Detour: The Cheap, Rushed Piece of 1940s Film Noir Nobody Ever Forgets

in Film | March 15th, 2012

Accord­ing to cin­e­ma lore, Edgar G. Ulmer’s Detour, a slap­dash, unpro­fes­sion­al $20,000 melo­dra­ma shot in a mere mis­take-filled six days, has some­how, over the past 66 years, accrued a siz­able and appre­cia­tive fol­low­ing among film noir enthu­si­asts. Except it turns out that, in real­i­ty, its bud­get prob­a­bly ran to some $117,000. And those six days might have actu­al­ly been three six-day weeks. And the Aus­tri­an-born Ulmer, who had not only worked for such Euro­pean lumi­nar­ies as F.W. Mur­nau, Bil­ly Wilder, and (so he claimed) Fritz Lang, but even made The Black Cat for Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures, hard­ly lacked pro­fes­sion­al bona fides. And the film’s care­ful use of sound and strik­ing use of light set it apart even from its brethren in the genre.

And speak­ing of that genre, a hearty crit­i­cal agree­ment now holds that Detour dis­tills, in its brief 68 min­utes, the most vital emo­tion­al and aes­thet­ic ele­ments of film noir in a way that none of its oth­er exem­plars have man­aged. And mis­takes? What mis­takes? As Roger Ebert wrote on ush­er­ing the film into his Great Movies canon, “Plac­ing style above com­mon sense is com­plete­ly con­sis­tent with Ulmer’s approach through­out the film.”

To recount Detour’s sto­ry here — a piano-play­er down on his luck; a sud­den death; a schem­ing, ven­omous dame — would be to miss the point. To cite out its many, er, uncon­ven­tion­al pro­duc­tion choic­es — nonex­is­tent back­grounds con­cealed with fog, shots sim­ply flipped over and re-used, stock footage meant to pad the run­time almost to fea­ture length, uncon­vinc­ing rear pro­jec­tion even by 1945’s stan­dards — would be to miss the point from anoth­er direc­tion. The film has fall­en into the pub­lic domain, so watch it free online and expe­ri­ence for your­self the way that, for all its appar­ent blunt­ness, it stealth­ily lodges itself in your sense mem­o­ry. To call a movie “dream­like” reeks of cliché, but Detour presents the ele­ments of film noir in such a pure, naked state that you have lit­tle choice but to accept them direct­ly, the way you would accept the “facts” of a dream. Though seem­ing­ly incom­pe­tent on all the lev­els sub­ject to con­scious analy­sis, the film oper­ates effec­tive­ly on all the lev­els beneath, hence the last­ing inspi­ra­tion it offers to cer­tain film­mak­ers today. Make Detour, if you can, a dou­ble-fea­ture with David Lynch’s Lost High­way, which plays almost like a straight trib­ute to Ulmer’s pic­ture. As a ded­i­cat­ed tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tor with a fas­ci­na­tion for the dark side of Los Ange­les and a ten­den­cy to bend arche­typ­al char­ac­ters toward his often oblique but always vivid styl­is­tic will, Lynch has inter­nal­ized Detour’s lega­cy — intend­ed or oth­er­wise — more deeply than any oth­er film­mak­er alive today.

More noir clas­sics can be found in our col­lec­tion of 60+ Free Noir Films.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Robert Altman’s First Film Found at Flea Market (Free to Watch Online)

in Film | March 15th, 2012

Long before Robert Alt­man gave us MASH (1970), Nashville (1975), The Play­er (1992) and Gos­ford Park (2001), he paid his dues in the film indus­try, shoot­ing 65 “indus­tri­al movies” dur­ing the 1950s. One such film recent­ly sur­faced in a Kansas City flea mar­ket, and it’s believed to be Alt­man’s first film. Gary Hug­gins, also a film­mak­er, told SF Week­ly, “I bought a stack of old instruc­tion­al films for $10 and nev­er got around to screen­ing them.” “Mod­ern Foot­ball [the title of the dis­cov­ered footage] sound­ed real­ly dull. But when I recent­ly did, I glimpsed Alt­man, who cameos as a sports reporter, and knew I had some­thing incred­i­ble.” Find the 26-minute film above, and the cameo at the 2:37 mark. Then con­sid­er catch­ing up with Alt­man six years lat­er when he c0-direct­ed The James Dean Sto­ry at the start of his Hol­ly­wood career. Watch the Dean doc­u­men­tary online, or find it housed in our col­lec­tion of 450 Free Movies Online.

