Continuing with Hitchcock… Martijn Hendriks’ ongoing project Untitled (or The Birds without the birds, or give us today our daily terror) is exact copy of master’s film with just all the birds removed.

The most amazing thing is the question the project poses: do we, as viewers, still experience fear if the fear symbols are erased from the film?

Martijn Hendriks says:

“In my video piece of The Birds without the birds, the terror of that film is still amazing. But the source of the terror has changed. By taking out the birds, terror isn’t given a form anymore, which instead is something we start doing as viewers.”

Looking at The Birds Barbie I was reminded of this frame, which for me is one of the greatest film stills. In general, the art of film stills is pretty subtle. A lot of studios preferred to hire photographer for catching moments on the set, rather than enlarging actual film stills. This was made on a notion that photographer’s picture might “sell” the film better than the actual enlargement from 35 mm reel of the film.

In an essay “Still and Moving” by Mary Corliss, available in Rogert Ebert’s “The Great Movies”, she writes

“Film stills preserve more than a dusty historical records. They evoke, with precision and purity, the cinema’s glorious past. They testify to the persistence of the filmmakers’ vision, to the enticement of movie glamour. They validate the movie lover’s fondest memories. The legacy of still photos shows just how moving moving pictures can be.”

I was surprised to find that Mattel produced this The Birds Barbie based on Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film. Released in 2008 to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the film it portrays Melanie Daniels attacked by birds. What can I say - it’s the first Barbie that I want to buy.

Comparable to making “Simpsons” post stamp, turning film heroine into one of the everyday pop icons is one of the ultimate honors a director can get.

“Films are created when there’s no one looking”

says Jean-Luc Godard in Wim Wender’s documentary “Room 666”.

Jean-Luc Godard in Room 666

Rainer Fassbinder and Werner Herzog in Room 666

Made in 1982 at the Cannes film festival it has a very simple idea: Wim Wenders invited selected directors one by one into same hotel room and presented them a list of questions concerning the future of cinema. Some answers are more interesting than the others but all in all documentary gives us insight into some of the cinema’s greatest minds: Fassbinder, Antonioni, Herzog, Godard and the issues that worried them at a time.

Cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth, center, and director Stanley Kubrick, right, during the production of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, 1968

In 1963 Stanley Kubrick was asked to name his 10 favorite films for “Cinema” magazine:

I Vitelloni (Federico Fellini, 1953), Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, 1958), Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948), City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931), Henry V (Laurence Olivier, 1945), La Notte (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961), The Bank Dick (W.C. Fields, 1940), Roxie Hart (William Wellman, 1942), Hell’s Angels (Howard Hughes, 1930)

I wonder how many of those titles, if any, would be left had the list be compiled in 1993.

Michael Ballhaus on a set filming “Martha” with director Rainer Fassbinder

I just read 19 issue of Mono.Kultur magazine which presents a lengthy interview with German cinematographer Michael Ballhaus. Topics range from technical aspects of the craft to experience working with two legendary directors: Rainer Maria Fassbinder and Martin Scorsese. There are some interesting stories and some good insight:

“To be honest, I preferred working with the complicated directors to the easy-going ones, simply because they were better. If someone has very high demans and visions that other people don’t have. then it’s naturally a bit complicated. But of course the results are better in the end. In this respect, working with Fassbinder was always interesting, always. Provided you overlooked the fact that he wasn’t very nice sometimes.”

http://vimeo.com/3930316

This is a great video of frequent David Lynch’s collaborator composer Angelo Badalamenti explaining in the very detail how he got the main tune for “Twin Peaks”. Emotionaly moving and very sincere it is a beautiful insight into the nature of creating music for films.

Straight story that is not so straight (Straight Story, David Lynch, 1999)

“Straight Story” by David Lynch is a film about a journey. Old man tames a thirty year-old John Deere lawn mower to visit his ailing brother some 240 miles away.

Alvin Straight is a man with an old-fashioned agenda. Leg injury gives him trouble but he hides the seriousness of the situation from his daughter. As the storm comes to their house, news of a stroke his brother suffered strikes him and the idea of imminent journey grows on his mind. At first Rosie is reluctant to let her father go but finally helps him build a lawn mower suitable for the occasion. As he goes on his trip we learn about life almost as much as he does. There´s rain and there´s thunderstorm, there´s unhappy teenager met on the road and deer hit by car - all this we experience together with Alvin as his slow-moving vehicle approaches destination.

We learn that he has a bunch of kids but only one that really cares, we learn the hardship of the war and trough all his conversations, trough magic in actor Richard Farnsworth’s face we find that he is having “a time of his life” when one is allowed to be slightly better than he is. For me the film is all about the small problems that occupy most of our daily-life versus the things that really matters. Just consider the way Elvin shares his days in a small house with his slow-witted daughter Rose. They both aren’t perfect but they learned to live with each other in a way that would do least harm. Elvin is too old for consumerism as he reveals the size of his pocket before knowing the price, but it is his frankness that buys other people. Just pay attention to the way others are treating him - they know they are dealing with something special and quite often something really good makes us behave above the standards.

There are couple of reminders in this beautifully simple story that this is a Lynch’s film after all: there’s a a moment when Rosie watches imaginative kids, there’s Everett McGill as a kind mechanic and then there’s a small town with all it’s side stories.

David Lynch, like all the great filmmakers, is fascinated by the story. His filmmaking is about sharing a good (and complicated, sometimes) story with us. This film is no exception at it is based on real-life event where the real Alvin Straight (lived 1920-1996) made his trip in 1993. “Straight Story” is the first and only of D. Lynch’s films to get G rating and indeed is as straightforward as it could be. It´s made by a man who have seen a lot in life and reveals his findings with a touch that belongs to a master. The script is almost perfect, the pace is slow and to appreciate the beauty of the shots one has to watch this one in old-fashioned analogue format. I had to give it second try to be awarded with the story so special that it sounds almost too simple. It belongs to a handful of films (another similar road movie where the real journey is inner is Abbas Kiarostami´s “Taste of Chery”) that could be prescribed from sadness.

“Straight Story” is one of those films that makes us, viewers, just a tiny bit better. There´s some sadness, hidden smiles and occasional laughs, but at the end of the day (and road) there´s love and friendship that truly matters.