Hear Hans Zimmer’s Experimental Score for the New Dune Film

in Film, Music | November 1st, 2021

If you have not yet seen the first install­ment of Denis Villeneuve’s reimag­in­ing of Dune, you will find no spoil­ers here, though if you’ve read Frank Herbert’s cult clas­sic nov­el and/or seen David Lynch’s film adap­ta­tion (or even the for­get­table TV minis­eries from 20 years ago), you are famil­iar with the sto­ry. You can, how­ev­er, hear Hans Zim­mer’s com­plete sound­track above. If you love it, and if film crit­ic Mick LaSalle is right, you’re in for a treat: “If you like the music here, you’ll prob­a­bly like the movie,” LaSalle writes in a San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle review. “If you hate it, you can’t pos­si­bly enjoy Dune.”

The film’s music is relent­less and cre­ates a “sense of some­thing strange and unfa­mil­iar,” mak­ing sure “we nev­er for­get we’re watch­ing an entire­ly alien uni­verse.” Vet­er­an block­buster com­pos­er Hans Zim­mer cre­at­ed this son­ic atmos­phere with stu­dio effects and non­tra­di­tion­al instru­men­ta­tion, though one famil­iar ele­ment remains, as he tells Indiewire:

I kept think­ing, wher­ev­er you are in the future, the instru­ments will change due to tech­nol­o­gy, and we could be far more exper­i­men­tal, but the one thing that remains is the human voice, which there is a lot of.

Those voic­es include that of singer Lisa Ger­rard, for­mer­ly of Dead Can Dance, who “came up with this lan­guage that is all her own. It could be from the future, it could be from a dif­fer­ent world.”

Zimmer’s approach almost mir­rors that of his first big break, the score for 1988’s Rain Man, of which he said in 2008, “The Ray­mond char­ac­ter does­n’t actu­al­ly know where he is. The world is so dif­fer­ent to him. He might as well be on Mars. So, why don’t we just invent our own world music for a world that does­n’t real­ly exist?” Villeneuve’s Dune gives us an entire inter­plan­e­tary civ­i­liza­tion for which to invent music that did­n’t exist before. “I felt like there was a free­dom to get away from a West­ern Orches­tra,” Zim­mer told The New York Times, in a major under­state­ment.

One piece of music, played as the Atrei­des fam­i­ly arrives on Arrakis, involved 30 bag­pipers, record­ed togeth­er in Edin­burgh while social­ly dis­tanced. “Along with syn­the­siz­ers,” writes The New York Times’ Dar­ryn King, “you can hear scrap­ing met­al, Indi­an bam­boo flutes, Irish whis­tles, a jud­der­ing drum phrase that Zim­mer calls an ‘anti-groove,’ seis­mic rum­bles of dis­tort­ed gui­tar” and “a war for that is actu­al­ly a cel­lo.” The result “might be one of Zimmer’s most unortho­dox and most provoca­tive” pieces of work, and a far cry from the music that accom­pa­nied David Lynch’s beau­ti­ful fail­ure of a film in 1984.

Zim­mer claims nev­er to have seen Lynch’s film nor heard the sound­track by soft-rock super­stars Toto, unwill­ing to com­pro­mise the Dune he’d been imag­in­ing since he first read the book. “I’ve been think­ing about Dune for near­ly 50 years,” he says. Lynch has been try­ing to for­get his film for almost as long. The dense, com­pli­cat­ed mess of an adap­ta­tion so con­fused film execs and test audi­ences that the stu­dio added intro­duc­to­ry expo­si­tion, above, and hand­ed out glos­saries to audi­ences at the first screen­ings (though not, pre­sum­ably, flash­lights).

The choice of super­stars Toto, of “Africa” fame, brought audi­ences of Lynch’s film a “lux­u­ri­ant and pecu­liar sound­track,” sup­ple­ment­ed by the Vien­na Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra and a com­po­si­tion by Bri­an Eno. But it also inte­grat­ed famil­iar 80’s rock touch­es (as in “Desert Theme,” above), giv­ing the alien world Lynch imag­ined both a famil­iar son­ic tex­ture and a dat­ed sound. Thir­ty-sev­en years lat­er, sci­ence fic­tion films need no such com­fort­ing appa­ra­tus to make them palat­able. As both Vil­leneuve and Zim­mer real­ized in their work on Dune, a film about a total­ly unfa­mil­iar future civ­i­liza­tion — even one filled with humans who look like us — can look and sound as strange as tech­nol­o­gy and imag­i­na­tion will allow.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Glos­sary Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Gave Out to the First Audi­ences of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

