I edited Mabel and Charlie’s short “Mabel at the Wheel” to the song “Hell on Wheels” by Old Money. I think it turned out fairly well!

No copyright infringement intended. The movie “Mabel at the Wheel” is in the public domain and can be downloaded in its entirety from archive.org.

I got the song from this super awesome video.

When I first learned about Sherlock Jr. (1924, viewable here), my expectations weren’t that high. I knew little about Buster Keaton, and still wondered how anyone could challenge Chaplin’s mastery of silent pathos and comedy. (Little did I know then that Keaton and Chaplin aren’t comparable so much in form or content, but in the levels of innovation they brought to their work.) The idea of a projectionist entering into a film seemed appealing enough, but nothing too radical. Then I finally saw the film, let it stew around my head, saw it again, and again, and realized that it’s a work of concentrated comic perfection.

I grant that Sherlock Jr. doesn’t quite have the well-developed, back-and-forth narrative of The General, which sustains Keaton’s audacious acrobatics for longer and to greater purpose, but I still feel it’s probably the best showcase for his talents. Buster Keaton’s trademark stunts put every other example of choreographed mayhem to shame; they’re comparable to Busby Berkeley’s dance routines of the ’30s in their uniqueness, surreal logic, and aestheticization of human physicality, but they substitute hilarity for eroticism. And nowhere in Keaton’s body of work are they crammed together as effectively and syllogistically as in Sherlock Jr., where the entire film unfolds like the best-constructed line of dominoes in film history.

The plot’s pretty simple: Keaton plays his usual nameless, stolid sad sack character, trying to win a girl’s love. He works as a projectionist, but aspires to be a detective (hence the title). However, through a series of unfortuitous clues, his scuzzy rival frames him for the theft of a watch, and he retires to the projection booth, defeated. While the girl discovers his innocence, he daydreams himself into the film-within-a-film, and a parallel secondary story takes place. Eventually he awakes, and finds the girl has realized her mistake, leading to one of Keaton’s great, ironic happy endings.

Within this framework, Keaton unleashes his bottomless bag of tricks – bottomless because his resources are the physical laws of the universe. Anyone can take a fall, but Keaton takes falls that defy our beliefs and expectations. He also roots his physical comedy in a romantic plot filled with its own pitfalls, whether they’re jokes at the expense of his protagonist, the girl, her idle rich father, or the rival, who’s depicted as a mustache-twirling cad.

I view the romances in Keaton’s films as somewhat cynical, as flat and unsentimental as the look on his face. In this film, for example, the girl seems willing to be bought off with fancy gifts, and a similar love-for-sale ethic pervades his earlier film Three Ages, which sees competition for mates – and the subsequent mating – as a constant of human nature. Maybe an argument could be made that the romantic urges of his protagonists are as obligatory as their obedience to gravity; after all, romances are omnipresent in his films, but they’re never really dwelled upon for their own sakes. It’s one more curious aspect of his filmography that shows how different he was, and how much he enjoyed sticking a little satirical thorn into the side of formula.

But really, the subtly offbeat romance is just the springboard off which Keaton launches all kinds of verbal, visual, and situational humor: his attempt to scrounge up a few dollars in the movie theater’s rubbish pile, and later his investigation into the watch’s disappearance, when his ultraliteral interpretation of a guidebook’s injunction to “Shadow your man closely” leads to a sequence of prolonged absurdity. This scene, in which Keaton tails his rival very closely, lets him toy with our perception of film, and question whether they’re seeing it in two or three dimensions. (He returns to this trick with even greater effect during the film’s climactic chase.) It also justifies some of his beloved train-based physical comedy (again, see The General).

This segment constitutes a good demonstration of Keaton’s prowess at staging and executing barely believable chains of cause and effect, yet in reality, it’s just a precursor to the meat of the film, which takes place in its protagonist’s imagination. As he projects himself into a stereotypical Perils of Pauline-esque silent melodrama, Keaton engages in some meta-cinematic playfulness; it doesn’t really have a spot in the film’s narrative, but it’s so cleverly staged that it ceases to matter. It rewrites the film’s ground rules: henceforth, this is not a normal comedy. Things will work the way Buster wants them to.

The protagonist takes up his place as “the crime-crushing criminologist – SHERLOCK JR.,” idealizing himself as suave and authoritative, effortlessly outsmarting a villainous pair of pearl thieves. After a pool game that riffs on the very concept of suspense, the film cuts to the next morning, and the remainder is pretty much one long, brilliant, loving exercise in concrete physics. This is the substance of Buster’s greatness, whether we’re talking about this film, or his other masterpieces like The General or Cops: his ability as a filmmaker to construct ridiculous master plans that would make Rube Goldberg balk, and then as an actor to endure them without flinching.

