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

in Film, History | March 29th, 2021

Did World War II help cre­ate the French New Wave? In a round­about way, yes, accord­ing to this video essay by Nerd­writer. Although Jean-Luc Godard’s A Bout de Souf­fle (aka Breath­less) was not tech­ni­cal­ly the first Nou­velle Vague film, it was the film’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary look and feel, and Godard’s exquis­ite sense of how to work the pro­mo­tion­al machine, that caused it to rever­ber­ate around the world. A few years lat­er, many oth­er coun­tries would be launch­ing their own New Waves: Britain, Ger­many, East­ern Europe, Aus­tralia, Japan, Brazil, Iran, and Amer­i­ca. Each were par­tic­u­lar to their own coun­tries, but all sought to cre­ate an alter­na­tive to the dom­i­nant film cul­ture, either Hol­ly­wood or their own country’s Hol­ly­wood-influ­enced film indus­tries.

That deci­sion did not come about in a vac­u­um, as the video points out. After the war, France was left with $2 bil­lion in debt. For­mer Inter­im Prime Min­is­ter and then Ambas­sador Leon Blum signed an agree­ment with America’s Sec­re­tary of State James F. Byrnes to can­cel debt and to start a new line of cred­it. One of the pro­vi­sions of the 1946 Blum-Byrnes agree­ment was open­ing France up to Amer­i­can cul­tur­al prod­uct, in par­tic­u­lar Hol­ly­wood films.

In French cin­e­mas, four weeks out of every thir­teen weeks would be devot­ed to French films. The oth­er nine were reserved for for­eign (i.e. most­ly Amer­i­can) films. But the trade off includ­ed a tax on movie tick­ets, so the increased audi­ence helped fund the French film indus­try.

Cer­tain results came about that were not planned. A young cinephile gen­er­a­tion was born, and its main jour­nal was Cahiers du Cin­e­ma, edit­ed by writer and the­o­rist André Bazin. The French could not lay claim to an indus­try like Hollywood’s, but they could point to invent­ing movies as we now know them (Georges Méliès and the Lumière Broth­ers were French), and for treat­ing film as an art form (by the Sur­re­al­ists, by the Dadaists) before any­body else, and not just as enter­tain­ment.

The young crit­ics who wrote for Cahiers du Cin­e­ma cer­tain­ly loved the influx of Amer­i­can films, which they devoured dai­ly in a city like Paris, espe­cial­ly at the Ciné­math­èque Française. Curat­ed by Hen­ri Lan­glois, this cinema/museum screened both new and old films, so much so that those crit­ics began to see the artist behind the enter­tain­ment. The rise of the auteur the­o­ry, coined by Bazin among oth­ers, placed the direc­tor at the cen­ter of not just their one film, but demon­strat­ed cer­tain tech­niques and inter­ests thread­ing through all films that they direct­ed.

Although there wasn’t a lot of mon­ey float­ing around, there was still enough to make short films and those critics—Jean-Luc Godard, Fran­cois Truf­faut, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Riv­ette, Eric Rohmer, and others—would start to put into prac­tice the the­o­ry that they had been writ­ing.

After a few shorts, Godard direct­ed A Bout de Souf­fle, and the world wasn’t real­ly the same after it.

The film was shot on a hand­held cam­era, by Raoul Cotard, who had used such a cam­era in the war for news­reels. They used avail­able light. And the two actors, Jean-Paul Bel­mon­do and Jean Seberg, impro­vised around a script that Godard would write the night before. Godard turned his brain inside-out, like emp­ty­ing a bag across a table: all his cul­tur­al obses­sions, not just in cin­e­ma, but in writ­ers, philoso­phers, music, and more, all came out. If Godard was going to be an auteur, then this was how to do it. And yes, the jump-cut edit­ing, as Nerd­writer points out, was shock­ing for the time. But so was see­ing the actors walk­ing around the actu­al streets of Paris. And so was hear­ing two peo­ple talk (and talk and talk) just like they do in real life. Even if a lot of those things have become com­mon place these days, when every­body car­ries a movie cam­era in their pock­et, Breath­less still brims with life.

