Deconstructing Bach’s Famous Cello Prelude–the One You’ve Heard in Hundreds of TV Shows & Films

in Music | February 3rd, 2020

There may be no instru­ment in the clas­si­cal reper­toire more mul­ti­di­men­sion­al than the cel­lo. Its deep silky voice mod­u­lates from moans to exal­ta­tions in a sin­gle phrase—conveying dig­ni­fied melan­choly and a pro­found sense of awe. Hear­ing a skilled cel­list inter­pret great solo music for cel­lo can approach the feel­ing of a reli­gious expe­ri­ence. And no piece of solo music for cel­lo is greater, or more pop­u­lar­ly known, than Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach’s Cel­lo Suite No. 1 in G Major. Bet­ter known as the “Pre­lude,” the first of six Baroque suites Bach com­posed between 1717 and 1723, the piece has appeared, notes the Vox Ear­worm video above, “in hun­dreds of TV shows and films.”

You’ve heard it at wed­ding and funer­als, in restau­rants, in the lob­bies of hotels. “It’s so famous, that if you don’t remem­ber its title, “you can just google ‘that famous cel­lo song’ and it will invari­ably pop up.” What is it about this piece that so appeals? Its con­stant, rhyth­mic move­ment con­ceals “what’s most com­pelling about it”—its sim­plic­i­ty. “The whole thing just takes up two pages of music, and it’s com­posed for an instru­ment with only four strings.” The Ear­worm video goes on to explain why this enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar, decep­tive­ly sim­ple piece is “con­sid­ered a mas­ter­piece that world-class cel­lists… have revered for years.”

Bach’s cel­lo suites “are the Ever­est of [the cello’s] reper­to­ry,” writes Zachary Woolfe at The New York Times, “offer­ing a guide to near­ly every­thing a cel­lo can do—as well as, many believe, chart­ing a remark­ably com­plete anato­my of emo­tion and aspi­ra­tion.” World-class cel­list Yo-Yo Ma has in fact been trav­el­ing the world play­ing these pieces to bring peo­ple togeth­er in his “Days of Action.” He recent­ly released the video below of the Pre­lude, demon­strat­ing the out­come of a life­time of engage­ment with Bach’s cel­lo music.

Ma plays this piece as “the musi­cian of our civic life,” writes Woolfe, appear­ing at col­lec­tive moments of both grief and cel­e­bra­tion, “to make us cry and then soothe us.” What we learn in the Vox video is that the cel­lo suites come from music designed to lit­er­al­ly move its lis­ten­ers. “With­in each suite are var­i­ous move­ments named for dances.” Cel­list Alisa Weil­er­stein demon­strates the Prelude’s beau­ti­ful sim­plic­i­ty and helps “decon­struct” the piece’s ide­al suit­abil­i­ty for the instru­ment “clos­est in range and abil­i­ty to express to the human voice.”

What’s inter­est­ing about Bach’s six cel­lo suites is that they were writ­ten by a non-cel­list, “the first non-cel­list com­pos­er to give the cel­lo its first big break as a lead actor,” writes musi­col­o­gist Ann Wittstruck. He drew on Baroque social dances for the form of the pieces, which increase in com­plex­i­ty as they go. The pre­lude is loos­er, with arpeg­gios cir­cling around an open bass note that gives the first half “grav­i­tas.”

As the piece shifts away to the dom­i­nant D major, then to “cloudy” dimin­ished and minor chords, its mood shifts too; with­in sim­ple har­monies play a com­plex of emo­tion­al ten­sions. Its sec­ond half wan­ders through an impro­visato­ry, dis­so­nant pas­sage on its way back to D major. Weil­er­stein walks through each tech­nique, includ­ing a dis­ori­ent­ing run down the cello’s neck called “bar­i­o­lage,” which, she says, is meant to cre­ate a “feel­ing of dis­or­der.”

Per­haps that’s only one of the rea­sons Bach’s Pre­lude res­onates with us so deeply in a frag­ment­ed world, and fits Ma’s har­mo­nious inten­tions so well. It’s a piece that acknowl­edges dis­so­nance and dis­or­der even as it sur­rounds them with the joy­ful, styl­ized move­ments of social dances. Music crit­ic Wil­frid Mellers described Bach’s cel­lo suites as “mono­phon­ic music where­in a man has cre­at­ed a dance of God.” But they were not rec­og­nized by his con­tem­po­raries with such high praise.

Com­posed “just before Bach moved to Leipzig,” Woolfe writes, “the cel­lo suites, now musi­cal and emo­tion­al touch­stones, were lit­tle known until the 1900s. It was thought, even by some who knew of them, that they were mere­ly études, noth­ing you’d want to per­form in pub­lic.” Now, the most famous cellist—and per­haps most famous clas­sic icon—in the world is trav­el­ing to six con­ti­nents, play­ing Bach’s cel­lo suites in 36 very pub­lic con­certs. Learn more about his Bach project here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant.