Watching the last third of Sherlock Jr. is both totally enjoyable on visceral and intellectual levels: you’re overwhelmed both by what you see happening, and by any attempt to fully process it, leading inevitably to the question, “How did he do that?” Ashley and I (and anyone else we’ve asked about it) are still completely baffled by a scene in which Keaton appears to leap through his assistant, into a wall. Sources suggest it’s accomplished via something called a “vampire trap” (from its use in a play version of Polidori’s The Vampire), but this doesn’t explain anything.

Kubrick once said that “if it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed”; I’m not sure where Buster Keaton falls on that spectrum. I’m not sure whether his art is closer to trompe l’oeil painting, or to poetry, or to architecture. He’s a beautiful anomaly. The chase scene in Sherlock Jr. seems to espouse a belief in overarching fate, in Newtonian determinism, in the happy conjunction of man’s actions and the physical laws. In the amusement of the gods, to whom we are “like flies to wanton boys,” as Shakespeare’s Gloucester would put it.

I’m not sure which of these viewpoints Keaton would actually agree with, but some blind faith must be in his unexpressive face as he careens along on the handlebars of a motorcycle without a driver – some willingness to leap before he looks. He injured himself countless times, risked life and limb, put himself in severe physical jeopardy in order to produce visual art with the power to make us laugh. To me, that’s saintly – putting yourself on the chopping block to benefit the rest of humanity.

When I watch the climax to Sherlock Jr., my mind keeps coming back to geometry: the circles, the lines, the angles that come together so flawlessly to yield these movements, where Buster is just one little piece in a huge, dynamic system. His influence has been felt everywhere in physical comedy (perhaps most resonantly in Roadrunner and Coyote), but never equaled. He just had his peerless skill, precision, and the bravura necessary to pull it all off. I’ve seen Sherlock Jr. several times (after all, it’s less than an hour long), and I hope to see it many, many more. With its ageless humor, tightly-packed inventiveness, and near-perfect execution, Sherlock Jr. is one of my favorite movies.

China won’t broadcast Obama’s visit on TV.

15 Things worth knowing about coffee.

Taliban making gains in Northern Afghanistan.

The Irish own the French (funny)

History of the Internet in a nutshell.

Politicians in Washington are literally reading the same talking points from lobbyists.

How to market a small business on Facebook.

The best exercises for healthy bones.

Source: http://s2.buzzfeed.com/static/imagebuzz/terminal01/2009/11/15/10/the-history-of-coke-bottles-3899-1258300567-4.jpg

source: http://i.imgur.com/wT4FQ.jpg

open a bottle of wine with your shoe

Before recordings and sound film changed the world, music didn’t travel well.  Myth says that you could hear Buddy Bolden’s horn miles away, but trumpet players know that is unlikely.  You certainly couldn’t have the complete Jelly Roll Morton Library of Congress recordings on a little box in your shirt pocket. 

Recordings, then sound film, made it possible for music to be portable, reproduced, and represented far away in time and space from its origins.  Preservation is an extraordinary gift, letting us visit the dead and cherish them whenever we want.  When the Ellington band played RING DEM BELLS on a Victor record or in a 1930 film, thousands who would never see that band live could experience it. 

But “representation” is never flawless, because all individual perspectives are necessarily subjective.  A recording engineer or cameraman captures one version of what listeners experience.  Most recordings and films seem, at best, to compress the exuberance of the artists.  Jazz anecdotal history is full of the names of great performers who, we are told, never “came though whole” in the recording studio.  And films  — even contemporary performance films — have their own, sometimes intrusive, conventions that must be obeyed.     

Our texts for today are two representations of Bing Crosby singing PLEASE.  The music is by the sadly short-lived Ralph Rainger, the lyrics by Leo Robin, and Bing first performed in the 1932 film THE BIG BROADCAST, one of Paramount’s efforts to get all the musical stars it could assemble into one film, to lure people away from their radios and back into the movie theatres.  The plot of this film is exceedingly foolish, but it’s only an excuse for a now irreplaceable variety show.     

And here’s the performance itself — all too brief:

I love the flimsy fictions that this clip requires a viewer to accept.  I think, just before it begins, Bing says to his pal, guitarist Eddie Lang, “Well, let’s run it through again,” suggesting that they are rehearsing a new number.  He holds the sheet music, but casually.  And Lang is not paying much attention to the music on top of the piano.  (He was a wonderfully subtle player, never equalled.)  Do you hear a piano?  Who’s playing it?  The invisible but entirely sympathetic pianist is Lennie Hayton, which suggests that Bing and Eddie were adeptly (and not in close-up) miming to an already-recorded track, which was common practice.

