Salvador Dalí Creates a Dream Sequence for Spellbound, Hitchcock’s Psychoanalytic Thriller

Alfred Hitch­cock made so many time­less films, but Spell­bound, alas, has­n’t held up quite so com­fort­ably. Most of the prob­lem has to do with its theme: psy­cho­analy­sis, which enjoyed a trendy moment in the mid-for­ties and may have attained enough rel­e­vance at the time to dri­ve a plot, but now seems a rather weak engine. That era’s ther­a­py craze swept up pic­ture’s pro­duc­er, old-Hol­ly­wood titan David O. Selznick, with such force that he per­son­al­ly asked the direc­tor to take it on as a sub­ject. Hitch­cock grudg­ing­ly agreed, set­ting the pro­duc­tion gears turn­ing on Spell­bound. Selznick arranged for his own ther­a­pist to both act as the movie’s tech­ni­cal advis­er and to cause Hitch­cock a num­ber of on-set headaches. So if Spell­bound seems faint­ly un-Hitch­cock­ian, we can chalk it up part­ly to Selznick­’s psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic zeal, but some of the cred­it must also go to Sal­vador Dalí.

Hired to craft a dream sequence, the Span­ish sur­re­al­ist painter and film­mak­er report­ed­ly pro­duced over twen­ty min­utes of footage, four and a half min­utes of which appear in the clip above. “I can’t make out just what sort of a place it was,” Gre­go­ry Peck mut­ters, reclined on the ther­a­pist’s couch, as the shot dis­solves into his mind and into Dalí’s imagery. “It seemed to be a gam­bling house, but there weren’t any walls, just a lot of cur­tains with eyes paint­ed on them. A man was walk­ing around with a large pair of scis­sors, cut­ting all the drapes in half. And then a girl came in with hard­ly any­thing on and start­ed walk­ing around the gam­bling room, kiss­ing every­body.” Sure­ly those days offered no more ide­al can­di­date for the job of real­iz­ing such a vision than Dalí. The light­ly theremin-ed score comes from Mik­lós Rózsa, but Hitch­cock did­n’t like that either. Though the famous­ly con­trol­ling auteur may have found his pow­er com­pro­mised in its pro­duc­tion, Spell­bound does end up being a rare thing indeed in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma: dream sequences com­pelling enough not to put you to sleep.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 20 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dali, Nar­rat­ed by the Great Orson Welles

A Tour Inside Sal­vador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Span­ish Home

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.

The Surreal Short Films of Louis C.K., 1993–1999

To some fans of his not-exact­ly-a-sit­com Louie, Louis C.K. sim­ply appeared a few years ago, ful­ly formed and acclaimed by his peers as per­haps the most skilled, ded­i­cat­ed comedic crafts­men work­ing today. But he does have a past, stretch­ing back well beyond his voice role on the ani­mat­ed series Home Movies and his direc­tion of the film Pootie Tang, and he has offered up enter­tain­ing frag­ments of it online. Above you’ll find his ear­li­est known short film, Ice Cream. Begin watch­ing this black-and-white med­i­ta­tion on the vagaries of dis­af­fect­ed twen­tysome­thing love in the nineties — one which opens in a con­ve­nient store, no less — and you’ll imme­di­ate­ly think of Kevin Smith’s Clerks. But C.K. made Ice Cream in 1993, the year before Clerks came out, and it tilts in direc­tions even Smith would­n’t dare pre­dict, ulti­mate­ly arriv­ing at a mari­achi band-scored finale.

Just above, we have 1998’s Hel­lo There. In four min­utes, the film fol­lows a cata­ton­ic-look­ing fel­low (played by come­di­an Ron Lynch) wear­ing a poor­ly fit­ting suit and a cas­sette recorder around his neck as he makes his way through town. “Excuse me,” his machine says when he press­es its play but­ton, “do you have the cor­rect time?” A bystander ner­vous­ly answers. “Hel­lo there,” his speak­er blares to a bum doz­ing in a card­board box, “is that a new hat? You are a good guy.”

As the morn­ing con­tin­ues, we come to under­stand that this eccen­tric is not the only one of his kind. Below you can watch that same year’s Brunch, which throws the ver­bal­ly NSFW come­di­an Rick Shapiro into a sharply observed mid-morn­ing hud­dle of pon­tif­i­cat­ing senior cit­i­zens. These all come from Louis C.K.s offi­cial Youtube chan­nel, and indeed, C.K. pre­scient­ly made them in a form neat­ly suit­ed to the Youtube era, just as Louie has proven an ide­al artis­tic, intel­lec­tu­al, and finan­cial fit for the mod­ern cable tele­vi­sion land­scape.

