Olivia Newton-John (RIP) Reunites with Grease Co-Star John Travolta to Sing “You’re The One That I Want” (2002)

in Film, Music | August 12th, 2022

Amer­i­can nos­tal­gia as we know it was invent­ed in the nine­teen-sev­en­ties. Con­sid­er that decade’s pre­pon­der­ance of back­ward-look­ing pop-cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na: Sha Na Na; Hap­py Days; “Yes­ter­day Once More”; Amer­i­can Graf­fi­ti, whose tagline asked “Where were you in ’62?”, a time just eleven years before the release of the pic­ture itself. But no piece of work stands more icon­i­cal­ly for the sev­en­ties revival of the late fifties and ear­ly six­ties than Grease. First pro­duced as a stage musi­cal in Chica­go in 1971, it grad­u­at­ed to Broad­way the next year. But Grease would­n’t take its most endur­ing form until 1978, the year that brought Ran­dal Kleis­er’s film adap­ta­tion star­ring John Tra­vol­ta and the late Olivia New­ton-John.

A 28-year-old Aus­tralian might have seemed an uncon­ven­tion­al choice for the part of Sandy Dom­brows­ki, the new girl at mid­west­ern Rydell High School. But after the alter­ation of a few details in the char­ac­ter and sto­ry, she made the role entire­ly her own. “It was Newton-John’s dul­cet inti­ma­cy as a singer that set her up per­fect­ly to play the naïve Sandy onscreen,” writes the New York­er’s Rachel Syme.

Her “squeaky prud­ish­ness and moony inno­cence as she wails ‘Hope­less­ly Devot­ed to You’ stands in such sharp, sil­ly con­trast to her vampy fall­en-woman per­sona at the end of the film that the whole thing feels like a camp com­men­tary on the pow­er of cos­tum­ing and col­lec­tive fan­ta­sy (not to men­tion a good perm).”

It did­n’t hurt that New­ton-John was already estab­lished as a singer: she’d rep­re­sent­ed the Unit­ed King­dom in 1974’s Euro­vi­sion Song Con­test (los­ing, ulti­mate­ly, to ABBA), and that very same year scored coun­try hits in the Unit­ed States. Her skills did much not just to make the Grease sound­track Amer­i­ca’s sec­ond-best-sell­ing album of 1978 (sec­ond to the sound­track of Tra­volta’s own vehi­cle Sat­ur­day Night Fever), but to keep it endur­ing­ly pop­u­lar through­out the decades since. At Grease’s 2002 DVD release par­ty, New­ton-John and Tra­vol­ta reunit­ed onstage to sing “You’re the One That I Want,” much to the delight of the audi­ence — all of whom must still remem­ber where they were in ’02, at least for those three min­utes.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Pow­er of Pulp Fic­tion’s Dance Scene, Explained by Chore­o­g­ra­phers and Even John Tra­vol­ta Him­self

Watch Simon & Gar­funkel Sing “The Sound of Silence” 45 Years After Its Release, and Just Get Haunt­ing­ly Bet­ter with Time

Jim­my Page and Robert Plant Reunite in Exot­ic Mar­rakesh, 1994

In Touch­ing Video, Artist Mari­na Abramović & For­mer Lover Ulay Reunite After 22 Years Apart

The “West Side Sto­ry” Sto­ry — Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast #114

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Oscar-Winner CODA and Deaf Representation in Film — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #130

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | August 10th, 2022

width=

The 2022 Oscar win­ner for Best Pic­ture was CODA, a sto­ry about a musi­cal­ly inclined girl with a deaf fam­i­ly. Kam­bri Crews, her­self a CODA and author of a much dark­er sto­ry about this called Burn Down the Ground, joins your Pret­ty Much Pop host Mark Lin­sen­may­er, writer Sarahlyn Bruck, and jack-of-many-intel­lec­tu­al-trades Al Bak­er to talk about how deaf cul­ture inter­acts with film.

Films tend to show deaf­ness as trag­ic, which is not nec­es­sar­i­ly how the deaf com­mu­ni­ty views them­selves. We talk about bal­anc­ing the demands of a sto­ry, how real life works, and the need for pos­i­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Also, deaf bowl­ing!

In addi­tion to CODA, we talk about The Sound of Met­al, A Qui­et Place, Chil­dren of a Less­er God, Mr. Hol­land’s Opus, See No Evil Hear No Evil, Eter­nals, Dri­ve My Car, and more.

