Category Archives: film

I urge you

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbGUr97tIDs&]

Early animation by the Chiodo brothers (of Killer Klowns from Outer Space)

“I urge you, learn to see ‘bad’ films; they are sometimes sublime”. —Ado Kyrou, Le Surréalisme au cinéma, p. 276

Bad films are not only sublime, they learn you about the techniques of filmmaking, all the things we take for granted, the inner workings of concepts such as credibility in acting, continuity editing are exposed in watching and studying bad films.

I found the clip above while researching Elihu Vedder‘s painting The Roc’s Egg (1868) which is said to have furnished Ray Harryhausen with inspiration for The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad.

The only version of the Roc’s Egg painting I found was this one, by Robert Swain Gifford

~~I couldn’t find Vedder’s painting.~~

Update: I found the Edder version, clearly inferior to Gifford’s. I’ll give you both so you be the judge.

Vedder’s version of the Roc’s egg

The Roc's Egg (1874) by Robert Swain Gifford

Gifford’s version of the Roc’s egg

Stunning work by Slavko Vorkapić

The Furies (1933)

music: Ludwig von Beethoven

score synchronized by Slavko Vorkapić

“Vorkapich hade complete creative freedom in writing, designing, directing and editing his montage sequences for feature films, his work was often reduced to its bones in the released productions. Here is the filmmaker’s original version of one of his outstanding efforts”

Thus reads the Youtube blurb to this wonderful clip; strange that I cannot find reference to this film over at IMDb.

Slavko Vorkapić (March 17 1894 – October 20 1976), was a Serbian–American film director and editor, university professor and painter, one of the most prominent figures of modern cinematography and film art, best-known for The Life and Death of 9413: a Hollywood Extra.

See surrealism and film

Paul Rumsey’s cinémathèque

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2tP9s8y2Ic&

Le Cochon danseur (The Dancing Pig, 1907), Pathé

I recently asked Paul Rumsey if he could be persuaded to contribute to my ongoing World Cinema Classics series. Paul came up with more than I bargained for, pointing me to a dozen of his favorite films in an ongoing email conversation.

Included were French director Jacques Rivette‘s films Duelle and Noroit (Paul pointed to the similarities in Rivette’s and David Lynch’s work); the work of Czech stop-motion animation director Jiří Barta, the American film “Return to Oz“[1] (a nightmarish reinterpretation of the Oz story where at one point Dorothy (played by Fairuza Balk [2]) is sent to a nightmarish Victorian mental institution, to be given electro-shock therapy [3]) and many more such as The Baby by Ted Post, etc….

I’ve finally settled to feature the short 1907 French film above, a film that clearly demonstrates the fairground antecedents that cinema has. Paul describes the film as “beginning almost erotic and ending almost sinister,” a fitting description of this silent film cult rarity. Paul got to see the film via the intriguing blog Hugo Strikes Back!.

I’ve mentioned a similarly exciting French animation here (scroll to the bottom for the Automatic Cleaning Company, a short about a room that cleans itself).

I am not a cinephile

I would have to concur with Alain Robbe-Grillet who stated in a televised interview that he is not a cinephile. He is interested in “certain films,” that’s it.

“What are commonly called true cinephiles are mental retards (débile mentale) who love “the movies”, people who run to any theatre to submit to viewing any film. They consume with the same pleasure whatever genre of film. That is what is known as cinephilia. It’s an illness, though a less common one than it used to be [during the heydays of the Nouvelle Vague],” he concedes.

From Alain Robbe-Grillet : Je ne suis pas un cinéphile ! Youtube clip posted by beethoven000999.

In the same interview Grillet adds that he is neither a devourer of books. The way I like to interpret this soundbite is that Grillet does not follow any medium, but rather is in search of certain sensibilities. Mine include:

absurd – alternative – anti – avant-garde – banned – bizarre – clandestine – controversial – counterculture – cult – eccentric – elitist – esoteric – excessive – extravagance – exotic – experimental – forbidden – gratuitous – grotesque – hermetic – hidden – horror – illegal – incongruous – independent – intellectual – irrational – kinky – kitsch – libertine – macabre – modern – monstrous – non-mainstream – obscure – occult – offbeat – offensive – original – outsider – perverse – postmodern – queer – radical – rare – revolutionary – scatological – sensational – strange – subculture – subversive – supernatural – surreal – taboo – transgressive – travesty – ugly – uncanny – unconventional – underground – unusual – weird – wild

P. S.: guilty pleasure of the day: Yelle – “A Cause des Garçons” Remix Tepr Video Tecktonik, a popular track when it first came out in 1987 in Francophone Europe, here in a recent remix.