Because it is a rehearsal in someone’s home (is it Eddie’s?), Bing has his vest, suit jacket, and hat off.  Our eyes are drawn to his natty two-tone shoes as he keeps the beat.  Then, after the first sixteen bars, a delightfully fictive moment occurs when Bing grins like a boy who has gotten away with three cookies instead of two and tells Eddie, “Well, I think I know it.”  (The record of PLEASE was released to coincide with the movie’s premiere, so Bing’s fans in the audience might have already had the Brunswick record while onscreen their hero was pretending he was learning the song.  But in the darkness of the movie theatre, such facts might be brushed aside.) 

Confident now, Bing launches into his own version of romantic scat singing, flicking his eyes to the ceiling, and begins getting dressed.  

Frank Tuttle, the director of THE BIG BROADCAST, wrote in an unpublished memoir (which I found in Gary Giddins’s wonderful Crosby biography), “Bing didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. . . . [he] was extremely cooperative and his sense of comedy was first-rate from the opening shot.  His approach was casual and he liked to move around.  We worked out interesting pieces of business so that he wouldn’t have to just stand there and deliver a number.” 

Thus, the striptease in reverse — bolstering the illusion that Bing was only a regular fellow who just happens to burst into song with such art.  We know this isn’t true, but watching Bing sing while getting dressed is rather like watching him sing while changing a flat tire — a splendid feat.  I don’t know if it was intentional, for comedy, or not, but Bing has some small difficulty getting his other arm into his vest, and he goes through a good deal of straightening and smoothing — while singing – before beginning to button it.  Once the vest is on, he is clearly loosening up the rhythm, and gently swinging PLEASE, confidently and cheerfully, wooing the imaginary girl right out of her reluctance, and perhaps out of her vest.  What man ever buttoned his vest with such swing, using each button as a visual accent?  Bing emphasizes the beat, bobbing his head.  It’s comic but understated.  It’s jazz made visual.  

Next comes the jacket — and Bing has more trouble finding the armhole while he makes the dramatic musical transition from ”a gloomy Romeo” to “Oh, please . . . ” most endearing.  In fact, his fumbling with his right arm behind his back seems to go on and on, although he is whistling prettily, unfazed by the burden of getting dressed.  Then, there’s no need to pretend that this has been a ”rehearsal,” as Bing and Eddie perform the closing phrase together, and Bing, hat cocked jauntily, tells Eddie, “Well, I’ll see you tonight,” and Eddie answers, “OK.”  Hardly Lubitsch, but entrancing in its pretend-casualness. 

And he sings so beautifully to Lang’s fetching accompaniment, their work mixing romanticism and swing, the effect both earnest and funny.  I found myself listening to the clip for the music — both casual and deliciously light, then watching the two men act (Lang, serious, plays the musical sidekick, never taking the spotlight away from Bing).

Bing’s performance of the song in the film and on the hit record spurred Paramount to make a short film (rather like the Mack Sennett shorts Bing had starred in).  I found a copy of the poster on eBay, and a wonderful piece of Art Deco foolishness it is, with a pretty blonde’s disembodied head grinning from the C in CROSBY; Bing playing the guitar (which he couldn’t) wearing something like a bathrobe, the lower half of his body swallowed up by the background.

PLEASE stars Bing, Mary Kornman (who was “Mary” in OUR GANG silents and worked with Bing in other movies), with Vernon Dent (who worked with Sennett, Harry Langdon, and in numberless two-reel films with The Three Stooges) as her huffy, pudgy suitor.  Giddins writes that it was presumed lost until the 1990s and unearthed by film preservationist Bob DeFlores.

The plot is paper-thin: my summary comes from the Mary Kornman website (www.marykornman.com) which proves that everything is indeed online:

This movie, filmed on location at Yosemite National Park, was not discovered until 1960.  In it, Mary plays a voice teacher, Beth Sawyer, on whom Bing has set his affections.  Playing himself, Bing hides his identity as to finagle lessons out of Beth in order to get close to her. Mary then enters him in a singing contest only to find out Bing’s true identity.  Humiliated by this, Mary rejects Bing but is soon won over as he croons a chorus of “Please” through her parlor window.

Fictions abound here as well.  As the sequence begins, a beautifully dressed “Beth,” with matching hat, turns on her radio — and out comes the sound of a dance orchestra playing the song for which the movie is named.  Coincidentally, Bing, wearing a pristine straw boater and neat dark suit, lurks outside her house, dramatizing his exasperation by some gesturing with a small object he discards.  The camera cuts to a momentary shot of a huge man in soiled white painter’s overalls, momentarily transfixed by the music, who takes off his hat and puts it back on again.  Director Gillstrom had trained in silent films, for you can see the idea balloon form above Bing’s head, “Hey!  That’s my song!  I could sing it to her!  Through this open window!  Wow!  What an idea!  Gee!” 

