Charlie Chaplin Finds Comedy Even in the Brutality of WWI: A Scene from Shoulder Arms (1918)


A friend of the Roman poet Mar­tial once asked him why he went to watch lions devour slaves at the Col­i­se­um. “These are my times,” replied Mar­tial, “and I must know them.” Not every Roman enjoyed such bru­tal spec­ta­cles, and Mar­tial him­self per­haps least of all, but he regard­ed it as a duty as an observ­er and inter­preter not to spare him­self the awful sight that pleased so many of his fel­low cit­i­zens. Char­lie Chap­lin, too, knew his times, as evi­denced by pic­tures like 1936’s Mod­ern Times, which made light of indus­tri­al cap­i­tal­ism, and The Great Dic­ta­tor, his sharp 1940 satire of Nazism and fas­cism.

But the hor­rors of the pre­vi­ous World War gave him mate­r­i­al too, as you can see in this scene from the 1918 silent com­e­dy Shoul­der Arms, above: “There have been learned dis­cus­sions as to whether Chap­lin’s com­e­dy is low or high, artis­tic or crude,” said the con­tem­po­rary New York Times review of the film, Chap­lin’s most pop­u­lar to date, “but no one can deny that when he imper­son­ates a screen fool he is fun­ny.”

His screen fool, in this case, has enlist­ed in the “awk­ward squad,” and though boot camp gives him a hard time, the prat­falls he goes through when sent off to Europe even­tu­al­ly lead him to win the Great War almost sin­gle­hand­ed­ly. Alas, as with most of Chap­lin’s hap­less pro­tag­o­nists, his moment of tri­umph van­ish­es even more quick­ly than it came, and at the time of its pre­miere the real war still had weeks to go.

Before mak­ing the movie, Chap­lin him­self had doubts about the poten­tial for humor in the blood­i­est con­flict in the his­to­ry of mankind, but he must have ulti­mate­ly under­stood what all the most astute come­di­ans do: that com­e­dy and tragedy have always gone hand-in-hand. “Say­ing some­thing is too ter­ri­ble to joke about is like say­ing a dis­ease is to ter­ri­ble to try to cure,” as the par­tic­u­lar­ly astute Louis C.K. recent­ly put it — a man of our own comedic and trag­ic times, and one who cer­tain­ly knows them as well as Chap­lin knew his.

Find 65 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Online in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Char­lie Chap­lin Gets Strapped into a Dystopi­an “Rube Gold­berg Machine,” a Fright­ful Com­men­tary on Mod­ern Cap­i­tal­ism

Char­lie Chap­lin Does Cocaine and Saves the Day in Mod­ern Times (1936)

Chap­lin Meets Incep­tion: The Final Speech of The Great Dic­ta­tor

When Char­lie Chap­lin Entered a Chap­lin Look-Alike Con­test and Came in 20th Place

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Explore 5,300 Rare Manuscripts Digitized by the Vatican: From The Iliad & Aeneid, to Japanese & Aztec Illustrations

vatican-iliad

Hun­dreds of years before vast public/private part­ner­ships like Google Arts & Cul­ture, the Vat­i­can served as one of the fore­most con­ser­va­tors of cul­tur­al arti­facts from around the world. In the era of the Holy Roman Empire, few of those works were avail­able to the mass­es (except­ing, of course, the city’s con­sid­er­able pub­lic archi­tec­ture and sculp­ture). But with over 500 years of his­to­ry, Vat­i­can Muse­ums and Libraries have amassed a trove of arti­facts that rival the great­est world col­lec­tions in their breadth and scope, and these have slow­ly become pub­lic over time. In 1839, for exam­ple, Pope Gre­go­ry XVI found­ed the Egypt­ian Muse­um, an exten­sive col­lec­tion of Egypt­ian and Mesopotami­an arti­facts includ­ing the famous Book of the Dead. We also have The Col­lec­tion of Mod­ern Reli­gious Art, which holds 19th and 20th cen­tu­ry impres­sion­ists, sur­re­al­ists, cubists, expres­sion­ists, etc. In-between are large pub­lic col­lec­tions from antiq­ui­ty to the Renais­sance.

codex-borgianus

When it comes to man­u­scripts, the Vat­i­can Library is no less an embar­rass­ment of rich­es. But unlike the art col­lec­tions, most of these have been com­plete­ly inac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic due to their rar­i­ty and fragili­ty. That’s all going to change, now that ancient and mod­ern con­ser­va­tion has come togeth­er in part­ner­ships like the one the Library now has with Japan­ese com­pa­ny NTT DATA.