Over the course of the ‘60s Godard and his con­tem­po­raries would both hon­or, indulge, and then break away from Hol­ly­wood influ­ences. The dom­i­nance of Hol­ly­wood prod­uct began to feel like impe­ri­al­ism, and America’s involve­ment in Viet­nam and its over­whelm­ing influ­ence on con­sumer cul­ture would lead to the events of 1968, and Godard’s out­right rejec­tion of Hol­ly­wood. He would end up killing his mas­ters, so to speak. But that was still to come. There’s still Breath­less, and there’s still 1960 in Paris.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Jean-Luc Godard’s Film­mak­ing Mas­ter­class on Insta­gram

How Jean-Luc Godard Lib­er­at­ed Cin­e­ma: A Video Essay on How the Great­est Rule-Break­er in Film Made His Name

An Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Luc Godard’s Inno­v­a­tive Film­mak­ing Through Five Video Essays

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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Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine Is Streaming Free on YouTube

in Current Affairs, Film | March 28th, 2021

Ear­li­er this year, Michael Moore released the 2002 doc­u­men­tary Bowl­ing for Columbine on his offi­cial YouTube chan­nel. The win­ner of the Acad­e­my Award for Best Doc­u­men­tary Fea­ture, the film “set out to inves­ti­gate the long, often volatile love affair between Amer­i­cans and their firearms, uncov­er­ing the per­va­sive cul­ture of fear that keeps the nation locked and loaded.” Cri­te­ri­on goes on to write:

Equipped with a cam­era and a micro­phone, Moore fol­lows the trail of bul­lets from Lit­tle­ton, Col­orado, and Flint, Michi­gan, all the way to Kmart’s mid­west­ern head­quar­ters and NRA pres­i­dent Charl­ton Heston’s Bev­er­ly Hills man­sion, meet­ing shoot­ing sur­vivors, mili­tia mem­bers, mild-man­nered Cana­di­ans, and rock provo­ca­teur Mar­i­lyn Man­son along the way. An unprece­dent­ed pop­u­lar suc­cess that helped ush­er in a new era in doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing, the Oscar-win­ning Bowl­ing for Columbine is a rau­cous, impas­sioned, and still trag­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant jour­ney through the Amer­i­can psy­che.”

Near­ly two decades later–and right on the heels of two mas­sacres in Atlanta and Boulder–Moore’s film has unfor­tu­nate­ly not lost its rel­e­vance. You can watch it online, right above.

via NoFilm­School

Relat­ed Con­tent

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

Michael Moore’s 13 Rules for Mak­ing Doc­u­men­taries — Real­ly Pow­er­ful & Enter­tain­ing Doc­u­men­taries

23 Car­toon­ists Unite to Demand Action to Reduce Gun Vio­lence: Watch the Result

When Archie Bunker’s Advice on Gun Con­trol Becomes Main­stream GOP Pol­i­cy (1972)

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How Sounds Are Faked For Nature Documentaries: Meet the Artists Who Create the Sounds of Fish, Spiders, Orangutans, Mushrooms & More

in Film, Nature, Television | March 25th, 2021

We think of nature doc­u­men­taries as pri­mar­i­ly visu­al works. As well we prob­a­bly should, giv­en the count­less, most­ly dull and uncom­fort­able hours spent in the field they demand of their pho­tog­ra­phy crews. But what comes to mind when we imag­ine the sound of nature doc­u­men­taries — apart, of course, from the voice of David Atten­bor­ough? Lis­ten close­ly dur­ing the breaks in his nar­ra­tion of such hit nature series as Plan­et Earth or Our Plan­et, and you’ll hear all man­ner of sounds: the sound of sharks swim­ming, of orang­utans chew­ing, of spi­ders shoot­ing their webs, of mush­rooms sprout­ing. Hang on — mush­rooms sprout­ing?

