The Myth of Sisyphus Wonderfully Animated in an Oscar-Nominated Short Film (1974)

in Animation | November 19th, 2015

Even if you don’t know the myth by name, you know the sto­ry. In Greek mythol­o­gy, Sisy­phus, King of Corinth, was pun­ished “for his self-aggran­diz­ing crafti­ness and deceit­ful­ness by being forced to roll an immense boul­der up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, repeat­ing this action for eter­ni­ty.” In mod­ern times, this sto­ry inspired Albert Camus to write “The Myth of Sisy­phus,” an essay where he famous­ly intro­duced his con­cept of the “absurd” and iden­ti­fied Sisy­phus as the absurd hero. And it pro­vid­ed the cre­ative mate­r­i­al for a breath­tak­ing­ly good ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed by Mar­cell Jankovics in 1974. The film, notes the anno­ta­tion that accom­pa­nies the ani­ma­tion on Youtube, is “pre­sent­ed in a sin­gle, unbro­ken shot, con­sist­ing of a dynam­ic line draw­ing of Sisy­phus, the stone, and the moun­tain­side.” Fit­ting­ly, Jankovics’ lit­tle mas­ter­piece was nom­i­nat­ed for the Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film at the 48th Acad­e­my Awards. Enjoy watch­ing it above.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Cours­es in Ancient His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture & Phi­los­o­phy

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vas­es Come to Life with 21st Cen­tu­ry Ani­ma­tion

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Dis­cov­er the “Brazen Bull,” the Ancient Greek Tor­ture Machine That Dou­bled as a Musi­cal Instru­ment

The Absurd Phi­los­o­phy of Albert Camus Pre­sent­ed in a Short Ani­mat­ed Film by Alain De Bot­ton

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Hear Ray Bradbury’s Classic Sci-Fi Story Fahrenheit 451 as a Radio Drama

in Audio Books, Books, Literature, Radio | November 19th, 2015

fahrenheit 451

Last week we fea­tured a list of 100 nov­els all kids should read before grad­u­at­ing from high school. Cho­sen by 500 Eng­lish teach­ers from all over Britain, the list hap­pens to have a lot of over­lap with many oth­ers like it. Invari­ably, these kinds of young adult read­ing lists include Ray Bradbury’s nov­el of dystopi­an cen­sor­ship and anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism, Fahren­heit 451.  Why, I’ve always won­dered, should this nov­el be pitched almost exclu­sive­ly at teenagers, so much so that it seems like one of those books many of us read in high school, then nev­er read again, even if we are fans of Bradbury’s work?

A strange dis­con­nect emerges when we look at the his­to­ry of Bradbury’s nov­el as a teach­ing tool. Although most high school stu­dents are pre­sent­ed with free­think­ing as an ide­al, and giv­en cau­tion­ary tales of its sup­pres­sion, their own edu­ca­tions are just as often high­ly cir­cum­scribed by adults who fret about the effects of var­i­ous bad influ­ences.

Whether, as a stu­dent, you read the bowd­ler­ized or the “adult” ver­sion of Bradbury’s nov­el, per­haps it’s time to revis­it Fahren­heit 451, par­tic­u­lar­ly now that free­doms of thought, belief, and expres­sion have again come under intense scruti­ny. And in addi­tion to re-read­ing Bradbury’s nov­el, you can lis­ten to the 1971 radio play above. Pro­duced in Van­cou­ver by the CBC (and re-broad­cast in recent years by the Radio Enthu­si­asts of Puget Sound pod­cast), the abridged, one-hour adap­ta­tion by neces­si­ty changes the source mate­r­i­al, though for dra­mat­ic pur­pos­es, not to express­ly soft­en the mes­sage. Ray Brad­bury’s rep­u­ta­tion may have been tamed over the decades. He became late in life an avun­cu­lar sci-fi mas­ter, pri­mar­i­ly known as a writer of books for high school stu­dents. But at one time, his work—and sci­ence fic­tion in general—were so sub­ver­sive that the FBI kept close tabs on them.

If you like the Fahren­heit 451 adap­ta­tion, you can hear many more Brad­bury sto­ries adapt­ed into clas­sic radio plays at our pre­vi­ous post.

