Yearly Archives: 2008

Jean Rollin @70

Happy 70th birthday Jean Rollin.

Franka Mai and Brigitte Lahaie in Fascination image sourced at imagesjournal [1]. [Apr 2005]

Jean Rollin constitutes a decisive chapter in the book Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies 1956-1984 and discovering him and his universe (which connects to the world of French “low culture”) has been a delight. But do not expect too much of his films. Seeing Jean Rollin films has been an underwhelming experience for Jahsonic. Silly is the best word for the films I’ve seen. And not enough redeeming elements.

However 0

See prev. posts [2]

However 1

cover picture of Fascination

Rollin is a very interesting documentalist (see his work for Jean-Pierre Bouyxou’s Fascination and Eric Losfeld‘s Midi Minuit Fantastique) and connoisseur of Gaston Leroux and all literature of what he calls « second rayon ».

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Calling Rollin connoisseurs.

I am looking for the title of the following excellent short subject by Rollin:

Filmed from the perspective of a painter. Looking at a model. She is a African woman with long and golden nails?. The background music is contemporary classical music. Estimated date of production: late sixties or early seventies.

Anyone?

P. S. If you are new to Rollin check his Google gallery and make sure SafeSearch is off.

Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly @200

Barbey: catholicism, sadism, mysticism

Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly (portrait by Émile Lévy, ca. 1882)

Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly‘s grave.

Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly (November 2, 1808 – April 23, 1889), was a French novelist and short story writer. He specialised in a kind of mysterious tale that examines hidden motivation and hinted evil bordering (but never crossing into) the supernatural. He had a decisive influence on writers such as Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Henry James and Proust.

Les Diaboliques (The She-Devils) (1874) – Barbey d’Aurevilly [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Frontispiece for ‘Les Diaboliques’ by Barbey d’Aurevilly painted by Félicien Rops in 1886

His best-known collection is The She-Devils, which includes the cult classic Happiness in Crime and is still in print from Dedalus Books. Most recently his Une vieille maîtresse (An Elderly Mistress, 1851) was adapted to cinema by French Jahsonic favorite director Catherine Breillat: its English title is The Last Mistress.

He is variously lumped in with the Late French Romantics, The Decadents and the Symbolists and is included in the Genealogy of the Cruel Tale and The Romantic Agony. He is considered a practitioner of the Fantastique, a catholic and a dandy.

L’ensorcelée (in a Folio edition)

L’Ensorcelée (The Bewitched, 1854) is a tale by French writer Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly. It concerns an episode of the royalist rising among the Norman peasants against the first republic.

Barbey is favorably mentioned in Against the Grain (the breviary of decadence) by Joris-Karl Huysmans:

“Deux ouvrages de Barbey d’Aurevilly attisaient spécialement des Esseintes, Le Prêtre marié et Les Diaboliques. D’autres, tels que L’ensorcelé, Le chevalier des touches, Une vieille maîtresse, étaient certainement plus pondérés et plus complets, mais ils laissaient plus froid des Esseintes qui ne s’intéressait réellement qu’aux oeuvres mal portantes, minées et irritées par la fièvre. Avec ces volumes presque sains, Barbey d’Aurevilly avait constamment louvoyé entre ces deux fossés de la religion catholique qui arrivent à se joindre: le mysticisme et le sadisme. — À rebours

“Two works in particular of Barbey d’Aurevilly‘s fired Des Esseintes‘ imagination: the Prêtre marié (“Married Priest”) and the Diabolique. Others, such as l’Ensorcelé (“The Bewitched”), the Chevalier des Touches, Une vieille Maîtresse (“An Old Mistress”), were no doubt better balanced and more complete works, but they appealed less warmly to Des Esseintes, who was genuinely interested only in sickly books with health undermined and exasperated by fever. In these comparatively sane volumes Barbey d’Aurévilly was perpetually tacking to and fro between those two channels of Catholicism which eventually run into one,—mysticism and Sadism.” — Against the Grain, translation by Havelock Ellis

Questions of color fidelity on the internet

One often does not have a clue of the colors of painted artworks if one is an internet connoisseur. By internet connoisseur I mean someone who has gained most of his/her expertise from the internet rather than traditional media. Questions of color fidelity on the internet should be raised here.

Before October 30, 2008 the only version known to me of Géricault’s Kleptomaniac was this one:

Kleptomaniac, 1822 painting by Théodore Géricault

Compare this photo taken at its current location here:

Kleptomaniac

The detail of the painting was taken with a Sony Ericsson K770i on last Thursday.

