The Oldest Color Movies Bring Sunflowers, Exotic Birds and Goldfish Back to Life (1902)

in Film, History, Photography | September 20th, 2012

Long before Tech­ni­col­or came along, the British pho­tog­ra­ph­er and inven­tor Edward Turn­er devel­oped a three-col­or motion pic­ture sys­tem in 1899. It was based on the mid-19th cen­tu­ry dis­cov­ery that all col­ors could be pro­duced through com­bi­na­tions of the three pri­ma­ry col­ors — red, green and blue. And Turn­er’s genius was find­ing a way to bring this notion to mov­ing pic­tures. Work­ing with the financier Fred­er­ick Mar­shall Lee, Turn­er man­aged to shoot col­or films of chil­dren play­ing with sun­flow­ers (above), a macaw perched in a cage, and gold­fish swim­ming in a bowl. But then his films and pro­jec­tors were lost … for a good cen­tu­ry … and only recent­ly did the Nation­al Media Muse­um in the UK recov­er the footage and then build a spe­cial pro­jec­tor capa­ble of bring­ing the films back to the screen. To learn how they pulled it off, watch the video below. It’s pret­ty inter­est­ing:

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Classic Films and Filmmakers, Rendered in Woodcut By a Los Angeles Artist-Cinephile

in Art, Film | September 19th, 2012

A great many indus­tri­ous cinephiles live in Los Ange­les. It’s no mis­take, for instance, that those rock-and-roll auteur shirts you see around come from there. In fact, I write you from that very town, to which I moved for a vari­ety of rea­sons relat­ed to my film habit. While I may not count myself as par­tic­u­lar­ly indus­tri­ous, I do count myself as a cinephile, and I can thus appre­ci­ate a project of gen­uine film-lov­ing indus­try like Loren Kan­tor’s clas­sic movie wood­cuts and linocuts.

Tak­ing Hol­ly­wood and its fringes as inspi­ra­tion, Kan­tor cre­ates strik­ing, high-con­trast black-and-white images that bring icons of con­tem­po­rary cul­ture into a far old­er aes­thet­ic realm. And who counts as more of an icon of con­tem­po­rary cul­ture — at least, I sense, in the minds of most Open Cul­ture read­ers — than David Lynch? Kan­tor’s wood­cut, seen above, cap­tures the air of simul­ta­ne­ous unflag­ging whole­some­ness and infi­nite dark­ness that swirls about the direc­tor and his films.

Or per­haps you con­sid­er Steve Busce­mi more rel­e­vant to our times; in that case, Kan­tor has cre­at­ed a wood­cut of him as well, one that evokes the actor’s alter­nat­ing lay­ers of worn-down malaise and pecu­liar alert­ness. Just above, you’ll see Kan­tor going in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion with a ren­di­tion of the poster for Man­hat­tan, one of Woody Allen’s most beloved New York pic­tures. “I fell in love with wood­cuts in the 80’s when I attend­ed a Ger­man Expres­sion­ist art show at LA Coun­ty Muse­um,” Kan­tor tells Open Cul­ture. “The stark lines and brusque images remind­ed me of film noir clas­sics.”  Should you ever find your­self in Los Ange­les with time to take in a movie screen­ing at the Los Ange­les Coun­ty Muse­um of Art, pay a vis­it down­stairs, to the floor below the the­ater. There, through­out the hall­way, the muse­um dis­plays the posters for all its Ger­man Expres­sion­ist art shows — includ­ing the one that inspired these wood­cuts in the first place.

To view more of Kan­tor’s work, vis­it Wood Cut­ting Fool: Jour­ney of a Carv­ing Enthu­si­ast or this recent spread on Brain­Pick­ings.

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

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

in Film, Television | September 18th, 2012

Alfred Hitch­cock fans should enjoy this 2007 com­mer­cial by Mar­tin Scors­ese. It was com­mis­sioned by the Cata­lan sparkling wine mak­er Freix­enet for the com­pa­ny’s annu­al Christ­mas cam­paign, with the con­cept of mak­ing a short film that would some­how weave the Freix­enet brand into the plot. Scors­ese respond­ed with a nine-minute homage to the mas­ter of sus­pense.  “Hitch­cock is one of my guid­ing lights,” he told El País at the film’s Decem­ber 2007 pre­mier in Madrid. “It’s a satire of my own movie mania. It has to do with my love of cin­e­ma, and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of pos­sess­ing it.”

