Home Movies of Frida Kahlo (and a Side Order of Romantic Entanglements)

in Art, Film, History, Life | April 1st, 2022

Ear­ly home movies have a cer­tain pre­dictable qual­i­ty. Their sub­jects wan­der around, point­ing at things. They shoo the cam­era away with embar­rassed grins, clus­ter togeth­er awk­ward­ly, and casu­al­ly chat up their side pieces in front of their spous­es….

Wait, what now?

The vis­it between mar­ried artists Fri­da Kahlo and Diego Rivera and exiled Russ­ian Com­mu­nist leader Leon Trot­sky and his wife Natalia Sedo­va appears both cor­dial and ordi­nary in Amer­i­can pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ivan Heisler’s footage, above.

The Trot­skys took up res­i­dence in La Casa Azul, Kahlo’s fam­i­ly home in Jan­u­ary 1937,  after Rivera per­suad­ed Pres­i­dent Lázaro Cár­de­nas to offer them sanc­tu­ary in Mex­i­co.

Short­ly after arrival, Sedo­va wrote a let­ter to friends, speak­ing warm­ly of the hos­pi­tal­i­ty she was receiv­ing:

We were breath­ing puri­fied air…A motorcar…carried us across the fields of palms and cac­ti to the sub­urbs of Mex­i­co City; a blue house, a patio filled with plants, airy rooms, col­lec­tions of Pre-Columbian art, paint­ings from all over: we were on a new plan­et, in Rivera’s house.

Heisler’s slice of life film would appear to be a con­tin­u­a­tion of this relaxed and hap­py vibe.

Trot­sky pats Rivera on the back and con­vers­es ani­mat­ed­ly with Kahlo, near­ly 30 years his junior. The two women embrace and stroll arm in arm, as the men take inter­est in a cac­tus.  Sedo­va seems  delight­ed when Rivera kiss­es her hand. Then every­one stands around and looks at trees.

Gosh, isn’t it nice when all mem­bers of two cou­ples get along so well?

Is it pos­si­ble, though, that an extra cou­ple was lurk­ing in plain sight?

Short­ly after meet­ing, Trot­sky and Kahlo entered into a brief but pas­sion­ate fling, exchang­ing sweet noth­ings in Eng­lish, con­ceal­ing love notes between the pages of books, and bor­row­ing Kahlo’s sis­ter Cristina’s house for trysts.

They called it quits in July of 1937, after Sedo­va caught on and issued her hus­band an ulti­ma­tum.

Accord­ing to the Hoover Insti­tu­tion Library and Archives, Heisler’s film was shot in 1938.

So we will amend our state­ment to say, isn’t it nice when two cou­ples get along so well, even after two of them were dis­cov­ered to be cheat­ing on their part­ners with each oth­er?

Kahlo’s and Rivera’s extra­mar­i­tal dal­liances are hard­ly news, of course.

Dan­ger­ous Minds sug­gests that part of what drew Kahlo to Trot­sky was the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get back at Rivera for his affair with Cristi­na — the sis­ter who vol­un­teered her house as love nest.

And in Van­i­ty Fair, Amy Fine Collins details how Rivera “boast­ed to any­one who would lis­ten” about Kahlo’s same sex lia­sons, but was apoplec­tic over her entan­gle­ments with men, includ­ing sculp­tor Isamu Noguchi, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Nick­o­las Muray, and Trotsky’s sec­re­tary Jean van Hei­jenoort, wit­ness to the bla­tant flir­ta­tion between the artist and his boss.

The romance with Trot­sky “infu­ri­at­ed him most” Collins writes, adding that “long after Trotsky’s assas­si­na­tion, Kahlo delight­ed in dri­ving Rivera into a rage by humil­i­at­ing him with the mem­o­ry of her affair with the great Com­mu­nist.”

…kind of makes one wish this lit­tle film had sound.

The absence of audio is also lament­ed by view­ers of this col­orized assem­blage of ama­teur footage star­ring Kahlo and Rivera.

Trot­sky appears again at the 1:03 mark. Dare we describe him as look­ing smit­ten?

There’s some spec­u­la­tion that the young woman at 1:17 is musi­cian Chavela Var­gas, anoth­er of Kahlo’s lovers. In that same moment, Kahlo proves her­self as in com­mand of her cin­e­mat­ic image as she was in her self-por­traits. She’s as self-pos­sessed as a movie star through­out.

Which makes the ear­ly glimpse of her sketch­ing en plein air in a fur coat and West­ern style hat, feet propped on a low wall, all the more dis­arm­ing.

It’s rare to see Fri­da Kahlo caught off guard, or so she appears, smil­ing and ges­tur­ing off­screen toward the osten­si­ble sub­ject of her draw­ing.