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

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

Why You Should Read Dune: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Frank Herbert’s Eco­log­i­cal, Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci-Fi Epic

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

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Watch the New Trailer for a Kurt Vonnegut Documentary 40 Years In the Making

in Film, Literature | October 29th, 2021

When Kurt Von­negut first arrived in Dres­den, a city as yet untouched by war, crammed into a box­car with dozens of oth­er POWs, the city looked to him like “Oz,” he wrote in his semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal sixth nov­el Slaugh­ter­house-Five. After all, he says, “The only oth­er city I’d ever seen was Indi­anapo­lis, Indi­ana.” When Von­negut and his fel­low GIs emerged from the bow­els of the pork plant in which they’d wait­ed out the Allied bomb­ing of the city, they wit­nessed the after­math of Dresden’s destruc­tion. The city for­mer­ly known as “the Flo­rence of the Elbe” was “like the moon,” as Von­negut’s “unstuck” pro­tag­o­nist Bil­ly Pil­grim says in the nov­el: cratered, pit­ted, lev­eled…. But the smok­ing ruins were the least of it.

Von­negut and his fel­low pris­on­ers spent the next few days remov­ing and incin­er­at­ing thou­sands of bod­ies, an expe­ri­ence that would for­ev­er shape the writer and his sto­ries. Whether men­tioned explic­it­ly or not, Dres­den became a “death card,” writes Philip Bei­dler, that Von­negut plant­ed through­out his work. Death recurs with banal reg­u­lar­i­ty, the phrase “So it goes,” pep­pered (106 times) through­out Slaugh­ter­house-Five, which Von­negut cred­it­ed to the French nov­el­ist Celine, whose cyn­i­cism tipped over into hatred. Von­negut may have gone as far as gen­er­al­ized mis­an­thropy, but his dry, wise­crack­ing humor and his human­ism stayed intact, even if it had picked up a pas­sen­ger: the hor­ror of mass death that haunt­ed his imag­i­na­tion.

Von­negut, like Bil­ly Pil­grim, became “unstuck in time,” a con­di­tion we might see now as anal­o­gous to PTSD, his daugh­ter Nanette says. “He was writ­ing to save his own life,” as news from Viet­nam came in and Von­negut, a paci­fist, found him­self “los­ing his tem­per” at the tele­vi­sion. “He saw the num­bers, how many dead,” she adds, “that these kids were being conned, and sent to their deaths. And I think it prob­a­bly set a fire under him to have his say.” A new doc­u­men­tary on the writer titled Unstuck in Time shows how much impact his “say” had on the coun­try’s read­ers. Von­negut wrote unbri­dled satire, sci­ence fic­tion, and social com­men­tary, in thin books with irrev­er­ent doo­dles in the mar­gins. As direc­tor Robert Wei­de says in the trail­er above, hold­ing a copy of Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons, “what high school kid isn’t gonna gob­ble this up?”

Wei­de, like most lovers of Von­negut, dis­cov­ered him as a teenag­er. At 23, the bud­ding film­mak­er con­tact­ed his lit­er­ary hero about mak­ing a doc­u­men­tary. Over the course of the next twen­ty-five years, Wei­de– best known for his work with Lar­ry David on Curb Your Enthu­si­asm (and as a meme) — filmed and taped con­ver­sa­tions with Von­negut until the author’s death in 2007. The result­ing doc­u­men­tary promis­es a com­pre­hen­sive por­trait of the writer’s life, LitHub writes, from his “child­hood in Indi­anapo­lis to his expe­ri­ence as a pris­on­er of war to his rise to lit­er­ary star­dom to the fans left in the wake of his death, all through the lens of Von­negut and Weide’s close friend­ship.”

As the rela­tion­ship between film­mak­er and sub­ject became part of the film itself, co-direc­tor Don Argott joined the project “to doc­u­ment the meta ele­ment of this sto­ry,” says Wei­de, “as I con­tin­ued to focus on Vonnegut’s biog­ra­phy.” Forty years in the mak­ing, Unstuck in Time, evolved from a “fair­ly con­ven­tion­al author doc­u­men­tary” to what may stand as the most inti­mate por­trait of the author put on film. Per­haps some­day we’ll also see the pub­li­ca­tion of an 84-page scrap­book recent­ly sold at auc­tion, a col­lec­tion of Vonnegut’s wartime let­ters, news clip­pings, and pho­tographs of the ruined Ger­man city that he nev­er ful­ly left behind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Offers 8 Tips on How to Write Good Short Sto­ries (and Amus­ing­ly Graphs the Shapes Those Sto­ries Can Take)

Why Should We Read Kurt Von­negut? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

Watch a Sweet Film Adap­ta­tion of Kurt Vonnegut’s Sto­ry, “Long Walk to For­ev­er”

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

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Scenes of New York City in 1945 Colorized & Revived with Artificial Intelligence

in Film, History, Travel | October 28th, 2021

Are you irked when a movie or video you’re attempt­ing to enjoy is con­stant­ly inter­rupt­ed by the com­men­tary of a chat­ty fel­low audi­ence mem­ber?