Also note: Tim Rob­bins has nar­rat­ed a new, unabridged audio ver­sion of Fahren­heit 451. It’s avail­able via Audible.com. You can get it for free with Audi­ble’s 30-day free tri­al. Get more details on that here.

via SFF

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who Was Afraid of Ray Brad­bury & Sci­ence Fic­tion? The FBI, It Turns Out (1959)

Sci-Fi Leg­end Ray Brad­bury Cre­ates a Vision­ary Plan to Redesign Los Ange­les

Ray Brad­bury: “The Things That You Love Should Be Things That You Do.” “Books Teach Us That”

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

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

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Meet Congo the Chimp, London’s Sensational 1950s Abstract Painter

in Art | November 19th, 2015

A few years ago, I watched and enjoyed My Kid Could Paint That, a doc­u­men­tary about Mar­la Olm­stead, a four-year-old abstract painter who became a brief art-world sen­sa­tion, her can­vas­es (which tow­ered over the tiny artist) at one point sell­ing for thou­sands of dol­lars apiece. Olm­stead raised the bar high indeed for all sub­se­quent preschool-aged art celebri­ties, but the world of unlike­ly painters in gen­er­al has a fuller, stranger his­to­ry. Wit­ness, for instance, Con­go the Chimp, the Lon­don Zoo’s artis­tic sen­sa­tion of the 1950s, a not­ed ani­mal artist who sold work to such not­ed non-ani­mal artists as Picas­so, Miró, and Dalí, the last of whom made a com­par­i­son with one of the best-known abstract painters of the day: “The hand of the chim­panzee is qua­si­hu­man; the hand of Jack­son Pol­lock is total­ly ani­mal!”

Congo

Con­go, who began his art career the moment he hap­pened to pick up a pen­cil, went on, writes the Tele­graph’s Nigel Reynolds, to become “a tele­vi­sion celebri­ty in the late 1950s as the star of Zootime, an ani­mal pro­gramme pre­sent­ed from the Lon­don Zoo by Desmond Mor­ris, the zool­o­gist and anthro­pol­o­gist. He became even more of a cause célèbre when the Insti­tute of Con­tem­po­rary Arts mount­ed a large exhi­bi­tion of his work in 1957.

Crit­ics had a field day and debate about the mean­ing of art raged furi­ous­ly.” You can see Mor­ris, a sur­re­al­ist painter him­self, in addi­tion to his zoo­log­i­cal, anthro­po­log­i­cal, and tele­vi­su­al work, inter­act­ing with Con­go in the 1950s and reflect­ing on the place of the chim­panzee artist in his own career in the clip at the top of the post. The news­reel below cov­ers an exhi­bi­tion called The Young Idea, which fea­tured paint­ings not just from Con­go but from such Mar­la Olm­stead pre­de­ces­sors as three-year-old Tim­o­thy Vaughn and eigh­teen-month-old Gra­ham Phillips. One of Con­go’s paint­ings appears above.

And so to the obvi­ous ques­tion: But Is It Art? And assum­ing it is, writes John Valen­tine in The Philoso­pher, “what then fol­lows from such a clas­si­fi­ca­tion? What sort of dif­fer­ence does it or should it make in the way we approach and appre­ci­ate chim­panzee paint­ings? If they are art, what sort of crit­i­cal or inter­pre­tive dis­course about them should we engage in? Do we sim­ply appre­ci­ate the lines, colours, and forms of Con­go’s paint­ings and stop at that? Does it make any dif­fer­ence that the paint­ings were done by a mem­ber of a dif­fer­ent species? Should species dif­fer­ences make any dif­fer­ence in artis­tic val­ue?” It may not, at least com­mer­cial­ly speak­ing: Con­go may have had his moment six decades ago, but don’t think that means his work will come cheap; back in 2005, some of his paint­ings went up on the auc­tion block and fetched more than $25,620.

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Comic Book Adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s Poignant Poem, Annabel Lee

in Comics/Cartoons, Literature | November 19th, 2015

annabellee1

We’ve high­light­ed the com­ic art of Mon­tre­al-based Julian Peters before on Open Cul­ture. He’s the man who under­took a 24-page illus­trat­ed adap­ta­tion of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and then also deliv­ered a man­ga ver­sion of W. B. Yeats’ “When You Are Old,” recre­at­ing the style of Japan­ese romance comics to a T.

