Alfred Hitchcock Presents Some of the First Words Ever Spoken on Film .… and They’re Saucy Ones (1929)

in Film | March 5th, 2013

Most the­aters in Amer­i­ca seem by now to have equipped them­selves for dig­i­tal pro­jec­tion. But just a year or two ago, dis­trib­u­tors had to send out dig­i­tal copies of their movies to some venues and cel­lu­loid prints to oth­ers. As it has­n’t proven quite the rev­e­la­tion its boost­ers had hoped, the lat­est wave of 3D pic­tures still has to deal with the fact that cer­tain the­aters accept a high­er-tech ver­sion, but most need a low­er-tech one. In 1929, cin­e­ma found itself in much the same tech­ni­cal sit­u­a­tion, but regard­ing sound. Even as Alfred Hitch­cock began shoot­ing his tenth film, Black­mail, as a tra­di­tion­al silent, British Inter­na­tion­al Pic­tures decid­ed he should join the pop­u­lar “talkies” just then open­ing in Eng­land. This required Hitch­cock to deliv­er both a sound and a silent ver­sion of the pic­ture — and to incor­po­rate sound record­ing on the fly.

Above you see — and, more impor­tant­ly, hear — a sound test Hitch­cock made with Anny Ondra, Black­mail’s lead actress. For a demon­stra­tion of what at the time sure­ly seemed like a com­pli­cat­ed new cin­e­mat­ic tech­nol­o­gy, it has an amus­ing­ly risqué goofi­ness. Start­ing this 42-sec­ond con­ver­sa­tion, a wise­crack­ing young Hitch­cock asks to hear Ondra’s voice. “But Hitch, you must­n’t do that,” she insists. “Why not?” asks the direc­tor. “Well,” replies the hes­i­tant actress, “because I can’t speak well.” Indeed, the Czech Ondra spoke with an accent, which forced the pro­duc­tion to “dub” her lines, live, with an Eng­lish actress stand­ing off­stage. As sound swept the motion pic­ture indus­try, Black­mail’s lead­ing lady suf­fered the fate of many an unac­cept­ably-voiced silent star and returned to the Con­ti­nent. As for its direc­tor, well, we’d hear a bit more from him. You can watch Hitch­cock­’s first talkie in full below.

Relat­ed con­tent:

20 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

Alfred Hitch­cock Tan­ta­lizes Audi­ences with a Play­ful Trail­er for Psy­cho (1960)

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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Leonard Cohen Narrates Film on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Featuring the Dalai Lama (1994)

in Film, Religion | March 5th, 2013

Accord­ing to Bud­dhist schol­ar and trans­la­tor Robert Thur­man (father of Uma), The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or Bar­do Thodol, “orga­nizes the expe­ri­ences of the between—(Tibetan, bar-do) usu­al­ly refer­ring to the state between death and rebirth.” While The Book of the Dead has, of course, a long and illus­tri­ous his­to­ry in Tibetan Bud­dhist life, it also has its place in the his­to­ry of the West, par­tic­u­lar­ly among 20th cen­tu­ry intel­lec­tu­als and artists. In the 1950s, for exam­ple, there was talk among Igor Stravin­sky, Martha Gra­ham, and Aldous Hux­ley to turn the Bar­do into a bal­let with a Greek cho­rus. Hux­ley, who famous­ly spent his final hours on an acid trip, asked that a pas­sage from the book be read to him as he lay dying: “Hey! Noble one, you named Aldous Hux­ley! Now the time has come for you to seek the way….”

In anoth­er, less trip­py, exam­ple of East­ern mys­ti­cism meets West­ern artist, the video above (con­tin­ued below) fea­tures poet and trou­ba­dour Leonard Cohen nar­rat­ing a two-part doc­u­men­tary series from 1994 that explores the ancient Tibetan teach­ings on death and dying. As Cohen tells it above, in Tibetan tra­di­tion, the time spent in the between sup­pos­ed­ly lasts 49 days after a person’s death. Dur­ing that time, a Bud­dhist yogi reads the Bar­do each day, while the con­scious­ness of the dead per­son, so it is believed, hov­ers between one life and anoth­er, and can hear the instruc­tions read to him or her. The film gives us an inti­mate look at this cer­e­mo­ny, per­formed after the death of a villager—with its intri­cate rit­u­als and ancient, unbound, hand-print­ed text of the book—and touch­es on the tricky polit­i­cal issues of Bud­dhist prac­tice in large­ly Chi­nese-con­trolled Tibet. In this first install­ment above, The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Way of Life, the Dalai Lama weighs in with his own views on life and death (at 33:22). Before his appear­ance, the film pro­vides some brief con­text of his sup­posed incar­na­tion from the 13th Dalai Lama and his rise to gov­er­nance, then exile.