If so, don’t watch archivist Rick Prelinger’s 2017 assem­blage, Lost Land­scapes of New York, in the com­pa­ny of a New York­er.

Unlike Open Cul­ture favorite NASS’s five minute sam­ple of Lost Land­scapes of New York, above, which adds col­or and ambi­ent audio to the unvar­nished found footage,  Prelinger — described by the New York Times’ Manohla Dar­gis as a “col­lec­tor extraordinaire…one of the great, under­sung his­to­ri­ans of 20th cen­tu­ry cin­e­ma” — rel­ish­es such mouthi­ness from the audi­ence. His black and white com­pi­la­tions are most­ly silent.

If you are a New York­er, view that as an invi­ta­tion here.

For every­one else, on behalf of New York­ers every­where, we con­cede that our con­fi­dent utter­ances may indeed dri­ve you out of your gourd…

Tourists with just one vis­it to their name can be for­giv­en for flaunt­ing their per­son­al brush­es with such hall of famers as the Brook­lyn Bridge and the Wash­ing­ton Square Arch, but there’s no com­pet­ing with long time res­i­dents’ inti­mate knowl­edge of the city’s geog­ra­phy.

It’s snob­bery of a type, but have pity on us long time res­i­dents, who know we will be viewed as sub­or­di­nates by those who were born with­in the five Bor­oughs.

(We sub­mit that there are lay­ers to this…a native of, say, the Hoosier State, who can remem­ber the orig­i­nal Penn Sta­tion should be con­sid­ered to have at least as much street cred as a mil­len­ni­al whose  birth in Brook­lyn, Harlem or the West Vil­lage con­fers native New York­er sta­tus.)

How­ev­er you slice it, con­sid­er this fair warn­ing that some of us, view­ing Lost Land­scapes of New York in your com­pa­ny, will not be able to stop our­selves from tri­umphant­ly crow­ing, “That’s 8th between 43rd and 44th!”

Again, it’s some­thing Prelinger courts in local live screen­ings of his Lost Land­scapes series. 

The phe­nom­e­non is not lim­it­ed to New York.

Be the set­ting San Fran­cis­co, Los Ange­les, or Detroit, he views audi­ence out­bursts as the sound­tracks to his most­ly silent, non-nar­ra­tive pas­tich­es drawn from his vast archive of vin­tage home movies, gov­ern­ment-pro­duced films, and back­ground footage shot with an eye toward com­posit­ing into a fea­ture film.

In a con­ver­sa­tion with The Essay Review’s Lucy Schiller, he remarked:

I’ve dis­cov­ered that home movies become some­thing else when blown up to the­ater-screen size. The change of scale pro­vokes a role change in the audi­ence, who with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly expect­ing it become more than sim­ple com­men­ta­tors. They turn into ethno­g­ra­phers, notic­ing and often remark­ing on every vis­i­ble detail of kin­ship, word and ges­ture and every inter­per­son­al exchange. They also respond as cul­tur­al geo­g­ra­phers, call­ing out streets and neigh­bor­hoods and build­ings, read­ing signs aloud, repeat­ing trade­names and brands and mark­ing extinct details in the cityscape. If I could cap­ture them (and I gen­er­al­ly can­not, because it is hard to intel­li­gi­bly record the voic­es of hun­dreds of peo­ple in one room), it would play back like an urban research project dis­trib­uted through a crowd of inves­ti­ga­tors. Each suc­cess­ful iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, each nam­ing achieved, is an endor­phin trig­ger.

Prelinger is hap­py to play fast and loose with chrono­log­i­cal order, scram­bling peri­od fash­ions, and col­or and black-and-white stock. This crazy quilt approach is in step with his resis­tance to con­struct­ing nar­ra­tives (“the curse of con­tem­po­rary doc­u­men­tary”) and admi­ra­tion for the way enthu­si­as­tic ama­teurs’ footage ren­ders “caste dis­tinc­tions between ani­mals and humans, between places and their inhab­i­tants” moot:

I am much less inter­est­ed in the minu­ti­ae of local his­to­ry than I am in the process of day­light­ing it, in the rela­tion­ship of his­to­ry and con­tem­po­rary life.