Watch J.S. Bach’s “Air on the G String” Played on the Actu­al Instru­ments from His Time

Down­load the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free

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

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

in Film | February 3rd, 2020

Wal­ter Murch, per­haps the most famed film edi­tor alive, is acclaimed for the work he’s done for direc­tors like Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, George Lucas, and Antho­ny Minghel­la. As inno­v­a­tive and influ­en­tial as his ways for putting images togeth­er have been, Murch has done just as much for cin­e­ma as a sound design­er. In the video above Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, exam­ines Murch’s sound­craft through what Murch calls “worldiz­ing,” which Filmsound.org describes as “manip­u­lat­ing sound until it seemed to be some­thing that exist­ed in real space.” This involves “play­ing back exist­ing record­ings through a speak­er or speak­ers in real-world acoustic sit­u­a­tions,” record­ing it, and using that record­ing on the film’s sound­track.

In oth­er words, Murch pio­neered the tech­nique of not just insert­ing music into a movie in the edit­ing room, but re-record­ing that music in the actu­al spaces in which the char­ac­ters hear it. Mix­ing the orig­i­nal, “clean” record­ing of a song with that song as re-record­ed in the movie’s space — a dance hall, an out­door wed­ding, a dystopi­an under­ground war­ren — has giv­en Murch a greater degree of con­trol over the view­er’s lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence. In some shots he could let the view­er hear more of the song itself by pri­or­i­tiz­ing the orig­i­nal song; in oth­ers he could pri­or­i­tize the re-record­ed song and let the view­er hear the song as the char­ac­ters do, with all the son­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics con­tributed by the space — or, if you like, the world — around them.

Puschak uses exam­ples of Murch’s worldiz­ing from Amer­i­can Graf­fi­ti and The God­fa­ther, and notes that he first used it in Lucas’ debut fea­ture THX 1138. But he also dis­cov­ered an ear­li­er attempt by Orson Welles to accom­plish the same effect in Touch of Evil, a film Murch re-edit­ed in 1998. What Welles had not done, says Murch in an inter­view with Film Quar­ter­ly, “was com­bine the orig­i­nal record­ing and the atmos­pher­ic record­ing. He sim­ply posi­tioned a micro­phone, sta­t­ic in an alley­way out­side Uni­ver­sal Sound Stu­dios, re-record­ing from a speak­er to the micro­phone through the alley­way. He did­n’t have con­trol over the bal­ance of dry sound ver­sus reflect­ed sound, and he did­n’t have the sense of motion that we got from mov­ing the speak­er and mov­ing the micro­phone rel­a­tive to one anoth­er.”

Doing this, Murch says, “cre­ates the son­ic equiv­a­lent of depth of field in pho­tog­ra­phy. We can still have the music in the back­ground, but because it’s so dif­fuse, you can’t find edges to focus on and, there­fore, focus on the dia­logue which is in the fore­ground.” In all ear­li­er films besides Welles’, “music was just fil­tered and played low, but it still had its edges,” mak­ing it hard to sep­a­rate from the dia­logue. These days, as Puschak points out, any­one with the right sound-edit­ing soft­ware can per­form these manip­u­la­tions with the click of a mouse. No such ease in the 1970s, when Murch had to not only exe­cute these thor­ough­ly ana­log, labor-inten­sive process­es, but also invent them in the first place. As any­one who’s looked and lis­tened close­ly to his work knows, that audio­vi­su­al strug­gle made Murch expe­ri­ence and work with cin­e­ma in a rich­ly phys­i­cal way — one that, as gen­er­a­tions of edi­tors and sound design­ers come up in whol­ly dig­i­tal envi­ron­ments, may not exist much longer.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sounds of Blade Run­ner: How Music & Sound Effects Became Part of the DNA of Rid­ley Scott’s Futur­is­tic World

How the Sounds You Hear in Movies Are Real­ly Made: Dis­cov­er the Mag­ic of “Foley Artists”

Hear Dzi­ga Vertov’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Exper­i­ments in Sound: From His Radio Broad­casts to His First Sound Film

Why Mar­vel and Oth­er Hol­ly­wood Films Have Such Bland Music: Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Per­ils of the “Temp Score”

The Alche­my of Film Edit­ing, Explored in a New Video Essay That Breaks Down Han­nah and Her Sis­ters, The Empire Strikes Back & Oth­er Films

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

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Radical Women: Stream the Getty’s Podcast That Features Six Major 20th-Century Artists, All Female

in Art, History, Life, Museums, Podcasts | February 3rd, 2020


Only recent­ly has “actor” become an accept­able gen­der-neu­tral term for per­form­ers of stage and screen.

