“The magnifying glass of the film camera will show you your shadow on the wall, something you live with without noticing, and it will show you the adventures and the ultimate fate of the cigar in your unsuspecting hand, and the secret – because unheeded – life of all the things that accompany you on your way and that taken together make up the events of your life.”
Beautiful thought on film by Béla Balázs (“Visible Man”, 1924)
“This is truly the art of the future.”
“Why we go to the Movies”, Hugo Münsterberg, 1915
Watch “Star Wars” ballet conducted by John Williams at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. No light-sabers but the intro music that starts ballet and each film from the series gives me shivers.
Interesting thoughts on “Star Wars” by Alex Carnevale in his article “The Jedi of Minsk”:
Some parts of the culture stay parts of the culture. Usually they relate to cultural icons, whose identities are so frequently personified in the art and Sovietesque reproduction of the image that it becomes currency in every aspect of the society.
Star Wars, on the other hand, is probably destined to inevitably disappear.
Mission-based programming like Star Trek and Stargate is about the vagaries of human exploration. That’s not Star Wars. It’s about fear of technology, and a movie about fear of technology is probably not going to age all that well in the age of technology. That’s the age we’re in.
While I don’t completely agree with the article (I also think the special effects of the first film are very well done), it provides some interesting points. In my opinion “Star Wars” are based (and very well based) on archetypes and century-old stories, much like the Greek myths and that should provide some foundation for its longevity. It is a shame story gradually depreciated with each episode.
Jean-Luc Godard on a set filming À bout de souffle (Breathless)
Godard’s iconic masterpiece celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Cinematographer Raoul Coutard told a interesting story for The Observer about working with Godard on this film:
Fifty years of Breathless is of course remarkable, but I think the fact that we’re all still breathing is just as remarkable.I am 86 years old now but I remember working on the film very clearly. I had no idea at the time that 50 years afterwards I would still be talking about it, but I did know that it was a very different film, that we were doing something that had never really been done or seen in cinema before. I didn’t know it would work, though.
I had met Jean-Luc Godard when he was working in the publicity department of 20th Century-Fox in Paris. I had been a war photographer for magazines but I had started making films almost by mistake. I didn’t have any training with a film camera at all, so I was really learning as I went along. Jean-Luc didn’t hire me. The original guy went off to shoot a “proper”movie, so producer Georges de Beauregard told Jean-Luc he had to work with me. I was cheap and Godard was determined this was going to be the cheapest film ever made, shooting in the street, with no sound, no lights, no crew. He told me it would be like shooting a reportage, so I was happy because that was a type of photography I understood.
We didn’t have permissions or anything. We just went into the boulevards, like the Champs-Élysées and filmed Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo. There was no crowd because no one knew we were there. We’d put the actor in position and walk many paces back and get them in shot. We didn’t do any sound at all, not even a wild track, so everything was put on later. That was all new to cinema, but as none of us really knew how to do any different, it didn’t feel like a risk.
Belmondo was a total unknown but I could see in my lens that he was a very easy performer, what I call désinvolte [breezy, carefree]. He was also very good at improvising because we had no script. There was the original press article on which Truffaut had based his story outline, but every day Jean-Luc would just turn up with his little exercise book and scribble some notes and some dialogue and we would rehearse maybe a couple of times so I knew where to point the camera vaguely. This was strange for Jean Seberg as she was the only one who’d actually made du grand cinéma. She’d worked with Otto Preminger on Saint Joan but that was a flop so she was very nervous about doing this little film in Paris. She was really concerned how she’d appear.
I’m aware now that what we made was iconic, but at the time… no. I used a Caméflex Éclair 35mm camera and they always say oh, “handheld” photography. It’s true that it was light and easy to move and reload quickly but it made one hell of a noise. I still have that terrible din in my ears. Do I still have the camera that captured those iconic shots? No, no, no. It was a cheap movie. We hired the camera and had to give it back.
In today’s restrained mainstream cinema smoking is hardly seen. But who is the most cigarette-loving character of all time?
One that springs to mind is Dr. Rothke from the great German postwar noir “Der Verlorene (The Lost One)”. Dr. Rothke (played by Peter Lorre, who also directed the film) lits 2-3 cigarretes in every scene, be it in hospital, train, his own house or laboratory.
