How Agnès Varda Explores Beauty in Cléo from 5 to 7: a Video Essay

in Film | September 9th, 2021

“We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.” That quote is usu­al­ly attrib­uted to Anaïs Nin, who counts among the most famous Parisi­ennes despite only hav­ing spent a rel­a­tive­ly short stretch of her life there. Cléo Vic­toire must also occu­py those same ranks, despite being a whol­ly fic­tion­al char­ac­ter. We know her as the pro­tag­o­nist of 1962’s Cléo from 5 to 7, the break­out fea­ture by French New Wave auteur Agnès Var­da — anoth­er of the great Parisi­ennes of our time, if one reluc­tant enough to have arrived for her edu­ca­tion at the Sor­bonne see­ing Paris as a “grey, inhu­mane, sad city.” Still, as Cléo’s per­am­bu­la­tions through and inter­ac­tions with Paris reveal, Var­da cer­tain­ly knew how to use the place.

As the film plays out in real time, “we fol­low Cléo through an after­noon as she jour­neys across real loca­tions in Paris, wait­ing for her dread­ed test results to be ready.” So says Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, in his new video essay “Through Agnes Var­da’s Look­ing Glass.” A promis­ing singer, Cléo has under­gone a med­ical exam­i­na­tion to deter­mine whether or not she has can­cer, and not until the final scene will she have the answer.

In the mean­time, Var­da takes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to “paint a com­plex pic­ture of a com­plex woman on a stress­ful day in her life.” This stress prompts Cléo “to exam­ine and ulti­mate­ly con­front her self-image,” a jour­ney that takes her past, among oth­er things, more than a few mir­rors.

Begin­ning the film as a self-regard­ing char­ac­ter — in the most lit­er­al sense — Cléo nev­er pass­es up a chance to check her own reflec­tion, and thus con­firm her own exis­tence. “If she’s not a beau­ti­ful, healthy, up-and-com­ing singer,” as Puschak artic­u­lates the ques­tion that descends upon her, “who is she?” Com­posed only of out­side per­cep­tions, Cléo’s cen­ter can­not hold; even­tu­al­ly “she dis­cards the iden­ti­ty she’s made for oth­ers. She ceas­es to be an object, looked at even by her­self and becomes a sub­ject, the one who looks.” Her cri­sis forces her to “observe the world as it is, not as a reflec­tion of peo­ple’s expec­ta­tion of her.” Var­da’s cin­e­mat­ic vision of her trans­for­ma­tion shows what it is to see things not as we are, but as they are.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the French New Wave Changed Cin­e­ma: A Video Intro­duc­tion to the Films of Godard, Truf­faut & Their Fel­low Rule-Break­ers

How Michel Legrand (RIP) Gave the French New Wave a Sound: Revis­it the Influ­en­tial Music He Com­posed for Jean-Luc Godard & Jacques Demy’s Films

Jean-Luc Godard’s Breath­less: How World War II Changed Cin­e­ma & Helped Cre­ate the French New Wave

How David Lynch Manip­u­lates You: A Close Read­ing of Mul­hol­land Dri­ve

What Andrei Tarkovsky’s Most Noto­ri­ous Scene Tells Us About Time Dur­ing the Pan­dem­ic: A Video Essay

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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Darth Vader’s Voice: The Original Voice Versus the Vocals of James Earl Jones

in Film | September 8th, 2021

The hulk­ing black-caped fig­ure, “a walk­ing iron lung,” as George Lucas called him in 1977, Darth Vad­er more than right­ly tops a list of the 50 best movie vil­lains of all time as the “gold stan­dard of vil­lainy,” but it took more than inspired cos­tum­ing to make him so. Vad­er is a com­pos­ite cre­ation of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent tal­ents. The qual­i­ty by which we most know (and fear) him – the boom­ing voice that com­mands and kills from afar — came, of course, from James Earl Jones. As one of the 20th century’s great­est actors, it’s fair to say that Jones not only pro­vid­ed Vader’s voice, but he also pro­vid­ed the vil­lains soul, inas­much as the Sith Lord had one left.

Although he redeemed him­self at the end of Return of the Jedi, Vader’s human­i­ty was an open ques­tion through­out most of the tril­o­gy. When he “nat­u­ral­ly … want­ed to make Darth Vad­er more inter­est­ing, more sub­tle, more psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed,” Jones says,” Lucas report­ed­ly replied, “No, no. What we’re find­ing out is you’ve got to keep his voice on a very nar­row band of inflec­tion because he ain’t human, real­ly.”