Louis C.K.‘s short films: Ice Cream (1993), The Let­ter V (1998), The Leg­end of Willie Brown (1998), Ugly Revenge, Hijack­er (1998), Hel­lo There (1998), Brunch (1998), Per­sona Ne’ll Aqua (1999),Search­ing for Nixon

(via Metafil­ter)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sein­feld, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Ricky Ger­vais Dis­sect the Craft of Com­e­dy (NSFW)

How the Great George Car­lin Showed Louis CK the Way to Suc­cess (NSFW)

David Lynch Teach­es Louis C.K. How to Host The David Let­ter­man Show

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.

New Documentary Brings You Inside Africa’s Little-Known Punk Rock Scene

Punk rock has died a thou­sand deaths in the West.  Almost as soon as the mass media picked it up, punk split into sev­er­al hun­dred sub­species and spawned oth­er monoliths—post-punk, new wave, “alter­na­tive.” Giv­en that his­to­ry, it’s gen­er­al­ly assumed—a cou­ple gen­er­a­tions of sub­ur­ban mall­rats aside—that the orig­i­nal move­ment flashed and failed, over­tak­en by key­boards and drum machines, cor­po­rate greed and nar­cis­sism. But that his­to­ry is incom­plete. As a recent Guardian head­line pro­claims, punk rock is “alive and kick­ing in a repres­sive state near you.” The cause célèbre of inter­na­tion­al punk is, of course, Russia’s Pussy Riot, three of whose mem­bers were con­vict­ed of “hooli­gan­ism” and sent to labor camps. But dis­si­dent punk scenes thrive under the radar in many oth­er places hos­tile to dis­sent, such as Bur­ma, Indone­sia, and Chi­na.

And while the con­tem­po­rary phe­nom­e­non of glob­al punk makes for fas­ci­nat­ing news sto­ries, a new doc­u­men­tary, Punk in Africa, demon­strates that inter­na­tion­al punk rock is as old as the West­ern vari­ety. It just nev­er got the same press. In South Africa, short­ly after the 1976 Sowe­to Upris­ing, mul­ti-racial punk bands began to form, with names like Gay Marines, Nation­al Wake, and Scream­ing Foe­tus. Meet­ing and per­form­ing under the pall of Apartheid, these bands defied laws against racial mix­ing and braved con­stant harass­ment by police. As one mem­ber of Nation­al Wake says in the trail­er above, “the vice squad would vis­it us, some­times three times in one day.” He calls the racial ter­ri­to­ry the band had to nav­i­gate a “mine­field.”

A lot of the Afrop­unk fea­tured in the film is rem­i­nis­cent of the meet­ing of black and white sounds and musi­cians in Eng­land, espe­cial­ly in bands like The Clash, The Beat and The Spe­cials. Lat­er African ska bands like Hog Hog­gi­ty Hog and The Rudi­men­tals cer­tain­ly car­ry on that tra­di­tion. But many of the bands profiled—from South Africa, Zim­bab­we, and Mozambique—melded raw punk ener­gy with African polyrhythms and dis­tinc­tive local sounds and instru­men­ta­tion. Nation­al Wake pro­vides a good exam­ple of such hybridiza­tion. The live per­for­mance above even includes a drum solo—anathema to most West­ern punk rock.

Punk in Africa promis­es to add some nec­es­sary bal­ance to the slew of punk his­to­ries that focus only on Britain and the U.S.. In the inter­view above, one of the documentary’s direc­tors, Deon Maas, points out that the “punk thing in Africa” start­ed vir­tu­al­ly weeks after its U.K. cousin, first in imi­ta­tion, then as a true move­ment in its own right. Like the inter­na­tion­al punk scenes bur­geon­ing around the world today, it’s a move­ment that deserves to be heard.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock

Russ­ian Punk Band, Sen­tenced to Two Years in Prison for Derid­ing Putin, Releas­es New Sin­gle

Rare Live Footage Doc­u­ments The Clash From Their Raw Debut to the Career-Defin­ing Lon­don Call­ing

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

Enrich Yourself with Free Courses, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Textbooks & More

iphone einstein

How’s that New Year’s res­o­lu­tion going? You know, the one where you promised to make bet­ter use of your free time and learn new things? If you’re off track, fear not. It’s only April. It’s not too late to make good on your promise. And we can help. Below, we’ll tell you how to fill your Kin­dle, iPad, com­put­er, smart­phone, com­put­er, etc. with free intel­li­gent media — great ebooks and audio books, movies, cours­es, and the rest:

Free eBooks: You have always want­ed to read the great works. And now is your chance. When you dive into our Free eBooks col­lec­tion you will find 400 great works by some clas­sic writ­ers (Dick­ens, Dos­to­evsky, Shake­speare and Tol­stoy) and con­tem­po­rary writ­ers (F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asi­mov, and Kurt Von­negut). The col­lec­tion also gives you access to the 51-vol­ume Har­vard Clas­sics.