Their com­bined project, the Dig­i­tal Vat­i­can Library, promis­es to dig­i­tize 15,000 man­u­scripts with­in the next four years and the full col­lec­tion of over 80,000 man­u­scripts in the next decade or so, con­sist­ing of codices most­ly from the “Mid­dle Age and Human­is­tic Peri­od.” They’ve made some excel­lent progress. Cur­rent­ly, you can view high-res­o­lu­tion scans of over 5,300 man­u­scripts, from all over the world. We pre­vi­ous­ly brought you news of the Library’s dig­i­ti­za­tion of Virgil’s Aeneid. They’ve also shared a fine­ly illus­trat­ed, bilin­gual (Greek and Latin) edi­tion of its pre­de­ces­sor, The Ili­ad (top).

japanese-dance-painting

Fur­ther up, from a sim­i­lar time but very dif­fer­ent place, we see a Pre-Columbian Aztec man­u­script, equal­ly fine­ly-wrought in its hand-ren­dered intri­ca­cies. You’ll also find illus­tra­tions like the cir­ca 17th-cen­tu­ry Japan­ese water­col­or paint­ing above, and the ren­der­ing of Dante’s hell, below, from a won­der­ful, if incom­plete, series by Renais­sance great San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li (which you can see more of here). Begun in 2010, the huge-scale dig­i­ti­za­tion project has decid­ed on some fair­ly rig­or­ous cri­te­ria for estab­lish­ing pri­or­i­ty, includ­ing “impor­tance and pre­cious­ness,” “dan­ger of loss,” and “scholar’s requests.” The design of the site itself clear­ly has schol­ars in mind, and requires some deft­ness to nav­i­gate. But with sim­ple and advanced search func­tions and gal­leries of Select­ed and Lat­est Dig­i­tized Man­u­scripts on its home­page, the Dig­i­tal Vat­i­can Library has sev­er­al entry points through which you can dis­cov­er many a tex­tu­al trea­sure. As the site remarks, “the world’s cul­ture, thanks to the web, can tru­ly become a com­mon her­itage, freely acces­si­ble to all.” You can enter the col­lec­tion here.

vatican-botticelli

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,600-Year-Old Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script of the Aeneid Dig­i­tized & Put Online by The Vat­i­can

Botticelli’s 92 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s Divine Com­e­dy

15,000 Col­or­ful Images of Per­sian Man­u­scripts Now Online, Cour­tesy of the British Library

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

1944 Instructional Video Teaches You the Lindy Hop, the Dance That Originated in 1920’s Harlem Ballrooms

1944’s MGM short Groovie Movie, abovebills itself as an instruc­tion­al film for those wish­ing to learn the Lindy Hop and its extreme­ly close cousin, the Jit­ter­bug.

The edu­ca­tion­al mod­el here is def­i­nite­ly of the “toss ‘em in the pool and see if they swim” vari­ety.

The eas­i­ly frus­trat­ed are advised to seek out a calm and patient teacher, will­ing to break the foot­work down into a num­ber of small, eas­i­ly digestible lessons.

Or bet­ter yet, find some­one to teach you in per­son. We’re about 20 years into a swing dance revival, and with a bit of Googling, you should be able to find an ath­let­ic young teacher who can school you in the dance pop­u­lar­ized by Frankie “Mus­cle­head” Man­ning and his part­ner Fre­da Wash­ing­ton at Harlem’s Savoy ball­room.

Speak­ing of teach­ers, you might rec­og­nize Arthur “King Cat” Walsh, the “top flight hep cat” star of Groovie Movie, as the fel­low who was brought in to teach I Love Lucy’s Lucy Ricar­do how to boo­gie woo­gie.

