Resurrecting the Sounds of Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s New Biopic

in Film, History | November 20th, 2012

If you’re head­ing to see Steven Spiel­berg’s new biopic of Abra­ham Lin­coln, you can go there know­ing one thing (oth­er than Daniel Day-Lewis has deliv­ered anoth­er Acad­e­my Award-win­ing per­for­mance) — and that’s that the direc­tor, cast and crew paid close atten­tion to the his­tor­i­cal details. In an inter­view yes­ter­day, Sal­ly Field (who plays Lin­col­n’s wife Mary Todd) described how she immersed her­self in the lan­guage of the era, pored over let­ters exchanged between Lin­coln and his wife, gained 25 pounds to resem­ble Mary’s doc­u­ment­ed mea­sure­ments. And then there’s this curi­ous detail. Dur­ing the film­ing of Lin­coln (watch the trail­er below), Daniel Day-Lewis and Sal­ly Field nev­er spoke to one anoth­er out of char­ac­ter. They knew each oth­er sim­ply as “Mary Lin­coln” and “Mr. Lin­coln” through­out.

In the video above, we get to lis­ten to sound design­er Ben Burtt talk about his own quest for his­tor­i­cal authen­tic­i­ty — that is, how he tried to recap­ture the sounds that Lin­coln heard dur­ing his life­time. Of course, we don’t have audio record­ings from the 1860s. But Burtt found cre­ative ways to res­ur­rect sounds from the peri­od, like record­ing the tick-tocks of Lin­col­n’s per­son­al watch, or cap­tur­ing the sounds made by mahogany doors that still stand in the White House. We’ll let Burtt explain the rest above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Last Sur­viv­ing Wit­ness of the Lin­coln Assas­si­na­tion (1956)

Louis CK Plays Abra­ham Lin­coln, America’s 16th Pres­i­dent and (Yes) Stand-Up Come­di­an Too

Watch Steven Spielberg’s Debut: Two Films He Direct­ed as a Teenag­er

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Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) Pitches Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansson) on the Famous Shower Scene

in Film | November 16th, 2012

First we have a film, the 1960 piece — some would say pin­na­cle — of psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror, Psy­cho. Then we have a man, Alfred Hitch­cock, Psy­cho’s direc­tor, the famous­ly man­nered but seem­ing­ly trou­bled mas­ter crafts­man of mid­cen­tu­ry cin­e­mat­ic sus­pense. Then we have a book, Stephen Rebel­lo’s Alfred Hitch­cock and the Mak­ing of Psy­cho, which Antho­ny Perkins, who played the psy­cho, called “required read­ing not only for Psy­cho-files, but for any­one inter­est­ed in the back­stage world of movie-cre­ation.” And, next week, we’ll have a new peri­od dra­ma, set dur­ing the pro­duc­tion of the film, based on the book, and cen­tered on the man. It’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine the afi­ciona­do of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry motion pic­tures who would­n’t want to watch Antho­ny Hop­kins take on Hitch­cock’s title role. Behold the brief clip above, where­in Hop­kins-as-Hitch­cock explains to young Janet Leigh how, exact­ly, he plans to shoot the show­er scene, as his wife Alma looks ner­vous­ly on.

You’ll notice, in the roles of Janet Leigh and Alma Reville, two more well-respect­ed per­form­ers, Scar­lett Johans­son and Helen Mir­ren. Indeed, the list of actors involved in Hitchock and that of char­ac­ters they play look equal­ly inter­est­ing: A Seri­ous Man star Michael Stuhlbarg as tal­ent agent Lew Wasser­man, Karate Kid Ralph Mac­chio as screen­writer Joseph Ste­fano, Wal­lace Lang­ham as graph­ic artist and title design­er Saul Bass, and Michael Win­cott as real-life ser­i­al killer Ed Gein. In the clip just above, watch Hitch­cock explain to Alma his insis­tence upon self-financ­ing Psy­cho’s pro­duc­tion after get­ting turned down by Para­mount: “Do you remem­ber the fun we had when we start­ed out, all those years ago?” he asks. “We did­n’t have any mon­ey then, did we? We did­n’t have any time, either, but we took risks, do you remem­ber? We exper­i­ment­ed. We invent­ed new ways of mak­ing pic­tures, because we had to. I just want to feel that kind of free­dom again.” Before see­ing exact­ly how he enjoyed that free­dom again when Hitch­cock comes out on Novem­ber 23rd, be sure to revis­it our posts fea­tur­ing Psy­cho’s tan­ta­liz­ing orig­i­nal trail­er, and the film­mak­er’s own rules for watch­ing the movie.