“Beth” at first doesn’t even register that a man is nearly climbing through her open window, singing along with the radio (something that would make many women call 911).  It’s as if Mary Kornman has forgotten her cue, although she does remember to sulk while Bing sings.  He sings beautifully, but without Tuttle to remind him how to understate, his gestures are at war with the song’s wooing intimacy.  Using a clenched fist to signify “I could hold you tight in my arms” is unromantic, even though it is perhaps the only gesture possible for a man still holding his hat).  And Mary Kornman may have been a delectable little girl in silent comedies, but her acting is petulantly limited.  Bing emotes and ”Beth” pouts, until his repetition of “Please!” win her over.  The lovers kiss, after a fashion; her dog turns its head away, and we are left hoping that they are going to be happy forevermore, even if she has to climb out of the window to be with Bing. 

But all this overacting doesn’t obscure the beauty of Bing’s voice, his phrasing, although I prefer the sound of the more casual version with Eddie Lang.     

Back to the song itself, one I’ve loved since adolescence.  When Bing was most popular as a romantic crooner, jazzmen, inspired by his recordings, took his repertoire for their own.  Think of I SURRENDER, DEAR and WRAP YOUR TROUBLES IN DREAMS!  Louis, Billie, and Hawkins (who memorably recorded I’VE GOT TO SING A TORCH SONG, WITH EVERY BREATH I TAKE, and JUST ONE MORE CHANCE).  Later on, Ruby Braff continued the tradition, including PLEASE and a whole album devoted to Bing.  But no one except John Gill has taken up the song, a pity.  I asked my Expert, Jon-Erik Kellso, about it, and he told me the melody line wasn’t easy for musicians who didn’t know the song to pick up on the spot.  If any musicians are reading this blog, would you please consider playing this song?  I’ll put more money in the tip jar when I hear it, I promise.

However, while researching this post, I also found a bouncy version of the song by Ambrose and his Orchestra.  This performance, however, deflates my theory about the song’s qualities.  Did it need Bing, John Gill, and Ruby to let its light shine through?  What you’ll hear is a fine 1932 dance record, but the yearning quality so essential to PLEASE is obliterated at this tempo.         

These clips remind me of truths that should be self-evident.  The young Crosby wasn’t an infallible actor; he needed a fine director to make sure that naturalness or “naturalness” prevailed.  But how he could sing!  And how splendidly Eddie Lang could play!  And they live in these filmed moments.   

So if someone asks you, reprovingly, ”WHAT’S the magic word?” (if anyone uses that phrase today), you must respond, “It’s Bing Crosby singing PLEASE, of course.” (Thanks to Peter Karl for that witticism, again.)

by Lewis Manalo

This Friday the 13th, check out Häxan, the freakiest silent film to ever crawl out of Scandinavia. I stupid, but as far as I can tell the film is a documentary about witchcraft. There’s a whole lotta cool-looking devils and ugly Scandinavian ladies, equally freaky monks and cute Scandinavian witches kissing Satan’s hairy ass. And a kleptomaniac. The production design and cinematography will blow. your. mind.

See it with a bud, but leave that shit that makes you paranoid at home. It plays this Friday the 13th at the MOMA, or check it out online here. (It’s pretty rad if you set the movie to Black Sabbath.)

All frames from Zepped in this post come from www.independent.co.uk

Last week there was much publicity about the discovery of an apparently lost Charlie Chaplin film. Morace Park, of Henham in Essex, purchased a nitrate film from eBay for the princely sum of £3.20 ($5), though he was more interested in the can. When he opened the can he found a reel of nitrate film bearing the title Charlie Chaplin in Zepped. Park could find no record of the film in any Chaplin filmography or biography. The film was a mixture of live action film of Chaplin and animation. Park’s neighbour just happened to be John Dyer, a former member of the British Board of Film Classification, and together they began investigating the history of the film.

They have been thorough in their studies so far, and have determined that the film features unused footage from the Chaplin films The Tramp, His New Profession and A Jitney Elopement. The Independent newspaper, which carries the fullest account of the discovery (including several frame illustrations), describes the film thus:

The unearthed film, called Charlie Chaplin in Zepped, features footage of Zeppelins flying over England during the First World War, as well as some very early stop-motion animation, and unknown outtakes of Chaplin films from three Essanay pictures including The Tramp. These have all been cut together into a six-minute movie that Mr Park describes as “in support of the British First World War effort”. It begins with a logo from Keystone studios, which first signed Chaplin, and there follows a certification from the Egyptian censors dating the projection as being in December 1916. There are outtakes, longer shots and new angles from the films The Tramp, His New Profession and A Jitney Elopement.

The main, animated sequence of the film starts with Chaplin wishing that he could return to England from America and fight with the boys. He is taken on a flight through clouds before landing on a spire in England. The sequence also features a German sausage, from which pops the Kaiser. During the First World War there was some consternation that the actor did not join the war effort.