While he wor­ried about cast­ing the only Black actor in the first Star Wars film in the role of a dehu­man­ized vil­lain, Lucas ulti­mate­ly decid­ed that no one else, not even Orson Welles, could con­vey Vader’s seri­ous intent.

But first, actor David Prowse under­stand­ably thought he had the role when he put on the heavy black suit, hel­met, and cape. Best known for his role as the Green Cross Code Man, a well-loved pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment hero in the UK, the for­mer body­builder Prowse per­formed Vader’s lines from inside the cos­tume, his voice muf­fled, as you can hear in the clips above, by the mask. Dur­ing the film­ing of Star Wars: A New Hope, Prowse was told that Vader’s lines would be re-record­ed. He did not know that some­one else would play the role.

Jones him­self asked for no cred­it and did not receive any until Return of the Jedi. Paid $7,500, he thought of the 2 ½ hours spent in the record­ing booth for the first film as “just spe­cial effects.” (The real effects artist, sound design­er Ben Burtt, cre­at­ed Vader’s icon­ic mechan­i­cal breath­ing sound by sync­ing record­ings of his scu­ba gear to Jones’ breaths.) Jones once told Star Wars Insid­er that David Prowse “is Vad­er.” And while the six-foot-sev­en Prowse, who passed away last Novem­ber, might have been per­fect­ly cast as the impos­ing form, no one on set could hear him as Darth Vad­er.

“With a strong Devon­shire accent that earned him the nick­name ‘Darth Farmer’ from the crew,” Force Mate­r­i­al notes, “the real­i­ty is that Dave Prowse was nev­er going to be called upon to pro­vide the voice of Darth Vad­er.” We might digress on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of accents in the Star Wars uni­verse. Maybe Prowse wasn’t the right Eng­lish­man to play the part, but why didn’t Lucas cast anoth­er British actor, as he had for every oth­er major bad guy in the film, begin­ning a tra­di­tion that con­tin­ues in Star Wars movies and relat­ed media over forty years lat­er?

There’s hard­ly any ques­tion. No one can com­mand atten­tion with his voice like James Earl Jones. And per­haps no oth­er actor could give such endur­ing­ly human men­ace to a char­ac­ter described by its cre­ator as a walk­ing iron lung.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Earl Jones Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”

The Com­plete Star Wars “Fil­mu­men­tary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Doc­u­men­tary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Com­men­tary

The Orig­i­nal Star Wars Tril­o­gy Adapt­ed into a 14-Hour Radio Dra­ma by NPR (1981–1996)

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

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RIP Jean-Paul Belmondo: The Actor Who Went from the French New Wave to Action Superstardom

in Film | September 7th, 2021

For quite a stretch, the late Jean-Paul Bel­mon­do was France’s biggest movie star. He also, in what now looks like the greater achieve­ment, stub­born­ly remained the most French of all movie stars. In France of the 1960s, an actor of Bel­mon­do’s gen­er­a­tion and lev­el of suc­cess would have been expect­ed to try mak­ing a go of it in Hol­ly­wood. And as he him­self admit­ted at the time, “every French­man dreams of mak­ing a West­ern.” But “Amer­i­ca has plen­ty of good actors. I’m not being false­ly mod­est, but why would they need me? I pre­fer a nation­al film to an inter­na­tion­al film.” When a cin­e­ma detach­es from its coun­try, “some­thing is lost. Look at what hap­pened to Italy when they went inter­na­tion­al.”

Though he nev­er did time as Hol­ly­wood’s token French­man, Bel­mon­do did appear in a few Ital­ian pic­tures (includ­ing the work of such mas­ters as Vit­to­rio De Sica and Mau­ro Bologni­ni) ear­ly in the 1960s, right after he shot to star­dom. His launch vehi­cle was, of course, Jean-Luc Godard­’s Breath­less, a har­bin­ger of La Nou­velle Vague and its exhil­a­rat­ing­ly delib­er­ate break­age of cin­e­ma’s rules.

Bel­mon­do would go on to make two more fea­tures with Godard: A Woman Is a Woman and Pier­rot le Fou, in both of which he starred along­side Anna Kari­na (anoth­er of the French New Wave icons we’ve lost in this decade). Oth­er auteurs also came call­ing: François Truf­faut, Alain Resnais, Jean-Pierre Melville.