His approach allows those of us who live or have lived here to rev­el in New York City’s long stand­ing capac­i­ty for rein­ven­tion.

Like the anony­mous tide of human­i­ty bustling along our side­walks (and dart­ing into traf­fic, mid-block), the mar­quees, restau­rant names and words on the deliv­ery trucks aren’t fixed. We claim to hate it, but philoso­phers might sug­gest it’s what keeps us engaged.

You won’t find many street ven­dors hawk­ing frumpy cot­ton undies these days, but there are plen­ty of cor­ners where you can buy fruit and veg… and iPhone cas­es, ear­buds, and COVID-19 era face masks.

As excit­ing as it is to suc­cess­ful­ly peg the quin­tes­sen­tial­ly New York things that remain, there’s an equal thrill to rec­og­niz­ing and shout­ing out the things that don’t, espe­cial­ly if there’s a sig­nif­i­cant per­son­al con­nec­tion.

It makes us feel like we’re notable, con­tribut­ing in some way.

You con­tribute, too, by watch­ing Lost Land­scapes of New York (2017) here, while simul­tanous­ly keep­ing your eyes peeled for grat­i­fy­ing­ly well attend­ed, high­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed live screen­ings.

If vin­tage ama­teur footage you’re in pos­ses­sion of is gath­er­ing dust, con­sid­er donat­ing it to expand Prelinger’s archive, already some 60,000 films strong.

Watch Prelinger’s Lost Land­scapes com­pi­la­tions of oth­er cities here and here (see episode 7 of his San Fran­cis­co series above).

Explore his mas­sive archive on the Inter­net Archive.

And if you want to prac­tice sound­ing like a “real New York­er,” head back up to the top of the page, skip to the end, and inform every­one with­in earshot that that build­ing is the old James A. Far­ley Post Office at 32nd and 8th:

“Now it’s Moyni­han Train Hall! It opened on Jan­u­ary 1! It’s part of Penn Sta­tion! Don’t for­get to look up inside the 33rd street entrance, or you’ll miss Kehinde Wiley’s incred­i­ble stained-glass ceil­ing! And if you want a snack for the ride, you should hit H‑Mart on 32nd just east of Gree­ley Square!”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See New York City in the 1930s and Now: A Side-by-Side Com­par­i­son of the Same Streets & Land­marks

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

An Online Gallery of Over 900,000 Breath­tak­ing Pho­tos of His­toric New York City

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

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Watch Django Reinhardt & Stéphane Grappelli Play Masterfully Together in Vivid Color (1938)

in Film, Music, Technology | October 27th, 2021

Few jazz gui­tarists today could claim to be entire­ly free of the influ­ence of Djan­go Rein­hardt. This despite the fact that he lost the use of two fin­gers — which ulti­mate­ly encour­aged him to devel­op a dis­tinc­tive play­ing style — and that he died 68 years ago. The unfor­tu­nate abbre­vi­a­tion of Rein­hardt’s life means that he nev­er built a sub­stan­tial body of solo work, though he did play on many record­ed dates that include per­for­mances along­side Cole­man Hawkins and Ben­ny Carter. It also means that he left even less in the way of footage, though we do get a crisp and illu­mi­nat­ing view of him and his gui­tar in the 1938 doc­u­men­tary short “Jazz ‘Hot,’ ” pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

“Jazz ‘Hot’ ” also fea­tures vio­lin-play­ing from Stéphane Grap­pel­li, who found­ed the group Quin­tette du Hot Club de France with Rein­hardt in 1934. As they deep­ened their knowl­edge of jazz, the two influ­enced each oth­er so thor­ough­ly as to devel­op their own style of music.

Grap­pel­li lived long enough to play with the likes of Jean-Luc Pon­ty, Paul Simon, Yo Yo Ma, and even Pink Floyd. Still, more than a few jazz fans would sure­ly claim that none of his pro­fes­sion­al col­lab­o­ra­tors was more impor­tant to his musi­cal for­ma­tion than Rein­hardt. Now you can see them play­ing togeth­er in col­or, and fair­ly real­is­tic col­or at that, in the clip at the top of the post.


