The Origins of the Monsters in Homer’s Odyssey: The Cyclops, Sirens, Scylla & More

in History, Literature | July 16th, 2026

Despite hav­ing been com­posed about two and a half mil­len­nia before the inven­tion of cin­e­ma, Home­r’s Odyssey has offered tempt­ing mate­r­i­al to gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion of film­mak­ers. Part of the appeal is, of course, the work’s age, which obvi­ates the need for poten­tial­ly frus­trat­ing rights nego­ti­a­tions. But what real­ly cap­tures a direc­tor’s imag­i­na­tion about retelling the sto­ry of Odysseus’ long jour­ney back to Itha­ca must have a great deal to do with the host of mon­sters he encoun­ters along the way. The giant can­ni­bal Laestry­go­ni­ans; the sirens, whose call forces Odysseus to lash him­self to the mast of his ship; Scyl­la and Charyb­dis, guardians of the Strait of Messi­na; and per­haps most mem­o­rably of all, the tow­er­ing cyclops Polyphe­mus.

Many or most of these fear­some char­ac­ters are famil­iar to us even if we’ve nev­er read the Odyssey, or indeed seen any of its adap­ta­tions. In every­day speech, we invoke the sirens’ call when describ­ing an irre­sistible temp­ta­tion, or Scyl­la and Charyb­dis when describ­ing any set of equal and oppo­site pit­falls. And it would be a rare man, woman, or even suf­fi­cient­ly edu­cat­ed child who can’t iden­ti­fy the defin­ing fea­ture of a cyclops.

But long before all of these could enter the mod­ern lex­i­con, they had to be invent­ed in antiq­ui­ty. In the new Hochela­ga video above, host Tom­mie Trelawny inves­ti­gates their ori­gins, going over the­o­ries that sug­gest that some or all of these mon­sters had already made fair­ly long cul­tur­al jour­neys of their own before Homer put them in Odysseus’ path.

The myth of the cyclops could have been inspired by ele­phant skulls with large cen­tral nasal cav­i­ties, or per­haps by a brutish inver­sion of eyes as a sig­nal of intel­li­gence. It could have been a series of colos­sal Bronze Age stone stat­ues on the island of Sar­dinia that con­sti­tut­ed the basis for the Laestry­go­ni­ans. As for the sirens, which we imag­ine as beau­ti­ful women, the pre-Chris­t­ian ancient Greeks envi­sioned them as strange winged crea­tures mak­ing promis­es of knowl­edge. Scyl­la and Charyb­dis, rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the destruc­tive forces of nature, were a way of reify­ing the Strait of Messi­na’s inher­ent per­ils. What­ev­er their ori­gins, all these chal­lengers to Odysseus’ home­com­ing still fire up the imag­i­na­tions of film­mak­ers, espe­cial­ly film­mak­ers inclined to high-tech spec­ta­cle: Christo­pher Nolan, for instance, the the­atri­cal release of whose Odyssey begins tomor­row. We all know that the hero gets home in the end, but we’ll buy tick­ets for the mon­sters.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the First Spec­tac­u­lar Film Adap­ta­tion of the Odyssey (1911)

Hear What Homer’s Odyssey Sound­ed Like When Sung in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

The Ghosts and Mon­sters of Hoku­sai: See the Famed Wood­block Artist’s Fear­some & Amus­ing Visions of Strange Appari­tions

How Many Lives Does God Take in the Bible: An Inves­ti­ga­tion into a Sur­pris­ing­ly High Body Count

Memen­to Mori: How Smil­ing Skele­tons Have Remind­ed Us to Live Ful­ly Since Ancient Times

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

11,700 Free Photos from John Margolies’ Archive of Americana Architecture: Download, Use & Re-Mix

in Architecture, Comedy, History, Travel | July 15th, 2026

Many con­nois­seurs of archi­tec­ture are enthralled by the mod­ernist phi­los­o­phy of Le Cor­busier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and I M Pei, who shared a belief that form fol­lows func­tion, or, as Wright had it, that form and func­tion are one.

Oth­ers of us delight in gas sta­tions shaped like teapots and restau­rants shaped like fish or dough­nuts. If there’s a phi­los­o­phy behind these insis­tent­ly play­ful visions, it like­ly has some­thing to do with joy…and pulling in tourists.

Art his­to­ri­an John Mar­golies (1940–2016), respond­ing to the beau­ty of such quirky visions, scram­bled to pre­serve the evi­dence, trans­form­ing into a respect­ed, self-taught pho­tog­ra­ph­er in the process. A Guggen­heim Foun­da­tion grant and the finan­cial sup­port of archi­tect Philip John­son allowed him to log over four decades’ worth of trips on America’s blue high­ways, hop­ing to cap­ture his quar­ry before it dis­ap­peared for good.

Despite Johnson’s patron­age, and his own stints as an Archi­tec­tur­al Record edi­tor and Archi­tec­tur­al League of New York pro­gram direc­tor, he seemed to wel­come the ruf­fled min­i­mal­ist feath­ers his enthu­si­asm for mini golf cours­es, theme motels, and eye-catch­ing road­side attrac­tions occa­sioned.

On the oth­er hand, he resent­ed when his pas­sions were labelled as “kitsch,” a point that came across in a 1987 inter­view with the Cana­di­an Globe and Mail:

Peo­ple gen­er­al­ly have thought that what’s impor­tant are the large, unique archi­tec­tur­al mon­u­ments. They think Toronto’s City Hall is impor­tant, but not those won­der­ful gnome’s‑castle gas sta­tions in Toron­to, a Detroit influ­ence that crept across the bor­der and pol­lut­ed your won­der­ful­ly con­ser­v­a­tive envi­ron­ment.

As Mar­golies fore­saw, the type of com­mer­cial ver­nac­u­lar archi­tec­ture he’d loved since boyhood–the type that screams, “Look at me! Look at me”–has become very near­ly extinct.

And that is a max­i­mal shame.

Your chil­dren may not be able to vis­it an orange juice stand shaped like an orange or the Lean­ing Tow­er of Piz­za, but thanks to the Library of Con­gress, these locales can be pit­stops on any vir­tu­al fam­i­ly vaca­tion you might under­take.

In July 2017, the library select­ed the John Mar­golies Road­side Amer­i­ca Pho­to­graph Archive as its “free to use and reuse” col­lec­tion. So linger as long as you’d like and do with these 11,700+ images as you will–make post­cards, t‑shirts, sou­venir place­mats.

(Or eschew your com­put­er entirely—go on a real road trip, and con­tin­ue Mar­golies’ work!)

What­ev­er you decide to do with them, the archive’s home­page has tips for how to best search the 11,710 col­or slides con­tained there­in. Library staffers have sup­ple­ment­ed Mar­golies’ notes on each image with sub­ject and geo­graph­i­cal head­ings.

Begin your jour­ney through the Library of Con­gress’ John Mar­golies Road­side Amer­i­ca Pho­to­graph Archive here.

We’d love to see your vaca­tion snaps upon your return.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Stew­art Brand’s 6‑Part Series How Build­ings Learn, With Music by Bri­an Eno

Frank Lloyd Wright Designs an Urban Utopia: See His Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Broad­acre City (1932)

A is for Archi­tec­ture: 1960 Doc­u­men­tary on Why We Build, from the Ancient Greeks to Mod­ern Times 

Watch 50+ Doc­u­men­taries on Famous Archi­tects & Build­ings: Bauhaus, Le Cor­busier, Hadid & Many More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How Anti-Chinese Immigration Laws Unexpectedly Led to a Chinese Restaurant Boom in America

in Food & Drink, History | July 14th, 2026

This past spring, the old­est con­tin­u­ous­ly oper­at­ed fam­i­ly-owned Chi­nese restau­rant in the Unit­ed States served its last plate of chop suey. Pekin Noo­dle Par­lor had been an insti­tu­tion in Butte, Mon­tana’s Chi­na­town since 1911, long out­last­ing the town’s gold-rush boom, but accord­ing to its final, fifth-gen­er­a­tion own­er, it could­n’t sur­vive chang­ing atti­tudes toward din­ing out in the twen­ty-twen­ties. Whether or not COVID-influ­enced habits or deliv­ery-app addic­tion are to blame, the Pekin’s clo­sure con­sti­tut­ed an occa­sion to reflect on the his­to­ry of Amer­i­can Chi­nese food, and its rapid evo­lu­tion into a dis­tinct cui­sine unto itself.

Take chop suey, which was adver­tised on the Pekin’s neon sign in let­ter­ing larg­er than the name of the restau­rant itself. Often cit­ed as an ear­ly “Chi­nese” dish actu­al­ly invent­ed by Chi­nese immi­grants in the Unit­ed States, it may have a cer­tain basis in the tsap seui eat­en in Guang­dong province from which many of them had come.

But even there, it amount­ed to a tech­nique for throw­ing togeth­er a hodge­podge of left­overs in a palat­able man­ner; only with its Amer­i­can­iza­tion did it acquire a dis­tinct set of fla­vors and tex­tures. A sim­i­lar process seems to have pro­duced Gen­er­al Tso’s chick­en, broc­coli beef, lo mein, and all the oth­er dish­es that the movies have con­vinced the world Amer­i­cans eat direct­ly from wire-han­dled paper box­es.

What­ev­er Hol­ly­wood’s ten­den­cy to exag­ger­ate, the pop­u­lar­i­ty of domes­tic Chi­nese food is real. Accord­ing to the Busi­ness Insid­er video just above, Chi­nese restau­rants out­num­ber even McDon­ald’s fran­chis­es in the U.S. How they reached that point owes more than a lit­tle to immi­gra­tion, as any­one would expect, but also, less obvi­ous­ly, to restric­tions on immi­gra­tion. “Anti-Chi­nese sen­ti­ment was ram­pant in Amer­i­ca in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry — and had been since the lat­ter half of the 19th cen­tu­ry, when as many as 300,000 Chi­nese min­ers, farm­ers, rail­road and fac­to­ry work­ers came to the U.S.,” writes NPR’s Maria Godoy. The neg­a­tive reac­tion to that influx under­lay the Chi­nese Exclu­sion Act of 1882; the Immi­gra­tion Act of 1917, with its “Asi­at­ic Barred Zone”; and the Immi­gra­tion Act of 1924, which intro­duced a nation­al-ori­gin quo­ta sys­tem.

Despite the osten­si­bly severe restric­tion on Chi­nese immi­gra­tion per se, the law allowed that “some Chi­nese busi­ness own­ers in the U.S. could get spe­cial mer­chant visas that allowed them to trav­el to Chi­na, and bring back employ­ees. Only a few types of busi­ness­es qual­i­fied for this sta­tus. In 1915, a fed­er­al court added restau­rants to that list. Voila! A restau­rant boom was born.” Ditch­ing their tra­di­tion­al busi­ness­es like laun­dries, Chi­nese in the U.S. would “pool their mon­ey to start lux­u­ry ‘chop suey palaces,’ then each investor would take turns run­ning the joint for a year or 18 months” in order to earn mer­chant sta­tus. What sus­tained it all was the increas­ing­ly insa­tiable Amer­i­can demand for the food these immi­grants had per­fect­ed, from chop suey to kung pao chick­en to moo goo gai pan and beyond. The sto­ry neat­ly arrives at an Amer­i­can-style moral: where there’s a will, there’s a way — or rather, yǒu zhì zhě, shì jìng chéng.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The 63 Cuisines of Chi­na Explained in 40 Min­utes: A Com­plete Primer

A Brief His­to­ry of Dumplings: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

The Sur­pris­ing Rea­son Why Chi­na­towns World­wide Share the Same Aes­thet­ic, and How It All Start­ed with the 1906 San Fran­cis­co Earth­quake

Col­or­ful Ani­ma­tion Visu­al­izes 200 Years of Immi­gra­tion to the U.S. (1820-Present)

Bob Dylan Pota­to Chips, Any­one?: What They’re Snack­ing on in Chi­na

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How Russian Artists Imagined in 1914 What Moscow Would Look Like in 2259

in History, Sci Fi | July 14th, 2026

In the days of pop­u­lar retro­fu­tur­ism—say, the first half of the twen­ti­eth century—people tend­ed to imag­ine the world of tomor­row look­ing very much like the world of today, only with a lot more fly­ing cars, mono­rails, and video­phones. This is true whether those doing the imag­in­ing were titans of indus­try, mar­ket­ing mavens, ide­al­is­tic Sovi­ets, or sub­jects of the Tsar, though we might think that peo­ple liv­ing under an ancient monar­chi­cal sys­tem might not expect much change. In some ways we might be right, but as we can see in the 1914 post­cards here—printed as Rus­sia entered World War I—the coun­try did antic­i­pate a mod­ern, tech­no­log­i­cal future, though one that still close­ly resem­bled its present.

Per­haps few but the most far-sight­ed of Rus­sians pre­dict­ed what the ail­ing empire would endure in the years to come—the dis­as­ter of the Great War, and the waves of Rev­o­lu­tion and Civ­il War. Cer­tain­ly, who­ev­er paint­ed these images fore­saw no such cat­a­stroph­ic upheaval.

Although pur­port­ing to show us a view of Moscow in the 23rd cen­tu­ry, they show the city very hap­pi­ly “still under monar­chi­cal rule,” writes A Jour­ney Through Russ­ian Cul­ture, going about its dai­ly life just as it did over three hun­dred years ear­li­er, “with the addi­tion of every­thing from sub­ways to air­borne pub­lic trans­porta­tion, things prob­a­bly seen as stan­dard meth­ods of trans­port for the future.”

Of course, there would be hot-rod­ded sleds on St. Peters­burg High­way with head­lights, fan­cy wind­shields, and what look like Christ­mas elves perched in them. Lubyan­s­ka Square, fur­ther up, would still host mil­i­tary parades of men on horse­back, as chil­dren whiz by on motor­bikes and sub­way trains rum­ble under­neath. The Cen­tral Rail­way Sta­tion, above, might seem entire­ly unchanged, until one looks up, and sees ele­vat­ed trams stream­ing out of the ter­mi­nal like spider’s silk. Red Square, how­ev­er, just below, would appar­ent­ly host drag races, while peo­ple in trams and giant diri­gi­bles look on from above.

The images have a children’s book qual­i­ty about them and the fes­tive air of hol­i­day cards. They were appar­ent­ly redis­cov­ered only recent­ly when a choco­late com­pa­ny called Eyinem reprint­ed them on their pack­ag­ing. Like so much retro­fu­tur­ism, these seem—in their bustling, yet safe, cheer­ful orderliness—tailor-made for nos­tal­gic trips through Petro­vsky Park, rather than imag­i­na­tive leaps into the great unknown. For that, we must turn to Russ­ian Futur­ism, which, both before and after World War I and the Rev­o­lu­tion, imag­ined, helped bring about, but did­n’t quite sur­vive the mas­sive tech­no­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal dis­rup­tion of the next two decades.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sovi­et Artists Envi­sion a Com­mu­nist Utopia in Out­er Space

How the Sovi­ets Imag­ined in 1960 What the World Would Look in 2017: A Gallery of Retro-Futur­is­tic Draw­ings

Down­load Russ­ian Futur­ist Book Art (1910–1915): The Aes­thet­ic Rev­o­lu­tion Before the Polit­i­cal Rev­o­lu­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Tatlin’s Tower, One of the Most Ambitious Buildings That Was Never Built

in Architecture, Art, History | July 13th, 2026

It’s no small project to found a new soci­ety, espe­cial­ly when you’re doing it on the scale of a place like Rus­sia. Apart from the con­sid­er­able prac­ti­cal chal­lenges it entails, there’s also the need for sym­bols bold enough to rep­re­sent the under­ly­ing ide­al. The avant-garde artist Vladimir Tatlin took it upon him­self to cre­ate just such a sym­bol in the years after the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion. The result is offi­cial­ly known as the Mon­u­ment to the Third Inter­na­tion­al, named for the orga­ni­za­tion tasked with the pro­mo­tion of world com­mu­nism (often abbre­vi­at­ed to Com­intern). But it’s more com­mon­ly referred to as Tatlin’s Tow­er, per­haps in trib­ute to the artist’s par­tic­u­lar vision — one too ambi­tious for its real-life con­struc­tion even to begin.

“As part of a large-scale pro­gram to replace old czarist mon­u­ments with mon­u­ments to the rev­o­lu­tion, the huge struc­ture was both a sym­bol­ic sculp­ture and func­tion­al archi­tec­ture,” write Smarthis­to­ry’s Charles Cramer and Kim Grant. “Designed to strad­dle the Neva riv­er in St. Peters­burg, the 1300 foot (400 meter) iron and glass Mon­u­ment would sur­pass Paris’s Eif­fel Tow­er in both scale and com­plex­i­ty.”

Indeed, it would stand taller than the yet-to-be-con­struct­ed Empire State Build­ing, at least if you don’t count its anten­na. Con­sist­ing of “a con­tract­ing dou­ble helix that spi­rals upward, sup­port­ed by a huge diag­o­nal gird­er,” Tatlin’s Tow­er would con­tain four sub-struc­tures, each rotat­ing at a dif­fer­ent speed.

Yes, rotat­ing, and “com­plet­ing a full rev­o­lu­tion in accor­dance with the impor­tance of the insti­tu­tions con­duct­ing their busi­ness on the inside,” as Tim Brinkof writes at Big Think. “The cube that con­tains the leg­is­la­ture would have com­plet­ed a full rota­tion once per year. The pyra­mid above, hous­ing the offices of par­ty exec­u­tives, would have need­ed a month. The infor­ma­tion cen­ter, locat­ed at the very peak, would have rotat­ed once a day, offer­ing a 360-degree view of Pet­ro­grad,” as St. Peters­burg was known in 1920. (It would be re-named Leningrad in 1924 before going back to St. Peters­burg in 1991, after the end of the Sovi­et era.) You can learn more about how it all worked from the Archi­tec­ture Enthu­si­ast video at the top of the post, and the one from Side­pro­jects just above.

“Tatlin’s Tow­er was designed dur­ing a time when Com­mu­nist rule was still nascent and par­ty lead­ers sought to estab­lish a new and dis­tinct­ly social­ist iden­ti­ty through art,” writes Brinkof. Ide­al­ized rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the rul­ing class hav­ing been aggres­sive­ly scrapped along with the rul­ing class itself, the Bol­she­viks wel­comed any style that could shore up their rev­o­lu­tion­ary cause, total abstrac­tion includ­ed. Alas, though many par­ty offi­cials approved of Tatlin’s design, they com­mand­ed noth­ing like the resources to build it: “Rus­sia would go bank­rupt if it tried to acquire the insane amounts of steel and iron need­ed for the tow­er’s skele­tal frame­work.” Per­haps Leon Trot­sky, one of the pro­jec­t’s dis­senters, was right when he called it “imprac­ti­cal and roman­tic” — and per­haps those are the very qual­i­ties that keep Tatlin’s Tow­er an object of fas­ci­na­tion more than a cen­tu­ry lat­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Utopi­an, Social­ist Designs of Sovi­et Cities

Every­thing You Need to Know About Mod­ern Russ­ian Art in 25 Min­utes: A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to Futur­ism, Social­ist Real­ism & More

What Makes Kaz­imir Malevich’s Black Square (1915) Not Just Art, But Impor­tant Art

The Unre­al­ized Projects of Frank Lloyd Wright Get Brought to Life with 3D Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tions

An Intro­duc­tion to Bru­tal­ism: the Icon­ic Post­war Archi­tec­tur­al Style That Com­bined Utopi­anism and Con­crete

The Futur­ist Archi­tec­tur­al Designs Cre­at­ed by Éti­enne-Louis Boul­lée in the 18th Cen­tu­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

The Bayeux Tapestry Explained: Watch an Animated Retelling of the Norman Conquest

in Art, History | July 10th, 2026

Every time the World Cup comes around, or at least since Eng­land first and last won it 60 years ago, there’s talk of whether it’ll be brought “back home.” The idea being, of course, that foot­ball (or soc­cer, as it’s called in a cou­ple of the coun­tries host­ing this year’s match­es) was made in Eng­land. How­ev­er the show­down with Nor­way goes this Sun­day, and indeed how the rest of the World Cup plays out dur­ing the week there­after, some­thing much old­er — and of much less debat­able ori­gins — will be returned to Blighty: the Bayeux Tapes­try, which has been kept in the epony­mous Nor­mandy town since at least the four­teen-sev­en­ties, and most like­ly cen­turies ear­li­er than that.

This siz­able and intri­cate piece of embroi­dered fab­ric depicts the events lead­ing up to the Bat­tle of Hast­ings in 1066, the deci­sive event of the Nor­man Con­quest of Eng­land. Leg­i­ble today as a kind of “medieval com­ic strip,” as the nar­ra­tor of this new ani­mat­ed video from the British Muse­um puts it, the Bayeux Tapes­try also reveals “medieval life in amaz­ing detail,” while at the same time “hint­ing at secrets in its bor­ders.”

For all the schol­ar­ly and pop­u­lar atten­tion paid to it, the work has yet to yield the answers to any­where near all of its mys­ter­ies, nor to lose its fas­ci­na­tion through famil­iar­i­ty. It bears, after all, quite a lot of imagery to get famil­iar with in the first place.

It’s one thing to behold the Bayeux Tapes­try through images, how­ev­er high-res­o­lu­tion, and quite anoth­er to behold the real thing. The Eng­lish have been able to get fair­ly close to the lat­ter expe­ri­ence since the Vic­to­ri­an era with the aid of the full-size repli­ca, made in 1885, now dis­played at the Read­ing Muse­um in Berk­shire and pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. But this Sep­tem­ber, the orig­i­nal Bayeux Tapes­try will begin its res­i­dence at the British Muse­um, coin­cid­ing with the ren­o­va­tion of the Bayeux Muse­um. (France, for its part, gets a loan of trea­sures from the ship buried at Sut­ton Hoo and the Lewis chess­men.) If you get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have a look before it’s returned the fol­low­ing year, don’t turn it down; as the World Cup shows us, you can nev­er be sure when the next home­com­ing will hap­pen.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Bayeux Tapes­try Gets Dig­i­tized: View the Medieval Tapes­try in High Res­o­lu­tion, Down to the Indi­vid­ual Thread

Behold a Cre­ative Ani­ma­tion of the Bayeux Tapes­try

The Sto­ry Told on the Famous Bayeux Tapes­try Explained from Start to Fin­ish

The Entire His­to­ry of the British Isles Ani­mat­ed: 42,000 BCE to Today

Con­struct Your Own Bayeux Tapes­try with This Free Online App

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch the First Spectacular Film Adaptation of the Odyssey (1911)

in Film, History, Literature | July 9th, 2026

Pub­lic and com­mer­cial spaces around the world are now lined with imagery of a ver­te­bra-stud­ded bat­tle hel­met and stat­ues sur­round­ed by flame. It’s all part of the pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign for Christo­pher Nolan’s adap­ta­tion of the Odyssey, which will begin open­ing in the­aters lat­er this month. Much has been said and writ­ten about how the project rep­re­sents the next phase of Nolan’s ever-grander cin­e­mat­ic ambi­tions, but bank­ing on the spec­ta­cle val­ue of Homer has a long his­to­ry in film­mak­ing. When the Ital­ian silent adap­ta­tion L’Odis­sea came out in 1911, for exam­ple, it was uncer­tain even whether audi­ences would tol­er­ate the 44 min­utes it took to depict Odysseus’ ardu­ous jour­ney home.

Though it was released in the fall of 1911 in Italy and the fol­low­ing win­ter in the U.S., L’Odis­sea now looks like a sum­mer block­buster avant la let­tre, or ante lit­ter­am — or then again, giv­en the mate­r­i­al, πρὶν ὀνομασθῆναι, though most of us are still wait­ing to see just how ancient Nolan and his col­lab­o­ra­tors have allowed them­selves to get.

By the stan­dards of their day, the mak­ers of L’Odis­sea appear to have spared no expense on sets, cos­tumes, and even visu­al effects, most notably in its por­tray­al of the cyclops Polyphe­mus. Tech­ni­cal­ly, none of it may mea­sure up to what Nolan and com­pa­ny have in store, but the the­atri­cal ges­tures, shift­ing col­or tints, and occa­sion­al­ly bat­tered tex­tures do their part to con­jure up a real­i­ty of their own.

L’Odis­sea was actu­al­ly the sec­ond major lit­er­ary adap­ta­tion of that year for its direc­tors, the trio of Francesco Bertoli­ni, Adol­fo Padovan, and Giuseppe De Liguoro, all work­ing at the stu­dio Milano Films. Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured their first, L’In­fer­no, which dra­ma­tizes the first and most famous part of Dan­te’s Divine Com­e­dy at a length of 73 min­utes. That run­time qual­i­fied it as the first fea­ture-length film ever pro­duced in Italy, by com­par­i­son to which L’Odis­sea may have actu­al­ly felt like a more famil­iar view­ing expe­ri­ence to con­tem­po­rary view­ers accus­tomed to shorts. Now that human­i­ty has been re-accli­mat­ed to watch­ing things a few min­utes at a time here in the twen­ty-twen­ties, Nolan’s near­ly three-hour Odyssey looks like a bold move indeed. But then, an epic poem demands an epic inter­pre­ta­tion.

Note: If you click “cc” on the YouTube video above, Eng­lish sub­ti­tles will appear.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear What Homer’s Odyssey Sound­ed Like When Sung in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

An Inter­ac­tive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Jour­ney in Homer’s Odyssey

Hear the First Book of Homer’s Ili­ad Read Aloud in the Orig­i­nal Greek

Watch All 18,225 Lines of the Ili­ad Read by 66 Actors in a Marathon Event For an Audi­ence of 50,000

Watch L’Inferno (1911), Italy’s First Fea­ture Film and Per­haps the Finest Adap­ta­tion of Dante’s Clas­sic

Cinecit­tà Luce and Google to Bring Italy’s Largest Film Archive to YouTube

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

How an Edward Hopper Painting Inspired Norman Bates’ Iconic House in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho

in Art, Film, History | July 8th, 2026

Alfred Hitch­cock was not Amer­i­can, as even casu­al view­ers of his tele­vi­sion show could tell right away. He may have exag­ger­at­ed his Eng­lish­ness, but like more than a few high-pro­file out­siders, he also used his cul­tur­al posi­tion to ren­der the Unit­ed States all the more vivid­ly in his work. Grow­ing up, he amassed enough sec­ond-hand knowl­edge of the coun­try in which he would one day live that he already knew his way around New York when first he set foot there. But it was some years after he relo­cat­ed to Hol­ly­wood that his films began to feel Amer­i­can — and, even­tu­al­ly, more Amer­i­can than those made by domes­tic direc­tors, thanks in part to his uncon­ven­tion­al per­spec­tive on local sources of inspi­ra­tion.

Image by Diego Del­so, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Take the archi­tec­ture. Asked by François Truf­faut about Nor­man Bates’ “ghost­ly house” in Psy­cho, he explained that “the mys­te­ri­ous atmos­phere is, to some extent, quite acci­den­tal. For instance, the actu­al locale of the events is in north­ern Cali­fornia, where that type of house is very com­mon.” He was­n’t try­ing to “recon­struct an old-fash­ioned Uni­ver­sal hor­ror pic­ture atmos­phere,” but “sim­ply want­ed to be accu­rate.” Yet the house is report­ed to have been inspired by an east-coast mod­el as well, and one found in art: Edward Hop­per’s paint­ingHouse by the Rail­road(top), from 1925, itself made with ref­er­ence to a real Vic­to­ri­an man­sion that still stands in Haver­straw, New York, between a rail­road and a ceme­tery.

Hitch­cock had already made use of Hop­per, that most cin­e­mat­ic of Amer­i­can painters. Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the visu­al influ­ence of Hop­per paint­ings from the nine­teen-twen­ties and thir­ties like Automat, Night Win­dows, Hotel Room, and Room in New York on Rear Win­dow. “Both artists explored the lone­li­ness that results from mod­ern­iza­tion,” writes Tim Brinkhof at Art­net. “Hopper’s paint­ings and Hitch­cock­’s films explore the extent to which progress and urban mod­ern­iza­tion have made the world lone­li­er and, as a result, capa­ble of acts of explo­sive, irra­tional vio­lence,” a capa­bil­i­ty per­son­i­fied in the dis­turbed motel-keep­er Nor­man Bates.

“The [Haver­straw] house was built in 1885, near the crest of a hill that ris­es steeply from the west bank of the Hud­son Riv­er,” writes Paul Bochn­er in the Atlantic. “By the turn of the cen­tu­ry it had been aban­doned; neigh­bor­hood chil­dren called it haunt­ed.” It was lat­er pur­chased by the dis­trict attor­ney of Rock­land Coun­ty, whose eldest daugh­ter remem­bered that, “when she was thir­teen, she looked out her bed­room win­dow and saw a man sit­ting across the road, paint­ing.” The man was, of course, Edward Hop­per. She would­n’t have known, sev­en­teen years before Nighthawks, that he was on his way to becom­ing one of the coun­try’s most famous artists. As for what the house would one day become in the hands of Alfred Hitch­cock, then just start­ing his career on the oth­er side of the Atlantic, nobody could have imag­ined.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

16 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

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

How Cin­e­ma Inspired Edward Hopper’s Great Paint­ings, and How Edward Hop­per Inspired Great Film­mak­ers

Alfred Hitch­cock Want­ed Frank Lloyd Wright to Design the North by North­west House: An Archi­tect Just Built It for $45 Mil­lion

How Edward Hop­per “Sto­ry­board­ed” His Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks

Sal­vador Dalí Goes to Hol­ly­wood & Cre­ates a Wild Dream Sequence for Alfred Hitch­cock

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast