If you're planning a trip to Edinburgh over the summer then a visit to Modern Two is essential to check out the Ray Harryhausen exhibition 'Titan of Cinema'.
For people of a certain vintage Harryhausen will be a familiar name with his iconic stop motion characters featuring in numerous Hollywood blockbusters such as Jason & The Argonauts, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and Clash of the Titans (not the modern version) to name a few. Indeed seeing the photo of the iconic skeleton warriors as featured in Argonauts in 1963 and The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad in 1958 is enough to stir up excitement, for me anyway. Watching these classic movies on a Saturday was a regular occurrence growing up, certain films seemed to be on TV at just the right time and although the special FXs quickly became dated they still held a unique charm and indeed compared to many of the early visual FX alternatives still hold their own.
So walking into Modern Two (which is about a 30 minute walk from the Princess Street gallery as we learned) and seeing the iconic symbols from Harryhausen films and feeling that same excitement set the tone for the next hour as we made our way around the exhibits. Incredibly detailed maquette's made up a large portion of the show, some in states of disrepair due to their original filming process with various chemicals being used to create the special effects. The show used back projections to bring some of the models to life, showing the originals with their screen counterparts flashing and running around in the background to great effect.
But tracing the Harryhausen timeline was also an important aspect of the show, from his early stop motion trials in his family garage to the movies which inspired him like 1933's King Kong who makes an appearance in the show along with a selection of items from Harryhausens archive including his golden Oscar trophy and family photographs. One of my favourite parts of the show was the incredible drawings and sketches created to help story board many of the films he worked on. Intricate drawings revealed plans for the miniature jointed frames that would be used to help animate the models along with detailed drawings of how they should look. Seeing the cursed Calibos along with the winged horse Pegasus from Clash of the Titans was special and who doesn't know Bubo the mechanical owl who greets you in one of the upper rooms.
The final highlight of being able to battle of the Kraken or the Skeleton Army via a special green screen video stage left me smiling and laughing like a kid again. The exhibition has been well thought out and flows across the Modern Two site of course finishing up at the gift shop where you can pick up a poster or Titan of Cinema book. We bought a poster and some postcards with Talos looming out of the shadows, I have a feeling that many readers won't have a clue what any of these names mean but upon leaving the show we caught up with Gabi & Phil who'd been just ahead of us seeing the show. I think we'd all enjoyed the exhibition judging from the smiles on our faces.
Thinking about the advancements in motion graphics and CGI its almost removed the need for stop motion but for me it has an important place in film making and not just for nostalgia sake, even modern shows like The Mandelorian employed stop motion techniques to achieve a look that nods to the creatures of the original Star Wars films whilst taking advantage of modern technology. The exhibition highlights this perfectly as it reflects upon the impact of Harryhausen on film making both then and now. It would be easy to regard him as just a puppeteer or animator but Harryhausen brought his creatures to life and show his own incredible acting skills while also directing other actors in how to move around his invisible models. I've always believed its important to see an artists hand in their work, whether its a strong brush stroke, a special motif or indeed their actual hand animating an inanimate puppet.
You can check out the full list of features Harryhausen worked on here and if you haven't seen any of his films then get it sorted. Although he stopped making films in the early 80s as the industry underwent huge changes during his time he made huge advancements in live action and stop motion cinema and has a solid place in the cinema history books. Certainly the title 'Titan of Cinema' feels very apt and I'm glad I was able to learn more about the man behind the magic!
The show runs until February 2022 so be sure to check it out, full details can be found here. Thank you Ray ✋
