Watch Gandhi Talk in His First Filmed Interview (1947)

in Film, History, Politics | October 6th, 2015

The Gand­hi of his­to­ry doesn’t line up with the Gand­hi of leg­end, just as the beat­i­fied Moth­er Tere­sa presents a very dif­fer­ent pic­ture in cer­tain astute crit­ics’ esti­ma­tion. But as with most saints, ancient and mod­ern, peo­ple tend to ignore Gandhi’s many con­tra­dic­tions and trou­bling­ly racist and casteist views. He comes to us more as myth and mar­tyr than deeply flawed human indi­vid­ual. An indis­pens­able part of the myth­mak­ing, Richard Attenborough’s 1982 biopic, Gand­hi, may be “over-san­i­tized,” as The Guardian writes, but Ben Kingsley’s per­for­mance as the anti-colo­nial leader is gen­uine­ly “sub­lime” in his evo­ca­tion of Gandhi’s “inten­si­ty… wit and even the dis­tinc­tive, deter­mined walk.” It’s these per­son­al qualities—and of course Gandhi’s defeat of the largest empire on the plan­et with non­vi­o­lent action and a spir­i­tu­al phi­los­o­phy—that con­tin­ue to inspire move­ments for jus­tice and civ­il rights.

We see a lit­tle of that deter­mined walk in the short news­reel inter­view above, the very first “talk­ing pic­ture” made of Gand­hi, and we also hear his inten­si­ty and wit, though much sub­dued by his phys­i­cal frailty after years of fast­ing. Tak­en in 1947 by Fox Movi­etone News, the film marks a piv­otal peri­od in the Indi­an leader’s life. Very short­ly after this Par­lia­ment passed the Indi­an Inde­pen­dence Act. That year also marked the start of a bloody new strug­gle, insti­gat­ed by anoth­er colo­nial inter­ven­tion, as the British par­ti­tioned India into two war­ring coun­tries, an act so poignant­ly dra­ma­tized in Salmon Rushdie’s Midnight’s Chil­dren.

This year of tur­moil was also Gandhi’s last; he was assas­si­nat­ed in 1948 by a Hin­du nation­al­ist who accused him of sid­ing with Pak­istan. In the inter­view, we hear what we might think of as some of Gandhi’s final pub­lic pro­nounce­ments on such sub­jects as child mar­riage, pro­hi­bi­tion, his deeply held con­vic­tions about an authen­tic Indi­an cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and the lengths that he would go for his country’s inde­pen­dence. At the end of the short inter­view, the Amer­i­can reporter asks Gand­hi, pre­scient­ly, “would you be pre­pared to die in the cause of India’s Inde­pen­dence?” to which Gand­hi replies, “this is a bad ques­tion.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tol­stoy and Gand­hi Exchange Let­ters: Two Thinkers’ Quest for Gen­tle­ness, Humil­i­ty & Love (1909)

Albert Ein­stein Express­es His Admi­ra­tion for Mahat­ma Gand­hi, in Let­ter and Audio

Hear Gandhi’s Famous Speech on the Exis­tence of God (1931)

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

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Akira Kurosawa Painted the Storyboards For Scenes in His Epic Films: Compare Canvas to Celluloid

in Art, Film | October 2nd, 2015

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Appre­ci­a­tors of the finest works in cin­e­ma his­to­ry often liken their images to paint­ings. In the case of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, mak­er of quite a few entries on that grand list of the finest works in cin­e­ma his­to­ry, that makes pro­fes­sion­al sense: he began as a painter, only lat­er turn­ing film­mak­er. “When I changed careers,” he writes, “I burnt all the pic­tures that I had paint­ed up until then. I intend­ed to for­get paint­ing once and for all. As a well-known Japan­ese proverb says, ‘If you chase two rab­bits, you may not catch even one.’ I did no art work at all once I began to work in cin­e­ma. But since becom­ing a film direc­tor, I have found that draw­ing rough sketch­es was often a use­ful means of explain­ing ideas to my staff.”

