Carlo Chiostri

African child in tree with snake () Carlo or Sofia Chiostri

Image sourced here, from a series entitled ‘Modernism from the masses‘ dedicated to art deco postcards.

“It appears to me that Topor is the last representative of the great illustrators who, like Blake and Daumier, Doré and Carlo Chiostri (1863 – 1939), are capable of creating complete universes described in minute detail.” – Fellini quoted in Topor (1985) – Gina Kehayoff and Christoph Stölzl.

More on the notion of ‘modernism for the masses’ and the notion of modernism itself:

The very definition of Modernism has always been contentious. Did it begin with the advent of photography, which liberated the visual arts from the obligations of realism, or was its starting point the experiments in the application of color by such Post-Impressionist painters as Cézanne, van Gogh and Gauguin? Did Claude Debussy’s gradual abandonment of tonality, the cornerstone of Western musical composition since J.S. Bach, lead inevitably to Arnold Schoenberg’s polytonality and the sound experiments of Webern, Stockhausen and Cage? Do the honors of introducing non-representational theatre belong to Pirandello, to the German Expressionists or to the Italian Futurists? And where do Kafka, Musil, Svevo and Joyce fit in? –Anthony Guneratne via http://www.co.broward.fl.us/library/bienes/postcard/modernism.htm [Nov 2006]

See also: modernism – low modernism – mass culture

Introducing ‘The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review’

Marquis (1989) – Henri Xhonneux [Amazon.com]

Last week I found out that my local library owns a copy of Roland Topor and Henri Xhonneux’s 1989 animation film Marquis. This is a film I had wanted to watch for some time. I can’t remember exactly where or how I found out about it, since there is not much info available on the internet. Which brings me to the site I want to introduce: ‘The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review’ written by Richard Scheib, 3,500 pages of reviews and film criticism about which the author says:

Fantastic Cinema is an umbrella label that covers material of great diversity. Here you will find coverage of films as far apart as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Bambi [a five star film, according to Scheib], of directors that range from Ingmar Bergman to Edward D. Wood Jr – all are represented here and each discussed in terms of their own merits. Fantastic Cinema is not always easy to define in terms of thematic boundaries and a deliberately broad interpretation of what constitutes genre material has been taken in the hope that it will provide interesting discussion.

On Richard’s site you can read a plot synopsis and appreciation of Marquis.

Richard Scheib apparently lives in New Zealand (re website address), but other than that I can’t find much about him. His site has been online for several years, and is still updated regularly. He’s been writing film reviews at least since 1998, here is his IMDB rec.arts.movies.reviews profile page.

Richard, I have a question for you. would you please start a blog and tell us what you’re watching?

See also: fantastic film – SF films – horror films

P.S. Marquis features extensive conversations of Sade talking to his genital (and the genital talking back), other fictions which employ the trope of the talking body parts are Naked Lunch (1959) – William S. Burroughs and the The Indiscreet Jewels (1748) – Denis Diderot.

What makes a novel unfilmable?

Hollywood occasionally attempts to turn supposedly ‘unfilmable’ novels into blockbusters. The Hours, Fight Club, American Psycho, and even Adaptation, were all based on what were said to be unfilmable books; although all were adapted into critically-acclaimed films.

Greencine reports on a flurry of posts relating to the supposed unfilmability of certain novels, some of them prompted by the release of Tom Tykwer’s 2006 Perfume:

There’s Will Gore [With the recent arrival of ‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer’ in cinemas, perhaps the myth of the ‘unfilmable’ novel can finally be laid to rest] on the concept of the “unfilmable novel” and “The Unfilmables: A List of the Hardest Novels to Film” at Screenhead [including James Joyce’s Ulysses, Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces and J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye].

In 2005 John Patterson already reported on film adaptations of ‘unwieldy’ novels in the Guardian:

“There is,” Norman Mailer once wrote, “a particular type of really bad novel that makes for a really great motion picture.” He might have been referring to such superselling potboilers as Mario Puzo’s The Godfather or Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind or, indeed, any number of middlebrow literary atrocities whose cinematic adaptations have entirely transcended their trashy sources.

In answer to my question ‘What makes a novel unfilmable?’, if I had to make a checklist of what makes novels unfilmable:

plotlessness
philosophical introspection (can be solved with voice-over)
experimental fiction
…………….

More on this later… In the meantime, if you feel like completing the list, please be my guest.

P. S. 1: now is a good time to reread Fuchsia’s comment on the ‘Nature of the 20th century reading experience’ where I asked: can one measure a book’s success by counting the number of film adaptations?

P. S. 2: My entry in the top ten of unfilmable novels:

Time’s Arrow: Or the Nature of the Offense (1991)
Do please submit your candidates in the comments …

P. S. 3: And maybe one last question: which films would resist successful novelization?

Andromeda interpretations

Andromeda (1629) – Rembrandt

Rembrandt’s is one of the uglier interpretations of the Andromeda myth, especially when compared by the following by Chassériau and Doré.

Andromeda and the Nereids (1840) – Théodore Chassériau

Paul Gustave Doré (1832-1883) painted Andromeda exposed to the sea-monster. (1869?)

Perseus Frees Andromeda (c. 1515) – Piero di Cosimo (1462 – 1521)

I am forced to the appalling conclusion

Joan Vollmer

In 1951, William Burroughs shot and killed his wife Joan Vollmer in a drunken game of “William Tell” at a party above the American-owned Bounty Bar in Mexico City.