Dementia 13: The Film That Took Francis Ford Coppola From Schlockster to Auteur

in Film | March 14th, 2012

The Con­ver­sa­tion, Apoc­alpyse Now, The God­fa­ther — Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la’s movies come so big that even the most casu­al cinephiles vivid­ly remem­ber their first expe­ri­ences with them. Of course, Cop­po­la made all of those in the sev­en­ties, when he held down the posi­tion of one of the lead­ing lights of the New Hol­ly­wood move­ment, when major Amer­i­can stu­dios grew will­ing to tap the uncon­ven­tion­al but ulti­mate­ly for­mi­da­ble cin­e­mat­ic tal­ents of a vari­ety of young auteurs. They backed every­one from Cop­po­la to Mar­tin Scors­ese to Peter Bog­danovich to Michael Cimi­no, and we enjoy the fruits of their gam­ble even today. Enthu­si­asts of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma remem­ber that peri­od — along with its echo, the Sun­dance-Mira­max-dri­ven “indie” boom of the nineties — as a gold­en age. Cop­po­la has­n’t stopped mak­ing films, and even if his lat­ter-day projects like Youth With­out Youth and Tetro haven’t gained such icon­ic stature in the cul­ture, some­thing in them nev­er­the­less lodges in your mind, demand­ing fur­ther view­ing and reflec­tion.

You’ll find an equal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing exam­ple of Cop­po­la’s work if you look before the New Hol­ly­wood era, all the way back to a 75-minute piece of black-and-white psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror called Demen­tia 13. Watch it in its entire­ty on YouTube for both the for­ma­tive piece of Cop­po­la’s art and the 1963 piece of Roger Cor­man-pro­duced junk that it some­how is. The pic­ture rep­re­sents a tran­si­tion point between the young Cop­po­la, sound tech­ni­cian and direc­tor of “nudie” films, and the mature Cop­po­la, laud­ed with crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial acclaim but sub­ject to an almost self-destruc­tive grand­ness of ambi­tion. Cor­man, who had $22,000 lay­ing around after his last pro­duc­tion, asked Cop­po­la for a Psy­cho knock­off. Cop­po­la pro­ceed­ed to round up a few of his UCLA pals and shoot Demen­tia 13 in Ire­land, return­ing with an alto­geth­er more sub­tle and sub­dued movie than Cor­man could have expect­ed. (Not that it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly hard to over­shoot Roger Cor­man-style expec­ta­tions in those depart­ments.)

To watch Demen­tia 13 now is to wit­ness Cop­po­la’s con­trol of ten­sion and dark­ness in its embry­on­ic — but still impres­sive — form. Nobody involved in the pro­duc­tion could have delud­ed them­selves about its goal of shoot­ing a few max­i­mal­ly grue­some axe mur­ders as quick­ly and cheap­ly as pos­si­ble, but even such strait­ened cir­cum­stances allow for pock­ets of artistry to bub­ble through. Emerg­ing from the school of cheap thrills into ulti­mate respectabil­i­ty was­n’t an unknown sto­ry for Cop­po­la’s cin­e­mat­ic gen­er­a­tion. Today’s seri­ous young direc­tors seem to pre­fer hon­ing their chops with now-inex­pen­sive video gear, mak­ing films that cost far less than $22,000 and thus avoid­ing com­pro­mis­ing their sen­si­bil­i­ties. That strikes me as a step for­ward, but watch­ing movies in the class of this unlike­ly Cor­man-Cop­po­la part­ner­ship will always make you won­der what we’ve lost now that our best film­mak­ers don’t have to pay their dues in the wild world of schlock.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Quentin Tarantino Gives Sneak Peek of Pulp Fiction to Jon Stewart in 1994

in Film | March 13th, 2012

They’re now fix­tures in our cul­ture — one on tele­vi­sion, the oth­er in cin­e­ma. But that was­n’t quite the case in 1994. The world had yet to lay eyes on Pulp Fic­tion, Quentin Taran­ti­no’s rol­lick­ing film that even­tu­al­ly land­ed the Palme d’Or at the ’94 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. And Jon Stew­art was still five years away from tak­ing the helm of The Dai­ly Show, which  … you know … is the wit­ti­est show on Amer­i­can TV. The clip above brings you back to their sal­ad days, with Taran­ti­no (31 years old) and Stew­art (32 years old) talk­ing about Pulp Fic­tion, Reser­voir Dogs, and the great spaghet­ti west­erns of Ser­gio Leone.…

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Tarantino’s Orig­i­nal Wish List for the Cast of Pulp Fic­tion

Quentin Tarantino’s Top 20 Grindhouse/Exploitation Flicks: Night of the Liv­ing Dead, Hal­loween & More

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Quentin Tarantino’s Hand­writ­ten List of the 11 “Great­est Movies”

John Belushi’s Improvised Screen Test for Saturday Night Live (1975)

in Comedy, Television | March 13th, 2012

In this rare footage from 1975, a 26-year-old John Belushi warms up with some eye­brow cal­is­then­ics before doing his sig­na­ture Mar­lon Bran­do impres­sion in a screen test for a new late-night tele­vi­sion pro­gram called Sat­ur­day Night Live. He got the part, of course, and his star rose rapid­ly along with the show’s. By 1978 Belushi could boast of hav­ing the num­ber one late-night tele­vi­sion show (SNL), the num­ber one movie (Ani­mal House) and the num­ber one musi­cal album (The Blues Broth­ers’ Brief­case Full of Blues). But sad­ly it all came crash­ing down 30 years ago this month–on March 5 1982–when he died of a drug over­dose. In this clip we remem­ber the young Belushi: cocky, tal­ent­ed, with a bril­liant future ahead of him.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Father Gui­do Sar­duc­ci Pitch­es “The Five Minute Uni­ver­si­ty”

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live

Leonard Bernstein’s Masterful Lectures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Recorded at Harvard in 1973)

in Harvard, Music | March 13th, 2012

In 1972, the com­pos­er Leonard Bern­stein returned to Har­vard, his alma mater, to serve as the Charles Eliot Nor­ton Pro­fes­sor of Poet­ry, with “Poet­ry” being defined in the broad­est sense. The posi­tion, first cre­at­ed in 1925, asks fac­ul­ty mem­bers to live on cam­pus, advise stu­dents, and most impor­tant­ly, deliv­er a series of six pub­lic lec­tures. T.S. Eliot, Aaron Cop­land, W.H. Auden, e.e. cum­mings, Robert Frost, Jorge Luis Borges — they all pre­vi­ous­ly took part in this tra­di­tion. And Bern­stein did too.

Deliv­ered in the fall of 1973 and col­lec­tive­ly titled “The Unan­swered Ques­tion,” Bern­stein’s lec­tures cov­ered a lot of ter­rain, touch­ing on poet­ry, lin­guis­tics, phi­los­o­phy and physics. But the focus inevitably comes back to music — to how music works, or to the under­ly­ing gram­mar of music. The lec­tures run over 11 hours. They’re con­sid­ered mas­ter­pieces, beau­ti­ful exam­ples of how to make com­pli­cat­ed mate­r­i­al acces­si­ble. And they’re avail­able in full on YouTube. You can watch the first lec­ture (on Musi­cal Phonol­o­gy) above, and find the remain­ing five lec­tures below. The lec­tures can also be pur­chased as DVDs or in book for­mat.

Lec­ture 2: Musi­cal Syn­tax

Lec­ture 3: Musi­cal Seman­tics

Lec­ture 4: The Delights & Dan­gers of Ambi­gu­i­ty

Lec­ture 5: The 20th Cen­tu­ry Cri­sis

Lec­ture 6: The Poet­ry of Earth

This lec­ture series has been added to our exten­sive col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

In Search of Mœbius: A Documentary Introduction to the Inscrutable Imagination of the Late Comic Artist Mœbius

in Art, Film | March 12th, 2012

“I’ll die in some tru­ly banal man­ner, the way I live,” says the sub­ject of BBC Four’s In Search of Mœbius. I don’t know what would con­sti­tute a non-banal man­ner of death — or, for that mat­ter, a banal one — but nobody famil­iar with mod­ern com­ic art could believe that Jean Giraud, also known as Mœbius, could pos­si­bly have lived a banal life. If you haven’t read a com­ic since your child­hood Sun­day fun­nies, you need only watch this pro­gram to under­stand why the artist’s pass­ing on Sat­ur­day brought forth so many breath­less trib­utes. You’ll also catch a glimpse of the vast pos­si­bil­i­ties offered by com­ic art as a form. The inscrutable work­ings of Mœbius’ pecu­liar imag­i­na­tion drove him far into this ter­ri­to­ry, and many cre­ators (in comics and else­where) still strug­gle to fol­low him.

Aside from Mœbius him­self, the pro­gram inter­views the coterie from his ear­ly years in France at Métal Hurlant, the mag­a­zine that would open the space for his dis­tinc­tive­ly sub­con­scious-fueled, near-psy­che­del­ic yet rich­ly tex­tur­al sci­ence-fic­tion sen­si­bil­i­ty. It goes on to talk with well-known admir­ers who, feel­ing the res­o­nance of those par­tic­u­lar (and par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult to describe) qual­i­ties of Mœbius’ vision that cross so many nation­al and artis­tic bound­aries, found ways to work with him.

These high-pro­file col­lab­o­ra­tors range from Mar­vel Comics founder Stan Lee, who enlist­ed Mœbius to take Sil­ver Surfer in new aes­thet­ic and intel­lec­tu­al direc­tions, to screen­writer Dan O’Bannon, bio­me­chan­i­cal sur­re­al­ist H.R. Giger, and filmmaker/mystic Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, who worked with him on an unre­al­ized (but still tan­ta­liz­ing) film adap­ta­tion of Dune.

In Search of Mœbius also explores the real land­scapes that must have worked their way into Mœbius’ imag­i­na­tion, con­tribut­ing to the strik­ing­ly unre­al land­scapes that worked their way out of it. We see the deserts of Mex­i­co, traces of which appear in his West­ern series Blue­ber­ry, where he vis­it­ed his moth­er in the 1950s. We see the Los Ange­les he con­sid­ered “real­ly an amaz­ing city,” where his work on Sil­ver Surfer took him. We even see him in his native land, stand­ing before the harsh­ly icon­ic Bib­lio­thèque nationale de France. Mœbius may be gone, but the world inside his head remains for­ev­er open for us on the page to explore. H/T @EscapeIntoLife

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Michio Kaku: We’re Born Scientists But Switch to Investment Banking (and More Culture Around the Web)

in Physics | March 12th, 2012

Physics of the Future: How Sci­ence Will Shape Human Des­tiny and Our Dai­ly Lives by the Year 2100 — That’s the new book by the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist, best-sell­ing author, and unabashed pop­u­lar­iz­er of sci­ence Michio Kaku. And, here’s one pre­dic­tion he makes. The U.S. won’t play as promi­nent a role in sci­ence dur­ing the years ahead. The rea­son why he explains in The Wall Street Jour­nal.

Fifty per­cent of Ph.D. physi­cists are for­eign-born, and they’re here com­pli­ments of the H1‑B visa. There’s a brain drain into the Unit­ed States; that’s why we’re still No. 1. But it can’t last for­ev­er.

And indeed while Chi­na and India start to lure their best tal­ent home, the best Amer­i­can stu­dents are leav­ing the hard sci­ences for lucra­tive careers, such as invest­ment bank­ing. Kaku goes on to say:

I have noth­ing against invest­ment bank­ing, but it’s like mas­sag­ing mon­ey rather than cre­at­ing mon­ey. If you’re in physics, you cre­ate inven­tions, you cre­ate lasers, you cre­ate tran­sis­tors, com­put­ers, GPS. [If you’re an invest­ment banker, on the oth­er hand] you don’t cre­ate any­thing new. You sim­ply mas­sage oth­er peo­ple’s mon­ey and take a cut.

More Cul­ture Around the Web:

Paul Gra­ham’s Ambi­tious Star­tups Ideas: #3 Replace Uni­ver­si­ties

World’s Old­est Charles Dick­ens Film Dis­cov­ered

How To Be Cre­ative. Jon­ah Lehrer on Why Any­one Can Inno­vate

Josef Skvorecky on the Nazis’ Con­trol-Freak Hatred of Jazz

Author Neil Gaiman Talks about His Trust­ed Foun­tain Pens

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Sen­ate Tes­ti­mo­ny from this Week on the Past, Present, & Future of NASA

Beat poet Allen Gins­berg Inter­viewed by Con­ser­v­a­tive Colum­nist John Lofton, 1990

Intro­duc­ing The Curator’s Code: A Stan­dard for Hon­or­ing Attri­bu­tion of Dis­cov­ery Across the Web

The Day the World Took Off. Cam­bridge Doc­u­men­tary on the Ori­gins of the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion

Nabokov Reads Lolita, and Names the Greatest Books of the 20th Century

in Books, Literature | March 10th, 2012

If you heard our inter­view on The John Batch­e­lor Show tonight (catch it at the 29:50 mark), and if you want to check out the mar­velous clip of Vladimir Nabokov read­ing Loli­ta, here it is. Don’t for­get to find us on Twit­ter and Face­book:

Orig­i­nal­ly aired on 1950s French tele­vi­sion, this clip gives you some vin­tage Vladimir Nabokov. Ear­ly on, the Russ­ian nov­el­ist reads the won­der­ful­ly poet­ic first lines of Loli­ta:

Loli­ta, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue tak­ing a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

Then we get down to real busi­ness. Putting on his lit­er­ary crit­ic cap, Nabokov tells us what 20th nov­els make real or pre­tend claims to great­ness. First the fak­ers:

I’ve been per­plexed and amused by fab­ri­cat­ed notions about so-called “great books.” That, for instance, Mann’s asi­nine Death in Venice, or Pasternak’s melo­dra­mat­ic, vile­ly writ­ten Doc­tor Zhiva­go, or Faulkner’s corn­cob­by chron­i­cles can be con­sid­ered mas­ter­pieces, or at least what jour­nal­ists term “great books,” is to me the same sort of absurd delu­sion as when a hyp­no­tized per­son makes love to a chair.

And then the true greats in order of per­son­al pref­er­ence:

1) James Joyce’s Ulysses

2) Kafka’s The Meta­mor­pho­sis

3) Andrei Bely’s St. Peters­burg

4) The first half of Proust’s fairy tale, In Search of Lost Time

We’re adding this video to our Cul­tur­al Icons col­lec­tion, which fea­tures great writ­ers, artists and thinkers speak­ing in their own words. And if we have piqued your inter­est, don’t miss these oth­er Nabokov gems:

Nabokov Tweaks Kafka’s “The Meta­mor­pho­sis”

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent “Loli­ta” Book Cov­ers

Vladimir Nabokov on Loli­ta: Just Anoth­er Great Love Sto­ry?

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

How Bertrand Russell Turned The Beatles Against the Vietnam War

in History, Music, Philosophy | March 10th, 2012

The Bea­t­les were so much a part of the youth move­ment that blos­somed in the 1960s that it’s amus­ing to think that one of the main issues that ener­gized the movement–peace–came to the Bea­t­les through a 92-year-old man.

As Paul McCart­ney explains in this clip from a Jan­u­ary 14, 2009 inter­view on The View, it hap­pened when he decid­ed to pay a vis­it to philoso­pher Bertrand Rus­sell. A co-founder of ana­lyt­ic phi­los­o­phy, Rus­sell had been a life-long social and polit­i­cal activist. Dur­ing World War I, he was not allowed to trav­el freely in Britain due to his anti-war views. He lost his fel­low­ship at Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Cam­bridge, and was even­tu­al­ly jailed for six months for sup­pos­ed­ly inter­fer­ing with British For­eign Pol­i­cy. After World War II, Rus­sell lob­bied stren­u­ous­ly for the abo­li­tion of nuclear weapons. In the 1960s, he opposed the Viet­nam War.

After the Bea­t­les became big in 1963 and 1964, McCart­ney began tak­ing advan­tage of his celebri­ty sta­tus by call­ing on peo­ple he admired. In an inter­view with Bar­ry Miles for the book Paul McCart­ney: Many Years From Now, McCart­ney describes his meet­ing with Rus­sell:

Some­how I got his num­ber and called him up. I fig­ured him as a good speak­er, I’d seen him on tele­vi­sion, I’d read var­i­ous bits and pieces and was very impressed by his dig­ni­ty and the clar­i­ty of this think­ing, so when I got a chance I went down and met him. Bertrand Rus­sell lived in Chelsea in one of those lit­tle ter­race hous­es, I think it was Flood Street. He had the arche­typ­al Amer­i­can assis­tant who seemed always to be at every­one’s door that you want­ed to meet. I sat round wait­ing, then went in and had a great lit­tle talk with him. Noth­ing earth-shat­ter­ing. He just clued me in to the fact that Viet­nam was a very bad war, it was an impe­ri­al­ist war and Amer­i­can vest­ed inter­ests were real­ly all it was all about. It was a bad war and we should be against it. That was all. It was pret­ty good from the mouth of the great philoso­pher. “Slip it to me, Bert.”

McCart­ney report­ed his expe­ri­ence to the oth­er mem­bers of the Bea­t­les, and it was John Lennon who real­ly took the anti-war mes­sage and ran with it. For a reminder of those days, watch the video below of Lennon and Yoko Ono at their “Bed-In” for peace in 1969:

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!