While study­ing in a Mas­ters pro­gram ear­ly exam­ples of lit­er­ary graph­ic nov­els, Peters is also turn­ing into a fine illus­tra­tor of poet­ry whether clas­sic (Rim­baud, Keats) or con­tem­po­rary (team­ing up with John Philip John­son on an upcom­ing book of illus­trat­ed poems, one of which you can find here.)

annabel lee 2

This adap­ta­tion (above) of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” dates from 2011. Poe’s work gives illus­tra­tors nar­ra­tive aplen­ty, but it also gives them rep­e­ti­tion and ellipses. In his ren­di­tion, Peters gives us two pre-teen sweet­hearts sim­i­lar to Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatch­er, and when Annabel Lee dies from “the wind that came out of the cloud by night,” we get a full pan­el of Annabel’s final healthy moments. Wind is every­where to be found in the com­ic, form­ing white caps on the ocean, and blow­ing Annabel’s pig­tails when we first see her.

annabel lee 3

Schol­ars tend to agree that “Annabel Lee” was based on Poe’s first cousin and teen bride Vir­ginia Clemm, whom he mar­ried when she was 13 (and Poe was 27), but who passed away from tuber­cu­lo­sis at 24 years of age. The image of the beau­ti­ful corpse con­tin­ues through his work from “The Raven” to “Ligeia”.

You can find the first few pan­els of Peters’ adap­ta­tion above. Read the rest here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Clas­sics Sto­ries by Edgar Allan Poe Nar­rat­ed by James Mason in a 1953 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed Ani­ma­tion & 1958 Dec­ca Album

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist Poem The Waste Land

Watch the 1953 Ani­ma­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart,” Nar­rat­ed by James Mason

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Get to Know Socrates, Camus, Kierkegaard & Other Great Philosophers with the BBC’s Intelligent Radio Show, In Our Time

in Philosophy, Podcasts, Radio | November 19th, 2015

When writer, politi­cian, and BBC radio and tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty Melvyn Bragg began his long-run­ning radio pro­gram In Our Time, which brings aca­d­e­mics togeth­er to dis­cuss phi­los­o­phy, his­to­ry, sci­ence, reli­gion, and cul­ture, he didn’t think the show would last very long: “Six months,” he told The Scots­man in 2009, “but I’ll have a go.” Now, sev­en­teen years after the show began in 1998, In Our Time is going strong, with mil­lions of lis­ten­ers from around the world who tune in on the radio, or down­load the In Our Time pod­cast. Though it’s easy to despair when faced with the onslaught of mass media devot­ed to triv­i­al­i­ty and sen­sa­tion­al­ism, Bragg has shown there’s still a siz­able audi­ence that cares about thought­ful engage­ment with mat­ters of import, and in par­tic­u­lar that cares about phi­los­o­phy.

Though the sub­ject takes a beat­ing these days, espe­cial­ly in unfa­vor­able com­par­isons to the hard sci­ences, the con­cerns artic­u­lat­ed by philoso­phers over the cen­turies still inform our views of ethics, lan­guage, pol­i­tics, and human exis­tence writ large. In Our Time’s phi­los­o­phy pro­grams fol­low the same for­mat as the show’s oth­er top­ics—in Bragg’s words, he gets “three absolute­ly top-class aca­d­e­mics to dis­cuss one sub­ject and explore as deeply as time allow[s].” In this case, the “sub­ject,” is often a prop­er name, like Simone Weil, David Hume, Albert Camus, Simone de Beau­voir or Socrates.

The show just as often tack­les philo­soph­i­cal move­ments like Skep­ti­cism, Neo­pla­ton­ism, or The Frank­furt School, that aren’t asso­ci­at­ed with only one thinker; like­wise, Bragg and his guests have devot­ed their dis­cus­sions to long­stand­ing philo­soph­i­cal prob­lems, like the exis­tence of Free Will, and his­tor­i­cal devel­op­ments, like the Con­ti­nen­tal-Ana­lyt­ic Split in West­ern phi­los­o­phy.

Though there is cer­tain­ly no short­age of high qual­i­ty resources for peo­ple who wish to learn more about philosophy—such as the many free cours­es, pod­casts, and lec­tures we’ve fea­tured on this site—few are as imme­di­ate­ly acces­si­ble as In Our Time’s phi­los­o­phy dis­cus­sions. Bragg describes his prepa­ra­tion for each show as “swotting”—or cram­ming. He’s not an expert, but he’s knowl­edge­able enough to ask per­ti­nent ques­tions of his guests, who then go on to edu­cate him, and the lis­ten­ers, for the almost hour-long con­ver­sa­tion. Hear how well the approach works in the In Our Time phi­los­o­phy pro­grams fea­tured here. At the top, Bragg dis­cuss­es the phi­los­o­phy and activism of Bertrand Rus­sell with aca­d­e­m­ic philoso­phers A.C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, and Hilary Greaves. Below that, he talks Kierkegaard with Jonathan Ree, Clare Carlisle, and John Lip­pitt. Just above, hear Bragg dis­cuss Jean-Paul Sartre with Jonathan Rée, Bene­dict O’Dono­hoe, and Christi­na How­ells. Final­ly, below, hear his con­ver­sa­tion on Karl Marx with Antho­ny Grayling, Fran­cis Wheen, and Sted­man Jones.