At first it seemed to those who thought they knew their Chaplin history, and the habits of film collectors, that this was some cobbled-together item by someone who had edited together Chaplin clips with a separate animation film of the 1914-18 period, Chaplin being a regular subject for animators at the time. But then evidence turned up that there had indeed been a film called Zepped, exhibited in Britain in 1916. In 2006 British film historian Mike Hammond had uncovered a reference to the film in a Manchester journal (probably Film Renter), as an article in a Russian online journal reveals (scroll down to note 43 and get an English translation through Babelfish).

So what is this peculiar hybrid? The six-minute film is a mixture of Keystone and Essanay titles, plus the animation. Chaplin left Keystone in 1914 to join Essanay, leavin the latter to join Mutual in 1916. Essanay is known to have tried to make the best out of its loss by issuing Triple Trouble (1918), a mish-mash of Chaplin outtakes, but Zepped contains Keystone and Essanay titles, suggesting a still more irregular arrangement. The existence of an Egyptian censors’ certificate only adds to the peculiarity of the whole affair. There seems to be a connection with the accusations made at the time that Chaplin was avoiding his military duty by residing in the United States, though clearly this was an unofficial film and Chaplin had nothing to do with its production.

Chaplin biographer Simon Louvish speculates (in the Independent article) that the film was compiled in Egypt, which was under British occupation at the time. However, no one was making animated films in Egypt in 1916. The access to the outtakes suggests an American source, yet the theme and reference to ‘Blighty’ in the title cards hints at a British source. The frames showing some of the animation (below) look like the crude semi-animated films that British artists like Lancelot Speed or Dudley Duxton were making at this time. The reference to ‘Made in Germany’ is a British allusion (there were protests at the import of German goods into Britain long before the War), and America was scarcely indulging in anti-German propaganda at this time. I’d point the finger at a British film distributor.

The film has been transferred to DVD, and Park and Dwyer have been showing it to assorted Chaplin experts. They have also started making a documentary film in America about their voyage of discovery, and you can follow their ‘Lost Film Project’ through Twitter and through a project blog. They seem to be making a good job not only of exploiting the discovery but of seeking to understand it. If it’s not quite ‘THE cinematic find of the last 100 years’ that the blog claims, it’s a real coup – not least for how it has left the experts baffled. We now await anxiously for the results of their researches.

Update (20 November):
The people behind the Zepped discovery have kindly sent me two advertisements for the film plus a press notice, all from the journal Film Renter. Now we learn that the film was made by Screen Plays Co. of Manchester, that it was 1,000 feet long, and that there was some sensitivity over its relationship with Chaplin because the first version of the advert pointedly neglects to mention his name. He is mentioned in the second, however:

Original advertisment from Film Renter, 23 December 1916

Revised advertisement from Film Renter 30 December 1916

Press notice from Film Renter (date not given)

You can see the documents on the website for the company producing the documentary about Zepped, Clear Champion Ltd.

one of my favorite silent films. it’s so surreal and i love that the Smashing Pumpkins allude to the film in their music video for “Tonight, Tonight”:

(PS – i am a Smashing Pumpkins fanatic! just so you know.)

link offelabuta

Thanks to the monumental effort put into the American Film Archives boxsets I was able to see DW Griffith’s early silent short The Country Doctor (1909) and what a beautifully filmed tragic tale it is. The tale of a doctor who treats a sick neighbor while neglecting his own ill child is a very simple tale, but there’s something powerful about how much is conveyed in these mere 14 minutes. The sadness that pervades the eyes of the doctor’s daughter during her bed-ridden days of sickness are what struck me most powerfully, if only there were a still I could share of such a sight, oh well, c’est la vie. Instead I’ll just share with you another still:

The Doctor and his family out on a nice stroll.

I heartily suggest anyone reading this to pick up a copy of any of the boxsets, this particular film is available in the More Treasures from American Film Archives set which also contains a fun adaptation of the Wizard of Oz complete with beautiful sets and costumes. But they’re all worth biting into, and if the price is too outrageous to drop the money on I managed to find a used copy at my local FYE for $40, but that may have just been my good luck getting the best of me.

Friday night, we went to the Procession of the Ghouls (thanks to Aaron).  It was pretty much the most awesome Haloween thing ever.

First of all, it took place at Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which is on 112st and Amsterdam, so I already felt like I was on another planet.  St. John the Divine is apparently the oldest Gothic church in the US and the 4th largest church in the world (it is HUGE!)

They showed the original 1922, Nosferatu with (epic) live organ accompaniment.

Nosferatu is actually in the public domain, you can watch it on youtube or download it for free from the internet archive.

After the film came the Procession of the Ghouls.

