Alfred Hitchcock Talks with Dick Cavett About Sabotage, Foreign Correspondent & Laxatives (1972)

in Film, Television | June 3rd, 2013

On the list of the most inter­view­able auteurs in film his­to­ry, Alfred Hitch­cock must rank par­tic­u­lar­ly high. I would­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly want to find myself on the busi­ness end of that sar­don­ical­ly stern gaze myself, but when Hitch­cock agreed to sit down and talk, he real­ly sat down and talked. For the ulti­mate case in point, we have his big inter­view with cin­e­mat­ic col­league François Truf­faut, avail­able both as twelve hours of MP3s and, in book form, as that main­stay of the cinephile’s shelf, Hitchcock/Truffaut. Those two film­mak­ers had their immor­tal series of inter­views in 1962; a decade lat­er, Hitch­cock would turn up on nation­al tele­vi­sion for a chat with that auteur of the nation­al chat show, Dick Cavett. You can watch choice seg­ments of their con­ver­sa­tion on Youtube.

At the top of the post, Hitch­cock tells Cavett about the for­ma­tive trau­ma vis­it­ed upon him by his moth­er. “I think my moth­er scared me when I was 3 months old,” he recalls. “You see, she said, ‘Boo!’ It gave me the hic­cups. And she appar­ent­ly was very sat­is­fied.” (No prizes for guess­ing what effect it made this mas­ter of sus­pense want his work to have on audi­ences.) Just above, you can hear Hitch­cock­’s thoughts on a lax­a­tive com­mer­cial that ran dur­ing one of the show’s breaks: “I won­der why all those peo­ple doing sports and all that sort of thing — where they would need a lax­a­tive after such vig­or­ous move­ment all over the place.” Rest assured that he does get around to talk­ing film­mak­ing, specif­i­cal­ly about the process­es behind For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent (below) and Sab­o­tage, but per­haps noth­ing here reveals the work­ings of Hitch­cock­’s mind more than his con­vic­tion that “puns are the high­est form of lit­er­a­ture.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alfred Hitch­cock: The Secret Sauce for Cre­at­ing Sus­pense

Alfred Hitchcock’s Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho (1960)

Ing­mar Bergman Vis­its The Dick Cavett Show, 1971

Woody Allen on The Dick Cavett Show Cir­ca 1970

Alfred Hitchcock’s Sev­en-Minute Edit­ing Mas­ter Class

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Tilda Swinton Recites Poem by Rumi While Reeking of Vetiver, Heliotrope & Musk

in Film, Poetry, Television | May 31st, 2013

If any­one should ask you how to pro­mote a celebri­ty fra­grance with­out los­ing face, click play and whis­per, “Like This.”

It helps if the celeb in ques­tion is gen­er­al­ly acknowl­edged to be a class act. Imag­ine a drunk­en star­let emerg­ing from her limo sans-draw­ers to stum­ble through her favorite poem by a 13th cen­tu­ry Sufi mys­tic. Which would you rather smell like?

(Per­son­al­ly, I’d go with Team Swin­ton! )

Some schol­ars quib­ble with the accu­ra­cy of this Til­da Swin­ton-approved trans­la­tion, but there’s no deny­ing that Cole­man Barks’ “per­fect sat­is­fac­tion of all our sex­u­al want­i­ng” stands to move a lot more scent than A.J. Arber­ry’s terse ref­er­ence to Houris, virig­i­nal and numer­ous though they may  be.

Speak­ing of com­par­isons, take a peek at how anoth­er celebri­ty pro­motes her fra­grance in a video of sim­i­lar length.

Team Swin­ton for the win. Def­i­nite­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Moby Dick Big Read: Celebri­ties and Every­day Folk Read a Chap­ter a Day from the Great Amer­i­can Nov­el

Til­da Swin­ton and Bar­ry White Lead 1500 Peo­ple in Dance-Along to Hon­or Roger Ebert

Hear Sylvia Plath Read Fif­teen Poems From Her Final Col­lec­tion, Ariel, in 1962 Record­ing

Ayun Hal­l­i­day marks her ter­ri­to­ry @AyunHalliday

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Rediscovered: The First American Anti-Nazi Film, Banned by U.S. Censors and Forgotten for 80 Years

in Film, History | May 30th, 2013

On March 5, 1933, Ger­many held its last demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions until the end of WWII, and the Nation­al Social­ists gained a plu­ral­i­ty in the Reich­stag, with 43.9% of the vote and 288 seats. This event paved the way for the Enabling Act lat­er that month, which effec­tive­ly empow­ered Hitler as dic­ta­tor. It would seem in hind­sight that this turn—with all its atten­dant vio­lence, coer­cion, and hys­ter­i­cal nation­al­ist rhetoric—might have alarmed the West­ern pow­ers. And yet the oppo­site was true.