Melville sits along­side Bel­mon­do in the 1962 inter­view clip above to dis­cuss their col­lab­o­ra­tion Le Dou­los, “a good old gang­ster film.” But Bel­mon­do’s pro­tag­o­nist, the tit­u­lar police informer, is hard­ly a con­ven­tion­al gang­ster. “He’s an ele­gant guy,” says the actor. “He’s ele­gant in every­thing he does, in his ges­tures and actions, despite appear­ances to the con­trary.” The same could be said of many of the char­ac­ters Bel­mon­do played through­out his career, even dur­ing his time as a Burt Reynolds-style action hero in the 1970s and 80s (dur­ing which, it must be not­ed, he did all his own stunts). We’re unlike­ly to see his like of nation­al super­star again — and cer­tain not to see anoth­er with such savoir-faire.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jean-Luc Godard’s Breath­less: How World War II Changed Cin­e­ma & Helped Cre­ate the French New Wave

How Anna Kari­na (RIP) Became the Mes­mer­iz­ing Face of the French New Wave

How Michel Legrand (RIP) Gave the French New Wave a Sound: Revis­it the Influ­en­tial Music He Com­posed for Jean-Luc Godard & Jacques Demy’s Films

How the French New Wave Changed Cin­e­ma: A Video Intro­duc­tion to the Films of Godard, Truf­faut & Their Fel­low Rule-Break­ers

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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How Mushroom Time-Lapses Are Filmed: A Glimpse Into the Pioneering Time-Lapse Cinematography Behind the Netflix Documentary Fantastic Fungi

in Biology, Film, K-12, Nature, Photography, Science | September 3rd, 2021

Mush­rooms are hav­ing a moment, thanks in part to pio­neer­ing time-lapse cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Louie Schwartzberg’s doc­u­men­tary Fan­tas­tic Fun­gi.

Now stream­ing on Net­flix, the film has giv­en rise to a bumper crop of funghi fantat­ics, who sprang up like, well, mush­rooms, to join the exist­ing ranks of cit­i­zen sci­en­tists, culi­nary fans, week­end for­agers, ama­teur grow­ers, and spir­i­tu­al seek­ers.

Schwartzberg, who ear­li­er visu­al­ized pol­li­na­tion from the flower’s point of view in the Meryl Streep-nar­rat­ed Wings of Life, is a true believ­er in the pow­er of mush­rooms, cit­ing funghi’s role in soil cre­ation and health, and their poten­tial for rem­e­dy­ing a num­ber of press­ing glob­al prob­lems, as well as a host of human ail­ments.

Fan­tas­tic Funghi focus­es on sev­en pil­lars of ben­e­fits brought to the table by the fun­gal king­dom and its Inter­net-like under­ground net­work of myceli­um:

  1. Bio­di­ver­si­ty

A num­ber of projects are explor­ing the ways in which the myceli­um world can pull us back from the bring of  deser­ti­za­tion, water short­age, food short­age, bee colony col­lapse, tox­ic con­t­a­m­i­nants, nuclear dis­as­ters, oil spills, plas­tic pol­lu­tion, and glob­al warm­ing.

  1. Inno­va­tion

Mush­room-relat­ed indus­tries are eager to press funghi into ser­vice as envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able faux leather, build­ing mate­ri­als, pack­ag­ing, and meat alter­na­tives.

  1. Food

From fine din­ing to for­ag­ing off-the-grid, mush­rooms are prized for their culi­nary and nutri­tion­al ben­e­fits.

  1. Phys­i­cal Health and Well­ness

Will the hum­ble mush­room prove mighty enough to do an end run around pow­er­ful drug com­pa­nies as a source of inte­gra­tive med­i­cine to help com­bat dia­betes, liv­er dis­ease, inflam­ma­tion, insom­nia and cog­ni­tive decline?

  1. Men­tal Health

Researchers at Johns Hop­kins, UCLA, and NYU are run­ning clin­i­cal tri­als on the ben­e­fits of psy­che­del­ic psilo­cy­bin mush­rooms as a tool for treat­ing addic­tion, depres­sion, anx­i­ety, PTSD and sui­ci­dal ideation.

  1. Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty

Of course, there’s also a rich tra­di­tion of reli­gions and indi­vid­ual seek­ers deploy­ing mind alter­ing psy­choac­tive mush­rooms as a form of sacra­ment or a tool for plumb­ing the mys­ter­ies of life.

  1. The Arts

Direc­tor Schwartzberg under­stand­ably views mush­rooms as muse, a fit­ting sub­ject for pho­tog­ra­phy, music, film, poet­ry, art and oth­er cre­ative endeav­ors.

 

With regard to this final pil­lar, many view­ers may be sur­prised to learn how much of the 15 years Schwartzberg ded­i­cat­ed to cap­tur­ing the exquis­ite cycle of fun­gal regen­er­a­tion and decom­po­si­tion took place indoors.

As he explains in the Wired video above, his pre­ci­sion equip­ment excels at cap­tur­ing devel­op­ment that’s invis­i­ble to the human eye, but is no match for such nat­ur­al world dis­rup­tions as insects and wind.

Instead, he and his team built con­trolled grow­ing envi­ron­ments, where high­ly sen­si­tive time lapse cam­eras, dol­lies, timed grow lights, and more cin­e­mat­ic light­ing instru­ments could be left in place.

Set dress­ings of moss and logs, cou­pled with a very short depth of field helped to bring the Great Out­doors onscreen, with occa­sion­al chro­makeyed panora­mas of the nat­ur­al world fill­ing in the gaps.

Even in such lab-like con­di­tions, cer­tain ele­ments were nec­es­sar­i­ly left to chance. Mush­rooms grow noto­ri­ous­ly quick­ly, and even with con­stant mon­i­tor­ing and cal­cu­la­tions, there was plen­ty of poten­tial for one of his stars to miss their mark, shoot­ing out of frame.

Just one of the ways that mush­rooms and humans oper­ate on rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent time­lines. The direc­tor bowed to the shrooms, return­ing to square one on the fre­quent occa­sions when a sequence got away from him.

Pro­vid­ing view­ers an immer­sive expe­ri­ence of the under­ground myceli­um net­work required high pow­ered micro­scopes, a sol­id cement floor, and a bit of movie mag­ic to finesse. What you see in the final cut is the work of CGI ani­ma­tors, who used Schwartzberg’s footage as their blue­print.

Net­flix sub­scribers can stream Fan­tas­tic Fun­gi for free.

From Octo­ber 15 — 17, film­mak­er Louie Schwartzberg is host­ing a free, vir­tu­al Fan­tas­tic Fun­gi Glob­al Sum­mit. Reg­is­ter here.

You can also browse his col­lec­tion of com­mu­ni­ty mush­room recipes and sub­mit your own, down­load Fan­tas­tic Fungi’s Stoned Ape poster, or have a ram­ble through a trove of relat­ed videos and arti­cles in the Mush Room.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

John Cage Had a Sur­pris­ing Mush­room Obses­sion (Which Began with His Pover­ty in the Depres­sion)

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

The Gold­en Guide to Hal­lu­cino­genic Plants: Dis­cov­er the 1977 Illus­trat­ed Guide Cre­at­ed by Harvard’s Ground­break­ing Eth­nob­otanist Richard Evan Schultes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Brood X Cicadas are her mush­rooms. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Velvet Underground: Get a First Glimpse of Todd Haynes’ Upcoming Documentary on the Most Influential Avant-Garde Rockers

in Film, History, Music | September 2nd, 2021

To the ques­tion of the most influ­en­tial band formed in the 1960s a list of easy answers unfolds, begin­ning with the Bea­t­les, the Beach Boys, and the Rolling Stones. As three of the mak­ers of the best-sell­ing records of all time, those bands all lay fair claim to the title. But even with­in the com­mer­cial dynamo of post­war Amer­i­ca, it was also pos­si­ble to exert great influ­ence with­out top­ping the charts, or indeed with­out even reach­ing them. This is proven by the sto­ry of avant-garde rock­ers the Vel­vet Under­ground, whose mea­ger suc­cess in their day as com­pared with their for­mi­da­ble cul­tur­al lega­cy inspired Bri­an Eno to sum them up with a quip now so well-known as to have become a cliché.

But not even a mind like Eno’s can tru­ly sum up the Vel­vet Under­ground. Bet­ter to tell the band’s sto­ry — the sto­ry, in its way, of art and pop­u­lar cul­ture in mid-to-late 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca — in a fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary, as Todd Haynes has done with The Vel­vet Under­ground, which pre­miered at this year’s Cannes Film Fes­ti­val and debuts on AppleTV+ on Octo­ber 15th.

“Haynes appears to have vac­u­umed up every last pho­to­graph and raw scrap of home-movie and archival footage of the band that exists and stitched it all into a cor­us­cat­ing doc­u­ment that feels like a time-machine kalei­do­scope,” writes Vari­ety crit­ic Owen Gleiber­man. He intro­duces the Vel­vets and their asso­ciates “by play­ing their words off the flick­er­ing black-and-white images of their Warhol screen tests.”

The Vel­vets were, in a sense, a prod­uct of Warhol’s Fac­to­ry. The pop-art icon man­aged the band him­self ear­ly on, con­nect­ing them with the singer who would become the sec­ond tit­u­lar fig­ure on their debut The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico and design­ing that album’s oft-visu­al­ly-ref­er­enced banana-stick­er cov­er. Hav­ing died in 1987, Warhol could­n’t grant Haynes an inter­view; hav­ing fol­lowed Warhol the next year, nei­ther could Nico. Band leader Lou Reed, too, has now been gone for the bet­ter part of a decade, but he does have plen­ty to say in the 1986 South Bank Show doc­u­men­tary above. Haynes’ The Vel­vet Under­ground includes Reed in archival footage, but also fea­tures new rem­i­nis­cences from sur­viv­ing mem­bers like Mau­reen Tuck­er and John Cale. Like all human beings, the Vel­vets are mor­tal; but their expan­sion of rock­’s son­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties will out­last us all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Explains Why He Decid­ed to Give Up Paint­ing & Man­age the Vel­vet Under­ground Instead (1966)

Watch Footage of the Vel­vet Under­ground Com­pos­ing “Sun­day Morn­ing,” the First Track on Their Sem­i­nal Debut Album The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

The Vel­vet Under­ground Cap­tured in Col­or Con­cert Footage by Andy Warhol (1967)

Watch The Vel­vet Under­ground Per­form in Rare Col­or Footage: Scenes from a Viet­nam War Protest Con­cert (1969)

Hear The Vel­vet Underground’s “Leg­endary Gui­tar Amp Tapes,” Which Show­cas­es the Bril­liance & Inno­va­tion of Lou Reed’s Gui­tar Play­ing (1969)

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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The Black Film Archive: A New Site Highlights 200+ Noteworthy Black Films Made Between 1915–1979

in Archives, Film | August 30th, 2021

The just launched Black Film Archive is a labor of love for the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, thanks to audi­ence strate­gist, Maya Cade.

Begin­ning in June 2020, she began research­ing films pro­duced between 1915 to 1979 that are avail­able for stream­ing, and “have some­thing sig­nif­i­cant to say about the Black expe­ri­ence; speak to Black audi­ences; and/or have a Black star, writer, pro­duc­er, or direc­tor.”

Thus far, she’s col­lect­ed over 200 films, span­ning the peri­od between 1915’s Black-pro­duced silent slap­stick short, Two Knights of Vaude­ville and 1978’s star­ry big bud­get musi­cal, The Wiz, a com­mer­cial flop that “major Hol­ly­wood stu­dios used … as a rea­son to stop invest­ing in Black cin­e­ma.”

Cade rea­sons that the rise of Black inde­pen­dent film in the 80s makes 1979 “feel like a nat­ur­al stop­ping point” for the archive. She’s also push­ing back against the notion of Black Films as trau­ma porn:

As debates about Black film’s asso­ci­a­tion with trau­ma rage on, I hope Black Film Archive can offer a dif­fer­ent lens through which to under­stand Black cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry, one that takes into con­sid­er­a­tion the full weight of the past. Through this lens, it is easy to see that the notion that “Black films are only trau­mat­ic” is based on gen­er­al­iza­tions and impres­sions of recent times (often pinned to the suc­cess of films like 12 Years a Slave) rather than a deep­er engage­ment with his­to­ry, which reveals that “slave films” con­sti­tute only a small per­cent­age of the Black films that have been made. I hope con­ver­sa­tions evolve to con­sid­er the expan­sive archive of rad­i­cal ideas and expres­sion found in Black films’ past.

The col­lec­tion, which Cade will be updat­ing month­ly, has some­thing for every­one — com­e­dy, dra­ma, doc­u­men­taries, musi­cals, silent films, for­eign films, and yes, Blax­ploita­tion.

