August 31, 2007

Joints #2


CBGB's owner Hilly Kristal (who passed away earlier this week at the age of 75) sweeps up after what could have been an average or a legendary night.

Seminal Image #725


Hijosen no onna
(Dragnet Girl)
(Yasujiro Ozu; 1933)

They Were Collaborators #358


Edie Sedgwick, Gerard Malanga and The Velvet Undergound

Artists in Action #249


Norman Mailer takes a swing at nothing

August 30, 2007

The Ink & Paint Set #22


Martha Raye in The Autograph Hound
(Jack King, Disney, 1939)

The Art of Jazz #43


Shirley
(Shirley Bassey)
(Columbia/EMI; 1961)

Collect 'Em All #35


Norman Foster
No. 20 in a series of 50 from Player's Navy Cut Cigarettes

Born in Richmond, Indiana, on December 13th, 1900, Norman Foster started his career as a newspaper reporter in his native town. Later, going to New York for a better position, he turned to the stage instead, and after a hard struggle, gradually won the position of a popular leading man. He had his first leading film role in Gentlemen of the Press, a talking made at Long Island. Later he was given a Hollywood contract. Among his recent films are State Fair, Orient Express and Strictly Dynamite. His real name is John Hoeffer and he is married to Claudette Colbert.

August 27, 2007

P Is For Pulp #20


The Tiger in Summer
(by Michael Keon)
(Popular Library; 1954)

Similar Images #6


Can You Take It
(Dave Fleischer; 1934)


La Belle et le Bete
(Jean Cocteau; 1946)

The Friends of Milt Hinton #4


Gene Krupa plays in New York City in 1955.

A Is For Arbus #42


Susan Sontag and her son David (July 1965)

When Legends Gather #290


Martin Sheen and Ava Gardner (and the poor shlub who has to drive them)

C is for Cunningham #8


Sydney at Davenport (1964)

Artists in Action #248


Truman Capote keeps his feet off the floor

The Art of Feminism #6

The Neocons #7


Norman Podhoretz

Broadcasters #24


Art Laboe

The Native-Americana of Edward S. Curtis #8


Hesquiaht woman from the Central Nootka tribe; British Columbia (1916)

The Cool Hall of Fame #94


Chick Webb

The Art of Cinema #251


The Informer
(John Ford; 1935)

August 25, 2007

Art of the London Underground #23


Untitled
By J. Hassall; 1908

Through the Lens of Cyril Arapoff #11


A second-hand bookstall. During the 1930's this street market became a mecca for bargain-hunters and antique collectors.

From the Sketch Book of Lawson Wood #18


A story without words

From the Southern Travellers Handbook for 1965/66 #6


First-Class passengers

Although comfortable enough, there is little sociability in a first-class carriage on a railway; everybody seems to have an idea that he is the only one who is really entitled, by payment and position, to a seat therein, and so is afraid of compromising his dignity by speaking. There is consequently no conversation: the heads of the four corner occupants are usually looking out of the windows, and the centre ones look at each other.

August 24, 2007

Seminal Image #724


Hard Luck
(Buster Keaton, Edward F. Cline; 1921)

The Art of Cinema #250


Aelita: Queen of Mars
(Yakov Protazanov; 1924)

Artists in Action #247


Louis B. Mayer presents a flag to Lon Chaney during filming of Tell It to the Marines.

They Were Collaborators #357


Ginger Rogers, Irving Berlin and Fred Astaire.

August 23, 2007

Seminal Image #723


The Asphalt Jungle
(John Huston; 1950)

From The Black Panther Coloring Book #10


"The Pig trys to protect the White stores in Black communities that rob Black people"

Fun at Bohemian Grove #24


Bohemians feast (1904)

Newspapermen #18


John Reed

The Art of Cinema #249


Ascenseur pour l'échafaud
(Elevator to the Gallows)
(Louis Malle; 1958)

P is for Pulp #18


Famous Fantastic Mysteries
(May-June, 1940)

The Art of the Big Top #11

They Were Collaborators #356


Miles Davis and Bill Evans

Poets are both clean and warm
And most are far above the norm
Whether here or on the roam
Have a poet in every home! #22


Vladimir Mayakovsky

The Art of the Gig #9

August 22, 2007

They Were an Item #12


Buddy Rogers and Mary Pickford tie the knot.

Collect 'Em All #34


Douglas Fairbanks
No. 19 in a series of 50 from Player's Navy Cut Cigarettes

"Born on May 23rd, 1883 in Denver, Colorado, Douglas Fairbanks studied to become a mining engineer, but changed his mind and went on the stage, leaving in 1915 for screen work. He soon won stardom, becoming famous for his vigourous personality and acrobatic feats upon the screen. Perhaps his most famous silent film was Robin Hood. His talkies include Mr. Robinson Crusoe and The Private Life of Don Juan. In 1920 he married Mary Pickford. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is his son by his first wife. His brother Robert manages his business affairs."

Adventures in American Filmmaking #81


Today's Adventure: Leslie Howard, Basil Rathbone and John Barrymore confer on the set of George Cukor's 1936 production of Romeo and Juliet. Norma Shearer is nowhere to be seen.