Relat­ed con­tent:

22 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Mar­tin Scors­ese Brings “Lost” Hitch­cock Film to Screen in Short Faux Doc­u­men­tary

François Truffaut’s Big Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock (Free Audio)

Hitch­cock on Hap­pi­ness

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The History of Film — 2000 Movies Across 100 Years — Presented in One Big Zoomable Graphic

in Film | November 15th, 2012

Hats off to Lar­ry Gorm­ley, who spent the bet­ter part of five years cre­at­ing a zoomable graph­ic that “chron­i­cles the his­to­ry of fea­ture films from the ori­gins in the 1910s until the present day.” 2000 films, across 20 gen­res and 100 years, all pre­sent­ed in one art­ful dis­play. Nice­ly done.

You can pur­chase a print copy, or sim­ply enjoy the visu­al dis­play online. Enjoy.

via @coudal

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Watch Suddenly: Frank Sinatra Stars in a 1954 Noir Film

in Film | November 14th, 2012

sinatra suddenly3

For Frank Sina­tra’s 100 birth­day today, we’re bring­ing back to the top a post from our archive that high­lights the 1954 noir film, “Sud­den­ly.” In this pub­lic domain flick, Sina­tra played the role of a psy­chopath. And he played the role con­vinc­ing­ly, get­ting some very fine reviews from The New York Times. Enjoy the film and our orig­i­nal post from 2012 below:

Tricky busi­ness, cast­ing a world-famous musi­cian in a movie’s star­ring role: it seems you must either craft the part to per­fect­ly match their per­sona, or to run per­fect­ly against it. Nico­las Roeg, that inim­itable employ­er of singers to his own semi-fath­omable cin­e­mat­ic ends, has rig­or­ous­ly explored this range of pos­si­bil­i­ties. David Bowie seemed the only pos­si­ble choice for the ter­mi­nal­ly lone­ly alien of The Man Who Fell to Earth, just as Art Gar­funkel seemed the last pos­si­ble choice for the psy­cho­sex­u­al tor­men­tor of Bad Tim­ing.

I per­son­al­ly regret that Roeg nev­er got to work with Frank Sina­tra, used to such strik­ing effect by John Franken­heimer in The Manchuri­an Can­di­date and Otto Pre­minger in The Man with the Gold­en Arm. To hold those pic­tures up against, say, the Rat Pack free-for-all of Ocean’s Eleven is to under­stand that cast­ing against per­sona, though on aver­age the riski­er option, pro­duces more fas­ci­nat­ing­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry per­for­mances. In the 1954 noir Sud­den­ly, avail­able free on Archive.org, you can watch an ear­ly exam­ple of this in Sina­tra’s career, when direc­tor Lewis Allen turns him into a psy­chopath bent on assas­si­nat­ing none oth­er than the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.

Giv­en the pro­jec­t’s unques­tioned B‑movie con­text, crit­ics regard­ed Sina­tra as hav­ing made a rea­son­ably rich meal of this vil­lain­ous part. “Mr. Sina­tra deserves a spe­cial chunk of praise,” wrote the New York Times’ Bosley Crowther. “In Sud­den­ly he proves a melo­dra­mat­ic tour de force.” Vari­ety also looked favor­ably upon him: “Thesp inserts plen­ty of men­ace into a psy­cho char­ac­ter, nev­er too heav­i­ly done, and gets good back­ing from his costar, Ster­ling Hay­den, as sher­iff, in a less showy role but just as author­i­ta­tive­ly han­dled.” Yes, you read that right: this movie pits Frank Sina­tra against Ster­ling Hay­den. Sina­tra and his crew of killers take over a small-town hill­top fam­i­ly home, the ide­al van­tage point from which to shoot the pass­ing Pres­i­dent. Then Hay­den, the town’s sher­iff, turns up to check things out. How will this clash of titan­ic per­son­al­i­ties resolve? Hit play and find out whether “the num­ber-one man in the nation,” as Sud­den­ly’s sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic poster puts it, falls vic­tim to this “kill-hun­gry hood­lum.”

You will find Sud­den­ly list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Noir Films and also our larg­er list 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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The Normandy Invasion Captured on 16 mm Kodachrome Film (1944)

in Film, History | November 14th, 2012

The Nor­mandy Inva­sion, oth­er­wise known as “Oper­a­tion Over­lord,” was launched by the Allies on June 6, 1944. On that day — D‑Day — Amer­i­can, British and Cana­di­an troops land­ed on five sep­a­rate beach­heads in Nor­mandy, on the west­ern shores of France. By the end of August 1944, the Allies had lib­er­at­ed all of north­ern France and start­ed march­ing towards Nazi Ger­many.