At least one news­man was alarmed, how­ev­er. And on the day of the 1933 elec­tions, he gained a brief audi­ence with the future Fuhrer. That man was Cor­nelius “Neil” Van­der­bilt IV, great-great-grand­son of the rail­road tycoon. Fed up with the malaise of his priv­i­leged peers, Van­der­bilt had moved to jour­nal­ism from his posi­tion as a dri­ver dur­ing the First World War. His name gave him access to Mus­soli­ni, Stal­in, and Hitler, whose impend­ing Reich became the sub­ject of Van­der­bilt’s doc­u­men­tary film, called Hitler’s Reign of Ter­ror, released on April 30, 1934, a short por­tion of which you can see above.

The New York­er obtained the clip from Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Thomas Doher­ty, who redis­cov­ered the film in a Bel­gian archive while research­ing a recent book. Vanderbilt’s doc­u­men­tary might well be the first Amer­i­can anti-Nazi film, but its con­tem­po­rary recep­tion speaks vol­umes about how crit­i­cism of the new Nazi regime was sup­pressed in the mid-thir­ties; the film was cen­sored across the U.S., denied a license, and banned.

What Van­der­bilt saw first-hand and chron­i­cled in his film is mild in com­par­i­son to what was to come. Nev­er­the­less, his take was pre­scient. He describes his anx­ious but par­tial­ly suc­cess­ful endeav­or to smug­gle footage across the Ger­man bor­der, pref­ac­ing the sto­ry by say­ing “there isn’t mon­ey enough in Hol­ly­wood to get me to go through it again.” (The scene above is a reen­act­ment, as is, quite obvi­ous­ly, the scene of Van­der­bilt’s meet­ing with Hitler.) Asked about his impres­sions of Hitler, Van­der­bilt has this to say:

Unques­tion­ably he is a man of real abil­i­ty, of force. But the way I sized him up after inter­view­ing him is that he is a strange com­bi­na­tion of Huey Long, Bil­ly Sun­day, and Al Capone…. I had nev­er heard a man so able to sway peo­ple.… In the hour and a half that Hitler talked to that packed audi­ence that night, he was as effec­tive as a bark­er in a sideshow trav­el­ing with a cir­cus.

Van­der­bilt says above that the ris­ing Nazi tide, “demand­ed revenge” and would not rest until they had it, to which his inter­view­er responds, “It all seems a ghast­ly, incred­i­ble night­mare.” Van­der­bilt’s vision seemed like a sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic fever dream to his crit­ics as well.

Read the full sto­ry of the film over at The New Yorker’s Cul­ture Desk.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Lam­beth Walk—Nazi Style: The Ear­ly Pro­pa­gan­da Mash Up That Enraged Joseph Goebbels

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

The Enig­ma Machine: How Alan Tur­ing Helped Break the Unbreak­able Nazi Code

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

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Leonard Cohen and U2 Perform ‘Tower of Song,’ a Meditation on Aging, Loss & Survival

in Film, Music | May 27th, 2013

Here’s a rare col­lab­o­ra­tion between the Cana­di­an singer and poet Leonard Cohen and the Irish super­group U2. It was staged for the 2005 Lian Lun­son doc­u­men­tary, Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man. The musi­cians are per­form­ing “Tow­er of Song,” a spir­i­tu­al med­i­ta­tion on aging, loss, and sur­vival, orig­i­nal­ly released on Cohen’s 1988 album I’m Your Man. Like Jorge Luis Borges’s Library of Babel, Cohen’s Tow­er of Song is some­thing unfath­omable.

Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I’m crazy for love but I’m not com­ing on
I’m just pay­ing my rent every day
Oh in the Tow­er of Song

I said to Hank Williams: how lone­ly does it get?
Hank Williams has­n’t answered yet
But I hear him cough­ing all night long
A hun­dred floors above me
In the Tow­er of Song

In addi­tion to the U2 col­lab­o­ra­tion, Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man includes inter­views with Cohen and trib­ute per­for­mances of some of his great­est songs by Martha and Rufus Wain­wright, Nick Cave, Beth Orton and oth­ers. You can watch the com­plete film here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Street Artist Plays Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah” With Crys­tal Glass­es

Leonard Cohen Recounts “How I Got My Song,” or When His Love Affair with Music Began

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen, a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

Leonard Cohen Reads “The Future” (Not Safe for Work)

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Piotr Dumala’s Artful Animations of Literary Works by Kafka & Dostoevsky

in Animation, Film, Literature | May 27th, 2013

There’s a cer­tain irony to Pol­ish ani­ma­tor Piotr Dumala’s inno­v­a­tive style, a stop-motion tech­nique in which he scratch­es an image into paint­ed plas­ter, then paints it over again imme­di­ate­ly and scratch­es the next. Called “destruc­tive ani­ma­tion,” Dumala devised the method while study­ing art con­ser­va­tion at the War­saw Acad­e­my of Fine Arts.