Note that this dis­cus­sion was record­ed in May but got bumped with all the shows wrap­ping up at that time and sum­mer movies launch­ing.

If you liked this, see our pre­vi­ous episode on dis­abil­i­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Hear more Pret­ty Much Pop. Sup­port the show at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

When Helen Keller Met Charlie Chaplin and Taught Him Sign Language (1919)

in Film, History | August 9th, 2022

Char­lie Chap­lin had many high-pro­file fans in his day, includ­ing some of the lumi­nar­ies of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. We could per­haps be for­giv­en for assum­ing that the writer and activist Hellen Keller was not among them, giv­en the lim­i­ta­tions her con­di­tion of deaf­ness and blind­ness — or “deaf­blind­ness” — would nat­u­ral­ly place on the enjoy­ment of film, even the silent films in which Chap­lin made his name. But mak­ing that assump­tion would be to mis­un­der­stand the dri­ving force of Keller’s life and career. If the movies were sup­pos­ed­ly unavail­able to her, then she’d make a point of not just watch­ing them, but befriend­ing their biggest star.

Keller met Chap­lin in 1919 at his Hol­ly­wood stu­dio, dur­ing the film­ing of Sun­ny­side. This, as biog­ra­phers have revealed, was not one of the smoothest-going peri­ods in the come­di­an-auteur’s life, but that did­n’t stop him from enjoy­ing his time with Keller, and even learn­ing from her.

In her 1928 auto­bi­og­ra­phy Mid­stream, she would remem­ber that he’d been “shy, almost timid,” and that “his love­ly mod­esty lent a touch of romance to the occa­sion that might oth­er­wise have seemed quite ordi­nary.” The pic­tures that have cir­cu­lat­ed of the meet­ing, seen here, include one of Keller teach­ing Chap­lin the tac­tile sign-lan­guage alpha­bet she used to com­mu­ni­cate.

It was also the means by which, with the assis­tance of com­pan­ion Anne Sul­li­van, she fol­lowed the action of Chap­lin’s films A Dog’s Life and Shoul­der Arms when they were screened for her that evening. When Keller and Chap­lin met again near­ly thir­ty years lat­er, he sought her feed­back on the script for his lat­est pic­ture, Mon­sieur Ver­doux. “There is no lan­guage for the ter­ri­fy­ing pow­er of your mes­sage that sears with sar­casm or rends apart coverts of social hypocrisy,” Keller lat­er wrote to Chap­lin. A polit­i­cal­ly charged black com­e­dy about a bigamist ser­i­al killer bear­ing lit­tle resem­blance indeed to the beloved Lit­tle Tramp, Mon­sieur Ver­doux met with crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial fail­ure upon its release. The film has since been re-eval­u­at­ed as a sub­ver­sive mas­ter­work, but it was per­haps Keller who first tru­ly saw it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Helen Keller Writes a Let­ter to Nazi Stu­dents Before They Burn Her Book: “His­to­ry Has Taught You Noth­ing If You Think You Can Kill Ideas” (1933)

Mark Twain & Helen Keller’s Spe­cial Friend­ship: He Treat­ed Me Not as a Freak, But as a Per­son Deal­ing with Great Dif­fi­cul­ties

When Albert Ein­stein & Char­lie Chap­lin Met and Became Fast Famous Friends (1930)

When Mahat­ma Gand­hi Met Char­lie Chap­lin (1931)

The Char­lie Chap­lin Archive Opens, Putting Online 30,000 Pho­tos & Doc­u­ments from the Life of the Icon­ic Film Star

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

What a Disney Version of A Clockwork Orange Would Look Like

in Animation, Film | August 4th, 2022

“Fam­i­ly-friend­ly enter­tain­ment” means dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple, despite near­ly a cen­tu­ry of the Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny attempt­ing to asso­ciate the con­cept exclu­sive­ly with its own brand. And on the busi­ness lev­el, Dis­ney has become increas­ing­ly iden­ti­fied with enter­tain­ment itself. “With Mar­vel, Star Wars, Pixar, and their princess con­tent tucked safe­ly in their port­fo­lio,” writes Boing Boing’s Devin Nealy, “Dis­ney is only a few stu­dios away from hav­ing a monop­oly on nos­tal­gia. At this point, it’d be eas­i­er to count the IPs that Dis­ney does­n’t own.”

