Caliginous

Caliginous (pronounced kuh-lij-uh-nuhs)

Misty; dim; dark; gloomy, murky (archaic).

1540-1550: From the Middle English caliginous (dim, obscure, dark), from either the Middle French caligineux (misty; obscure) or directly from its Latin etymon cālīginōsus (misty; dark, obscure), from caliginem (nominative caligo) (mistiness, darkness, fog, gloom), of uncertain origin.  The construct of cālīginōsus was cālīgin- (stem of cālīgō or cālīginis (mist; darkness)) + -ōsus or –ous (the suffix meaning “full of, prone to” used to form adjectives from nouns.  The origin of caliginem has attracted speculation, one etymologist pondering links with the Greek kēlas (mottled; windy (of clouds)) & kēlis (stain, spot), the Sanskrit kala- (black) or the Latin calidus (with a white mark on the forehead).  Caliginous is an adjective, caliginousness is a noun and caliginously is an adverb.

Procession in the Fog (1828) by Ernst Ferdinand Oehme (1797-1855), oil on canvas, Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden, Germany.

Lindsay Lohan in Among the Shadows (2019).  In film, using a dark and murky environment can help create an ambiance of gloom and doom, something helpful for several genres, most obviously horror.  Directed by Tiago Mesquita with a screenplay by Mark Morgan, Among the Shadows is a thriller which straddles the genres, elements of horror and the supernatural spliced in as required.  Although in production since 2015, with the shooting in London and Rome not completed until the next year, it wasn’t until 2018 when, at the European Film Market, held in conjunction with the Berlin International Film Festival, Tombstone Distribution listed it, the distribution rights acquired by VMI, Momentum and Entertainment One, and VMI Worldwide.  In 2019, it was released progressively on DVD and video on demand (VOD), firstly in European markets, the UK release delayed until mid-2020.  In some markets, for reasons unknown, it was released with the title The Shadow Within.

Not highly regarded as an example of the film-maker’s art, Among the Shadows is of some interest to students of the technique of editing and continuity.  As spliced in as some of the elements may have been, just as obviously interpolated was much of the footage involving Ms Lohan and while the editing has been done quite well, there are limitations to the extent to which this can disguise discontinuities.  In this case the caliginous atmospherics probably did help the editing process, the foggy dimness providing its own ongoing visual continuity.

Daytime in London during the Great Smog of 1952.

Ghastly things had been seen in the London air before the Great Smog of 1952.  In the high summer of 1858, there had been the Great Stink, caused by an extended spell of untypically hot and windless weather, conditions which exacerbated the awfulness of the smell of the untreated human waste and industrial effluent flowing in the Thames river, great globs of the stuff accumulating on the banks, the consequence of a sewerage system which had been out-paced by population growth, the muck still discharged untreated,  straight into the waterway.

The weather played a part too in the caliginous shroud which for almost a week engulfed the capital early in December 1952.  That year, mid-winter proved unusually cold and windless, resulting in an anti-cyclonic system (which usually would have passed over the British Isles) remaining static, trapping airborne pollutants and forming a thick layer of smog over the city.  The conditions lasted for several days and cleared only when the winter winds returned.  What made things especially bad was that in the early post-war years, most of the UK’s high quality coal was exported to gain foreign exchange.  Despite having been on the winning side in World War II, the cost of the struggle had essentially bankrupted the country and the mantra to industry quickly became “export or die”; thus the coal allocated for domestic consumption was “dirty” and of poor quality.  The official reports at the time indicated a death-toll of some 4000 directly attributed to the Great Smog (respiratory conditions, car accidents, trips & falls etc) with another 10,000 odd suffering some illnesses of some severity.  However, more recent statistical analysis, using the same methods of determining “surplus deaths” as were applied to the COVID-19 numbers, suggested there may have been as many as 12,000 fatalities.  It was the public disquiet over the Great Smog of 1952 which ultimately would trigger the Clean Air Act (1956), which although not the UK’s first environmental legislation, did until the 1980s prove the most far reaching.