Seminal Image #722


Desperate Journey
(Raoul Walsh; 1942)

The Cool Hall of Fame #93


Porter Wagoner

They Were Collaborators #355


Nelson Riddle, Eva Marie Saint and Paul Newman

The Golden Age of Prurience #42


I Feel It Coming
(Sidney Knight; 1969)

Before and After #83:
Benny Goodman

Before


After

August 20, 2007

They Were an Item #11


Olive Thomas and Jack Pickford

Seminal Image #721


The Red Badge of Courage
(John Huston; 1951)

Artists in Action #246

When Legends Gather #289


Richard Wright, Paul Robeson and Count Basie

Newspapermen #17


Harrison Salisbury (and a subject)

August 19, 2007

They Were Collaborators #354

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry

The Art of Cinema #248

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
The Man in the White Suit
(Alexander Mackendrick; 1951)

Seminal Image #720

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
The Leather Boys
(Sidney J. Furie; 1964)

Artists in Action #245

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Marilyn Monroe takes a swim

August 18, 2007

Joints #1


Peppermint Lounge

Artists in Action #244


Federico Fellini waits for service

The Cool Hall of Fame #92


Bob Dorough

When Legends Gather #288


Henry and William James

They Were Collaborators #353


Harry Nilsson and Gordon Jenkins

Great Moments in Journalism #5

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muriel Gray interviews Scott Walker for Channel Four's The Tube, with limited success.

Adventures in European Filmmaking #30

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Today's adventure Jean Renoir takes a break during filming.

Artists in Action #243


Peter Sellers is photographed by Roddy McDowall in Hollywood (1967)

The Art of Cinema #247


Z
(Costa-Gavras; 1969)

August 17, 2007

Max Roach dies at 83


Sorry to interrupt the Presleyana, but this news fills me with profound
sadness. I'm gonna switch the Sun Sessions with Money Jungle for a while.

The Associated Press obituary.

August 16, 2007

Great Moments in Journalism #4:
Elvis Presley Memorial Edition


With customary sobriety, Britain's Super Soar-away Sun covers the
passing of Elvis Presley 30 years ago today

Artists in Action #242:
Elvis Presley Memorial Edition


Elvis Presley points

When Legends Gather #287 (x 20):
Elvis Presley Memorial Edition


Elvis Presley and Bobby Darin


Elvis Presley and Faron Young


Elvis Presley and Gov. Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY)


Elvis Presley and Jackie Wilson


Merle Kilgore and Elvis Presley


Billy Ward and Elvis Presley


Elvis Presley and The Willburn Brothers


Nudie Cohen, Tex Williams and Elvis Presley


Elvis Presley and Hank Snow


Gov. George C. Wallace (D-AL) and Elvis Presley


Elvis Presley and Jim Brown


Eddy Arnold and Elvis Presley


Rufus Thomas and Elvis Presley


Elvis Presley, Natalie Wood and Nick Adams


Elvis Presley and Muhammad Ali


Elvis Presley and The Browns


Susan Hayward and Elvis Presley


Elvis Presley and Johnny Horton


Elvis Presley and Mahalia Jackson


Merv Griffin, Tom Jones, Elvis Presley and Norm Crosby

Before and After #82:
Elvis Presley Memorial Edition

Before


After

They Were Collaborators #352:
Elvis Presley Memorial Edition


Hal Wallis, Elvis Presley and Col. Tom Parker

The Art of the Gig #8:
Elvis Presley Memorial Edition

August 15, 2007

Artists in Action #241


Al Jolson visits the Gargoyles at Notre Dame Cathedral

They Were an Item #10


Ted White and Aretha Franklin

Before and After #81:
Sophie Tucker

Before


After

Seminal Image #719


Baby Face
(Alfred E. Green; 1933)

They Were Collaborators #351


Dead Kennedys

The New Yorkers #3


Robert Moses

August 14, 2007

The Ink & Paint Set #21


Popeye meets Harpo in Sock-a-Bye, Baby.
(Fleischer Studios; Dave Fleischer; 1934)

Seminal Image #718


Man Bait (UK title: The Last Page)
(Terence Fisher; 1952)

Collect 'Em All #33


Ann Dvorak
(No. 18 in a series of 50 from Player's Navy Cut Cigarettes)

Of Irish-Austrian descent, Ann Dvorak was born on August 2nd, 1912 in New York. Her real name is McKim, and she is the daughter of Anna Lehr, a famous American stage and silent screen actress. Ann began her career as a dancer and dance teacher with M.G.M. in whose films she first appeared as a dancer. For some time afterwards she did crowd work, a few larger roles, and then gained her great opportunity in Scarface, as the ill-fated sister. Her latest roles are in Massacre, with Richard Barthelmess, Heat Lightning, A Woman in Her Thirties and Midnight Alibi.

August 13, 2007

Housekeeping Matter #22
Guest Contributor Week: Aftermath

Well . . . that's that.

If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger's first Guest Contributor Week enters the yellowed ledger of Blogospheric histoire and, not to put too fine a point on it, I can honestly say I am eternally chuffed both by the generosity of our contributors and their respective eyes for good, very very good material. Mere thanks is not sufficient, but it is all I can offer.

