The Letter Between Stanley Kubrick & Arthur C. Clarke That Sparked the Greatest SciFi Film Ever Made (1964)

in Film, Letters | May 14th, 2015

Clarke and Kubrick

Image cour­tesy of 2001Italia

Ori­gin sto­ries are all the rage these days giv­en the ubiq­ui­ty of super­hero films and tele­vi­sion series. But for all their smash-em-up spec­ta­cle and break­neck pac­ing, they gen­er­al­ly feel over­stuffed and dis­pos­able. As with the Age of Ultron, there is an age, every sum­mer, of some Mar­vel or DC hero or oth­er. Or all of them at once, at this point, in a per­pet­u­al onslaught. On the oth­er hand, we still have the qui­et­ly omi­nous, thought­ful sci­ence fic­tion film, the off­spring of Nico­las Roeg and Andrei Tarkovsky, in movies like Ex Machi­na. These come and go, some bet­ter than oth­ers, but also always with us. Dif­fer­ent as these two types of films can be, in style and tone, nei­ther would like­ly look and feel the way they do with­out Stan­ley Kubrick’s intense­ly intro­spec­tive and pro­found­ly epic 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The ori­gin sto­ry of this incred­i­ble 1968 film begins on March 31, 1964 when Kubrick wrote the let­ter below to Arthur C. Clarke, propos­ing that the two col­lab­o­rate on “the prover­bial ‘real­ly good’ sci­ence fic­tion film.” “I had been a great admir­er of your books for quite a time,” writes Kubrick, and gives Clarke three “broad areas” of inter­est, “nat­u­ral­ly assum­ing great plot and char­ac­ter.” Nat­u­ral­ly.

“Clarke’s response,” writes BFI, “was imme­di­ate­ly enthu­si­as­tic, express­ing a mutu­al admi­ra­tion.” Kubrick, Clarke told their mutu­al friend Roger Caras, “is obvi­ous­ly an aston­ish­ing man.” In his response to the direc­tor him­self, Clarke wrote on April 8, ““For my part, I am absolute­ly dying to see Dr. Strangelove; Loli­ta is one of the few films I have seen twice – the first time to enjoy it, the sec­ond time to see how it was done.” The two met in New York and talked for hours, and from Clarke’s short sto­ry “The Sen­tinel of Eter­ni­ty” was born per­haps the best “real­ly good” sci­ence fic­tion film ever made.

letter-stanley-kubrick-arthur-c-clarke-001_1

Clarke would com­pare the dif­fer­ences between the sto­ry and the film to those between an acorn and an oak tree, accord­ing to Ital­ian Kubrick site 2001Italia. After that meet­ing, the two would spend almost four years writ­ing the screen­play togeth­er and envi­sion­ing the har­row­ing voy­age to Jupiter that ends so tragically—and strangely—for the two astro­nauts left to expe­ri­ence it. It’s a col­lab­o­ra­tive suc­cess Kubrick clear­ly fore­saw when he approached Clarke, but in his let­ter, above, with tran­script below—cour­tesy of Let­ters of Note—he plays it cool, using the pre­text of a tele­scope Clarke owned to slip in dis­cus­sion about the film project. We are almost led to believe,” writes 2001Italia, “that the movie was an excuse” to dis­cuss the gad­get. But of course we know bet­ter.

Dear Mr Clarke:

It’s a very inter­est­ing coin­ci­dence that our mutu­al friend Caras men­tioned you in a con­ver­sa­tion we were hav­ing about a Ques­tar tele­scope. I had been a great admir­er of your books for quite a time and had always want­ed to dis­cuss with you the pos­si­bil­i­ty of doing the prover­bial “real­ly good” sci­ence-fic­tion movie.

My main inter­est lies along these broad areas, nat­u­ral­ly assum­ing great plot and char­ac­ter:

  1. The rea­sons for believ­ing in the exis­tence of intel­li­gent extra-ter­res­tri­al life.
  2. The impact (and per­haps even lack of impact in some quar­ters) such dis­cov­ery would have on Earth in the near future.
  3. A space probe with a land­ing and explo­ration of the Moon and Mars.

Roger [Caras ]tells me you are plan­ning to come to New York this sum­mer. Do you have an inflex­i­ble sched­ule? If not, would you con­sid­er com­ing soon­er with a view to a meet­ing, the pur­pose of which would be to deter­mine whether an idea might exist or arise which could suf­fi­cient­ly inter­est both of us enough to want to col­lab­o­rate on a screen­play?

Inci­den­tal­ly, “Sky & Tele­scope” adver­tise a num­ber of scopes. If one has the room for a medi­um size scope on a pedestal, say the size of a cam­era tri­pod, is there any par­tic­u­lar mod­el in a class by itself, as the Ques­tar is for small portable scopes?

Best regards,

Kubrick pur­sued his projects very delib­er­ate­ly and pas­sion­ate­ly, moti­vat­ed by great per­son­al inter­est. Though his films can feel detached and cold, and he him­self seems like a very aloof char­ac­ter, the oppo­site was true, accord­ing to those who knew him best. Below, see a short video from The Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts London’s Stan­ley Kubrick Archive pro­fil­ing the way Kubrick went about choos­ing his films, best summed up by Jan Har­lon, Kubrick’s broth­er-in-law and pro­duc­er: “No love, no qual­i­ty, and in Stanley’s case, no love, no film.”

via BFI

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Rare 1965 Inter­view with The New York­er

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964 … And Kind of Nails It

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

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Monty Python and the Holy Grail Re-Imagined as an Epic, Mainstream Hollywood Film

in Comedy, Film | May 12th, 2015

The orig­i­nal 1975 trail­er for Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail (below) start­ed to make some big claims for itself. It opens, with the nar­ra­tor declar­ing:

Once in a life­time there comes a motion pic­ture which changes the whole his­to­ry of motion pic­tures. A pic­ture so stun­ning in its effect, so vast in its impact that it pro­found­ly affects the lives of all who see it.

But then comes the self-effac­ing punch­line deliv­ered by anoth­er nar­ra­tor in Japan­ese:

One such film is Kuro­sawa’s “The Sev­en Samu­rai.” Anoth­er was “Ivan the Ter­ri­ble.” Then there are more run-of-the mill films like “Her­bie Rides Again,” “La Notte” and “Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail.”

… So, if you’re an intel­lec­tu­al midget and you feel like gig­gling, you could do worse than see Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail.

Clas­sic Python!

Now, if want a Python trail­er that takes itself seri­ous­ly, look no fur­ther than the clip above. Cre­at­ed last year, this trail­er re-imag­ines Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail as a main­stream Hol­ly­wood film. No wit. All cheese. If you dig the con­cept, you can see sim­i­lar rework­ings of Stan­ley Kubrick films here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es

Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail­Cen­sor­ship Let­ter: We Want to Retain “Fart in Your Gen­er­al Direc­tion”

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

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Watch Miles Davis Improvise Music for Elevator to the Gallows, Louis Malle’s New Wave Thriller (1958)

in Film, Jazz, Music | May 11th, 2015

The modal exper­i­men­ta­tion in Miles Davis’ clas­sic albums Mile­stones and, espe­cial­ly, 1959’s Kind of Blue seemed to come out of nowhere. Along with sim­i­lar­ly ground­break­ing releas­es at the end of the fifties, these records irrev­o­ca­bly changed the sound of jazz. But hard­core jazz fans, and cinephiles, would have seen the devel­op­ment com­ing, hav­ing heard Davis’ sound­track to Louis Malle’s 1958 crime thriller Ele­va­tor to the Gal­lows (Ascenseur pour l’Echafaud—trail­er below). As the sto­ry goes, Davis hap­pened to be in Paris in 1957 dur­ing the film’s post­pro­duc­tion to per­form at the Club Saint-Ger­main. Malle’s assistant—perhaps inspired by the moody jazz sound­tracks of films like Roger Vadim’s Does One Ever Know and Alexan­der Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Suc­cess—sug­gest­ed Davis to the direc­tor. After a pri­vate screen­ing of the film, the trum­peter and com­pos­er agreed to take the gig. It was Davis’ first sound­track and Malle’s first fea­ture film.

At the top of the post, we have the great priv­i­lege of seeing—and hearing—Miles and his four side­men record the sound­track, live. The two-day ses­sion took place at Le Post Parisien Stu­dio in Paris on Decem­ber 4th and 5th. Accord­ing to Discogs, “Davis only gave the musi­cians a few rudi­men­ta­ry har­mon­ic sequences he had assem­bled in his hotel room, and once the plot was explained, the band impro­vised with­out any pre­com­posed theme, while edit­ed loops of the musi­cal­ly rel­e­vant film sequences were pro­ject­ed in the back­ground.”

