Movie Review: Dawson City: Frozen Time

Dawson City: Frozen Time *** 1/2 / *****

Directed by: Bill Morrison.

Written by: Bill Morrison.

 

Dawson City: Frozen Time is one of the most fascinating documentaries of the year – a film that tells several interlocking stories, all in and around, and related to Dawson City – once the capital of the Yukon, which briefly flourished as a Gold Rush town, and then, quickly, saw itself fall from relevance for decades. The documentary tells the story of Dawson City as a Gold Rush town in the waning days of the 19^th Century, how big Dawson City got, and quickly it fell away. It also tells the story of the treasure trove of silent films discovered in Dawson City in the 1970s – and how they were restored and preserved. Then, it tells the story of those films itself. It is a fascinating combination of history and cinematic lore – all told through images, and intertitles – no narration – and is a must for film buffs.

 

The story of Dawson City as a mining town is fascinating in its own right. It happened the way all gold rushes happened – one lucky guy found gold there, set-up his claim, and when word got out, thousands flocked to the city. The film contains some footage of that time – movie cameras were just starting to be used, and also uses a lot of still photos from the era at the same time to tell how this small city blew up overnight. Of course, most people who arrived had no hope of finding gold – they couldn’t even setup their own claims, since they were all gone. But as the city itself grew, more and more business sprouted up to “mine the miners” as the documentary explains – and Dawson City becomes an unlikely major city in the Canadian North. Of course, once the Gold Rush is over, almost all of the 40,000 who flocked there leave, and the the decades since have been a much sadder story, as Dawson City has mainly lost its relevance.

 

One of the businesses that did get built was, of course, movie theaters. Dawson City was the last stop on the distribution chain – where films would open in major cities, and then the prints would slowly circulate the country going to smaller and smaller cities – eventually ending in Dawson City. The studios didn’t want the films back, and Dawson City didn’t much know what to do with them – the prints themselves were dangerous, since they contains nitrate and were extremely flammable. Most of the prints got destroyed – but in the 1970s, they find a lot of prints, buried in the underground, in a filled in swimming pool. Because of the cold, and other factors, the prints were largely intact – they were all water damaged, but still playable. Eventually, they would be restored.

 

All of this is lovingly assembled by filmmaker Bill Morrison, who uses much of the movies found in that swimming pool as the spine of his film. The film traces the evolution of both Dawson City, and of cinema itself – both becoming more advanced as the 20^th Century progresses,

 

Dawson City: Frozen Time is probably the perfect way to use all this footage that survives, and the movies that were found. It’s not like they discovered lost masterpieces down there, but really, just a variety of Westerns and melodramas from the silent era – which have, as we know, seen many of the films of that time lost and/or destroyed, as people didn’t take preservation seriously at the dawn of the medium. Here, Morrison has combined it all into one fascinating package. Yes, the film can be a little dry – honestly, I wish at least some of it contained narration, rather than intertitles (I read more here than in most foreign language films) – yet this remains one of the best documentary films of the year so far – a must for film fans.