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That comes quot­ed on “Aki­ra Kuro­sawa: From Art to Film,” a roundup of such paint­ings by the Emper­or (a nick­name Kuro­sawa earned through his on-set man­ner), set beside the result­ing frames from his movies. “As a painter and film­mak­er, Kuro­sawa stuck to his own style,” writes Pop­mat­ters’ Ian Chant in an exam­i­na­tion of this facet of his career, “informed heav­i­ly by tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese paint­ing as well as Euro­pean impres­sion­ists and expres­sion­ists, anoth­er are­na of art where he answered to both east­ern and west­ern influ­ences. These painstak­ing­ly craft­ed paint­ings formed the visu­al back­bone of some of Kurosawa’s most last­ing achieve­ments.”

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The most vivid exam­ples of can­vas-turned-cel­lu­loid come from Kuro­sawa’s lat­er works, such as 1980’s Kage­musha, 1985’s Ran, 1990’s Dreams, and 1993’s Mada­dayo, selec­tions from each of which you see in this post. “I can­not help but be fas­ci­nat­ed by the fact that when I tried to paint well, I could only pro­duce mediocre pic­tures,” con­tin­ues the Emper­or him­self. “But when I con­cen­trat­ed on delin­eat­ing the ideas for my films, I uncon­scious­ly pro­duced works that peo­ple find inter­est­ing.” Hold­ing the paint­ed work up against his film work, only the strictest cin­e­ma purist could deny that, ulti­mate­ly, Kuro­sawa caught both rab­bits.

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Jux­ta­pose more paint­ed sto­ry­boards and frames from films here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Paint­ings of Aki­ra Kuro­sawa

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s 80-Minute Mas­ter Class on Mak­ing “Beau­ti­ful Movies” (2000)

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s List of His 100 Favorite Movies

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Talk About Film­mak­ing (and Nuclear Bombs) in Six Hour Inter­view

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Complete Star Wars “Filmumentary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Documentary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Commentary

in Film | October 2nd, 2015

Who owns Star Wars, George Lucas or the fans?

The short answer now, of course, is… Dis­ney… and maybe J.J. Abrams. Giv­en the explo­sion of fran­chis­ing and mer­chan­dis­ing begun by the com­ing tidal wave of new Star Wars films under Disney’s aegis, it will some­day be dif­fi­cult to con­vince young­sters that things were ever oth­er­wise.

But in my day [insert old man wag­ging fin­ger here] the crit­i­cal debate was between Lucas and the fans. I’m pret­ty sure the fans won. The world-build­ing of Star Wars will out­last its cre­ator and its first cou­ple gen­er­a­tions of devot­ed view­ers, and the grand tra­di­tion of Star Wars fan films—begun almost imme­di­ate­ly after the first Star Wars’ release with the fond par­o­dy “Hard­ware Wars”—will live on. Star Wars fan films even have their own annu­al awards pro­gram.

There are many micro-gen­res of Star Wars fan film: Ani­me, Silent, Crowd-sourced, Action Fig­ure, etc. Today we bring you per­haps the best exam­ple in the Doc­u­men­tary cat­e­go­ry, a “Com­plete Fil­mu­men­tary” by film­mak­er Jamie Ben­ning. Although pre­sent­ed here in order of the first three Star Wars movies, this stel­lar exam­ple of fan craft and devo­tion actu­al­ly began in 2006 with the film right above, Build­ing Empire, which offers over two hours of “video clips, audio from cast and crew, alter­nate angles, recon­struct­ed scenes, text facts and insights into the devel­op­ment and cre­ation of The Empire Strikes Back.

Next, in 2007, came Return­ing to Jedi, anoth­er exhaus­tive pre­sen­ta­tion of out­takes, behind-the-scenes moments, audio com­men­tary, tech­ni­cal details, and triv­ia from the first trilogy’s final film. Final­ly, in 2011, Ben­ning com­plet­ed his fan doc­u­men­tary tril­o­gy with Star Wars Begins at the top. “If you’ve nev­er seen the delet­ed scenes of Jab­ba the Hutt or Big­gs Dark­lighter on Tatooine, or heard David Prowse say­ing Vader’s dia­logue,” says the film’s press release, “then you will get a real kick out of this. Many reviews and com­ments have cen­tered on the fact that it’s like watch­ing your favourite movie but from an entire­ly dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive.”

It’s also at times like watch­ing what Star Wars might look like in an alter­nate uni­verse. Some delet­ed scenes and ear­ly demo footage show us plot points and char­ac­ters we nev­er knew exist­ed. In Star Wars Begins, for exam­ple, we see an ear­ly black and white silent edit, known as the “Lost Cut,” and fea­tur­ing a droid named “Tread­well” who resem­bles Short Circuit’s John­ny 5. As fan films demon­strate, again and again into seem­ing eter­ni­ty, the Star Wars uni­verse is infi­nite­ly malleable—despite con­stant bick­er­ing over canon—and offers end­less rich­es for imag­i­na­tive plun­der. And for that we’ll always have the films’ orig­i­nal cre­ators to thank. Benning’s painstak­ing­ly-edit­ed doc­u­men­taries show us the incred­i­ble amount of work that went into build­ing the world of Star Wars, a world that shows no signs of ever com­ing to an end.

Jen­ning’s fil­mu­men­taries will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of The Empire Strikes Back Show­cased on Long-Lost Dutch TV Doc­u­men­tary

Joseph Camp­bell and Bill Moy­ers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Uni­ver­sal Myth

Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)

Star Wars Uncut: The Epic Fan Film

Frei­heit, George Lucas’ Short Stu­dent Film About a Fatal Run from Com­mu­nism (1966)

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

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The Night Ed Sullivan Scared a Nation with the Apocalyptic Animated Short, A Short Vision (1956)

in Film, History, Television | October 1st, 2015

On May 27, 1956, mil­lions of Amer­i­cans tuned in to The Ed Sul­li­van Show, expect­ing the usu­al vari­ety of come­di­ans, tal­ents and musi­cal guests. What they weren’t pre­pared for was a short ani­mat­ed film that Sul­li­van intro­duced thus­ly:

Just last week you read about the H‑bomb being dropped. Now two great Eng­lish writ­ers, two very imag­i­na­tive writ­ers — I’m gonna tell you if you have young­sters in the liv­ing room tell them not to be alarmed at this ‘cause it’s a fan­ta­sy, the whole thing is ani­mat­ed — but two Eng­lish writ­ers, Joan and Peter Foldes, wrote a thing which they called “A Short Vision” in which they won­dered what might hap­pen to the ani­mal pop­u­la­tion of the world if an H‑bomb were dropped. It’s pro­duced by George K. Arthur and I’d like you to see it. It is grim, but I think we can all stand it to real­ize that in war there is no win­ner.

And with that, he screened the hor­rif­ic bit of ani­ma­tion you can watch above. At the height of the atom­ic age, this film was a short sharp shock. Its vision of a nuclear holo­caust is told in the style of a fable or sto­ry­book, with both ani­mals and humans wit­ness­ing their last moments on earth, and end­ing with the extin­guish­ing of a tiny flame. The most­ly sta­t­ic art work is all the more effec­tive when faces melt into skulls.

A Short Vision

Many chil­dren didn’t leave the room of course, and the web­site Conel­rad has a won­der­ful in-depth his­to­ry of that night and col­lect­ed mem­o­ries from peo­ple who were trau­ma­tized by the short as a child. One child’s hair–or rather a small sec­tion of his hair–turned white from fright.

It was as for­ma­tive a moment as The Day After would be to chil­dren of the ‘80s. The papers the next day report­ed on the short in sala­cious detail (“Shock Wave From A‑Bomb Film Rocks Nation’s TV Audi­ence”) and Sul­li­van not only defend­ed his deci­sion, but showed the film again on June 10.

The film was cre­at­ed by mar­ried cou­ple Peter and Joan Foldes, and shot for lit­tle mon­ey in their kitchen on a makeshift ani­ma­tion table. Peter was a Hun­gar­i­an immi­grant who had stud­ied at the Slade School of Art and the Court­laud Insti­tute and appren­ticed with John Halas where he learned ani­ma­tion.

(Halas is best known for the ani­mat­ed fea­ture ver­sion of Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm.)

A Short Vision would go on in Sep­tem­ber of that year to win best exper­i­men­tal film at the 17th Venice Film Fes­ti­val. (Peter Foldes would lat­er make anoth­er dis­turb­ing and award-win­ning short called Hunger.)

Once so shock­ing, A Short Vision fell out of cir­cu­la­tion. But a gen­er­a­tion grew up remem­ber­ing that they had seen some­thing hor­rif­ic on tele­vi­sion that night (in black and white, not the col­or ver­sion above.) For a time, it was hard to find a men­tion of the film on IMDB and a dam­aged edu­ca­tion­al print was one of the few copies cir­cu­lat­ing around. For­tu­nate­ly the British Film Insti­tute has made a pris­tine copy avail­able of this impor­tant Cold War doc­u­ment.

What we want to know is this: Did Steven Spiel­berg see this movie that Sun­day night in 1956? He would have been 10 years old.

A Short Vision will be added to the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via A Wast­ed Life

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dick Van Dyke, Paul Lyn­de & the Orig­i­nal Cast of Bye Bye Birdie Appear on The Ed Sul­li­van Show (1961)

Ani­mat­ed Films Made Dur­ing the Cold War Explain Why Amer­i­ca is Excep­tion­al­ly Excep­tion­al

Dizzy Gille­spie Wor­ries About Nuclear & Envi­ron­men­tal Dis­as­ter in Vin­tage Ani­mat­ed Films

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. 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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Human: The Movie Features Interviews with 2,020 People from 60 Countries on What It Means to Be Human

in Environment, Film, Life, Travel | September 29th, 2015

What is it that makes us human? And how best to ensure that we all get our fair say?

For direc­tor, pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and envi­ron­men­tal activist Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the answers lay in fram­ing all of his inter­view sub­jects using the same sin­gle image lay­out. The for­mal sim­plic­i­ty and unwa­ver­ing gaze of his new doc­u­men­tary, Human, encour­age view­ers to per­ceive his 2,020 sub­jects as equals in the sto­ry­telling realm.

There’s a deep diver­si­ty of expe­ri­ences on dis­play here, arranged for max­i­mum res­o­nance.

The qui­et­ly con­tent first wife of a polyg­a­mist mar­riage is fol­lowed by a polyamorous fel­low, whose uncon­ven­tion­al lifestyle is a source of both tor­ment and joy.

There’s a death row inmate. A lady so con­fi­dent she appears with her hair in curlers.

Where on earth did he find them?

His sub­jects hail from 60 coun­tries. Arthus-Bertrand obvi­ous­ly went out of his way to be inclu­sive, result­ing in a wide spec­trum of gen­der and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tions, and sub­jects with dis­abil­i­ties, one a Hiroshi­ma sur­vivor.

Tears, laugh­ter, con­flict­ing emo­tions… stu­dents of the­ater and psy­chi­a­try would do well to book­mark this page. There’s a lot one can glean from observ­ing these sub­jects’ unguard­ed faces.

The project was inspired by an impromp­tu chat with a Malian farmer. The direc­tor was impressed by the frank­ness with which this stranger spoke of his life and dreams:

I dreamed of a film in which the pow­er of words would res­onate with the beau­ty of the world. Putting the ills of human­i­ty at the heart of my work—poverty, war, immi­gra­tion, homophobia—I made cer­tain choic­es. Com­mit­ted, polit­i­cal choic­es. But the men talked to me about every­thing: their dif­fi­cul­ty in grow­ing as well as their love and hap­pi­ness. This rich­ness of the human word lies at the heart of Human. 

In Vol­ume I, above, the inter­vie­wees con­sid­er love, women, work, and pover­ty. Vol­ume II deals with war, for­give­ness, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, fam­i­ly, and the after­life. Hap­pi­ness, edu­ca­tion, dis­abil­i­ty, immi­gra­tion, cor­rup­tion, and the mean­ing of life are the con­cerns of the third vol­ume .

The inter­view seg­ments are bro­ken up by aer­i­al sequences, rem­i­nis­cent of the images in Arthus-Bertrand’s book, The Earth from Above. It’s a good reminder of how small we all are in the grand scheme of things.

Appro­pri­ate­ly, giv­en the sub­ject mat­ter, and the director’s long­time inter­est in envi­ron­men­tal issues, the film­ing and pro­mo­tion were accom­plished in the most sus­tain­able way, with the sup­port of the Good­Plan­et Foun­da­tion and the Unit­ed Car­bon Action pro­gram. It would be love­ly for all human­i­ty if this is a fea­ture of film­mak­ing going for­ward.

The Google Cul­tur­al Insti­tute has a col­lec­tion of relat­ed mate­r­i­al, from the mak­ing of the sound­track to behind-the-scenes rem­i­nis­cences of the inter­view team.

Human will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes Us Human?: Chom­sky, Locke & Marx Intro­duced by New Ani­mat­ed Videos from the BBC

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Biol­o­gy That Makes Us Tick: Free Stan­ford Course by Robert Sapol­sky

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her new play, Fawn­book, opens in New York City lat­er this fall. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Gabriel García Márquez Describes the Cultural Merits of Soap Operas, and Even Wrote a Script for One

in Film, Literature | September 28th, 2015

The rela­tion­ship between lit­er­ary writ­ers and the film indus­try has giv­en us many a sto­ry of major cre­ative ten­sion or down­ward mobil­i­ty. Most famous­ly, we have Fitzger­ald—who grav­i­tat­ed to Hol­ly­wood like most writ­ers did, includ­ing the more suc­cess­ful Faulkn­er—for mon­ey. When we look at the career of one of Latin Amer­i­ca’s most cel­e­brat­ed writ­ers, how­ev­er, we find a very dif­fer­ent dynam­ic. Although Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez did not have what we might con­sid­er a suc­cess­ful career in the movies, his inter­est in cinema—as a screen­writer, crit­ic, and even as an actor—stemmed from a gen­uine, life­long love of the medi­um, which he con­sid­ered equal to or sur­pass­ing lit­er­a­ture as a form of sto­ry­telling.

“I thought of myself as a writer of lit­er­a­ture,” says Márquez at the begin­ning of the doc­u­men­tary Mar­quez: Tales Beyond Soli­tude, “but it was my con­vic­tion that the cin­e­ma, the image, had more pos­si­bil­i­ties of expres­sion than lit­er­a­ture.” And yet, he goes on…

Films and tele­vi­sion have indus­tri­al, tech­ni­cal and mechan­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions that lit­er­a­ture doesn’t have. That’s why I said once, in a peri­od of falling out with films, “My rela­tion­ship with film has always been that of an uneasy mar­riage. We can’t live togeth­er or apart.” 

Film even­tu­al­ly need­ed Márquez more than he need­ed film. And yet he nev­er dis­dained more pop­u­lar enter­tain­ments, “pro­duc­ing more than twen­ty screen­plays, some of them for tele­vi­sion,” accord­ing to Alessan­dro Roc­co’s Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez and the Cin­e­ma. He even rel­ished the chance to write soap operas. In 1987, he told an inter­view­er, “I’ve always want­ed to write soap operas. They’re won­der­ful. They reach far more peo­ple than books do…. The prob­lem is that we’re con­di­tion [sic] to think that a soap opera is nec­es­sar­i­ly in bad taste, and I don’t believe this to be so.” Márquez felt that the “only dif­fer­ence between La bel­la palom­era” [a TV film based on his Love in the Time of Cholera] and “a bad soap opera is that the for­mer is well writ­ten.” Though his pro­nounce­ments on the cre­ative poten­tial of tele­vi­sion may seem pre­scient today, they did not seem so at the time.

