Woody Allen Lists the Greatest Films of All Time: Includes Classics by Bergman, Truffaut & Fellini

in Film | August 2nd, 2013

Image by Col­in Swan, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

We’ve looked this week at the favorite movies select­ed by such respect­ed film­mak­ers as Stan­ley Kubrick and Mar­tin Scors­ese. Today we round out this trio of emi­nent direc­tors with the great­est films of all time accord­ing to Woody Allen, vot­ing in the almighty Sight and Sound poll. The direc­tor of Annie Hall, Crimes and Mis­de­meanors, and Mid­night in Paris select­ed, in no par­tic­u­lar order, the fol­low­ing:

• The 400 Blows (François Truf­faut, 1959)
• 8½ (Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, 1963)
• Amar­cord (Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, 1972)
• The Bicy­cle Thieves (Vit­to­rio de Sica, 1948)
• Cit­i­zen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
• The Dis­creet Charm of the Bour­geoisie (Luis Buñuel, 1972)
• Grand Illu­sion (Jean Renoir, 1937)
• Paths of Glo­ry (Stan­ley Kubrick, 1957)
• Rashomon (Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, 1950)
• The Sev­enth Seal (Ing­mar Bergman, 1957)

It comes as no shock that Ing­mar Bergman makes the list, giv­en Allen’s well-doc­u­ment­ed and open­ly admit­ted enthu­si­asm for (and, in cas­es like Inte­ri­ors, direct imi­ta­tion of) the man who made The Sev­enth Seal. If that vote rep­re­sents Allen’s con­tem­pla­tive, moral­ly seri­ous side, then the vote for Luis Buñuel’s endur­ing­ly fun­ny sur­re­al­ist farce The Dis­creet Charm of the Bour­geoisie rep­re­sents his well-known predilec­tion for humor, often class-based, which occa­sion­al­ly melts into silli­ness.

Like Scors­ese, Allen includes Kubrick, though for his ear­ly Paths of Glo­ry rather than the more wide­ly-seen 2001. Like both Scors­ese and Kubrick, he picks a Felli­ni — two, in fact — and all three of their lists illus­trate that it would take a con­trar­i­an film­go­er indeed to deny Orson Welles’ Cit­i­zen Kane a vote. Kubrick, you’ll recall, also had great praise for Vit­to­rio de Sica and François Truf­faut, and their ear­ly pic­tures show up among Allen’s selec­tions. Take Kubrick, Scors­ese, and Allen’s lists togeth­er, and you have a few prin­ci­ples to guide your view­ing: con­cen­trate on the mid­cen­tu­ry mas­ters. Cit­i­zen Kane real­ly does mer­it all those acco­lades. And above all, make sure you watch your Felli­ni. But which films did Felli­ni love?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

How Woody Allen Dis­cov­ered Ing­mar Bergman, and How You Can Too

Woody Allen Answers 12 Uncon­ven­tion­al Ques­tions He Has Nev­er Been Asked Before

Meetin’ WA: Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Watch Lollapalooza 2013. It’s Streaming Live on YouTube This Weekend, and It’s Free

in Music | August 2nd, 2013

A quick heads up: The Lol­la­palooza 2013 music fes­ti­val is get­ting going in Chica­go. And it’s stream­ing live (for free) all this week­end on YouTube. Right now, you can catch The Killers on stage. Nine Inch Nails will be per­form­ing lat­er tonight (Fri­day). You can find the line­up for Sat­ur­day and Sun­day here. Enjoy the shows.

Watch as Van Gogh’s Famous Self-Portrait Morphs Into a Photograph

in Art, Photography, Technology | August 2nd, 2013

It’s a real­i­ty of big city liv­ing that one occa­sion­al­ly stum­bles upon some famous per­son behav­ing like a mere civil­ian, out walk­ing the dog, buy­ing a lat­te, or tak­ing the kids to some child-cen­tric event. I’m bad at rec­og­niz­ing these lumi­nar­ies out of con­text, which may be why I’m great at mis­tak­en­ly believ­ing some ran­dom cit­i­zen stand­ing beside me at an inter­sec­tion is in fact a not­ed author or beloved char­ac­ter actor. I have thus far nev­er labored under the delu­sion that the guy across the aisle on the F train to Brook­lyn is a one-eared Dutch post-Impres­sion­ist who died over a hun­dred years ago, but that could change.