If you’re an iPad/iPhone user, the down­load process is super easy. Just click the “iPad/iPhone” links and you’re good to go. Kin­dle and Nook users will gen­er­al­ly want to click the “Kin­dle + Oth­er For­mats links” to down­load ebook files, but we’d sug­gest watch­ing these instruc­tion­al videos (Kin­dle –Nook) before­hand.

Free Audio Books: What bet­ter way to spend your free time than lis­ten­ing to some of the great­est books ever writ­ten? This page con­tains a vast num­ber of free audio books, includ­ing works by Arthur Conan Doyle, James Joyce, Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, George Orwell and more recent writ­ers — Ita­lo Calvi­no, Vladimir Nabokov, Ray­mond Carv­er, etc. You can down­load these clas­sic books straight to your gagdets, then lis­ten as you go.

[Note: If you’re look­ing for a con­tem­po­rary book, you can down­load one free audio book from Audible.com. Find details on Audi­ble’s no-strings-attached deal here.]

Free Online Cours­es: This list brings togeth­er over 700 free online cours­es from lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, includ­ing Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, UC Berke­ley, Oxford and beyond. These full-fledged cours­es range across all dis­ci­plines – his­to­ryphysicsphi­los­o­phypsy­chol­o­gy and beyond. Most all of these cours­es are avail­able in audio, and rough­ly 75% are avail­able in video. You can’t receive cred­its or cer­tifi­cates for these cours­es (click here for cours­es that do offer cer­tifi­cates). But the amount of per­son­al enrich­ment you will derive is immea­sur­able.

Free Movies: With a click of a mouse, or a tap of your touch screen, you will have access to 525 great movies. The col­lec­tion hosts many clas­sics, west­erns, indies, doc­u­men­taries, silent films and film noir favorites. It fea­tures work by some of our great direc­tors (Alfred Hitch­cock, Orson Welles, Andrei Tarkovsky, Stan­ley Kubrick, Jean-Luc Godard and David Lynch) and per­for­mances by cin­e­ma leg­ends: John Wayne, Jack Nichol­son, Audrey Hep­burn, Char­lie Chap­lin, and beyond. On this one page, you will find thou­sands of hours of cin­e­ma bliss.

Free Lan­guage Lessons: Per­haps learn­ing a new lan­guage is one of your res­o­lu­tions. Well, here is a great way to do it. Take your pick of 40 lan­guages — Span­ish, French, Ital­ian, Man­darin, Eng­lish, Russ­ian, Dutch, even Finnish, Yid­dish and Esperan­to. These lessons are all free and ready to down­load.

Free Text­books: And one last item for the life­long learn­ers among you. We have scoured the web and pulled togeth­er a list of 150 Free Text­books. It’s a great resource par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re look­ing to learn math, com­put­er sci­ence or physics on your own. There might be a dia­mond in the rough here for you.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Abandoned Alternate Titles for Two Great Films: Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and Hitchcock’s Vertigo

Kubrick notebook

We have here a page out of Stan­ley Kubrick­’s note­book, which Lists of Note—the sis­ter site of Let­ters of Note, always a favorite of ours here at Open Cul­ture—post­ed as a col­lec­tion of alter­na­tive titles for Dr. Strangelove. The list includes Dr. Dooms­day, The Dooms­day Machine, Dr. Doomsday and His Nuclear Women, Don’t Knock the Bomb: these ideas came not from an inter­fer­ing stu­dio, but from Kubrick­’s own mind as he worked his way toward the most suit­able name. You can see him get­ting clos­er; while this page does­n’t include the film’s final title, Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Wor­ry­ing and Love the Bomb, it does include Dr. Strangelove’s Bomb, Strangelove; Nuclear Wise­man, and the Gib­son­ian-sound­ing The Pas­sion of Dr. Strangelove. I myself will always won­der how Dr. Strangelove’s Secret Uses of Uranus would have played, but when you deal with cin­e­mat­ic crafts­men as detail-ori­ent­ed and reput­ed­ly “per­fec­tion­ist” as Kubrick, you know that their dri­ving desire to get things right extends all the way to their titles and beyond.