World cinema classics #38 by Nurse Myra

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2XjH6TZkQg]

Rain (2001) – Christine Jeffs

It is my sincerest pleasure to announce the first guest contribution for Jahsonic’s World Cinema Classics category. Could it be any more befitting that today’s classic should be contributed by this blog’s liveliest commentator – a cultural omnivore like myself: Nurse Myra of the Gimcrack Hospital (PG)? Over the past few months, I have discovered her as a lady of seemingly impeccable taste, acute powers of perception and a huge stash of humor. She chose the New Zealand film Rain, directed by director Christine Jeffs released in 2001.

Nurse Myra:

“Rain deals with a very young girl observing problems in adult relationships at the same time as experiencing sexual awareness and the power that brings. The young actors are particularly good and the depiction of a new Zealand bach* holiday is perfect.

*A NZ holiday cabin was/is called a bach (pronounced batch). They were usually quite rudimentary and used to be very cheap to buy. Most of them are near the sea and prices would have skyrocketed by now.”

Previous “World Cinema Classics” and in the Wiki format here.

World cinema classics #37

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6WmEoMY2Lo]

The Hitcher (1986) – Robert Harmon

This film introduced me to Jennifer Jason Leigh, it was love at first sight. In one particular scene in The Hitcher Leigh is kidnapped by the villain Rutger Hauer, who ties her between a Mack truck and its trailer, threatening to tear her in half.

In the film, she does not survive, in real life, it is Jennifer’s 46th birthday. Congratulations, you are one of my favorite living actresses and I enjoyed your recent parts in In the Cut and The Machinist.

Previous “World Cinema Classics” and in the Wiki format here.

World cinema classics #36

I agree “to meet Mr Neville in private and to comply with his requests concerning his pleasure with me.”

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlEo563RJZI]

The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982) – Peter Greenaway

The Draughtsman’s Contract is a 1982 British film written and directed by Peter Greenaway. The score was by Michael Nyman and borrows extensively from Henry Purcell, forming a substantial attraction of the film. It was most recently re-used in Winterbottom’s A Cock and Bull Story.

Previous “World Cinema Classics” and in the Wiki format here.

World cinema classics #34

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

Tokyo Decadence (1992) – Ryu Murakami

This is a film I chose in the mid 1990s at the video store because of its cover, not being familiar at the time with the work of Murakami (Coin Locker Babies). The key scenes are four sex scenes (see more at the wiki). Three out of these heavily feature drugs. The most exquisite one, featured in the Youtube remix above, is soundtracked by Xavier Cugat music. The audio used in this particular Youtube remix is not included in the original film. ~~I wonder what the music is. Anyone?~~ (De temps en temps is a song (André Hornez / Paul Misraki) voiced by Josephine Baker.)

The film’s only rival in terms of my favourite film of the 1990s is the Japanese film Audition, which is also written by Murakami.

Previous “World Cinema Classics” and in the Wiki format here.

World cinema classics #33

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgCxCZNkQ9E]

Fantastic Planet (1973) – René Laloux

Fantastic Planet is the English title of La Planète sauvage (literally “The Savage Planet”), an animated 1973 science fiction film directed by René Laloux. Based on a novel, Oms en Série, by the French writer Stefan Wul, the film was an international production between France and Czechoslovakia and was distributed in the United States by Roger Corman. The film is chiefly noted for its surreal imagery, the work of French writer and artist Roland Topor. Alain Goraguer provides a fitting early electronic soundtrack.

Previous “World Cinema Classics” and in the Wiki format here.

World cinema classics #32

Once Were Warriors is 1994 film based on New Zealand author Alan Duff‘s bestselling 1990 first novel of the same name. The film tells the story of an urban Māori family, the Hekes, and their problems with poverty, alcoholism, and domestic violence, mostly brought on by the family patriarch Jake Heke. It was directed by Lee Tamahori, and stars Rena Owen and Temuera Morrison.

Previous in the Wiki format here.