Complete Metropolis

New York Times article on the newly newly restored Metropolis.

"The restoration, overseen by the F.W. Murnau Foundation in Germany, is a marvel of craft, though there are, inevitably, some visible seams and imperfections. The 16-millimeter images are blurrier, smaller and less pristine than the rest of the film, which makes it easy for viewers who have seen earlier versions to identify the newly inserted shots and scenes, even though the overall visual experience is a bit bumpy. Still, much of what you see is remarkable, and this more complete “Metropolis” clarifies Lang’s sprawling, complicated story and italicizes its central themes. It also offers precious glimpses of his genius as a maker of sublime and witty pictures.

"The sublimity is familiar to anyone who remembers the factory maw swallowing and disgorging workers, or the apotheosis of Maria, the robot-idol-prophet-sex-symbol played bythe Weimar bombshell Brigitte Helm. Lang’s wit is less often remarked upon, but it is vividly present in a newly added scene in which two characters grapple in front of a bank of elevators traveling up and down behind them, with the doors open and their passengers caught in poses of studied nonchalance."

Wilhelm scream

Futurist experiments with film

Corra's account of his early experimental work with cinema.

Oye Como Va

From Alex:

Alex Clarke's second blog post

I have always found Chaplin to be extremely irritating even though his brilliance cannot be denied. His routines have always gone on just that little bit too long, but I guess a lot of that was an era thing as well; he was after all the first of his kind.

When I first watched the Great Dictator I expected just another Chaplin movie, but I became more and more engaged as it went along, this was obviously written as an anti war movie and would have been a difficult balancing act.

I had to check the date the film was made, the world would have been aware of what was happening in Germany at the time, but I think had Chaplin been aware of the extent to which Hitler was to go, the film would have been treated somewhat differently. On the other hand it is the lighter moments that actually get the message across. The sequence with the world balloon is nothing short of amazing even today. I still found the humour a bit confronting; the scene where his lieutenant comes and says that he has perfected the gas is shocking. But that is probably because we are watching with hindsight. I have to check what serious movies he’s made........ I think I’ve changed my opinion about him.

Metropolis rescore

Here's a section of the rescore done by the New Pollutants for Metropolis. I saw this performed live at the Opera House and thought it was spot-on. One half of the New Pollutants, Benjamin Speed, has uploaded the whole thing on YouTube.

Oz Film Festival

The Oz Silent Film Festival is currently on. Click here for the program.

Alex Clarke's first blog post

[Posted here due to technical issues--Rod.]

It is interesting to note the differences between early American and European cinema.

In comparing the films of Thomas Edison to the films of Georges Melies, or the Lumiere brothers, we find Edisons’ to be voyeuristic and crass. There is very little plot in his films, instead, he uses violence and shock to gain the viewers attention. He steps outside the everyday bounds of morality and uses the thrill element to stimulate the viewer, this still holds true today as we have a morbid fascination for things that shock. His work is very different from the theatricality, and technique of, for example, George Melies’ Black Imp. Even further from Edison is quiet beauty of The Weavers of Avdela by Yannakis and Militiadis Manaki.

Without wanting to generalize, we tend to find even in modern cinema that the Europeans are less obviously sensational, American cinema still wants to appeal to the mass audience and in certain genres is becoming more and more shocking. It rather reminds me of the Roman Games, how far will they have to go to achieve a reaction as the public becomes more and more inured to the slash movies of today ?

We have 3D, and virtual movies, what new medium would affect us today as cinema did then? Are we at the end of surprises and what new visual sense stimulation would affect us like cinema did so long ago ?

Kodachrome Test film

Here's that film of very early colour motion pictures I mentioned in class.

I'd like to know what you all think. The arbitrary choice of music gives it this ethereal quality, but what about the quality of the black in the image? The colour film, I think, gives the black a new depth. Where colourism in black and white motion pictures comes with tonality and grades of shading that can micro-shift in the movement of 24 fps, the introduction of colour, at least in this instance, removes the internal tonal complexity of black and turns it into a kind of void. In what space (that is, "whence") do these coloured figures exist?

Keaton :: Chaplin

I was thinking on the difference between Chaplin and Keaton and it occurred to me that I've never seen Keaton dance. Chaplin, on the other hand, is always on the verge of breaking out into dance. In the two clips from Modern Times, for example, he "humans" the machine by moving at a rhythm that messes with that of the machines--a break-flow system, if you will (think of the squirts of oil). In the song he performs, the first time the Tramp is heard, dance is used as a delaying tactic when the words go flying off his wrists, than as a kind of gestural augmentation to his nonsense ("nonsensuous"?) vocal acrobatics.

And then it occurred to me that I have seen Keaton dance. I don't think this counts, however (about 42 secs in):

From Beach Blanket Bingo (1965)

And here are two other very famous dance sequences from Chaplin:

1) From The Great Dictator (1940)

2) From The Gold Rush (1925)

The Cinematic Orchestra - Man with a Movie Camera

Lucas suggested this as a must-see-hear; I agree.

Melies remixed

Some of you might find this interesting:

http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/whatson/the_george_melies_project.aspx?start=yes

It's a series of Melies films set to new music by Phillip Johnston. I caught the remix for Nosferatu a few months back and it was great.

A Primitive Wink at the Primitive

As an adieu to the first module of the course on early cinema, below is a film by the American Edwin S. Porter called Uncle Josh the Moving Picture Show. You might remember Porter from such films as The Electrocution of an Elephant and The Great Train Robbery. Made in 1902, the film is a direct copy of a British film called The Countryman and the Cinematograph.

There is a lot going on in this film. We have the awareness and representation of:

• generic codes, of the types of films that were churned out for popular consumption;
• the idea of the primitive spectator fooled by the cinematographic illusion who instead of merely suspending his disbelief, accepts the illusion as reality;
• the direct impact cinema had on the sensorium and the body;
• the intense identifications between characters and spectators;
• increasingly sophisticated editing and optical practices;
• the price of investment - here, it's violence when one's fantasy is rudely revealed as fantasy.

The flagrant rip-off of another film also shows the ambiguous status of the cinematic object at this stage--itself a reproduction, created by many hands and a hazily-understood technological magic, what claims can it have as an original, singular work of art?

Weaving the Image

Below is a heavily degraded copy of a film sometimes entitled, "The Weavers of Avdela." It was shot by the brothers Maniakis in the Balkans. I'd like to present it as an alternative, or a third way, of thinking about the films of earlier cinema. On the one side we have the brothers Lumieres, turning their camera back onto themselves: the factory and its workers, family situations, trips to cities and abroad. In short, a bourgeois cinema. On the other side (of the Atlantic), we have the Edison laboratory bringing images of the spectacular and the salacious into the field before the camera: seminary girls, semi-naked muscle men and boxers, animal fights, and, most shockingly, The Electrocution of an Elephant.

What alternative might we find here in the Balkans, at a point where the west feels the influence of the east, where the presence of a 114 year old grandmother reaches back into the 18th century? I suggest we might find something in the weave itself, in the loom, in the warp and woof and the diagonal line that is possible; Grandma Maniakis remembers a time before the photographic, before the direct duplication and indexical registration of reality. Also important to note here is the absence of men from this space; while the brothers may be shooting the scene, it is in no way constructed for a typically male mode of enjoyment. These women work as they have done for centuries. There is a distribution of duties according to age. It begs the question: what does the moving image do to the weavers of Avdela?



The above post is about 250 words and is meant as a very rough guide to how and what you can write about in your own blog posts. Please note I knocked this up in one go without revision - I trust that you will take longer than I did and present some more considered ideas.
In case you'd like to put a video in your post as I have done, you will find a button that says "embed" on the bottom RHS of the youtube screen. Click it, copy the code you find there, and paste it into where you write the text for your blog post.

Readings

I've sent email messages from google docs where I uploaded readings. You should be able to access the readings by clicking on the link in the email. Let me know how it goes. Thanks, Rod

Welcome

Welcome to the blog associated with The Moving Image, an elective course at the National Art School, Sydney. To the right are some links to blogs on film you may find interesting. Do suggest more that might be of use to the study of early forms of moving image culture.