At the time, the film­mak­er George Stevens (1904–1975) was a lieu­tenant colonel in the U.S. Army’s Sig­nal Corps. Dwight D. Eisen­how­er, tasked with plan­ning and car­ry­ing out the Allied inva­sion of Nor­mandy, want­ed film crews present at the inva­sion to pro­vide footage for a doc­u­men­tary film. Stevens took charge of the Spe­cial Motion Pic­tures Unit and gath­ered a group of cam­era­men and writ­ers dubbed the “Stevens Irreg­u­lars”. They used the stan­dard Army motion pic­ture stock, 35 mm black and white news­reel film. But they also brought along a hand-held cam­era and some 16 mm Kodachrome col­or film. Stevens shot sev­er­al hours’ worth of col­or footage from France, Bel­gium and Ger­many. The scenes from the lib­er­a­tion of Dachau con­cen­tra­tion camp are par­tic­u­lar­ly shock­ing and left their mark on the lives of the cam­era­men. In 1994, Stevens’ son used this film footage to assem­ble the doc­u­men­tary George Stevens: D‑Day to Berlin.

Bonus mate­r­i­al:

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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Reefer Madness, 1936’s Most Unintentionally Hilarious “Anti-Drug” Exploitation Film, Free Online

in Film | November 13th, 2012

reefermadness

The motion pic­ture you are about to wit­ness may star­tle you. It would not have been pos­si­ble, oth­er­wise, to suf­fi­cient­ly empha­size the fright­ful toll of the new drug men­ace which is destroy­ing the youth of Amer­i­ca in alarm­ing­ly increas­ing num­bers. Mar­i­hua­na is that drug — a vio­lent nar­cot­ic — an unspeak­able scourge — The Real Pub­lic Ene­my Num­ber One! Or at least that’s how the open­ing crawl of Reefer Mad­ness tells it.

Also known, in oth­er forms, as Tell Your Chil­dren, The Burn­ing Ques­tion, Dope Addict, Doped Youth and Love Mad­ness, the film has spent the past forty years accru­ing cult cred­i­bil­i­ty on the (high­ly over­lap­ping) mid­night-movie and cannabis-cul­ture cir­cuits. That pecu­liar spelling of what we know as mar­i­jua­na reveals only a whiff of its dis­tinc­tive blend of hand-wring­ing sala­cious­ness, aggres­sive square­ness, and sheer igno­rance. Kei­th Stroup, founder of the Nation­al Orga­ni­za­tion for the Reform of Mar­i­jua­na Laws, spot­ted the movie’s unin­tend­ed comedic poten­tial back in 1971, when he bought a print and began col­lege-cam­pus screen­ings. It today draws more pro­longed, dis­be­liev­ing guf­faws and chor­tles than ever before.


Since Reefer Mad­ness has fall­en into the pub­lic domain, you can hold your own mid­night screen­ing near­ly with­out effort by watch­ing it online. Behold the deeply askew motion pic­ture that began as a church-fund­ed moral­i­ty play, got into the hands of ear­ly exploita­tion-film icon Dwain Esper (he of 1934’s Mani­ac, 1937’s How to Undress in Front of Your Hus­band, and 1938’s Sex Mad­ness), and wound up as an uproar­i­ous main­stay of hazy uni­ver­si­ty audi­to­ria. While the film clear­ly knows noth­ing of mar­i­jua­na or its real effects — or, seem­ing­ly, of the real effects of any nar­cot­ic — that does­n’t stop its script from yield­ing a host of res­o­nant lines. These run from the “straight­for­ward ques­tion” of whether “you have, per­haps unwill­ing­ly, acquired a cer­tain habit through asso­ci­a­tion with cer­tain unde­sir­able peo­ple” to the rec­ol­lec­tion of hav­ing been “high enough to take over the marines and the navy” to that immor­tal imper­a­tive, “Bring me some reefers!” Laugh if you must, but bear in mind the final words from the solemn Dr. Car­roll: “The next tragedy may be that of your daugh­ter’s… or your son’s… or yours… or yours… or yours!”

