Grab the Lapels

Silver Nitrate by Silva Moreno-Garcia

Learn more about what silver nitrate was to the filmmaking industry — both the beauty and danger — by reading this brief article from the British Film Institute.

It’s that time again, when the Glendora Bookstore meets for Spooky Book Club! I want to be involved, so I created a video for my friends there, and all of you, too. For my non-spooky friends, Silver Nitrate isn’t a horror novel, so go ahead and try it if you’re interested in the synopsis.

9 comments

  1. It could be worse, remember that movie we watched where the climax was the protagonist connecting with some convenient witchy powers she inherited from her mom and saying… I’m a motherf@&#ing bruja? When I hear about silver nitrate film and Nazis, I’m fully expecting a situation like Inglorious Basterds. It could have been… Inglorious Brujas? That might have been a better book.

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    • Hahahaha, thank you for watching. I forgot I called them “two sucks,” but I stand by it. I noticed that the style of plotting in this one was similar to Mexican Gothic, and both felt slow to me, and like I wasn’t really getting to know any character or see character growth.

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  3. You are a delight! Loved watching this. Do you know how the club went, and how many liked the book.

    And, just to add my little know-it-all bit, I didn’t need to read the BFI link because I worked for decades at the National Film and Sound Archive (not always called that) and Nitrate was of course one of our big issues. Needed special storage, special handling processes. We had a big project in the early 1980s called Nitrate Won’t Wait, in which a project officer drove around Australia looking for Nitrate because we believed it’s would all deteriorate – which it does – and we wanted to get all the important stuff in particular before it did. And our officer found quite a lot. (He’d go into country towns, where he’d set up interviews in advance with local radios etc, speak on the radio and then hope people would contact him with film in their attics, under theatre stages, etc etc) But, funnily, we (the Archive, not me personally!) discovered that Nitrate, if stored ok, is actually surviving better than acetate, which came after and which gets something called vinegar syndrome. And then there’s the mag tape used for videos which also deteriorates quickly. It’s been a rush to digitise all the programs on mag tape. And so it goes. TMI I know but you just got me going and thinking about my career.

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    • No, not TMI, that was fascinating. Thanks for the info, Sue! I can just picture my Nick doing something like that, as he used to work in radio and graduated with a degree in broadcasting. I also read a while ago about how some of the biggest names in Hollywood are trying to save movies because even stuff shot 30 years ago is starting to disintegrate. I’ve even had Nick explain to my why my DVD from 20 years ago looks fuzzy when my memory is that the movie wasn’t shot like that.

      Anyway, glad you enjoyed the review! I texted a friend who said that the book club felt pretty meh about the novel overall. I think this author’s style of storytelling doesn’t match what I’m looking for. It’s so slow, often without an obvious motive for something that propels the characters forward.

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