The filmed ses­sion is cap­ti­vat­ing; Davis and band stare intent­ly at the screen and, on the spot, cre­ate the film’s mood. (In the sec­ond half of the clip, the film­mak­ers ban­ter in French about the pro­duc­tion while Davis plays in the back­ground.) See­ing this footage, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, is akin to “watch­ing Picas­so paint.” Fur­ther­more, “it could be argued that Malle’s cin­e­mat­ic style and the unique pac­ing and char­ac­ter of this par­tic­u­lar film—which Miles obvi­ous­ly had to con­form to in order to score it properly—had a notice­able influ­ence on his music.”

Miles would say as much, claims his biog­ra­ph­er Ian Carr, telling Malle “a year or two lat­er” that “the expe­ri­ence of mak­ing the music for the film had enriched him.” Crit­ic Jean-Louis Gini­bre wrote in Jazz mag­a­zine at the time that Davis “raised him­self to greater heights” dur­ing the ses­sions, “and became aware of the trag­ic char­ac­ter of his music which, until then, had been only dim­ly expressed.” For his part, Malle remarked, “Miles’s commentary—which is of extreme simplicity—gives a real­ly extra­or­di­nary dimen­sion to the visu­al image.” Fans of the film will sure­ly agree. Fans of Miles Davis may want to rush out and get their hands of a copy of the score. (You can find a dimin­ished copy on Youtube here). It was nev­er released in the U.S., but ten songs appeared state­side on an album called Jazz Track. While the sound­track may not work as well with­out the images (All­mu­sic describes some num­bers as “rather ster­ile”), it nonethe­less pro­vides us with a kind of miss­ing link between Davis’ fifties hard bop and the cool jazz he pio­neered the fol­low­ing decade in his most-laud­ed, best-sell­ing album, Kind of Blue.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds/Discogs/

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Miles Davis Sto­ry, the Defin­i­tive Film Biog­ra­phy of a Jazz Leg­end

Miles Davis Plays Music from Kind of Blue Live in 1959, Intro­duc­ing a Com­plete­ly New Style of Jazz

Watch Ani­mat­ed Sheet Music for Miles Davis’ “So What,” Char­lie Parker’s “Con­fir­ma­tion” & Coltrane’s “Giant Steps”

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

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Watch the Pilot of Orson Welles’ Never-Aired Talk Show, Starring the Muppets (1979)

in Film, Television | May 8th, 2015

The Hen­son Rar­i­ties site on YouTube keeps giv­ing and giv­ing. Not only has it giv­en us access to some of Jim Henson’s ear­li­est (and delight­ful­ly vio­lent) com­mer­cials, but it has dis­cov­ered this: a pilot of The Orson Welles Show from 1979. The show was nev­er aired, and you might be able to dis­cern why from check­ing it out.

It’s the height of ‘70s excess with wide col­lars, poly­ester shirts, var­i­ous forms of pre-show indul­gences, and it’s all under­lit like a night­club, not a talk show set. Orson Welles doesn’t inter­view his first guest Burt Reynolds, but instead imme­di­ate­ly throws the ques­tions to the audi­ence, turn­ing the first half of the show into an ur-Actors Stu­dio episode. (An eagle eyed YouTube com­men­ta­tor points out a young–but unver­i­fied–Joe Dante in the audi­ence.) And the entire show has the feel­ing of very, very rough footage saved by edit­ing and heap­ing on table­spoons of canned laugh­ter.

Even­tu­al­ly Welles intro­duces “a lit­tle com­pa­ny of cloth head­ed come­di­ans” that was already in its third sea­son of the Mup­pet Show and about to pre­miere its first movie. (That first Mup­pet Movie, by the way, fea­tures Welles near the end as a movie exec­u­tive.)

Welles, who calls him­self a magi­cian more often than a direc­tor in this episode, no doubt loves the mag­ic behind the Mup­pets. Even when the lights are ful­ly upon Hen­son and his frog pup­pet, we nev­er ques­tion that Ker­mit is not real. In the 50th minute, Welles intro­duces both Hen­son (“pic­ture Rasputin as an Eagle Scout” says the direc­tor) and Frank Oz (“A man who tru­ly fits his name.”)

