Depending on the language version you watch, you'll see a 1928 newspaper headline dated September 20 (a Thursday), January 10 (a Tuesday), or January 9 (a Monday).

 

 

“You've won a doll and a kiss. I'll give you the doll and your girl can give you the kiss!”

– Coney Island barker

Filmmaker Jean Epstein and his cameraman Paul Guichard made their way to the Etna on June 22, 1923. This was merely five days after the eruption started.

“Sicily! The night had a thousand eyes. All sorts of smells shrieked at once. An unfurled coil of wire brought our car, swathed in moonlight as if surrounded by mosquito netting, to a halt. It was hot. Impatient, the drivers broke off singing the most beautiful love song, striking the car with a monkey wrench and insulting Christ and his mother with a blind faith in their efficacy. In front of us: Etna, the great actor who bursts onto the stage two or three times each century, whose tragic extravagances I had arrived to film. An entire side of the mountain was a blazing spectacle. The conflagration reached up to the reddened corners of the sky. From a distance of twenty kilometers, the rumbling at times seemed to be a triumphal reception heard from afar, as if a thousand hands were applauding in an immense ovation.”

– Jean Epstein, Le Cinématographe vu de l’Etna (1926) (via)

“It's spooky! It sounds… unholy!”

– Echo

and May 4.

 

“What a lucky clown you are! You don't have to wipe off your laugh.”

A journey or road trip*

 

Four weeks in four minutes, spanning decades in its disruptive form.

 

* the Bales 2025 Film Challenge for November is, again, not date-based, but follows a sloppy schmaltzy all-American Thanksgiving-y narrative. Trying to make it work my way.