Is there a lip read­er in the house?

(Seri­ous ques­tion.)

For good mea­sure, here is even more footage — the Kahlo-Riveras at the Casa Azul, as cap­tured by Kahlo’s lover Nick­o­las Muray, whose famous 1939 por­trait of the artist in a magen­ta rebo­zo was declared “mar­velous as a Piero del­la Francesca” by her hus­band.

“To me it is more than that,” Kahlo wrote to Muray:

It is a trea­sure, and besides, it will always remind me [of] that morn­ing we had break­fast togeth­er.

Under­stand­ably, some view­ers remain dis­ap­point­ed that the snip­pets of Kahlo on film lack sound, but sure­ly the “voice” in which she wrote her many loves, Diego includ­ed, is far more expres­sive than any audio that a home movie might have cap­tured.

Which is not to say we’ll nev­er hear Fri­da. Above is a record­ing the Nation­al Sound Library of Mex­i­co believes to be her, from a radio show aired the year after her death.

The title of the text from which she is heard read­ing?

Por­trait of Diego.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Inti­ma­cy of Fri­da Kahlo’s Self-Por­traits: A Video Essay

A Brief Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Life and Work of Fri­da Kahlo

What the Icon­ic Paint­ing The Two Fridas Actu­al­ly Tells Us About Fri­da Kahlo

Vis­it the Largest Col­lec­tion of Fri­da Kahlo’s Work Ever Assem­bled: 800 Arti­facts from 33 Muse­ums, All Free Online

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Fri­da Kahlo’s Blue House Free Online

Dis­cov­er Fri­da Kahlo’s Wild­ly Illus­trat­ed Diary: It Chron­i­cled the Last 10 Years of Her Life, and Then Got Locked Away for Decades

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and cre­ator, most just late­ly, of Inven­tive, Not Well-known: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Com­ply with her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Francis Ford Coppola Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films: The Godfather, Apocalypse Now & More

in Film | March 30th, 2022

Fifty years after its the­atri­cal release, The God­fa­ther remains a sub­ject of live­ly cinephile con­ver­sa­tion. What, as any of us might ask after a fresh semi-cen­ten­ni­al view­ing of Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la’s mafia mas­ter­piece, is this movie about? We need only ask Cop­po­la him­self, who has our answer in one word: suc­ces­sion. In the recent GQ inter­view above, he also explains the themes of oth­er major works with sim­i­lar suc­cinct­ness: Apoc­a­lypse Now is about moral­i­ty; The Con­ver­sa­tion is about pri­va­cy. Such clean and sim­ple encap­su­la­tions belie the nature of the film pro­duc­tion process, and espe­cial­ly that of Cop­po­la’s nine­teen-sev­en­ties pic­tures, with their large scale, seri­ous­ness of pur­pose, and prone­ness to severe dif­fi­cul­ty.

“What we con­sid­er real art is a movie that does not have a safe­ty net,” Cop­po­la says, and that applies with­out a doubt to movies like The God­fa­ther and Apoc­a­lypse Now. Much as Orson Welles once said of his own expe­ri­ence mak­ing Cit­i­zen Kane, the young Cop­po­la went into The God­fa­ther igno­rant of more or less every­thing involved in its con­tent but life in an Ital­ian-Amer­i­can fam­i­ly. But he had, in the­ater school, learned the tech­niques of “out­wit­ting the fac­ul­ty,” and deal­ing with the high­er-ups at Hol­ly­wood stu­dios turned out to require that same skill set. He thus found a way to include every ele­ment ruled insis­tent­ly out by the exec­u­tives, from New York loca­tions and a peri­od set­ting to per­form­ers like the then-unknown Al Paci­no and then-washed-up Mar­lon Bran­do.

Bran­do did­n’t take part in The God­fa­ther Part II, but he did show up at the end of Apoc­a­lypse Now for a vivid­ly mem­o­rable turn as the pow­er-mad Colonel Kurtz. As Cop­po­la remem­bers it, “when Bran­do arrived, he looked at me — he’s so smart — and he said, ‘You paint­ed your­self in a cor­ner, did­n’t you?” The actor meant that the sur­re­al qual­i­ties of the film had reached such an inten­si­ty that no con­ven­tion­al form of res­o­lu­tion could pos­si­bly suf­fice. This was the result of the fact that, as Cop­po­la puts it, “one of the things that make a movie is the movie: it con­tributes to mak­ing itself.” In oth­er words, as Cop­po­la and his col­lab­o­ra­tors shot each scene (a process that famous­ly result­ed in over one mil­lion feet of footage), the very film tak­ing shape before them sug­gest­ed its own direc­tion — in the case of Apoc­a­lypse Now, toward the ever dark­er and stranger.