This holds just as true for Alfred Hitch­cock. Alone in the Dark, Behind the Mask, The Dark Tow­er, With­out a Trace, all pos­si­ble titles for the movie we now know as Ver­ti­go. When Hitch­cock­’s San Fran­cis­co psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller recent­ly topped Sight and Sound’s crit­ics poll of the great­est films of all time, it sure­ly did so for cin­e­mat­ic mer­its hav­ing noth­ing to do with its name.

But would a Ver­ti­go by any oth­er title feel quite as fresh and grip­ping today, 55 years after it first came out? This goes espe­cial­ly for the pre-thread­bare titles I rat­tled off above, which only account for four of 47 of the sug­ges­tions Para­mount Pic­tures exec­u­tive Sam Frey pitched to Hitch­cock, includ­ing Deceit, Deceit­ful, and, for good mea­sure, Decep­tion. You can read all of them below, or at Lists of Note. I quite like The Face Vari­a­tions, but Hitch­cock knew his project most inti­mate­ly, and thus knew that Ver­ti­go it had to be.

  1. Afraid to Love
  2. Alone in the Dark
  3. The Appari­tion
  4. Behind the Mask
  5. Car­lot­ta
  6. Check­mate
  7. Con­science
  8. Cry from the Rooftop
  9. The Dark Tow­er
  10. Deceit
  11. Deceit­ful
  12. Decep­tion
  13. Don’t Leave Me
  14. Dream With­out End­ing
  15. The Face Vari­a­tions
  16. Foot­steps
  17. For the Last Time
  18. The Hid­den life
  19. In the Shad­ows
  20. The Inves­ti­ga­tor
  21. A Life Is For­ev­er
  22. The Lure
  23. Mal­ice
  24. The Mask and the Face
  25. The Mask Illu­sion
  26. My Madeleine
  27. A Mat­ter of Fact
  28. Nev­er Leave Me
  29. Night Shade
  30. Noth­ing Is For­ev­er
  31. Past, Present and Future
  32. The Phan­tom
  33. The Sec­ond Chance
  34. The Shad­ow
  35. Shad­ow and Sub­stance
  36. Shad­ow on the Stairs
  37. Shock
  38. Steps on the Stairs
  39. Ter­ror
  40. To Live Again
  41. Tonight Is Ours
  42. Too Late My Love
  43. Two Kinds of Women
  44. The Unknown
  45. Want­ed
  46. With­out A Trace
  47. The Wit­ness

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inside Dr. Strangelove: Doc­u­men­tary Reveals How a Cold War Sto­ry Became a Kubrick Clas­sic

Philoso­pher Slavoj Zizek Inter­prets Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go in The Pervert’s Guide to Cin­e­ma (2006)

20 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

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 Ange­lesA Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Always-NSFW Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes Catch Up in Jay and Silent Bob Get Old Podcast

With 1994’s Clerks, Kevin Smith opened up the flood­gates for inde­pen­dent­ly pro­duced, micro-bud­get, dia­logue-inten­sive, curs­ing-inten­sive movies by, for, and about a cer­tain stripe of feck­less Generation‑X twen­tysome­thing. These pic­tures show­cased more aggres­sive­ly foul­mouthed (but, in their way, more ener­getic) ver­sions of the over­grown kids and/or stalled adults whose mean­der­ing lives Richard Lin­klater had dra­ma­tized in Slack­er three years before. (Watch Slack­er online here.) Clerks hit when I had­n’t yet grown out of com­ic book-read­ing pre-ado­les­cence, though I do remem­ber becom­ing aware of Smith’s work from an ad on the back of, yes, a com­ic book. The page adver­tised Mall­rats, Smith’s big-bud­get Clerks fol­lowup; in its cor­ner posed a pair of smirk­ing young long­hairs. “Snootchie bootchies,” read an inex­plic­a­ble voice bub­ble ema­nat­ing from the thin­ner of the two. I had to know: who were those guys? The zeit­geist now rec­og­nizes Jay and Silent Bob, the out­ward­ly dumb but star­tling­ly wise drug deal­ers played by Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith him­self, as hav­ing stolen Clerks’ show. (You can watch one of their fin­er moments in Mall­rats above.)