Nature doc­u­men­taries, as nar­ra­tor Abby Tang says in the Insid­er video above, are full of “sounds that would either be impos­si­ble to cap­ture, or ones that are straight-up made up.” In this they dif­fer lit­tle from script­ed films, whose actu­al shoots usu­al­ly man­age to record only the actors’ dia­logue, if that.

Work­ing in the wild, far indeed from any stu­dio, nature doc­u­men­tar­i­ans “might actu­al­ly be shoot­ing a sub­ject mat­ter that’s across a val­ley, or they’ll cap­ture objects nor­mal­ly too small to have a reg­is­tered noise to it.” Hence the need for a cat­e­go­ry of pro­fes­sion­als pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture: foley artists, those inven­tive cre­ators of foot­steps, door-knocks, punch­es, sword-unsheath­ings, and all the oth­er sounds view­ers expect to hear.

Here foley artist Richard Hin­ton demon­strates his meth­ods for breath­ing son­ic life into a range of nature scenes. A shoal of mack­er­el? Old mag­net­ic audio tape sloshed around in a tub of water. The vibra­tions of a spi­der­web? A slinky, held per­ilous­ly close to the micro­phone. The north­ern lights? A pair of cym­bals and a set of wind chimes. Often, just the right sound emerges from those of two dis­tinct objects lay­ered togeth­er, a prin­ci­ple known to foley artists since the ear­ly days of radio dra­ma. In fact, though foley sounds today go through a fair bit of dig­i­tal edit­ing and pro­cess­ing to make them more con­vinc­ing, the tools and tech­niques used to pro­duce them have changed lit­tle since those days. The next time you watch a bear onscreen open its eyes after months-long hiber­na­tion, con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that you’re hear­ing an Eng­lish­man mak­ing nois­es with scraps of fur and his mouth.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 50 Hours of Nature Sound­scapes from the BBC: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Proven to Ease Stress and Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness & Awe

Chill Out to 70 Hours of Ocean­scape Nature Videos Filmed by BBC Earth

Watch­ing Nature Doc­u­men­taries Can Pro­duce “Real Hap­pi­ness,” Finds a Study from the BBC and UC-Berke­ley

How the Sounds You Hear in Movies Are Real­ly Made: Dis­cov­er the Mag­ic of “Foley Artists”

How the Sound Effects on 1930s Radio Shows Were Made: An Inside Look

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 Edward Hopper’s Paintings Inspired the Creepy Suspense of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window

in Art, Film | March 19th, 2021

Cer­tain direc­tors like to impli­cate their audi­ence in their onscreen crimes, draw­ing on decades of expec­ta­tions cre­at­ed by pop­u­lar cin­e­mat­ic tropes and play­ing with the viewer’s innate desires. Film­mak­er Michael Haneke takes a Hitch­cock­ian approach in this regard, in night­mar­ish visions like Benny’s Video, The Piano Play­er, and Caché. “Haneke uses voyeurism to dis­man­tle the space between the film and audi­ence,” writes Pop­mat­ters,” and in doing so, he takes advan­tage of what might be thought of as Hitchcock’s voyeur appa­ra­tus and forces the audi­ence to ques­tion its place with­in the nar­ra­tive.”

Hitchcock’s “voyeur appa­ra­tus” has inspired many anoth­er idio­syn­crat­ic film­mak­er — most notably, per­haps, David Lynch. Like Jim­my Stewart’s Jeff Jef­fries in Hitchcock’s Rear Win­dow, Kyle MacLachlan’s Jef­frey in Lynch’s Blue Vel­vet becomes cor­rupt­ed by illic­it vision.

These are clas­sic iter­a­tions of the Peep­ing Tom, the casu­al voyeur sex­u­al­ly awak­ened by covert obser­va­tions of oth­ers. The road from Hitch­cock to the psy­cho­sex­u­al alien­ation of lat­er art­house cin­e­ma may be a short one, but where did Hitch­cock­’s fram­ing of the voyeuris­tic gaze come from?

One answer, says writer Diane Doniol-Val­croze — daugh­ter of Cahiers Du Ciné­ma co-founder Jacques Doniol-Val­croze — is found in a com­par­i­son of Hitchcock’s visu­al sense with that of Edward Hop­per, the inven­ter of mid­cen­tu­ry mod­ern lone­li­ness and also him­self kind of a clas­sic Peep­ing Tom. In a series of jux­ta­po­si­tions on Twit­ter, Doniol-Val­croze shows how Hitch­cock adopt­ed the fram­ing of paint­ings like Hopper’s Automat (1927), Night Win­dows (1928), Hotel Room (1931), Room in New York (1932) for shots of Rear Win­dow’s “Miss Tor­so” and “Miss Lone­ly­hearts.” She is not the only crit­ic to make the com­par­i­son.

“For Hitch­cock in par­tic­u­lar,” writes Finn Blythe at Hero, “Hopper’s gaze was like a petri dish from which an infi­nite num­ber of pos­si­ble nar­ra­tives could grow. Evi­dence of Hopper’s influ­ence can be found through­out Hitchcock’s oeu­vre, but espe­cial­ly his 1954 clas­sic Rear Win­dow. Just as the pow­er of Hopper’s paint­ings lies in what he choos­es to exclude, so the ten­sion and spec­ta­cle in Hitchcock’s Rear Win­dow relies on what is obscured or unseen.” Hopper’s fig­ures are not only lone­ly and alien­at­ed, they are vul­ner­a­ble, and espe­cial­ly so in pri­vate, unguard­ed moments in their own homes.

Hitch­cock takes Hopper’s gaze, so often framed by win­dows, and makes it about cin­e­ma itself. “As view­ers,” writes Blythe, “we become com­plic­it in the same mor­bid human fan­tasies,” as Stewart’s creepy Jeff, “rub­ber-neck­ing the same lurid acts from the safe van­tage point of our chairs.” As the cin­e­mat­ic image of the voyeur has shown us, how­ev­er — in Hitch­cock, Haneke, Lynch, and its many iter­a­tions of what Lau­ra Mul­vey called the “male gaze” — the act of watch­ing from a dis­tance can become a kind of vio­lence all its own; in Hitch­cock­ian cin­e­ma, the men­ace that often seems to lurk just out of frame in Hopper’s paint­ings can burst into the pic­ture at any moment.

via Diane Doniol-Val­croze

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Alfred Hitch­cock Reveals The Secret Sauce for Cre­at­ing Sus­pense

Edward Hopper’s Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks Explained in a 7‑Minute Video Intro­duc­tion

How Edward Hop­per “Sto­ry­board­ed” His Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks

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

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A Celebration of Typewriters in Film & Television: A Supercut

in Film, Health, Writing | March 19th, 2021

There are a num­ber of ways to come at video essay­ist Ariel Avis­sar’s two-minute super­cut of type­writ­ers in action on film and tele­vi­sion.

Cin­e­ma buffs will itch to con­nect The Typewriter’s clips to titles. Here are some of the ones we were able to iden­ti­fy:

Zodi­ac

Stranger Than Fic­tion

Cit­i­zen Kane

Find­ing For­rester

The Mag­ic of Belle Isle

The Shin­ing

Adap­ta­tion

Mad Men

Bar­ton Fink

All the President’s Men

Mis­ery

Ruby Sparks

Trum­bo

And then there are the type­writer enthu­si­asts, more con­cerned with make and mod­el than any­thing relat­ing to cin­e­ma:

Roy­al

Under­wood

Olivet­ti

Olympia

Clark Nova

Smith Coro­na

IBM Selec­tric

Giv­en the obses­sive nature of both camps, it’s not sur­pris­ing that there would be some crossover.

Here’s a delight­ful­ly nerdy inves­ti­ga­tion of the onscreen type­writ­ers in Naked Lunch, David Cronenberg’s adap­ta­tion of William S. Burrough’s nov­el.

This collector’s top 10 list gives extra con­sid­er­a­tion to scripts that “place type­writ­ers at the heart of the sto­ry.” First and sec­ond place fea­ture type­writ­ers on their posters.