Always can­did about his pro­fes­sion­al strug­gles, Cop­po­la has also been gen­er­ous with tech­ni­cal and artis­tic expla­na­tions of just how his pic­tures have come togeth­er. God­fa­ther fans will delight in his direc­tor’s-com­men­tary tracks on the first and sec­ond parts of that tril­o­gy; as for The God­fa­ther Part III, Cop­po­la released a new edit (in the man­ner of Apoc­a­lypse Now’s Redux and Final Cut) called The God­fa­ther Coda: The Death of Michael Cor­leone in 2020. He dis­cuss­es that project in the GQ inter­view, and also his work-in-progress Mega­lopo­lis. Hav­ing described The God­fa­ther as essen­tial­ly a Shake­speare­an tale, he’s now reach­ing fur­ther back in time: “Would­n’t it be inter­est­ing if you made a Roman epic but did­n’t set it in ancient Rome — set it in mod­ern New York?” He also lets us in on Mega­lopo­lis’ sur­pris­ing key word: not mega­lo­ma­nia, nor ambi­tion, nor pow­er, but sin­cer­i­ty.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Cast­ing of The God­fa­ther with Cop­po­la, Paci­no, De Niro & Caan

Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s Hand­writ­ten Cast­ing Notes for The God­fa­ther

What Is Apoc­a­lypse Now Real­ly About? An Hour-Long Video Analy­sis of Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s Viet­nam Mas­ter­piece

How Wal­ter Murch Rev­o­lu­tion­ized the Sound of Mod­ern Cin­e­ma: A New Video Essay Explores His Inno­va­tions in Amer­i­can Graf­fi­ti, The God­fa­ther & More

Great Film­mak­ers Offer Advice to Young Direc­tors: Taran­ti­no, Her­zog, Cop­po­la, Scors­ese, Ander­son, Felli­ni & More

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to Cit­i­zen Kane

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

A Vintage Short Film about the Samurai Sword, Narrated by George Takei (1969)

in Film, History | March 28th, 2022

Long before it was a nation­al­ist ral­ly­ing cry in Japan dur­ing WWII, the term Yam­a­to-damashii referred to some­thing less like racial impe­ri­al­ism and more like chival­ry — the “Japan­ese Spir­it” or “Old Soul of Japan,” as Greek-Japan­ese writer Laf­ca­dio Hearn wrote. Per­haps sur­pris­ing­ly, the “Japan­ese Spir­it” was not based in the mar­tial arts of the samu­rai at first, but in the schol­ar­ship of Chi­na, as the ancient nov­el The Tale of Gen­ji explains when defin­ing Yam­a­to-damashii as “a good, sol­id fund of knowl­edge… a fund of Chi­nese learn­ing.” This would change when the code of Bushidō evolved, and the samu­rai, with his elab­o­rate armor and ele­gant swords, became a cen­tral fig­ure of hon­or in Japan­ese soci­ety.

In The Japan­ese Sword as the Soul of the Samu­rai, the near­ly half-hour doc­u­men­tary above by trav­el­ing Amer­i­can doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Ken Wolf­gang, George Takei nar­rates the tale of the samu­rai’s sword. The film begins with the leg­endary char­ac­ter Yam­a­to Takeru (who one schol­ar spec­u­lates may share a com­mon ori­gin with King Arthur). This ur-samu­rai inher­it­ed the first sword from the tail of a eight-head­ed drag­on that was slain by a god.

The sword, nick­named “grass-mow­er,” Takei tells us, is enshrined near Nagoya, “the sec­ond of the three sacred sym­bols of Shin­to, the nation­al reli­gion of Japan.” When we turn from myth to his­to­ry, Takei says, we find that the “ear­li­est known swords are found in the… tombs of the ancient Yam­a­to peo­ple, who are believed to have inhab­it­ed Japan between the 2nd and 8th cen­turies AD,” and who are the ori­gin of Yam­a­to-damashii.

“As Japan devel­oped, so did the sword,” becom­ing ever more refined in the coun­try’s Mid­dle Ages, where the weapon reached its “peak of per­fec­tion.… Its qual­i­ty has nev­er been sur­passed to this day.” The sword became a soul — and we, as view­ers, are treat­ed to an insid­er’s view of the meth­ods of its forg­ing. The smithing of swords is no mere craft; it is a “reli­gious rit­u­al” that begins with prayers and offer­ings — fer­vent impre­ca­tions to the gods that the new sword may approach the per­fec­tion of a “grass-mow­er.” The forge is lit from the alter’s fire, and it can take months, or even years, to make just one sword. Don’t miss the rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to see the process in just over twen­ty min­utes in this short doc­u­men­tary film.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Origa­mi Samu­rai Made from a Sin­gle Sheet of Rice Paper, With­out Any Cut­ting