Trained as a sculp­tor as well as an ani­ma­tor, Dumala’s award-win­ning films present strik­ing­ly expres­sion­is­tic tex­tures emerg­ing from pitch black and reced­ing again. The 1991 film Kaf­ka (top) begins with the reclu­sive writer shroud­ed in dark­ness and iso­la­tion. He coughs once, and we are trans­port­ed to Prague, 1883. Each frame of Kaf­ka resem­bles a wood­cut, and the sound design is as spare as the extreme­ly high-con­trast ani­ma­tion.

In Sciany (Walls), an ear­li­er short film from 1988, Dumala uses light and shad­ow, and even more min­i­mal music and sound effects to cre­ate a haunt­ing, sur­re­al­is­tic piece that con­jures the atmos­phere of an inter­ro­ga­tion room or soli­tary con­fine­ment cell. Like the strange, emp­ty cityscapes of Gior­gio de Chiri­co, Dumala’s art unset­tles, with its skewed per­spec­tives, shad­owy, mys­te­ri­ous fig­ures, and unex­pect­ed shifts in tone and scale.


Crime and Pun­ish­ment, Dumala’s idio­syn­crat­ic half-hour Dos­to­evsky adap­ta­tion (which we’ve fea­tured pre­vi­ous­ly), uses “destruc­tive ani­ma­tion” to sim­i­lar effect as in Kaf­ka and Walls, cre­at­ing shad­owy, min­i­mal­ist set pieces that emerge slow­ly from dark­ness and return to it. But this time, Dumala incor­po­rates color—greens, reds, and browns—and the images are much more detailed, almost painter­ly.

Strip­ping the Russ­ian mas­ter­work down to just two scenes—the mur­der and Raskolnikov’s meet­ing of Sonia—Dumala inter­prets the nov­el­’s themes with the light-and-shad­ow inten­si­ty with which he ren­ders all of his artis­tic visions, say­ing, “This is about love and how obses­sion can destroy love. In our life we are under two oppo­site influ­ences to be good or bad and to love or hate.” In Dumala’s almost claus­troph­ic worlds, the lines between light and dark­ness are stark, even if they’re also ever shift­ing and ephemer­al.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor,’ Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

John Tur­tur­ro Reads Ita­lo Calvino’s Ani­mat­ed Fairy Tale

Orson Welles Nar­rates Ani­ma­tion of Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry

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

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Watch Picasso Create Entire Paintings in Magnificent Time-Lapse Film (1956)

in Art, Film | May 20th, 2013

How did Pablo Picas­so do it? Art his­to­ri­ans have spent much time and many words answer­ing that ques­tion, but in the video above, you can watch the painter in the act of cre­ation — or, rather, you can watch a series of his paint­ings as they come into being, evolv­ing from spare but evoca­tive col­lec­tions of mark­er strokes into com­plete images, alive with col­or. We see Picas­so’s visu­al ideas emerge, and then we see him refine and revise them, some­times toward a sur­pris­ing result. All of this hap­pens in under two min­utes, since film­mak­er Hen­ri-Georges Clouzot shot the artist work­ing with time-lapse pho­tog­ra­phy, com­press­ing each cre­ative process into mere sec­onds.

This par­tic­u­lar sequence became the trail­er of Clouzot’s 1956 doc­u­men­tary The Mys­tery of Picas­so. The paint­ings in it, we read at the end, “can­not be seen any­where else. They were destroyed upon com­ple­tion of the film.” Though word on the street has it that one or two of them may actu­al­ly sur­vive some­where today, the idea of Picas­so paint­ings exist­ing only on film does cap­ture the imag­i­na­tion, and it moved the French gov­ern­ment to offi­cial­ly declare The Mys­tery of Picas­so a nation­al trea­sure. Picas­so had, of course, paint­ed on film before, as you might recall from see­ing us fea­ture Paul Hae­saerts’ 1950 Vis­ite à Picas­so.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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:

Watch Icon­ic Artists at Work: Rare Videos of Picas­so, Matisse, Kandin­sky, Renoir, Mon­et, Pol­lock & More

Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Duke Ellington’s Symphony in Black, Starring a 19-Year-old Billie Holiday in Her First Filmed Performance

in Film, Music | May 18th, 2013

In Sep­tem­ber of 1935 Para­mount Pic­tures released a nine-minute movie remark­able in sev­er­al ways. Sym­pho­ny in Black: A Rhap­sody of Negro Life is one of the ear­li­est cin­e­mat­ic explo­rations of African-Amer­i­can cul­ture for a mass audi­ence. It fea­tures Duke Elling­ton and his orches­tra per­form­ing his first extend­ed com­po­si­tion. And per­haps most notably, it stars Bil­lie Hol­i­day in her first filmed per­for­mance.