An IBM Selec­tric III in Avissar’s super­cut caused one view­er to rem­i­nisce about the anachro­nis­tic use of Selec­tric IIs in Mad Men’s first sea­son sec­re­tar­i­al pool. Cre­ator Matthew Wein­er admits the choice was delib­er­ate. The first Selec­tric mod­el is peri­od appro­pri­ate, but much more dif­fi­cult to find and chal­leng­ing to main­tain, plus their man­u­al car­riage returns would have cre­at­ed a headache for sound edi­tors.

Avissar’s round up also serves to remind us of a par­tic­u­lar­ly mod­ern problem—the ongo­ing quest to por­tray texts and social media mes­sages effec­tive­ly on big and small screens. This dilem­ma didn’t exist back when type­writ­ers were the pri­ma­ry text-based devices. A close up of what­ev­er page was rolled onto the plat­en got the job done with a min­i­mum of fuss.

Two of the most cel­e­brat­ed type­writer sequences in film his­to­ry did not make the cut, pos­si­bly because nei­ther fea­tures actu­al work­ing type­writ­ers: the NSFW anthro­po­mor­phic type­writer-bug in David Cronenberg’s adap­ta­tion of William S. Burrough’s Naked Lunch and Jer­ry Lewis’ inspired pan­tomime in Who’s Mind­ing the Store, per­formed, like Avissar’s super­cut, to the tune of com­pos­er Leroy Ander­son­’s The Type­writer.

Up for anoth­er chal­lenge? Which top Hol­ly­wood star is “obsessed with type­writ­ers”?

Watch more of Ariel Avissar’s super­cuts, includ­ing a super­moon trib­ute and The Silence of the Lambs’ “clever, care­ful fin­gers” on his Vimeo chan­nel.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Friedrich Nietzsche’s Curi­ous Type­writer, the “Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball” (Cir­ca 1881)

Dis­cov­er the Inge­nious Type­writer That Prints Musi­cal Nota­tion: The Keaton Music Type­writer Patent­ed in 1936

Ray Brad­bury Wrote the First Draft of Fahren­heit 451 on Coin-Oper­at­ed Type­writ­ers, for a Total of $9.80

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

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The Iconic Dance Scene from Hellzapoppin’ Presented in Living Color with Artificial Intelligence (1941)

in Dance, Film, Technology | March 10th, 2021

After Charles Lind­bergh “hopped” the Atlantic in 1927, his his­to­ry-mak­ing solo flight set off a craze for all things “Lindy.” Of the count­less songs, foods, prod­ucts, and trends cre­at­ed or named in hon­or of the famous one­time U.S. Air Mail pilot, only one remains rec­og­niz­able these more than 90 years lat­er: the Lindy Hop. Devel­oped on the streets and in the clubs of Harlem, the dance proved explo­sive­ly pop­u­lar, though it took Hol­ly­wood a few years to cap­i­tal­ize on it. In the late 1930s, the musi­cal Hel­lza­pop­pin’ brought the Lindy Hop to Broad­way, and in 1941, Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures turned that stage show into a major motion pic­ture direct­ed by H.C. Pot­ter (now best known for Mr. Bland­ings Builds His Dream House).

An often sur­re­al, fourth-wall-break­ing affair, Hel­lza­pop­pin’ is remem­bered main­ly for the five-minute Lindy Hop musi­cal num­ber that comes about halfway through the film. It fea­tures a dance troupe called the Harlem Con­ga­roos, played by the real-life Whitey’s Lindy Hop­pers, a group of pro­fes­sion­al swing dancers found­ed at Harlem’s Savoy Ball­room, the ori­gin point of the Lindy Hop as we know it today.

Its appear­ing mem­bers include Frankie Man­ning, whose name had become syn­ony­mous with the Lindy Hop in the 1930s, and Nor­ma Miller, who as a twelve-year-old girl famous­ly did the dance out­side the Savoy for tips. Hel­lza­pop­pin’ pre­serves their ath­leti­cism and vital­i­ty for all time — with a hot jazz sound­track to boot.