How to Be a Samu­rai: A 17th Cen­tu­ry Code for Life & War

The 17th Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Samu­rai Who Sailed to Europe, Met the Pope & Became a Roman Cit­i­zen

Splen­did Hand-Scroll Illus­tra­tions of The Tale of the Gen­jii, The First Nov­el Ever Writ­ten (Cir­ca 1120)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Adapting Agatha Christie for the Screen — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #118

in Film, Literature, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | March 28th, 2022

width=

In light of the new­ly released, Kenneth Branagh-direct­ed film Death on the Nile, Pret­ty Much Pop dis­cuss­es the con­tin­u­ing appear­ance of the works of the world’s most suc­cess­ful mys­tery writer in film and TV. 

Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er is joined by repeat guests Sarahlyn Bruck, Al Bak­er, and Nicole Pomet­ti to dis­cuss the recent films, the Sarah Phelps TV adap­ta­tions (like The ABC Mur­ders), the Poirot BBC TV series, and some old­er adap­ta­tions.

We take on the dif­fer­ent char­ac­ter­i­za­tions of Poirot and how recent, grit­ti­er inter­pre­ta­tions com­pare with those of James Bond and Sher­lock Holmes. Also, how should a screen­writer adapt such fact-heavy nov­els? What works and does­n’t in terms of mod­ern­iz­ing them to cur­rent audi­ence expec­ta­tions? How did Christie keep things inter­est­ing for her­self writ­ing so many mys­ter­ies? How deep do her med­i­ta­tions on psy­chol­o­gy and ethics run in these books, and can that be ade­quate­ly con­veyed on screen? What’s the future of the mys­tery genre?

Here are a few rel­e­vant sources:

Lis­ten to Nicole’s Remakes, Reboots and Revivals pod­cast. Look into Sarahlyn’s book and oth­er writ­ings. Check out Al’s work fight­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion at Log­i­cal­ly.

Fol­low our guests at @remakespodcast (Nicole), @sarahlynbruck, and @ixisnox (Al).

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion fea­tur­ing all of our guests that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Meet Anita Berber, the Cabaret Star Who Scandalized Weimar-Era Berlin

in Dance, Film, Gender, History | March 18th, 2022

Ani­ta Berber, the taboo-bust­ing, sex­u­al­ly omniv­o­rous, fash­ion for­ward, fre­quent­ly naked star of the Weimar Repub­lic cabaret scene, tops our list of per­form­ers we real­ly wish we’d been able to see live.

While Berber act­ed in 27 films, includ­ing Pros­ti­tu­tion, direc­tor Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse: The Gam­bler, and Dif­fer­ent from the Oth­ers, which film crit­ic Den­nis Har­vey describes as “the first movie to por­tray homo­sex­u­al char­ac­ters beyond the usu­al innu­en­do and ridicule,” we have a strong hunch that none of these appear­ances can com­pete with the sheer audac­i­ty of her stage work.

Audi­ences at Berlin’s White Mouse cabaret (some wear­ing black or white masks to con­ceal their iden­ti­ties) were tit­il­lat­ed by her Expres­sion­is­tic nude solo chore­og­ra­phy, as well as the troupe of six teenaged dancers under her com­mand.

As biog­ra­ph­er Mel Gor­don writes in The Sev­en Addic­tions and Five Pro­fes­sions of Ani­ta Berber: Weimar Berlin’s Priest­ess of Deprav­i­ty, Berber, often described as a “strip­per”, dis­played the pas­sion of a seri­ous artist, “respond(ing) to the audience’s heck­ling with show-stop­ping obscen­i­ties and inde­cent provo­ca­tions:”

Berber had been known to spit brandy on them or stand naked on their tables, dous­ing her­self in wine whilst simul­ta­ne­ous­ly uri­nat­ing… It was not long before the entire cabaret one night sank into a groundswell of shout­ing, screams and laugh­ter.  Ani­ta jumped off the stage in fum­ing rage, grabbed the near­est cham­pagne bot­tle and smashed it over a businessman’s head.

Her col­lab­o­ra­tions with her sec­ond hus­band, dancer Sebas­t­ian Droste, car­ried Berber into increas­ing­ly trans­gres­sive ter­ri­to­ry, both onstage and off.