The orig­i­nal black-and-white footage (which appears just above) was col­orized with DeOld­ify, a deep learn­ing-based appli­ca­tion devel­oped to restore pho­tographs and motion pic­tures from bygone times. Per­haps you’ve seen the pre­vi­ous DeOld­ify col­oriza­tion projects we’ve fea­tured here, which run the gamut from musi­cal num­bers in Stormy Weath­er and Hel­lza­pop­pin’ to scenes of 1920s Berlin and even an 1896 snow­ball fight in Lyon. Grant­ed access to a time machine, more than a few jazz-lovers would no doubt choose to go back to the Paris of the 1930s to see the Quin­tette du Hot Club de France in action. Tech­nol­o­gy has yet to make that a viable propo­si­tion, but it’s giv­en us a next-best-thing that no appre­ci­a­tor of jazz gui­tar — or jazz vio­lin — could fail to enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Leg­end Djan­go Rein­hardt

How Djan­go Rein­hardt, After Los­ing Two Fin­gers, Devel­oped An Inno­v­a­tive Style & Inspired Black Sab­bath Gui­tarist Toni Iom­mi to Do the Same

Djan­go Rein­hardt Demon­strates His Gui­tar Genius in Rare Footage From the 1930s, 40s & 50s

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

One of the Great­est Dances Sequences Ever Cap­tured on Film Gets Restored in Col­or by AI: Watch the Clas­sic Scene from Stormy Weath­er

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 Radiohead Wrote the Perfect James Bond Theme Song

in Film, Music | October 22nd, 2021

Over the past 59 years, the duty of per­form­ing a James Bond movie theme has fall­en to the likes of Tom Jones, Paul McCart­ney, Car­ly Simon, Bono, Madon­na — and most recent­ly, for the lat­est install­ment, No Time to Die, Bil­lie Eil­ish. But one of the great­est Bond themes ever writ­ten has nev­er been heard in any of the movies. This, in any case, is the con­tention of the video essay above, “How Radio­head Wrote the Per­fect Bond Theme.” Com­mis­sioned for 2015’s Spec­tre, the sec­ond-most recent film in the series, Thom Yorke and com­pa­ny came up with a song that moves Lis­ten­ing In cre­ator Barn­a­by Mar­tin to declare, “This is Bond, but it’s also unmis­tak­ably Radio­head.”

Like many Bond title themes, Radio­head­’s “Spec­tre” is in a minor key with “added blues notes,” work­ing off the dis­tinc­tive chord pro­gres­sion com­pos­er John Bar­ry employed in the series’ orig­i­nal instru­men­tal theme. And while, like most Bond title-theme per­form­ers, Radio­head are pop­u­lar musi­cians, their actu­al work has always refused to align per­fect­ly with straight­for­ward pop-music expec­ta­tions.

“Spec­tre” embod­ies both the band’s “love of rhyth­mi­cal ambi­gu­i­ty” and their “trade­mark har­mon­ic ambi­gu­i­ty.” The “beau­ty and sim­plic­i­ty of the music con­trast painful­ly with the words,” reflect­ing “per­fect­ly that dichoto­my in con­tem­po­rary Bond: a man strug­gling to rec­on­cile love and duty.”

As if that weren’t enough, Radio­head­’s song also includes unex­pect­ed but con­sum­mate­ly Bond-esque com­po­si­tion­al and instru­men­tal moves. “It’s jazzy but dis­cor­dant,” says Mar­tin. “It’s a mod­ern re-imag­in­ing of John Bar­ry’s big-band orches­tra­tions.” In every sec­tion the piece exquis­ite­ly main­tains the ten­sion between Radio­head and Bond, cre­at­ing “an instant­ly com­pelling and dark musi­cal world. Alas, it was ulti­mate­ly replaced, osten­si­bly because the mood of the music and lyrics did­n’t fit prop­er­ly with that of the film: “We had this beau­ti­ful song,” lament­ed direc­tor Sam Mendes, “and we weren’t able to use it.” But that has­n’t stopped Bond afi­ciona­dos from imag­in­ing what could have been, and you can get a sense of it in a fan video, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, that reunites “Spec­tre” with Spec­tre.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radiohead’s “Spec­tre” Played Against the Title Sequence of the 2015 James Bond Film, Spec­tre

Intro­duc­ing The Radio­head Pub­lic Library: Radio­head Makes Their Full Cat­a­logue Avail­able via a Free Online Web Site

James Bond: 50 Years in Film (and a Big Blu-Ray Release)

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Per­forms Songs from His New Sound­track for the Hor­ror Film, Sus­piria