These four exam­ples are but a small sam­pling of the many com­pelling In Our Time phi­los­o­phy dis­cus­sions. Explore, stream, and down­load dozens more at the BBC Radio 4 site or hear them on Youtube and iTunes here. And if any these con­ver­sa­tions whet your appetite for more, then head over to our expan­sive archive of Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es, and Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 197 Pod­casts (With More to Come)

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy With­out Any Gaps Pod­cast, Now at 239 Episodes, Expands into East­ern Phi­los­o­phy

Phi­los­o­phize This!: The Pop­u­lar, Enter­tain­ing Phi­los­o­phy Pod­cast from an Uncon­ven­tion­al Teacher

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

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The Lord of the Rings Mythology Explained in 10 Minutes, in Two Illustrated Videos

in Education, Literature | November 18th, 2015

As a lover of fan­ta­sy and sci­ence fic­tion, but by no means a know-it-all fan­boy, I know what it’s like to come to a fic­tion­al uni­verse late. It can seem like every­one else has already read the canon, seen the movies, and mem­o­rized the genealo­gies, ori­gin sto­ries, mag­i­cal arcana, num­ber of ancient blood feuds, etc. For exam­ple, I grew up steeped in Star Trek but nev­er watched Dr. Who. Now that British sci-fi show is seem­ing­ly every­where, and I find myself intrigued. But who has the time to catch up on sev­er­al decades of missed episodes? Some peo­ple may have felt sim­i­lar­ly in the last few years about The Lord of the Rings, what with the num­ber of J.R.R. Tolkien adap­ta­tions besieg­ing the­aters. If you haven’t read any of those books, Mid­dle Earth—for all its air of medieval leg­end and Norse myth—can be a very con­fus­ing place.

Thanks to Peter Jackson’s films, for bet­ter or worse, Tolkien’s books have even more cul­tur­al cur­ren­cy than they did in the 70s, when Led Zep­pelin mined them for lyri­cal inspi­ra­tion, and “Fro­do lives” graf­fi­ti appeared on over­pass­es every­where.

This brings us to the videos we fea­ture here. Pre­sent­ed in a rapid fire style like that of motor­mouth YA nov­el­ist and video edu­ca­tor John Green, “The Lord of the Rings Mythol­o­gy Explained” is exact­ly that–two very quick tours, with illus­tra­tions, through the com­plex mytho­log­i­cal world of Mid­dle Earth, the set­ting of The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy, The Hob­bit, and oth­er books you’ve maybe nev­er heard of. These videos were made before the final install­ment of Jack­son’s inter­minable Hob­bit tril­o­gy, but they cov­er most major devel­op­ments before and after the events in short book on which he based those films.

I’ll say this for the effort—Tolkien’s world is one I thought I knew, but I didn’t know it near­ly as well as I thought. Like most peo­ple, frankly, I haven’t read the source­book of so much of that world’s gen­e­sis, The Sil­mar­il­lion, which gets a sur­vey in the first video at the top of the post. I’m much more famil­iar, and you may be as well—through books or films—with the mytholo­gies of The Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy prop­er, cov­ered in the video above. If these two thor­ough explain­ers don’t sat­is­fy your curios­i­ty, you can like­ly have fur­ther ques­tions answered at one of the videos’ sources, Ask Mid­dle Earth, a site that solic­its “any ques­tion about Mid­dle Earth.” Anoth­er source, the work of com­par­a­tive mythol­o­gist Ver­lyn Flieger, who spe­cial­izes in Tolkien, also promis­es to be high­ly illu­mi­nat­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Map of Mid­dle-Earth Anno­tat­ed by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

“The Tolkien Pro­fes­sor” Presents Three Free Cours­es on The Lord of the Rings

110 Draw­ings and Paint­ings by J.R.R. Tolkien: Of Mid­dle-Earth and Beyond

J.R.R. Tolkien Snubs a Ger­man Pub­lish­er Ask­ing for Proof of His “Aryan Descent” (1938)

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

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The First Feminist Film, Germaine Dulac’s The Smiling Madame Beudet (1922)

in Film, Gender | November 18th, 2015

Yes­ter­day we fea­tured The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man, the first sur­re­al­ist film, direct­ed by Ger­maine Dulac in 1928. Giv­en Dulac’s gen­der, for those play­ing the cin­e­ma his­to­ry home game, it also counts as the first sur­re­al­ist film direct­ed by a woman. That alone would make for a suf­fi­cient­ly pio­neer­ing achieve­ment for any career in film, but Dulac had already accom­plished anoth­er impor­tant act of cin­e­mat­ic trail­blaz­ing with La Souri­ante Madame Beudet (The Smil­ing Madame Beudet), a short silent that also hap­pens to hold the title of the first fem­i­nist film.

