If you were to watch David Lynch’s com­plete fil­mog­ra­phy from begin­ning to end, how would you see real­i­ty after­ward? Video essay­ist Lewis Bond sure­ly has some idea. As the cre­ator of Chan­nel Criswell, whose exam­i­na­tions of auteurs like Andrei Tarkovsky, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, and Mar­tin Scors­ese we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, he once released a med­i­ta­tion on what makes a Lynch film “Lynchi­an.” Now, under the new ban­ner of The Cin­e­ma Car­tog­ra­phy (and in part­ner­ship with film stream­ing ser­vice MUBI), Bond not only returns to the well of the Lynchi­an, but plunges in deeply enough to come up with The David Lynch Ret­ro­spec­tive.

In two hours, this video essay makes a jour­ney through all the dark recess­es of Lynch’s fea­ture fil­mog­ra­phy — a fil­mog­ra­phy that, admit­ted­ly, can at times seem made up of noth­ing but dark recess­es. It begins in 1977 with Eraser­head, Lynch’s first full-length pic­ture as well as his least remit­ting. How­ev­er har­row­ing its bio­me­chan­i­cal strange­ness, that debut drew the eye of Hol­ly­wood, result­ing in Lynch’s hir­ing to direct The Ele­phant Man, a chiaroscuro vision of the life of deformed 19th-cen­tu­ry Eng­lish­man Joseph Mer­rick. There fol­lows the infa­mous Dune, which finds Lynch at the helm (at least nom­i­nal­ly) of a $40-mil­lion adap­ta­tion of Frank Her­bert’s sci­ence-fic­tion epic, an extrav­a­gant mis­match as was ever made between direc­tor and mate­r­i­al.

Bond men­tions that he con­sid­ered exclud­ing Dune from The David Lynch Ret­ro­spec­tive, see­ing as the direc­tor him­self has dis­owned the pic­ture. Still, no Lynch enthu­si­ast can deny that it brought him to the artis­ti­cal­ly uncom­pro­mis­ing posi­tions that have made the rest of his body of work what it is. But what, exact­ly, is it? Bond draws some pos­si­bil­i­ties from Blue Vel­vet, Lynch’s return to the art house whose mem­o­rably oneir­ic fusion of idyl­lic small-town Amer­i­ca with sadism and voyeurism also func­tions as a state­ment of philo­soph­i­cal and aes­thet­ic intent. Not that Lynch is giv­en to state­ments, per se: as Bond empha­sizes in a vari­ety of ways, none of these works admit of direct expli­ca­tion, and this holds as true for the ultra-pas­tiche road movie Wild at Heart as it does for the split-per­son­al­i­ty neo-noir Lost High­way.

Then comes 1999’s The Straight Sto­ry, a movie about an old man who dri­ves a trac­tor across the Amer­i­can Mid­west to vis­it his broth­er. Bond frames the lat­ter as the most Lynchi­an choice the direc­tor could have made, its seem­ing­ly thor­ough mun­dan­i­ty shed­ding light on his per­cep­tion of cin­e­ma and real­i­ty itself. It also low­ers the Lynch-fil­mog­ra­phy binge-watcher’s psy­cho­log­i­cal defens­es for the simul­ta­ne­ous Hol­ly­wood fan­ta­sy and night­mare to come, Mul­hol­land Dri­ve. Though Bond describes it as “the zenith of all that’s Lynchi­an,” not every fan agrees that it’s Lynch’s mas­ter­piece: some opt for the impen­e­tra­ble three-hour dose of pure Lynchi­an­ism (and cryp­tic sit­com rab­bits) that is Inland Empire. Bond describes Inland Empire, still Lynch’s most recent fea­ture, as “a tor­tur­ous film, and this should be seen only as com­pli­men­ta­ry.” There speaks a true Lynchi­an.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

A Young David Lynch Talks About Eraser­head in One of His First Record­ed Inter­views (1979)

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

Watch an Epic, 4‑Hour Video Essay on the Mak­ing & Mythol­o­gy of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks Actu­al­ly Explained: A Four-Hour Video Essay Demys­ti­fies It All

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

Cour­tesy of the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art: “Dar­ren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream has only grown in stature since its explo­sive debut in 2000. His har­row­ing and influ­en­tial visu­al depic­tion of addic­tion and depen­den­cy across four char­ac­ters in Brook­lyn is a film that’s still whis­pered about in tones of rev­er­ence.” To cel­e­brate 20th anniver­sary, Aronof­sky and actors Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jen­nifer Con­nel­ly, and Mar­lon Wayans reunit­ed to recon­sid­er the film and its impact on cin­e­ma and cul­ture. This vir­tu­al con­ver­sa­tion was mod­er­at­ed by Rajen­dra Roy, the Celeste Bar­tos Chief Cura­tor of Film. If you become a MoMA mem­ber, you will gain access to more spe­cial events along these lines.