The rest of the wacky photos are here.

Phantom (1922, F.W. Murnau)



DOCUMENTARY VIRAL RESEARCH BY DESIREE D’ALESSANDRO
10.19.09

Documentary
Definition doc•u•men•ta•ry (d k y -m n t -r )
adj.
1. Consisting of, concerning, or based on documents.
2. Presenting facts objectively without editorializing or inserting fictional matter, as in a book or film.
n. pl. doc•u•men•ta•ries
A work, such as a film or television program, presenting political, social, or historical subject matter in a factual and informative manner and often consisting of actual news films or interviews accompanied by narration.

MAIN INTEREST: Non-Dialogue Documentaries / Non-Narrative Film

Researching Launching Point: Documentary Film
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_film

Excerpt – Documentaries without words:
“From 1982, the Qatsi trilogy and the similar Baraka have been popular for their unique experimental film styles. These visual tone poems contain neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and music. Koyaanisqatsi consists primarily of slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and many natural landscapes across the United States.”

Koyaanisqatsi (feature length: 26 minutes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sps6C9u7ras

Thoughts From an (Experimental?) Documentary Film
interesting blog reflection w/ comments:
“The [...] conceptual conflicts in non-narrative film, specifically music and expectation. These two major considerations challenge the supposed “open-ended” qualities of a non-narrative film
Whether the score acts as a driving force to the film’s visual composition or as a counterpoint to the visual workings, the score instructs the viewer in ways less open-ended than the visual text. Tensions resulting from internal and external rhythms, reliefs provided by harmonies and dynamics of tone and pitch all provide rich and complex texts of their own.

1.) If contemplative cinema invites participation, empathy and engagement with a film, and a film’s storytelling capabilities actually strengthen and expand from that quality, what does that say about human expectations regarding narrative? What does it signify of the storyteller who has taken the responsibility to provide a story that includes room for expansion, depth and maneuverability within or navigation of that story?

2.) Perhaps more importantly, what does it mean for the future of filmmaking as an experiential, interactive process? What challenges do filmmakers face in terms of telling a story in this manner — not just technically, but also concerning what the filmmaker wants to convey versus what the audience interprets from a given work? What examples are there, if any, of films in which the director’s desired results for a film’s reception greatly differed with an audience’s interpretation — to his or her delight?”

Non-Narrative Film & Direct Relevence to Santa Barbara History
Santa Barbara, CA Silent Film history (Early 20th century to World War II)
“Santa Barbara housed the world’s largest movie studio during the era of silent film. Flying A Studios, a division of the American Film Company, operated on two city blocks centered at State and Mission between 1910 and 1922, with the industry shutting down locally and moving to Hollywood once it outgrew the area, needing the resources of a larger city. Flying A and the other smaller local studios produced approximately 1,200 films during their tenure in Santa Barbara, of which approximately 100 survive.”

Silent-Era Filmmaking in Santa Barbara (CA) (Images of America) (Paperback)

Between 1910 and 1921, the American Film Company was one of the fledgling movie industry’s most successful studios, with production facilities in Santa Barbara and business offices in Chicago. Nicknamed for its distinctive winged A logo, the Flying A produced nearly 1,200 films, starring such favorites of the day as Mary Miles Minter, J. Warren Kerrigan, Wallace Reid, and King Baggot. The company’s rather patriotic motto invited patrons to See Americans first. The studio’s films also documented the picturesque and developing Pacific seaside community of Santa Barbara and served as a training ground for some of Hollywood’s greatest directors.

A History of Experimental Film and Video (Paperback)

Avant-garde film is almost indefinable. It is in a constant state of change and redefinition. In this book A.L. Rees tracks the movement of the film avant-garde between, on the one hand, the cinema, and, on the other hand, modern art (with its post-modern coda). But he also reconstitutes the film avant-garde as an independent form of art practice with its own internal logic and aesthetic discourse. This is the first major history of avant-garde film and video to be published in more than twenty years. Ranging from Cezanne and dada, via Cocteau, Brakhage and Le Grice, to the new wave of British video artists in the 90s, this remarkable study will introduce a generation of new readers to avant-garde film as well as provoking students and specialists to further reflection and debate.

Experimental Cinema, The Film Reader (In Focus: Routledge Film Readers) (Paperback)

Experimental Cinema, The Film Reader brings together key writings on American avant-garde cinema to explore the long tradition of underground filmmaking from its origins in the 1920s to the work of contemporary film and video artists. The Reader traces the development of major movements such as the New American Cinema of the 1960s and the Structuralist films of the 1970s, examining the work of key practitioners and recovering neglected filmmakers. Contributors focus on the ways in which underground films have explored issues of gender, sexuality and race, and foreground important technical innovations such as the use of Super 8mm and video. Each section features an editor’s introduction setting debates in their context. The book concludes with a valuable filmography of key films available.

Silent Film Sound (Film and Culture Series) (Hardcover)

Altman radically rewrites the history of sound practices in silent cinema in the United States. He boldly challenges the basic assumptions of earlier work and carefully develops a series of cogent arguments about the complexity and swiftly changing nature of American silent cinema in which sound often had an importance equal to that of the moving image. The arguments are based on extensive, meticulous research in primary sources, many of them examined for the first time. This book is simply an extraordinary achievement.

Kennedy Center had an intriguing dance program last night. Keigwins & Company. The show featured four dances to each of the world’s elements: Water, Fire, Earth & Air.

The Company is a viewer friendly group. The opening number featured six dancers in towels moving to Mozart. Slapstick actions and movements reminded this viewer of silent movies. The fourth water piece teased audiences with white body suits.

Fire featured three dances, one in orange, another in red and a third in yellow. The costumes included frills on the arms and hats creating a sense of flames and movement. The male dancers hip hop moves thrilled the audience.

The jokey movements returned with Debussy, the song “Stormy Weather” and Devo, in the earth elements. A friend described the pieces as musical theater comedy.

The Air pieces included performers dressed in airline costuming. The moves in the first piece to “Up, Up and Away,” included the safety demonstrations done by stewards on every flight.

Making accessible dance is a great idea as is dancing to recent music. I wish the performances included more daring and interesting steps/choreography.

The old movie has inspired and scared people for a long time. I’m shocked no one has just redone it. Everything else ahs been remade. Maybe everyone’s nervouse to do a remake without dialogue.

Tonight we scored the silent film _Sunrise_ with our buds Dead Friend. It was in the public library. Previous to the show there had been controversy. I won’t tell you what the controversy was about, but these people can:

http://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?t=4680&sid=5cb40ad5ebe1dcca46afcea1e580af94

This topic is kind of amazing. I wish every town could have grotesque music in its library, but only Albany can. Thanks!

A thoughtful and expressive piece appeared in today’s Guardian, praising the value, worth and beauty of silent cinema.

Three silent’s are slated to be screened at the London Film Festival later this month: Underground (1928, directed by Anthony Asquith), J’accuse! (1919, directed by Abel Gance), and Laila (1929, directed by George Schneevoigt), which, Guardian writer Ronald Bergan says, remind modern audiences just how eloquent dialogue-free movies are capable of being. He also makes the provocative argument that “if cinema history had started with sound, it would have been necessary to invent silent movies.”

Read his reverent op-ed below:

The London film festival is screening three silent classics this year, reminding us just how eloquent dialogue-free movies are capable of being.

Is there anyone out there who still needs to be convinced of the superiority of silent movies? They hold their own easily against sound, colour and widescreen films in any canonical list. Silent movies are the ne plus ultra of cinema. The rest is… theatre or literature. How exciting, therefore, that this year’s London film festival is screening three silent movie treasures: one British (Underground, 23 October), one French (J’Accuse, 24 October) and one Norwegian (Laila, 29 October).

Pre-sound movies are closer to Erwin Panovsky’s definition of cinema as “the dynamisation of space and the spacialisation of time”, and to Alfred Hitchcock’s belief in “pure cinema”. When film theorists attempt to define cinematic specificity, it is to non-talkies that they turn. I have a theory that if cinema history had started with sound, it would have been necessary to invent silent movies.

Actually, there is no such thing as a silent movie, because a musical accompaniment was an essential component of every performance. And how can anything so eloquent be termed “silent”? That is why I prefer to call them pre-sound movies, or non-talkies. Ironically, one of the few things that non-talkies couldn’t do was create silence. Silence as an acoustic effect exists only where sounds can be heard, as in Abel Gance’s The Life and Loves of Beethoven (1937), in a sequence where the composer loses his hearing. Incidentally, it is interesting to compare Gance’s non-talkie 1919 version of J’Accuse – which depicts death, delusion and insanity in the trenches – with his far less effective talkie remake of 1938.

Pre-sound films were more universal, with no need for subtitles or dubbing – FW Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1924) is so expressive that intertitles were unnecessary. Charlie Chaplin, feeling that talkies would limit his international appeal, and being popular enough, resisted dialogue for 13 years, making two of the screen’s greatest comedies, City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936), in the midst of an avalanche of talk.

Much is written about the cinematographic beauty and the use of montage in pre-sound films (for Sergei Eisenstein, sound destroyed montage, which he considered the essence of cinema) but of equal importance were the closeup and the performances. The absence of the spoken word concentrates the spectator’s attention more closely on the visual aspect of behaviour. Acting in non-talkies, now a lost art, had to be done in a manner different from the style on stage or the reality of ordinary life. This was precisely what the great actors of the silent period accomplished, far from the pantomimic exaggeration seen in films like Singin’ in the Rain. Lillian Gish, Gloria Swanson, Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Conrad Veidt, Greta Garbo, Rudolph Valentino and Asta Nielsen were among those that gave the most extraordinary performances in screen history. As Norma Desmond (Swanson) says in Sunset Boulevard (1950): “We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces.”