Where Dulac worked from a sto­ry by Antonin Artaud in the The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man, she works here from a sto­ry orig­i­nal­ly by Guy de Mau­pas­sant, one revolv­ing around a wife, the tit­u­lar Madame Beudet, pushed to the brink by years of life with her boor­ish hus­band.

Madame Beudet at first finds some sweet­ness in her unen­vi­able lot in life in the form of the rich fan­tasies in her head, real­ized onscreen with a suite of visu­al tech­niques sim­i­lar to those Dulac would use to bring her audi­ence into the roman­ti­cal­ly fraught psy­che of the cler­gy­man six years lat­er. Even­tu­al­ly, though, she engi­neers a more per­ma­nent solu­tion to her prob­lems, plac­ing a live bul­let into the cham­ber of the revolver Mon­sieur Beudet uses in his con­stant self-pity­ing pan­tomimes of Russ­ian roulette.

And where schol­ars label The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man as a work of sur­re­al­ism, they label The Smil­ing Madame Beudet as a work of impres­sion­ism. “Through­out the pic­ture,” writes crit­ic Nathan South­ern, “Dulac uses such devices as slow motion, dis­tor­tions, and super­im­posed images to paint Beude­t’s var­i­ous emo­tion­al states onscreen,” an inter­sec­tion of form and sub­stance that result­ed in a pic­ture that “instant­ly estab­lished Dulac as a force in world cin­e­ma.” Now, along­side The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man, The Smil­ing Madame Beudet lays strong claim to the title of her mas­ter­work. Dulac clear­ly had far bet­ter luck than the pitiable Madame Beudet who, despite her best efforts ends the film deep­er in despair than she began it. As advanced an artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ty as she had, the film­mak­er here express­es a dic­tum of age-old sim­plic­i­ty: you can’t win ’em all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Sur­re­al­ist Film The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man, Brought to You By Ger­maine Dulac & Antonin Artaud (1928)

Simone de Beau­voir Explains “Why I’m a Fem­i­nist” in a Rare TV Inter­view (1975)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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An Interactive Timeline Covering 14 Billion Years of History: From The Big Bang to 2015

in History | November 18th, 2015

For his final project in Beza­lel Acad­e­my of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, Matan Stauber cre­at­ed His­tog­ra­phy, an inter­ac­tive time­line that cov­ers 14 bil­lion years of his­to­ry. The time­line, writes Stauber, “draws his­tor­i­cal events from Wikipedia, and it self-updates dai­ly with new record­ed events.” And the inter­face lets users see his­to­ry in small­er chunks (decades at a time) or big­ger ones (mil­lions of years at a time). To get a vague feel for how His­tog­ra­phy works, you can watch the video above. But real­ly the best way to expe­ri­ence things is to dive right in here.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

6,000 Years of His­to­ry Visu­al­ized in a 23-Foot-Long Time­line of World His­to­ry, Cre­at­ed in 1871

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

The His­to­ry of Mod­ern Art Visu­al­ized in a Mas­sive 130-Foot Time­line

Big His­to­ry: David Chris­t­ian Cov­ers 13.7 Bil­lion Years of His­to­ry in 18 Min­utes

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es

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The First Surrealist Film The Seashell and the Clergyman, Brought to You By Germaine Dulac & Antonin Artaud (1928)

in Film | November 17th, 2015

When the sub­ject of ear­ly sur­re­al­ist film aris­es, most of us think of Sal­vador Dalí and Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou, and not with­out good cause: even 86 years after its release, its night­mare images of piano-drag­ging and eye­ball-slic­ing still lurk in our col­lec­tive cin­e­mat­ic con­scious­ness. But we can’t call it the very first sur­re­al­ist film since, 87 years ago, French crit­ic and film­mak­er Ger­maine Dulac, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with no less an avant-garde lumi­nary than Antonin Artaud, put out La Coquille et le cler­gy­man, bet­ter know inter­na­tion­al­ly as The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man, which you can watch free above.