The sec­ond install­ment of the series, The Great Lib­er­a­tion (also above), fol­lows an old Bud­dhist lama and a thir­teen-year-old novice monk as they guide anoth­er deceased per­son with the text of the Bar­do. The Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da, who pro­duced the series (you can pur­chase the DVD on their web­site), did well in their choice of Cohen as nar­ra­tor. Not only is his deep, sooth­ing voice the kind of thing you might want to hear read­ing to you as you slipped into the between realms (or just slipped off to sleep), but his own jour­ney has brought him to an abid­ing appre­ci­a­tion for Bud­dhism. Although Cohen has always iden­ti­fied strong­ly with Judaism—incorporating Jew­ish themes and texts into his songs and poetry—he found refuge in Zen Bud­dhism late in life. Two years after this film, he was ordained as a Zen Bud­dhist monk at age 62, at the Mount Baldy Zen Cen­ter east of Los Ange­les (where Ram Dass, Oliv­er Stone, and Richard Gere also prac­ticed). Cohen’s  “Dhar­ma name”? Jikan, or “Silent One.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Cohen Plays a Spell­bind­ing Set at the 1970 Isle of Wight Fes­ti­val

Aldous Huxley’s Most Beau­ti­ful, LSD-Assist­ed Death: A Let­ter from His Wid­ow

The Dalai Lama on the Neu­ro­science of Com­pas­sion

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

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I Say I Say I Say: A Delightful Home Movie by Peter Sellers (1964)

in Comedy, Film | March 5th, 2013

In late 1964, when he was at the height of his suc­cess, Peter Sell­ers filmed a series of vaude­vil­lian sketch­es with a group of wealthy and social­ly elite friends. He edit­ed the scenes togeth­er into a movie and called it I Say I Say I Say.

The ten-minute film was made dur­ing a week­end at the home of Joce­lyn and Jane Stevens. Joce­lyn Stevens was the pub­lish­er of Queen mag­a­zine and had recent­ly gained noto­ri­ety by financ­ing the con­tro­ver­sial pirate radio ship Caroline–hence the ref­er­ence to “the Duke and Duchess of Car­o­line.” A draw­ing of the pirate ship appears at the begin­ning of the film on top of the Duke and Duchess’s coat of arms, with its sym­bols for mon­ey and guns and the Latin mot­to “Errare Humanum Est” (“To Err is Human”).

Sell­ers is joined in the film by his preg­nant wife Britt Ekland, the Stevens­es, Princess Mar­garet and her hus­band Antho­ny Arm­strong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snow­don. Sell­ers jok­ing­ly called the enter­prise “Snow­do­deo­do Pro­duc­tions.” In one scene, Lord Snow­don appears as a rather effem­i­nate gang­ster. But the most famous episode fea­tures Sell­ers as “The Great Berko,” recent­ly returned from his “dra­mat­ic suc­cess at the Work­men’s Insti­tute, Penge,” who presents an uncan­ny imper­son­ation of Her Roy­al High­ness, Princess Mar­garet.  Sell­ers dis­ap­pears behind a screen and out comes–of course–the real Princess Mar­garet, sis­ter of Queen Eliz­a­beth II.