Some of the titles — To Sir with Love, A Raisin in the Sun, Shaft — are far from obscure, and you’ll find appear­ances by many Black per­form­ers and doc­u­men­tary sub­jects whose lega­cies endure: Paul Robe­son, Cice­ly Tyson, Sid­ney Poiti­er, Josephine Bak­er, Dorothy Dan­dridge, Bil­ly Dee Williams and Richard Pry­or, Muham­mad Ali, Mal­colm X, Light­nin’ Hop­kins.…

But the archive is also a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cov­er direc­tors, per­form­ers, and films with which you may be utter­ly unfa­mil­iar.

Black Girl, 1966, was the first fea­ture of Ous­mane Sem­bène, the father of African cin­e­ma, and the first fea­ture made in Africa by a sub-Saha­ran African to attract inter­na­tion­al notice. It fol­lows a Sene­galese domes­tic work­er serv­ing a wealthy white fam­i­ly on the Côte d’Azur. Ear­ly on Dioua­na is seen work­ing in the kitchen, naive­ly dream­ing of adven­tures that sure­ly await once she’s fin­ished prepar­ing “a real African dish” for her employer’s din­ner guests:

Maybe we’ll go to Cannes, Nice, Monte Car­lo. We’ll look in all the pret­ty stores and when the mis­tress pays me, I’ll buy pret­ty dress­es, shoes, silk undies, and pret­ty wigs. And I’ll get my pic­ture tak­en on the beach, and I’ll send it back to Dakar, and they’ll all die of jeal­ousy!

One of sev­er­al adap­ta­tions of Tim­o­thy Shay Arthur’s pop­u­lar 1854 tem­per­ance nov­el, The Col­ored Play­ers Film Cor­po­ra­tion of Philadelphia’s 1926 melo­dra­ma, Ten Nights in a Bar Room, fea­tures a star turn by the mul­ti-tal­ent­ed Charles Gilpin, the most suc­cess­ful Black stage per­former of the ear­ly 20th Cen­tu­ry.

The Emper­or Jones may have pro­vid­ed Paul Robe­son with his icon­ic, break­through role, but the part was first played onstage by Gilpin, who was fired by play­wright Eugene O’Neill after it was dis­cov­ered he was repeat­ed­ly swap­ping out the script’s many instances of the N‑word for gen­tler terms like “Black boy.”

As Indy Week’s Byron Woods notes in a pre­view of N, Adri­enne Ear­le Pender’s play about O’Neill and Gilpin:

A 1921 review in Negro World con­clud­ed, “We imag­ine if Mr. Gilpin is an intel­li­gent and loy­al Negro, his heart must ache and rebel with­in him as he is forced to belie his race.” When the work was staged in Harlem, Langston Hugh­es recalled that the audi­ence “howled with laugh­ter.”

The Oscar nom­i­nat­ed The Qui­et One, from 1948, was the first major Amer­i­can film to posi­tion a Black child — 10-year old non-actor Don­ald Thomp­son — front and cen­ter.

Osten­si­bly a doc­u­men­tary, it took an unflinch­ing look at the emo­tion­al­ly tur­bu­lent exis­tence of a neglect­ed Harlem boy, and offered no easy solu­tions, even as he begins to come out of his shell at the Wiltwyck School for Boys.

The cast, includ­ing a num­ber of stu­dents from the Wiltwyck School, is almost entire­ly Black, with Ulysses Kay’s jazz score pro­vid­ing an urgent pulse to real life scenes of mid-cen­tu­ry Harlem.

The white pro­duc­tion team fea­tured sev­er­al high pro­file, social­ly con­scious names — nov­el­ist and film crit­ic James Agee con­tributed poet­ic com­men­tary and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Helen Levitt was one of two prin­ci­pal cam­era peo­ple.

Cur­rent­ly, the Black Film Archive is orga­nized by decade, though we hope one day this might be expand­ed to encom­pass gen­res, as well as a search option that would allow view­ers to dis­cov­er work by direc­tor and per­form­ers.

For now, Cade’s cura­tor picks are an excel­lent place to begin your explo­rations.

