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Suspense (1913)

Triangular split-screen in Suspense (1913). While the Wife (Lois Weber) is on the phone with her Husband (Val Paul), unbeknownst to them the Tramp (Sam Kaufman) cuts the telephone wire.

Suspense (1913)

June 11: say Hi! on #SayHiDay

Suspense (Phillips Smalley & LoisWeber, 1913)

Now he's in the…

Suspense is not only the title of this short silent thriller, but also the state of mind the viewer is put into as soon as the film opens. Using POV (point-of-view) shots and breaking the fourth wall, the imminent threat – a vagrant trespassing and creeping up to a lone woman and her newborn child – creeps up on us. We know we're safe, on the other side of the screen, but the Tramp (a particularly haunting Sam Kaufman) looks us right in the eye. He passes us on the stairs, but he's going around us so he must be, hopefully, aware of our presence.

Meanwhile, we also see something that only cinema and books can give: multiple happenings at once. The Wife (Lois Weber) calls her Husband (Val Paul) on the phone. Suddenly the screen splits into three: in the middle, the Husband on call, listening to his Wife on the right who's begging him to hurry home. On the left, the Tramp. Unlike us, he cannot see the conversation promising a happy end. But instead that bringing some relief to the viewer, he cuts the phone cable. While we see that happen, we have no way to tell the Husband to make haste, or the Wife that the Tramp's getting closer.

What's striking too is the omnipresence of modernity: the couple's home and Husband's office have telephones and therefore electricity, and the Husband speeds off in an automobile. The cinematography for the telephone and car chase scenes are filmed and edited with great knowledge of the technical possibilities of the medium; split-screen (only gathering popularity much later, see Pillow Talk (1959), and the usage of the Entfesselte Kamera [unchained camera], the latter a mid 1920s German invention.

A similar, triangular split-screen scene from Michael Gordon's Pillow Talk (1959) with (LtR) Eileen (Valerie Allen), Jan Morrow (Doris Day), and Brad Allen (Rock Hudson) on the party line. With Ms Day's character centred, we know that she's the one to identify with in this particular scene. DP: Arthur E. Arling.

Pillow Talk (1959)

With that, Suspense not only preceded Italian futurist cinema, but also the usage of suspense as a cinematic technique. Now go and watch, and remember

it's only a movie it's only a movie it's only a movie

#Bales2023FilmChallenge #PhillipsSmalley #LoisWeber #SamKaufman #USA #ShortFilm #SilentFilm #drama #suspense #crime #thriller #HomeInvasion #1910s ★★★★☆

#todo

Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)

Gertie raises her creator Winsor McCay in her mouth. McCay holds a dressage whip but in his tuxedo resembles a musical conductor more than a lion tamer. DPs: John A. Fitzsimmons & Winsor McCay.

Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)

June 1: dinosaurs for #DinosaurDay

Gertie the Dinosaur (Winsor McCay, 1914)

I made ten thousand cartoons —each one a little bit different from the one preceding it.

Long before we all flocked to the movies, there was vaudeville. Vaudeville comes in many flavours, from raucous song and dance, acrobatics (see #BusterKeaton's start) to chalk talk: a live performance in which an artist would chat and draw on a blackboard in real time. The format is perfect to enlighten and entertain an audience, about the dangers of alcohol, the importance of religion, the demand for women's suffrage.

But where there's a scholar, there's a showman. As a chalk talk consists of a succession of quickly drawn illustrations, one flowing into the next while the performer raps over it, the leap to animation is a logical one. In 1914, a brontosaurus named Gertie and a comic strip creator called Winsor McCay travelled the land – both animated and real.

McCay, known for his fantastic comic strips Little Nemo in Slumberland and its predecessor Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, introduced the great animated animal to the audience with little tidbits of knowledge about the mighty brontosaurus, throw her an apple, demonstrate her gentleness by stepping into the screen (a parlour trick made the transition from real to animated look incredibly convincing) and let Gertie carry him around in her prehistoric world. In front of the delighted audience, the showman then would reappear into our realm.

The movies were young and promising, and Gertie's leap to celluloid was made the very same year. Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), an adaptation of the vaudeville act and the first animated dinosaur movie, moves the stage to a dinner party at the animator's studio, where McCay shows off his animation skills as part of a bet.

Gertie, with its combination of animated and real content, had a huge influence on film makers to come. You can see it in Max Fleischer's wonderful Out of the Inkwell cartoons (1918 – 1929) and Ubi Iwerk's Alice Comedies (1923 – 1927, the only original work that ever came out of the Disney studios). And Buster Keaton? In honour of Gertie he rode a claymation brontosaurus in his Three Ages (1923).

