in Trieste - then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now part of Italy. By 1909 he had a family of two children and was teaching English language in order to make ends meet, whilst he tried to get publishers to accept the short stories that were eventually published as Dubliners.

Trieste at that time was a hub of cinematic activity. (There were twenty-one cinemas in 1909.) A chance remark by Joyce's sister, Eva that Dublin lacked cinemas suggested a business opportunity and in October 1909, he signed a contract with three local businessmen (Antonio Machnich, Guiseppe Caris and Giovanni Rebez) to set up Ireland's first permanent film house at 45 Mary Street, just of Sackville Street (now O'Connell Street).

Milo O'Shea as Leopold Bloom

The full history of this endeavour is set out in Roll Away the Reel World: James Joyce and Cinema. And the evening's events at the GFT concluded with a roundtable discussion of the influence of the Cinema Volta on Joyce's writings with questions from the audience. This was chaired by John McCourt (editor of Roll Away the Reel World) and featured Katy Mullin and Keith Williams as well as Luke McKernan. Having seen the extraordinary close-up scene in which the horns sprout from the protagonist's head in 'A Glass of Goat's Milk', it's hard not to think of the scene in Ulysses where antlers sudden shoot out from the head of Leopold Bloom in the form of a hatrack.

Ultimately, however, the Volta project failed - in part because the Italian backers failed to adjust their cinema stock to an English speaking audience. Cards had to be handed out to the audience with translations of the intertitles. Joyce had hoped that it would bring him the money he needed to subsidize his artistic career, although, typically, invested no money in it himself (because he had none). But it failed to bring a profit and his sponsors sold it in June 1910. (The cinema would run until 1948 under other management.)

If this was a brief interlude in his artistic career, as the roundtable discussion showed, it was highly influential. The play in early films with narrative, space and magical effect is something all reader's of Joyce fiction will recognise.