I Say I Say I Say was locked away in the Sell­ers fam­i­ly archives until about 1995, when the BBC pro­duced The Peter Sell­ers Sto­ry. The film was nev­er intend­ed for pub­lic exhi­bi­tion. “It was total­ly impro­vised,” Lord Snow­don told The Tele­graph in 2004. “Peter had a cam­era that he want­ed to try out. It was all very hap­haz­ard. We made the whole thing in I should think two hours.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Per­forms The Bea­t­les in Shake­speare­an Mode

Peter Sell­ers Gives a Quick Demon­stra­tion of British Accents

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ ‘She Loves You’ in Four Voic­es

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Free: Listen to Dave Grohl’s Soundtrack for New Film Celebrating the Days of Analog Recording

in Film, Music | March 4th, 2013

Mark your cal­en­dars, music lovers, March 22nd is Dynam­ic Range Day and March 12th is the day Dave Grohl’s new doc­u­men­tary Sound City Stu­dios gets wide release. What does this mean, you ask, and how are these things relat­ed? I’m get­ting there, hear me out. The dig­i­tal age has brought us many boun­ti­ful rewards, it’s true, but it has also brought us the so-called “Loud­ness Wars”—basi­cal­ly, for sev­er­al annoy­ing­ly bor­ing tech­ni­cal rea­sons, dig­i­tal record­ings can be very high­ly com­pressed so as to sound sub­jec­tive­ly loud­er than any­thing ana­log record­ing can pro­duce. Sounds like a real bonus, right? Loud­er is bet­ter? Not so, say the orga­niz­ers of Dynam­ic Range Day. Not so, say the par­tic­i­pants in Dave Grohl’s doc­u­men­tary about the leg­endary Sound City Stu­dios (trail­er above) and his album of record­ings using Sound City’s vin­tage ana­log Neve con­sole.

See, high­ly com­pressed dig­i­tal record­ings basi­cal­ly sound like crap­py walls of dis­tort­ed noise after a while, which is ugly and tire­some. Gone is the dynam­ic range–the nuance, or light-and-shade, as music peo­ple some­times like to say. This phenomenon—combined with the pro­lif­er­a­tion of low-grade mp3s and the dig­i­tal trick­ery that makes bad singers sound tolerable—is ruin­ing record­ed music, and musi­cians know it, which is why so many great ones were excit­ed to work with Grohl on his film and record­ing project, cel­e­brat­ing the lost art of live, all-ana­log record­ing. Well, that’s not the only rea­son. Found­ed in Van Nuys, CA in 1969, the dive‑y Sound City Stu­dios also hap­pens to be where some of the most-loved rock and roll records of all time were made, includ­ing Fleet­wood Mac’s Rumours, Nirvana’s Nev­er­mind, and Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush. (Rick Rubin also record­ed Metallica’s Death Mag­net­ic there—according to the purists and fans alike, one of the worst casu­al­ties of the Loud­ness Wars—but that’s a sto­ry for anoth­er day).

Now, Sound City Stu­dios is no more, but its his­to­ry has been doc­u­ment­ed by Grohl in Sound City, the movie, and Grohl pre­served the studio’s beau­ti­ful ana­log gear, now housed in his Stu­dio 606, and record­ed a suite of songs with spe­cial guests from the film like Ste­vie Nicks, Paul McCart­ney, Trent Reznor, Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen, Nir­vana bassist Krist Novosel­ic, punk leg­ends Lee Ving and Pat Smear, and Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme. That record, Sound City: Real to Reel is stream­ing free now on NPR. Lis­ten to its sweet ana­log good­ness above for a lim­it­ed time  (through your dig­i­tal machine—hey, it is what it is, right?). Then, if you’re so inclined, you can pur­chase the record (or indi­vid­ual tracks) from iTunes or Ama­zon. The film will be avail­able short­ly on Blu-ray and down­load too.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young Reveals the New Killer Gad­get That Will Save Music

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

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The Confessions of Robert Crumb: A Portrait Scripted by the Underground Comics Legend Himself (1987)

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Film | March 4th, 2013

Any­one who’s seen Crumb, Ter­ry Zwigoff’s 1994 doc­u­men­tary about under­ground comics leg­end, R. Crumb, may con­sid­er them­selves fair­ly con­ver­sant in both the art and the off­beat exis­tence of the vin­tage-record-rever­ing sex­u­al adven­tur­er and self-pro­claimed wimp.

But does a trav­el­er pass up the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it Paris sim­ply because he’s been there once before?

