“It's spontaneous combustion!” Get Rollin' (J. Terrance Mitchell, 1980)
Jun
22
Positive Media Day
Young Black men jammin' to resident DJ “Big Bob” Clayton's grooves with Maurice Gatewood taking centre stage. Later in the 80s, the Empire Roller Disco would become a meeting point for gay Black and Latinx men who would hold rollerdance competitions. DP: Joseph Friedman.
The groove is driving and the characters jammin' in J. Terrance Mitchell's Get Rollin' (1980). We follow entrepreneur Vinzerrelli (Vinnie Vinzerrelli) who aims to become “the Muhammad Ali of #RollerBoogie” and to enter the Guinness Book of World Records as the first roller skater to make a million dollars. In his tow, smooth-as-silk Pat the Cat (Pat Richardson), who calls it a day to become a star roller derby player in “London, England”. Pat's wife and suddenly-ex-boss are less charmed by the idea. Those skates are expensive, and steam-cleaning those customised tees cost a dime, too. But Pat, he's determined. He's the Cowboy on Skates, rollin' his and everyone's blues away.
– Vinzerrelli
And in her own quiet way, there's soft-spoken physical therapist Inez from Alabama, who can be seen swerving around like a Disco Queen if not teaching a mangled man in Central Park how to rollerskate with flair and self-esteem.
A movie awash with so much groove and good vibes, so much love for Black life on #Brooklyn's Empire Roller Disco rink, it can not do other than put a huge grin on your face.
USA
“Welcome home, Ethan.”The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
Jun
21
National Arizona Day
Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) facing the endless desert. DP: Winton C. Hoch.
“You know, I wish I had my board with me… even if I could just wax it once in a while.” Dark Star (John Carpenter, 1974)
Jun
17
International Surfing Day
Lt. Doolittle (Brian Narelle) dreaming of catching that wave. DP: Douglas Knapp.
On the other end of outer space, far far away from existentialist odysseys and crypto-fascist space operas, there's a little stoner cosmos where a small, dilapidated starship manned by long-haired freaks drifts about.
– Lt. Doolittle
Dark Star started out as a highly ambitious, underfunded student film that, in a blessed pre-Lucas, pre-blockbuster universe, got recognised for its #counterculture glory. In the early 70s, when #surfing was not yet mainstream and a handful of restless pioneers continued west despite the lack of mainland, a cross-pollination between beach blond daredevils and stoner culture happened.
Carpenter's laidback space odyssey fully embraces the beach bum spirit; it's meandering, incoherent, and whatever the superlative of no-budget may be. With at its core: #boredom, the most honest form of cinema.
“This isn’t playtime, kids, it’s work.” “Any star can be devoured by human adoration, sparkle by sparkle.”Kid 'N' Hollywood [Kid in Hollywood] (Charles Lamont, 1933)
Jun
12
Child Labor Day
A movie set on a movie set in Kid 'N' Hollywood. Shirley Temple can be seen on her knees scrubbing the floor as the character Morelegs Sweettrick. Standing next to her with a bullhorn and adult spats is Arthur J. Maskery as the tyrannical movie director Frightwig von Stumblebum. As in all the Baby Burlesk shorts, the kids are only half-dressed with their diapers showing.
Despite Shirley Temple's clear statements of what was going on on set during her child actress days, her output remains wildly popular. Who cannot resist her precocious lines, her cute dimples and baby doll innocence? And tapdancing with ánd befriending a Negro, during the segregation years? Miss Shirley truly was wise beyond her tender age.
Shirley Temple was “discovered” at the age of three by then-casting director Charles Lamont and promptly shot to stardom is his satirical Baby Burlesks: short talkies starring toddlers in diapers (a burlesque being a short, humorous skit). The gag was that the kids behaved and spoke like adults, seemingly unaware of being #children.
– Charles Lamont, Baby Burlesk director
In the Baby Burlesk Kid 'N' Hollywood, Temple plays a Hollywood hopeful called Morelegs Sweettrick, who gets her break when the star doesn't feel like showing up (kids, right? no discipline).
While Kid 'N' Hollywood is relatively innocent, others in the series are much more sexualised (War Babies (1932) stars Temple as prostitute Charmaine) or plain racist (Kid 'in' Africa (1933) with Temple as Madame Cradlebait, bringing civilisation to Black kids portraying fearsome cannibals).
I'm not the one to take events from the past out of context and apply modern-day sensibilities to them, and with the advent of #ChildLabor laws for #Hollywood child actors, many of the horrors recalled by Temple and her peers are history. School is mandatory, long hours restricted, and using twins to split the workload is definitely not unheard of.
And then I watched teevee, and saw chubby, precocious blondes with dental plates to hide their missing baby teeth, wearing lipstick and baby-dolls, grinding and crooning with no backup in sight. And I remember Miss Temple say:
– Shirley Temple
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.
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.
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 ★★★★☆
“Now, until the break of day,
Through this house each fairy stray…”A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Dieterle + Max Reinhardt, 1935)
Jun
10
Superman Week
Oberon (Victor Jory) – King of the Fairies – on his horse with Puck (Mickey Rooney) – a trickster sprite. While they ride of, Oberon's cape flows behind them through the trees, supported by the fae. A lot of the other-worldly fairy sparkle was accomplished by generous amounts of DuPont® cellophane and cinematographer Hal Mohr's contribution of trimming the trees with aluminium paint, cobwebs, and small metal particles. DP: Hal Mohr.
Capes, cloaks, and mantles are everywhere in Dieterle and Reinhardt's lavishly outfitted A Midsummer Night's Dream. The dreamlike #CostumeDesign by Max Rée and the uncredited Milo Anderson is as much as a personality as #Shakespeare's characters are.
– Oberon, Act 5, Scene 1
Any reports of Kenneth Anger's presence as the Changeling Prince are greatly exaggerated.
“Wouldn't you rather I did it out of love, than have one of those wood things do it out of their own animal hungers?”Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (Richard Blackburn, 1973)
Jun
4
meat
A fancy looking silver plate with what appears to be raw meat. DP: Robert Caramico.
– Lemora
“I don't find you the least bit amusing, Lieutenant Whatever-your-problem- is!”Who Killed Teddy Bear (Joseph Cates, 1965)
Jun
3
A square 1960s man – Jan Murray as Lt. Dave Madden – smugly pouring himself a stiff drink. DP: Joseph C. Brun.
– Norah Dain
“Your new society sounds charming.” The Last Man on Earth (Ubaldo Ragona + Sidney Salkow, 1964)
Jun
2
Republic Day – Italy
Dr. Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) walking down the stairs of the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (aka the Palazzo della Civiltà del Lavoro aka the Colosseo Quadrato), with bodies scattered around him. DP: Franco Delli Colli.
Rome's EUR was Italy's site for the 1942 World's Fair, and meant as a showcase for #Mussolini's then-20 year old fascist state. Due to the outbreak of World War 2, EUR was never used for the Fair. Instead, the Italian Republic restored the project after the war and – quite appropriately if I may say so – turned it into a business district.
– Dr. Robert Morgan
An idealised, hypermodern interpretation of Classical Roman architecture, EUR feels alien and inhumane and serves as a perfect backdrop for the events a last man on earth may come up against.
Besides in The Last Man on Earth, EUR makes an appearance in Antonioni's L'eclisse (1962), Bertolucci's Il conformista (1970), Antonio Pietrangeli's Io la conoscevo bene (1965), and Peter Greenaway's The Belly of an Architect (1987).
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.
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.
#Bales2023FilmChallenge #WinsorMcCay #JohnAFitzsimmons #vaudeville #comedy #dinosaurs #animals #animation #ShortFilm #SilentFilm #USA #1910s