The one-reel movie, direct­ed by Fred Waller, tells the sto­ry of Elling­ton’s “A Rhap­sody of Negro Life,” using pic­tures to con­vey the images run­ning through the musi­cian’s mind as he com­posed and per­formed the piece. Elling­ton’s “Rhap­sody” has four parts: “The Labor­ers,” “A Tri­an­gle,” “A Hymn of Sor­row” and “Harlem Rhythm.” Hol­i­day appears as a jilt­ed and abused lover in “A Tri­an­gle.”

Hol­i­day’s only pre­vi­ous screen appear­ance was as an uncred­it­ed extra in a night­club scene in the 1933 Paul Robe­son film, The Emper­or Jones. Sym­pho­ny in Black was pro­duced over a ten-month peri­od. Hol­i­day was only 19 when her scenes were shot. She sings Elling­ton’s “Sad­dest Tale,” a song care­ful­ly select­ed by the com­pos­er to fit the young singer’s style. “Sad­dest tale on land or sea,” begin the lyrics, “Was when my man walked out on me.” In the book Bil­lie Hol­i­day: A Biog­ra­phy, author Meg Greene calls the per­for­mance “mes­mer­iz­ing”:

Sym­pho­ny in Black marked an impor­tant mile­stone in the devel­op­ment of Bil­lie Hol­i­day, the woman and the singer. Elling­ton’s deft han­dling enabled Bil­lie to dis­tin­guish her­self from oth­er torch singers. She did not wear her emo­tions on her sleeve; instead, she revealed her­self grad­u­al­ly as the song unfold­ed. Hers was a care­ful­ly craft­ed and sophis­ti­cat­ed per­for­mance, espe­cial­ly for a woman only 19 years old. This care­ful­ly woven tapes­try of life and music was the ori­gin of the per­sona that audi­ences came to iden­ti­fy with Bil­lie. Oth­er singers such as Frank Sina­tra and Judy Gar­land may have more suc­cess­ful­ly estab­lished and cul­ti­vat­ed an image, but Bil­lie Hol­i­day did it first.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bil­lie Hol­i­day Sings ‘Strange Fruit’

Bil­lie Holiday–The Life and Artistry of Lady Day: The Com­plete Film

Duke Elling­ton Plays for Joan Miró in the South of France, 1966: Bassist John Lamb Looks Back on the Day

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Watch 5 Filmmakers Recall Their Most Cringeworthy Moments at the Movies with Mom & Dad

in Comedy, Film, Life | May 17th, 2013

In sixth grade, my friend Amy Osborn’s par­ents took us to a screen­ing of Annie Hall. The bed­room scenes with Car­ol Kane, Janet Mar­golin and Diane Keaton were chaste by today’s stan­dards. The repar­tee was so beyond my frame of ref­er­ence, it caused but lit­tle dis­com­fort. What did me in was the two-line exchange between a car­toon Woody Allen and Snow White’s Wicked Queen con­cern­ing her peri­od (or lack there­of). Are You There God? It’s Me, Mar­garet was our sacred text, but its most sen­sa­tion­al sub­ject matter—menstruation—was deeply taboo out­side of my 1970’s Indi­ana tribe. I could have died, know­ing Mr. Osborn was sit­ting right there. The one con­so­la­tion was that my own par­ents weren’t.

These awk­ward encoun­ters can be defin­ing, which explains why the Tribeca Film Fes­ti­val sought to fer­ret them out as part of its One Ques­tion series. It’s impres­sive that the four direc­tors and one pro­duc­er fea­tured above decid­ed to pur­sue careers in film after inad­ver­tent­ly shar­ing with their par­ents such ten­der moments as a mas­tur­bat­ing Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man in Todd Solondz’s sem­i­nal (par­don the pun) Hap­pi­ness or the relent­less deflo­ration scene at the top of Lar­ry Clark’s Kids.

Per­haps you can relate. If so, please spill the gory details below. Pro­vid­ed you’re strong enough to revis­it the trau­ma, what was your most cringe-induc­ing moment at the movies with your mom or dad, or—let’s not be ageist here—your kids?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Grow­ing Up John Waters: The Odd­ball Film­mak­er Cat­a­logues His Many For­ma­tive Rebel­lions (1993)

The Sto­ry Of Men­stru­a­tion: Watch Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

Dustin Hoff­man Talks Sex from the Com­fort of His Own Bed (1968)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day grows less ashamed with every pass­ing year. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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