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 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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An Introduction to Yasujiro Ozu, “the Most Japanese of All Film Directors”

in Film | November 9th, 2012

“Yasu­jiro Ozu, the man whom his kins­men con­sid­er the most Japan­ese of all film direc­tors, had but one major sub­ject, the Japan­ese fam­i­ly, and but one major theme, its dis­so­lu­tion.” So writes Don­ald Richie in Ozu: His Life and His Films, still the defin­i­tive Eng­lish-lan­guage study of this thor­ough­ly Japan­ese film­mak­er. (Richie, per­haps the most astute and expe­ri­enced liv­ing crit­ic of Japan­ese film, tells more of Ozu in the rel­e­vant seg­ment of Mark Cousins’ series The Sto­ry of Film.) Despite his Japan­ese­ness, or indeed because of it, Ozu con­tin­ues, near­ly fifty years after his pass­ing, to enthrall gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of west­ern cinephiles. Yes­ter­day we fea­tured a clip from Tokyo-Ga, the doc­u­men­tary where­in Wim Wen­ders makes a Tokyo jour­ney out of sheer need to seek out the spir­it of Ozu. Crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed French film­mak­er Claire Denis has also paid trib­ute, and above you’ll find a salute to Ozu as inspi­ra­tion from equal­ly laud­ed but res­olute­ly dead­pan Finnish auteur Aki Kau­ris­mä­ki. “Ozu-san, I’m Aki Kau­ris­mä­ki from Fin­land,” the Le Havre direc­tor explains, ready­ing a cig­a­rette. “I’ve made eleven lousy films, and it’s all your fault.”

What is it about Ozu? The dis­ci­plined econ­o­my of his sto­ries, dia­logue and images accounts for some of it. But he also deliv­ers some­thing less obvi­ous. “Just as there are no heroes in Ozu’s pic­tures,” writes Richie, “so there are no vil­lains. [ … ] In basic Zen texts one accepts and tran­scends the world, and in tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese nar­ra­tive art one cel­e­brates and relin­quish­es it. The aes­thet­ic term mono no aware is often used nowa­days to describe this state of mind.” And, whether in those words or not, Ozu’s fol­low­ers savor the expres­sion of mono no aware in his many films, such as An Autumn After­noon, Tokyo Sto­ry, Late Spring, and Good Morn­ing. This sort of thing being bet­ter expe­ri­enced than described, why not watch Ozu’s 1952 pic­ture The Fla­vor of Green Tea Over Rice? (Or 1941’s The Broth­ers and Sis­ters of the Toda Fam­i­ly, 1948’s A Hen in the Wind, 1950’s The Mureka­ta Sis­ters?) To my mind, noth­ing sums up Ozu’s appeal quite so well as his use of “pil­low shots” — sim­ple, sta­t­ic com­po­si­tions placed in his films for pure­ly rhyth­mic, non-nar­ra­tive pur­pos­es — of which you can watch one fan-made com­pi­la­tion below. How many film­mak­ers, Japan­ese or oth­er­wise, could pull those off?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Kurosawa’s Rashomon Free Online, the Film That Intro­duced Japan­ese Cin­e­ma to the West

Wim Wen­ders Vis­its, Mar­vels at a Japan­ese Fake Food Work­shop

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

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Marilyn Monroe Reads Joyce’s Ulysses at the Playground (1955)

in Film, Photography | November 8th, 2012

Dur­ing the 1950s, the pio­neer­ing pho­to­jour­nal­ist Eve Arnold took a series of por­traits of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe. The now icon­ic pho­tos gen­er­al­ly present Mon­roe as a larg­er-than-life celebri­ty and sex sym­bol. Except for one. In 1955, Arnold pho­tographed Mon­roe read­ing a worn copy of James Joyce’s mod­ernist clas­sic, Ulysses. It’s still debat­ed whether this was sim­ply an attempt to recast her image (she often played the “dumb blonde” char­ac­ter in her ’50s films), or whether she actu­al­ly had a pen­sive side. (Her per­son­al library, cat­a­logued at the time of her death, sug­gests the lat­ter.) But, either way, Arnold explained years lat­er how this mem­o­rable pho­to came about:

We worked on a beach on Long Island. She was vis­it­ing Nor­man Ros­ten the poet.… I asked her what she was read­ing when I went to pick her up (I was try­ing to get an idea of how she spent her time). She said she kept Ulysses in her car and had been read­ing it for a long time. She said she loved the sound of it and would read it aloud to her­self to try to make sense of it — but she found it hard going. She couldn’t read it con­sec­u­tive­ly. When we stopped at a local play­ground to pho­to­graph she got out the book and start­ed to read while I loaded the film. So, of course, I pho­tographed her. It was always a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort of pho­tog­ra­ph­er and sub­ject where she was con­cerned — but almost more her input.

You can find more images of Mar­i­lyn read­ing Joyce over at The Retro­naut. Of course, you can down­load your own copy of Ulysses from our Free Ebooks col­lec­tion. But we’d rec­om­mend spend­ing time with this fine­ly-read audio ver­sion, which oth­er­wise appears in our list of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 430 Books in Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

Stephen Fry Explains His Love for James Joyce’s Ulysses

Hen­ri Matisse Illus­trates 1935 Edi­tion of James Joyce’s Ulysses

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Jean Cocteau’s Avante-Garde Film From 1930, The Blood of a Poet

in Film | November 8th, 2012

In a 1946 essay Jean Cocteau cau­tions against mak­ing a quick inter­pre­ta­tion of his first film, The Blood of a Poet, with a quote from Mon­taigne:

Most of Aesop’s fables have many dif­fer­ent lev­els and mean­ings. There are those who make myths of them by choos­ing some fea­ture that fits in well with the fable. But for most of the fables this is only the first and most super­fi­cial aspect. There are oth­ers that are more vital, more essen­tial and pro­found, that they have not been able to reach.

Cocteau con­ceived The Blood of a Poet (Le Sang d’un Poète) in late 1929, soon after the pub­li­ca­tion of his nov­el Les Enfants Ter­ri­bles. He had just kicked his opi­um habit and was enter­ing one of the most pro­lif­ic peri­ods of his career. The film is often called a sur­re­al­ist work, but Cocteau reject­ed the asso­ci­a­tion, say­ing that he had set out “to avoid the delib­er­ate man­i­fes­ta­tions of the uncon­scious in favor of a kind of half-sleep through which I wan­dered as though in a labyrinth.” He goes on:

The Blood of a Poet draws noth­ing from either dreams or sym­bols. As far as the for­mer are con­cerned, it ini­ti­ates their mech­a­nism, and by let­ting the mind relax, as in sleep, it lets mem­o­ries entwine, move and express them­selves freely. As for the lat­ter, it rejects them, and sub­sti­tutes acts, or alle­gories of these acts, that the spec­ta­tor can make sym­bols of if he wish­es.

Many of its first spec­ta­tors saw anti-Chris­t­ian sym­bol­ism in the film. Although pro­duc­tion end­ed in Sep­tem­ber of 1930, Cocteau was not able to get his film shown pub­licly until Jan­u­ary of 1932. The Blood of a Poet fea­tures the only film appear­ance by Lee Miller, a not­ed pho­tog­ra­ph­er and mod­el of Man Ray. (She plays a stat­ue.) The film is now con­sid­ered a clas­sic of exper­i­men­tal cin­e­ma and is the first in what came to be known as Cocteau’s “Orphic Tril­o­gy,” which includes Orphée (1950) and Tes­ta­ment of Orpheus (1959). The Blood of a Poet will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Man Ray and the Ciné­ma Pur: Four Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920s

Anémic Ciné­ma: Mar­cel Ducham­p’s Whirling Avant-Garde Film (1926)

Bal­let Méchanique: The His­toric Cin­e­mat­ic Col­lab­o­ra­tion Between Fer­nand Legér and George Antheil