Smith used the char­ac­ters in Mall­rats as well, and went on to write them into sub­se­quent movies like Chas­ing Amy, Dog­ma, and of course Clerks II and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, their pres­ence uni­fy­ing all these sto­ries into one coher­ent real­i­ty. Cinephiles argue over whether Smith has deliv­ered on his promise as a direc­tor, but some fans think the man has found his true voice as a pod­cast­er. Today, on his own pod­cast net­work, he hosts a stag­ger­ing array of shows, includ­ing SMod­cast, SMoviemak­ers, Hol­ly­wood Bab­ble-On, and Fat Man on Bat­man. Jay and Silent Bob Get Old (WebiTunesRSS feed) reunites the 42-year-old Smith and the 38-year-old Mewes for reg­u­lar con­ver­sa­tions about adult­hood, fame, and strug­gles with sobri­ety (in Mewes’ case) and weight (in Smith’s), always fea­tur­ing the most vul­gar jokes imag­in­able. If you haven’t caught up with these guys since the nineties, have a lis­ten to their pod­cast’s so-very-Not-Safe-for-Work first episode above. They’ve even got back into char­ac­ter for Jay and Silent Bob’s Super Groovy Car­toon Movie, which begins its road­show across North Amer­i­ca on April 20.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Free Online: Richard Linklater’s Slack­er, the Clas­sic Gen‑X Indie Film

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 Ange­lesA Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Free: Watch Jackie Robinson Star in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950)

This week­end, the new Jack­ie Robin­son biopic, 42, opened up well in the box offices, bring­ing in $27.3 mil­lion in tick­et sales. That puts it at the top of the charts, which is a real rar­i­ty for a base­ball film.

This isn’t the first time Jack­ie Robin­son’s sto­ry has been told on film. And today we’re bring­ing you anoth­er note­wor­thy pro­duc­tion, The Jack­ie Robin­son Sto­ry from 1950. As review­ers are quick to note, it’s not a work of art. It’s a sim­ple film with low pro­duc­tion val­ues. But, it has one thing that oth­er Jack­ie Robin­son films do not — Jack­ie Robin­son play­ing him­self, and quite well at that. Run­ning 76 minut­ers, the fast-paced film takes the audi­ence through the life and times of the great base­ball play­er and civ­il rights fig­ure. His youth, col­lege foot­ball days, mil­i­tary ser­vice, minor league career, amaz­ing 1949 sea­son with the Brook­lyn Dodgers — they all get cov­ered here.

The Jack­ie Robin­son Sto­ry (which is now in the pub­lic domain) has been added to our col­lec­tion of 525 Free Movies Online.

via Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lou Gehrig, Yan­kee Leg­end, Stars in 1938 West­ern Rawhide

Bill Murray’s Base­ball Hall of Fame Speech (and Hideous Sports Coat)

The Grate­ful Dead Rock the Nation­al Anthem at Can­dle­stick Park: Open­ing Day, 1993

Watch 10-Year-Old Bruce Lee in His First Starring Role (1950)

Bruce Lee has remark­able stay­ing pow­er. Forty years after his untime­ly death, he’s still cel­e­brat­ed as a charis­mat­ic and influ­en­tial lethal weapon. Remem­ber how Pelé ush­ered in Amer­i­ca’s soc­cer craze? Bruce did the same for kung fu. For those of us who came of age in the 70’s, he was Evel Kniev­el, the Fonz, and Sylvester Stal­lone’s Rocky rolled into one.

His star qual­i­ties were in place long before those rock hard mus­cles. Take a look at this clip from The Kid (aka Xi Lu Xiang, Kid Che­ung, and My Son A‑Chang), a 1950 Can­tonese dra­ma based on Kid­dy Che­ung, a pop­u­lar and social­ly con­scious com­ic strip of the 40s. The 10-year-old Lee brings irre­sistable Lit­tle Ras­cals-esque panache to his por­tray­al of a wily, slum-dwelling orphan in the thrall of a gang­ster named Flash Blade Lee. The part pro­vides ample oppor­tu­ni­ty to swag­ger and strut, but just when things are threat­en­ing to turn phys­i­cal, the Lit­tle Drag­on is best­ed by pen­cil-necked char­ac­ter actor Yee Chau-Sui, who shames him for falling in with the local toughs. Lee upholds his rep­u­ta­tion by pulling a knife, but the pose is more than he can main­tain.

As Rosey Gri­er would sing the year after Enter the Drag­on was released, It’s All Right to Cry

Watch the com­plete film here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bruce Lee Audi­tions for The Green Hor­net (1964)

Bruce Lee: The Lost TV Inter­view

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day had the Dyna­mite mag­a­zine with Bruce Lee on the cov­er. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

« Go BackMore in this category... »
Quantcast