When it comes to extract­ing all pos­si­ble val­ue from IP — that is, intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty — no com­pa­ny shows quite as much deter­mi­na­tion as Dis­ney. This goes for the cre­ations it has late­ly acquired as well as those it already owned.

Wit­ness, for instance, its recent spate of live-action remakes: The Jun­gle Book direct­ed by Jon Favreau, Aladdin by Guy Ritchie, Dum­bo by Tim Bur­ton. That these are hard­ly the least plau­si­ble prod­ucts to be put out by Dis­ney Stu­dios in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry sends the imag­i­na­tion toward ever more incon­gru­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties for IP-reusage. What if Dis­ney remade, say, Stan­ley Kubrick­’s A Clock­work Orange?

Such is the premise of the uncan­ny trail­er above, cre­at­ed by Youtu­ber Jaba­Toons. Using audio tak­en straight from Kubrick­’s eclec­ti­cal­ly night­mar­ish vision of Antho­ny Burgess’ dystopi­an nov­el, it also ren­ders a host of its scenes not in the style of the CGI extrav­a­gan­zas Dis­ney puts out today, but the more tra­di­tion­al, two-dimen­sion­al ani­mat­ed pic­tures it still did in the nine­teen-nineties. The trail­er announces the film as “Dis­ney’s 35th ani­mat­ed clas­sic,” a posi­tion occu­pied in real­i­ty by Her­cules: also a hero’s jour­ney, albeit with a much dif­fer­ent tone, to say noth­ing of out­come, than A Clock­work Orange. Alex Delarge may look strange­ly plau­si­ble as a Dis­ney char­ac­ter, but a pro­tag­o­nist with a less fam­i­ly-friend­ly set of inter­ests would be hard to imag­ine.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Lccokrkow Gar­neo: All 245,000 Frames of Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange Ran­dom­ized

Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Re-Imag­ined as an Epic, Main­stream Hol­ly­wood Film

The Shin­ing and Oth­er Com­plex Stan­ley Kubrick Films Recut as Sim­ple Hol­ly­wood Movies

Don­ald Duck Dis­cov­ers Glenn Beck: A Remix

Mick­ey Mouse In Viet­nam: The Under­ground Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968, Co-Cre­at­ed by Mil­ton Glaser

When Stan­ley Kubrick Banned His Own Film, A Clock­work Orange: It Was the “Most Effec­tive Cen­sor­ship of a Film in British His­to­ry”

The Mak­ing of Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch a Complete Mini-Series Adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina

in Film, Literature | August 1st, 2022

Not long after pub­lish­ing his most beloved nov­el Anna Karen­i­na, Leo Tol­stoy gave away his wealth, renounced his aris­to­crat­ic priv­i­leges, and embraced the life of a peas­ant. His extreme exper­i­ment in Chris­t­ian anar­chism notwith­stand­ing, how­ev­er, Tol­stoy was fas­ci­nat­ed by new tech­nol­o­gy and allowed him­self to be pho­tographed and filmed near the end of his life. On one occa­sion, he sup­pos­ed­ly con­fessed a love of the cin­e­ma to his vis­i­tors and told them he was think­ing of writ­ing “a play for the screen” on a “bloody theme.”

“All the same,” argues Rosamund Bartlett at the OUP blog, Tol­stoy “would prob­a­bly have tak­en a dim view of the twen­ty odd screen adap­ta­tions of Anna Karen­i­na.” The author died the year before the first filmed adap­ta­tion of his work, a silent French/Russian adap­ta­tion of Anna Karen­i­na made in 1911. Five more would fol­low before Gre­ta Gar­bo stepped into the role for a loose 1927 adap­ta­tion titled Love, then again a 1935 film ver­sion direct­ed by Clarence Brown, with Fredric March as Vron­sky and Gar­bo as the “most famous and crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed of all the Annas Karen­i­na,” Dan Shee­han writes at LitHub.

Gar­bo’s ver­sion is often con­sid­ered the pin­na­cle of Tol­stoy film adap­ta­tions — large­ly because of Gar­bo. Or as Gra­ham Greene wrote then, “it is Gre­ta Gar­bo’s per­son­al­i­ty which ‘makes’ this film, which fills the mold of the neat respect­ful adap­ta­tion with some kind of sense of the great­ness of the nov­el.” The prob­lem of adap­ta­tions — of great nov­els in gen­er­al, and of Tol­stoy’s in par­tic­u­lar — is that they must reduce too much com­plex­i­ty, cut out too many char­ac­ters and vital sub­plots, and boil down the wider themes of the book to focus almost sole­ly on the trag­ic romance at its cen­ter.

Maybe this is what Tol­stoy meant when he alleged­ly called the cam­era (“the lit­tle click­ing con­trap­tion with the revolv­ing han­dle”) a “direct attack on the old meth­ods of lit­er­ary art.” Nov­els were not meant to be films. They’re too loose and expan­sive. “We shall have to adapt our­selves to the shad­owy screen and to the cold machine,” Tol­stoy pre­scient­ly not­ed, aware that film required an entire­ly dif­fer­ent con­cep­tion of nar­ra­tive art. Adap­ta­tions of Anna con­tin­ue to pro­lif­er­ate nonethe­less in the 21st cen­tu­ry, from Joe Wright’s 2012 adap­ta­tion with Kiera Knight­ley to, most recent­ly, Net­flix’s first Russ­ian orig­i­nal dra­ma series with Svet­lana Khod­chenko­va as the title char­ac­ter.

Tol­stoy schol­ars large­ly echo what I sus­pect Tol­stoy him­self might have thought of filmed ver­sions of his nov­el. As Car­ol Apol­lo­nio put it in a recent online dis­cus­sion, “If you want Anna Karen­i­na, read it again (and again). If you want some­thing else, then read or watch that, but don’t assume it has a lot to do with Tol­stoy.” That said, we bring you yet anoth­er adap­ta­tion of Anna Karen­i­na, just above, a mini-series from 2013 star­ring Vit­to­ria Puc­ci­ni, San­ti­a­go Cabr­era, Ben­jamin Sadler, and Max von Thun. Its set­ting and cos­tum­ing are peri­od-cor­rect, but does it meet the exact­ing lit­er­ary stan­dard of the orig­i­nal? Of course not.

Film ver­sions of nov­els can’t approx­i­mate lit­er­a­ture. But a good adap­ta­tion of Anna Karen­i­na, whether set in 19th-cen­tu­ry Rus­sia, 21st-cen­tu­ry Aus­tralia, or entire­ly — as in Joe Wright’s 2012 film — on a stage, can con­vey “the emo­tion­al tragedy of Anna’s sto­ry,” Apol­lo­nio writes. Adap­ta­tions should­n’t just illus­trate their sources faith­ful­ly, nor should they take so much license that the source becomes irrel­e­vant. They are always tied in some way to the orig­i­nal, and thus in every cin­e­mat­ic Anna is a lit­tle bit of Tol­stoy. But you’ll have to read, or reread, the nov­el to see how much of it the series above cap­tures, and how much it frus­trat­ing­ly leaves out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an 8‑Part Film Adap­ta­tion of Tolstoy’s Anna Karen­i­na Free Online

Watch the Huge­ly-Ambi­tious Sovi­et Film Adap­ta­tion of War and Peace Free Online (1966–67)

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Leo Tol­stoy, and How His Great Nov­els Can Increase Your Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Quentin Tarantino & Roger Avary Rewatch Cult-Classic Movies on Their New Video Archives Podcast

in Film, Podcasts | July 29th, 2022

Quentin Taran­ti­no has count­less fans all around the world, increas­ing­ly many of whom are too young to ever have rent­ed a tape from a video store. But when those twen­ty-some­thing cinephiles learn his ori­gin sto­ry as a film­mak­er, they must sus­pect they missed out on a valu­able expe­ri­ence in the VHS era, what­ev­er its incon­ve­niences. When Taran­ti­no broke out in the nine­teen-nineties with Reser­voir Dogs and Pulp Fic­tion, he was pub­licly cel­e­brat­ed not just for those films, but for his hav­ing made them as a video-store-clerk-turned-auteur.

Indeed, it real­ly does seem true that Taran­ti­no’s cin­e­mat­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty owes some­thing to the years he’d spent exer­cis­ing his movie exper­tise behind the counter at Video Archives in Man­hat­tan Beach. When the store closed in 1995, the fresh­ly ascen­dant Taran­ti­no seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to buy up its thou­sands of VHS tapes. Roger Avary, his fel­low Archives alum­nus and col­lab­o­ra­tor on the screen­play for Pulp Fic­tion, bought the Laserdiscs. Though much of Avary’s col­lec­tion has suc­cumbed to the “disc rot” that noto­ri­ous­ly afflicts that for­mat, Taran­ti­no’s col­lec­tion has held up for more than a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry.