The show peters out with a mag­ic trick, an appear­ance by Ang­ie Dick­in­son (more tricks!) and a final Welles monolog, who reads Jen­ny Kissed Me by James Leigh Hunt. Like the poem, there’s a shad­ow of maudlin mor­tal­i­ty hang­ing over all of Welles’ lines through­out the show. Six years lat­er Welles would pass away with his final movie unfin­ished, still wait­ing for the cash that he hoped pro­grams like The Orson Welles Show would bring.

via @KirstinButler

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Orson Welles Read Edgar Allan Poe on a Cult Clas­sic Album by The Alan Par­sons Project

Future Shock: Orson Welles Nar­rates a 1972 Film About the Per­ils of Tech­no­log­i­cal Change

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

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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Michael Moore’s 13 Rules for Making Documentaries — Really Powerful & Entertaining Documentaries

in Film, Politics | May 7th, 2015

66ème Festival de Venise (Mostra)

Flickr Com­mons Image by Nico­las Genin

You don’t rile up as many peo­ple as Michael Moore has with­out mas­ter­ing the art of but­ton push­ing. Clint East­wood threat­ened to kill him (alleged­ly). Christo­pher Hitchens, echo­ing the sen­ti­ments of many Iraq war sup­port­ers, called his work “dis­hon­est and dem­a­gog­ic.” And the State Department—opponents of both social­ized health­care and the Cuban government—attempted to dis­cred­it Moore with lies about his film Sicko. Those are some pow­er­ful ene­mies, espe­cial­ly for a “come­di­an and a pop­ulist” whose only weapons are cam­eras, micro­phones, and best­selling top­i­cal rants. On the oth­er hand, Moore inspires mil­lions of reg­u­lar folks. As far back as 2004, a pro­file in The New York­er described the simul­ta­ne­ous­ly angry and jovial doc­u­men­tar­i­an as “a polit­i­cal hero” to mil­lions who “revere” him.

How does a doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er cre­ate such pas­sion? Moore, writes The New York­er, inten­tion­al­ly pro­vokes; but he is also “exquis­ite­ly sen­si­tive to his audience’s mood and response. The harsh­ness of his com­e­dy, the pro­por­tion of com­e­dy to polit­i­cal anger, the flat­tery or mock­ery of the audi­ence, the num­ber and type of swear­words he uses….” All care­ful­ly con­trolled. And all of it adds up to some­thing more than doc­u­men­tary. Moore treats the term almost as a pejo­ra­tive, as he told an audi­ence in his keynote speech at the 2014 Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Festival’s Doc Con­fer­ence. Typ­i­cal doc­u­men­tar­i­ans, Moore said, “sound like a scold. Like you’re Moth­er Supe­ri­or with a wood­en ruler in your hand.”

Some crit­ics of Moore make this very charge against him. Nonethe­less, his abil­i­ty to move peo­ple, both in the­aters and live audi­ences, to tears, peals of laugh­ter, and fits of rage, speaks of much more than humor­less moral­ism. Doc­u­men­tar­i­ans, Moore says in the 13-point “man­i­festo” of his speech, should aspire to more. Hence his first rule, which he derives part­ly from Fight Club. Below it, see abridg­ments of the oth­er twelve guide­lines, and read Moore’s speech in its entire­ty at Indiewire. If he repeats him­self, and he does, a lot, I sup­pose it’s because he feels the point is impor­tant enough to dri­ve home many times:

1. The first rule of doc­u­men­taries is: Don’t make a doc­u­men­tary — make a MOVIE.

…the audi­ence, the peo­ple who’ve worked hard all week — it’s Fri­day night, and they want to go to the movies. They want the lights to go down and be tak­en some­where. They don’t care whether you make them cry, whether you make them laugh, whether you even chal­lenge them to think — but damn it, they don’t want to be lec­tured, they don’t want to see our invis­i­ble wag­ging fin­ger pop­ping out of the screen. They want to be enter­tained.

2. Don’t tell me shit I already know.

Oh, I see — you made the movie because there are so many peo­ple who DON’T know about genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied foods. And you’re right. There are. And they just can’t wait to give up their Sat­ur­day to learn about it

3. The mod­ern doc­u­men­tary sad­ly has mor­phed into what looks like a col­lege lec­ture, the col­lege lec­ture mode of telling a sto­ry.

That has to stop. We have to invent a dif­fer­ent way, a dif­fer­ent kind of mod­el.