Yesterday, shahn of the amazing blog six martinis and the seventh art suggested we do this again, and we shall. I intend it. In fact, had it not been for my own schedule-from-hell and an unwillingness to exile my co-conspirators for the length of time required, I would have extended Guest Contributor Week at least a few more days, if not another week (at one point I'd resolved to do that very thing). That's how many contributions we still have left over. I'm not sure when we'll be throwing open the doors again, but it won't be too long. Rest assured, I'll send out another shout of 'Come one, come all' when it happens.

I want to thank Stephen Cooke and Richard Gibson for clearing out, as it were, these last seven days while our guests moved in. As for me, I'm taking (deliberately this time . . . usually it happens of its own volition) a day or two off from the cane field of images that is this blog. What with the Bergman and Antonioni tributes and Guest Contributor-a-Go-Go, I've probably posted more on this blog in the last nine days than I do in a month (maybe). Now, some of you might be saying "Is he kidding? All he does is post pictures; and he thinks that's work? Has this chump ever hammered out 5,000 words on Out 1, noli me tangere . . . all 800 minutes! . . . hours after seeing it!! . . . all while making sure it reads exactly like everybody else's 5,000 words?? That's what I call hard blog-work, you apostate jackass!"

Well, it's a decent-enough point on its face. I've never claimed to have a talent for automatic writing, and certainly my gifts for cinephilic verisimiltude and CriticSpeak are not what they were when I was a lad; but those who take this view do so, I think, with a bit of short sighted-ness, however fashionable in some circles it may be. Think what you will, but we do expend a measure of critical judgement here when it comes to selecting and sequencing and (a word I'm using advisedly) editing the images. They are, for better or worse, our content; and even if we moved to a more text-intensive format . . . in the event such a strategy would not turn our fellow film bloggers against us even more than they've already turned . . . I don't think this blog would be as good, at least not in the same manner of good-ness.

All of which is to say that I been working overtime the last nine days on this here railroad, and I need to re-charge my batteries. Messrs. Cooke and Gibson will, I have no doubt, pick up the standard and brandish it far more effectively than I, blog wearied as I am.

Again, I want to give my immense thanks to those of you who contributed images and text and all things Charlie Parker last week. Most of you I thanked individually, and the rest I will get to (I promise that much), but this is the collective thanks. May your tribes increase.

Tom Sutpen

August 12, 2007

Guest Contributor Week: Day #7

The Golden Age of Publicity #1


From the original caption supplied by Columbia Pictures:

"Interesting Company: Two Columbia contract beauties, Norma Randall, left, and Rosemarie Bowe, have little Tommy Rettig in tow as he prepares to leave on a cross-country tour to exploit his latest film, The Kramer Company's Technicolor The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T. All are wearing official 'T' shirts and beanies."

Guest Contributor: Ray Young

Artists in Action #240
When Legends Gather #286


Weegee shows Stanley Kubrick his Rolleiflex camera

Guest Contributor: Galen Young

Seminal Image #717


Lásky jedné plavovlásky
(Loves of a Blonde)
(Milos Forman; 1965)

Guest Contributor: David Parker

When Models Were Models #11


Penelope Tree

Guest Contributor: Kimberly Lindbergs

Poets are both clean and warm
And most are far above the norm
Whether here or on the roam
Have a poet in every home! #21


Alan Ansen (hung by William S. Burroughs)

Guest Contributor: Hannah

Tricky: Scenes from a Life #40


Tricky meets a man in black (1972)

Guest Contributor: Mike Daly

Seminal Image #716


The Thin Red Line
(Terence Malick; 1998)

Guest Contributor: Jason Comerford

Artists in Action #239


Jean-Paul Belmondo plays pinball

Guest Contributor: Kimberly Lindbergs

The Cool Hall of Fame #91


Frank Zappa

Guest Contributor: Theron Neel

The Art of War #31


Guest Contributor: Rob Carver

They Were Collaborators #350


Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil with Big Ben

Guest Contributor: Mike Daly

This Week's Weegee #30


Guest Contributor: Jeff Duncanson

The Art of Communism #17


Guest Contributor: Pietro

They Were an Item #9


Alain Delon and Romy Schneider

Guest Contributor: Kimberly Lindbergs

The Roots of Pop Art #10


Hot Rod and Speedway
(February-March, 1957)

Guest Contributor: Rob Carver

The Acid Eaters #2
Before and After #80:
Aldous Huxley

Before


After

Guest Contributor: Glyphjockey

Old New York #9


32nd St. and 3rd. (1936)

Guest Contributor: Jeff Duncanson

Seminal Image #715


Au revoir, les enfants
(Goodbye, Children)
(Louis Malle; 1987)

Guest Contributor: shahn

When Legends Gather #285


Charles Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks

Guest Contributor: David Manning

Yé-Yé #6


Zouzou

Guest Contributor: Kimberly Lindbergs

Sex Education #83


Natalie Wood

Guest Contributor: Rob Carver

Jack Delano's Trains #4


In the roundhouse at a Chicago and Northwestern Railroad yard
(Chicago, IL; December, 1942)

Guest Contributor: Abraham Hyatt

Artists in Action #238


The Mighty Sparrow wows some suits

Guest Contributor: Mike Daly

When Legends Gather #284


Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog

Guest Contributor: Josh Krauter

Adventures in American Filmmaking #80


Today's Adventure: On the set of Eraserhead, David Lynch makes up Laurel Near as the Lady in the Radiator (1977)

Guest Contributor: Galen Young

August 11, 2007

Guest Contributor Week: Day #6

The Acid Eaters #1

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Albert Hofmann

Guest Contributor: Glyphjockey

Seminal Image #714


The Big Lebowski
(Joel Coen; 1997)

Guest Contributor: Stacia

They Were Collaborators #349


Merce Cunningham and John Cage

Guest Contributor: Mike Daly

When Legends Gather #283


Ann Coulter and Rev. Al Sharpton

Guest Contributor: David Manning

Artists in Action #237

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Tom Stoppard is poised to write

Guest Contributor: Testify

They Were Collaborators #348


Ann-Margret and Ken Russell

Guest Contributor: Galen Young

The Golden Age of Prurience #41


Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
(by Lewis Carroll; aka, The Rev. Charles Dodgson)
(MacMillan and Co., 1865)

Guest Contributor: Rob Carver

The Present Day Composer #49


Townes Van Zandt (1944-1997)

Guest Contributor: Mike Daly

Artists in Action #236


Klaus Kinski publishes his memoirs

Guest Contributor: Jürgen Fauth of jürgen fauth’s muckworld

They Were an Item #8

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Spade and Ella Mae Cooley

Guest Contributor: Testify

Before and After #79:
Eric Burdon

Before
Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

After
Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Guest Contributor: Glyphjockey

The Art of Cinema #246


Dick Tracy
(William A. Berke; 1945)

Guest Contributor: Hannan Levin of grow-a-brain

When Legends Gather #282

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Terence Stamp and Sammy Davis, Jr.

Guest Contributor: Kimberly Lindbergs

Seminal Image #713

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
The Hustler
(Robert Rossen; 1961)

Guest Contributor: Ryan Sarnowski of Made Out of Mouth

Jack Delano's Trains #3


Switchman throwing a switch at C & NW RR's Proviso yard
(Chicago, IL; April, 1943)

Guest Contributor: Abraham Hyatt

Self Portrait #4

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Andrea (Andy) Warhol

Guest Contributor: Glyphjockey

The Cool Hall of Fame #90

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Johnny Ray

Guest Contributor: Peteski of Nevver

They Were Collaborators #347

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Lester Flatt, Curly Sechler and Earl Scruggs

Guest Contributor: Testify

When Legends Gather #281


Errol Flynn and Brigitte Bardot

Guest Contributor: Rob Carver

The Art of Travel #10


Guest Contributor: Kimberly Lindbergs

August 10, 2007

Guest Contributor Week: Day #5

Adventures in American Filmmaking #79


Today's Adventure: Lars von Trier gives Lauren Bacall direction and a hard time on the set of Manderlay (2005)

Guest Contributor: Steve Carlson of The Ongoing Cinematic Education of Steven Carlson

Artists in Action #235


Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir get arrested for distributing
La Cause du Peuple (1971)

Guest Contributor: Galen Young

Seminal Image #712


Phantom Lady
(Robert Siodmak; 1944)

Guest Contributor: Ray Young

The Art of War #30


Guest Contributor: Stacia

Great Canadians of the 20th Century #9


Emily Carr in her studio with Sunshine and Tumult, c. 1936

(photo: Harold Mortimer-Lamb; courtesy: National Gallery of Canada).

Guest Contributor: Trish Turliuk

Jack Delano's Trains #2


Indiana Harbor Belt RR switchman, demonstrating signal with a 'fusee' --
used at twilight and dawn -- when visibility is poor. This signal means 'stop.'
(Calumet City, IL; January, 1943)

Guest Contributor: Abraham Hyatt

A Who's Who of Swinging London #9


Marsha Hunt

Guest Contributor: Kimberly Lindbergs

The Art of Cinema #245


Tanned Legs
(Marshall Neilan; 1929)

Guest Contributor: Rob Carver

When Legends Gather #280


Jack Nicholson, Lauren Bacall and Warren Beatty

Guest Contributor: Mark of Movie Masterworks

They Were Collaborators #346


Nick Adams and Natalie Wood

Guest Contributor: Peter L. Winkler of Precious Cargo

Seminal Image #711


Ariel
(Aki Kaurismäki; 1988)

Guest Contributor: Paul Duane

When Legends Gather #279


Noam Chomsky and Fidel Castro

Guest Contributor: David Manning

Before and After #78:
Dorothy Parker

Before


After

Guest Contributor: Theron Neel

Great Moments in Marketing #13


Cornel Wilde sells Schenley Whiskey

Guest Contributor: Kimberly Lindbergs

The Present Day Composer #48


Juan Garcia Esquivel (1918-2002)

Guest Contributor: Testify

August 09, 2007

Guest Contributor Week: Day #4

They Were Collaborators #345


Buster Keaton and Samuel Beckett

Guest Contributor: Galen Young

Adventures in American Filmmaking #78


Today's Adventure: Ralph Levy and Marlon Brando discuss pratfalls
for Bedtime Story (1964)

Guest Contributor: Ray Young

The Cool Hall of Fame #89


Lon Chaney

Guest Contributor: Stacia

The Golden Age of Prurience #40


Homo Hill
(Matt Bradley; 1963)

Guest Contributor: Dave Cash

They Were Collaborators #344


John Ford and George O'Brien

Guest Contributor: name lastname

Yé-Yé #5


Marie Laforet

Guest Contributor: Kimberly Lindbergs

When Legends Gather #278


Ringo Starr and Marc Bolan

Guest Contributor: Theron Neel

The Art of Communism #16


Guest Contributor: Pietro

Great Canadians of the 20th Century #8


Gordon Lightfoot

Guest Contributor: Jeff Duncanson

El Cine Del Oro #36


El Gato sin botas
(A Puss Without Boots)
(Fernando Cortés; 1957)

Guest Contributor: Rob Carver

Seminal Image #710


Portrait of Jennie
(William Dieterle; 1948)

Guest Contributor: David Parker

Artists in Action #234


The Jackson 5ive strut their stuff on The Ed Sullivan Show

Guest Contributor: Mike Daly

They Were an Item #7


Jean-Paul Belmondo and Ursula Andress

Guest Contributor: Kimberly Lindbergs

Seminal Image #709


Blue Velvet
(David Lynch; 1986)

Guest Contributor: Stacia

August 08, 2007

Guest Contributor Week: Day #3

Artists in Action #233


Leo Tolstoy spins a yarn

Guest Contributor: Mike Daly

They Were Collaborators #343


John Waters and Harris Glenn Milstead (aka Divine)

Guest Contributor: Andrew Mazur of Transmissions from Wintermute

When Legends Gather #277


Bud Abbott, Donald O'Connor, Eddie Cantor, James Durante and Lou Costello

Guest Contributor: David Manning

Seminal Image #708


Imitation of Life
(Douglas Sirk; 1959)

Guest Contributor: Patrick Ciccone

Self Portrait #3


Stanley Kubrick

Guest Contributor: Mike Daly

The Art of the Gig #7


Guest Contributor: Pietro

The Art of Technological Advance #3


Guest Contributor: Stacia

When Models Were Models #10


Marisa Berenson

Guest Contributor: Kimberly Lindbergs

The Roots of Pop Art #9


Mister Mystery
(July-August, 1955)

Guest Contributor: Rob Carver

Before and After #77:
Montgomery Clift

Before


After

Guest Contributor: Testify

Artists in Action #232


Fritz Lang puts Peter to bed

Guest Contributor: Galen Young

They Were Collaborators #342


The Three Stooges (Jerry Howard, Larry Fine and Moe Howard)

Guest Contributor: Lex10 of Glyphjockey

August 07, 2007

Guest Contributor Week: Day #2

Jack Delano's Trains #1


C&NW RR, working on a locomotive at the 40th street railroad shops
(Chicago, IL; December, 1942)

Guest Contributor: Abraham Hyatt

The Art of Travel #9


Guest Contributor: Kimberly Lindbergs

Artists in Action #231


Paul Anka knots his tie

Guest Contributor: Testify of Testify

Sex Education #82


Elizabeth Taylor

Guest Contributor: Rob Carver

The Art of Jazz #42


Unit Structures
(Cecil Taylor)
(Blue Note Records; 1966)

Guest Contributor: Mike Daly

Adventures in American Filmmaking #77


Today's Adventure: Anthony Cardoza, William C. Thompson, Harry Thomas, Tor Johnson and Edward D. Wood take an existential break from filming Night of the Ghouls (1959)

Guest Contributor: Ray Young

When Legends Gather #276


Bill Haley and Elvis Presley

Guest Contributor: David Manning

The Cool Hall of Fame #88


Ann-Margret

Guest Contributor: Theron Neel

Seminal Image #707


Soy Cuba
(I Am Cuba)
(Mikhail Kalatozov; 1964)

Guest Contributor: Jeff Duncanson

A Who's Who of Swinging London #8


Michael Caine struts down a London street

Guest Contributor: Kimberly Lindbergs

Artists in Action #230


The Monks get their tonsures touched up

Guest Contributor: Mike Daly

The Art of the Gig #6


Guest Contributor: Rob Carver

August 06, 2007

Guest Contributor Week: Day #1

When Legends Gather #275


Marvin Hamlisch, Mike Douglas, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

Guest Contributor: David Manning of The Ridgefield Press

Adventures in the Fight Racket #7


Today's Adventure: Marcel Cerdan smiles confidently before his title defense
against Jake LaMotta (1949)

Guest Contributor: Jeff Duncanson of Filmscreed

When Legends Gather #274


Brian Jones, Yoko Ono, Roger Daltrey, Julian Lennon, John Lennon and Eric Clapton

Guest Contributor: Kimberly Lindbergs

Artists in Action #229


Toots Hibbert inhales

Guest Contributor: Mike Daly

Great Moments in Marketing #12


Jack Palance endorses Heublein Cocktails

Guest Contributor: Kimberly Lindbergs of Cinebeats

They Were Collaborators #341


Michel Legrand and Jean-Luc Godard

Guest Contributor: Galen Young

The Art of Cinema #244


Man Bait
(Terence Fisher; 1952)

Guest Contributor: Rob Carver

The Art of American Amusement #9


A Ku Klux Klan carnival somewhere in the Midwest

Guest Contributor: Stacia of Food & Movies

Academy of the Underrated #8


Brother Theodore

Guest Contributor: Ray Young of Flickhead

Before and After #76:
Lotte Lenya

Before


After

Guest Contributor: Rob Carver

They Were Collaborators #340


The Benny Goodman Trio (Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa)

Guest Contributor: Shahn of six martinis and the seventh art

Artists in Action #228


Daniel Johnston gives Yip! Jump Music the hard sell

Guest Contributor: Mike Daly

August 05, 2007

The Director of the Moment


It's an appropriate image, don't you think?

Not that he was any more at home in the treacherous expanse of Death Valley than Erich von Stroheim had been forty-five years earlier. Nor would I say that he emerged from that red-gold desert with a film anyone would call a triumph in the art of the motion picture (it was, in fact, the worst of his films; though not without its moments). No, I merely make this observation to point out that Michelangelo Antonioni, who passed away last week at the age of 94, could find more in empty spaces and relative silences than any filmmaker in history. "I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible." he once said, "I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space."

It was Antonioni's limning of that social context, his greater or lesser understanding of it, that enabled these realizations, gave them breath. Unlike Federico Fellini, the director he was so often and so foolishly pitted against by movie reviewers in the early 1960s, Antonioni had little interest in cramming his frames to their edges with human bric-a-brac (beauties, grotesques, endless, endless talkers) and a filming style unhinged yet, at its core, severely disciplined. He instead stripped the universe his narratives dwelled in of everything they (and, by extension, we) didn't need, making all he left in that much more stark and forbidding. With its awful history and abundant life-force, Italy is a country whose arts were never easily dispassionate, and no medium practiced there was ever more manic than its cinema (it's the one crucial, unbreakable link between that country's commercial filmmaking and its so-called Art cinema), yet Antonioni's work, at first glance, seemed oddly cold-blooded in comparison with . . . just about everyone's. But that was only their surface. His films were, in fact, intensely dramatic at their best, though totally bereft of the thousand manipulations of melodrama; and they could be excruciating in the utter persistence with which the background, as he put it, of his characters made itself known to us.

Michelangelo Antonioni was, if nothing else, a director of moments. This is not to say that he excelled at individual sequences at the expense of the whole, or even that he had an abiding gift for dramatic, carefully constructed epiphanies. His unique gift, his genius (to use a word pressed into backbreaking service this week) lay in depicting with immense precision the most agonizing hours of inner torment, documenting on film that which cannot be documented so directly: The moment when an artist begins to know the limits of art; the moment when a marriage can no longer go on; the moment when a man's inanition of will finally reduces every personal illusion to dust; the moment when a revolutionary impulse dies; the moment when loss becomes irretrievable. It was something no other filmmaker, then or now, was capable of. It was literally like photographing heartbreak.

In New York magazine earlier this week, Bilge Ebiri squeezed out the standard, reflexive teardrop; lamenting the passing of Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, placing these doubly sad events in contrast to the foul success of someone like Brett Ratner, then reading into it all the usual, sinister implications. Doesn't bode well for us, does it? Well, who knows. I won't go the Cassandra route (not this time) and foretell a dour and detestable future for those of us who are hopelessly obsessed with cinema. Frankly, I'm of the opinion (sometimes) that we cinephiles only rarely deserve to have artists like Antonioni . . . or Bergman . . . or whatever giant falls next (Godard? Rivette? Kenneth Anger??) walk among us and bring forth their works.

Let's just be thankful we have them for as long as they're around.

Seminal Image #706


Il Grido
(The Cry)
(Michelangelo Antonioni; 1957)

Movie of the Week #20


Sette Canne, un vestito
(Seven Reeds, One Suit)
(Michelangelo Antonioni; 1949)

The industrialization of Northern Italy after the Second World War, and all its hideous consequences, was only one of the subtexts that informed, to one degree or another, a huge amount of Post-war Italian Cinema (not just the Neorealist cycle). In one of his early documentaries, Sette Canne, un vestito, Michelangelo Antonioni took his camera to a Rayon factory near Trieste and, through his determined emphasis on soulless machinery (almost to the exclusion of the workers) created the first of his oppressive environments without sacrificing the essential documentary character of the enterprise. Almost a decade later, Alain Resnais and Raymond Queneau would take this a step (or two) further with their plastic molding epic, Le Chant du Styrène, but Antonioni's film, even with the sumptuousness of its imagery, remains the more everlasting triumph in this small corner of the documentary canon.

Note: This film is presented in the original Italian, without English subtitles. Call it a poor guess or call it a shifty evasion, but it's my . . . belief . . . that the narration probably offers us little that the images can't handle on their own.