Now Taran­ti­no’s pri­vate tape stash pro­vides the mate­r­i­al for his and Avary’s lat­est col­lab­o­ra­tion: The Video Archives Pod­cast, to which you can lis­ten on plat­forms like Apple Pod­casts and Stitch­er. On it, the two of them aim to re-cre­ate the vehe­ment­ly cinephile envi­ron­ment of Video Archives by dis­cussing the movies from its stock — after watch­ing them on the actu­al VHS tapes the store once rent­ed out. As Taran­ti­no explains it, each episode of The Video Archives Pod­cast will fea­ture three titles. But the con­ver­sa­tions will go well beyond the films them­selves, involv­ing details of the par­tic­u­lar home-video releas­es popped into the VCR as well as the his­to­ry of the dis­trib­u­tors that put them out.

Nat­u­ral­ly, the hosts also get into their per­son­al his­to­ries with these movies — which in some cas­es go back near­ly 50 years — as film-lovers and film­mak­ers. Owing to the need to intro­duce the show itself, in the first episode they dis­cuss only two pic­tures, both from the nine­teen-sev­en­ties: John Car­pen­ter and Dan O’Ban­non’s anti-estab­lish­ment sci-fi com­e­dy Dark Star, fol­lowed by Ulli Lom­mel’s rock-Mafia dra­ma Cocaine Cow­boys, which fea­tures a cameo from Andy Warhol. Rep­re­sent­ing a younger gen­er­a­tion is Avary’s daugh­ter Gala, pro­duc­er of the pod­cast, who in a mid-show seg­ment (and her own after-show) offers anoth­er per­spec­tive on the movies of the week. She clear­ly knows how to appre­ci­ate a cult clas­sic, even if she’s nev­er paid a late fee in her life.

via IndieWire

Relat­ed con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Gives a Tour of Video Archives, the Store Where He Worked Before Becom­ing a Film­mak­er

Quentin Taran­ti­no Reviews Movies: From Dunkirk and King of New York, to Soul Broth­ers of Kung Fu & More

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains How to Write & Direct Movies

An Analy­sis of Quentin Tarantino’s Films Nar­rat­ed (Most­ly) by Quentin Taran­ti­no

The Last Video Store: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on How the World’s Old­est Video Store Still Sur­vives Today

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Scenes from The Wizard of Oz Remastered in Brilliant 4K Detail: Behold the Work of a Creative YouTuber

in Film | July 29th, 2022

The Wiz­ard of Oz came out more than 80 years ago, but there must still be a few among us who remem­ber see­ing it in the the­ater. Only they would have felt com­plete­ly the pow­er of its famous scene when Dorothy leaves black-and-white Kansas and enters the col­or­ful land of Oz. Much of the pow­er of art comes from con­trast, and this par­tic­u­lar con­trast could hard­ly have been a more per­sua­sive adver­tise­ment for the pow­er of Tech­ni­col­or. After a devel­op­ment his­to­ry of more than twen­ty years, that col­or motion-pic­ture process had by 1939 reached the stage of its tech­no­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion called “Process 4,” which enabled stu­dios to make use of not just some but all of the spec­trum.

This final form of Tech­ni­col­or enrap­tures view­ers even today, repro­duc­ing col­ors as it did at intense, some­times bor­der­line-psy­che­del­ic depths of sat­u­ra­tion. The process found its ide­al mate­r­i­al in the fan­ta­sy of The Wiz­ard of Oz, with its yel­low brick road (choos­ing whose exact shade inspired about a week of delib­er­a­tion at MGM), its ruby slip­pers (cal­cu­lat­ed­ly changed from the sil­ver shoes in L. Frank Baum’s orig­i­nal nov­el), and its host of set­tings and char­ac­ters with great chro­mat­ic poten­tial.

You can appre­ci­ate this un-repeat­ably for­tu­itous inter­sec­tion of con­tent and tech­nol­o­gy again in these scenes from an unof­fi­cial 4K restora­tion of the film post­ed by Youtu­ber Oriel Malik.