4. I don’t like Cas­tor Oil…. Too many of your doc­u­men­taries feel like med­i­cine.

The peo­ple don’t want med­i­cine. If they need med­i­cine, they go to the doc­tor. They don’t want med­i­cine in the movie the­aters. They want Goobers, they want pop­corn, and they want to see a great movie.

5. The Left is bor­ing.

…we’ve lost our sense of humor and we need to be less bor­ing. We used to be fun­ny. The Left was fun­ny in the 60s, and then we got real­ly too damn seri­ous. I don’t think it did us any good.

6. Why don’t more of your films go after the real vil­lains — and I mean the REAL vil­lains?

Why aren’t you nam­ing names? Why don’t we have more doc­u­men­taries that are going after cor­po­ra­tions by name? Why don’t we have more doc­u­men­taries going after the Koch Broth­ers and nam­ing them by name?

7. I think it’s impor­tant to make your films per­son­al.

I don’t mean to put your­self nec­es­sar­i­ly in the film or in front of the cam­era. Some of you, the cam­era does not like you. Do not go in front of the cam­era. And I would count myself as one of those. … But peo­ple want to hear the voice of a per­son. The vast major­i­ty of these doc­u­men­tary films that have had the most suc­cess are the ones with a per­son­al voice.

8. Point your cam­eras at the cam­eras.

Show the peo­ple why the main­stream media isn’t telling them what is going on.      

9. Books and TV have non­fic­tion fig­ured out. Peo­ple love to watch Stew­art and Col­bert. Why don’t you make films that come from that same spir­it? 

Why would­n’t you want the same huge audi­ence they have? Why is it that the Amer­i­can audi­ence says, I love non­fic­tion books and I love non­fic­tion TV — but there’s no way you’re drag­ging me into a non­fic­tion movie! Yet, they want the truth AND they want to be enter­tained. Yes, repeat after me, they want to be enter­tained!

10. As much as pos­si­ble, try to film only the peo­ple who dis­agree with you.

That is what is real­ly inter­est­ing. We learn so much more by you train­ing your cam­era on the guy from Exxon or Gen­er­al Motors and get­ting him to just blab on.

11. The audi­ence is part of the film.

While you are film­ing a scene for your doc­u­men­tary, are you get­ting mad at what you are see­ing? Are you cry­ing? Are you crack­ing up so much that you are afraid that the micro­phone is going to pick it up? If that is hap­pen­ing while you are film­ing it, then there is a very good chance that’s how the audi­ence is going to respond, too. Trust that. You are the audi­ence, too.

12. Less is more. You already know that one.

Edit. Cut. Make it short­er. Say it with few­er words. Few­er scenes. Don’t think your shit smells like per­fume. It does­n’t.

13. Final­ly… Sound is more impor­tant than pic­ture.

Pay your sound woman or sound man the same as you pay the DP, espe­cial­ly now with doc­u­men­taries. Sound car­ries the sto­ry. It’s true in a fic­tion film, too.

So there you have it aspir­ing film­mak­ers. Should you to wish to gal­va­nize, polar­ize, move, and inspire your audi­ence as you tell them the truth (as you see it), you’d do well to take a few point­ers from Michael Moore. Polit­i­cal differences—and homi­ci­dal urges—aside, even par­tic­u­lar­ly right-lean­ing doc­u­men­tary direc­tors might con­sid­er tak­ing a few pages from Moore’s play­book. A few media per­son­al­i­ties, it seems, already have, at least when it comes to defin­ing their pur­pose. One last time, with feel­ing, for the TL;DR crowd: “Yes, repeat after me, [audi­ences] want to be enter­tained! If you can’t accept that you are an enter­tain­er with your truth, then please get out of the busi­ness.”

via Indiewire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michael Moore Tells Wis­con­sin Teach­ers “Amer­i­ca Isn’t Broke”

Bowl­ing for Columbine: It’s Online and 10 Years Lat­er the School Mas­sacres Con­tin­ue. Have You Had Enough?!

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

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The 10 Greatest Films of All Time According to 358 Filmmakers

in Film | May 6th, 2015

Every ten years, film jour­nal Sight and Sound con­ducts a world­wide sur­vey of film crit­ics to decide which films are con­sid­ered the best ever made. Start­ed in 1952, the poll is now wide­ly regard­ed as the most impor­tant and respect­ed out there.