This mam­moth under­tak­ing is a self-fund­ed one-woman oper­a­tion. Dona­tions are wel­come, as are paid sub­scrip­tions to the Black Film Archive Sub­stack.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Free Films by African Amer­i­can Film­mak­ers in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion … and the New Civ­il Rights Film, Just Mer­cy

Watch the First-Ever Kiss on Film Between Two Black Actors, Just Hon­ored by the Library of Con­gress (1898)

Watch the Pio­neer­ing Films of Oscar Micheaux, America’s First Great African-Amer­i­can Film­mak­er

Watch Lime Kiln Club Field Day, One of the Ear­li­est Sur­viv­ing Fea­ture Films with an All Black Cast (1913)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Two Haruki Murakami Stories Adapted into Short Films: Watch Attack on a Bakery (1982) and A Girl, She Is 100% (1983)

in Film, Literature | August 30th, 2021

At this year’s Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, the Award for Best Screen­play went to Ryusuke Ham­aguchi’s Dri­ve My Car, an adap­ta­tion of a sto­ry by Haru­ki Muraka­mi. So did FIPRESCI Prize, the Prize of the Ecu­meni­cal Jury, and no small amount of crit­i­cal acclaim, sug­gest­ing that the code for trans­lat­ing Muraka­mi onto the screen might final­ly have been cracked. Every now and again over the past forty years, a bold film­mak­er has tak­en on the chal­lenge of turn­ing a work of that most world-famous Japan­ese nov­el­ist into a fea­ture. But until recent­ly, the results have for the most part not been received as espe­cial­ly con­se­quen­tial in and of them­selves.

In gen­er­al, short fic­tion tends to pro­duce more sat­is­fy­ing adap­ta­tions than full-fledged nov­els, and Murakami’s work seems not to be an excep­tion (as under­scored a few years ago by Kore­an auteur Lee Chang-dong’s Burn­ing). Ham­aguchi’s film spins some 40 pages into a run­ning time of near­ly three hours, doing the oppo­site of what oth­er Japan­ese film­mak­ers have done with Murakami’s short sto­ries. In 1982, Nao­to Yamakawa made one of them into Attack on a Bak­ery, a short film run­ning less than twen­ty min­utes; the fol­low­ing year, he made anoth­er into the even short­er A Girl, She is 100%, run­ning less than fif­teen. Today Muraka­mi fans every­where can watch them both on Youtube, com­plete with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles.

The mate­r­i­al will feel famil­iar to Eng­lish-lan­guage Muraka­mi read­ers. A main char­ac­ter of the sto­ry “The Sec­ond Bak­ery Attack” rem­i­nisces about a rob­bery he attempt­ed as a hun­gry young man that went com­i­cal­ly off the rails, in a man­ner sim­i­lar to the one in Yamakawa’s first short. (In 2010 “The Sec­ond Bak­ery Attack,” where­in the now-mar­ried nar­ra­tor robs a fast-food joint with his new bride, itself became a short film direct­ed by Car­los Cuarón, broth­er of Alfon­so.) Though “The Bak­ery Attack” has nev­er been offi­cial­ly pub­lished in Eng­lish, “On See­ing the 100% Per­fect Girl One Beau­ti­ful April Morn­ing” has, and it now stands as one of Murakami’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive short works in that lan­guage; it also, in the orig­i­nal, pro­vides the basis for A Girl, She Is 100%.

“She doesn’t stand out in any way,” Murakami’s nar­ra­tor says of the tit­u­lar fig­ure. “Her clothes are noth­ing spe­cial. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn’t young, either — must be near thir­ty, not even close to a ‘girl,’ prop­er­ly speak­ing. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She’s the 100% per­fect girl for me.” Yamakawa dra­ma­tizes a sim­i­lar fleet­ing encounter and the roman­tic spec­u­la­tions that res­onate in the man’s mind. Like the half-baked philo­soph­i­cal and polit­i­cal con­vic­tions of the would-be rob­bers, these inspire the direc­tor to the kind of visu­al and for­mal inven­tive­ness one would expect giv­en his back­ground in Godard and Scors­ese schol­ar­ship. But the only film­mak­er name-checked is Woody Allen, which fans will rec­og­nize as a char­ac­ter­is­tic Muraka­mi ref­er­ence. So as are the inclu­sions of Wag­n­er, D.H. Lawrence, jazz music — and of course, an unex­pect­ed cat.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 12 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online

Dis­cov­er Haru­ki Murakami’s Adver­to­r­i­al Short Sto­ries: Rare Short-Short Fic­tion from the 1980s

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

A 3,350-Song Playlist of Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Per­son­al Record Col­lec­tion

Mem­o­ran­da: Haru­ki Murakami’s World Recre­at­ed as a Clas­sic Adven­ture Video Game