At one point he asks a companion:
“Do you know why I’m still alive?”
And answers himself:
“Because of a cigarette.”
Bas Jan Ader was a Dutch conceptual artist, photographer and filmmaker. Born 1942 in Netherlands he was mysteriously lost at sea in 1975.
Ader left a small body of film work, most of which is said to be made over a weekend. However his short pieces are exceptional and presents a subtle insight into a tender and fragile mind of the artist.
Highly recommended.
This would make a great poster for Woody Allen’s “Manhattan”. Taken from Postcards to Alphaville.
From project’s website:
“Postcards to Alphaville” is a project dedicated to film characters featured in guest-made illustrations. Everyone participating in this adventure has to watch a film and make postcard portraying specific character from it. It is love-letter to films and those characters that brings us, the viewers, moments of joy, sorrow and revelation and sometimes seems more real than the neighbor next-door.
Lumet on set with Al Pacino, filming Dog Day Afternoon
Sydney Lumet’s favorite films (as revealed in “Halliwell’s Top 1000”) are mostly good old classics:
1. The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler, 1946) 2. Fanny and Alexander (Bergman, 1982) 3. The Godfather (Coppola, 1972) 4. The Grapes of Wrath (Ford, 1940) 5. Intolerance (Griffith, 1916) 6. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928) 7. Ran (Kurosawa, 1985) 8. Roma (Fellini, 1972) 9. Singin’ in the Rain (Kelly, Donen, 1952) 10. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
The list was published in 2005, but even then half of the films were more than 50 years old while the newest one - The Godfather - is not actually new, being made in 1972. Did Lumet feel that new films are not so much interesting? Probably not, as in an interesting interview with Logan Hill in 2007, he says:
I think it’s a great time right now for New York film, actually.
Asked to mention some names, Lumet’s answer was sly:
Oh, I can’t say names. Somebody would get bent out of shape.
It is said that in Pierrot le Fou (1965), Belmondo really plays the character of Godard: a man who can’t choose between life and art.
This is a beautiful image of French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard with two of his frequent collaborators: Anna Karina and Jean-Paul Belmondo. To me, this image conveys the emotional lightness of Godard’s way of work, which allowed spontaneity and exchange of ideas, often simulating and changing the film on the go.
As David Sterritt remarked in his “The films of Jean-Luc Godard– seeing the invisible”:
“What is ultimately spontaneous as we watch a Godard film is not the story, the characters, or the cinematic techniques, all of which lie frozen on strips of celluloid. Rather, the spontaneity he treasures is found in the mercurial stream of creativity that flows from him and his collaborators as they work. While this creativity is as ephemeral as thought, it leaves unmistakable traces on the work we eventually view.”
William S. Burroughs by Jeannette Montgomery Barron, New York, 1985
William Burroughs inspired many artists, but here is one of the most beautiful realization of his ideas on screen: Gus Van Sant’s 1978 short-film adaptation of Burrough’s essay “Do Easy (DE)”.
“DE is a way of doing. It is a way of doing everything you do. DE simply means doing whatever you do in the easiest most relaxed way you can manage which is also the quickest and most efficient way, as you will find as you advance in DE.”
Watch Gus Van Sant’s “The Discipline of DE”
Still from Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945). Hitchcock hired Dali to help create dreamlike atmosphere for his film.
Salvador Dali not only contributed to various films: from Luis Buñuel’s Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog) and L’age d’or (The Golden Age) to Hitckcock’s famous dream scene in Spellbound, but he was also quite friendly with television. His various talents are famously (and comically) on display in a television game show “What’s my Line” from 1950’s which is surprisingly fresh and interesting today.
What is an independent film? For me, it is a case when producer has no creative control. When that happens, producer’s name doesn’t show up in titles in the same size, length and importance as director’s. In that aspect, you can not regard films like Being John Malkovich ($13 million budget, dir. Spike Jonz), Lost in Translation ($4 million budget, dir. Sofia Coppola), Memento ($4.5 million budget, dir. Christopher Nolan), or The Terminator ($6.5 million budget, dir. James Cameron) as truly independent, as put by Empire magazine in their list of 50 greatest independent films.