And the crit­i­cal con­sen­sus for a long time was that the mas­ter­piece Cit­i­zen Kane by Orson Welles (born 100 years ago today, by the way) is the best of the best. The film topped the list for five decades from 1962 until 2002. Then in 2012, per­haps out of Kane fatigue, Alfred Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go mus­cled its way to the top.

That’s what the crit­ics think. But what about the film­mak­ers?

Begin­ning in 1992, Sight and Sound start­ed to poll famed direc­tors about their opin­ions. Peo­ple like Mar­tin Scors­ese, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, Mike Leigh and Michael Mann. So what is the best movie ever made accord­ing to 358 direc­tors polled in 2012? Kane? Ver­ti­go? Per­haps Jean Renoir’s bril­liant Rules of the Game, the only movie to appear in the top ten for all sev­en crit­ics polls? No.

Tokyo_Monogatari_1953

Instead, the top prize goes to Yasu­jiro Ozu’s Tokyo Sto­ry.

It’s a sur­pris­ing, an enlight­ened, choice. Ozu’s work is miles away from the flash of Kane and the psy­cho­sex­u­al weird­ness of Ver­ti­go. Tokyo Sto­ry is a gen­tle, nuanced por­trait of a fam­i­ly whose bonds are slow­ly, inex­orably being frayed by the demands of mod­ern­iza­tion. The movie’s emo­tion­al pow­er is restrained and cumu­la­tive; by the final cred­its you’ll be over­whelmed both with a Bud­dhist sense of the imper­ma­nence of all things and a strong urge to call your moth­er.

But per­haps the rea­son film­mak­ers picked Tokyo Sto­ry of all the oth­er cin­e­mat­ic mas­ter­pieces out there is because of Ozu’s unique approach to film. Since the days of D. W. Grif­fith, almost every film­mak­er under the sun, even cin­e­mat­ic rebels like Jean-Luc Godard, fol­lowed some basic con­ven­tions of the form like con­ti­nu­ity edit­ing, the 180-degree rule and match­ing eye­lines. Ozu dis­card­ed all of that. Instead, he con­struct­ed a high­ly idio­syn­crat­ic cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage revolv­ing around match cuts and rig­or­ous­ly com­posed shots. His film form was rad­i­cal but his sto­ries were uni­ver­sal. That is the para­dox of Ozu. You can see the trail­er of the movie above.


Cit­i­zen Kane does make num­ber two on the list but the film is tied with anoth­er for­mal­ly rig­or­ous mas­ter­piece – Stan­ley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Next on the list is per­haps the best movie ever about mak­ing a movie – Fed­eri­co Fellini’s 8 ½. And Ozu’s film might be num­ber one, but Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la is the only film­mak­er to have two movies on the list – The God­fa­ther and Apoc­a­lypse Now. And that’s no mean feat.

You can see the full list below:

1. Tokyo Sto­ry — Yasu­jiro Ozu (1953)
= 2. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Stan­ley Kubrick (1968)
= 2. Cit­i­zen Kane – Orson Welles (1941)
4. 8 ½ — Fed­eri­co Felli­ni (1963)
5. Taxi Dri­ver – Mar­tin Scors­ese (1976)
6. Apoc­a­lypse Now – Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la (1979)
= 7. The God­fa­ther – Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la (1972)
= 7. Ver­ti­go – Alfred Hitch­cock (1958)
9. Mir­ror – Andrei Tarkovsky (1974)
10. Bicy­cle Thieves – Vit­to­rio De Sica (1949)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

The 10 Great­est Films of All Time Accord­ing to 846 Film Crit­ics

Woody Allen Lists the Great­est Films of All Time: Includes Clas­sics by Bergman, Truf­faut & Felli­ni

Mar­tin Scors­ese Reveals His 12 Favorite Movies (and Writes a New Essay on Film Preser­va­tion)

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was the Genius Behind Cit­i­zen Kane

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

in Art, Film | April 28th, 2015

The doc­u­men­tary form, like every oth­er kind of onscreen sto­ry­telling, is a very recent devel­op­ment in human his­to­ry. Yet we tend to take for grant­ed the way in which it con­structs our sense of reality—from not only much-maligned real­i­ty TV, but also end­less loops of cable news and Net­flix chan­nels. But the man wide­ly cred­it­ed with the inven­tion of doc­u­men­tary film, Dzi­ga Ver­tov, made decid­ed­ly anti-sto­ry movies, par­tic­u­lar­ly his Man With a Movie Cam­era (watch it online here)—a film that jars con­tem­po­rary sen­si­bil­i­ties. With no nar­ra­tive to speak of, the movie con­tains rough­ly 1,775 sep­a­rate shots from three cities, shot over four years time, and edit­ed togeth­er by his wife. Its view­ing is indeed a dizzy­ing expe­ri­ence, and its direc­tor Vertov—born David Kaufman—truly illus­trates the aes­thet­ic of his pseu­do­nym, which means “spin­ning top.”