Adventures in European Filmmaking #29


Today's Adventure: Michelangelo Antonioni sets up his camera for Chung Kuo: Cina, without representatives of the PRC breathing down his neck (1972)

Before and After #75:
Michelangelo Antonioni

Before


After

Seminal Image #705


Cronaca di un amore
(Story of a Love Affair)
(Michelangelo Antonioni; 1950)

Adventures in American Filmmaking #76


Today's Adventure: On the set of Zabriskie Point, extras look on nervously as Michelangelo Antonioni contemplates a solution to his problems with MGM (1970)

Seminal Image #704


Identificazione di una donna
(Identification of a Woman)
(Michelangelo Antonioni; 1982)

They Were Collaborators #339


Monica Vitti and Michelangelo Antonioni

Artists in Action #227


Michelangelo Antonioni reads

Great Moments in Journalism #3


How the mighty BBC covered the passing of Michelangelo Antonioni

The Art of Cinema #243

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Blow Up
(Michelangelo Antonioni; 1966)

Seminal Image #703


L'Avventura
(The Adventure)
(Michelangelo Antonioni; 1960)

Adventures in European Filmmaking #28


Today's adventure: Michelangelo Antonioni the cast and crew of Professione: reporter (The Passenger; 1975) prepare for the final shots.

Seminal Image #702


L'Eclisse
(The Eclipse)
(Michelangelo Antonioni; 1962)

The Art of Cinema #242


Zabriskie Point
(Michelangelo Antonioni; 1970)

Artists in Action #226
When Legends Gather #273


Andrei Tarkovsky and Michelangelo Antonioni hang out, as Tonino Guerra stands watch

Seminal Image #701


Blow Up
(Michelangelo Antonioni; 1966)

They Were Collaborators #338


Wim Wenders and Michelangelo Antonioni

Seminal Image #700


Professione: reporter
(The Passenger)
(Michelangelo Antonioni; 1975)

Artists in Action #225


Far away from home, Michelangelo Antonioni makes a home movie

Seminal Image #699


Le Amiche
(The Friends)
(Michelangelo Antonioni; 1955)

They Were Collaborators #337


Michelangelo Antonioni and the cast of La Notte

The Art of Cinema #241

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L'Eclisse
(The Eclipse)
(Michelangelo Antonioni; 1962)

The Cool Hall of Fame #87


Michelangelo Antonioni

August 04, 2007

The Most Happy Auteur


Ingmar Bergman, who passed away earlier this week at the age of 89, was already one of the most celebrated film artists on earth by the age of forty; and not without good cause. Over the preceding fifteen years (and more than one decade thereafter) he had, through the force of his will and his talent alone, accomplished a feat that was almost miraculous: He brought to bear upon narrative cinema the most directly personal vision it had ever witnessed. Think about it. Personal expression in film arguably goes all the way back to the Brothers Lumiere, and directors always, to greater or lesser degrees, used their work to cast perspective on matters of far more immediate concern to them than the audience or their putative colaborators. But when people speak (rightfully) of intensely private dimensions in the work of, say, Howard Hawks or Alfred Hitchcock, it has to be remembered that whatever core of inward reflection these directors sought could not have been achieved without the protective armor of comercially-viable genres. Inside the contours of a Western or a Suspense number they were, very often, poets; outside them, they were considered unemployable.

After a half-decade of slugging it out in the trenches of Sweden's film industry, Bergman had truck with genres only rarely, and when he did they never adhered to anyone's conventions. His was a process, almost from the start, of striking personal thematic chords again and again and again. With very few exceptions he wrote every film he directed, and not one could have been conceivable as the product of any other. His works were his, or they were no one's.

He was, in this sense, on the fast track of history. In 1948, just two years after Bergman commenced his directorial career, the novelist Alexandre Astruc thundered across the pages of L'Ecrain Francais with a piece that in its time was seen less an essay than a call to arms. In this article, "The Birth of a New Avant-Garde", he advanced the idea of 'Le camera-stylo', and argued that film artists could only realize the full potentialities of the medium by means of direct, singular authorship, an authorship at once similar to that of a novelist or a painter but wholly dissimilar in that its methods were exclusively those of cinema. It was idealism run rampant, but that only made its allure, for some, all the more alluring.

It's a proposition with which one can, of course, dispute endlessly, but in the realm of narrative filmmaking Ingmar Bergman consummated Astruc's ideal more completely than any director of his day. So it falls, then, as naturally as night falls upon day, that in the full flower of his creativity he would often find himself dismissed by the high tide of auteurist movie reviewers, usually American, whose critical mandate was virtually fueled by such outlandishly romantic proclamations as Astruc's. The reason for this had little to do with his movies and everything to do with the attitudes of a certain breed of reviewer: Auteurist criticism, as it came to be, was essentially a sport, one where each critic mined a body of work for the oft-hidden authorial hand of its director and then wrote their way (often poorly) to Olympus. It's an engaging preoccupation, always good for passing the time, but Bergman made it too easy.

No one, after all, had to look very far or for very long to find the evidence of his hand. It was manifest from first frame to last. What else was there to say? When Jonas Mekas (more gadfly than auteurist was he) once stated somewhat foolishly that there was more cinema in Hawks's Air Force than in the entirety of Ingmar Bergman's ouvre, it was not without a particle or two of real frustration. It was as if, by so closely incarnating the auteur model, Bergman was somehow playing dirty pool. If he'd been laboring in the charnel house of a severely regimented film industry such as Hollywood's, cranking out genre assignments and sneaking whatever he could of himself into the most rote, impersonal material, then he'd be presenting critics with a challenge, something they could work with. But the way he was doing it, the way he always did it, there was nothing for them to write about. It was no fair; no fun.