The Secret Rhythm Behind Radiohead’s “Video­tape” Now Final­ly Revealed

Inti­mate Live Per­for­mances of Radio­head, Son­ic Youth, the White Stripes, PJ Har­vey & More: No Host, No Audi­ence, Just Pure Live Music

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 Salvador Dali Viewed Joseph Cornell’s Surrealist Film, Became Enraged & Shouted: “He Stole It from My Subconscious!” (1936)

in Art, Film | October 20th, 2021

Did Sal­vador Dalí meet the diag­nos­tic cri­te­ria for a per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der and maybe, also, a form of psy­chosis, as some have alleged? Maybe, but there’s no real way to know. “You can’t diag­nose psy­chi­atric ill­ness­es with­out doing a face to face psy­chi­atric exam­i­na­tion,” Dutch psy­chi­a­trist Wal­ter van den Broek writes, and it’s pos­si­ble Dali “con­scious­ly cre­at­ed an ‘artis­tic’ per­son­al­i­ty… for the mon­ey or in order to suc­ceed.” No doubt Dalí was a tire­less self-pro­mot­er who mar­ket­ed his work by way of a sen­sa­tion­al­ist per­sona.

But maybe Dalí faked symp­toms of men­tal ill­ness (via his under­stand­ing of Freud) in order to delib­er­ate­ly induce states of psy­chosis as part of his para­noid-crit­i­cal method, a “spon­ta­neous method of irra­tional knowl­edge based on the crit­i­cal and sys­tem­at­ic objec­tiv­i­ty of the asso­ci­a­tions and inter­pre­ta­tions of deliri­ous phe­nom­e­na,” he wrote. One of Dalí’s extreme “unortho­dox meth­ods for idea gen­er­a­tion,” the prac­tice of pre­tend­ing to be insane may have dri­ven Dalí to believe too strong­ly in his own delu­sions at times.

Through­out the ear­ly 1930s, Dalí cham­pi­oned para­noia, “a form of men­tal ill­ness in which real­i­ty is orga­nized in such a man­ner so as to be served through the con­trol of an imag­i­na­tive con­struc­tion,” he said in a 1930 lec­ture. “The para­noiac who thinks he is being poi­soned dis­cov­ers in all the things that sur­round him, down to their most imper­cep­ti­ble and sub­tle details, prepa­ra­tions for his death.” And the para­noiac Sur­re­al­ist who believes he’s being robbed of his ideas may see artis­tic theft every­where — espe­cial­ly in an exhib­it of Sur­re­al­ist artists that does not include him. (After all, as Dalí once declared, “I am Sur­re­al­ism.”)

In 1936, Dalí attend­ed a screen­ing of Joseph Cor­nel­l’s short Sur­re­al­ist film Rose Hobart (top), named for the obscure silent actress whose scenes Cor­nell excised from a “1931 jun­gle adven­ture film” called East of Bor­neo. Cor­nell took the footage, slowed it down, “chopped it up, reordered it, and dis­card­ed the entire plot,” writes Cather­ine Cor­man. “He cut out reac­tion shots… removed overt­ly upset­ting scenes,” edit­ed in scenes from oth­er films, and “made the film seem delib­er­ate­ly mod­est and worn,” pro­ject­ing it through a blue fil­ter and scor­ing it with two songs from Nestor Ama­r­al’s album Hol­i­day in Brazil (which he’d found at a junk shop).

The screen­ing hap­pened to be held in New York at the same time as the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s first exhib­it of Sur­re­al­ist art, an exhi­bi­tion “rife with con­tro­ver­sy,” MoMA writes, that “pro­voked fierce reac­tions from bat­tle fac­tions among the Dadaists and the Sur­re­al­ists.” French Sur­re­al­ist poet and crit­ic André Bre­ton, who two years ear­li­er expelled Dalí from the Sur­re­al­ist group for “the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Hit­ler­ian fas­cism,” wrote the cat­a­logue intro­duc­tion. The Span­ish Civ­il War had just bro­ken out that year, fur­ther aggra­vat­ing Dalí, no doubt, when he encoun­tered Cor­nel­l’s film at a mati­nee screen­ing.

Part­way through the screen­ing of Rose Hobart, Dalí became enraged, stood up, shout­ing in Span­ish, and over­turned the pro­jec­tor. Lat­er, he report­ed­ly told Julian Levy, whose gallery held the screen­ing: “My idea for a film is exact­ly that, and I was going to pro­pose it to some­one who would pay to have it made.… I nev­er wrote it or told any­one, but it is as if [Cor­nell] had stolen it.” Oth­er ver­sions of the sto­ry had Dalí say­ing, “He stole it from my sub­con­scious!” or “He stole my dreams!” Cor­nell had not, of course, reached into Dalí’s sub­con­scious but had man­i­fest­ed the film from his own obses­sions with silent film and Hol­ly­wood divas, themes that run through­out his work. After Dalí’s out­burst, the shy, reclu­sive artist refused to screen Rose Hobart again until the 1960s.

Dalí had van­quished an imag­i­nary rival, but per­haps his true tar­gets — Bre­ton and his for­mer Sur­re­al­ist col­leagues — remained untouched. It would not mat­ter: Dalí eclipsed them all in fame, espe­cial­ly in the age of tele­vi­sion, which embraced the artist’s antics like no oth­er medi­um. But through his per­for­mances of insan­i­ty, maybe Dalí actu­al­ly did touch into a cre­ative pre­con­scious state shared among artists — a place in which Joseph Cor­nell just might have found and stolen his ideas.

In 1932, Dalí had an epiphany about Jean-Fran­cois Mil­let’s The Angelus, a paint­ing with which he’d been obsessed since child­hood and that influ­enced him heav­i­ly as an adult, becom­ing a key source for his para­noid-crit­i­cal method. Dalí claimed that the two farm­ers pray­ing over a mea­ger har­vest were actu­al­ly mourn­ing a lost child. He per­sist­ed in this belief until the Lou­vre agreed to X‑ray the paint­ing. Under­neath, they found a small, child-sized cof­fin, and at least one of Dalí’s para­noid fan­tasies was proved true.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Jour­ney Through 933 Paint­ings by Sal­vador Dalí & Watch His Sig­na­ture Sur­re­al­ism Emerge

Sal­vador Dalí Gets Sur­re­al with 1950s Amer­i­ca: Watch His Appear­ances on What’s My Line? (1952) and The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view (1958)

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed a Sur­re­al­ist Fun­house at New York World’s Fair (1939)

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

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Slot Machine Age: A 1964 British Newsreel Angsts Over Whether Automated Machines Will Displace People

in Film, History, Technology | October 14th, 2021

When Amer­i­cans hear the phrase “slot machine,” they think of pen­sion­ers com­pul­sive­ly pulling levers day and night in Las Vegas. But when the British hear it, a much less bleak vision comes to their minds: the auto­mat­ed dis­pen­sa­tion of cig­a­rettes, cof­fee, gro­ceries, and even entire meals. Or at least such a vision came to the minds of Britons back in 1964, the year of the British Pathé news­reel above. With its bril­liant col­ors and jazzy score, Slot Machine Age proud­ly dis­played to the view­ing pub­lic the range of coin-oper­at­ed won­ders already mak­ing their way into dai­ly life, from pay phones and pin­ball machines to shoe-buffers and bot­tle-recy­cling sta­tions.

“This inven­tion, this brain­child of the boffins, has cre­at­ed a new dis­ease,” declares the announc­er: “slot machine fever.” Again, this has noth­ing to do with gam­bling, and every­thing to do with automa­tion. Near­ly 60 years ago, buy­ing some­thing from a machine was a nov­el­ty to most peo­ple in even the most high­ly indus­tri­al­ized coun­tries on Earth.

Yet even then the automat, where din­ers pulled all their dish­es from coin-oper­at­ed win­dows, had in cer­tain cities been an insti­tu­tion for decades. Alas, such estab­lish­ments did­n’t sur­vive the explo­sion of fast food in the 1970s, whose busi­ness mod­el made use of more, not less, human labor.

But in the 1960s, the age of the robot seemed well on its way — so much so that this phrase titles anoth­er, slight­ly lat­er British Pathé pro­duc­tion show­cas­ing a “semi-com­put­er­ized ver­sion of the dumb­wait­er” being tried out in hotel rooms. From it the film’s hon­ey­moon­ing cou­ple extract cock­tails, peanuts, tooth­paste, and “that last cig­a­rette of the day.” It even offers read­ing mate­r­i­al, a con­cept since tried again in France, Poland, San Fran­cis­co, and an eccen­tric book­store in Toron­to, but the glo­ri­ous age of all-around con­ve­nience pre­dict­ed in these news­reels has yet to mate­ri­al­ize. We cit­i­zens of the 21st cen­tu­ry are in many cas­es hard­ly pleased, but rather anx­ious about what we see as our grow­ing depen­dence on automa­tion. Still, with the coro­n­avirus-induced vogue for con­tact-free pay­ment and din­ing, per­haps it’s time to give the automat anoth­er chance.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 85,000 His­toric News­reel Films from British Pathé Free Online (1910–2008)