He’s got more chem­istry with his Groovie Movie part­ner, Jean Veloz. Backed by Lenny Smith, Kay Vaughn, Irene Thomas, Chuck Sag­gau, and sev­er­al tal­ent­ed kid­dies, they quick­ly achieve an aston­ish­ing­ly man­ic inten­si­ty as nar­ra­tor Pete Smith barks out a host of jazzy lin­go. (Here­in, lays the tru­ly sol­id instruc­tion. The atti­tude!)

Smith also heps view­ers to a few of the influ­ences at work, includ­ing bal­let, tra­di­tion­al Javanese dance, and even the “gay old waltz.” Sad­ly, he fails to men­tion the Harlem ball­room scene from whence it most direct­ly sprung.

At least Whitey’s Lindy Hop­pers, a pro­fes­sion­al troop drawn from the Savoy’s most skilled prac­ti­tion­ers, got their due in the 1941 film, Hel­lza­pop­pin’, below. Again, aston­ish­ing!

Okay, worms, let’s squirm.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Brown Gives You Danc­ing Lessons: From The Funky Chick­en to The Booga­loo

Rita Hay­worth, 1940s Hol­ly­wood Icon, Dances Dis­co to the Tune of The Bee Gees Stayin’ Alive: A Mashup

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Leg­end Djan­go Rein­hardt

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Akira Kurosawa’s Advice to Aspiring Filmmakers: Write, Write, Write and Read

We should all learn from the best, and in the domain of cin­e­ma, that means study­ing under mas­ters like Aki­ra Kuro­sawa. Though now near­ly twen­ty years gone, the Japan­ese film­mak­er known as “the Emper­or” left behind not just one of the most impres­sive bod­ies of direc­to­r­i­al work in exis­tence — RashomonSev­en Samu­raiThrone of BloodRan, and much else besides — but a gen­er­ous quan­ti­ty of words. In addi­tion to the volu­mi­nous mate­ri­als relat­ed to the films them­selves, he wrote the book Some­thing Like an Auto­bi­og­ra­phy, gave in-depth inter­views, and offered film­mak­ing advice to estab­lished col­leagues and young aspi­rants alike.

“If you gen­uine­ly want to make films,” Kuro­sawa tells the next gen­er­a­tion of direc­tors in the clip above, “then write screen­plays. All you need to write a script is paper and a pen­cil. It’s only through writ­ing scripts that you learn specifics about the struc­ture of film and what cin­e­ma is.”

This brings to mind the sto­ry of how, long unable to find fund­ing for Kage­musha, he wrote and re-wrote its screen­play, then, still unable to go into pro­duc­tion, paint­ed the entire film, shot by shot. Such per­sis­tence requires no lit­tle strength of patience and dis­ci­pline, the very kind one builds through rig­or­ous writ­ing prac­tice. Kuro­sawa quotes Balzac: “The most essen­tial and nec­es­sary thing is the for­bear­ance to face the dull task of writ­ing one word at a time.”

Take it one word at a time: appar­ent­ly cre­ators as osten­si­bly dif­fer­ent as Balzac, Kuro­sawa, and Stephen King agree on how to han­dle the writ­ing process. And to write, Kuro­sawa adds, you must read. “Young peo­ple today don’t read books,” he says, echo­ing an oft-heard com­plaint. “It’s impor­tant that they at least do a cer­tain amount of read­ing. Unless you have a rich reserve with­in, you can’t cre­ate any­thing. Mem­o­ry is the source of your cre­ation. Whether it’s from read­ing or from your own real-life expe­ri­ence, you can’t cre­ate unless you have some­thing inside your­self.” Or, as Wern­er Her­zog more recent­ly put it: “Read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read… read, read… read.” But per Kuro­sawa, don’t for­get to write — and when the writ­ing gets tough, do any­thing but give up.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Talk About Film­mak­ing (and Nuclear Bombs) in Six Hour Inter­view

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa to Ing­mar Bergman: “A Human Is Not Real­ly Capa­ble of Cre­at­ing Real­ly Good Works Until He Reach­es 80”

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Paint­ed the Sto­ry­boards For Scenes in His Epic Films: Com­pare Can­vas to Cel­lu­loid

How Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Used Move­ment to Tell His Sto­ries: A Video Essay

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Art of Making Old-Fashioned, Hand-Printed Books

Reports of tra­di­tion­al books’ death are great­ly exag­ger­at­ed, thanks in part to the suc­cess of print-on-demand pub­lish­ing and oth­er dig­i­tal inno­va­tions.

As thrilled as we are about the sur­vival of the print­ed page—it’s a relief to have some­thing to read after Wi-Fi fails dur­ing the zom­bie invasion—the crafts­man­ship that goes into hand-print­ed, hand-bound vol­umes is an almost-lost art.

The Vic­to­ria and Albert Museum’s video, above, doc­u­ments the painstak­ing process, begin­ning with the arrang­ing of met­al type that will result in an octa­vo, the most com­mon type of book.

It’s a qui­et endeav­or, though sure­ly a bit loud­er than the V&A’s silent doc­u­men­ta­tion, an unusu­al choice giv­en a cer­tain seg­ment of the mil­len­ni­al pop­u­lace’s appetite for well-edit­ed arti­sanal craft videos in which music plays a big part.

A well-deployed tune could ele­vate these love­ly visu­als to the realms of the advanced ele­gy.

YouTube user, Krafts­man Sheng, attempts to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion by repro­duc­ing the video (sans attri­bu­tion) with a sound­track of his own choos­ing—pianist Roger Williams’ syrupy 1965 ren­di­tion of “Soft­ly As I Leave You,” below.

An uncon­ven­tion­al choice, to be sure. I should think some­thing baroque would go bet­ter with all of this metic­u­lous fold­ing, cut­ting, and bind­ing.

Though per­haps some­thing a lit­tle more robust could high­light the hard­core hero­ism of the arti­sans toil­ing to keep this ancient art alive. Elec­tric Lit has a round up of great book-inspired punk songs, of which “Time” by Richard Hell and the Voidoids seems par­tic­u­lar­ly apt.

Print­’s not dead!

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Brazil Gives Out Books That Dou­ble as Sub­way Tick­ets, Pro­mot­ing Lit­er­a­cy & Mass Tran­sit at Once

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Presents the 550-Year-Old Guten­berg Bible in Spec­tac­u­lar, High-Res Detail

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

David Byrne & Neil deGrasse Tyson Explain the Importance of an Arts Education (and How It Strengthens Science & Civilization)

Unless you’re a pol­i­cy geek or an edu­ca­tor, you may nev­er have heard of the “STEM vs. STEAM” debate. STEM, of course, stands for the for­mu­la of “sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math­e­mat­ics” as a base­line for edu­ca­tion­al cur­ricu­lum. STEAM argues for the neces­si­ty of the arts, which in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary edu­ca­tion have waxed and waned depend­ing on pre­vail­ing the­o­ry and, per­haps more impor­tant­ly, polit­i­cal will. Andrew Carnegie may have donat­ed hand­some­ly to high­er edu­ca­tion, but he frowned on the study of “dead lan­guages” and oth­er use­less pur­suits. Indus­tri­al­ist Richard Teller Crane opined in 1911 that no one with “a taste for lit­er­a­ture has the right to be hap­py” because “the only men enti­tled to hap­pi­ness… are those who are use­ful.”

It’s a long way from think­ing of poets as “the unac­knowl­edged leg­is­la­tors of the world,” as Per­cy Shel­ley wrote in his “Defence of Poet­ry” 90 years ear­li­er, but Shelley’s essay shows that even then the arts need­ed defend­ing. By the time we get to STEM think­ing, the arts have dis­ap­peared entire­ly from the con­ver­sa­tion, become an after­thought, as ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists, rather than wealthy indus­tri­al­ists, decide to trim them away from pub­lic pol­i­cy and pri­vate invest­ment. The sit­u­a­tion may be improv­ing, as more edu­ca­tors embrace STEAM, but “there’s ten­sion,” as Neil DeGrasse Tyson says in the excerpt above from his StarTalk inter­view show on Nat Geo. In the kinds of fund­ing crises most school dis­tricts find them­selves in, “school boards are won­der­ing, do we cut the art, do we keep the sci­ence?”

The choice is a false one, argues for­mer Talk­ing Heads front­man and some­times Cas­san­dra-like cul­tur­al the­o­rist David Byrne. “In order to real­ly suc­ceed in what­ev­er… math and the sci­ences and engi­neer­ing and things like that,” Byrne tells Tyson above, “you have to be able to think out­side the box, and do cre­ative prob­lem solv­ing… the cre­ative think­ing is in the arts. A cer­tain amount of arts edu­ca­tion…” will help you “suc­ceed more and bring more to the world… bring­ing dif­fer­ent worlds togeth­er has def­i­nite tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits. To kind of cut one, or sep­a­rate them, is to injure them and crip­ple them.”

The idea goes back to Aris­to­tle, and to the cre­ation of uni­ver­si­ties, when medieval thinkers tout­ed the Lib­er­al Arts—the Triv­i­um (gram­mar, rhetoric, and log­ic) and Quadriv­i­um (arith­metic, geom­e­try, music, and astronomy)—as mod­els for a bal­anced edu­ca­tion. Tyson agrees that the arts and sci­ences should not be sev­ered: “Sup­pose they did that back in Renais­sance Europe? What would Europe be with­out the sup­port and inter­est in art?” He goes even fur­ther, say­ing, “We mea­sure the suc­cess of a civ­i­liza­tion by how well they treat their cre­ative peo­ple.”

It’s a bold state­ment that emerges from a longer con­ver­sa­tion Tyson has with Byrne, which you can hear in the StarTalk Radio pod­cast above. Tyson is joined by co-host Maeve Hig­gins and neu­ro­sci­en­tist and con­cert pianist Dr. Móni­ca López-González—and lat­er by Pro­fes­sor David Cope, who taught a com­put­er to write music, and Bill Nye. Byrne makes his case for the equal val­ue of the arts and sci­ences with per­son­al exam­ples from his ear­ly years in grade school and art col­lege, and by build­ing con­cep­tu­al bridges between the two ways of think­ing. One theme he returns to is the inter­re­la­tion­ship between archi­tec­ture and music as an exam­ple of how art and engi­neer­ing co-evolve (a sub­ject on which he pre­vi­ous­ly deliv­ered a fas­ci­nat­ing TED talk).

You won’t find much debate here among the par­tic­i­pants. Every­one seems to read­i­ly agree with each oth­er, and I can’t say I’m sur­prised. Speak­ing anec­do­tal­ly, all of the sci­en­tists I know affirm the val­ue of the arts, and a high per­cent­age have a cre­ative avo­ca­tion. Like­wise, I’ve rarely met an artist who doesn’t val­ue sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.  We find exam­ple after exam­ple of scientist-artists—from Albert Ein­stein to astro­physi­cist Stephon Alexan­der, who sees physics in Coltrane. The cen­tral ques­tion may not be whether artists and sci­en­tists can mutu­al­ly appre­ci­ate each other—they gen­er­al­ly already do—but whether school boards, politi­cians, vot­ers, and investors can see things their way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

An Ani­mat­ed Neil deGrasse Tyson Gives an Elo­quent Defense of Sci­ence in 272 Words, the Same Length as The Get­tys­burg Address

The Secret Link Between Jazz and Physics: How Ein­stein & Coltrane Shared Impro­vi­sa­tion and Intu­ition in Com­mon

The Musi­cal Mind of Albert Ein­stein: Great Physi­cist, Ama­teur Vio­lin­ist and Devo­tee of Mozart

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Bruce Springsteen Lists 20 of His Favorite Books: The Books That Have Inspired the Songwriter & Now Memoirist

1024px-brucespringsteen2003

Image by Michele Lucon, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Bruce Spring­steen turns 67 today. And next week his long-await­ed mem­oir, Born to Run, will final­ly get into read­ers’ hands. In advance of that lit­er­ary event, we’re look­ing back at a 2014 inter­view with The New York Times, print­ed short­ly before Spring­steen pub­lished his chil­dren’s book, Out­law Pete