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The Drinking Party, 1965 Film Adapts Plato’s Symposium to Modern Times

in Film, Philosophy | November 7th, 2012

The word “sym­po­sium” tends to con­jure images of a for­mal, aca­d­e­m­ic gath­er­ing, which it most often is these days. It’s kind of a stuffy word, but it shouldn’t be. In Plato’s day, it was sim­ply a drink­ing par­ty, the kind you might have with a group of brainy acquain­tances when the last course is cleared, there’s no short­age of wine, and no one has to work the next day. (This being ancient Greece, these were all-male affairs). Plutarch defined a sym­po­sium as “a pass­ing of time over wine, which, guid­ed by gra­cious behav­ior, ends in friend­ship.” Plato’s Sym­po­sium, the best-known of his dia­logues, is much more in the lat­ter vein—a cel­e­bra­tion among accom­plished friends to mark the tri­umph of the poet Agathon’s first tragedy. The dia­logue con­tains sev­en speech­es on love, includ­ing of course, one from Plato’s pri­ma­ry mouth­piece Socrates. But the main draw is com­ic play­wright Aristo­phanes; no under­grad­u­ate who takes a phi­los­o­phy course for­gets his roman­tic ori­gin myth, in which love actu­al­ly is a yearn­ing for one’s miss­ing oth­er half.

When writer and direc­tor Jonathan Miller decid­ed to adapt Plato’s clas­sic text into a film in 1965, he evi­dent­ly decid­ed to com­bine both the mod­ern, aca­d­e­m­ic def­i­n­i­tion of “sym­po­sium” and its clas­si­cal prece­dent. His film is called The Drink­ing Par­ty, and involves its share of that in mod­er­a­tion (as in the orig­i­nal), but it also trans­pos­es Plato’s casu­al gath­er­ing to a group of stu­dents in for­mal attire din­ing on a neo-Clas­si­cal ter­race with an Oxford don, their clas­sics mas­ter. Each char­ac­ter adopts the role of one of Plato’s Sym­po­sium speak­ers. A few things to note here: the excerpt above is of rel­a­tive­ly high qual­i­ty, but the com­plete film itself (below) did not fare near­ly as well: trans­ferred from a well-worn 16mm print from a uni­ver­si­ty archive, the film is mud­dy, scratched and quite dim. This is too bad. Miller’s film, which was shown to col­lege phi­los­o­phy stu­dents in the 60s and 70s, sunk into cul­tur­al obliv­ion for a cou­ple decades, and copies of it are very rare. Nonethe­less, this is well worth watch­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly for stu­dents of phi­los­o­phy. The Drink­ing Par­ty was pro­duced as part of a mid-60s arts doc­u­men­tary series called “Sun­day Night,” which ran from 1965–1968.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Find The Sym­po­sium and oth­er great works in our col­lec­tion of 375 Free eBooks.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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

in Film | November 6th, 2012

You can’t say that Hitch­cock did­n’t think through the angles when he released Psy­cho in 1960. As you may recall, Hitch­cock tight­ly con­trolled the pro­mo­tion for the film. The stars of the now clas­sic movie — Antho­ny Perkins and Janet Leigh — did­n’t talk to the media. Crit­ics weren’t giv­en pri­vate screen­ings. And Hitch­cock put a firm “no late admis­sion” pol­i­cy in place. If you did­n’t see the film from the begin­ning, you didn’t see it all. It’s a hard­ball approach that the direc­tor pub­li­cized in a video out­lin­ing The Rules for Watch­ing Psy­cho.

But then there was a car­rot to accom­pa­ny the stick — a play­ful trail­er (above) that gave view­ers a light-heart­ed tour of the Psy­cho set. You know, the infa­mous Bates Motel. In the trail­er, Hitch­cock teas­es the audi­ence, almost giv­ing away spoil­er details, but nev­er quite goes that far. The cheer­ful music play­ing in the back­ground comes from Hitch­cock­’s lost mas­ter­piece The Trou­ble with Har­ry. And, it all ends with .… ok we won’t tell … but just keep in mind that what you see is not Janet Leigh. It’s actu­al­ly Vera Miles, who played a sup­port­ing role in the film, sport­ing a blonde wig and look­ing like Janet Leigh.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, you can’t watch Psy­cho on the web, but you can catch 22 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hitch­cock on Hap­pi­ness

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

37 Hitch­cock Cameos over 50 Years: All in One Video

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FolkStreams Presents a Big Film Archive on American Folk Art and Music

in Film, Music | November 5th, 2012

Folk­streams is not just a Wun­derkam­mer of Amer­i­can folk tra­di­tions cap­tured on film. It’s also an online repos­i­to­ry for folk films them­selves, whose weird lengths and non-main­stream obses­sions lim­it­ed their chances of wide­spread dis­tri­b­u­tion, while ensur­ing that the major­i­ty of their mak­ers would toil in obliv­ion.