Hear Alan Watts’s 1960s Pre­dic­tion That Automa­tion Will Neces­si­tate a Uni­ver­sal Basic Income

Buck­min­ster Fuller Rails Against the “Non­sense of Earn­ing a Liv­ing”: Why Work Use­less Jobs When Tech­nol­o­gy & Automa­tion Can Let Us Live More Mean­ing­ful Lives

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

Experts Pre­dict When Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Take Our Jobs: From Writ­ing Essays, Books & Songs, to Per­form­ing Surgery and Dri­ving Trucks

Watch the “Bib­lio-Mat” Book-Vend­ing Machine Dis­pense Lit­er­ary Delight

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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Watch Free Cult Films by Stanley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi & More on the New Kino Cult Streaming Service

in Film | October 13th, 2021

For many Open Cul­ture read­ers, the Hal­loween sea­son offers an oppor­tu­ni­ty — not to say an excuse — to re-expe­ri­ence clas­sic hor­ror films: F.W. Mur­nau’s Nos­fer­atu from 1922, for instance, or even George Méliès The Haunt­ed Cas­tle, which launched the whole form in 1896. This year, may we sug­gest a home screen­ing of the for­mi­da­ble work of vin­tage cin­e­ma that is 1968’s The Astro Zom­bies? Writ­ten, pro­duced, and direct­ed by Ted Mikels — auteur of The Corpse Grinders and Blood Orgy of the She-Dev­ils — it fea­tures not just “a mad astro-sci­en­tist” played by John Car­ra­dine and “two gore-crazed, solar-pow­ered killer robot zom­bies,” but “a bloody trail of girl-next-door vic­tims; Chi­nese com­mu­nist spies; dead­ly Mex­i­can secret agents led by the insane­ly volup­tuous Tura Satana” and an “intre­pid CIA agent” on the case of it all.

You can watch The Astro Zom­bies for free, and new­ly remas­tered in HD to boot, at Kino Cult, the new stream­ing site from film and video dis­trib­u­tor Kino Lor­ber. Pull up the front page and you’ll be treat­ed to a wealth of tit­il­lat­ing view­ing options of a vari­ety of eras and sub­gen­res: “Dri­ve-in favorites” like Ape and Beware! The Blob; “gold­en age exploita­tion” like Reefer Mad­ness and She Shoul­da Said ‘No’!; and even clas­sics like Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis and Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Fear and Desire.

True cult-film enthu­si­asts, of course, may well go straight to the avail­able selec­tions, thought­ful­ly grouped togeth­er, from “Mas­ter of Ital­ian Hor­ror” Mario Bava and pro­lif­ic Span­ish “B‑movie” king­pin Jesús Fran­co. Those look­ing to throw a fright night might con­sid­er Kino Cult’s offer­ings filed under “hard­boiled hor­ror”: Kill­bil­lies, The House with 100 Eyes, Bun­ny: The Killer Thing.

Few of these pic­tures skimp on the grotesque; few­er still skimp on the humor, a nec­es­sary ingre­di­ent in even the most har­row­ing hor­ror movies. Far from a pile of cyn­i­cal hack­work, Kino Cult’s library has clear­ly been curat­ed with an eye toward films that, although for the most part pro­duced inex­pen­sive­ly and with unre­lent­ing intent to pro­voke vis­cer­al reac­tions in their audi­ences, are hard­ly with­out inter­est to seri­ous cinephiles. The site even includes an “art­sploita­tion” sec­tion con­tain­ing such taboo-breach­ing works as Cur­tis Burz’s Sum­mer House. Among its gen­er­al recent addi­tions you’ll also find Dog­tooth by Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos, per­haps the most dar­ing high-pro­file provo­ca­teur cur­rent­ly at work in the medi­um. Since Kino Cult has made all these films and more avail­able to stream at no charge, none of us, no mat­ter our par­tic­u­lar cin­e­mat­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties, has an excuse to pass this Hal­loween un-enter­tained — and more to the point, undis­turbed. Enter the col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

The First Hor­ror Film, George Méliès’ The Haunt­ed Cas­tle (1896)

Watch Nos­fer­atu, the Sem­i­nal Vam­pire Film, Free Online (1922)

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cre­ates a List of the 11 Scari­est Hor­ror Films

Stephen King’s 22 Favorite Movies: Full of Hor­ror & Sus­pense

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

What Scares Us, and How Does this Man­i­fest in Film? A Hal­loween Pret­ty Much Pop Cul­ture Pod­cast (#66)

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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