This is sure­ly the sharpest and most-detail rich ver­sion of The Wiz­ard of Oz most of us have seen, and, in those respects, it actu­al­ly out­does the orig­i­nal prints of the film. For some the image may actu­al­ly be too clear, mak­ing obvi­ous as it does cer­tain arti­fi­cial-look­ing aspects of the back­grounds and cos­tumes. But in a sense this may not run counter to the inten­tions of the film­mak­ers, who knew full well what genre they were work­ing in: even on film, a musi­cal must retain at least some of the look and feel of the stage. Yet it’s also true that the soft­er visu­al edges of the con­tem­po­rary ana­log print­ing and pro­jec­tion tech­nolo­gies would have enhanced the dream­like atmos­phere cre­at­ed in part by all those sur­re­al­ly vivid hues — which, accord­ing to die-hard Tech­ni­col­or enthu­si­asts, only real­ly come through on film any­way.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Tech­ni­col­or Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Cin­e­ma with Sur­re­al, Elec­tric Col­ors & Changed How We See Our World

The Com­plete Wiz­ard of Oz Series, Avail­able as Free eBooks and Free Audio Books

The Wiz­ard of Oz Bro­ken Apart and Put Back Togeth­er in Alpha­bet­i­cal Order

Dark Side of the Rain­bow: Pink Floyd Meets The Wiz­ard of Oz in One of the Ear­li­est Mash-Ups

Watch the Ear­li­est Sur­viv­ing Filmed Ver­sion of The Wiz­ard of Oz (1910)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Visit Great Cities in the 1920s in Restored Color Film: New York City, London, Berlin, Paris, Venice & More

in Film, History | July 28th, 2022

Woody Allen’s Mid­night in Paris stars Owen Wil­son as a Hol­ly­wood screen­writer on vaca­tion in the French cap­i­tal. Alas, the City of Lights as it is in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry does­n’t sat­is­fy him. When he walks his streets he thinks only of the nine­teen-twen­ties, when a trav­el­er in Paris could eas­i­ly cross paths with the likes of Paul Gau­guin, Hen­ri Matisse, and Edgar Degas — as well as expa­tri­ates from Pablo Picas­so and Dju­na Barnes to F. Scott Fitzger­ald and Ernest Hem­ing­way. Or so he imag­ines, at any rate, and so he goes on to expe­ri­ence when he finds him­self trans­port­ed back in time to the city of the “Lost Gen­er­a­tion” at each stroke of mid­night.

With the video above, you, too, can take a trip to nine­teen-twen­ties Paris — as well as nine­teen-twen­ties New York, Chica­go, San Fran­cis­co, Lon­don, Berlin, Stock­holm, Copen­hagen, Ams­ter­dam, Nice, Gene­va, Milan, and Venice. A com­pi­la­tion of peri­od footage sourced from the Prelinger Archives, it light­ly col­orizes, adds ambi­ent sound, and in oth­er ways enhances its dis­parate mate­ri­als to make them feel all of a piece.

And indeed, the clip plays almost as if shot by a sin­gle, and sin­gu­lar­ly ambi­tious, world trav­el­er of one hun­dred years ago. That hypo­thet­i­cal trav­el­er’s world is both ours — filled as it is with such rec­og­niz­able and ever-pho­tograph­able sites as the Eif­fel Tow­er, the gon­do­las of Venice, and the non-latex-clad cyclists of Copen­hagen — and not.

Whether tra­di­tion­al or mod­ern, the dress of every­one on the street looks neater and more for­mal than that worn by urban­ites in the main today. In some cities, horse-drawn car­riages still make their way through the traf­fic of bus­es, trams, and waves of seem­ing­ly iden­ti­cal per­son­al cars. (Ford man­u­fac­tured more than two mil­lion Mod­el Ts in 1923 alone.) The nine­teen-twen­ties brought rapid urban devel­op­ment in both the New World and the Old, as well as rapid devel­op­ment in motion pho­tog­ra­phy. Not for noth­ing was it the decade of the “city sym­pho­ny” film; for equal­ly good rea­son, it remains the decade of which many of us dream, even a cen­tu­ry lat­er, when we want to feel the exhil­a­ra­tion of moder­ni­ty.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch 1920s “City Sym­phonies” Star­ring the Great Cities of the World: From New York to Berlin to São Paulo

Expe­ri­ence Footage of Roar­ing 1920s Berlin, Restored & Col­orized with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Nerves of Steel!: Watch Peo­ple Climb Tall Build­ings Dur­ing the 1920s.

Great New Archive Lets You Hear the Sounds of New York City Dur­ing the Roar­ing Twen­ties

Footage of Cities Around the World in the 1890s: Lon­don, Tokyo, New York, Venice, Moscow & More

Down­load 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them How­ev­er You Like

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast