How German Expressionism Gave Rise to the “Dutch” Angle, the Camera Shot That Defined Classic Films by Welles, Hitchcock, Tarantino & More

in Film | November 19th, 2021

Expres­sion­ism was an art move­ment that set out to take the internal—emotions, the human con­di­tion itself—and make it exter­nal, with paint­ings that made no attempt to recre­ate real­i­ty. It was a break with the clas­si­cal schools of art that had come before. It was mod­ern, very mod­ern, very col­or­ful, and excit­ing as hell. And it was soon to run head­long into that most mod­ern of art forms, film­mak­ing, in the 1920s.

In the above mini-doc on the Dutch Angle, that cant­ed fram­ing so beloved of film noir, and appar­ent­ly every shot in the first Thor movie, Vox traces its roots back to Expres­sion­ism, and par­tic­u­lar­ly back to Ger­many of the 1910s where schools like Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reit­er were assault­ing real­ism with bru­tal paint­ings. They sensed some­thing was chang­ing in the sub­con­scious of peo­ple and in the coun­try itself. And the movie The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari was the cul­mi­na­tion of that hor­rif­ic vibe.

Three expres­sion­ist painters, Her­mann Warm, Wal­ter Reimann, and Wal­ter Rohrig designed the crooked, bizarre, and night­mar­ish sets for that film. They look like the paint­ings of Ernst Lud­wig Kirch­n­er or Fritz Bleyl, but denud­ed of col­or. Expres­sion­ism had entered film. (Warm, Reimann, and Rohring had worked on, and con­tin­ued to work as set designers/art direc­tors for many films at that time, but most are lost or destroyed.) Ger­many being cut off from the Hol­ly­wood film indus­try at the time had led to this strange new direc­tion, but once Hitler rose to pow­er, many artists came to Hol­ly­wood, and expres­sion­ist tech­niques infect­ed Hol­ly­wood.

The Dutch Angle (real­ly, the Deutsche Angle, before being Ger­man became prob­lem­at­ic) was a way of turn­ing ver­ti­cal and hor­i­zon­tal lines in a scene into diag­o­nals. They sug­gest some­thing had gone wrong, that real­i­ty has been knocked off its axis. It became part of the vocab­u­lary of film noir, which was also filled with expres­sion­is­tic light­ing, high con­trast black and white, light and shad­ows.

Those direct emo­tion­al par­al­lels have been leached from the Dutch angle from its overuse. It’s been used in many a film as a way to jazz up a scene, or some­times just as a way to get sev­er­al ele­ments into a tight frame. It’s ubiq­ui­ty in music videos and com­mer­cials has made it almost invis­i­ble.

But when the Dutch angle is used the right way by tal­ent­ed direc­tors, from Hitch­cock to Spike Lee and Quentin Taran­ti­no, the effect still works. The angle makes a shot stand out, it can jar us, it can show inte­ri­or con­fu­sion and moral may­hem. And when that hap­pens it can take us back to the Expressionist’s orig­i­nal goal. It can reveal our inner truths, and remind us of the times when we have felt off cen­ter, when the world was not on the lev­el.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

60 Free Film Noir Movies

10 Great Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Films: From Nos­fer­atu to The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari

From Cali­gari to Hitler: A Look at How Cin­e­ma Laid the Foun­da­tion for Tyran­ny in Weimar Ger­many

How Ger­man Expres­sion­ism Influ­enced Tim Bur­ton: A Video Essay

Watch The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari, the Influ­en­tial Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Film (1920)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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How Stanley Kubrick Made 2001: A Space Odyssey: A Seven-Part Video Essay

in Film | November 17th, 2021

Andrei Tarkovsky had a rather low opin­ion of Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. “Pho­ny on many points,” he once called it, built on “a life­less schema with only pre­ten­sions to truth.” His pro­fes­sion­al response was 1972’s Solaris, by most esti­mates anoth­er high point in the sci­ence-fic­tion cin­e­ma of that peri­od. Yet today it isn’t wide­ly regard­ed as Tarkovsky’s best work; cer­tain­ly it has­n’t become as much of an object of wor­ship as, say, Stalk­er. That pic­ture — arguably anoth­er work of sci-fi, though one sui gener­is in prac­ti­cal­ly its every facet — con­tin­ues to inspire such trib­utes and exege­ses as the video essay on its mak­ing we fea­tured ear­li­er this year here on Open Cul­ture.

That video essay came from the chan­nel of Youtu­ber Cin­e­maTyler, who like many auteur-ori­ent­ed cinephiles exhibits appre­ci­a­tion for Tarkovsky and Kubrick alike. He’s cre­at­ed numer­ous exam­i­na­tions on the work that went into Kubrick­’s pic­tures, includ­ing A Clock­work Orange, Bar­ry Lyn­don, and Full Met­al Jack­et.

The ambi­tion of 2001, out­sized even by Kubrick­’s stan­dard, is reflect­ed in what it spurred Cin­e­maTyler on to cre­ate: a sev­en-part series of video essays on its pro­duc­tion, with three-hour total run­time that far exceeds that of the film itself. It takes at least that long to explain the achieve­ments Kubrick pulled off, espe­cial­ly with mid-1960s film­mak­ing tech­nol­o­gy, which gave us the rare vision of the future that has held up for more than half a cen­tu­ry.

Some of the qual­i­ties that have made 2001 endure came into being almost by acci­dent. Take the use of Strauss’ “The Blue Danube” to intro­duce the space sta­tion, a stroke of scor­ing genius inspired by the records Kubrick and com­pa­ny hap­pened to be lis­ten­ing to while view­ing their footage. That and oth­er clas­si­cal pieces replaced an orig­i­nal score by the com­pos­er who’d worked on Kubrick­’s Spar­ta­cus, which would have struck a dif­fer­ent mood alto­geth­er. So would the por­ten­tous nar­ra­tion includ­ed in ear­li­er ver­sions of the script, hard­ly imag­in­able in the con­text of such pow­er­ful­ly word­less scenes as the famous four-mil­lion-year cut from tossed bone to space­craft, which turns out to have been orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived an Earth-orbit­ing nuclear-weapon plat­form. That’s one of the many lit­tle-known facts Cin­e­maTyler fits into this series, and a view­ing of which even the biggest Kubrick buffs will have rea­son to admire 2001 more intense­ly than ever.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1966 Film Explores the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Our High-Tech Future)

James Cameron Revis­its the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Stan­ley Kubrick Explains the Mys­te­ri­ous End­ing of 2001: A Space Odyssey in a New­ly Unearthed Inter­view

What’s the Dif­fer­ence Between Stan­ley Kubrick’s & Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (A Side-by-Side Com­par­i­son)

The Sto­ry of Stalk­er, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Trou­bled (and Even Dead­ly) Sci-Fi Mas­ter­piece

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 or on Face­book.

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Albert Einstein in Color Films

in Film, History, Physics | November 16th, 2021

We all think we know just what Albert Ein­stein looked like — and broad­ly speak­ing, we’ve got it right. At least since his death in 1955, since which time gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of chil­dren around the world have grown up close­ly asso­ci­at­ing his bristly mus­tache and semi-tamed gray hair with the very con­cept of sci­en­tif­ic genius. His sar­to­r­i­al rum­pled­ness and Teu­ton­i­cal­ly hang­dog look have long been the stuff of not just car­i­ca­ture, but (as in Nico­las Roeg’s Insignif­i­cance) earnest trib­ute as well. Yet how many of us can say we’ve real­ly tak­en a good look at Ein­stein?

These three pieces of film get us a lit­tle clos­er to that expe­ri­ence. At the top of the post we have a col­orized news­reel clip (you can see the orig­i­nal here) show­ing Ein­stein in his office at Prince­ton’s Insti­tute for Advanced Study, where he took up a post in 1933.

Even ear­li­er col­orized news­reel footage appears in the video just above, tak­en from an episode of the Smith­son­ian Chan­nel series Amer­i­ca in Col­or. It depicts Ein­stein arriv­ing in the Unit­ed States in 1930, by which time he was already “the world’s most famous physi­cist” — a posi­tion then mer­it­ing a wel­come not unlike that which the Bea­t­les would receive 34 years lat­er.

https://youtube.com/shorts/ibzYKmzA0NI?si=MoWIZU9zMF93AAc3

Ein­stein returned to his native Ger­many after that vis­it. The Amer­i­ca in Col­or clip also shows him back at his cot­tage out­side Berlin (and in his paja­mas), but his time back in his home­land amount­ed only to a few years. The rea­son: Hitler. Dur­ing Ein­stein’s vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor­ship at Cal Tech in 1933, the Gestapo raid­ed his cot­tage and Berlin apart­ment, as well as con­fis­cat­ed his sail­boat. Lat­er the Nazi gov­ern­ment banned Jews from hold­ing offi­cial posi­tions, includ­ing at uni­ver­si­ties, effec­tive­ly cut­ting off his pro­fes­sion­al prospects and those of no few oth­er Ger­man cit­i­zens besides. The 1943 col­or footage above offers a glimpse of Ein­stein a decade into his Amer­i­can life.

A cou­ple of years there­after, the end of the Sec­ond World War made Ein­stein even more famous. He became, in the minds of many Amer­i­cans, the bril­liant physi­cist who “helped dis­cov­er the atom bomb.” So declares the announc­er in that first news­reel, but in the decades since, the pub­lic has come to asso­ciate Ein­stein more instinc­tive­ly with his the­o­ry of rel­a­tiv­i­ty — an achieve­ment less imme­di­ate­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble than the apoc­a­lyp­tic explo­sion of the atom­ic bomb, but one whose sci­en­tif­ic impli­ca­tions run much deep­er. Many clear and lucid pré­cis of Ein­stein’s the­o­ry exist, but why not first see it explained by the man him­self, and in col­or at that?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New­ly Unearthed Footage Shows Albert Ein­stein Dri­ving a Fly­ing Car (1931)

Hear Albert Ein­stein Read “The Com­mon Lan­guage of Sci­ence” (1941)

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Explains Rel­a­tiv­i­ty to Albert Ein­stein (in a Nico­las Roeg Movie)

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

Einstein’s The­o­ry of Rel­a­tiv­i­ty Explained in One of the Ear­li­est Sci­ence Films Ever Made (1923)

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 or on Face­book.

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When John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on SNL, And They Got Banned from the Show: A Short Documentary

in Film, Music, Television | November 16th, 2021

Like many famous episodes in the lives of famous peo­ple, Andy Warhol’s 15 min­utes quote turns out to be a gar­bling of what hap­pened. Warhol sim­ply said that every­body wants to be famous (and by impli­ca­tion, famous for­ev­er). To which the Factory’s “court pho­tog­ra­ph­er” Nat Finkel­stein replied, “yeah, for 15 min­utes.” Giv­en the way the idea has come down to us, we’ve missed the ambi­gu­i­ty in this exchange. Do we all want to be famous for 15 min­utes (and only 15 min­utes), or do we only spend 15 min­utes want­i­ng to be famous before we move on and accept it as a suck­er’s game?

Finkel­stein him­self might have felt the lat­ter as he watched “pop die and punk being born” (he said in a 2001 inter­view). It was the death of Warhol’s fame ide­al, and the birth of some­thing new: music that loud­ly declared open hos­til­i­ties against the gate­keep­ers of pop­u­lar cul­ture. Not every punk band reserved its punch­es for those above them. Cal­i­for­nia hard­core leg­ends Fear — led by con­fronta­tion­al satirist Lee Ving — swing wild­ly in every direc­tion, hit­ting their audi­ence as often as the pow­ers that be.

When their first taste of Warho­lian fame came around — in Pene­lope Spheeris’ 1981 doc­u­men­tary The Decline of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion — Ving used the moment in front of the cam­eras to taunt and abuse audi­ence mem­bers until a few of them rushed the stage to fight him. Had NBC exec­u­tives seen this footage casu­al vio­lence, pro­fan­i­ty, and wor­ri­some ebul­lience, it’s unlike­ly they would have let return­ing guest John Belushi book Fear on Hal­loween night of that same year.

The SNL appear­ance — for which Fear proud­ly earned a per­ma­nent ban — became the stuff of leg­end. Not only did Ving and band get up to their usu­al antics onstage, but the show brought in a crew of about 80 DC punks (includ­ing Dischord Records/Fugazi founder Ian MacK­aye), who smashed up the set and joined the band in sol­i­dar­i­ty against New York and its sax­o­phones. The net­work cut the broad­cast short when one punk (iden­ti­fied as either MacK­aye or John Bran­non of the band Neg­a­tive Approach) yelled “F*ck New York!” into an open mic dur­ing the last song, “Let’s Start a War.” NBC shelved the footage for years.

Although well-known in fan com­mu­ni­ties, the appear­ance might have fad­ed from mem­o­ry were it not for the inter­net, which not only has the Warho­lian pow­er to make any­one famous (or “inter­net famous”) for no rea­son, but also rou­tine­ly res­ur­rects lost moments of fame and makes them last for­ev­er. Just so, the leg­end of Fear on SNL has grown over time on YouTube. It now war­rants a short doc­u­men­tary — one made, no less, by Jeff Kru­lik, a film­mak­er who, five years after the Fear appear­ance, doc­u­ment­ed anoth­er bur­geon­ing Fear-like fan­dom in his cult short, “Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot.”

“Fear on SNL,” above, includes sev­er­al inter­view clips from first­hand wit­ness­es. DC “punk super­fan” Bill MacKen­zie lis­tens to an old inter­view he gave about the show, in which he says the band asked him to come to the tap­ing. As Ian MacK­aye tells it, Lorne Michaels him­self placed the call. (He must mean pro­duc­er Dick Eber­sol, as Michaels left the show in 1980 and wouldn’t return until 1985.) But both MacK­aye and Ving remem­ber that it was Belushi who real­ly round­ed up the audi­ence of authen­tic punks, lever­ag­ing his own hard-won celebri­ty to stick it to the fac­to­ry that made his fame.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Night John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on Sat­ur­day Night Live, And They Got Banned from the Show

Andy Warhol’s 15 Min­utes: Dis­cov­er the Post­mod­ern MTV Vari­ety Show That Made Warhol a Star in the Tele­vi­sion Age (1985–87)

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live

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

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Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free — The Making of Wildflowers Is Streaming Free on YouTube

in Film, Music | November 14th, 2021

Orig­i­nal­ly released in cin­e­mas last month, the new doc­u­men­tary Tom Pet­ty: Some­where You Feel Free — The Mak­ing of Wild­flow­ers is now stream­ing free on YouTube. Here’s how Pet­ty’s offi­cial YouTube chan­nel pref­aces the film:

In ear­ly 2020, a col­lec­tion of 16mm film from 1993–95 was dis­cov­ered in the archive of leg­endary artist Tom Pet­ty. The film was shot while Tom was on a pro­lif­ic song­writ­ing streak for years mak­ing what he intend­ed to be a dou­ble album called Wild­flow­ers. Tom Pet­ty was known for being reclu­sive about his per­son­al life and his cre­ative process. “Some­where You Feel Free” allows you to spend 90 min­utes immersed in the can­did and musi­cal­ly rich world of Tom’s cre­ativ­i­ty as he makes his first album with leg­endary pro­duc­er Rick Rubin. With col­lab­o­ra­tors pro­vid­ing unri­valed access and fea­tur­ing nev­er before seen footage cap­tured dur­ing the mak­ing of Wild­flow­ers, Tom’s per­son­al favorite album.

You can stream the film by direc­tor Mary Whar­ton above, or find it cat­a­logued in our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More. Enjoy!

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 True His­to­ry Of The Trav­el­ing Wilburys, a Free Film Doc­u­ment­ing the Mak­ing of the 1980s Super Group

Tom Pet­ty Takes You Inside His Song­writ­ing Craft

Watch Tom Pet­ty (RIP) and the Heart­break­ers Per­form Their Last Song Togeth­er, “Amer­i­can Girl”: Record­ed on 9/25/17

Prince Plays a Mind-Blow­ing Gui­tar Solo On “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” While Tom Pet­ty Looks On

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Watch 30+ Exceptional Short Films for Free in The New Yorker’s Online Screening Room

in Animation, Comedy, Film, Magazines | November 12th, 2021

For short films, find­ing an audi­ence is an often uphill bat­tle. Even major award win­ners strug­gle to reach view­ers out­side of the fes­ti­val cir­cuit.

Thank good­ness for The Screen­ing Room, The New Yorker’s online plat­form for shar­ing short films.

It’s a mag­nif­i­cent free buf­fet for those of us who’d like noth­ing bet­ter than to gorge our­selves on these lit­tle gems.

If you’re not yet a fan of the form, allow us to sug­gest that any one of the 30 fic­tion­al shorts post­ed in The Screen­ing Room could func­tion as a superb palate cleanser between binge watch­es of more reg­u­lar fare.

Take co-direc­tors Ami­na Sut­ton and Maya Tanaka’s hilar­i­ous The Price of Cheap Rent, clock­ing in at 6 1/2 min­utes, above.

A com­mu­ni­ty-sup­port­ed project, star­ring Sut­ton and shot in Tanaka’s Brook­lyn apart­ment, it’s a com­e­dy of man­ners that brings fresh mean­ing to the semi-con­tro­ver­sial phrase “Bed Stuy, Do or Die.”

Sut­ton plays a young Black artist with a mas­ters from Yale, a gig behind the bar at Applebee’s, and a keen inter­est in posi­tion­ing her­self as an influ­encer, an ambi­tion the film­mak­ers lam­poon with glee.

When she dis­cov­ers that her new apart­ment is haunt­ed, she is “so freaked the f&ck out,” she spends a week sleep­ing in the park, before ven­tur­ing back:

And it’s a stu­dio, so it’s like liv­ing in a clown car of hell.

But once she dis­cov­ers (or pos­si­bly just decides) that the major­i­ty of the ghosts are Black, she begins plan­ning a pod­cast and makes her peace with stay­ing put.

Pros: the rent’s a lot less than the 1‑bathroom dump she shared with five room­mates, there’s laun­dry in the base­ment, and the ghosts, whom she now con­ceives of as ances­tors, share many of her inter­ests — his­to­ry, the arts, and the 1995 live action/CGI adap­ta­tion of Casper the Friend­ly Ghost. (They give Ghost­busters a thumbs down.)

Cons: the ghost of an 18th-cen­tu­ry Dutch Protes­tant set­tler whose white fragili­ty man­i­fests in irri­tat­ing, but man­age­able ways.

Those with 18 min­utes to spare should check out Joy Joy Nails, anoth­er very fun­ny film hing­ing on iden­ti­ty.

Every day a group of salty, young Kore­an women await the van that will trans­port them from their cramped quar­ters in Flush­ing, Queens, to a nail salon in a ritzi­er — and, judg­ing by the cus­tomers, far whiter — neigh­bor­hood.

Writer-direc­tor Joey Ally con­trasts the salon’s aggres­sive­ly pink decor and the employ­ees’ chum­my def­er­ence to their reg­u­lar cus­tomers with the grub­bi­ness of the break room and the trans­ac­tion­al nature of the exchange.

“Any­one not fired with enthu­si­asm… will be!” threat­ens a yel­lowed notice taped in the employ­ees only area.

Behind the reg­is­ter, the veil is lift­ed a bit, nar­row­ing the upstairs/downstairs divide with real­is­ti­cal­ly home­made signs:

“CASH! FOR TIP ONLY”

Like Sut­ton and Tana­ka, Ally is versed in hor­ror tropes, inspir­ing dread with close ups of pumice stones, emory boards, and cuti­cle trim­mers at work.

When a more objec­tive view is need­ed, she cuts to the black-and-white secu­ri­ty feed under the recep­tion counter.

When one of the cus­tomers calls to ask if her miss­ing ear­ring was left in the wax­ing room, the sto­ry takes a trag­ic turn, though for rea­sons more com­plex than one might assume.

Ally’s script punc­tures the all-too-com­mon per­cep­tion of nail salon employ­ees as a mono­lith­ic immi­grant mass to explore themes of dom­i­nance and bias between rep­re­sen­ta­tives of var­ied cul­tures, a point dri­ven home by the sub­ti­tles, or absence there­of.

The 2017 film also tapped into its release year zeit­geist with a plot point involv­ing the boss’ son.

On a tight sched­ule? You can still squeeze in Undis­cov­ered, direc­tor Sara Litzen­berg­er’s 3‑minute ani­ma­tion from 2014.

Iden­ti­ty fac­tors in here, too, as a Sasquatch-like crea­ture ter­ri­fies a string of cam­era wield­ing humans in its attempt to get a pho­to­graph that will show it as it wish­es to be per­ceived.

It’s an eas­i­ly digest­ed delight, suit­able for all ages.

Explore all 30+ fic­tion­al shorts in the Screen­ing Room for free here or on The New York­er’s YouTube playlist. You can find them all embed­ded and stream­able below.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch the Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Short “Hair Love”

Watch 66 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed-and-Award-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Shorts Online, Cour­tesy of the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Watch 36 Short Ani­ma­tions That Tell the Ori­gin Sto­ries of Mexico’s Indige­nous Peo­ples in Their Own Lan­guages

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Rare Book Featuring the Concept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune Goes Up for Auction (1975)

in Books, Film, History, Sci Fi | November 9th, 2021


Denis Vil­leneu­ve’s new adap­ta­tion of Frank Her­bert’s Dune has made a decent­ly promis­ing start to what looks set to shape up into an epic series of films. But how­ev­er many install­ments it final­ly com­pris­es, it’s unlike­ly to run any­where near as long as Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky’s ver­sion — had Jodor­owsky actu­al­ly made his ver­sion, that is. Pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, that project promised to unite the tal­ents of not just the cre­ator of the Dune uni­verse and the direc­tor of The Holy Moun­tain, but those of Mœbius, H.R. Giger, Sal­vador Dalí, Pink Floyd, Orson Welles, and Mick Jag­ger. Even David Lynch’s Dune, for all its large-scale weird­ness, would sure­ly play like My Din­ner with Andre by com­par­i­son.

Alas, none of us will ever get to see Jodor­owsky’s Dune, now one of the most sto­ried of all unmade films. But one of us — one of the deep-pock­et­ed among us, at least — now has a chance to own the book. Not Her­bert’s nov­el: the book assem­bled cir­ca 1985 as a pitch­ing aid, meant to show stu­dios the exten­sive pre-pro­duc­tion work Jodor­owsky, pro­duc­er Michel Sey­doux, and their col­lab­o­ra­tors had done.

“Filled with the script, sto­ry­boards, con­cept art, and more, the book is basi­cal­ly as close as any­one can get to see­ing Jodorowsky’s ver­sion of Dune,” writes io9’s Ger­main Lussier. “But, of course, the direc­tor and his team only cre­at­ed a hand­ful of copies and this was decades ago. This isn’t a book you can just get on Ama­zon.”


But you can get it at Christie’s, on whose auc­tion block it’s expect­ed to go for between €25,000 and €35,000 (around USD $30,000–40,000). Reck­on­ing that only ten to twen­ty copies were ever print­ed, the house­’s list­ing describes the book as “an extra­or­di­nary arti­fact” from “a doomed project which inspired legions of film-mak­ers and movie­go­ers alike.” Despite all of Hol­ly­wood ulti­mate­ly pass­ing on this enor­mous­ly ambi­tious adap­ta­tion, “all of this was not in vain.” Jodor­owsky him­self claims that, though unre­al­ized, his Dune set a prece­dent for “a larg­er-than-life sci­ence fic­tion movie, out­side of the sci­en­tif­ic rig­or of 2001: A Space Odyssey.” Its influ­ence, accord­ing to Christie’s, is present in 1970s films like Star Wars and Alien. Would it be too much to sense a trace of the Jodor­owskyan in Vil­leneu­ve’s Dune as well?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, That Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

Mœbius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Mas­ter­piece, The Incal, Brought to Life in a Tan­ta­liz­ing Ani­ma­tion

The Dune Graph­ic Nov­el: Expe­ri­ence Frank Herbert’s Epic Sci-Fi Saga as You’ve Nev­er Seen It Before

Ale­jan­dro Jodorowsky’s 82 Com­mand­ments For Liv­ing

Watch the First Trail­er for Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s Adap­ta­tion of Frank Herbert’s Clas­sic Sci-Fi Nov­el

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 or on Face­book.

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An Introduction to the Chrysler Building, New York’s Art Deco Masterpiece, by John Malkovich (1994)

in Architecture, Design, Film, History | November 5th, 2021

No old stuff for me, no bes­tial copy­ings of arch­es and columns and cor­nices. Me, I’m new.  
             — archi­tect William Van Alen, design­er of the Chrysler Build­ing

Many peo­ple claim the Chrysler Build­ing as their favorite New York City edi­fice and actor John Malkovich is one such:

It’s so crazy and vig­or­ous in its exe­cu­tion, so breath­tak­ing in its vision, so bril­liant­ly eccen­tric.

Malkovich, who’s not shy about tak­ing pot­shots at the city’s “vio­lence and filth” in the BBC doc­u­men­tary short above, rhap­sodizes over Detroit indus­tri­al­ist Wal­ter P. Chrysler’s “lat­ter day pyra­mid in Man­hat­tan.”

Malkovich’s unmis­tak­able voice, pegged by The Guardian as “waft­ing, whis­pery, and reedy” and which he him­self poo poos as sound­ing like it belongs to some­one who’s “labored under heavy nar­cotics for years,” pairs well with descrip­tions so plum­my, one has to imag­ine he penned them him­self. (No writer is cred­it­ed.)

After show­ing us the open-to-the-pub­lic lobby’s “deli­cious Art Deco fit­tings,” ceil­ing mur­al, and intri­cate, veneered ele­va­tor doors, Malkovich gives us a tour of some off-lim­its upper floors.

Unlike the Empire State Build­ing, which best­ed the Chrysler Building’s brief record as the world’s tallest build­ing (1046 feet, 77 sto­ries), you can’t pur­chase tick­ets to admire the view from the top.

But Malkovich has the star pow­er to gain access to Celes­tial, the sev­en­ty-first floor obser­va­to­ry that has been closed to the pub­lic since 1945 and is cur­rent­ly occu­pied by a pri­vate firm.

He also has a wan­der around the bar­ren Cloud Club, a sup­per club and speakeasy for gen­tle­man one per­centers. Its mish­mash of styles rep­re­sent­ed a con­ces­sion on archi­tect Van Alen’s part. The build­ing’s exte­ri­or was an ele­gant mod­ernist homage to Chrysler’s hub­caps and hood orna­ments, but between the 66th and 68th floor, the Cloud Club catered to the promis­cu­ous tastes of the rich and pow­er­ful — Tudor, Olde Eng­lish, Neo-Clas­si­cal…

The New York Times reports that it boast­ed what “was reput­ed to be the grand­est men’s room in all of New York.”

A Duke Elling­ton sound­track and vin­tage footage fea­tur­ing Van Alen cos­tumed to resem­ble his famous cre­ation sup­ply a taste of the excite­ment that her­ald­ed the building’s 1930 open­ing, even if those with a fear of heights may swoon at the sight of pret­ty young things reclin­ing on high beams and per­form­ing oth­er feats of der­ring-do.

Malkovich, ever the cool cus­tomer, dis­plays his lack of ver­ti­go by casu­al­ly prop­ping a foot on the rooftop’s edge to com­mune with the icon­ic eagle-head­ed gar­goyles.

The building’s unique flour­ish­es caused a sen­sa­tion, but not every­one was a fan.

Malkovich clear­ly savors his swipe at crit­ics who decried the new build­ing as too shiny:

For­tu­nate­ly these crit­ics are long dead so we can’t even call their offices and taunt them as they should be taunt­ed.

He’s more tem­per­ate when it comes to author and social philoso­pher Lewis Mum­ford, whose beef with the sky­scraper is under­stand­able, giv­en the his­toric con­text — the stock mar­ket crashed the day after the secret­ly con­struct­ed spire was riv­et­ed into place:

Such build­ings show one of the real dan­gers of a plu­toc­ra­cy: it gives the mas­ters of our civ­i­liza­tion an unusu­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to exhib­it their bar­barous egos, with no sense of restraint or shame.

Near­ly one hun­dred years lat­er, bar­barous egos con­tin­ue to erect sky­scrap­ing tem­ples to their own van­i­ty, but as Malkovich points out, they’re far bland­er, if taller.

The Chrysler Build­ing is now wide­ly rec­og­nized as one of New York City’s most mag­nif­i­cent jew­els, and the Land­marks Preser­va­tion Com­mis­sion recent­ly approved plans to con­struct a pub­lic obser­va­tion deck on the Chrysler Building’s 61st floor, just above its icon­ic Art Deco eagles, though it’s too ear­ly to tell if it will be ready in time for a cen­ten­ni­al cel­e­bra­tion.

Until then, the gen­er­al pub­lic must con­tent itself with explor­ing the Chrysler Building’s lob­by dur­ing week­day busi­ness hours.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

Famous Archi­tects Dress as Their Famous New York City Build­ings (1931)

A New Inter­ac­tive Map Shows All Four Mil­lion Build­ings That Exist­ed in New York City from 1939 to 1941

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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