Vertov’s rad­i­cal exper­i­men­ta­tion did not begin and end with Man With a Movie Cam­era or his oth­er avant-garde doc­u­men­taries and ani­ma­tions. (Find eight of Ver­tov’s films here.) Once a psy­chol­o­gy stu­dent in Pet­ro­grad, the future film­mak­er start­ed his artis­tic career as a writer of futur­ist poet­ry and sci­ence fic­tion. Entranced by emerg­ing record­ing tech­nol­o­gy and com­mit­ted to dis­rupt­ing tra­di­tion­al forms, in 1916 Ver­tov began, writes Mono­skop, “exper­i­ment­ing with the per­cep­tion and arrange­ment of sound.”

He cre­at­ed “sound poems,” and pro­duced “ver­bal mon­tage struc­tures.” Of his audio art, Ver­tov remarked, “I had an idea about the need to enlarge our abil­i­ty for orga­nized hear­ing. Not lim­it­ing this abil­i­ty to the bound­aries of usu­al music. I decid­ed to include the entire audi­ble world into the con­cept of ‘Hear­ing.’”

After the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, Ver­tov embraced Bol­she­vist agit-prop; his “Kino-Prav­da,” or “truth films,” cel­e­brat­ed indus­tri­al­iza­tion and the Russ­ian work­er. His first sound film, Enthu­si­asm! The Don­bass Sym­pho­ny (1930)—a “paean to coal and steel workers”—integrates his exper­i­ments with sound record­ing in an entire­ly nov­el way. Ubuweb describes the film and its accom­pa­ny­ing sound­track as “Vertov’s most rev­o­lu­tion­ary achieve­ment: a sym­pho­ny of abstract indus­tri­al noise for which a spe­cial­ly designed giant mobile recod­ing sys­tem was con­struct­ed (it weighed over a ton) in order to cap­ture the din of mines, fur­naces and fac­to­ries. For Ver­tov, the intro­duc­tion of sound film didn’t mean talkies, but the oppor­tu­ni­ty to col­lage, mon­tage and splice togeth­er con­struc­tions of pure envi­ron­men­tal noise.”

You can hear three excerpts of this indus­tri­al sound col­lage above and the remain­ing sev­en at Ubuweb. Lis­ten to them first as exam­ples of “sound poems,” then watch Enthu­si­asm: The Don­bass Sym­pho­ny at the top for a bet­ter under­stand­ing of why Ver­tov remains such an influ­en­tial, indeed essen­tial, film—and audio—artist wide­ly cred­it­ed with free­ing new media from the aes­thet­ic con­fines of the stage and the page. Just below, lis­ten to one of Ver­tov’s ear­ly exper­i­ments with doc­u­men­tary sound art, from 1916. Just as he sought to cre­ate an inter­na­tion­al work­er’s visu­al lan­guage through film, “Through radio, he attempt­ed to estab­lish audi­to­ry com­mu­ni­ca­tion across the whole of the world’s pro­le­tari­at by way of record­ing the sounds of work­places and of life itself.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Dzi­ga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Cam­era, the 8th Best Film Ever Made

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Unset­tling Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Eight Free Films by Dzi­ga Ver­tov, Cre­ator of Sovi­et Avant-Garde Doc­u­men­taries

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

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Fritz Lang Tells the Riveting Story of the Day He Met Joseph Goebbels and Then High-Tailed It Out of Germany

in Film, History | April 28th, 2015

The more World War II his­to­ry you read, the more you under­stand not just the evil of the Nazis, but their incom­pe­tence. Some­times you hear vari­a­tions on the obser­va­tion that “in Nazi Ger­many, at least the trains ran on time,” but even that has gone up for debate. It seems more and more that the Holo­caust-per­pe­trat­ing polit­i­cal par­ty got by pri­mar­i­ly on their way with pro­pa­gan­da — and in that, they did have a tru­ly for­mi­da­ble appa­ra­tus.