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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Benedict Cumberbatch Reads “the Best Cover Letter Ever Written”

in Film, History, Letters | August 26th, 2021

In the 1930s, many a writer jour­neyed to Hol­ly­wood in order to make his for­tune. The screen­writer’s life did­n’t sit well with some of them — just ask F. Scott Fitzger­ald or William Faulkn­er — but a fair few made more than a go of it out West. Take the Bal­ti­more-born Robert Pirosh, whose stud­ies at the Sor­bonne and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Berlin land­ed him a job as a copy­writer in New York. This work seems to have proven less than sat­is­fac­to­ry, as evi­denced by the piece of cor­re­spon­dence that, still in his ear­ly twen­ties, he wrote and sent to “as many direc­tors, pro­duc­ers and stu­dio exec­u­tives as he could find.” It was­n’t just a request for work; it was what Let­ters Live today calls “the best cov­er let­ter ever writ­ten.”

Pirosh’s impres­sive mis­sive, which you can hear read aloud by favorite Let­ters Live per­former Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch in the video above, runs, in full, as fol­lows:

Dear Sir:

I like words. I like fat but­tery words, such as ooze, turpi­tude, gluti­nous, toady. I like solemn, angu­lar, creaky words, such as strait­laced, can­tan­ker­ous, pecu­nious, vale­dic­to­ry. I like spu­ri­ous, black-is-white words, such as mor­ti­cian, liq­ui­date, ton­so­r­i­al, demi-monde. I like suave “V” words, such as Sven­gali, svelte, bravu­ra, verve. I like crunchy, brit­tle, crack­ly words, such as splin­ter, grap­ple, jos­tle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowl­ing words, such as skulk, glow­er, scab­by, churl. I like Oh-Heav­ens, my-gra­cious, land’s‑sake words, such as tricksy, tuck­er, gen­teel, hor­rid. I like ele­gant, flow­ery words, such as esti­vate, pere­gri­nate, ely­si­um, hal­cy­on. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blub­ber, squeal, drip. I like snig­gly, chuck­ling words, such as cowlick, gur­gle, bub­ble and burp.

I like the word screen­writer bet­ter than copy­writer, so I decid­ed to quit my job in a New York adver­tis­ing agency and try my luck in Hol­ly­wood, but before tak­ing the plunge I went to Europe for a year of study, con­tem­pla­tion and hors­ing around.

I have just returned and I still like words.

May I have a few with you?

Though not known as an unsub­tle actor, Cum­ber­batch seizes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to deliv­er each and every one of these choice words with its own vari­ety of exag­ger­at­ed rel­ish. Though none of these terms is espe­cial­ly recher­ché on its own, they must col­lec­tive­ly have giv­en the impres­sion of a for­mi­da­ble mas­tery of the Eng­lish lan­guage, espe­cial­ly to the ear of the aver­age Hol­ly­wood big-shot. One way or anoth­er, Pirosh’s let­ter did the trick: accord­ing to Let­ters of Note, it “secured him three inter­views, one of which led to his job as a junior writer at MGM. Fif­teen years lat­er,” he “won an Acad­e­my Award for Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play for his work on the war film Bat­tle­ground.”

A World War II pic­ture, Bat­tle­ground was writ­ten at least in part from Pirosh’s own expe­ri­ence: a few years into his Hol­ly­wood career, he enlist­ed and made a return to Europe, this time as a Mas­ter Sergeant in the 320th Reg­i­ment, 35th Infantry Divi­sion, see­ing action in France and Ger­many. After the war he went right back to writ­ing and pro­duc­ing, remain­ing active in the enter­tain­ment indus­try until at least the 1970s (and in fact, his writ­ing cred­its include con­tri­bu­tions to such pro­grams that defined that decade as Man­nix, Barn­a­by Jones, and Hawaii Five‑O). Pirosh’s was an envi­able 20th-cen­tu­ry career, and one that began with a suit­ably brazen — and still con­vinc­ing — 20th-cen­tu­ry adver­tise­ment for him­self.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Ball­sy Job Appli­ca­tion Let­ter (1958)

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Incensed Let­ter to the High School That Burned Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Kurt Vonnegut’s Let­ter of Advice to Peo­ple Liv­ing in the Year 2088

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads a Let­ter Alan Tur­ing Wrote in “Dis­tress” Before His Con­vic­tion For “Gross Inde­cen­cy”

Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Albert Camus’ Touch­ing Thank You Let­ter to His Ele­men­tary School Teacher

“Stop It and Just DO”: Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch Reads Advice on Over­com­ing Cre­ative Blocks, Writ­ten by Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse (1965)

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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