Pri­or to that, we had “actor” and “actress,” and while there may have been some prob­lem­at­ic assump­tions con­cern­ing the type of woman who might be drawn to the pro­fes­sion, there was arguably lin­guis­tic par­i­ty between the two words.

Not so for artists.

In the not-so-dis­tant past, female artists invari­ably found them­selves referred to as “female artists.”

Not great, when male artists were referred to as (say it with me) “artists.”

The new sea­son of the Getty’s pod­cast Record­ing Artists pays trib­ute to six sig­nif­i­cant post-war artists—two Abstract Expres­sion­ists, a por­traitist, a per­for­mance artist and exper­i­men­tal musi­cian, and a print­mak­er who pro­gressed to assem­blage and col­lage works with an overt­ly social mes­sage.

Hope­ful­ly you won’t need to reach for your smelling salts upon dis­cov­er­ing that all six artists are female:

Alice Neel

Lee Kras­ner

Betye Saar

Helen Franken­thaler

Yoko Ono

and Eva Hesse

Host Helen Molesworth is also female, and up until recent­ly, served as the much admired Chief Cura­tor of LA’s Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art. (Accord­ing to artist Lor­na Simp­son’s take on Molesworth’s abrupt dis­missal: “Women who have a point of view and stand by it are often pun­ished. Just because you get rid of Helen Molesworth doesn’t mean you have solved ‘the prob­lem.’”)

Molesworth, who is joined by two art world guests per episode—some of them (gasp!) non-female—is the per­fect choice to con­sid­er the impact of the Rad­i­cal Women who give this sea­son its sub­ti­tle.

We also hear from the artists them­selves, in excepts from taped ’60s and ’70s-era inter­views with his­to­ri­ans Cindy Nemser and Bar­bara Rose.

Their can­did remarks give Molesworth and her guests a lot to con­sid­er, from the dif­fi­cul­ties of main­tain­ing a con­sis­tent artis­tic prac­tice after one becomes a moth­er to racial dis­crim­i­na­tion. A lot of atten­tion is paid to his­tor­i­cal con­text, even when it’s warts and all.

The late Alice Neel, a white artist best remem­bered for her por­traits of her black and brown East Harlem neigh­bors and friends, cracks wise about butch les­bians in Green­wich Vil­lage, prompt­ing Molesworth to remark that she thinks she—or any artist of her acquaintance—could have “eas­i­ly” swayed Neel to can the homo­pho­bic remarks.

It’s also pos­si­ble that Neel, who died in 1984, would have kept step with the times and made the nec­es­sary cor­rec­tion unprompt­ed, were she still with us today.


A cou­ple of the sub­jects, Yoko Ono and Betye Saar, are alive …and active­ly cre­at­ing art, though it’s their past work that seems to be the source of great­est fas­ci­na­tion.

When New York City’s Muse­um of Mod­ern Art reopened its doors fol­low­ing a major phys­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal reboot, vis­i­tors were treat­ed to The Leg­ends of Black Girl’s Win­dow, an exhi­bi­tion of the 94-year-old Saar’s work from the ‘60s and ‘70s. New York­er crit­ic Doreen St. Félix bemoaned the “absence of explic­it­ly black-fem­i­nist works,” par­tic­u­lar­ly The Lib­er­a­tion of Aunt Jemi­ma, a mixed media assem­blage, Molesworth dis­cuss­es at length in the pod­cast episode ded­i­cat­ed to Saar.

MoMA also played host to a mas­sive exhi­bi­tion of Ono’s ear­ly work in 2015, prompt­ing the New York Times crit­ic Hol­land Cot­ter to pro­nounce her “imag­i­na­tive, tough-mind­ed and still under­es­ti­mat­ed.”

This is a far cry bet­ter than New York Times crit­ic Hilton Kramer’s dis­missal of Neel’s 1974 ret­ro­spec­tive at the Whit­ney, when the artist was 74 years old:

… the Whit­ney, which can usu­al­ly be count­ed on to do the wrong thing, devot­ed a solo exhi­bi­tion to Alice Neel, whose paint­ings (we can be rea­son­ably cer­tain) would nev­er have been accord­ed that hon­or had they been pro­duced by a man. The pol­i­tics of the sit­u­a­tion required that a woman be giv­en an exhi­bi­tion, and Alice Neel’s paint­ing was no doubt judged to be suf­fi­cient­ly bizarre, not to say inept, to qual­i­fy as some­thing ‘far out.’”

Twen­ty six years lat­er, his opin­ion of Neel’s tal­ent had not mel­lowed, though he had the polit­i­cal sense to dial down the misog­y­ny in his scathing Observ­er review of Neel’s third show at the Whit­ney…or did he? In cit­ing cura­tor Ann Temkin’s obser­va­tion that Neel paint­ed “with the eye of a car­i­ca­tur­ist” he makes sure to note that Neel’s sub­ject Annie Sprin­kle, “the porn star who became a per­for­mance artist, is her­self a car­i­ca­ture, no mock­ery was need­ed.”