Un Chien Andalou met with a pleased recep­tion, to Buñuel’s delight and Dalí’s dis­ap­point­ment. Dulac and Artaud’s project pro­voked a dif­fer­ent reac­tion. “Adver­tised as ‘a dream on the screen,’ ” writes Sens­es of Cin­e­ma’s Maryann de Julio, “The Seashell and Cler­gy­man’s pre­miere at the Stu­dio des Ursu­lines on Feb­ru­ary 9, 1928 incit­ed a small riot, and crit­i­cal response to the film has ranged from the mis­in­formed – some Amer­i­can prints spliced the reels in the wrong order – to the rap­tur­ous – acclaimed as the first exam­ple of a Sur­re­al­ist film.”

The film takes place in the con­scious­ness of the tit­u­lar cler­gy­man, a lusty priest who thinks all man­ner of impure thoughts about a gen­er­al’s wife. In anoth­er Sens­es of Cin­e­ma arti­cle on Artaud’s film the­o­ry, Lee Jamieson writes that, in putting this trou­bled con­scious­ness on film, it “pen­e­trates the skin of mate­r­i­al real­i­ty and plunges the view­er into an unsta­ble land­scape where the image can­not be trust­ed,” result­ing in “a com­plex, mul­ti-lay­ered film, so semi­ot­i­cal­ly unsta­ble that images dis­solve into one anoth­er both visu­al­ly and ‘seman­ti­cal­ly,’ tru­ly invest­ing in film’s abil­i­ty to act upon the sub­con­scious.” It cap­i­tal­izes, in oth­er words, upon the now well-known prin­ci­ple that what is seen can­not be unseen.

But it also pushed cin­e­ma ahead in a way that Buñuel and Dali could run with the fol­low­ing year. De Julio’s arti­cle quotes Artaud’s own descrip­tion of the chal­lenge he saw the form as fac­ing, and the one which The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man attempts, in its way, to address: it could either become “pure or absolute cin­e­ma” or “this sort of hybrid visu­al art that per­sists in trans­lat­ing into images, more or less apt, psy­cho­log­i­cal sit­u­a­tions that would be per­fect­ly at home on stage or in the pages of a book, but not on the screen.” He saw nei­ther of these as “like­ly the true one,” and many film­mak­ers even today (David Lynch stands as a guid­ing light among those now liv­ing) con­tin­ue the search for how best to tell sto­ries on film in a man­ner suit­ed to the advan­tages of film.

Even over­shad­owed by Un Chien Andalou, The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man remains a pop­u­lar silent film to re-score today, and you can watch the movie with a few dif­fer­ent sound­tracks online: from dark ambi­ent artist Roto Vis­age, from musique con­crète com­pos­er Delia Der­byshire (see right above), from large-scale exper­i­men­tal band Sons of Noel and Adri­an, and many more besides.

The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man has been added to our col­lec­tion of Silent Films, a sub­set of our meta list 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Antonin Artaud’s Cen­sored, Nev­er-Aired Radio Play: To Have Done With The Judg­ment of God (1947)

Restored Ver­sion of Un Chien Andalou: Luis Buñuel & Sal­vador Dalí’s Sur­re­al Film (1929)

The 10 Favorite Films of Avant-Garde Sur­re­al­ist Film­mak­er Luis Buñuel (Includ­ing His Own Col­lab­o­ra­tion with Sal­vador Dalí)

The Great Train Rob­bery: Where West­erns Began

A Trip to the Moon: Where Sci Fi Movies Began

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Charles Dickens (Channeling Jorge Luis Borges) Created a Fake Library, with 37 Witty Invented Book Titles

in Books, Letters, Literature | November 17th, 2015

dickensshelf

I don’t know about you, but I’ve sort of always asso­ci­at­ed Charles Dick­ens with the kind of humor­less moral­ism and didac­tic sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty that are hall­marks of so much Vic­to­ri­an lit­er­a­ture. That’s prob­a­bly because the work of Dick­ens con­tains no small amount of humor­less moral­ism and didac­tic sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty. But it also con­tains much wit and absur­di­ty, inven­tive char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and rich descrip­tion. While nov­els like the short Hard Times, pub­lished in 1854, can seem more like thin­ly veiled tracts of moral phi­los­o­phy than ful­ly real­ized fic­tions, oth­ers, like the strange and whim­si­cal Pick­wick Papers—Dick­ens’ first—work as fan­ci­ful, light­heart­ed satires. The big, bag­gy nov­els like Great Expec­ta­tions, Bleak House, and A Tale of Two Cities (find in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks) man­age to skill­ful­ly com­bine these two impuls­es with his own twist on the goth­ic, such that Dick­ens’ work is not over­whelmed, as it might be, by ser­mo­niz­ing.