Accord­ing to trans­la­tor Mer­rill Cole, in the intro­duc­tion to the 2012 reis­sue of Dances of Vice, Hor­ror and Ecsta­sy, a book of Expres­sion­ist poems, essays, pho­tographs, and stage designs which Droste and Berber co-authored, “even the bio­graph­i­cal details seduce:”

…a bisex­u­al some­times-pros­ti­tute and a shady fig­ure from the male homo­sex­u­al under­world, unit­ed in addic­tion to cocaine and dis­dain for bour­geois respectabil­i­ty, both high­ly tal­ent­ed, Expres­sion­ist-trained dancers, both beau­ti­ful exhi­bi­tion­ists, set out to pro­vide the Baby­lon on the Spree with the ulti­mate expe­ri­ence of deprav­i­ty, using an art form they had helped to invent for this pur­pose. Their brief mar­riage and artis­tic inter­ac­tion end­ed when Droste became des­per­ate for drugs and abscond­ed with Berber’s jew­el col­lec­tion.

This, and the descrip­tion of Berber’s pen­chant for “haunt(ing) Weimar Berlin’s hotel lob­bies, night­clubs and casi­nos, radi­ant­ly naked except for an ele­gant sable wrap, a pet mon­key hang­ing from her neck, and a sil­ver brooch packed with cocaine,” do a far more evoca­tive job of res­ur­rect­ing Berber, the Weimar sen­sa­tion, than any wordy, blow-by-blow attempt to recre­ate her shock­ing per­for­mances, though we can’t fault author Karl Toepfer, Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of The­ater Arts at San Jose State Uni­ver­si­ty, for try­ing.

In Empire of Ecsta­sy: Nudi­ty and Move­ment in Ger­man Body Cul­ture, 1910–1935, Toepfer draws heav­i­ly on Czech chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Joe Jenčík’s eye­wit­ness obser­va­tions, to recon­struct Berber’s most noto­ri­ous dance, Cocaine, begin­ning with the “omi­nous scenery by Har­ry Täu­ber fea­tur­ing a tall lamp on a low, cloth-cov­ered table:”

This lamp was an expres­sion­ist sculp­ture with an ambigu­ous form that one could read as a sign of the phal­lus, an abstrac­tion of the female dancer’s body, or a mon­u­men­tal image of a syringe, for a long, shiny nee­dle pro­trud­ed from the top of it…It is not clear how nude Berber was when she per­formed the dance. Jenčík, writ­ing in 1929, flat­ly stat­ed that she was nude, but the famous Vien­nese pho­tog­ra­ph­er Madame D’O­ra (Dora Kalmus) took a pic­ture enti­tled “Kokain” in which Berber appears in a long black dress that expos­es her breasts and whose lac­ing, up the front, reveals her flesh to below her navel.

In any case, accord­ing to Jenčík, she dis­played “a sim­ple tech­nique of nat­ur­al steps and unforced pos­es.” But though the tech­nique was sim­ple, the dance itself, one of Berber’s most suc­cess­ful cre­ations, was appar­ent­ly quite com­plex. Ris­ing from an ini­tial con­di­tion of paral­y­sis on the floor (or pos­si­bly from the table, as indi­cat­ed by Täu­ber’s sceno­graph­ic notes), she adopt­ed a pri­mal move­ment involv­ing a slow, sculp­tured turn­ing of her body, a kind of slow-motion effect. The turn­ing rep­re­sent­ed the unrav­el­ing of a “knot of flesh.” But as the body uncoiled, it con­vulsed into “sep­a­rate parts,” pro­duc­ing a vari­ety of rhythms with­in itself. Berber used all parts of her body to con­struct a “trag­ic” con­flict between the healthy body and the poi­soned body: she made dis­tinct rhythms out of the move­ment of her mus­cles; she used “unex­pect­ed counter-move­ments” of her head to cre­ate an anguished sense of bal­ance; her “porce­lain-col­ored arms” made hyp­not­ic, pen­du­lum­like move­ments, like a mar­i­onet­te’s; with­in the pri­mal turn­ing of her body, there appeared con­tra­dic­to­ry turns of her wrists, tor­so, ankles; the rhythm of her breath­ing fluc­tu­at­ed with dra­mat­ic effect; her intense dark eyes fol­lowed yet anoth­er, slow­er rhythm; and she intro­duced the “most refined nuances of agili­ty” in mak­ing spasms of sen­sa­tion rip­ple through her fin­gers, nos­trils, and lips. Yet, despite all this com­plex­i­ty, she was not afraid of seem­ing “ridicu­lous” or “painful­ly swollen.” The dance con­clud­ed when the con­vulsed dancer attempt­ed to cry out (with the “blood-red open­ing of the mouth”) and could not. The dancer then hurled her­self to the floor and assumed a pose of motion­less, drugged sleep. Berber’s dance dra­ma­tized the intense ambi­gu­i­ty involved in link­ing the ecsta­t­ic lib­er­a­tion of the body to nudi­ty and rhyth­mic con­scious­ness. The dance tied ecsta­t­ic expe­ri­ence to an encounter with vice (addic­tion) and hor­ror (acute aware­ness of death).

