settima

SciFi

Manden der tænkte ting [The Man Who Thought Life] (Jens Ravn, 1969)

May

12

National Hospital Day

Manden der tænkte ting (1969)

A man in black (Preben Neergaard) seen from the back looks into an operating room. DP: Witold Leszczyński.

A strange man arrives at neurosurgeon Dr Max Holst's #hospital one day. So strange in fact that he's promptly send to the psychiatric ward. This man, a Mr Steinmetz, insists on the doctor's help. He can materialise things – look see here's a cigar – but living things is what he wants. This bird, it died. Can the doctor help? No no, not the bird, the brain! Steinmetz has set up a theatre in his home, it can be done there. While the doctor, however tempted, refuses, Steinmetz evolves.

“We are now entering the century of the soul!”

– Steinmetz

Manden der tænkte ting intrigues in its clinical monotonous settings, its pale late-60s stock, and precise composition. Early Cronenberg – Stereo (Tile 3B of a CAEE Educational Mosaic) (1969) and Crimes of the Future (1970) – comes to mind and, of course Lars von Trier's majestic Riget [The Kingdom] (1994 – 2022). But only Jens Ravn mastered this strangling lightness. Slowly, while you count backwards. Now you no longer feel the straps. 10… 9… …

Аэлита [Aelita / Aelita: Queen of Mars] (Yakov Protazanov, 1924)

Apr

29

International Astronomy Day

Аэлита (1924)

Queen Aelita (Yuliya Solntseva) peering through her telescope. DPs: Emil Schünemann & Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky.

Like in Enrico Novelli's Un matrimonio interplanetario [A Marriage in the Moon] (1910), interplanetary romance blooms in Аэлита.
Through her #telescope, Queen Aelita spots engineer Los, a handsome Earth man, and he promptly travels to #Mars to be with her. There, Los uncovers an uprising by the Elders against his beloved queen that he vows to – in good proletarian fashion – stomp down.

 

Aelita*'s constructivist stage and costume design had an enormous influence on science fiction, as far as the late 20th century.

Ghosts… of the Civil Dead (John Hillcoat, 1988)

Apr

26

Hug An Australian Day

Ghosts… of the Civil Dead (1988)

One of the inmates near a small window. The light's cold. DPs: Paul Goldman & Graeme Wood.

John Hillcoat's deeply unpleasant debut is based on In the Belly of the Beast (1981), a collection of excerpts of letters between prisoner Jack Henry Abbott and author Norman Mailer. True to the book's format, Ghosts consists of disjointed vignettes of monologues, #CCTV footage, title cards, and prisoners' phone calls.

 

For the last 37 months, these filters inform the observer, the hypermodern #supermax Central Industrial Prison has been in permanent lockdown. The cast, a mix of professional actors and ex-cons, and the location, a clean factory-style hangar in the middle of the Australian desert, underscore the underlying raw brutality of the unfolding events.

 

“Officer, come here. I wanna spit in your fucking eye!”

– Maynard

The #industrial soundtrack is by Bad Seed Nick Cave (co-writer and starring as Maynard), Mick Harvey, and Blixa Bargeld from when they were still closer to being birthday boys than morose crooners.

La folie du Docteur Tube [The Madness of Dr. Tube] (Abel Gance, 1915)

Apr

23

World Laboratory Day

La folie du Docteur Tube (1915)

The professor's assistant is a young Black kid, maybe 10 years old. He's wearing a white lab apron over his dark outfit and glances at something off camera (I assume he's waiting for his cue from the director; this is the scene where the hallucinogenic powder is about to reach him and he has to act the part). In the background is Dr. Tube, cracking up under the influence of his own invention. DP: Léonce-Henri Burel.

Dr. Tube (Séverin-Mars) invents a powder that distorts reality and promptly tests it out on some oblivious test subjects, who quickly can no longer recognise the world around them. The brilliance of La folie du Docteur Tube is its use of practical in-camera effects that makes us, the viewer, experience the hallucinogen.

 

This little folly by the great Abel Gance features Albert Dieudonné in a small part, who later would again work with Gance in his Napoleon (1927), as Napoléon Bonaparte.

 

This is one of the few (French) comedies from the time that I'm aware of with a Black character who is not a horrible racist stereotype or a white person in blackface. If you have any idea of who the professor's assistant is, please reach out on Mastodon.

Vynález zkázy (1958)

Vynález zkázy (1958)

April 11: ride a #submarine on #NationalSubmarineDav

Vynález zkázy [A Deadly Invention] (Karel Zeman, 1958)

“Jules Verne was a dreamer. He was a dedicated follower of technology, but he saw it through his own eyes, and the eyes of his time. But with his vast imagination, he created a whole world of magical things imbued with a delightful naiveté, which charms us even today.” —Karel Zeman

Karel Zeman was a Czech film maker who seemingly magically combined live action with stop motion animation. In his Vynález zkázy, loosely based on Jules Verne's Face au Drapeau [Facing the Flag aka For the Flag] (1896), a fiendish count kidnaps a professor to get his hands on a terrible super-weapon. Underwater pursuits commence!

Vynález zkázy (1958)

Based on the engravings that accompany the Verne story, Zeman came up with fantastic, highly stylised in-camera effects that make the sets, actors and props resemble cross-hatched etchings.

That's more than enough words for such a spectacle. Watch the trailer

#Bales2023FilmChallenge #KarelZeman #JulesVerne #LuborTokos #StopMotion #animation #fantasy #adventure #SciFi #BookAdaptation #trailer #Czechoslovakia #1950s ★★★½

#ToDo

Hu-Man [Pleurs] (Jérôme Laperrousaz, 1975)

Apr

7

Public Television Day

Hu-Man (1975)

Terence (Terence Stamp) projected on multiple large screens with television executives watching. DP: Jimmy Glasberg.

The global audience of #Mondo-Vision, a live broadcast #TimeTravel experiment, determines through their emotional investment in the lead's screened experience what the man's destination will be. Even so, the spectators' collective energy should serve as a powerhouse, enabling a televised leap into the future. The man whose faith determines it all is Terence Stamp – played by the actor with the same name. He agrees to partake in the hope that enough emotional energy can be harvested for him to travel back in time so he can reunite with his lost love.

 

While definitely taking a cue or two from Alain Resnais' Je t'aime, je t'aime (1968), Hu-Man has a much grimmer feel to it. The seventies were not a time of or even for optimism, including Stamp's career and personal life. Noun Serra's dizzying editing and the real-world danger both the in-movie actor and real-world actor are exposed to makes Hu-Man a much more self-referential and personal experience for this future's reality-fatigued viewer.

Paris qui dort [Paris Asleep / The Invisible Ray / At 3:25] (René Clair, 1925)

Mar

30

freebie: Eiffel Tower Day

Paris qui dort (1925)

Two bright young things in their fashionable suits cease their scuffle mid fight, high up on the Eiffel Tower. DPs: Maurice Desfassiaux & Alfred Guichard.

Science fiction may be one of those genres that's forever linked to the future and, depending on which side of 2000 you are at, either in a dystopian of utopian fashion.

 

An #Eiffel Tower watchman wakes up to find the world around him asleep. The few ones still awake – the bright, pretty, carefree things – explore, live and loot.

The Damned [These Are the Damned] (Joseph Losey, 1962)

Mar

19

National Automatic Door Day

The Damned (1962)

An 11-year old boy, Henry (Kit Williams), opens a featureless door in a rock surface for a drenched King (Oliver Reed). DP: Arthur Grant.

An American tourist visiting Dorset is tricked by a prostitute, then falls victim to a youth gang controlled by volatile con King – a still very green Oliver Reed at his meanest. The trickster is King's sister, who confides in the American hoping to escape her brother's incestuous advances.

“I'm strange, all right! I'll show you just how strange I am!”

– King

The couple elopes to a nearby island, closely followed by King and his gang, where they find a group of #children, all contently living in an underground lab, with #AutomaticDoors only they can control.

 

They are the damned.

The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold, 1957)

Mar

5

National Scott Day

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

Scott Carey (Grant Williams) standing in a palm of someone's hand, his arms outstretched as if pleading. DP: Ellis W. Carter.

Despite its sensationalist pulpy title and #ColdWar premise, Jack Arnold's adaptation of the Richard Matheson's The Shrinking Man (1956) is an existentialist treatise.

“A strange calm possessed me. I thought more clearly than I had ever thought before – as if my mind were bathed in a brilliant light.”

– Scott Carey

The Incredible Shrinking Man plays with the understanding of what it means to be acknowledged as a human, and one's place in the world. The story is told through the eyes of the titular Shrinking Man – Scott Carey – who after being exposed to strange fog, finds himself increasingly lost in this world.

Sur un air de Charleston [Charleston Parade] (Jean Renoir, 1927)

Feb

14

Extraterrestrial Culture Day

Sur un air de Charleston (1927)

Parisian savage Catherine Hessling and African explorer Johnny Hudgins exploring each other's alien ways. DP: Jean Bachelet.

Legendary African-American #vaudeville performer Johnny Hudgins – in historically correct Blackface – plays an African explorer who descends onto 2028 Paris to learn about the primitive ways of the white natives. Soon, he discovers the Charleston.

“I have finally discovered my ancestors' traditional dance.”

– Johnny Hudgins

A fantastic Afrofuturist short, made a decade before Sun Ra's trip to Saturn.