Or not. Accord­ing to Lithuan­ian archi­tect and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Tadao Cern, the friend who served as the mod­el for his dig­i­tal recre­ation of Vin­cent Van Gogh’s icon­ic self-por­trait does­n’t resem­ble the painter all that much beyond his gin­ger hair and beard. After tak­ing his pic­ture, Cern devot­ed a day to adjust­ing col­ors and expo­sure in Light­room and fine tun­ing a host of details in Pho­to­shop. Sud­den­ly, the sim­i­lar­i­ties were uncan­ny.

And since every Franken­stein needs a bride, Cern has cob­bled togeth­er a Mona Lisa to keep Van Gogh com­pa­ny.

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mor­ph­ing Van Gogh Por­traits

Simon Schama Presents Van Gogh and the Begin­ning of Mod­ern Art

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is post­ing from the wilds of Cape Cod, where she once spot­ted John Waters rid­ing his bicy­cle to Safe­way in a yel­low slick­er and match­ing all-weath­er pants. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

George Saunders Extols the Virtues of Kindness in 2013 Speech to Syracuse University Grads

in Graduation Speech, Life, Literature | August 2nd, 2013

Full dis­clo­sure: I love George Saun­ders. Can I say that? Can I say that George Saun­ders rekin­dled my faith in con­tem­po­rary fic­tion? Is that too fawn­ing? Obse­quious, but true! Oh, how bored I had become with fourth-hand deriv­a­tive Carv­er, cheap­ened Cheev­er, some­times the sad approx­i­ma­tions of Chuck Palah­niuk. So bor­ing. It had got­ten so all I could read was Philip K. Dick, over and over and over. And Alice Walk­er. And Wuther­ing Heights. And Thomas Hardy. Do you see the pass I’d come to? Then Saun­ders. In a writ­ing class I took, with one of Gor­don Lish’s acolytes (no names), I read Saun­ders. I read Wells Tow­ers, Pad­gett Pow­ell, Aimee Bender—a host of mod­ern writ­ers who were doing some­thing new, in short, some­times very short, forms, but explo­sive!

What is it about George Saun­ders that grips? He has mas­tered friv­o­li­ty, turned it into an art of dia­mond-like com­pres­sion. And for this, he gets a MacArthur Fel­low­ship? Well, yes. Because what he does is bril­liant, in its shock­ing­ly unaf­fect­ed obser­va­tions of human­i­ty. George Saun­ders is an accom­plished writer who puts lit­tle store in his accom­plish­ments. Instead, he val­ues kind­ness most of all, and gen­eros­i­ty. These are the qual­i­ties he extols, in his typ­i­cal­ly droll man­ner, in a grad­u­a­tion speech he deliv­ered to the 2013 grad­u­at­ing class at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty. Kind­ness: a lit­tle virtue, you might say. The New York Times has pub­lished his speech, and I urge you to read it in full. I’m going to give you half, below, and chal­lenge you to find George Saun­ders want­i­ng.

Down through the ages, a tra­di­tion­al form has evolved for this type of speech, which is: Some old fart, his best years behind him, who, over the course of his life, has made a series of dread­ful mis­takes (that would be me), gives heart­felt advice to a group of shin­ing, ener­getic young peo­ple, with all of their best years ahead of them (that would be you).

And I intend to respect that tra­di­tion.

Now, one use­ful thing you can do with an old per­son, in addi­tion to bor­row­ing mon­ey from them, or ask­ing them to do one of their old-time “dances,” so you can watch, while laugh­ing, is ask: “Look­ing back, what do you regret?”  And they’ll tell you.  Some­times, as you know, they’ll tell you even if you haven’t asked.  Some­times, even when you’ve specif­i­cal­ly request­ed they not tell you, they’ll tell you.

So: What do I regret?  Being poor from time to time?  Not real­ly.  Work­ing ter­ri­ble jobs, like “knuck­le-puller in a slaugh­ter­house?”  (And don’t even ASK what that entails.)  No.  I don’t regret that.  Skin­ny-dip­ping in a riv­er in Suma­tra, a lit­tle buzzed, and look­ing up and see­ing like 300 mon­keys sit­ting on a pipeline, poop­ing down into the riv­er, the riv­er in which I was swim­ming, with my mouth open, naked?  And get­ting death­ly ill after­wards, and stay­ing sick for the next sev­en months?  Not so much.  Do I regret the occa­sion­al humil­i­a­tion?  Like once, play­ing hock­ey in front of a big crowd, includ­ing this girl I real­ly liked, I some­how man­aged, while falling and emit­ting this weird whoop­ing noise, to score on my own goalie, while also send­ing my stick fly­ing into the crowd, near­ly hit­ting that girl?  No.  I don’t even regret that.