Underground (UK, 1928)

Laila (Norway, 1929)

J'accuse! (France, 1919)

WHY A MUSEUM FOR AN OLD SILENT FILM STAR, ANYWAY?

Donation Drives for the Douglas Fairbanks Museum’s relocation effort have been considerably more difficult since the American economy went into a recession. Like all small nonprofits; libraries, museums and performing arts/cultural organizations, we’re faced with dramatic drops in funding sources and donations. Right now we need your help more than ever in order to meet our goal of securing a suitable new building to house and exhibit our collections.

In these turbulent economic times, we sometimes hear people say: “but why does an old silent movie star need a museum? And why should taxpayers foot the bill?”

We’ll tackle the second part of the question first: throughout the entire 11-year history of the Douglas Fairbanks Museum, we have never asked for nor accepted any public funding.

Our operating costs have always been funded by donations from private individuals, businesses and foundation grants, in addition to our own funds raised though film screenings, events, workshops, publications, admission fees, licensing/loan fees and sales from our gift shop. We strongly believe that small museums like ours should not be a drain on our taxpayers or our government, and that if silent film lovers and the local community believe that we provide a valuable service, they will contribute financially.

Now – for the most important part of that question: why should people care about an old silent movie star, anyway?

Let us pause for a moment to consider a world without “Doug”.

If it weren’t for Douglas Fairbanks, the history of cinema may have been written very differently indeed.

• We have Mr. Fairbanks to thank for giving independent film producers power over the production and distribution of their own films with the creation of United Artists in 1919.
• We can give our thanks to him for ensuring long-term health care and housing for elderly members of the industry with the Motion Picture Relief Fund and Hospital in 1921.
• Thanks to Fairbanks’ efforts to found the nation’s first film school at USC in 1929, young and aspiring filmmakers can learn their craft in universities around the world today.
• We can also thank him for helping to found the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who have brought us the Oscars every year since 1927.
• And above all, we have to thank him for giving us all those wonderful films which continue to inspire and influence us.

Now, let us stop for a moment to consider a world without the Douglas Fairbanks Museum (perish the thought!):

Had it not been for the Douglas Fairbanks Museum over these past 11 years, Doug’s fans, cinema scholars, and silent film enthusiasts would have no other place on earth to learn about his immense contribution to movie history.

Anyone looking for biographical information, research materials, photographs, copies of his films, or answers to questions about Mr. Fairbanks have come here to find what they were looking for. Our educational programs, workshops, lectures, film screenings, free web resources and virtual online galleries, news blog, books and other publications all provide a valuable service to the community of movie lovers everywhere.

We hope to continue providing these services in the future, but we can’t do it without your financial support.

With the economy as it is, small museums like ours rely mostly on donations from people like you to survive. Nonprofits, educational institutions, libraries and museums across America are seeing our annual donations plummet to record lows, and many of us are being forced to cut back on programs and staff or face permanent closure.

The Douglas Fairbanks Museum has been particularly hard hit by the financial crisis, as we are still trying to recover from the flood damage which forced us to close our doors last year. Over the past three quarters, the amount of financial contributions from individuals and businesses who have been our strongest supporters has dropped significantly due to the unstable economy, but we are hoping to get a much-needed boost from our fall donation drive this year.

Please don’t forget that our dedicated staff and volunteers make it all possible. Without their efforts, we would not have been able to make it through the storm (literally!), nor would we be able to continue making our collections available to the public while our doors remain temporarily closed.

Without YOU, a new library and exhibit space may not be in our future. We really do need your help now as we continue to raise funding for a new location. Please show your support for silent film, as well as your appreciation for Douglas Fairbanks and the many dedicated individuals who keep his museum going with a financial contribution today!

Your financial support helps us achieve our mission, enables us to acquire new artifacts, and to provide the very best care and conservation for our existing collections. As these items are now approaching or over 100 years of age, they need increasing amounts of attention and preservation.

You can make a donation quickly, easily, and safely through PayPal using a credit card, debit card or bank account below.Every donation, small or large – even just dropping $5.00 in our Virtual Donation Box - brings us one step closer to accomplishing our mission. That goal is establishing a permanent place in history for Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., to ensure that film historians and fans have his work, his extraordinary life and legacy to study and enjoy for many generations to come.

Make a financial gift through safe, secure Pay Pal International below:

Thank You.

(*) – Donations may not be tax-deductible.