To me independent stand-outs are usually those films, where director felt the urge to express his vision, idea, story no matter the shining surface. They are often made on a shoestring of a budget and involves friends and like-minded people. Some of the great independent film examples:
À Bout de Souffle (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
All the Vermeers in New York (dir. Jon Jost, 1990)
Buffalo 66 (dir. Vincent Gallo, 1998)
Cube (dir. Vincenzo Natali, 1997)
Dreams That Money Can Buy (dir. Hans Richter, 1947)
Eraserhead (dir. David Lynch, 1979)
Night of the Living Dead (dir. George Romero, 1968)
Orphée (dir. Jean Cocteau, 1950)
Pi (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 1998)
Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (dir. Jonas Mekas, 1971)
Ritual in Transfigured Time (dir. Maya Deren, 1946)
Roger And Me (dir. Michael Moore, 1989)
Signs of Life (dir. Werner Herzog, 1968)
Stranger than Paradise (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 1984)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (dir. Tobe Hooper, 1974)
Finally, as Philip Glass once remarked about Cocteau’s Orphée:
“I suppose Cocteau probably had a budget of five dollars and thirty-five cents for special effects. Yet those effects are magical.”
Agreed, magical is the right word for many truly independent films.
Jim Jarmusch revealed his ten favorite films in John Walker’s “Halliwell’s Top 1000” (published in 2005):
1. L’Atalante (Vigo, 1934) 2. Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953) 3. They Live by Night (N Ray, 1949) 4. Bob le flambeur (Melville, 1955) 5. Sunrise (Murnau, 1927) 6. The Cameraman (Sedgwick, 1928) 7. Mouchette (Bresson, 1967) 8. Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954) 9. Broken Blossoms (Griffith, 1919) 10. Rome, Open City (Rossellini, 1945)
Compared with the list Andrei Tarkovsky made in 1972 there is one film that appears on both lists: Bresson’s “Mouchette”.
Jean-Luc Godard with his cinematographer Raoul Coutard shooting “Breathless”. Sometimes this film is listed under 1959, but technically it’s release came a year later.
When somebody asks a question - what was the best year in cinema history - there are two popular answers: 1939 or 1959. Both were spectacular years for cinema-goers so lets take a look at some films each year produced:
1939
Gone with the Wind (dir. Victor Fleming, George Cukor)
Stagecoach (dir. John Ford)
The Rules of the Game (dir. Jean Renoir)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (dir. Frank Capra)
The Wizard of Oz (dir. Victor Fleming)
Ninotchka (dir. Ernst Lubitsch)
Wuthering Heights (dir. William Wyler)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (dir. William Dieterle)
Destry Rides Again (dir. George Marshall)
1959
North by Northwest (dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
400 Blows (dir. Francois Truffaut)
Some Like it Hot (dir. Billy Wilder)
Anatomy of a Murder (dir. Otto Preminger)
Shadows (dir. John Cassavetes)
The World of Apu (dir. Satyajit Ray)
Pickpocket (dir. Robert Bresson)
Hiroshima Mon Amour (dir. Alan Resnais)
Rio Bravo (dir. Howard Hawks)
Floating Weeds (dir. Yasujiro Ozu)
Imitation of Life (dir. Douglas Sirk)
As poll in 2000 revealed, 1939 is both fan and critic favorite and I can see why. It is very America-centered and holds few films (Gone with the Wind and Wizard of Oz) that are dear to couple generations and even became household names. On the other hand, 1959 trumps 1939 easily if you prefer art over entertainment and truth over melodrama and comedy.
The infamous 31st Academy Awards which took place 1959 produced many flops: ceremony (screened on national television) that ended 20 minutes early leaving it’s host to attempt to fill in the time, enjoyable but clichéd musical “Gigi” breaking then-record with 9 Oscars and omission of two best films of the year - Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” and Welles “Touch of Evil”.
The truth about Oscars was best expressed in adult animation “Futurama” when an actor responds sincerely after hearing remarks that his acting should be better to be nominated for the award:
“The Oscar isn’t about acting. It is about earning respect and admiration of the creative community.”
And, well, when that “creative community” has a lot of friends we all know what happens. One of the most terrible flops from the recent times is mediocre comedy and bad film “Shakespeare in love” getting all the love in 1998. Would you at least consider wasting your time watching this film now?