For all of this tidy sum­ma­tion of that giant of Vic­to­ri­an let­ters, one adjec­tive now comes to mind that I would nev­er have pre­vi­ous­ly thought to apply at any time to the writer of A Christ­mas Car­ol: Bor­ge­sian, as in pos­sessed of the scholas­tic wit of 20th cen­tu­ry Argen­tine writer Jorge Luis Borges. I’m not the first to note a resem­blance, but I must say it nev­er would have occurred to me to think of the two names in the same sen­tence were it not for an extra-cur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ty Dick­ens engaged in while out­fit­ting his Lon­don home, Tavi­s­tock House, in 1851. Let­ters of Note’s sis­ter site Lists of Note brings us the fol­low­ing anec­dote:

[Dick­ens] decid­ed to fill two spaces in his new study with book­cas­es con­tain­ing fake books, the wit­ty titles of which he had invent­ed. And so, on Octo­ber 22nd, he wrote to a book­binder named Thomas Robert Eeles and sup­plied him with the fol­low­ing “list of imi­ta­tion book-backs” to be pro­duced.

You can see the complete—completely Borgesian—list below. Borges is of course well known for invent­ing titles of books that have nev­er exist­ed, but seem like they should, in anoth­er dimen­sion some­where. His inven­tion of alter­nate real­i­ties, and pub­li­ca­tions, man­i­fests in most all of his sto­ries, as well as in odd­i­ties like the Book of Imag­i­nary Beings. Like Borges’ made-up books, Dick­ens’ con­tain just the right mix of the self-seri­ous and the ridicu­lous, so as to make them at once plau­si­ble, cryp­tic, exot­ic, and hilarious—both Pick­wick­ian and, indeed, pro­to-Bor­ge­sian.

His­to­ry of a Short Chancery Suit
Cat­a­logue of Stat­ues of the Duke of Welling­ton
Five Min­utes in Chi­na. 3 vols.
Forty Winks at the Pyra­mids. 2 vols.
Aber­nethy on the Con­sti­tu­tion. 2 vols.
Mr. Green’s Over­land Mail. 2 vols.
Cap­tain Cook’s Life of Sav­age. 2 vols.
A Car­pen­ter’s Bench of Bish­ops. 2 vols.
Toot’s Uni­ver­sal Let­ter-Writer. 2 vols.
Orson­’s Art of Eti­quette.
Downeast­er’s Com­plete Cal­cu­la­tor.
His­to­ry of the Mid­dling Ages. 6 vols.
Jon­ah’s Account of the Whale.
Cap­tain Par­ry’s Virtues of Cold Tar.
Kan­t’s Ancient Hum­bugs. 10 vols.
Bow­wow­dom. A Poem.
The Quar­rel­ly Review. 4 vols.
The Gun­pow­der Mag­a­zine. 4 vols.
Steele. By the Author of “Ion.”
The Art of Cut­ting the Teeth.
Matthew’s Nurs­ery Songs. 2 vols.
Pax­ton’s Bloomers. 5 vols.
On the Use of Mer­cury by the Ancient Poets.
Drowsy’s Rec­ol­lec­tions of Noth­ing. 3 vols.
Heavyside’s Con­ver­sa­tions with Nobody. 3 vols.
Com­mon­place Book of the Old­est Inhab­i­tant. 2 vols.
Growler’s Gruffi­ol­o­gy, with Appen­dix. 4 vols.
The Books of Moses and Sons. 2 vols.
Burke (of Edin­burgh) on the Sub­lime and Beau­ti­ful. 2 vols.
Teaz­er’s Com­men­taries.
King Hen­ry the Eighth’s Evi­dences of Chris­tian­i­ty. 5 vols.
Miss Bif­fin on Deport­ment.
Mor­rison’s Pills Progress. 2 vols.
Lady Godi­va on the Horse.
Mun­chausen’s Mod­ern Mir­a­cles. 4 vols.
Richard­son’s Show of Dra­mat­ic Lit­er­a­ture. 12 vols.
Hansard’s Guide to Refresh­ing Sleep. As many vol­umes as pos­si­ble.

As Fla­vor­wire reports, design­er Ann Sap­pen­field cre­at­ed her own fake book­bind­ings with Dick­ens’ titles (see some at the top of the page, cour­tesy of the NYPL). These are part of a New York Pub­lic Library exhib­it called Charles Dick­ens: The Key to Char­ac­ter that ran in 2012–13. You can read Dick­ens orig­i­nal let­ter to Thomas Robert Eeles in The Let­ters of Charles Dick­ens here.

via Lists of Note/Fla­vor­wire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Charles Dick­ens Gave His Cat “Bob” a Sec­ond Life as a Let­ter Open­er

Charles Dick­ens’ Hand-Edit­ed Copy of His Clas­sic Hol­i­day Tale, A Christ­mas Car­ol

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

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The Making of The Beatles’ Abbey Road: Alternate Album Cover Photos, Recording Session Outtakes & Interviews

in Music | November 17th, 2015

View post on imgur.com

A good part of my youth was spent in front of my old fam­i­ly hi-fi sys­tem, lis­ten­ing to Bea­t­les records. This was music I knew no longer exist­ed in the mod­ern world—not on con­tem­po­rary pop radio, and not on MTV… nowhere but on what seemed to me those ancient plas­tic disks. To my untrained ears, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s, Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour, and espe­cial­ly Abbey Road sound­ed like they had come down from an advanced alien civ­i­liza­tion.

What I was hear­ing in part—especially on Abbey Road—was the per­fec­tion of the stu­dio as an instru­ment, and the major influ­ence of the last, best fifth Bea­t­le, George Mar­tin. Not to dimin­ish the incred­i­ble musi­cian­ship and song­writ­ing abil­i­ties of the Bea­t­les them­selves, but with­out their engi­neers, with­out Mar­tin at the con­trols, and with­out the state-of-the-art studios—EMI, then, of course, Abbey Road—those albums would have sound­ed much more down to earth: still great, no doubt, but not the sym­phon­ic mas­ter­pieces they are, especially—in my opin­ion—Abbey Road, the last album the Bea­t­les record­ed togeth­er (though not their final release).

So how did such a bril­liant record­ing come to being? You can piece its con­struc­tion togeth­er your­self by sort­ing through all of the stuff that didn’t make it on the record—outtakes, alter­nate album cov­er pho­tos—as well as through inter­views with Mar­tin and the band. At the top of the post, see one of the cov­er pho­tos that didn’t make the cut. A self-effac­ing­ly-named blog called Stuff Nobody Cares About has sev­er­al more alter­nate pho­tos from that ses­sion on August 8, 1969 (which McCart­ney con­cep­tu­al­ized before­hand in a series of sketch­es). Before the album got its icon­ic look, it came together—pun intended—as icon­ic sound. Just above, you can hear George Mar­tin describe the process of pro­duc­ing the band’s last record­ing, a “very hap­py record,” he says, com­pared to the tense, unhap­py Let it Be. After­ward, hear George, Paul, and Ringo rec­ol­lect their bit­ter­sweet mem­o­ries of the ses­sions.

Near the end of the doc­u­men­tary clip, Paul McCart­ney says, “I’m real­ly glad that most of the songs dealt with love, peace, under­stand­ing….” If that’s what “Mean Mr. Mus­tard” or “Maxwell’s Sil­ver Ham­mer” are about, col­or me sur­prised, but I’ve nev­er been one to get too hung up on the mean­ings of the Bea­t­les songs—it’s the menagerie of sounds I love, the unusu­al chord changes, and the wit­ty lit­tle nar­ra­tives, touch­ing vignettes, and almost shock­ing­ly apt lyri­cal images (“Hold you in his arm­chair / You can feel his dis­ease”).

But like the band them­selves com­ing back togeth­er, the songs on Abbey Road—includ­ing that mas­ter­ful clos­ing med­ley—didn’t imme­di­ate­ly fall into place; they were the prod­uct of much stu­dio noodling and idio­syn­crat­ic Bea­t­les brainstorming—an activ­i­ty one part music hall com­e­dy improv, one part genius hap­py acci­dent, and one part good-natured fam­i­ly squab­ble. In the three clips above and below, hear the pow­er­ful Abbey Road med­ley come togeth­er, in fits and starts, with plen­ty of play­ful ban­ter and off-the-cuff inspi­ra­tion.

Hear­ing the mak­ing of Abbey Road doesn’t take away from the oth­er­world­ly final prod­uct, but it does bring the exalt­ed per­son­al­i­ties of the band back down to earth, show­ing them as hard­work­ing musi­cians and nat­ur­al writ­ers and come­di­ans who just hap­pened to have made—with no short­age of help—some of the most mind-blow­ing music of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

Hear the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks for The Bea­t­les’ Cli­mac­tic 16-Minute Med­ley on Abbey Road

The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig Filmed in Jan­u­ary 1969

The Bea­t­les’ Final, “Painful” Pho­to Shoot: A Gallery of Bit­ter­sweet Images

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

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