You can always find Reefer Mad­ness in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed con­tent:

This is What Oliv­er Sacks Learned on LSD and Amphet­a­mines

Bela Lugosi Dis­cuss­es His Drug Habit as He Leaves the Hos­pi­tal in 1955

Beyond Tim­o­thy Leary: 2002 Film Revis­its His­to­ry of LSD

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch Night of the Living Dead, the Seminal Zombie Movie, Free Online

in Film | November 12th, 2012

Hal­loween has long since passed, grant­ed. But giv­en the over­abun­dance of Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions even now aris­ing all around us, a brac­ing splash of hor­ror won’t go amiss. This goes dou­ble when the splash comes from George A. Romero’s Night of the Liv­ing Dead, urtext of the mod­ern zom­bie movie. It goes triple when you can watch it free online. (It’s been uploaded in high-def­i­n­i­tion video, no less, an absolute essen­tial for lo-fi, low-bud­get gorefests.) Though only released in 1968, the movie appears on the inter­net legal­ly due to its dis­trib­u­tor not indi­cat­ing their copy­right on the film prints. They removed the orig­i­nal title cards, which dis­played the con­sid­er­ably less catchy orig­i­nal title Night of the Flesh Eaters, but for­got to put the copy­right state­ment back in with the new ones.

If Night of the Liv­ing Dead strikes you as some­what déclassé for a site like Open Cul­ture, ask your­self whether you’ve actu­al­ly seen the movie. If you haven’t, then it seems you suf­fer from a vast gap — a vast, zom­bie filled gap — in your aware­ness of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry cin­e­ma cul­ture. The film has even won insti­tu­tion­al val­i­da­tion. Just read the titles of these real arti­cles: “Rewrit­ing the Dead: The Ten­sion between Nos­tal­gia and Per­ver­sion in George A. Romero’s Night of the Liv­ing Dead,” “Inner-City Exhi­bi­tion and the Genre Film: Dis­trib­ut­ing Night of the Liv­ing Dead,” “Greek Gifts: Vision and Revi­sion in Two Ver­sions of Night of the Liv­ing Dead,” “A Mod­ern Med­i­ta­tion on Death: Iden­ti­fy­ing Bud­dhist Teach­ings in George A. Romero’s Night of the Liv­ing Dead.” If you’re look­ing for a PhD. the­sis top­ic, you may have turned up too late to this par­tic­u­lar movie. But it’ll cer­tain­ly take your mind off gift shop­ping.

You can always find Night of the Liv­ing Dead in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Look in the Noir, Thriller, Hor­ror and Hitch­cock sec­tion.

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 the Quin­tes­sen­tial Vam­pire Film Nos­fer­atu Free Online as Hal­loween Approach­es

Where Hor­ror Film Began: The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

The First Unin­tend­ed Hor­ror Film (1895)?

Tro­ma Enter­tain­ment, the Mak­er of Acclaimed B‑Movies, Puts 150 Free Films on YouTube

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Caught Mapping: A Cinematic Ride Through the Nitty Gritty World of Vintage Cartography (1940)

in Business, Film | November 9th, 2012

Long before iPhones, Garmins, and Google Maps con­spired to make car­to­graph­ic sheep of us all, Chevro­let had a vest­ed inter­est in glam­or­iz­ing any­thing to do with four wheels, includ­ing the process that put maps in a sup­pos­ed­ly adven­tur­ous, car-buy­ing pub­lic’s hands. Caught Map­ping (1940), like so many of the short, infor­ma­tive films the auto­mo­tive giant engi­neered with direc­tor Jam Handy and “the coop­er­a­tion of State High­way Depart­ments,” has all the ear­marks of its time:

Gor­geous black and white cin­e­matog­ra­phy? Check.

Fetishis­tic regard for any­thing that might pos­si­bly be described as “the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy” (includ­ing a big sheet of acetate and a real­ly big cam­era)? Check.

Jaun­ty male nar­ra­tor suck­ing all the non­cha­lance out of peri­od slang? Say, fel­la, what are you “dri­ving” at? Check.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to those accus­tomed to nav­i­gat­ing dig­i­tal­ly is the sheer grit­ti­ness of the endeav­or. Com­pare the ear­ly Euro­pean explor­er shown pon­der­ous­ly wield­ing a sex­tant to the per­spir­ing road scouts (or “map detec­tives”) criss­cross­ing Death Val­ley in an un-air­con­di­tioned vehi­cle, chas­ing down the sort of con­struc­tion-relat­ed detours or topo­graph­i­cal devel­op­ments that could ren­der a paper map obso­lete. One steers;  the oth­er updates the most recent­ly pub­lished edi­tion in ink, imper­vi­ous to such haz­ards as car sick­ness and bumps in the road.  Even­tu­al­ly, the eggheads in the lab take over, trans­lat­ing the intre­pid road scouts’ field­work into a series of sym­bols and sig­ni­fiers as mys­te­ri­ous as hiero­glyphs to the mod­ern view­er.

Tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments aside, it’s the hands-on aspect that proves most thrilling. Some­one should make a movie about these guys for real.

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!

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