Unless you’re a vir­gin to the sub­ject, The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb, a BBC doc whose release pre­dat­ed that of Zwigof­f’s defin­i­tive por­trait by sev­en years, will con­tain no major rev­e­la­tions. It’s still a lot of fun though, per­haps more so for hav­ing been script­ed by its main attrac­tion.

Crumb and his wife, fel­low car­toon­ist, Aline Komin­sky Crumb, were uneasy with Zwigof­f’s por­tray­al, a reac­tion they doc­u­ment­ed in Head for the Hills!, a joint­ly authored, two-page com­ic in the New York­er. Their objec­tions ulti­mate­ly lay with the noto­ri­ety the film would con­fer on them. Fame for Crumb is a mon­ster-mak­ing drain on cre­ativ­i­ty. (“And I guar­an­tee we won’t earn an extra dol­lar as a result of this won­der­ful expo­sure,” Aline adds in a word bub­ble, an obser­va­tion the Crumb blog gives the lie to, near­ly twen­ty years out.)

But in terms of what he was will­ing to own up to on cam­era, Crumb the screen­writer is far from a shrink­ing vio­let. The talk­ing heads are min­i­mized and the extend­ed fam­i­ly kept to the shad­ows, but he’s frank about the erot­ic pre­oc­cu­pa­tions that fig­ure promi­nent­ly in his work and have raised more than a few fem­i­nist hack­les over the years. One might even say he plays it up in goofy staged bits, such as the one where he dons a lab coat to exam­ine the pow­er­ful rear and kid­ney bean-shaped pelvic tilt of an impas­sive mod­el clad in 80s-style Jane Fon­da Work­out wear. As social mal­adroits go, he’s not afraid to wear a lamp­shade on his head.

He also reveals him­self as a life­long learn­er, avid­ly research­ing his non-flesh-relat­ed pas­sions. His inter­ests are infec­tious. One hour with Crumb and you may find your­self spend­ing the next two or three on eso­teric top­ics rang­ing from James Gill­ray to Har­ry Roy and his Bat Club Boys.

You can find The Con­fes­sions of Robert Crumb list­ed in our col­lec­tion of 55o Free Online Movies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Record Cov­er Art by Under­ground Car­toon­ist Robert Crumb

The Inscrutable Imag­i­na­tion of the Late Com­ic Artist Mœbius

Vis­it the World of Lit­tle Nemo Artist Win­sor McCay: Three Clas­sic Ani­ma­tions and a Google Doo­dle

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is a fem­i­nist and a long term Robert Crumb fan.

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Johnny Cash Stars as a Menacing, Musical Gangster in 1961 Film Five Minutes to Live

in Film, Music | February 26th, 2013

As every­one sure­ly knows by now, today would have been John­ny Cash’s 81st birth­day, and he’s been right­ly cel­e­brat­ed all around the inter­net for his one-of-a-kind coun­try per­sona as “The Man in Black.” Cash was so well-loved in part because, like only a hand­ful of oth­er coun­try stars (Hank Williams, Pat­sy Cline, Dol­ly Par­ton, Emmy­lou Har­ris), he tran­scend­ed the genre, win­ning fans from every con­ceiv­able cor­ner. The out­law singer was also no stranger to TV and film cam­eras, once host­ing his own talk show and appear­ing in sev­er­al dozen films and TV shows as him­self.

But did you know that Cash once had a star­ring fea­ture film role along­side Vic Tay­back and Ron Howard? That’s right, in the 1961 crime dra­ma above, Five Min­utes to Live, Cash plays John­ny Cabot, described by Rot­ten Toma­toes as “a blood­thirsty New Jer­sey gang­ster who is forced to hide out in a small Cal­i­for­nia sub­urb after killing a cop dur­ing a job gone wrong.”

Cabot is a musi­cal crook, who tricks his way into a bank pres­i­den­t’s home by con­vinc­ing the pres­i­den­t’s wife he’s a gui­tar sales­man. Once inside, he ter­ror­izes her and sings men­ac­ing songs in her direc­tion. Ron Howard plays the vic­tim­ized wom­an’s son Bob­by, and anoth­er coun­try great, gui­tarist Mer­le Travis, has a small role as a bowl­ing alley own­er. It’s all in keep­ing, I guess, with the John­ny Cash out­law leg­end (though he may have regret­ted the lurid, grind­house movie poster below).