In a 1972 interview with John Simon . . . published in Ingmar Bergman Directs; a book, by contrast, almost tumescent with admiration for its subject ("To be the most important man in the most important art must be a terrible responsibility. Does it bother you?") . . . he spoke of what inspired his works. "It starts with a sort of tension or a specific scene, some lines, a picture or something, a piece of music. It just starts as a very, very small scene. And from this little scene comes a trembling. I look at it and try to pull it out. And sometimes it remains just this little thing.. But sometimes it's more; I can't stop and suddenly I have a lot of material." If we warrant that this is so . . . and the thousand evasions movie directors employed in interviews could often be an art unto itself; one worthy of fuller exploration at another time . . . then what is remarkable about Ingmar Bergman is not that he would draw inspiration from seemingly odd and random elements, but that his engagement with his own sensibility, his supreme confidence in it, up to and including an acceptance of its unknowable corridors, was such that he could then construct, as he did, a wholly coherent, utterly compelling body of cinema.

By using his imagination to plumb the deepest recesses of himself, he in turn gave us something we could then use to see ourselves, thereby succeeding where so many navel-gazers (and film critics) fail.

Seminal Image #698


Kvinnors väntan
(Secrets of Women)
(Ingmar Bergman; 1952)

Movie of the Week #19


Karins ansikte
(Karin's Face)
(Ingmar Bergman; 1984)

For a director who sought time and again to restate a past he could only have known from hearsay, 1984's Karin's ansikte, one of the director's few shorter works and one of his most moving, represents the one occasion when Ingmar Bergman allowed that past to speak for itself.

Before and After #74:
Ingmar Bergman

Before


After

Artists in Action #224


Ingmar Bergman looks into the jaws of the future

They Were Collaborators #336


Max Von Sydow, Liv Ullmann and Gunnar Bjornstrand

Seminal Image #697


Vargtimmen
(Hour of the Wolf)
(Ingmar Bergman; 1968)

The Art of Cinema #240


Det Sjunde inseglet
(The Seventh Seal)
(Ingmar Bergman; 1957)

They Were Collaborators #335


Ingmar Bergman and Victor Sjöström

Adventures in European Filmmaking #27


Today's Adventure: Ingmar Bergman listens to Ingrid Bergman on the set of Höstsonaten (Autumn Sonata; 1978)

Seminal Image #696


Viskningar och rop
(Cries and Whispers)
(Ingmar Bergman; 1972)

The Art of Cinema #239


Persona
(Ingmar Bergman; 1966)

Artists in Action #223


Ingmar Bergman gets himself zilched

Adventures in European Filmmaking #26

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Today's Adventure: Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullman, Sven Nykvist and Ingmar Bergman take a break during the filming of Persona in 1965.

Seminal Image #695

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Tystnaden (The Silence)
(Ingmar Bergman; 1963)

The Art of Cinema #238

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Sommaren med Monika
(Summer with Monika)
(Ingmar Bergman; 1953)

Artists in Action #222


Ingmar Bergman waves his arms in the air

They Were Collaborators #334


The cast of Gycklarnas afton (Sawdust and Tinsel; 1953)

(seismic thanks to Galen Young for this image)

Seminal Image #694

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Persona
(Ingmar Bergman; 1966)

When Legends Gather #272


Charles Chaplin and Ingmar Bergman

Before and After #73:
Ingmar Bergman Directs

Before (Såsom i en spegel; 1961)


After (Saraband; 2003)

(huge thanks to Jason Comerford of One Letter at a Time for the After image!)

Seminal Image #693


Jungfrukällan
(The Virgin Spring)
(Ingmar Bergman; 1960)

They Were Collaborators #333


Ingrid Thulin and Ingmar Bergman

(immense thanks to Galen Young for this image)

Adventures in European Filmmaking #25


Today's Adventure: Ingmar Bergman and Jörgen Lindström play with a toy train on the set of Tystnaden (The Silence; 1963).

They Were an Item #6


Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann

The Art of Cinema #237

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Vargtimmen
(Hour of the Wolf)
(Ingmar Bergman; 1968)

Seminal Image #692


Törst
(Thirst)
(Ingmar Bergman; 1949)

Relevant Quote #92


"Say anything you want against The Seventh Seal. My fear of death — this infantile fixation of mine — was, at that moment, overwhelming. I felt myself in contact with death day and night, and my fear was tremendous. When I finished the picture, my fear went away. I have the feeling simply of having painted a canvas in an enormous hurry — with enormous pretension but without any arrogance. I said, 'Here is a painting; take it, please.'"
-- Ingmar Bergman

August 03, 2007

Intervista #3
Broadcasters #23


Everything that was good and everything that was ridiculous about Tom Snyder (who passed away earlier this week at the age of 71), is on display in this 1981 interview with Singer-Songwriter Charles Manson; recorded for NBC's Tomorrow show at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.

Seminal Image #691


The Train
(John Frankenheimer; 1965)

They Were Collaborators #332


Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford