“Everything that lives is still. Are the hills going to march off? Will heaven fall upon us? Will the Earth open under us? We don't know. We don't know, for a total eclipse has come upon us.”–Lars Rudolph as János Valuska in “Werckmeister harmóniák”
Slnko v sieti [The Sun in a Net] (Štefan Uher, 1963)
L'éclipse du soleil en pleine lune [The Eclipse: The Courtship of the Sun and Moon] (Georges Méliès, 1907)
Werckmeister harmóniák [Werckmeister Harmonies] (Béla Tarr, 2000)
L’Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962)
That Cloud Never Left (Yashaswini Raghunandan, 2019)
Wunder der Schöpfung [Our Heavenly Bodies] (Hanns Walter Kornblum, 1920/25)
Pождество обитателей леса [Rozhdestvo obitateley lesa / The Insects' Christmas] (Wladyslaw Starewicz, ca 1912)
Father Christmas makes a Christmas tree for the people of the forest.
Дед Мороз (Ded Moroz, or Old Man Frost) is the Slavic version of Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus. An ornament depicting the old grey climbs down a child's (or doll's) Christmas tree and sets off to the forest where he plants his magic staff to create a Christmas feast for the woodland animals.
The word “animation” means “a bestowing of life“. Like his ancestor in the arts Bernard Palissy and the ancient winter solstice celebration of the return of light that long ago spawned Christmas, Wladyslaw Starewicz's Insects' Christmas breathes life into real but inanimate beetles, dragonflies, and frogs. The illusion is complete as you effortlessly forget they are painstakingly animated.
Director Wladyslaw Starewicz and his daughter Irina (Irene), surrounded by several of his tiny actors. Irina, writer and director in her own right, starred in her father's WW1 short “Liliya Belgii” [“The Lily of Belgium”] (1915).
Monique (Silke Humel, R) spending Christmas Eve in a bar, looking for a way out. She's speaking to an elderly man in an expensive tuxedo. Is this it? DP: Denis Lenoir; still photographer Patrice Morere.
December 24: the night before Christmas (Christmas Eve)
Colloque de chiens (Raúl Ruiz, 1977)
“Nobody knows why Monique, the cold and dry voiced whore, bears in her eyes the sadness and tiredness of her past.”
Filmed during an actors' strike, Raúl Ruiz's Colloque de chiens consists for the most part of still photographs with mixed in stolen moving footage of unsuspecting bystanders and stray dogs. Told in fotonovela format, we follow the pitiful account of Monique, who as a young girl, learns that her mother is not who she thinks she is. Rejected, she throws herself into a life of vice until she meets Henri, a handsome young television repairman. Together they buy a small café, and are happy for once. But the cyclical nature of life determines her faith.
Raúl Ruiz's work is, like Henri's modus operandi, determined by maps and patterns. Even in the short comically melodramatic breathe of Colloque de chiens, the map has been laid out for Ruiz's later, much more complex narrative.
Colloque opens in a barren landscape. There are the skeletal towers of a nearby city, and the endless barks of abandoned dogs. Obscured by tall reeds, a blown-up photograph of a young man. The face, soft and familiar, a distant memory.
“He wanted to be returned to the world of his childhood and to this woman who was perhaps waiting for him”–Chris Marker, dialogue from La Jetée (1962)
Amongst bare winter bushes a large photo of a friendly, young, familiar looking man. In the background against a grey sky multiple white apartment buildings.
Take a few spoonfuls of tomato and throw them in there.
While mother Scorsese's famous meatballs in gravy are working their way to mwah! chef's kiss perfection, son Martin interviews his parents Catherine and Charles. For those unsure what to cook, and for those who don't celebrate Thanksgiving at all, mama's recipe is included in the end credits. And here:
Board and planchette at the ready for a little game of Ouija. DPs: Ray June (23mm) & Robert H. Planck (70mm).
It's just a little game. But then you wonder if Ouija, the Wonderful Talking Board is actually just that. Two neat little ladies playing that quirky 1891 novelty game in Roland West's The Bat Whispers summon the aforementioned bat, black-clad fiend and Batman predecessor.
– Get the Ouija board.
– It's got the Bible on top of it, keeping it quiet.
Who is he? What does he want? And how can he be stopped? Do you know the answer?
Glen or Glenda [aka Male or Female aka Glen or Glenda, Which Is It? aka I Led 2 Lives] (Edward D. Wood Jr., 1953)
“Give this man satin undies, a dress, a sweater and a skirt, or even the lounging outfit he has on, and he's the happiest individual in the world. He can work better, think better, he can play better, and he can be more of a credit to his community and his government because he is happy.”—Dr. Alton, narrator
In 1953, Christine Jorgensen – who had widely reported sex reassignment surgery the year before – was approached by schlocky Z movie producer George G. Weiss to be in an exploitation movie about her voyage. She kindly thanked for the offer. Who did bite was the producer's pick to be the director, novice movie maker and transvestite Edward D. Wood Jr.. Wood reworked the script.
The resulting effort – Glen or Glenda – is not only an utterly unique autobiographic docudrama; it's a lovingly composed pamphlet in support of (heterosexual) transvestism – both fetish and lifestyle, not to be confused with drag – and transsexualism to boot. Rarely sex-related outsider lifestyles were discussed this frankly; Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male came out only five years prior and the volume about the human female in the year of this movie.
It's also pretty unique when it comes to the art of filmmaking. However contagiously enthusiastic, Wood didn't have the skill, weight, or budget to make movies. He'd pad story lines and plot holes with stock footage and long-winded dream sequences of the sexploitation kind. Like John Waters after him, Ed would cast friends and family – Dolores Fuller was his real-world girlfriend – and cinematic idols such as Bela Lugosi, who by 1953 was addicted to alcohol and prescription drugs.
Wood's life was wild and colourful. He once said that while serving in the US Marine Corps, he feared injury more than death, worried that the combat medic would discover the pink bra and panties under his uniform. It makes me wonder if the full colour promotional material for Psycho (1960) was #Hitchcock sending out a little wink to Ed.
Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) wearing pink undergarments on a lobby card for Psycho (1960). The movie itself is in black and white and the reveal of Marion wearing pink underwear came as a shock in early-60s prissy America. DP: John L. Russell.
Marie/M. Magdalène (Zouzou) embracing a lost Jesus (Pierre Clémenti). She's wears a black tunic with a black headscarf, he a white outfit (long johns?) and a crown of thorns. She appears to speak to him. DP: Michel Fournier.
Le lit de la vierge [The Virgin's Bed] (Philippe Garrel, 1969)
After the dust of May 68 had settled and it became clear that the promised revolution would never be, the young were lost. Filmed in an unscripted haze of drugs and dimmed hope, Le lit de la vierge brings back Jesus [Pierre Clémenti] – now mocked as an astray, confused man and representing the many once-hopeful of '68 – to the desert where he meets Marie, his mother the virgin and the prostitute Marie Magdalène, 60s scene girl Zouzou la twisteuse in a double role.
The mother/whore and hippie aspire a new revolution of sorts, exposing the beach under the pavement as a desert of contemplation.
A gif of Tina Aumont during the filming of “Le lit de la vierge”. From Frédéric Pardo's short psychedelic documentary “Home Movie, autour du 'Lit de la vierge” (1968). DP: Frédéric Pardo.
Glauco (Michel Piccoli) finishing his copious dinner with half a watermelon. In his right hand the copy of the July 25, 1934 Chicago Daily Tribune with the headline CLEAR UP DILLINGER MYSTERY. DP: Mario Vulpiani.
Dillinger è morto [Dillinger Is Dead] (Marco Ferreri, 1969)
Pow!
Industrial designer Glauco (Michel Piccoli) arrives home after a long long, tedious day. His wife Ginette (Anita Pallenberg) – in bed high on painkillers – cooked dinner but the dish is bland and long cold, and the maid (Annie Girardot) is already sleeping. Glauco decides to cook himself a gourmet meal. Looking for ingredients he finds a 1934 newspaper reporting the dead of Chicago gangster John Dillinger with inside of it a rusty 1930s revolver. Fascinated, he meticulously restores the handgun while preparing his meal.
Dillinger è morto is a story of food and alienation. Piccoli's Glauco, bored of his successful career, bored of his beautiful wife, bored of his beautiful house, finds sudden vigour in the act of preparing food and restoring an item that shouldn't be where it is and with that, essentially recreates John Dillinger's escape from Crown Point.
John Dillinger posing with a Tommy gun and the hand-carved wooden gun that he used to escape inescapable Crown Point jail on March 3, 1934. Crudely carved into the dupe's barrel are the words COLT 38.
The great Garbo was known for her beauty, her coolness, her tragedy, for a lot but her laughter. So typecast she became that the tagline for Ninotchka (1939) – Garbo laughs! – is a #joke in itself.
Penned by the great Billy Wilder, the Ernst Lubitsch directed comedy unexpectedly temporarily revived #Garbo's career, who by the time 1938 came around had become box office poison. And the joke? Well…
A man comes into a restaurant. He sits down at the table and he says, “Waiter, bring me a cup of coffee without cream.” Five minutes later, the waiter comes back and says, “I'm sorry, sir, we have no cream. Can it be without milk?”