But here’s some­thing I do regret:

In sev­enth grade, this new kid joined our class.  In the inter­est of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, her Con­vo­ca­tion Speech name will be “ELLEN.”  ELLEN was small, shy.  She wore these blue cat’s‑eye glass­es that, at the time, only old ladies wore.  When ner­vous, which was pret­ty much always, she had a habit of tak­ing a strand of hair into her mouth and chew­ing on it.

So she came to our school and our neigh­bor­hood, and was most­ly ignored, occa­sion­al­ly teased (“Your hair taste good?” – that sort of thing).  I could see this hurt her.  I still remem­ber the way she’d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a lit­tle gut-kicked, as if, hav­ing just been remind­ed of her place in things, she was try­ing, as much as pos­si­ble, to dis­ap­pear.  After awhile she’d drift away, hair-strand still in her mouth.  At home, I imag­ined, after school, her moth­er would say, you know: “How was your day, sweet­ie?” and she’d say, “Oh, fine.”  And her moth­er would say, “Mak­ing any friends?” and she’d go, “Sure, lots.”

Some­times I’d see her hang­ing around alone in her front yard, as if afraid to leave it.

And then – they moved.  That was it.  No tragedy, no big final haz­ing.

One day she was there, next day she wasn’t.

End of sto­ry.

Now, why do I regret that?  Why, forty-two years lat­er, am I still think­ing about it?  Rel­a­tive to most of the oth­er kids, I was actu­al­ly pret­ty nice to her.  I nev­er said an unkind word to her.  In fact, I some­times even (mild­ly) defend­ed her.

But still.  It both­ers me.

So here’s some­thing I know to be true, although it’s a lit­tle corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it:

What I regret most in my life are fail­ures of kind­ness. 

Those moments when anoth­er human being was there, in front of me, suf­fer­ing, and I responded…sensibly.  Reserved­ly.  Mild­ly.

Or, to look at it from the oth­er end of the tele­scope:  Who, in your life, do you remem­ber most fond­ly, with the most unde­ni­able feel­ings of warmth?

Those who were kind­est to you, I bet.

It’s a lit­tle facile, maybe, and cer­tain­ly hard to imple­ment, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.

Read the rest of Saun­ders’ speech here, and be moved. Try not to be.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

10 Free Sto­ries by George Saun­ders, Author of Tenth of Decem­ber, “The Best Book You’ll Read This Year”

Oprah Winfrey’s Har­vard Com­mence­ment Speech: Fail­ure is Just Part of Mov­ing Through Life

David Byrne’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech Offers Trou­bling and Encour­ag­ing Advice for Stu­dents in the Arts

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

132 Years of Global Warming Visualized in 26 Dramatically Animated Seconds

in Science | August 1st, 2013

Cour­tesy of NASA comes a visu­al­iza­tion show­ing how glob­al tem­per­a­tures have changed since 1880. Accord­ing to NASA’s web site, this “col­or-cod­ed map shows a pro­gres­sion of chang­ing glob­al sur­face tem­per­a­tures from 1884 to 2012. Dark blue indi­cates areas cool­er than aver­age. Dark red indi­cates areas warmer than aver­age.”  And the dif­fer­ence between dark blue and dark red is about 7.2 degrees fahren­heit. NASA sci­en­tists note that “2012 was the ninth warmest of any year since 1880, con­tin­u­ing a long-term trend of ris­ing glob­al tem­per­a­tures. With the excep­tion of 1998, the nine warmest years in the 132-year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 rank­ing as the hottest years on record.” Copies of the video above and still shots can be freely down­loaded from the NASA web site. To deep­en your under­stand­ing of cli­mate change, spend some time with Glob­al Warm­ing, a free online course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. 

via @SteveSilberman/Wash­Po

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Song of Our Warm­ing Plan­et: Cel­list Turns 130 Years of Cli­mate Change Data into Music

Glob­al Warm­ing: A Free Course from UChica­go Explains Cli­mate Change

Per­pet­u­al Ocean: A Van Gogh-Like Visu­al­iza­tion of our Ocean Cur­rents

Sal­ly Ride Warns Against Glob­al Warm­ing; Won­ders If Tech­nol­o­gy Can Save Us From Our­selves

The Origins Project Brings Together Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Bill Nye, Ira Flatow, and More on One Stage

in Media, Science | August 1st, 2013

It often seems, at least to me, that our cul­ture is slow­ly slid­ing back­ward when it comes to sci­ence edu­ca­tion. As a human­i­ties per­son, my obser­va­tions may not count for much, but I do find myself get­ting nos­tal­gic for pop­u­lar sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tors like Carl Sagan and Richard Feyn­man; peo­ple who could appear in America’s liv­ing room and enthrall even the most hard­ened and recal­ci­trant of minds. Sagan’s influ­ence peaked at the dawn of the cul­ture wars, and it doesn’t seem like any­one could fill his shoes.

But sev­er­al influ­en­tial sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tors have made sig­nif­i­cant strides in bring­ing sci­ence to a pop­u­lar audi­ence in the past few decades. Among them is the very affa­ble astro­physi­cist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who takes Sagan’s man­tle in the Cos­mos reboot on Fox next year. There are media fig­ures like NPR’s Ira Fla­tow, Bill Nye the Sci­ence Guy, sci-fi author Neal Stephen­son, and Emmy-award-win­ning Tra­cy Day, co-founder of the World Sci­ence Fes­ti­val. Physi­cist and pop­u­lar sci­ence writer Bri­an Greene has done excel­lent work for NOVA, and sci­en­tif­ic heavy­weights Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins reach mil­lions with pop­u­lar books and media appear­ances.

Now imag­ine all these peo­ple on the same stage togeth­er, trad­ing sto­ries, jam­ming, riff­ing like great jazz musi­cians, like some Jus­tice League of 21st cen­tu­ry sci­ence lovers. Well, you don’t have to, because this hap­pened, not on prime­time tele­vi­sion (alas), but at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty under the aegis of their “Ori­gins Project,” whose mis­sion is to fos­ter inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research, build sci­en­tif­ic part­ner­ships, and “raise the pro­file of ori­gins-relat­ed issues and broad­en sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­cy.” Ori­gins Project direc­tor Lawrence Krauss MC’ed the March 30th event, and the pan­el filled a 3,000-seat audi­to­ri­um for a two-hour ses­sion that focus­es on “the sto­ry­telling of sci­ence” (part one at top, part two above).

The event har­ness­es the slick, enter­tain­ing for­mat of TED Talks to demon­strate how cut­ting-edge research can reach a wide audi­ence eager for a fuller under­stand­ing of the phys­i­cal uni­verse. The first video up top opens with a quote from Michael Sher­mer: “Humans are pat­tern-seek­ing sto­ry-telling ani­mals, and we are quite adept at telling sto­ries about pat­terns, whether they exist or not.” The sto­ries that the mem­bers of this excit­ing pan­el dis­cus­sion tell are con­nect­ed to phys­i­cal real­i­ty through sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence that—without art­ful and com­pelling narrative—can seem bewil­der­ing­ly com­plex.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson Unveils a Daz­zling Pre­view of the New Cos­mos

Richard Dawkins Makes the Case for Evo­lu­tion in the 1987 Doc­u­men­tary, The Blind Watch­mak­er

The Unbe­liev­ers, A New Film Star­ring Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, Wern­er Her­zog, Woody Allen, & Cor­mac McCarthy

Bill Nye, The Sci­ence Guy, Says Cre­ation­ism is Bad for Kids and America’s Future

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

The Masterful Polaroid Pictures Taken by Filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky

in Film, Photography | August 1st, 2013

Today, dig­i­tal­ly empow­ered to take, view, and share a pho­to­graph in the span of sec­onds, we think noth­ing of the phrase “ïnstant cam­era.” But to cel­e­brat­ed Russ­ian film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky, who died in 1986 after liv­ing almost his entire life in the Sovi­et Union, the tech­nol­o­gy came as a rev­e­la­tion. He had, of course, to use a prim­i­tive Polaroid cam­era, but, Tarkovsky being Tarkovsky, his aes­thet­ic sense still came through its lit­tle square, self-devel­op­ing frames loud and clear — or rather, it came through, rich, pen­sive, solemn, and autum­nal.

In 2006, Thames & Hud­son pub­lished Instant Light, a book col­lect­ing “a selec­tion of col­or Polaroids the film­mak­er took from 1979 to 1984 of his home, fam­i­ly, and friends in Rus­sia and of places he vis­it­ed in Italy,” and you can see some of these images on the blog Poe­mas del río Wang, or on this Face­book page.

The post quotes Tarkovsky’s friend Toni­no Guer­ra, remem­ber­ing the auteur’s Polaroid peri­od: “In 1977, on my wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny in Moscow, Tarkovsky appeared with a Polaroid cam­era. He had just short­ly dis­cov­ered this instru­ment and used it with great plea­sure among us. [ … ] Tarkovsky thought a lot about the ‘flight’ of time and want­ed to do only one thing: to stop it — even if only for a moment, on the pic­tures of the Polaroid cam­era.”

Now that we find our­selves in a new wave of Polaroidism — you can even buy the cam­eras and their film at Urban Out­fit­ters — we’d do well to study these pic­tures tak­en by a man who mas­tered their form just as thor­ough­ly as he mas­tered cin­e­ma. And if you want evi­dence of the lat­ter, look no fur­ther than our col­lec­tion of Tarkovsky films free online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Tarkovsky’s Solaris Revis­it­ed

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Very First Films: Three Stu­dent Films, 1956–1960

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

A Subway Ride Through New York City: Watch Vintage Footage from 1905

in History, Technology | July 31st, 2013

If you’re a New York­er, you know this stretch of sub­way inside and out. You’ve schlepped from Union Square to Grand Cen­tral Sta­tion on the 4, 5, or 6 trains how many times? Prob­a­bly more than you care to count. But don’t wor­ry, you’re in good com­pa­ny. New York­ers have been mak­ing this jour­ney since 1904, and here we have some vin­tage video to prove it. Shot on May 21, 1905, sev­en months after the IRT sub­way line opened, the video shows a train mov­ing uptown. And then, dur­ing the last minute, you can see the New York­ers exit­ing the train, svelte and dressed to the nines.

If you’re won­der­ing how this clip was shot, let me add this: A cam­era was mount­ed on a sub­way train fol­low­ing anoth­er train on the same track. Light­ing was pro­vid­ed by a spe­cial­ly con­struct­ed work car on a par­al­lel track.

This pub­lic domain film can be found in the Library of Con­gress’ Ear­ly Motion Pic­ture Col­lec­tion. The video itself comes to us via the New York Dai­ly News, where you can see maps and pic­tures of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry sub­way sys­tem.

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:

The World’s First Mobile Phone Shown on 1922 Vin­tage Film

Berlin Street Scenes Beau­ti­ful­ly Caught on Film (1900–1914)

1927 Lon­don Shown in Mov­ing Col­or

Rare Col­or Footage of the 1939 World Series: Yan­kees v. Reds

New Archive Reveals How Scientists Finally Solved the Vexing “Longitude Problem” During the 1700s

in Archives, Astronomy, Education, History, Science | July 31st, 2013

For cen­turies, sea­far­ing explor­ers and mer­chants reck­oned with the lon­gi­tude prob­lem. It was rel­a­tive­ly easy to fig­ure out a ship’s loca­tion on a north-south axis, but near­ly impos­si­ble to deter­mine how far east or west it was. And the stakes were high. Sail too far astray and your ship (and men) could end up so far afield that get­ting home before the food and water ran out might be impos­si­ble. The sail­ing world need­ed bet­ter tools to deter­mine loca­tion at sea.

In 1714 the British gov­ern­ment estab­lished the Board of Lon­gi­tude, offer­ing a cash prize to any­one who could fig­ure out how to detect how far east or west a ship was at sea. The Board was abol­ished in 1828, but only after fos­ter­ing inno­v­a­tive tech­niques that would for­ev­er change the nature of marine nav­i­ga­tion.

Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty and the Nation­al Mar­itime Muse­um at Green­wich recent­ly released an archive mak­ing all of the let­ters, objects, and doc­u­ments relat­ed to the Board’s work avail­able, along with a spiffy set of videos that brings the Board’s his­to­ry and achieve­ments to life.

Dur­ing the Board’s tenure, clock­mak­er John Har­ri­son fig­ured out that sailors could find out their loca­tion if they knew local time at sea and com­pared that to the time at a com­mon ref­er­ence point. The moon was seen as a giant clock, and its posi­tion rel­a­tive to stars was record­ed in the Nau­ti­cal Almanac, giv­ing sailors the data to com­pare against the time at sea. One of the inno­va­tions vet­ted by the Board of Lon­gi­tude is John Harrison’s Sea Clock. Also dur­ing that time, Green­wich became the prime merid­i­an.

All of this work led to more accu­rate maps. The Board spon­sored jour­neys, includ­ing some aboard Cap­tain Cook’s ships with portable obser­va­to­ries for map­mak­ers to sketch and use tri­an­gu­la­tion to deter­mine accu­rate loca­tion on voy­ages, includ­ing one to the North­west­ern Unit­ed States.

You can start rum­mag­ing through the fas­ci­nat­ing archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Caught Map­ping: A Cin­e­mat­ic Ride Through the Nit­ty Grit­ty World of Vin­tage Car­tog­ra­phy

Play Cae­sar: Trav­el Ancient Rome with Stanford’s Inter­ac­tive Map

Cut­ting-Edge Tech­nol­o­gy Recon­structs the Bat­tle of Get­tys­burg 150 Years Lat­er

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Fol­low her on Twit­ter @mskaterix or vis­it her on the web at .

Classic Monty Python: Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw Engage in a Hilarious Battle of Wits

in Comedy, Literature | July 31st, 2013

Have you ever won­dered what it would have been like to be present when Oscar Wilde was deliv­er­ing those daz­zling epi­grams of his? In this clas­sic sketch from Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, we’re pre­sent­ed with one hilar­i­ous pos­si­bil­i­ty.

The sketch is from Episode 39 of the Fly­ing Cir­cus, the last episode of sea­son three, which was record­ed on May 18, 1972 but not aired until Jan­u­ary 18, 1973. The scene takes place in 1895, in the draw­ing room of Wilde’s Lon­don home. Hold­ing court amid a room­ful of syco­phants, Wilde (played by Gra­ham Chap­man) com­petes with the Irish writer George Bernard Shaw (Michael Palin) and the Amer­i­can-born painter James McNeill Whistler (John Cleese) to impress Queen Vic­to­ri­a’s son Albert Edward (Ter­ry Jones), the Prince of Wales and future King Edward VII.

As for the his­tor­i­cal basis of the sketch, “There seems to be no evi­dence for the con­vivial tri­umvi­rate of Whistler, Wilde, and Shaw,” writes Darl Larsen in Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus: An Utter­ly Com­plete, Thor­ough­ly Unil­lus­trat­ed, Absolute­ly Unau­tho­rized Guide, “espe­cial­ly as late as 1895, when Whistler was car­ing for his ter­mi­nal­ly ill wife and Wilde was in the ear­ly stages of his fall from grace.” Wilde’s play The Impor­tance of Being Earnest opened in Feb­ru­ary of that year, and short­ly after­ward he became embroiled in a legal bat­tle with the Mar­quess of Queens­ber­ry that led even­tu­al­ly to his impris­on­ment for homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. Wilde was once a pro­tégé of Whistler, but their friend­ship had dete­ri­o­rat­ed by 1895. Whistler was appar­ent­ly jeal­ous of Wilde’s suc­cess, and believed he had stolen many of his famous lines. When Wilde report­ed­ly said “I wish I had said that” in response to a wit­ty remark by Whistler in about 1888, the painter famous­ly retort­ed, “You will, Oscar, you will.” Shaw worked as a Lon­don the­atre crit­ic in the 1890s, and the Prince of Wales was a patron of the arts.

In the Python sketch, Wilde kicks off a round of wit­ti­cisms with his famous line, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” But things go rapid­ly down­hill as the con­ver­sa­tion turns into an exer­cise in heap­ing abuse on the Prince of Wales and pin­ning the blame on a rival:

WILDE: Your Majesty is like a big jam dough­nut with cream on the top.

PRINCE: I beg your par­don?

WILDE: Um…It was one of Whistler’s.

WHISTLER: I nev­er said that.

WILDE: You did, James, you did.

WHISTLER: Well, Your High­ness, what I meant was that, like a dough­nut, um, your arrival gives us pleasure…and your depar­ture only makes us hun­gry for more. [The prince laughs and nods his head.] Your High­ness, you are also like a stream of bat’s piss.

PRINCE: What?

WHISTLER: It was one of Wilde’s. One of Wilde’s.

WILDE: It sod­ding was not! It was Shaw!

SHAW: I…I mere­ly meant, Your Majesty, that you shine out like a shaft of gold when all around is dark.

PRINCE: Oh.

WILDE: Right. Your Majesty is like a dose of clap–

WHISTLER: –Before you arrive is plea­sure, and after is a pain in the dong.

PRINCE: What??

WHISTLER AND WILDE: One of Shaw’s, one of Shaw’s.

SHAW: You bas­tards.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Watch Mon­ty Python’s “Sum­ma­rize Proust Com­pe­ti­tion” on the 100th Anniver­sary of Swann’s Way

John Cleese’s Eulo­gy for Gra­ham Chap­man: ‘Good Rid­dance, the Free-Load­ing Bas­tard, I Hope He Fries’