The com­mer­cial is struc­tured as a faux doc­u­men­tary, with Scors­ese appear­ing as him­self. With amus­ing­ly frac­tured log­ic, he explains to an inter­view­er his dis­cov­ery of a three-and-a-half minute frag­ment from an unpro­duced Hitch­cock script and his obses­sion with bring­ing it to the screen. “It’s one thing to pre­serve a film that has been made,” Scors­ese says. “It’s anoth­er to pre­serve a film that has not been made.”

The “pre­served” frag­ment, The Key to Reser­va, is pre­sent­ed as a film with­in the film. Bernard Her­man­n’s omi­nous music from North By North­west sets the tone. The roman­tic leads look some­thing like Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint. Hitch­cock afi­ciana­dos will spot ref­er­ences to a num­ber of the mas­ter’s clas­sic films from the 1950s, includ­ing Rear Win­dow, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Ver­ti­go. The Key to Reser­va was filmed by cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Har­ris Savides and edit­ed by Scors­ese’s long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Thel­ma Schoon­mak­er. The sto­ry is set in Carnegie Hall but the crew was unable to film there, so the his­toric con­cert hall had to be cre­at­ed dig­i­tal­ly from pho­tographs. Ben Gross­mann of The Syn­di­cate won a Gold Clio award for visu­al effects.

If you’re won­der­ing whether Hitch­cock would have been pleased by any of this, be sure to stay with the film until it’s amus­ing con­clu­sion. For more of Scors­ese pok­ing fun at his own movie mania, see our fea­ture from yes­ter­day, “Always the Direc­tor: Mar­tin Scors­ese Spoofs Him­self in Two Com­mer­cials.” And if you want to see some real Hitch­cock films, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of 20 Free Alfred Hitch­cock Films Online.

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An Annotated Charlie Chaplin Filmography — 82 Films with Links to Videos

in Film | September 18th, 2012

Last year we pub­lished a handy list of 20 Free Char­lie Chap­lin Films Avail­able Online. And it looked pret­ty good … until yes­ter­day. That’s when Metafil­ter post­ed an Anno­tat­ed Fil­mog­ra­phy of Char­lie Chap­lin fea­tur­ing a list of Chap­lin’s 82 “offi­cial short and fea­ture films in chrono­log­i­cal order … with links to where you can watch them [online].” Above, we’ll start you off above with a short Char­lie Chap­lin Film Fes­ti­val which includes four works in one col­lec­tion — The Adven­tur­er, The Cure, Easy Street and The Immi­grant.

For a broad­er selec­tion of films, don’t miss our meta list of 700 Free Movies Online, where you’ll find great Hitch­cock films and noir clas­sics; West­ern films, includ­ing many with John Wayne; ani­mat­ed gems; doc­u­men­taries and much more. Or, if you want to nar­row down your list, check out our list of 33 Free Oscar-Win­ning Films on the Web.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus.

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Thomas Edison’s Boxing Cats (1894), or Where the LOLCats All Began

in Film, Random, Technology | September 18th, 2012

I’m will­ing to bet a lot of some­one else’s mon­ey that there are thou­sands more lol­cat lovers than cat lovers in the world. Since I hap­pen to be unashamed­ly both, I was suck­ered by the lit­tle 1894 film above from Thomas Edison’s Black Maria stu­dios fea­tur­ing “Pro­fes­sor Welton’s Box­ing Cats.” Now, grant­ed, there is no dis­claimer telling us no ani­mals were harmed, but it looks to me like good clean cat-box­ing fun. As the Smith­son­ian page that post­ed this lit­tle gem declares, Edi­son is per­haps the “mogul who start­ed lol­cats.”

Edi­son is giv­en cred­it for invent­ing a lot of things, many of which he sim­ply appro­pri­at­ed, made his own, and mar­ket­ed heav­i­ly. In this way, he exem­pli­fies a par­tic­u­lar brand of Amer­i­can entre­pre­neur skilled not so much in mak­ing things as in patent­ing them. The so-called “Wiz­ard of Men­lo Park” patent­ed 1,093 inven­tions, among them his motion pic­ture cam­era, or “kine­to­graph.” But as the Library of Con­gress reports, it is like­ly that Edison’s awk­ward­ly-named assis­tant William Kennedy Lau­rie Dick­son did the actu­al work of turn­ing Edis­on’s con­cept (which he took from Ead­weard Muy­bridge) into a real­i­ty.

Com­plex­i­ties of due cred­it aside, we can at least thank Edi­son for man­ag­ing an effi­cient oper­a­tion and also, for bet­ter or worse, pio­neer­ing lit­i­ga­tion against his com­peti­tors (putting many of them out of busi­ness). His Black Maria Stu­dios amassed quite an archive of ear­ly “actu­al­i­ty” films and silent fic­tion­al films of the Nick­elodeon era, the most famous of which, The Great Train Rob­bery, you can watch below (with dubbed-in score).