Much of the dubi­ous cred­it there goes to Hitler’s close asso­ciate Joseph Goebbels, Reich Min­is­ter of Pro­pa­gan­da and an anti-semi­te even by Nazi stan­dards. “Pow­er based on guns may be a good thing,” he said in a 1934 Nurem­berg Par­ty Con­ven­tion speech. “It is, how­ev­er, bet­ter and more grat­i­fy­ing to win the heart of a peo­ple and keep it.” He under­stood the pow­er of film in pur­suit of this end, pro­vid­ing not only essen­tial assis­tance for pro­duc­tions like Leni Riefen­stahl’s Tri­umph of the Will, but also attempt­ing to recruit no less a lead­ing light of Ger­man cin­e­ma than Fritz Lang, direc­tor of three Doc­tor Mabuse pic­tures, the pro­to-noir M, and the expres­sion­ist epic Metrop­o­lis.

Goebbels loved Metrop­o­lis, but had rather less appre­ci­a­tion for The Tes­ta­ment of Dr. Mabuse, going so far as to ban it for its sup­posed poten­tial to instill in its view­ers a dis­trust of their lead­ers. And so, on one fate­ful day in 1933 when Goebbels called Lang to his office, the film­mak­er won­dered if he might find a way to get the ban lift­ed. But Goebbels pre­ferred to talk, at great length, about anoth­er pro­pos­al: Lang’s employ­ment in artis­tic ser­vice of the Nazi cause.

“The Fuhrer and I have seen your films,” Lang quotes Goebbels as say­ing, “and the Fuhrer made clear that ‘this is the man who will give us the nation­al social­ist film.’ ” Feel­ing no choice but to thank Goebbels for the hon­or and osten­si­bly accept the offered (or per­haps insist­ed-upon) posi­tion as the head of state film pro­duc­tion, Lang went home and imme­di­ate­ly told his ser­vant to pre­pare lug­gage “for a one- or two-week trip to Paris,” leav­ing Ger­many that same evening, nev­er to return until the late 1950s. You can hear Lang tell this sto­ry in Ger­man in the clip at the top of the post, and again in Eng­lish, and in more detail, in the 1974 inter­view with William Fried­kin above.

But did it it real­ly hap­pen as he says? In his Film Quar­ter­ly arti­cle “Fritz Lang and Goebbels: Myth and Facts,” Gös­ta Wern­er casts doubt, not­ing that “even though it is high­ly prob­a­ble that Goebbels did offer Lang the post as head of the entire Ger­man film pro­duc­tion, there is not a word about it in Goebbel­s’s usu­al­ly metic­u­lous diary for the year 1933. Lang is not men­tioned there at all.” For Lang’s part, his pass­port’s “for­eign cur­ren­cy stamps from Berlin tes­ti­fy, as do the var­i­ous entry and exit stamps, that between the jour­neys abroad in the sum­mer of 1933 Lang returned to Berlin, which city he left final­ly only on 31 July 1933 — four months after his leg­endary meet­ing with Goebbels and sup­posed dra­mat­ic escape.”

But then, you expect a cer­tain amount of dra­ma from a sto­ry­teller of Lang’s cal­iber, onscreen as well as off. And despite hold­ing the views of, in Wern­er’s words, a “fierce nation­al­ist,” Lang clear­ly made the right choice in real­i­ty by not get­ting caught up in the offices of the Third Reich, when­ev­er and how­ev­er he made that choice. To this day, cinephiles respect and admire the pow­er of Lang’s film­mak­ing — a pow­er that we can only feel relieved did­n’t fall into the wrong hands.

via Bib­liok­lept/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Lam­beth Walk—Nazi Style: The Ear­ly Pro­pa­gan­da Mash Up That Enraged Joseph Goebbels

Metrop­o­lis: Watch a Restored Ver­sion of Fritz Lang’s Mas­ter­piece (1927)

Fritz Lang’s M: The Restored Ver­sion of the Clas­sic 1931 Film

Fritz Lang’s “Licen­tious, Pro­fane, Obscure” Noir Film, Scar­let Street (1945)

Titan­ic: The Nazis Cre­ate a Mega-Bud­get Pro­pa­gan­da Film About the Ill-Fat­ed Ship … and Then Banned It (1943)

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

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