By Gary D. Rhodes.
How of one ounce of Silver maie Silver be noe more.”
– Thomas Norton, The Ordinall of Alchimy (1477)*
Embodied practice and cinematic technology yields alchemical crucible in E. Elias Merhige’s Begotten, a non-dialogue film of 1989 that the London Film Festival declared “breaks all moulds, furnishing celluloid with new possibilities,”[1] a film that Susan Sontag proclaimed to be “an extraordinarily original accomplishment.”[2] Merhige has himself described the film as an “obsession” that led to an “innerstanding” of an “alchemical state,”[3] the “alchemical process [being] a means to distill a deep, unconscious resonance that [he] hoped would bypass intellectual interpretation and strike viewers on a visceral, almost pre-verbal level.”[4] His alchemical process spanned the pre-production, production, and post-production phases, representing the consumnate example of what the Greek alchemist and Gnostic mystic Zosimos of Panopolis would describe as “Cheirokmeta,” meaning “hand-made things.”[5]
Begotten is allegorical and obscure. Many of its secrets remain encrypted. My purpose is not to decode it narratively or thematically, to undertake exegesis, but rather to dialogue with its alchemy, my emphasis focusing on what Merhige beget rather than what his cinematic characters create. I contend that Begotten is the ne plus ultra example of alchemical cinema, not cinema about alchemy, but alchemical cinema. Similar to alchemists in the Middle Ages, Merhige transmuted the cinema through textural, visual, and photochemical means. He figuratively and literally manipulated the silver film stock.
As we learn in the Aphorismi Urbigerani (1690), “The Hermetic Art consists in the true Manipulation of the undetermin’d Subject, which before it can be brought to the highest degree of Perfection, must of necessity undergo all our Chymical Operations.”[6] Merhige has similarly noted of his pre-production work:
The testing phase was an experiment in extremes, akin to alchemical investigation. I had a vision from the start that lived brightly in my mind, but it was through trial and error—testing exposures, pushing and pulling in processing, experimenting with filtration—that the look began to reveal itself. This process was a dance between control and discovery, a quest to distill something primal and raw from the material. Each test became a step deeper into that vision, helping me uncover a visual language that felt elemental and almost otherworldly.” [7]
Begotten has a uniquely aged mise-en-scène, which Merhige has likened to a “cinematic Dead Sea Scroll buried in the sands.”[8]
Prior to Merhige, various filmmakers had in fact attempted to prematurely age new footage, a notable marker being editor Robert Wise’s experiments for the newsreel section of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941). Using a sandbox, he added scratches for the sake of verisimilitude, to imply visually that certain shots had suffered from repeated projections over a period of years.[9] Following Begotten, the use of digitally-added scratches and glitch effects became relatively common, from feature films to television commercials. The purpose has generally been the same, to make footage appear old, perhaps even mistreated. Importantly, the aging process in all such examples is one suggestive of decades. At the very most, footage shot in 2024 is made to look at 130 years old at the very most, dating to the advent of cinema, the “age” accentuated at times by digital desaturation, so the allegedly-old film is panchromatic, its faked maturation at times accentuated by such footage being edited adjacent to color images.[10] In the years after Begotten, authentic decomposing film was heralded in such found-footage projects as Peter Delpeut’s Lyrical Nitrate (1991) and Bill Nichols’ Decasia: The State of Decay (2002).
In sharp contrast, Merhige was creating new images photochemically with Begotten, in an era before digital, nonlinear editing. He was also attempting to achieve a mise-en-scène never before seen, his intention for its age to appear of millennia past. Merhige has said, “I looked not to film history, but to the way rock erodes over millennia, to the pitted surfaces of ancient ruins that speak to something far beyond human memory. I wanted to make a documentary of what existed before the world began.”[11] To achieve his goal of a “raw, primordial look,” he filmed Begotten on Kodak Plus-X 16mm film, a black-and-white reversal stock, using an Arri-S camera.[12] Nevertheless, the luminous properties that attracted Merhige to Plus-X also posed significant challenges given its propensity towards unwanted scratches. Merhige thus had to proceed with great caution, wearing gloves and working in a dust-free environment in order to control not only the desired look of the film, but also to avoid unwelcome imperfections.[13]
Begotten possesses scratches, but only what Merhige has called “ghosts whispering at the edge of the frame,” those working towards his vision rather than disrupting it. As Ruland observed in his alchemical dictionary of 1612, “The philosophers have so greatly admired the Creature of God which is called the Primal Matter, especially concerning its efficacy and mystery.”[14] In Begotten, transformed commercial film stock contributes to the viseral-visual allure, the mystery, of its production.