In 1989, Márquez got his chance to write for tele­vi­sion soap operas, with a script, The Tele­graph tells us, “about an Eng­lish gov­erness in Venezuela called I Rent Myself Out to Dream.” In the clip above from Tales Beyond Soli­tude, Márquez gives us his demo­c­ra­t­ic phi­los­o­phy of the arts: “To me music, lit­er­a­ture, film, soap operas are dif­fer­ent gen­res with one com­mon end: to reach peo­ple…. In one sin­gle night, one episode of a TV soap can reach, in Colom­bia alone, 10 to 15 mil­lion peo­ple.” He con­trasts this with his book sales and con­cludes, “it’s only nat­ur­al that some­one who wants to reach peo­ple is attract­ed to TV soap like to a mag­net­ic pole. He can­not resist it.”

Márquez also served as the pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tion­al Film and Tele­vi­sion School, in which posi­tion, he said, “I can’t start by being scorn­ful of TV.” And yet the nov­el­ist’s regard for soaps was not sim­ply a mat­ter of pro­fes­sion­al­ism. “For me,” he said, “there’s no divid­ing line between cin­e­ma and tele­vi­sion, they’re just images in motion.” Ulti­mate­ly, we can see Gar­cia Márquez’s total faith in the nar­ra­tive poten­tial of all forms of pop­u­lar narrative—film, folk tale, the cher­ished telen­ov­ela—as an essen­tial part of his writer­ly ethos, which has tak­en him from the dai­ly scrum of the news­room to the Nobel cer­e­mo­ny stage in Stock­holm. “Ulti­mate­ly all cul­ture,” he says else­where in the doc­u­men­tary, “is pop­u­lar cul­ture.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Talk About Film­mak­ing (and Nuclear Bombs) in Six Hour Inter­view

Read 10 Short Sto­ries by Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Free Online (Plus More Essays & Inter­views)

Lit­er­ary Remains of Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Will Rest in Texas

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

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“Bleu, Blanc, Rouge”: a Striking Supercut of the Vivid Colors in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960s Films

in Film | September 28th, 2015

What’s your favorite col­or? A sim­ple ques­tion, sure — the very first one many of us learn to ask — but one to con­sid­er seri­ous­ly if you see a future for your­self in film­mak­ing. Ear­li­er this year, we fea­tured video stud­ies on the use of the col­or red by Wes Ander­son and Stan­ley Kubrick. Yasu­jiro Ozu, as Jonathan Crow points out in that post, “made the jump to col­or movies very reluc­tant­ly late in his career and prompt­ly became obsessed with the col­or red,” and a teaket­tle of that col­or even became his visu­al sig­na­ture. No less an auteur than Krzysztof Kieślows­ki made not just a pic­ture called Red, but anoth­er called Blue and anoth­er called White, which togeth­er form the acclaimed “Three Col­ors” tril­o­gy.

Jean-Luc Godard, nev­er one to be out­done, has also made vivid use through­out his career of not just red but white and blue as well. The video above, “Bleu, Blanc, Rouge — A Godard Super­cut,” com­piles three min­utes of such col­or­ful moments from the Godard fil­mog­ra­phy, draw­ing from his works A Woman Is a Woman, Con­tempt, Pier­rot le Fou, and Made in U.S.A., all of which did much to define 1960s world cin­e­ma, cap­tur­ing with their vivid col­ors per­for­mances by Godar­d­ian icons Jean-Paul Bel­mon­do and Anna Kari­na.

“Bleu, Blanc, Rouge” comes from Cin­e­ma Sem Lei, the source of anoth­er aes­thet­i­cal­ly dri­ven video essay we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on how Ger­man Expres­sion­ism influ­enced Tim Bur­ton. This one makes less of an argu­ment than that one did, but tru­ly obses­sive cinephiles may still find them­selves able to con­struct one. An obvi­ous start­ing point: we con­sid­er few film­mak­ers as French as Godard, and which coun­try’s flag has these very col­ors? Well, besides those of Amer­i­ca, Aus­tralia, Cam­bo­dia, Chile, Cuba, Ice­land, North Korea, Lux­em­bourg, Schleswig-Hol­stein, Thai­land, and so on. And in inter­views, Godard has dis­tanced him­self from pure French­ness, pre­fer­ring the des­ig­na­tion “Fran­co-Swiss.” But still, you can start think­ing there. Or you can just enjoy the images.

Relat­ed Content:

How Ger­man Expres­sion­ism Influ­enced Tim Bur­ton: A Video Essay

Wes Ander­son Likes the Col­or Red (and Yel­low)

Jean-Luc Godard Gives a Dra­mat­ic Read­ing of Han­nah Arendt’s “On the Nature of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism”

A Young Jean-Luc Godard Picks the 10 Best Amer­i­can Films Ever Made (1963)

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick (1971)

Jean-Luc Godard’s Debut, Opéra­tion béton(1955) — a Con­struc­tion Doc­u­men­tary

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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David Bowie Sings in a Wonderful M.C. Escher-Inspired Set in Jim Henson’s Labyrinth

in Film | September 22nd, 2015

A gen­er­a­tion grew up watch­ing and re-watch­ing Jim Hen­son’s Labyrinth. Now, their fond mem­o­ries of that musi­cal fantasy—featuring not just Hen­son’s sig­na­ture pup­pets but live actors like Jen­nifer Con­nel­ly and David Bowie—have got them try­ing to turn their own chil­dren on to the movie’s won­ders. Some now regard Labyrinth as a goofy, flam­boy­ant nov­el­ty suit­able for no oth­er audi­ence but chil­dren, but that gives short shrift to the con­sid­er­able craft that went into it. To get a sense of that, we need only take a look at Jim Hen­son’s Red Book.

Hen­son kept the Red Book, a kind of diary writ­ten one line at a time, until 1988, not long after Labyrinth’s release, and it cap­tures intrigu­ing details of the film’s pro­duc­tion. On its site, the Jim Hen­son Com­pa­ny has sup­ple­ment­ed the Red Book’s entries with oth­er mate­ri­als, such as the mak­ing-of clip above, which shows what went into the scene where “Bowie’s char­ac­ter Jareth taunts Sarah (Jen­nifer Con­nel­ly) as she tries to get to her broth­er Toby (Toby Froud) in an elab­o­rate set inspired by the art of Dutch artist and illus­tra­tor M.C. Esch­er.”

Hen­son and his team want­ed to bring into three dimen­sions “Escher’s images of seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble archi­tec­ture where stairs seemed to lead both up and down at the same time. The inabil­i­ty of the view­er to rec­og­nize what is and is not real was a theme the per­me­at­ed some of Jim’s exper­i­men­tal works in the 1960s and was explored at length in the film.” You can watch the still-con­vinc­ing final prod­uct, in which Bowie sings the song “With­in  You” while step­ping and leap­ing from one per­spec­tive-defy­ing plat­form or stair­way to anoth­er, just above. Spe­cial cred­it for pulling all this off goes to the film’s pro­duc­tion design­er Elliot Scott. But from which mem­ber of the team should we demand an expla­na­tion for, by far, the most bizarre visu­al aspect of Labyrinth — David Bowie’s hair?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Paper Dolls Recre­ate Some of the Style Icon’s Most Famous Looks

Watch The Sur­re­al 1960s Films and Com­mer­cials of Jim Hen­son

Jim Henson’s Orig­i­nal, Spunky Pitch for The Mup­pet Show

Jim Henson’s Zany 1963 Robot Film Uncov­ered by AT&T: Watch Online

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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