The Library of Congress’s Edi­son page is an excel­lent resource for infor­ma­tion on the his­to­ry of film in gen­er­al and Edison’s con­tri­bu­tions in par­tic­u­lar, and it fea­tures dozens of his short films avail­able for down­load in Real­Me­dia, Quick Time, or as MPEGs.

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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Always the Director: Martin Scorsese Spoofs Himself in Two Commercials

in Comedy, Film, Television | September 17th, 2012

Over the years, Mar­tin Scors­ese has earned a rep­u­ta­tion as a con­sum­mate film­mak­er, an obses­sive per­fec­tion­ist who lives and breathes cin­e­ma. In these two com­mer­cials the famed direc­tor moves to the front of the cam­era to make fun of his own man­ic per­fec­tion­ism.

In 2003 Scors­ese was asked to play him­self in a com­mer­cial for Amer­i­can Express (see above), which was one of the spon­sors of the Tribeca Film Fes­ti­val. In keep­ing with his rep­u­ta­tion for fas­tid­i­ous­ness, Scors­ese demand­ed to see a resume and show reel from vet­er­an com­mer­cial direc­tor Jim Jenk­ins before agree­ing to the shoot. “It’s like Kobe Bryant ask­ing for your bas­ket­ball cre­den­tials,” Jenk­ins told Ste­fano Hat­field at Adver­tis­ing Age. “What are you gonna say? I once direct­ed Tonya Hard­ing in a Fox Sports com­mer­cial?”

Scors­ese appar­ent­ly liked what he saw, because Jenk­ins was hired. The shoot took place in a Los Ange­les drug­store dur­ing a sin­gle day. “The main chal­lenge,” wrote Hat­field in his arti­cle, “was to get Mr. Scors­ese to speak as quick­ly as we all think he does. He actu­al­ly had to be coaxed into that machine-gun deliv­ery we have all come to expect of him. While it is entire­ly cred­i­ble that this per­fec­tion­ist would have his nephew stage a par­ty all over again for a bet­ter shoot, Mr. Scors­ese admit­ted that he had­n’t actu­al­ly col­lect­ed a roll of film from a drug­store for 15 years.”

Jenk­ins and Scors­ese teamed up again for a 2008 AT&T com­mer­cial that was shown in the­aters to encour­age movie-goers to silence their phones. It shows Scors­ese barg­ing into the home of a moth­er and her young son and pro­ceed­ing to direct a pri­vate phone call.  The mes­sage: “We won’t inter­rupt your phone calls. Please don’t inter­rupt our movies.” Scors­ese was orig­i­nal­ly expect­ed to direct the com­mer­cial, accord­ing to Jenk­ins, but decid­ed just to act in it. “Obvi­ous­ly he’s a nat­ur­al actor,” Jenk­ins said of Scors­ese in an inter­view with Cre­ativ­i­ty-online. “But he was ner­vous. He just want­ed it to be fun­ny. He said, ‘I can’t know if it’s fun­ny. Just make it fun­ny.’ ”

You can watch the com­mer­cial below to decide for your­self whether it’s fun­ny. And be sure to come back tomor­row, when we fea­ture an imag­i­na­tive com­mer­cial direct­ed by Scors­ese him­self.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Mar­tin Scors­ese Appears in New Apple Ad, Plays on His Chill­ing Cameo in Taxi Dri­ver

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The Making of Drugstore Cowboy, Gus Van Sant’s First Major Film (1989)

in Film | September 14th, 2012

Port­land, 1988. Film­mak­er Gus Van Sant shoots Drug­store Cow­boy, the project that will bring he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors a for­mi­da­ble burst of main­stream atten­tion. Star­ring Matt Dil­lon, Kel­ly Lynch, and Heather Gra­ham, the film fol­lows a rov­ing quar­tet of drug addicts — and, con­se­quent­ly, drug thieves, espe­cial­ly from the busi­ness­es of the title — who wash up in Port­land’s then-grit­ty Pearl Dis­trict. A death among their own spooks the leader of the pack into try­ing to clean up, and an encounter with a sepul­chral junkie priest does its part to con­vince him fur­ther. Or maybe we should call him a Junkie priest, por­trayed as he is by a con­tro­ver­sial cameo from writer William S. Bur­roughs. “I’m going back to the old days,” Bur­roughs says of his role ear­ly in the above doc­u­men­tary on the mak­ing of Drug­store Cow­boy. “The old days when they used to give peo­ple mor­phine in jail. The old days before the methadone pro­grams.”