The chemical makeup of Begotten’s footage merged with Merhige’s intentional choice of filters and exposures, the light interacting with the film stock. Consider these words from Thomas Vaughan’s Aura Lucis (1652):
I have resolved with myself to discourse of Light, the powder of projection, and to deliver it over to the hands of posterity, a practice certainly very ancient and first used by those who were primordially wise.[15]
… We must look then for the mansion of light — that oily, ethereal substance that retains it — for by this means we may circumscribe and confine it. We may impart and communicate it to what bodies we please, give the basest things a most precious lustre and a complexion as lasting as the sun. This is that mystery which the philosophers have delivered hereunto in most envious and obscure terms….” [16]
Aura Lucis bemoans the fact that “we cannot shut up [light] in a cabinet, that we may use it when we please.”[17] But film allows for light to be captured and manipulated, uniquely so in the case of Begotten. Aura Lucis translates as “the breeze of light,” the emphasis being on its movements and changes. Merhige explains:
I adjusted exposure settings dynamically within shots, sometimes mid-shot, using custom shutter modifications on the Mitchell camera. This approach allowed us to capture light and shadow as shifting, living forces. Carefully selected density and color filters further helped sculpt each frame, creating a chiaroscuro that imbued the film with an eerie, luminescent quality. These filters and adjustments brought out a spectral light—a kind of ‘philosopher’s light’—transforming ordinary film into a vessel for something more profound.” [18]
Merhige’s experimentation reminds us of Eugenius Philalethes’ 1651 text Lumen de Lumine: or, A New Magicall Light Discovered and Communicated to the World. Philalethes recounts, “shee brought mee to a cleare, large light, and here I saw those Things, which I must not speak of. Having thus discovered all the parts of glorious Labyrinth, shee did lead me out again with her Clew of Sun-beams, her Light that went before us.”[19] Merhige found light. In a Promethean gesture, he altered light. He captured and released light. And he altered it again, “light from light,” that phrase being the translation of Lumen de Lumine.
Nowhere is Merhige’s alchemical experimentation more apparent and adherent than in the transmutation of metal, specifically the silver content of the Kodak Plus-X film stock. According to The Mirror of Alchimy (1597), “Silver is a body, cleane, pure, and almost perfect, begotten of Argent-wine, pure, almost fixed…”[20] Merhige pursued “retrogradation,” to appropriate a term from Robert Boyle’s 1678 text on the degradation of gold.[21] Merhige thus sought what Boyle referred to as an ”anti-elixir.” Merhige recalls:
The variances in photochemical processing were meticulously planned and executed at Kin-O-Lux, a small boutique film laboratory that, like so many analog labs, has long since closed. The partnership with … the lab master at Kin-O-Lux, was crucial—an alchemist as passionate and driven as I was. He facilitated my weekend tests, adjusting developer temperatures and crafting unique chemical baths that pushed the boundaries of conventional film development. This was not mere experimentation for its own sake, but a calculated process with the precision of scientific research. Every decision—whether a shift in exposure, a change in bath temperature, or a novel developer composition—was made to summon the soul of the film from its emulsion, frame by frame. I spent months observing how these adjustments would transform the material, casting light and shadow in ways that revealed the latent essence of Begotten’s world. It was a delicate balance between control and surrender, knowing that each choice would either draw out the hidden vision or obliterate it entirely.” [22]
The rituals of processing Begotten led to manipulations of contrast that otherwise would not have been possible, not in the same way, with midtones minimized or erased, with deep blacks and bright whites brought to the fore, a transmutation of the stock’s chemical makeup.[23]
Merhige’s experiments led to the film becoming “fixed,” not only in the manner that term is understood in photochemical film processing, but also in laboratory rephotography, which recaptured and altered images a manner distinct from any prior filmmaker. Merhige notes:
The film was later rephotographed onto 16mm black-and-white negative stock through a Mitchell camera on a custom-built optical bench (I built from borrowed parts and tested). This rephotography was not just a technical step but a way to forge an image that felt excavated, as though unearthed from a mythic past.” [24]
His purpose-built optical printer incorporated disparate antiques, ranging from an old Italian projector to a 1936 Mitchell rack-over camera, the creation’s alignment being callibrated carefully to the millimeter.[25] The optical printer also featured a custom shutter, precisely engineered to introduce extremely minor flicker into some shots.[26] Merhige adds:
In the final stage, I rephotographed selected takes frame-by-frame, treating each frame as a distinct artifact to be sculpted. This hands-on, prolonged rephotography gave Begotten its unique texture, a sense of wear and erosion as if each image had weathered through time. Some sequences required over ten hours per minute of footage, an act of near-devotional care that allowed the film to develop a patina—a visual entropy that mirrored its themes of birth, death, and decay.” [27]
Images never seen were thus seen and screened again, before the arrival of any audience to bear witness.