Five Min­utes to Live was re-released in 1966 as Door-to-Door Mani­ac. What­ev­er you call it, you may hear more about this movie soon: Speed direc­tor Jan de Bont has been brought on to direct a remake in the near future. And yes, there’s been talk (if only tongue-in-cheek) of cast­ing Joaquin Phoenix in the Cash role.

Five Min­utes to Live is in the pub­lic domain, and we’ve added it to our col­lec­tion of 500 Free Movies Online.

5minutestolive

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: Twelve Rare Record­ings

Two Prison Con­certs That Defined an Out­law Singer: John­ny Cash at San Quentin and Fol­som (1968–69)

John­ny Cash Sings “Man in Black” for the First Time, 1971

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

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An Oral History of Pulp Fiction: the Making of the Indie Film that Changed the Rules

in Film | February 26th, 2013

Steel your­selves, movie­go­ers over thir­ty: the cin­e­mat­ic phe­nom­e­non known as Pulp Fic­tion hap­pened nine­teen years ago. Which means that the mak­ing of Pulp Fic­tion hap­pened twen­ty years ago. Van­i­ty Fair’s Mark Seal has seized this occa­sion to write “Cin­e­ma Taran­ti­no: The Mak­ing of Pulp Fic­tion,” an oral his­to­ry of the con­cep­tion of the one movie that, more than any oth­er, stoked the Amer­i­can indie-film boom of the nineties to its full cul­tur­al blaze. Seal quotes Har­vey Wein­stein, a force of this move­ment at the helm of Mira­max Films and Taran­ti­no’s long­time busi­ness col­lab­o­ra­tor, as describ­ing Pulp Fic­tion as “the first inde­pen­dent movie that broke all the rules,” which “set a new dial on the movie clock.” Though pos­sessed of a leg­endary way with hyper­bole, Wein­stein may have this time put it too mild­ly.

As a movie­go­er slight­ly under thir­ty, I grew up regard­ing Pulp Fic­tion as the movie cool grown-ups loved (I remem­ber my dad buy­ing the poster almost imme­di­ate­ly after see­ing the film), only know­ing that it had some­thing to do with McDon­ald’s Quar­ter- Pounders in France. Seal’s arti­cle sheds spe­cial light on the pic­ture’s gen­e­sis for those too young to have engaged with the con­sid­er­able indus­try buzz at the time, using not just the rec­ol­lec­tions of John Tra­vol­ta, Bruce Willis, Samuel Jack­son, Uma Thur­man, Har­vey Kei­t­el, and Taran­ti­no him­self, but also of instru­men­tal behind-the-scenes fig­ures like co-writer Roger Avary, agent Mike Simp­son, and typ­ist Lin­da Chen. Before you peti­tion your local revival cin­e­mas to hold trib­ute screen­ings, have anoth­er shot of Pulp Fic­tion back­sto­ry by watch­ing the on-set footage above. It opens on not just any set, but Jackrab­bit Slim’s, the very same fic­tion­al theme restau­rant Pulp Fic­tion’s cre­ators remem­ber so vivid­ly in the arti­cle.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Gives Sneak Peek of Pulp Fic­tion to Jon Stew­art (1994)

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Film­mak­ing Advice from Quentin Taran­ti­no and Sam Rai­mi (NSFW)

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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33 Oscar-Winning Films Online

in Film | February 24th, 2013

https://youtu.be/euh0kEU20V4?t=10s

Per­son­al­ly, I’d rather watch a good movie than an awards show about good movies. If you’re like me, then con­sid­er spend­ing tonight watch­ing a long list of Oscar-win­ning films on the web. 33 films, to be pre­cise. The list includes many great short films, ani­mat­ed films, doc­u­men­taries, and a few fea­ture-length movies. We start you off above with Why Man Cre­ates, the clas­sic ani­mat­ed film by Saul Bass and his wife/collaborator Elaine, which won the 1968 Acad­e­my Award for Doc­u­men­tary Short Sub­ject. You can get the full list of Acad­e­my Award win­ners on the web here. And don’t for­get to peruse our ever-grow­ing list of 500 Free Movies Online. It’ll keep you busy for weeks, if not months.

Please fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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