One has to won­der if he would have described the artist’s nude self-por­trait at the age of 80 as that of “a geri­atric ruin” had the artist been a man.

Lis­ten to all six episodes of Record­ing Artists: Rad­i­cal Women and see exam­ples of each subject’s work here.

And while nei­ther Saar nor Ono added any cur­rent com­men­tary to the pod­cast, we encour­age you to check out the inter­views below in which they dis­cuss their recent work in addi­tion to reflect­ing on their long artis­tic careers:

“‘It’s About Time!’ Betye Saar’s Long Climb to the Sum­mit” (The New York Times, 2019)

“The Big Read – Yoko Ono: Imag­ine The Future” (NME, 2018)

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Space of Their Own, a New Online Data­base, Will Fea­ture Works by 600+ Over­looked Female Artists from the 15th-19th Cen­turies

Women Who Draw: Explore an Open Direc­to­ry That Show­cas­es the Work of 5,000+ Female Illus­tra­tors

A New Archive Tran­scribes and Puts Online the Diaries & Note­books of Women Artists, Art His­to­ri­ans, Crit­ics and Deal­ers

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York: The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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These Boots Are Made for Walkin’: The Story Behind Nancy Sinatra’s Enduring #1 Hit (1966)

in Fashion, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | February 3rd, 2020

You put on your boots
And I’ll put on mine
And we’ll sell a mil­lion records
Any old time
- Lee Hazle­wood

Musi­cians!

Look­ing to increase your chances of a hit song, one that will worm its way into the public’s hearts and ears, earn­ing fat roy­al­ty checks for half a cen­tu­ry or more?

Try start­ing with a killer bass line.

Accord­ing to singer Nan­cy Sina­tra, song­writer Lee Hazle­wood and arranger Bil­ly Strange swung by her par­ents’ liv­ing room to pre­view a selec­tion of tunes they thought she might want to record.

The moment she heard “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ ”s mem­o­rable lick, she knew it was a win­ner.

(As did her famous father, who looked up from his news­pa­per after Hazle­wood and Strange depart­ed, to remark, “The song about the boots is best.”)

Orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived of as a song from the male POV, the 25-year-old, just-divorced Sina­tra felt its mes­sage would be less “harsh and abu­sive” deliv­ered by a “lit­tle girl.”

Hazle­wood agreed, but hedged his bets by direct­ing engi­neer Eddie Brack­ett to beef up Sinatra’s vocals with some light reverb.

As biog­ra­ph­er James Kaplan describes in Sina­tra: The Chair­man, Hazle­wood also offered some dis­creet direc­tion, insin­u­at­ing that the vibe to strive for was that of “a 14-year-old girl in love with a 40-year-old man.”

When Sina­tra failed to receive his mean­ing, he shucked all pre­tense of del­i­ca­cy. Nan­cy shared his march­ing orders in her 1985 biog­ra­phy Frank Sina­tra, My Father:

…I was still singing like Nan­cy Nice­La­dy. Lee hit the talk-back switch in the booth and his deep voice blew my ears off. ‘For chris­sake, you were a mar­ried woman, Nasty, you’re not a vir­gin any­more. Let’s do one for the truck dri­vers. Say some­thing tough at the end of this one… Bite the words.’

Or some­thing to that effect…

Kaplan includes how sev­er­al sources claim that Hazlewood’s actu­al instruc­tion was to sing it like “a six­teen-year-old girl who f**ks truck dri­vers.”

(Editor’s note: instruct­ing a young woman to do that in 2020 is far like­li­er to result in a law suit than a hit record.… and giv­en that most of the sources who abide by this ver­sion of Boots’ cre­ation myth pref­ace their state­ments with the word “appar­ent­ly,” it may not have flown in 1966 either.)

The song’s immense pop­u­lar­i­ty was giv­en an assist by the 1966 Col­or-Son­ics film, above, shot in 16mm for the public’s enjoy­ment on 26-inch Sco­pi­tone juke­box screens.

It also put a match to the Amer­i­can tin­der where go-go boots were con­cerned. Young women in Britain had already adopt­ed them as the per­fect footwear to accom­pa­ny Youthquake design­er Mary Quant’s miniskirts and hot pants. Sina­tra and her maxi sweater-wear­ing back up dancers get the bulk of the cred­it on this side of the pond.

While “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” has been cov­ered by every­one from Ella Fitzger­ald and Duke Elling­ton to Bil­ly Ray Cyrus and Megadeth, the sweet­est cov­er remains song­writer Hazlewood’s, below, in which he namechecks the col­lab­o­ra­tors of his most famous hit with nary a men­tion of truck­ers or teenaged girls.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Car­ol Kaye, the Unsung Bassist Behind Your Favorite 60s Hits

How the Viet­nam War Shaped Clas­sic Rock–And How Clas­sic Rock Shaped the War

The Sex Pis­tols’ Sid Vicious Sings Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”: Is Noth­ing Sacred?