In the introduction to Queer, a novel written in 1953 but published in 1985, Burroughs states, “I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would have never become a writer but for Joan’s death … So the death of Joan brought me into contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle, in which I had no choice except to write my way out.” (Queer, 1985, p.xxii)

Hatching from a nameless gleam of light I see

Inspired by Richard T Scott’s comment New figurative art

Shadows of a Hand: The Drawings of Victor Hugo (1998)
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Shadows of a Hand: The Drawings of Victor Hugo (1998) features contributions of Luc Sante, who also contributed to a monograph on Guy Bourdin.

Octopus with the initials V. H. (ca. 1866) – Victor Hugo

The great romantic painter, Delacroix, wrote to Victor Hugo that, had he decided to become a painter instead of a writer, he would have outshone the artists of their century. –via here.

Hatching from a nameless gleam of light I see
Monstrous flowers and frightening roses
I feel that out of duty I write all these things
That seem, on the lurid, trembling parchment,
To issue sinisterly from the shadow of my hand.
Is it by chance, great senseless breath
Of the Prophets, that you perturb my thoughts?
So where am I being drawn in this nocturnal azure?
Is it sky I see? Am I in command?
Darkness, am I fleeing? Or am I in pursuit?
Everything gives way. At times I do not know if I am
The proud horseman or the fierce horse;
I have the scepter in my hand and the bit in my mouth.
Open up and let me pass, abysses, blue gulf,
Black gulf! Be silent, thunder! God, where are you leading me?
I am the will, but I am the delirium.
Oh, flight into the infinite! Vainly I sometimes say,
Like Jesus calling out “Lamma Sabacthani,”
Is the way still long? Is it finished,
Lord? Will you soon let me sleep?
The Spirit does what it will. I feel the gusting breath
That Elisha felt, that lifted him;
And in the night I hear someone commanding me to go!

VICTOR HUGO

From ‘Le bien germe parfois…’ (Good Sometimes Germinates…),
from the collection Toute la lyre, first published 1888. via here.

Cette belle suspension d’esprit

From a newly discovered Literary Vocabulary by K. Wheeler:

WILLING SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF: Temporarily and willingly setting aside our beliefs about reality in order to enjoy the make-believe of a play, a poem, film, or a story. Perfectly intelligent readers can enjoy tall-tales about Pecos Bill roping a whirlwind, or vampires invading a small town in Maine, or frightening alternative histories in which Hitler wins World War II, without being “gullible” or “childish.” To do so, however, the audience members must set aside their sense of “what’s real” for the duration of the play, or the movie, or the book.

Samuel Coleridge coined the English phrase in Chapter 14 of Biographia Literaria to describe the way a reader is implicitly “asked” to set aside his notions of reality and accept the dramatic conventions of the theater and stage or other fictional work. Coleridge writes:

. . . My endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith (quoted in Cuddon, page 1044).

Coleridge may have been inspired by the French phrase, “cette belle suspension d’esprit de law sceptique” from François de La Mothe le Vayer, or by Ben Jonson’s writing where Jonson notes, “To many things a man should owe but a temporary belief, and suspension of his own judgment.” Cf. verisimilitude.

Best of 2006

Seen:

The Sultan’s Elephant by Royal de luxe

You’ll just have to take my word for it but you can’t believe how happy I am Antwerpen spent 800,000 Euros to have the popular spectacle The Sultan’s Elephant in the streets of my city Antwerpen, Belgium.

Films:

As far as film goes I enjoyed Brokeback Mountain, Borat, Walk the Line and especially V for Vendetta and The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema.

Music:

I was enthralled by Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture which came to me via V for Vendetta. The track is about 10 minutes long, but you should head straight for the very short danceable bit (the cannons) at the very end of the song. Explosive! I started listening almost exclusively to classical music station Klara here in Belgium. Klara als features a most excellent experimental music programme: mixtuur.

Truth and Todorov

Historian and philosopher Tzvetan Todorov argues in the French left wing newspaper Libération that the foundations of democracy are at risk whenever a country accepts – as the United States did with the war in Iraq – lies and illusion. An English translation of the article here.

Search string used: Todorov + Fellini, after seeing the following definition of the term felliniesque at Wikipedia:

“felliniesque” is used to describe any scene in which a hallucinatory image invades an otherwise ordinary situation.

This reminded me of Todorov’s definition of fantastic literature.

The truth is — and as always with cases of instinctual dislike I cannot exactly explain why — I don’t care much for Fellini who is considered according to the same Wikipedia article as “one of the most influential and widely revered Italian filmmakers of the 20th century and … one of the finest film directors of all time”. All time film equals 20th century film, too much praise indeed.

The last film by Fellini I watched was his vignette for the Boccaccio 70 collection. His contribution, starring Anita Ekberg just seemed downright silly. I liked the other 3 contributions except his.

I’d like to point out the irony of Todorov, who’s written about the unresolved hesitation between the real and the imaginary, should write about the notion of truth as it relates to Iraq and the U.S.A..

Carlo Ponti (1912 – 2007)

Robert Monell reports that the long lived Italian film producer Carlo Ponti has died.

A silent partner on the international coproduction deal which financed Jess Franco’s Venus in Furs (the party scene was filmed in one of his villas) Ponti produced over 150 films since the 1940s directed by such cinema luminaries as Vittorio De Sica, Antonioni (Blow-Up, Zabriskie Point), Fellini (La Strada), David Lean (Dr. Zhivago), Godard, Ettore Scola (Ugly, Dirty and Bad) and many others.

He will probably be most remembered as the man who discovered and married Sophia Loren.

Jahsonic

Burgemeester van Dodenstad