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.

The Roc's Egg by Vedder

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

11 thoughts on “I urge you”

  1. lichanos

    [from bad films]…you about the techniques of filmmaking, all the things we take for granted… credibility in acting, continuity editing…

    So true! Also, I think this is the appeal of many very early films, watching the artists work out the implications of the medium.

    But is it right to call them “bad?” This film is amateurish – what’s wrong with that? (Amateur comes from the root, to love.) I think the celebration of “bad” is often a fatigue with sophistication, and a desire to return to the simple delight that got us all into this stuff in the first place. Using critical inversions like “bad films” and “camp” is just an intellectual’s way of messing up the situation. And once you get into things like “camp” you’ve already gotten so self-conscious about it that you’ve become the attitude you’re trying to escape.

    Re: Vedder. He was a WEIRD painter. I think his version is better because of that. His is creepy – Gifford’s is just an illustration…

  2. suburbanlife

    Obviously, these lads have seen The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. The death of this killer clown (which by the way looks like something my cat might have coughed up) is obviously a riff on the death of Cyclops in SVS. These boys obviously experimented with camera angles and probably learned a lot during the whole process of making this rather quirky, and predictable fil. There are little gem discoveries of the potential of film to generate iconic images. The execrable acting also produces some unexpected moments. G

  5. jahsonic

    ….But is it right to call them “bad?”

    I guess it’s alright to call them “bad”, but not alright to call them bad. The difference is in the quotation marks, a hallmark of relativist postmodernism. I checked the original by Kyrou, and it has the quotation marks.

    I never liked bad movies, they are just bad. I do like “bad”.

    To say in the words of the author that makes you cringe:

    “Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It’s not a lamp, but a “lamp”; not a woman, but a “woman.” To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.– Susan Sontag

    Vedder is indeed A OK. Thanks for your Fletcher Hanks tip and Polyphemus, they are both on the wiki now.

    I totally agree with your etymological assessment of the term amateur, I will always be an amateur, never a professional.

  6. lichanos

    Regarding Sontag and quotation marks, there is a zen proverb something like this:

    When I began to sit, I thought mountains were just mountatins, clouds were just clouds, and trees were just trees.

    After praticing meditation a bit, I saw that mountains were not mountains, clouds were not clouds, and trees were not trees.

    After gaining enlightenment, I saw that indeed, mountains are just mountatins, clouds are just clouds, and trees are just trees.

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