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC TONIGHT, Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3, as her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York, The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Monty Python Pays Tribute to Terry Jones: Watch Their Montage of Jones’ Beloved Characters in Action

in Comedy | January 31st, 2020

The actor, come­di­an, direc­tor, and medieval his­to­ri­an Ter­ry Jones passed away last week, but Mr. Cre­osote will nev­er die. Nor will any of the oth­er char­ac­ters por­trayed by Jones in his work with Mon­ty Python, the cul­ture-chang­ing com­e­dy troupe he co-found­ed with Eric Idle, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Gra­ham Chap­man, and Ter­ry Gilliam. You can get a sense of Jones’ range as a comedic per­former in the three-minute com­pi­la­tion above, which fea­tures a range of Jones’ char­ac­ters includ­ing the crunchy frog-deal­ing can­dy-shop own­er, the avi­a­tor-hel­met­ed Span­ish Inquisi­tor, one of the four York­shire­men, and of course, the Bish­op.

My own intro­duc­tion to Jones’ work came through the Spam wait­ress, a Mon­ty Python char­ac­ter beloved of many chil­dren not yet born when Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, the troupe’s BBC series, first ran in the late 1960s and ear­ly 70s.

Set in a din­er where near­ly every dish involves Spam as at least one ingre­di­ent, the sketch pokes fun at the cheap tinned meat’s per­sis­tence on British tables well after the aus­ter­i­ty of the Sec­ond World War, and more sub­tly at the even deep­er and longer-last­ing per­sis­tence of the British wartime mind­set. I nat­u­ral­ly knew lit­tle of all this when first I saw the Spam sketch, and had nev­er once tast­ed Spam itself, but Jones’ com­mit­ment to his char­ac­ter — and that char­ac­ter’s blithe seri­ous­ness about the word “Spam” — got me laugh­ing.

Gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren and adults alike will con­tin­ue to enjoy the Spam wait­ress, as well as all of Jones’ oth­er char­ac­ters and their often absurd inter­ac­tions with those played by the rest of the Pythons. And the more they learn about the troupe and its work, the more they’ll appre­ci­ate Jones’ spe­cial con­tri­bu­tions to its lega­cy. After co-direct­ing Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail with Gilliam, he sin­gle­hand­ed­ly direct­ed the next two Python fea­tures, Life of Bri­an and The Mean­ing of Life. It was in that last film that Jones man­aged to bal­ance his direc­to­r­i­al duties with those of play­ing the colos­sal­ly obese, fre­quent­ly vom­it­ing Mr. Cre­osote, whose sheer glut­tony results in his explo­sion. So yes, tech­ni­cal­ly, Mr. Cre­osote did die — but every time we watch The Mean­ing of Life he lives, and we laugh, once again.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Jones (RIP) Was a Come­di­an, But Also a Medieval His­to­ri­an: Get to Know His Oth­er Side

The His­to­ry & Lega­cy of Magna Car­ta Explained in Ani­mat­ed Videos by Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Jones

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es: “The Philoso­phers’ Foot­ball Match,” “Philosopher’s Drink­ing Song” & More

Ter­ry Gilliam Reveals the Secrets of Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions: A 1974 How-To Guide

Mon­ty Python’s Eric Idle Breaks Down His Most Icon­ic Char­ac­ters

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

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Take an Aerial Tour of Medieval Paris

in History | January 31st, 2020

Paris is named after the Parisii, a tribe of Celts who set­tled on a very strate­gic island in the mid­dle of the Seine some­time around 250 BC. With a wall and two bridges in and out, the set­tle­ment grew and–though con­quered by Romans, and threat­ened by all sorts includ­ing Atti­la the Hun–it evolved into the city of romance and rev­o­lu­tion.

This fas­ci­nat­ing fly-through of Paris cir­ca 1550 AD shows a city in tran­si­tion. Still very much a medieval town in cer­tain respects, it already has many of the land­marks tourists flock to even now.

It begins just out­side the abbey of Saint-Ger­main-des-Prés, found­ed in the 6th Cen­tu­ry, and goes down the Seine towards the Palais de la Cité, and under the Pont Saint-Michel. Hous­es were built along the bridges like this until the 18th and 19th cen­turies.

There’s time to linger on Notre Dame cathe­dral, and to note that the famed flèche, the spire that was lost in 2019’s fire, had yet to be built. (There is debate in the com­ments about whether the spire in the video is his­tor­i­cal­ly inac­cu­rate, whether there was any spire at that time, or whether the spire depict­ed is the cor­rect one.) Anoth­er cir­cle of the Palais and past Sainte-Chapelle until a street lev­el diver­sion into the bustling Right Bank along the Pont aux Meu­niers, a bridge that no longer exists (it col­lapsed in 1596, was rebuilt, and dis­ap­peared one final time in a 1621 fire).

The Renais­sance was just around the cor­ner, and this glimpse of Paris on the cusp of urban­iza­tion is fas­ci­nat­ing in its CGI-gen­er­at­ed fin de siè­cle (to bor­row a phrase).

The city has always been evolving–for those inter­est­ed, there is a longer 3‑D tour of Paris through its his­to­ry. While this Mid­dle Ages excur­sion con­tains some famil­iar archi­tec­ture, the Roman years (when Paris was known as Lute­tia) fea­ture many large struc­tures that sim­ply do not exist any more. It is yet anoth­er reminder that noth­ing lasts for­ev­er, not even build­ings made of the finest stone.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

Paris in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images from 1890: The Eif­fel Tow­er, Notre Dame, The Pan­théon, and More (1890)

A Vir­tu­al Time-Lapse Recre­ation of the Build­ing of Notre Dame (1160)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Crowd Breaks into Singing Bon Jovi in the Park: The Power of Music in 46 Seconds

in Music | January 30th, 2020

Hope you enjoy your week­end…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

Ital­ian Street Musi­cian Plays Amaz­ing Cov­ers of Pink Floyd Songs, Right in Front of the Pan­theon in Rome

Icon­ic Songs Played by Musi­cians Around the World: “Stand by Me,” “Redemp­tion Song,” “Rip­ple” & More

 

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Akira Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

in Film, Life | January 30th, 2020

In movies like Sev­en Samu­rai and High and Low, direc­tor Aki­ra Kuro­sawa took the cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage of Hol­ly­wood and improved on it, cre­at­ing a vig­or­ous, mus­cu­lar method of visu­al sto­ry­telling that became a styl­is­tic play­book for the likes of Mar­tin Scors­ese, George Lucas and Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la. In movies like Ikiru, The Bad Sleep Well and The Low­er Depths, Kuro­sawa relent­less­ly strug­gled to find the rays of light among the shad­ows of the human soul. This philo­soph­i­cal urgency com­bined with his visu­al bril­liance is what gives his work, espe­cial­ly his ear­ly films, such vital­i­ty.

“One thing that dis­tin­guish­es Aki­ra Kuro­sawa is that he didn’t just make a mas­ter­piece or two mas­ter­pieces,” Cop­po­la said dur­ing an inter­view. “He made eight mas­ter­pieces.”

So when Kuro­sawa comes out with a rec­om­mend­ed view­ing list, movie mavens every­where should take note. Such a list was pub­lished in his posthu­mous­ly pub­lished book Yume wa ten­sai de aru (A Dream is a Genius). His daugh­ter Kazuko Kuro­sawa described the list’s selec­tion process:

My father always said that the films he loved were too many to count, and to make a top ten rank. That explains why you can­not find in this list many of the titles of the films he regard­ed as won­der­ful. The prin­ci­ple of the choice is: one film for one direc­tor, entry of the unfor­get­table films about which I and my father had a love­ly talk, and of some ideas on cin­e­ma that he had cher­ished but did not express in pub­lic. This is the way I made a list of 100 films of Kurosawa’s choice.

Orga­nized chrono­log­i­cal­ly, the list starts with D.W. Griffith’s Bro­ken Blos­soms and ends with Takeshi Kitano’s Hana-Bi. In between is a remark­ably thor­ough and diverse col­lec­tion of films, mix­ing in equal parts Hol­ly­wood, art house and Japan­ese clas­sics. Many of the movies are exact­ly the ones you would see on any Film Stud­ies 101 syl­labus — Truffaut’s 400 Blows, Car­ol Reed’s The Third Man and DeSica’s Bicy­cle Thieves. Oth­er films are less expect­ed. Hayao Miyazaki’s utter­ly won­der­ful My Neigh­bor Totoro makes the cut, as does Ishi­ro Hon­da’s Goji­ra and Peter Weir’s Wit­ness. His pol­i­cy of one film per direc­tor yields some sur­pris­ing, almost will­ful­ly per­verse results. The God­fa­ther, Part 2 over The God­fa­ther? The King of Com­e­dy over Good­fel­las? Ivan the Ter­ri­ble over Bat­tle­ship Potemkin? The Birds over Ver­ti­go? Bar­ry Lyn­don over pret­ty much any­thing else that Stan­ley Kubrick did? And while I am pleased that Mikio Naruse gets a nod for Ukigu­mo – in a just world, Naruse would be as read­i­ly praised and cel­e­brat­ed as his con­tem­po­raries Yasu­jiro Ozu and Ken­ji Mizoguchi – I am also struck by the list’s most glar­ing, and curi­ous, omis­sion. There’s no Orson Welles.

You can see his 100 essen­tial movies below. Above we have the sec­ond film on the list, The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari, which you can oth­er­wise find in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

1. Bro­ken Blos­soms or The Yel­low Man and the Girl (Grif­fith, 1919) USA
2. Das Cab­i­net des Dr. Cali­gari [The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari] (Wiene, 1920) Ger­many
3. Dr. Mabuse, der Spiel­er – Ein Bild der Zeit (Part 1 — Part 2) [Dr. Mabuse, the Gam­bler] (Lang, 1922) Ger­many
4. The Gold Rush (Chap­lin, 1925) USA
5. La Chute de la Mai­son Ush­er [The Fall of the House of Ush­er] (Jean Epstein, 1928) France
6. Un Chien Andalou [An Andalu­sian Dog] (Bunuel, 1928) France
7. Moroc­co (von Stern­berg, 1930) USA
8. Der Kongress Tanzt (Charell, 1931) Ger­many
9. Die 3groschenoper [The Three­pen­ny Opera] (Pab­st, 1931) Ger­many
10. Leise Fle­hen Meine Lieder [Lover Divine] (Forst, 1933) Austria/Germany
11. The Thin Man (Dyke, 1934) USA
12. Tonari no Yae-chan [My Lit­tle Neigh­bour, Yae] (Shi­mazu, 1934) Japan
13. Tange Sazen yowa: Hyaku­man ryo no tsubo [Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Mil­lion Ryo] (Yamana­ka, 1935) Japan
14. Akan­ishi Kaki­ta [Capri­cious Young Men] (Ita­mi, 1936) Japan
15. La Grande Illu­sion [The Grand Illu­sion] (Renoir, 1937) France
16. Stel­la Dal­las (Vidor, 1937) USA
17. Tsuzurika­ta Kyoshit­su [Lessons in Essay] (Yamamo­to, 1938) Japan
18. Tsuchi [Earth] (Uchi­da, 1939) Japan
19. Ninotch­ka (Lubitsch, 1939) USA
20. Ivan Groznyy I, Ivan Groznyy II: Boyarsky Zagov­or [Ivan the Ter­ri­ble Parts I and II] (Eisen­stein, 1944–46) Sovi­et Union
21. My Dar­ling Clemen­tine (Ford, 1946) USA
22. It’s a Won­der­ful Life (Capra, 1946) USA
23. The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946) USA
24. Ladri di Bici­clette [The Bicy­cle Thief] [Bicy­cle Thieves] (De Sica, 1948) Italy
25. Aoi san­myaku [The Green Moun­tains] (Imai, 1949) Japan
26. The Third Man (Reed, 1949) UK
27. Ban­shun [Late Spring] (Ozu, 1949) Japan
28. Orpheus (Cocteau, 1949) France
29. Karu­men kokyo ni kaeru [Car­men Comes Home] (Kinoshi­ta, 1951) Japan
30. A Street­car Named Desire (Kazan, 1951) USA
31. Thérèse Raquin [The Adul­tress] (Carne 1953) France
32. Saikaku ichidai onna [The Life of Oharu] (Mizoguchi, 1952) Japan
33. Viag­gio in Italia [Jour­ney to Italy] (Rosselli­ni, 1953) Italy
34. Goji­ra [Godzil­la] (Hon­da, 1954) Japan
35. La Stra­da (Felli­ni, 1954) Italy
36. Ukigu­mo [Float­ing Clouds] (Naruse, 1955) Japan
37. Pather Pan­chali [Song of the Road] (Ray, 1955) India
38. Dad­dy Long Legs (Neg­ule­sco, 1955) USA
39. The Proud Ones (Webb, 1956) USA
40. Baku­mat­su taiy­o­den [Sun in the Last Days of the Shogu­nate] (Kawashima, 1957) Japan
41. The Young Lions (Dmytryk, 1957) USA
42. Les Cousins [The Cousins] (Chabrol, 1959) France
43. Les Quarte Cents Coups [The 400 Blows] (Truf­faut, 1959) France
44. A bout de Souf­fle [Breath­less] (Godard, 1959) France
45. Ben-Hur (Wyler, 1959) USA
46. Oto­to [Her Broth­er] (Ichikawa, 1960) Japan
47. Une aus­si longue absence [The Long Absence] (Colpi, 1960) France/Italy
48. Le Voy­age en Bal­lon [Stow­away in the Sky] (Lam­or­isse, 1960) France
49. Plein Soleil [Pur­ple Noon] (Clement, 1960) France/Italy
50. Zazie dans le métro [Zazie on the Subway](Malle, 1960) France/Italy
51. L’Annee derniere a Marien­bad [Last Year in Marien­bad] (Resnais, 1960) France/Italy
52. What Ever Hap­pened to Baby Jane? (Aldrich, 1962) USA
53. Lawrence of Ara­bia (Lean, 1962) UK
54. Melodie en sous-sol [Any Num­ber Can Win] (Verneuil, 1963) France/Italy
55. The Birds (Hitch­cock, 1963) USA
56. Il Deser­to Rosso [The Red Desert](Antonioni, 1964) Italy/France
57. Who’s Afraid of Vir­ginia Woolf? (Nichols, 1966) USA
58. Bon­nie and Clyde (Penn, 1967) USA
59. In the Heat of the Night (Jew­i­son, 1967) USA
60. The Charge of the Light Brigade (Richard­son, 1968) UK
61. Mid­night Cow­boy (Schlesinger, 1969) USA
62. MASH (Alt­man, 1970) USA
63. John­ny Got His Gun (Trum­bo, 1971) USA
64. The French Con­nec­tion (Fried­kin, 1971) USA
65. El espíritu de la col­me­na [Spir­it of the Bee­hive] (Erice, 1973) Spain
66. Sol­yaris [Solaris] (Tarkovsky, 1972) Sovi­et Union
67. The Day of the Jack­al (Zin­ne­man, 1973) UK/France
68. Grup­po di famiglia in un inter­no [Con­ver­sa­tion Piece] (Vis­con­ti, 1974) Italy/France
69. The God­fa­ther Part II (Cop­po­la, 1974) USA
70. San­dakan hachiban­shokan bohkyo [San­dakan 8] (Kumai, 1974) Japan
71. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (For­man, 1975) USA
72. O, Thi­as­sos [The Trav­el­ling Play­ers] (Angelopou­los, 1975) Greece
73. Bar­ry Lyn­don (Kubrick, 1975) UK
74. Daichi no komo­ri­u­ta [Lul­la­by of the Earth] (Masumu­ra, 1976) Japan
75. Annie Hall (Allen, 1977) USA
76. Neokonchen­naya pye­sa dlya mekhanich­esko­go piani­no [Unfin­ished Piece for Mechan­i­cal Piano] (Mikhalkov, 1977) Sovi­et Union
77. Padre Padrone [My Father My Mas­ter] (P. & V. Taviani, 1977) Italy
78. Glo­ria (Cas­savetes, 1980) USA
79. Haruka­naru yama no yobi­goe [A Dis­tant Cry From Spring] (Yama­da, 1980) Japan
80. La Travi­a­ta (Zef­firelli, 1982) Italy
81. Fan­ny och Alexan­der [Fan­ny and Alexan­der] (Bergman, 1982) Sweden/France/West Ger­many
82. Fitz­car­ral­do (Her­zog, 1982) Peru/West Ger­many
83. The King of Com­e­dy (Scors­ese, 1983) USA
84. Mer­ry Christ­mas Mr. Lawrence (Oshi­ma, 1983) UK/Japan/New Zealand
85. The Killing Fields (Joffe 1984) UK
86. Stranger Than Par­adise (Jar­musch, 1984) USA/ West Ger­many
87. Dong­dong de Jiaqi [A Sum­mer at Grand­pa’s] (Hou, 1984) Tai­wan
88. Paris, Texas (Wen­ders, 1984) France/ West Ger­many
89. Wit­ness (Weir, 1985) USA
90. The Trip to Boun­ti­ful (Mas­ter­son, 1985) USA
91. Otac na sluzbenom putu [When Father was Away on Busi­ness] (Kus­turi­ca, 1985) Yugoslavia
92. The Dead (Hus­ton, 1987) UK/Ireland/USA
93. Khane-ye doust kod­jast? [Where is the Friend’s Home] (Kiarosta­mi, 1987) Iran
94. Bagh­dad Cafe [Out of Rosen­heim] (Adlon, 1987) West Germany/USA
95. The Whales of August (Ander­son, 1987) USA
96. Run­ning on Emp­ty (Lumet, 1988) USA
97. Tonari no totoro [My Neigh­bour Totoro] (Miyaza­ki, 1988) Japan
98. A un [Bud­dies] (Furuha­ta, 1989) Japan
99. La Belle Noiseuse [The Beau­ti­ful Trou­ble­mak­er] (Riv­ette, 1991) France/Switzerland
100. Hana-bi [Fire­works] (Kitano, 1997) Japan

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Jan­u­ary 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Did Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Make Such Pow­er­ful & Endur­ing Films? A Wealth of Video Essays Break Down His Cin­e­mat­ic Genius

David Lynch Lists His Favorite Films & Direc­tors, Includ­ing Felli­ni, Wilder, Tati & Hitch­cock

Andrei Tarkovsky Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Films (1972)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s List of Top 10 Films (The First and Only List He Ever Cre­at­ed)

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la Star in Japan­ese Whisky Com­mer­cials (1980)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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