Like most Hol­ly­wood musi­cals of the ear­ly 1940s, Hel­lza­pop­pin’ was shot in black-and-white, and cinephiles will main­tain that it’s best seen that way. But just as the tech­nol­o­gy pow­er­ing long-haul flights has devel­oped great­ly since the days of Charles Lind­bergh, so has the tech­nol­o­gy of film col­oriza­tion. Take DeOld­ify, the “open-source, Deep Learn­ing based project to col­orize and restore old images and film footage” that “uses AI neur­al net­works trained with thou­sands of ref­er­ence pic­tures” – and that was used to pro­duce the ver­sion of Hel­lza­pop­pin’s Lindy Hop num­ber seen at the top of the post. It all looks much more con­vinc­ing than when Ted Turn­er attempt­ed to col­orize Cit­i­zen Kane, but in lovers of dance, what­ev­er sense of real­ism DeOld­ify con­tributes will main­ly inspire a deep­er long­ing to expe­ri­ence the cul­ture of Harlem as it real­ly was in the 1920s.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1944 Instruc­tion­al Video Teach­es You the Lindy Hop, the Dance That Orig­i­nat­ed in 1920’s Harlem Ball­rooms

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

Watch Metrop­o­lis’ Cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly Inno­v­a­tive Dance Scene, Restored as Fritz Lang Intend­ed It to Be Seen (1927)

Rita Hay­worth, 1940s Hol­ly­wood Icon, Dances Dis­co to the Tune of The Bee Gees Stayin’ Alive: A Mashup

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 Looney Tunes & Other Classic Cartoons Helped Americans Become Musically Literate

in Animation, Film, Music, Television | March 9th, 2021

Dis­tance learn­ing exper­i­ments on tele­vi­sion long pre­date the medium’s use as a con­duit for adver­tis­ing and mass enter­tain­ment. “Before it became known as the ‘idiot box,’” writes Matt Novak at Smith­son­ian, “tele­vi­sion was seen as the best hope for bring­ing enlight­en­ment to the Amer­i­can peo­ple.” The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment made way for edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming dur­ing TV’s ear­li­est years when the FCC reserved 242 non­com­mer­cial chan­nels “to encour­age edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming.”

Fund­ing did not mate­ri­al­ize, but the nation’s spir­it was will­ing, Life mag­a­zine main­tained: “the hunger of our cit­i­zen­ry for cul­ture and self-improve­ment has always been gross­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed.” Was this so? Per­haps. At the medium’s very begin­nings as stan­dard appli­ance in many Amer­i­can homes, there was Leonard Bern­stein. His Omnibus series debuted in 1952, “the first com­mer­cial tele­vi­sion out­let for exper­i­men­ta­tion in the arts,” notes Schuyler G. Chapin. Six years lat­er, he debuted his Young People’s Con­certs, spread­ing musi­cal lit­er­a­cy on TV through the for­mat for the next 14 years.

“It was to [Bernstein’s] — and our — good for­tune that he and the Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion grew to matu­ri­ty togeth­er,” wrote crit­ic Robert S. Clark in well-deserved trib­ute. Much the same could be said of some unlike­ly can­di­dates for TV musi­cal edu­ca­tors: Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and oth­er clas­sic ani­ma­tors, who did as much, and maybe more, to famil­iar­ize Amer­i­can view­ers with clas­si­cal music as per­haps all of Bernstein’s for­mi­da­ble efforts com­bined.

But Jones and his fel­low ani­ma­tors have not been giv­en their prop­er due, car­toon­ist and ani­ma­tor Vin­cent Alexan­der sug­gest­ed in a recent Twit­ter thread. Aim­ing to rec­ti­fy the sit­u­a­tion, Alexan­der post­ed a wealth of exam­ples from Bugs Bun­ny & company’s con­tri­bu­tions to Amer­i­cans’ musi­cal lit­er­a­cy. Grant­ed, many of these car­toons start­ed as short films in the­aters, but they spent many more decades on TV, enter­tain­ing mil­lions of all ages while expos­ing them to a wide vari­ety of clas­si­cal com­po­si­tions.

Alexan­der points out how car­toons like the first Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheep­dog (1953) set a prece­dent for using Mendelssohn’s “Früh­lingslied (Spring Song)” in lat­er ani­mat­ed favorites like Ren & Stimpy and Sponge­bob Squarepants. He gives oblig­a­tory nods to Dis­ney and cites sev­er­al oth­er non-Looney Tunes exam­ples like Popeye’s “Spinach Over­ture,” based on Franz von Suppé’s “The Poet and Peas­ant Over­ture.” But on the whole, the thread focus­es on Warn­er Bros. clas­sics, espe­cial­ly those in which Bugs Bun­ny demon­strates his tal­ents as a con­duc­tor, pianist, and bar­ber to the bald Elmer Fudd.

“I don’t know who can lis­ten to the famous opera The Bar­ber of Seville by Gioachi­no Rossi­ni with­out think­ing of Bugs Bun­ny,” writes Alexan­der. “The way direc­tor Chuck Jones syn­chro­nizes the slap­stick action to the sound­track is flat-out mas­ter­ful.” There are fair ques­tions to be asked here — and Bern­stein would sure­ly ask them: How many of those peo­ple can appre­ci­ate Rossi­ni with­out the slap­stick? How many have heard, and seen, a full per­for­mance of his work sans Fudd?

Who can hear Wag­n­er with­out want­i­ng to sing at the top of their lungs, “Kill da wab­bit, Kill da wab­bit, Kill da wab­bit!” Good­ness knows, I can’t. Nonethe­less, Chuck Jones’ What’s Opera, Doc? has been rec­og­nized for its major con­tri­bu­tions to “Amer­i­can enlight­en­ment” — deemed “cul­tur­al­ly, his­tor­i­cal­ly or aes­thet­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant” by the Library of Con­gress and pre­served in the Nation­al Film Reg­istry. This, Alexan­der sug­gests, is as it should be. (Just con­sid­er the opera singers Bugs inspired). We should hon­or ani­ma­tion’s major con­tri­bu­tions to our cul­ture lit­er­a­cy: a mass musi­cal edu­ca­tion by car­toon. See many more clas­sic clips in Alexander’s Twit­ter thread here.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Evo­lu­tion of Chuck Jones, the Artist Behind Bugs Bun­ny, Daffy Duck & Oth­er Looney Tunes Leg­ends: A Video Essay

Kill the Wab­bit!: How the 1957 Bugs Bun­ny Car­toon, “What’s Opera, Doc?,” Inspired Today’s Opera Singers to First Get Into Opera

Books Come to Life in Clas­sic Car­toons from 1930s and 1940s

“The Duck­ta­tors”: Loony Tunes Turns Ani­ma­tion into Wartime Pro­pa­gan­da (1942)

 

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Compare the Original Trailers of Classic Films with Their Modern Updates: Casablanca, Dog Day Afternoon & The Exorcist

in Film | March 9th, 2021

You must remem­ber this, a kiss is just a kiss and audi­ences’ taste in film trail­ers evolves, just like movies do.

HBO Max is cap­i­tal­iz­ing on these shifts by releas­ing a series of Mod­ern Trail­ers for some of the clas­sic (and not so clas­sic… look­ing at you, Grem­lins) films stream­ing on its plat­form.

Take the recut trail­er for 1944’s Oscar win­ning Best Pic­ture, Casablan­ca, above.

Rather than using a nar­ra­tor to deliv­er expo­si­tion, it’s sup­plied by dia­logue, super­im­posed over moody shots of Humphrey Bog­a­rt’s Rick, smok­ing, lev­el­ing a pis­tol, and sur­vey­ing his bar. We’re giv­en just enough of it to pique our inter­est.

When Ingrid Bergman makes her first entrance, halfway through, the com­pos­er pulls out the Pavlov­ian stops.

At sev­en­ty-five, Casablan­ca is such a part of the canon, even those who haven’t seen it can savor the  mod­ern trailer’s ban­quet of time­less lines, with the most cel­e­brat­ed saved for dessert.