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Ear­ly cin­e­ma is full of leg­ends, but none as endur­ing as the leg­end of the Lumière Broth­ers’ Arrivée d’un train à la Cio­tat (Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat). The fif­teen-sec­ond reel of a loco­mo­tive so star­tled audi­ences, alleged­ly, they scram­bled from their seats. Ger­man film schol­ar Mar­tin Loiperdinger calls the anec­dote “cinema’s found­ing myth,” a sto­ry repeat­ed over and over, for over 100 years, though there’s no evi­dence it actu­al­ly hap­pened. One film his­to­ry text even titled a chap­ter “Begin­ning with Ter­ror” to under­line the sem­i­nal impor­tance of the event.

If we think about it, the inci­dent, how­ev­er apoc­ryphal, does mark an ori­gin. Con­sid­er how many films after­ward fea­tured trains as a cen­tral scene of the action, from The Great Train Rob­bery to Strangers on a Train to Snow­piercer. There are mag­i­cal trains and train heists in space. Trains are every­where in the movies. If we think about it some more, isn’t cin­e­ma itself some­thing like a train? Even films that play with time still move inex­orably from begin­ning to end, fol­low­ing some sort of dis­cernible through-line from one end to the oth­er.

But, say we were to enter­tain an alter­nate film his­to­ry, a Philip K. Dick-like ver­sion in which, rather than trains, the found­ing myth of cin­e­ma involved snow­balls….

In 1896, the year after the sup­posed pub­lic shock of Arrival of a Train, the Lumières shot Bataille de boules de neige, “Snow­ball Fight,” which you can see in its orig­i­nal black and white, above (with added, faux-vaude­ville music). A group of sol­id cit­i­zens pum­mels each oth­er with snow­balls, then a cyclist, unawares, rides into the fray, gets pelt­ed, and hur­ries off for dear life. It’s a mad­cap ver­ité gem. “The film was shot in Lyon, France using one of the duo’s all-in-one ciné­matographe cre­ations,” notes Petapix­el, “which was part cam­era, part pro­jec­tor, and part devel­op­er.” There were no reports of pan­ics in the the­ater.

At the top of the post, you can expe­ri­ence the short in full col­or and HD, thanks to Joaquim Cam­pa, “who used the AI-pow­ered soft­ware DeOld­ify to upscale the footage to 1080p, inter­po­late addi­tion­al frames for a smoother result, and col­orize the old footage.” Despite appear­ances, it seems the film’s speed remains unchanged. Campa’s star­tling­ly imme­di­ate ver­sion arrives in the midst of a debate over the trendy col­oriza­tion of old films and pho­tos. Rather than bring­ing us clos­er to his­to­ry, the British Library’s Luke McK­er­nan told Wired, dig­i­tal pro­cess­ing “increas­es the gap between now and then.”

Col­orized, cleaned-up, and upscaled images show us the past as it nev­er actu­al­ly exist­ed, his­to­ri­ans claim. But isn’t that what film and pho­tog­ra­phy have always done? As media of tech­ni­cal inven­tion and rein­ven­tion, they inevitably shape and alter the scenes they cap­ture, both dur­ing and after shoot­ing. When Georges Méliès saw the Lumière’s films, he was not inter­est­ed in their real­ism but in their poten­tial for cre­at­ing fan­tasies. He went off to make his spe­cial-effects mas­ter­piece, A Trip to the Moon, which screened in both black-and-white and gar­ish­ly hand-col­ored prints in 1902.

“Sure, it can be argued that adding col­or, inter­po­lat­ing frames, and remov­ing scratch­es is cre­at­ing infor­ma­tion that was nev­er there and could ‘obscure the past instead of high­light­ing it,’” writes Petapix­el. “But how many peo­ple (who aren’t film buffs) will have ever heard of ‘Bataille de boules de neige’ before today? And how many might dis­cov­er a pas­sion for film­mak­ing or his­to­ry as a result?” Per­son­al­ly, I’d like to see more films that look like “Snow­ball Fight.”

via Joaquim­Cam­pa

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

Watch the Films of the Lumière Broth­ers & the Birth of Cin­e­ma (1895)

The Ear­li­est Known Motion Pic­ture, 1888’s Round­hay Gar­den Scene, Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

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

The hats won’t stay on heads. The bowtie won’t be tied. The gun can’t shoot and the tar­get can’t keep still. When objects them­selves rebel, some­thing ter­ri­ble is upon the land, and anar­chism will out. This is one of the take­aways from painter Hans Richter’s 1928 DADA short film Ghosts Before Break­fast, or Vor­mit­tagsspuk in its orig­i­nal Ger­man (lit­er­al­ly “Morn­ing Spook”). And you might take that a very dif­fer­ent way than the audi­ence in 1928. That is fine. This is Dada. It is a bomb thrown into the mind.

But actu­al events and prob­lems sur­round the film and its after­math. By the end of the 1920s Richter was near­ly two decades into his abstract/cubist paint­ing career, and at the begin­ning of the decade he had already been exper­i­ment­ing with the rel­a­tive­ly new medi­um of film. His 1921 Rhyth­mus 21 was one of the first films to attempt to bring abstract ideas–shapes, light, rhythm– to the medi­um. Writ­ing in a Ger­man peri­od­i­cal around 1926, he said “…cin­e­ma can ful­fill cer­tain promis­es made by the ancient arts, in the real­iza­tion of which paint­ing and film become close neigh­bors and work togeth­er.”

Ah, but could music and silent film work togeth­er? In 1927 he was asked by the Ges­sellschaft Fur Neu Musik in Berlin to work with com­pos­er Paul Hin­demith on a piece to screen at their annu­al fes­ti­val. Hin­demith sug­gest­ed some­thing pleas­ant, some­thing set in the coun­try­side. Richter ran out of time and shot some­thing in an impro­vi­sa­tion­al style. But, you know, some­times dead­lines real­ly bring out the best in peo­ple. If the lega­cy of Ghosts Before Break­fast is any indi­ca­tion, it did. It’s con­sid­ered by many to be one of the best Dada films for pure inven­tion and play­ful­ness.

If Ghosts has any nar­ra­tive it’s this: objects con­found their human own­ers, while a clock relent­less­ly counts down the min­utes to noon, a play on the Ger­man phrase “Es ist fünf vor zwölf,” lit­er­al­ly “five min­utes to 12” or “time in run­ning out.” (There’s also a duck).

Richter throws it all in: there’s back­wards film, neg­a­tive film, cut-out and stop-motion ani­ma­tion, in-cam­era spe­cial effects. And as a through­line, one of the sim­plest effects: four, then three, then two ghost­ly bowler hats float­ing in the sky, just out of the reach of their own­ers.

And the artist called in his friends to help: Richter used Bauhaus stu­dent and sculp­tor Wern­er Gra­eff, Hin­demith him­self, com­pos­er Dar­ius Mil­haud and his cousin/wife Madeleine Mil­haud, and film edi­tor Willi Pfer­dekamp to pop­u­late the film.

Ghosts has a trag­ic after­life: the Nazis burned the orig­i­nal film and the score Hin­demith wrote for it. How­ev­er that has left a flow­er­ing of music in its wake, as com­posers have tried to fill the gap: Ian Gar­den­er, Jean Has­se, the band The Real Tues­day Weld, and oth­ers. Steve Roden com­posed four ver­sions for a LACMA ret­ro­spec­tive of Richter’s work, using var­i­ous Dadaist tac­tics, includ­ing record­ing a Hin­demith vinyl he had pre­pared with sand­pa­per.

All scores have resist­ed per­fect syn­chro­niza­tion, how­ev­er. Indeed, in 1947 Richter him­self spoke out against that desire:

We should find a way to let the sound and the pic­ture move on its own in the same direc­tion, but nev­er­the­less, sep­a­rate­ly. This refers to the spo­ken word as well as to the musi­cal and oth­er sounds.

Near­ly 100 years old, Ghosts Before Break­fast is still set­ting the table for us, ready with a strong brew of truth.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Mas­ter­pieces of Abstract Film: Hans Richter’s Rhyth­mus 21 (1921) & Viking Eggeling’s Sym­phonie Diag­o­nale (1924)

Watch Dreams That Mon­ey Can Buy, a Sur­re­al­ist Film by Man Ray, Mar­cel Duchamp, Alexan­der Calder, Fer­nand Léger & Hans Richter

Dada Was Born 100 Years Ago: Cel­e­brate the Avant-Garde Move­ment Launched by Hugo Ball on July 14, 1916

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.