This footage cap­tures Van Sant on the point of tran­si­tion between obscu­ri­ty and fame. His pre­vi­ous work — semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal shorts on Super 8 film, the unre­leased fall­en-actress sto­ry Alice in Hol­ly­wood, and the retroac­tive­ly acclaimed grim snap­shot of grim psy­cho­sex­u­al strife Mala Noche — demon­strat­ed that he could make uni­ver­sal­ly affect­ing movies about kids on the skids and their poten­tial redemp­tion. But thrown into this $2.5 mil­lion pro­duc­tion, he found him­self in anoth­er realm entire­ly: a full pro­fes­sion­al cast, a full pro­fes­sion­al crew, and a pho­tog­ra­phy depart­ment that could take up to twen­ty min­utes (he says, with exas­per­a­tion) to light. “I’m caught in the mid­dle of this trav­el­ing cir­cus,” he reflects, weari­ly. “This is exact­ly the kind of thing I did­n’t want to hap­pen: I did­n’t want peo­ple hang­ing around, jok­ing, drink­ing cof­fee,” he says, cof­fee in hand. But from this com­bi­na­tion of col­lec­tive lax­ness and direc­to­r­i­al anx­i­ety arose one of the most crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed Amer­i­can films of 1989. Van Sant describes it as an “anti-drug” film, but Bur­roughs sug­gests a broad­er mes­sage: “Say no to drug hys­te­ria. Or any oth­er kind of hys­te­ria, for that mat­ter.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

William S. Bur­roughs’ “The Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant

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

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Charade, the Best Hitchcock Film Hitchcock Never Made. Stars Cary Grant & Audrey Hepburn

in Film | September 12th, 2012

Charade_se

The best Hitch­cock film Hitch­cock nev­er made. That’s how cer­tain enthu­si­asts of Amer­i­can film think of Cha­rade, Stan­ley Donen’s 1963 light­ly comedic mys­tery thriller filled with inter­na­tion­al intrigue. Its cast list draws deeply from the era’s for­mi­da­ble well of cin­e­mat­ic icons: Cary Grant, Audrey Hep­burn, Wal­ter Matthau, James Coburn, and George Kennedy. Its action takes place in no less a screen-illu­mi­nat­ing world city than Paris. The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion has seen fit to give it a schol­ar­ly, respectable DVD and Blu-Ray release. It comes scored by Hen­ry Manci­ni. It has inspired four remakes, includ­ing one in Ben­gali and one in Hin­di. It direc­tor also made On the Town, Sin­gin’ in the Rain, Fun­ny Face, and Bedaz­zled. “A ter­rif­i­cal­ly enter­tain­ing com­e­dy-thriller,” crit­ic Dave Kehr calls it, “per­fect­ly craft­ed” and “a mar­velous use of Paris.” All these qual­i­ties and more strong­ly rec­om­mend the pic­ture, at least to my mind, and if you’d like to see it for your­self, you have only to pull it up on Archive.org.


Wait — real­ly? A film of such seem­ing­ly high pro­file, made only 49 years ago? You don’t exact­ly come across the likes of Cha­rade in the pub­lic domain every day. But I have an expla­na­tion, and it will sure­ly delight those film fans who make sport of point­ing out the incom­pe­tence of major stu­dios. It seems that pre-1978 Unit­ed States copy­right law absolute­ly required you to include some sort of mark on your work indi­cat­ing your intent to claim copy­right at all — ©, for instance — and in Cha­rade’s case, Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures seemed to have just sort of for­got­ten about it. The film thus went pub­lic domain as soon as it came out. Cri­te­ri­on’s pro­vides a supe­ri­or trans­fer and a wealth of cinephilic accou­trements besides, but if you want to dip into the pic­ture right now, sim­ply click play. An unknow­able but capa­ble Cary Grant and a Givenchy-clad Audrey Hep­burn pur­sued through the ear­ly six­ties’ City of Light for gold stolen in wartime — who, espe­cial­ly those on an office lunch break, could resist?

You can, of course, find Cha­rade list­ed in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hours of Clas­sic Crime and Mys­tery Movies. Dis­cov­er Our Film Noir and Alfred Hitch­cock Col­lec­tions

Detour: The Cheap, Rushed Piece of 1940s Film Noir Nobody Ever For­gets

Female Noir Direc­tor Ida Lupino’s The Hitch-Hik­er, Free Online

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

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