Benjamin Judge's judgements

1900-1945

Let’s pick up the pace a bit, yeah?

The first multi-storey carpark was built in 1901 (I think). I’m not a huge fan of parking in them, but as weird concrete eyesores, I do have a soft spot for them. Painfully functional, concrete and fluorescence, made uglier by attempts to gentrify them, nasty, brutish and tall. Their lifts are often claustrophobic and slow. Their stairwells smell of piss. They suck. And yet, in representing a swing and a miss at a post-modern landscape, are they not a reflection of our own flawed ambitions for a space-age future?

Also massively underrated, but with more of a consensus toward acceptability, I think, are the scientifically inaccurate paintings of dinosaurs that popped up in this era, sparking the imagination of millions of young children, forever warping the brains of those of us who didn’t go on to become palaeontologists. There was a storyline in the latest Jurassic Park film that revolved around people becoming so bored of dinosaurs that they ignored the ones living in their cities. Dude, I’m not even bored of Arsinotherium attacked by Pterodons by Charles R Knight. I think I would be occupied plenty by the real thing.

The greatest fizzy drink ever made, Lemon & Paeroa, was launched in (or around) 1907, in New Zealand.

The greatest still drink ever made, Vimto, was launched in 1908, in Manchester.

Have you explored the BFI player? There is a lot on there that you can watch for free, including I Do Like To Be Where The Girls Are, a sort-of proto-Thong Song, with Jack Charman as 1912’s Sisqó. I don’t have enough knowledge of the history of cinema to know if it was the first music video to feature a man bribing a policeman so he can hang with the suffragettes, but it might be.

Tombow stationery was founded in 1913. It is, of course, the best stationery.

The twenties were a great time for short stories. Notably, The Fly by Katherine Mansfield, The Fatal Eggs by Mikhail Bulgakov and Quadraturin by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky.

In 1931, The Boswell Sisters released their version of Everybody Loves My Baby, which, if you aren’t familiar with the Boswell Sisters, I very much recommend. It starts off pretty normal and then they just start showing off, singing gibberish, singing off the beat, harmonising, all sorts, and all in less than two and a half minutes. It is a lot of fun.

A year later, Helen Stewart painted Portrait of a woman in red.

A year after that, the Midland Hotel opened in Morecambe.

A year after that, possibly the finest Gracie Fields movie, Sing As We Go was released. Andrew Marr described it as “probably the worst film I have ever seen” and honestly, I haven’t taken a thing he has said seriously since he did.

In 1937, Bendix Home Appliances launched the first domestic automatic washing machine. If you divide history into two parts, one before the widespread distribution of domestic washing machines, and one after, and then consider how many great works of art have been created by people who are also caring for a family, it is hard not to argue that the washing machine is as important as the printing press or the computer in the history of the arts. I’d go as far as saying that if you disagree with that premise, you aren’t responsible for the washing. Speaking for myself, if I didn’t have a washing machine I would be absolutely fucked.

And four films of the forties that you need to watch are, Casablanca (which I’m sure you already know about) Went the Day Well (still the greatest war film ever made) I Know Where I’m Going! (“I want you to do one thing for me…”) and Pink String and Sealing Wax (which builds an over-the-top melodramatic mood that is absolutely gorgeous).

Next week: probably up to 1970 or something.