Birth, death, and decay: here is where we understand that the cinematic grimoire of Begotten is at it was made, the alchemical processes not merely illuminating its narrative and thematic achievements, but also begetting them, to an extent being them. Merhige notes, “The aesthetics of Begotten are not a coat of paint but the flesh of the story itself.” His experimentation provides as much meaning as any plot or purpose. The search for the philosopher’s stone may well be the stone. As Merhige once wrote:
With these eyes I ask you to look at my first film Begotten, not as a narrative made up of characters, but as a drama of forces there to awaken an essential part of our being. It is of the very stuff of our origin where language fails, and for the lack of a better word, the unconscious begins. Just as there is a yearning to explore the mysteries of deep space, there is a need to explore the deeper foundations of the psyche and what better medium for that exploration than the cinema….” [28]
To conclude this analysis of E. Elias Merhige, the prime proponent of alchemical experimentation in motion pictures, let us consider Johannes Segerus Weidenfeld’s 1685 publication on the secrets of the adepts, on birth, death, and decay, on the capabilities of alchemical experimentation, on the precious properties of silver and, by extension, in the case of Begotten, the silver screen:
Silver retain[s] the property of Menstruum, with which it extend[s] [its similitude] into exotic substances, transmuting the said substances into their own kind…. And our understanding also knows, that principle is as a Woman conceiving the Man’s Seed, and bringing forth in the same form and virtue, as it was in the beginning.[29]
…Here also note that all Silver put into it a due time, at length grows Black … yet not fixed before: its exact time but a volatile … thing: but if it hath its Time, it performs all things feasible….” [30]
Merhige’s experimental film invokes the recalled presence of what we never saw, a familiar image of reality rendered completely unfamiliar. As we watch Begotten, we witness the alchemical, burnished in enigmatic 24 frames per second.[31]
Endnotes
*Quoted in Elias Ashmole, Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (London: J. Grismond, 1652), 20.
[1] Begotten Trailer (Los Angeles: World Artists Home Video, 2001).
[2] Ibid.
[3] E. Elias Merhige, “The Dark Soul of Cinema: An Apology Toward a Genre of the ‘Unconscious,’” MovieScope, Volume 1, Number 6, 2008, 14.
[4] E. Elias Merhige, Email to Gary D. Rhodes, November 2, 2024.
[5] Quoted in Peter Kingsley, “From Pythagoras to the Turba philosophorum: Egypt and Pythagorean Tradition,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Volume 57 (1994), 6.
[6] Baro Urbigirus, Aphorismi Urbigerani, or, Certain Rules Clearly Demonstrating the Three Infallible Ways of Preparing the Grand Elixir, or Circulatum Majus of the Philosophers (London: Henry Faithome, 1690), 2.
[7] Merhige, Email, November 2, 2024.
[8] Quoted in Aimee Ferrier, “Begotten: The Disturbed Homemade Horror Steeped in the Occult,” Far Out, September 6, 2023, available at: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/begotten-disturbing-homemade-horror-occult/. Accessed November 1, 2024.
[9] While undertaking initial experiments during pre-production, Merhige recalls that he grated some film stock with sandpaper, but discarded the idea because the results “felt contrived, a human gesture that lacked the primal authenticity. The damage needed to appear as though it had been inscribed by time itself, not by a human hand.” Merhige, Email to Gary D. Rhodes, November 8, 2024.
[10] For more information, see “Scratched, Stained, and Damaged: The Intersection of Projection Booth Flaws and Hollywood Aesthetics,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Number 8 (2017).
[11] Merhige, Email, November 8.
[12] Merhige, Email, November 2.
[13] Merhige, Email, November 8.
[14] Ruland, On the Prima Materia, Lexicon alchemiæ sive dictionarium alchemisticum, cum obscuriorum verborum, et rerum Hermeticarum, tum Theophrast-Paracelsicarum phrasium, planam explicationem continens (Frankfurt, 1612).
[15] Thomas Vaughan, Aula lucis, or, The House of Light (London: William Leake, 1652), 2.
[16] Ibid., 7.
[17] Ibid., 7.
[18] Merhige, Email, November 2, 2024.
[19] Eugenius Philalethes, Lumen de Lumine, or A New Magicall Light Discovered and Communicated to the World (London: H. Blunden, 1651), 15. Emphases in original.
[20] Anonymous, The Mirror of Alchimy (London: Richard Olive, 1597), 2. Emphasis in Original.
[21] Robert Boyle, Of a Degradation of Gold Made by an Anti-Elixir, a Strange Chymical Narative (London: Henry Herringman, 1678), 3.
[22] Merhige, Email, November 8.
[23] Merhige, Email, November 2.
[24] Merhige, Email, November 2.
[25] Merhige, Email, November 8.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Merhige, Email, November 2.
[28] Merhige, “The Dark Soul of Cinema,” 16.
[29] Johannes Seger Weidenfeld, Four books of Johannes Segerus Weidenfeld Concerning the Secrets of the Adepts, or, of the Use of Lully’s Spirit of Wine: a Practical Work, with Very Great Study Collected Out of the Ancient as well as Modern Fathers of Adept Philosophy: Reconciled Together by Comparing them one with Another, Otherwise Disagreeing, and in the Newest Method So Aptly Digested, That Even Young Practitioners May Be Able to Discern the Counterfeit or Sophistical Preparations of Animals, Vegetables and Minerals, Whether for Medicines or Metals, from True, and So Avoid Vagabound Imposters, and Imaginary Processes, Together with the Ruine of Estates (London: Will Bonny, 1685), unpaginated.
[30] Ibid., 255.
[31] The author would like to express thanks to Robert Gitt, Robert Singer, Anthony Slide, Gina Snooks, Matthew Sorrento, and of course E. Elias Merhige for their kind help and assistance with this article.
Gary D. Rhodes, Ph.D., filmmaker, poet and Full Professor of Media Production at Oklahoma Baptist University, is the author of Weirdumentary: Ancient Aliens, Fallacious Prophecies, and Mysterious Monsters from 1970s Documentaries (Boswell Books, forthcoming), Vampires in Silent Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), Becoming Dracula – Vols. 1 and 2 (with William M. [Bill] Kaffenberger, BearManor Media), Consuming Images: Film Art and the American Television Commercial (co-authored with Robert Singer, Edinburgh University Press, 2020), Emerald Illusions: The Irish in Early American Cinema (IAP, 2012), The Perils of Moviegoing in America (Bloomsbury, 2012) and The Birth of the American Horror Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), as well as the editor of such anthologies as Becoming Nosferatu: Stories Inspired by Silent German Horror (BearManor Media, forthcoming), Film by Design: The Art of the Movie Poster (University of Mississippi Press, 2024), The Films of Wallace Fox (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), The Films of Joseph H. Lewis (Wayne State University Press, 2012) and The Films of Budd Boetticher (Edinburgh University Press, 2017). Rhodes is also the writer-director of such documentary films as Lugosi: Hollywood’s Dracula (1997) and Banned in Oklahoma (2004).
Read a review of Gary Rhodes’s new book, Vampires in Silent Cinema (Edinburgh University Press), here and an excerpt from the book here.