The inter­view takes you inside Spring­steen’s lit­er­ary world, reveal­ing what books he reads, which books he loves, and what authors have shaped his song­writ­ing (and like­ly his own lit­er­ary style): The Times asks: “Who is your favorite nov­el­ist of all time, and your favorite nov­el­ist writ­ing today?;” “Who are your favorite New Jer­sey writ­ers?;” “What’s your favorite mem­oir by a musi­cian?;” “What book, if any, most influ­enced your deci­sion to become a song­writer and musi­cian or con­tributed to your artis­tic devel­op­ment?” The books he namechecks along the way include the fol­low­ing:

You can read the inter­view in its entire­ty here, and find some of the clas­sic books he men­tions in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. His mem­oir, Born to Run, will be offi­cial­ly released on Sep­tem­ber 27th. The com­pan­ion album, Chap­ter and Verse, is out today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Heat Map­ping the Rise of Bruce Spring­steen: How the Boss Went Viral in a Pre-Inter­net Era

Springsteen’s Favorite Books & Read­ing List

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The Very First Illustrations of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1897)

war-of-the-worlds-goble

H.G. Wells’ tales of fan­tas­ti­cal inven­tions, nev­er-before-seen beings, time trav­el, and alien inva­sion prac­ti­cal­ly cry out for visu­al and son­ic accom­pa­ni­ment. Of all the oth­er artists’ inter­pre­ta­tions of his 1898 nov­el The War of the Worlds, Orson Welles’ infa­mous Hal­loween 1938 radio broad­cast remains best known, but var­i­ous illus­tra­tors have also brought the sto­ry of mer­ci­less­ly destruc­tive Mar­tians’ arrival on Earth to equal­ly vivid life. Last year, we fea­tured Brazil­ian illus­tra­tor Hen­rique Alvim Cor­rêa’s hor­ri­fy­ing work for the 1906 edi­tion; today, we go back before The War of the Worlds’ first edi­tion to behold the aliens as ren­dered by War­wick Gob­le.

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“I’m doing the dear­est lit­tle ser­i­al for Pear­son­’s new mag­a­zine,” Wells wrote to a friend, “in which I com­plete­ly wreck and sack Wok­ing — killing my neigh­bours in painful and eccen­tric ways — then pro­ceed via Kingston and Rich­mond to Lon­don, which I sack, select­ing South Kens­ing­ton for feats of pecu­liar atroc­i­ty.” That dear­est lit­tle ser­i­al, after its 1897 run in Pear­son­’s Mag­a­zine in the U.K. and Cos­mopoli­tan in the U.S., appeared the next year in book form as The War of the Worlds, a com­mon pub­li­ca­tion pro­ce­dure for pop­u­lar Eng­lish-lan­guage nov­els in the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry.

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“The sto­ry is still a bit rough round the edges,” writes sci-fi author John Guy Col­lick, but “what makes the mag­a­zine spe­cial are the fan­tas­tic illus­tra­tions by War­wick Gob­le. These are the first pic­tures of the Mar­tians and their tripods and, I think, the best.” He prais­es their low-tech style and their faith­ful­ness to the text: “in the nov­el Wells is at pains to point out that the Mar­t­ian legs are rigid,” not artic­u­lat­ed as the films and oth­er illus­tra­tions have tend­ed to por­tray them.” The Mar­tians them­selves he con­sid­ers a “bit too cute, though they are the first attempt to visu­alise beings from anoth­er world,” and these depic­tions of ter­ror from anoth­er plan­et (more of which you can see here) cer­tain­ly marked a depar­ture in Gob­le’s chil­dren’s book-ori­ent­ed career. Even an artist of whim­sy has to cause a few night­mares once in a while.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hor­ri­fy­ing 1906 Illus­tra­tions of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: Dis­cov­er the Art of Hen­rique Alvim Cor­rêa

The War of the Worlds on Pod­cast: How H.G. Wells and Orson Welles Riv­et­ed A Nation

Orson Welles Meets H.G. Wells in 1940: The Leg­ends Dis­cuss War of the Worlds, Cit­i­zen Kane, and WWII

H.G. Wells Inter­views Joseph Stal­in in 1934; Declares “I Am More to The Left Than You, Mr. Stal­in”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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