The Sony Ericsson is notorious for picking up an excess of blue, but still is a rather faithful reproduction.

Day of the Dead

Calavera de la Catrina (before 1913) by Posada

Fitting events on this day in history:

Day of the Dead
1755 – Lisbon earthquake: In Portugal, Lisbon is destroyed by a massive earthquake and tsunami, killing between sixty thousand and ninety thousand people.

250 anos #2 by bruce grant

Engraving of the Lisbon earthquake

1962 – Diabolik first published with the title Il re del terrore (in English: “The King of Terror”).

Cover of the first issue of Diabolik, start of the genre “fumetti neri”.

Andrew Sarris @80

The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 (1968) – Andrew Sarris

Andrew Sarris, born on October 31, 1928 in New York, is a U.S. film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism. He is generally credited with popularising this theory in the United States and coining the half-English, half-French term, “auteur theory,” in his essay, “Notes on the Auteur Theory,” which was inspired by critics writing in the French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma.

He wrote book The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968, published in 1968, an opinionated assessment of films of the sound era, organized by director. The book helped raise an awareness of the role of the film director among the general public.

He is often seen as a rival to Pauline Kael, who had originally attacked the auteur theory in her essay, “Circles and Squares“.

The gullibility of American audiences

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9VWC8eB9ic]

October 30, 1938 radio broadcast

Orson Welles first gained wide American notoriety 70 years ago today for his October 30, 1938 radio broadcast of H. G. Wells‘ The War of the Worlds. Adapted to sound like a contemporary news broadcast, it caused a large number of listeners to panic, now commonly and somewhat euphemistically referred to as mass hysteria. Welles and his biographers subsequently claimed he was exposing the gullibility or naïveté of American audiences in the tense preamble to the Second World War.

Placeholder for Icon of erotic art #34

La Fleuve (1913) – Leon Spilliaert

Ghent today, lovely work by Leon Spilliaert, very sensual, very erotic though not in a stroky way.

Unfortunately permission was not granted to photograph this work.

The work depicts a seated female, seen from behind left from a birdseye perpective. This point of view accentuates here pear-like voluptuousness. The tone is dark, reminiscent of Gauguin’s Tahitian ladies.

The woman is seated on a rock overlooking the sea. Just as the Danish Mermaid [1] protects the city of Copenhagen, this siren has been protecting the imaginary coast of the Belgian seaside since 1913.

Click for credits

One day I will find a decent online copy of this painting and point you to it. For now, please accept the substitute.

In the meantime, let me show you these:

Detail from unidentified MSK painting in Ghent

World Cinema Classic #70

In search of nonspace and unthought thoughts.

Sans Soleil

In search of nonspace and unthought thoughts.

I’ve been mulling over French director Chris Marker‘s Sans Soleil for four days now. The key scene for me was the shooting of the giraffe, which gave its origins away as far as genre-theoretics are concerned.

The key phrase was perhaps the “salute to all unposted letters,” but is safe to say that the film is brilliantly written throughout.

I saw the film at MuHKA on last Saturday, introduced by a Belgian scholar (who?). He stated that the film was unclassifiable, because the “film essay is not a genre but a small category”. However, in my opinion, the film fits the mondo film category, and functions as a highbrow counterpart to Mondo Cane. The film also begs a viewing of the masterwork Blood of the Beasts. But Sans Soleil is a different film altogether. It is a philosophical film that raises questions of medium specificity, multimedia, memory and authenticity.

I have a feeling that Sans Soleil can be invoked to clarify Gilles Deleuze‘s any-space-whatever (see B. C. Holmes – “The Deleuzian Memory of Sans Soleil” [1]), but to prove that would need some more studying of Gilles Deleuze on film.

RIP Gerard Damiano (1928 – 2008)

Still from Deep Throat featuring Linda Lovelace

Gerard Damiano (August 4, 1928 – October 27, 2008) was an American director of pornographic films. He made the infamous film Deep Throat in 1972 starring Linda Lovelace and Harry Reems, cited in the 2005 documentary Inside Deep Throat as the most profitable film ever made. Other notable films made by Damiano include The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) and the sadomasochistic classic The Story of Joanna (1975).

A History of Derision, wikified

A History of Derision

A History of Derision by way of Illusory Confections who wrote on its subject[1]:

“Be still my beating heart, this is practically everything I adore in one tidy 240 page bundle! But it isn’t referenced anywhere online and I couldn’t even find mention of it on the Atlas Press site. So I zipped an email to Atlas inquiring about it, and, sadly, its nonexistence was confirmed. Apparently it was a planned project that fell to the sidelines and “[1]