The Boy's (Buster Keaton) nifty use of a pre-Willis O’Brien stop-motion Brontosaurus' high vantage point. DPs: Elgin Lessley & William C. McGann.

Three Ages (1923)

#Bales2023FilmChallenge #WinsorMcCay #JohnAFitzsimmons #vaudeville #comedy #dinosaurs #animals #animation #ShortFilm #SilentFilm #USA #1910s

#todo

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

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) & The Wormwood Star (1956)

The Scarlet Woman (Marjorie Cameron) wearing a fantastic peacock-like robe and crown. DP: Kenneth Anger.

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954)

March 26: someone wears purple on #PurpleDay / #InternationalEpilepsyDay

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (Kenneth Anger, 1954)

Purple beyond purple: it is the light higher than eyesight. — Liber AL vel Legis sub figura CCXX

Both in The Wormwood Star (Curtis Harrington, 1956) and Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (Kenneth Anger, 1954) Marjorie Cameron wears shades of purple. Professionally known as Cameron, she was a follower of #Thelema, the philosophical movement founded by occultist Aleister Crowley.

Cameron as herself. Here too she wears references to the peacock Aiwass, who dictated The Book of the Law to Crowley.

The Wormwood Star (1956)

The Wormwood Star (Curtis Harrington, 1956)

Meanwhile in 1946, rocket scientist #JackParsons and (pre-Scientology) sci-fi author #LRonHubbard worked on a series of #Crowley-related magic ceremonies named Babalon Working. After Parsons declared the rituals a success, he encountered Cameron in his own house. She became the element required to continue the ceremonies, this resulting in her being declared Babalon, the #Scarlet Woman.

#Bales2023FilmChallenge #KennethAnger #SamsonDeBrier #MarjorieCameron #AnaïsNin #CurtisHarrington #PaulMathison #colours #purple #occultism #Magick #ShortFilm #Avantgarde #USA #1950s ★★★★☆

#Bales2023FilmChallenge #CurtisHarrington #Cameron #PhilipHarland #LeonaWood #PaulMathison #documentary #occultism #FineArt #colours #purple #witches #USA #AleisterCrowley #1950s ★★★½

#todo

Peace, little girl (1964)

Peace, little girl (1964)

March 21: #countdown to #NationalCountdownDay

Peace, little girl [Daisy aka Daisy Girl] (Sidney Myers, 1964)

One… two… three… four… five… seven… six… six… eight… nine… nine…

It was the #PoliticalAd campaign to end all political ad campaigns. Peace, little girl opens innocently enough with a little blonde girl, picking the petals of an ox-eye #daisy while counting. When the final petal's gone, the tone changes completely.

This deceptively simple propaganda film was made in support of Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign by ad agency #DBB and media consultant Tony Schwartz. It was so effective and bleak in is insinuations that the Johnson campaign was forced to pull it after only one screening.

What fascinates me is the similarity with one particular scene from James Whale's #Frankenstein (1931). The Monster (#Karloff) meets a little girl who sits on the shore of a lake, picking daisies. He approaches her, and the girl, knowing the creature is a good man at heart, invites him to play a game with her involving them tossing the daisies into the lake.

The Monster (Boris Karloff) and little Maria (Marilyn Harris) playing with daisies on a beautiful day at the lake. DPs: Arthur Edeson & Paul Ivano.

Frankenstein (1931)

Spoiler warning When they run out of daisies, the Monster picks up the girl who to him is as pretty and innocent as a flower, and tosses her into the water.

This scene was cut and considered lost until the 1980s. Could Tony Schwartz have been aware of that scene? He was at the right age to have seen the pre-code, pre-cut version.

#Bales2023FilmChallenge #SidneyMyers #LyndonBJohnson #ChrisSchenkel #MoniqueCorzilius #MoniqueCozy #RobertDryden #DrummondDrury #ShortFilm #war #peace #scaresploitation #flowers #propaganda #ColdWar #election #politics #USA #1960s ★★★★☆

#todo

Desperate Living (1977)

Desperate Living (1977)

March 1: someone pays a compliment on #WorldComplimentDay

Desperate Living (John Waters, 1977)

Peggy Gravel: Peggy is about to die from being shot up the ass by Mole. You're so low you make white trash look positively top drawer! Mole McHenry: Oh, blow it out your ass!

#Bales2023FilmChallenge #JohnWaters #LizRenay #MinkStole #SusanLowe #EdithMassey #crime #comedy #USA #1970s ★★★½

#todo