By con­trast, the orig­i­nal the­atri­cal trail­er took a max­i­mal­ist approach, employ­ing an urgent male nar­ra­tor, hyper­bol­ic title cards, and exot­ic trav­el­ogue. There’s heavy empha­sis on dan­ger, romance, and the pres­ence of big name stars. The music is as thun­der­ous as the sales pitch.

As Katie Kilken­ny notes in a 2014 essay on movie trail­er fatigue for The Atlantic:

In the 1940s and ’50s, pre­views tried to per­suade the view­er of the movie’s superla­tive qual­i­ties with caps-locked plac­ards and nar­ra­tion (“A mad adven­ture fraught with bold intrigue!” “The most excit­ing movie ever screened!” “The most mem­o­rable event in the annals of the motion pic­tures!”).

Now images and music do the heavy lift­ing. In an inter­view with Wired, Dan­ish film­mak­er and trail­er guru Nico­las Wind­ing Refn explains:

Direc­tors talk about how it’s all about cast­ing for them—when they get the right actors, their jobs are eas­i­er. For us, that’s true of music. Some­times 70, 80 per­cent of the job can be try­ing to find that per­fect piece. Trail­ers are all about rhythm, pac­ing, and feel­ing… I’ll watch the whole movie with­out sound, just look­ing for visuals—that lit­tle head turn, that glimpse, that spark of some­thing. Then I’ll watch the movie just for dia­log. I can get down to about 10 to 15 min­utes and from there start craft­ing and mak­ing con­nec­tions.

If you had zero pre-exist­ing knowl­edge of Dog Day After­noon and the more rec­og­niz­able mem­bers of its cast — Al Paci­no, the late Charles Durn­ing, and the incom­pa­ra­ble John Caza­le, HBO Max’s trail­er might fool you into think­ing it’s a new release from a direc­tor who wor­shipped at the altar of the great, grit­ty NYC films of the 70s as an alter­na­tive to film school. They cer­tain­ly got the peri­od details right!

The orig­i­nal the­atri­cal trail­er from 1975 fea­tured an info-heavy voiceover, chop­pi­er edit­ing, and a lot more screen time for Judith Mali­na, co-founder of the Liv­ing The­ater, as Paci­no’s moth­er.

The mod­ern trail­er for The Exor­cist, wide­ly con­sid­ered one of the scari­est movies of all time, embraces a 21st-cen­tu­ry pro­mo­tion­al trope of hor­ror films in which chil­dren play a cen­tral role: lean into the inno­cence before unleash­ing the hounds.

Extra points for black and pur­ple text cards in Friz Quadra­ta font, and an extreme­ly zing‑y but­ton.

The dis­turb­ing orig­i­nal the­atri­cal trail­er by edi­tor Bud Smith, below, was banned upon its release. Whether this is because its black-and-white flash­es of a young Lin­da Blair and the demon­ic Pazuzu induced seizures, or because the stu­dio was spooked by its arty sen­si­bil­i­ties is up for debate.

Direc­tor William Fried­kin, who called it “the best trail­er ever made about The Exor­cist,” reck­ons it was the lat­ter.

***Pho­to­sen­si­tive Epilep­sy Warn­ing*** (no joke.)

Smith’s dis­turb­ing vision was quick­ly replaced by the more con­ven­tion­al trail­er, below. It gave away more shocks, but lacks the abil­i­ty to bur­row into your dreams, caus­ing you to recheck the locks and go to bed with all the lights on.

Read­ers, do you have an all-time favorite movie trail­er? Let us know in the com­ments.

Watch a playlist of HBO Max’s Mod­ern Trail­ers here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch 25 Alfred Hitch­cock Trail­ers, Excit­ing Films in Their Own Right

Watch the 7 Hour Trail­er for the 720 Hour Film, Ambiancé, the Longest Movie in His­to­ry

Casablanca’s Hilar­i­ous Alter­na­tive Final Scene Fea­tur­ing Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Kate McK­in­non: Prag­ma­tism Car­ries the Day!

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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