The archive is exceed­ing­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic. Browse by region or gen­er­al sub­jects such as reli­gion, rur­al life, and custom/dress. House­hold names such as B.B. King and Grand­ma Moses exist along­side snake han­dlers (Gretchen Robin­son and Stan Wood­ward’s Peo­ple Who Take Up Ser­pents) and dis­abled tat­too artist Stoney St. Clair, the sub­ject of Alan Gove­nar’s irre­sistible 1981 Stoney Knows How. Admir­ers of the form will be glad to know that the archive is also search­able by film­mak­er and dis­trib­u­tor.

Any one of these short films could pro­vide a folk rem­e­dy anti­dote to a case of acute dig­i­tal over­load. I’d also sug­gest suc­cumb­ing to the archivist’s Net­flix-style, view­ing-his­to­ry-based rec­om­men­da­tions (“If you liked Paint­ed Bride you may also like Mos­qui­toes and High Water.” Think of it as it is a do-it-your­self doc fest on autopi­lot, the sort of once-in-a-blue-moon pro­gram­ming you’d be lucky to catch, per­pet­u­al­ly play­ing on demand.

The clip above comes from the film Give My Poor Heart Ease: Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta Blues­men. Enter the Folk­streams films archive here.

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is doing her bit to keep zines alive with­in the realm of Amer­i­can folk cul­ture.

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Making The Planet of the Apes: Roddy McDowall’s Home Movies and a 1966 Makeup Test

in Film, Television | November 5th, 2012

By most accounts, when Rod­dy McDowall appeared on The Car­ol Bur­nett Show in full Plan­et of the Apes make­up, the host was gen­uine­ly fright­ened, a tes­ta­ment to the extra­or­di­nary work of leg­endary, Oscar-win­ning make­up artist John Cham­bers (who as Ben Affleck’s new film Argo reveals, also did work for the CIA). The hand­some char­ac­ter-actor McDowall spent a good por­tion of his film career in make­up, most mem­o­rably as the char­ac­ters Cor­nelius, Cae­sar, and Galen (on the 1974 TV show) of the Plan­et of the Apes series. A home movie buff and pho­tog­ra­ph­er, McDowall doc­u­ment­ed the lengthy process of his Apes’ make­up (above), applied here by artist Don Cash and his assis­tants. Shot and edit­ed by McDowall, and set to excerpts from the dra­mat­ic Jer­ry Gold­smith Apes score, the film also includes a quick shot of Mau­rice Evans in the first minute, game­ly smok­ing a cig­a­rette in full Dr. Zaius make­up.

The Plan­et of the Apes fran­chise is one of the most suc­cess­ful and long-run­ning sci-fi series of all time. Adapt­ed from a 1963 nov­el by French writer Pierre Boulle, the orig­i­nal 1968 film spawned four sequels, Tim Burton’s 2001 remake, the 2011 pre­quel Rise of the Plan­et of the Apes, and its sequel, the upcom­ing Dawn of the Plan­et of the Apes, slat­ed for the spring of 2014. Then, of course, there’s a world of mer­chan­dise, com­ic books, and a car­toon series. The longevi­ty of the series is due in no small part to Chamber’s remark­ably durable visu­al real­iza­tion of Boulle’s premise. How­ev­er, few peo­ple know how much dif­fer­ent the film might have looked had it stayed true to the aes­thet­ic of a 1966 stu­dio pitch/makeup test. In the video right above, set up in the first few min­utes with hand-drawn stills and voice-over nar­ra­tion, Charleton Hes­ton plays Thomas (lat­er changed to Tay­lor), Edward G. Robin­son is Dr. Zaius, James Brolin is Cor­nelius and Lin­da Har­ri­son is Zira (lat­er played by Kim Hunter). This film shows a much more advanced, sci­en­tif­ic ape soci­ety than the result­ing first film, lim­it­ed by bud­get con­cerns, would be able to.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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