A noble attempt, but for­give us if we can’t quite pic­ture it…

And what lit­tle evi­dence has been pre­served of her screen appear­ances exists at a sim­i­lar remove from  the dark sub­ject mat­ter she explic­it­ly ref­er­enced in her chore­o­graphed work — Mor­phine, Sui­cide, The Corpse on the Dis­sect­ing Table…

Cole opines:

There are a num­ber of nar­ra­tive accounts of her dances, some pinned by pro­fes­sion­al crit­ics, and almost all com­mend­ing her tal­ent, finesse, and mes­mer­iz­ing stage pres­ence. We also have film images from the var­i­ous silent films in which she played bit parts. There exist, too, many still pho­tographs of Berber and Droste, as well as ren­di­tions of Berber by oth­er artists, most promi­nent­ly the Dadaist Otto Dix’s famous scar­let-sat­u­rat­ed por­trait. In regard to the naked dances, unfor­tu­nate­ly, we have no mov­ing images, no way to watch direct­ly how they were per­formed.

For a dishy overview of Ani­ta Berber’s per­son­al life, includ­ing her alleged dal­liances with actress Mar­lene Diet­rich, author Lawrence Dur­rell, and the King of Yugoslavia, her influ­en­tial effect on direc­tor Leni Riefen­stahl, and her sad demise at the age of 29, a “car­rion soul that even the hye­nas ignored,” take a peek at Vic­to­ria Linchong’s bio­graph­i­cal essay for Messy Nessy Chic, or bet­ter yet, Iron Spike’s Twit­ter thread.

via Messy Nessy

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Expe­ri­ence Footage of Roar­ing 1920s Berlin, Restored & Col­orized with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

Down­load Hun­dreds of Issues of Jugend, Germany’s Pio­neer­ing Art Nou­veau Mag­a­zine (1896–1940)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

When Oliver Stone & Vladimir Putin Chillingly Watched Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove Together

in Current Affairs, Film, Television | March 16th, 2022

Hav­ing by now seen Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Wor­ry­ing and Love the Bomb (1964) more times than I can remem­ber, it sur­pris­es me to meet some­one who’s nev­er seen it at all. When I do, my first impulse is always to sug­gest a screen­ing right then and there. This would seem to put me in com­pa­ny with Oliv­er Stone, who in recent years has been doc­u­ment­ed engag­ing in at least one instance of high-pro­file Strangelove evan­ge­lism. As for the new inductee into the Strangelove view­er­ship, he went more than 60 years with­out hav­ing seen the film, but for the last cou­ple of decades had the cred­i­ble excuse of busy­ness: it isn’t just a part-time gig, after all, being the pres­i­dent of Rus­sia.

Stone seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty to watch Dr. Strangelove with Vladimir Putin in the course of film­ing The Putin Inter­views, a four-part doc­u­men­tary series broad­cast on Show­time in 2017. This was­n’t the first time Stone had made a sub­ject of his own inter­ac­tions with a head of state whom many Amer­i­cans con­sid­er malev­o­lent: in 2008’s South of the Bor­der, for exam­ple, he attempt­ed a human­iz­ing cin­e­mat­ic por­trait of Venezue­lan pres­i­dent Hugo Chávez. At Show­time’s Youtube chan­nel, you can watch a vari­ety of clips from The Putin Inter­views, includ­ing Putin giv­ing Stone a tour of his offices, Putin’s reac­tion to the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump, and Putin check­ing in with Stone before skat­ing out onto the ice for a game of hock­ey.

The view­ing of Dr. Strangelove comes at the series’ very end, which is pre­sum­ably an effort on Stone’s part to save the “best” for last — and as Cold War Amer­i­can cin­e­ma goes, one could hard­ly hope for a bet­ter selec­tion. Based on Peter George’s Red Alert, a straight­for­ward thriller nov­el about Amer­i­can and Sovi­et pro­to­cols of nuclear-defense man­age­ment gone dis­as­trous­ly wrong, the film only took shape when Kubrick real­ized it had to be a com­e­dy. As he lat­er recalled, “I found that in try­ing to put meat on the bones and to imag­ine the scenes ful­ly, one had to keep leav­ing out of it things which were either absurd or para­dox­i­cal, in order to keep it from being fun­ny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in ques­tion.”

As Joseph Heller real­ized while writ­ing Catch-22, cer­tain ridicu­lous truths about war sim­ply can’t be por­trayed non-comed­ical­ly. As real­ized through the painstak­ing­ly exact film­mak­ing of Kubrick and his col­lab­o­ra­tors, Dr. Strangelove is the black­est of black come­dies. “There are cer­tain things in this film that indeed make us think,” Putin says to Stone after the clos­ing mon­tage of mush­room clouds. He even cred­its Kubrick with tech­ni­cal fore­sight: “Mod­ern weapon sys­tems have become more sophis­ti­cat­ed, more com­plex. But this idea of a retal­ia­to­ry weapon and the inabil­i­ty to con­trol such weapon sys­tems still hold true today.” Not much has changed since the days of Dr. Strangelove, he admits, and now that he’s under­gone his own bout of geopo­lit­i­cal brazen­ness, let’s hope that he remem­bers how the movie ends.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Putin’s War on Ukraine Explained in 8 Min­utes

Inside the Mak­ing of Dr. Strangelove: Doc­u­men­tary Reveals How a Cold War Sto­ry Became a Kubrick Clas­sic

The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Title Sequences and Trail­ers Cre­at­ed by Pablo Fer­ro: Dr. Strangelove, A Clock­work Orange, Stop Mak­ing Sense, Bul­litt & Oth­er Films

Two Scenes from Stan­ley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, Recre­at­ed in Lego

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 12 ) |

Real Footage of Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance: Watch Clips from the First Documentary Feature Film Ever Made (1919)

in Film, History | March 14th, 2022

Last week we fea­tured the recent dis­cov­ery of Ernest Shack­le­ton’s ship Endurance, which has spent more than a cen­tu­ry at the bot­tom of the Wed­dell Sea off Antarc­ti­ca. It sank there in 1915, after hav­ing been entrapped and slow­ly crushed by pack ice for the most of a year. That marked the end of what had start­ed as the 1914–1917 Impe­r­i­al Trans-Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion, but it cer­tain­ly was­n’t the end of the sto­ry. When it had become clear that there was no hope for Endurance, writes Rain Noe at Core77, “Shack­le­ton and five of the crew then sailed 800 miles in a lifeboat to Strom­ness, an inhab­it­ed island and whal­ing sta­tion in the South Atlantic, where they were able to orga­nize a res­cue par­ty. Shack­le­ton locat­ed and res­cued his crew four months lat­er.”

Today we can watch the Endurance’s demise on film, as shot by expe­di­tion pho­tog­ra­ph­er Frank Hur­ley. “How is it pos­si­ble that the film footage sur­vived this ordeal?” Noe writes. “After the crew aban­doned ship, food was the main thing to be car­ried away by the men, and Hur­ley had to decide which pho­to neg­a­tives and film reels to sal­vage.” Hur­ley him­self lat­er described this ago­niz­ing process, at the end of which “about 400 plates were jet­ti­soned and 120 retained. Lat­er I had to pre­serve them almost with my life; for a time came when we had to choose between heav­ing them over­board or throw­ing away our sur­plus food — and the food went over!”

Even rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly in the era of cin­e­ma, Hur­ley must have under­stood the pow­er of the image — as, it seems, did his cap­tain. The footage Hur­ley could sal­vage retained a strik­ing clar­i­ty, and it went into 1919’s South, which is now con­sid­ered to be the very first doc­u­men­tary fea­ture. “South was first exhib­it­ed by Ernest Shack­le­ton in 1919 to accom­pa­ny his lec­tures,” writes Ann Ogi­di at the BFI’s Screenon­line, “and it has some of the qual­i­ty of a lec­ture. Excerpts of the jour­ney are inter­spersed with sci­en­tif­ic and bio­log­i­cal obser­va­tions.” And “just when the dra­mat­ic ten­sion reach­es its height, there are almost 20 inex­plic­a­ble min­utes of nature footage, show­ing sea lions gam­bol­ing, pen­guins and oth­er birds.”

Crisply restored in the 1990s, South “is best thought of as that mul­ti-media doc­u­men­tary lec­ture that Shack­le­ton would have pre­sent­ed with stills, paint­ings, film and music woven togeth­er to spin the yarn, and for Hurley’s exquis­ite pho­tog­ra­phy that keeps alive the sto­ry of that group of extra­or­di­nary men.” So writes BFI cura­tor Bry­ony Dixon in a recent piece on the mirac­u­lous sur­vival of not just Shack­le­ton and his men, but of Hur­ley’s hand­i­work. And it was Hur­ley who then went right back out to the island of South Geor­gia to “take wildlife footage that the news­pa­per edi­tor Ernest Per­ris, who spon­sored the film, was con­vinced was need­ed to make the film inter­est­ing to the pub­lic.” Per­ris was dar­ing enough to fund the first doc­u­men­tary fea­ture, but also pre­scient in his con­cep­tion of the form — a con­cep­tion proven defin­i­tive­ly right, more than eighty years lat­er, by the box-office per­for­mance of March of the Pen­guins.

via Core77

Relat­ed con­tent:

See the Well-Pre­served Wreck­age of Ernest Shackleton’s Ship Endurance Found in Antarc­ti­ca

Hear Ernest Shack­le­ton Speak About His Antarc­tic Expe­di­tion in a Rare 1909 Record­ing

Google Street View Opens Up a Look at Shackleton’s Antarc­tic

The Titan­ic: Rare Footage of the Ship Before Dis­as­ter Strikes (1911–1912)

New­ly Dis­cov­ered Ship­wreck Proves Herodotus, the “Father of His­to­ry,” Cor­rect 2500 Years Lat­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Dick Van Dyke Still Dancing at 96!

in Dance, Film, Life, Television | March 1st, 2022

Beloved com­ic actress Bet­ty White left some big shoes to fill last New Year’s Eve when she shocked the world by dying at the ten­der age of 99.

Who could pos­si­bly match her zest for life so many years into it?

Pag­ing Dick Van Dyke…

The nim­ble-foot­ed 96-year-old has yet to host Sat­ur­day Night Live, but remains cul­tur­al­ly rel­e­vant nonethe­less, thanks to the endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of his ear­ly work.

His ear­ly 60s sit­com, The Dick Van Dyke Show, was a sta­ple of ‘90s-era Nick at Nite.

Even Gen­er­a­tion Alpha knows who he is, thanks to his ever­green turn as Bert, the danc­ing chim­neysweep in Mary Pop­pins (1964).

The phys­i­cal grace he brought to such musi­cal fare as Bye Bye Birdie and Chit­ty Chit­ty Bang Bang is some­thing he delib­er­ate­ly strived for as a fan of silent com­e­dy’s greats, and at 96, it’s not some­thing he takes for grant­ed. He began strength train­ing many decades ago, after observ­ing Broad­way dancers’ work outs, and main­tains a dai­ly reg­i­men of crunch­es, leg lifts, and hip open­ers.

Like White, he thrives in the com­pa­ny of younger peo­ple.

He’s by far the old­est mem­ber of The Van­tastix, a bar­ber­shop quar­tet he formed in 2020.

And for those keep­ing score, he’s 46 years old­er than his bride of ten years, Arlene Sil­ver, who sings and dances with him in the above video (and directs, too.)

Yes, Van Dyke’s shoul­ders and tor­so may have stiff­ened a bit in the four years since Mary Pop­pins Returns  found him hop­ping atop a desk for a sprite­ly soft shoe, but the ease with which he pro­pels him­self from a low slung wing­back chair at the one-minute mark will strike many view­ers as noth­ing short of mirac­u­lous.

(For those admir­ing the decor, Fall­en Fruit’s recent SUPERSHOW instal­la­tion pro­vid­ed the video’s younger-than-spring­time set.)

Van Dyke’s loose limbed appeal is accom­pa­nied by a refresh­ing­ly flex­i­ble atti­tude, anoth­er way in which he mod­els health aging.

A year into his mar­riage to Sil­ver, he told Parade that they’re so well suit­ed because “she’s very mature for her age, and I’m very imma­ture for my age.”

“Imma­ture in a good way, Sil­ver clar­i­fied to Huff­Post, “with the won­der of a child”:

He’s just fun, he’s open mind­ed. He’s not stuck in his ways at all.

We take very good care of each oth­er. But, I’m very aware that I have a nation­al trea­sure on my hands.

No won­der peo­ple love him. As proof, wit­ness the twen­ty-some­thing leap­ing to their feet to give him an ova­tion, as he makes his entrance in Disneyland’s 60th-anniver­sary spe­cial six years ago.

12 sec­onds lat­er, the 90-year-old Van Dyke was also leap­ing.

“When peo­ple tell you you look good in your 90s, what they mean is you don’t look dead,” Van Dyke con­fid­ed in the late Carl Rein­er’s 2017 doc­u­men­tary, If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Break­fast:

At 30, I exer­cised to look good. In my 50s, I exer­cised to stay fit. In my 70s, to stay ambu­la­to­ry. In my 80s, to avoid assist­ed liv­ing. Now, in my 90s, I’m just doing it out of pure defi­ance.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Pow­er of Pulp Fiction’s Dance Scene, Explained by Chore­o­g­ra­phers and Even John Tra­vol­ta Him­self

One of the Great­est Dances Sequences Ever Cap­tured on Film Gets Restored in Col­or by AI: Watch the Clas­sic Scene from Stormy Weath­er

The Icon­ic Dance Scene from Hel­lza­pop­pin’ Pre­sent­ed in Liv­ing Col­or with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (1941)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 15 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.