Watch Entr’Acte: René Clair’s Dadaist Masterpiece, Scored by Erik Satie and with Cameos by Marcel Duchamp & Man Ray (1924)

in Art, Film | November 14th, 2014

René Clair’s 1924 avant-garde mas­ter­piece Entr’Acte opens with a can­non fir­ing into the audi­ence and that’s pret­ty much a state­ment of pur­pose for the whole movie. Clair want­ed to shake up the audi­ence, throw­ing it into a dis­ori­ent­ing world of visu­al brava­do and nar­ra­tive absur­di­ty. You can watch it above.

The film was orig­i­nal­ly designed to be screened between two acts of Fran­cis Picabia’s 1924 opera Relâche. Picabia report­ed­ly wrote the syn­op­sis for the film on a sin­gle sheet of paper while din­ing at the famous Parisian restau­rant Maxim’s and sent it to Clair. While that hand­writ­ten note was the gen­e­sis of what we see on screen, it’s Clair sheer cin­e­mat­ic inven­tive­ness that is why the film is still shown in film schools today.

Clair sought to cre­ate a work of “pure cin­e­ma,” so he filled the film with just about every cam­era trick in the book: slow motion, fast motion, split screen and super­im­po­si­tions among oth­ers. The cam­era is unbound and wild­ly kinet­ic. At one point, Clair mounts the cam­era upside down to the front of a roller­coast­er.

In true Dadaist fash­ion, Clair cre­ates a series of strik­ing images – an upskirt shot of a leap­ing bal­le­ri­na; a funer­al pro­ces­sion bound­ing down the street in slow motion; a corpse spring­ing out of a cof­fin – that seem to cry out for an expla­na­tion but remain mad­den­ing­ly, fre­quent­ly hilar­i­ous­ly obscure.

The movie also serves as a class por­trait of the Parisian avant-garde scene of the ear­ly ‘20s. Picabia and Erik Satie – who scored the movie – are the ones who fired that can­non. In anoth­er scene, Mar­cel Duchamp and Man Ray can be seen play­ing chess with each oth­er on a Parisian rooftop.

Com­pared to Luis Bunuel and Sal­vador Dali’s noto­ri­ous 1928 short Un Chien Andalou – a movie that is still quite shock­ing today – Entr’Acte is a much lighter, fun­nier work, one that looks to thwart bour­geois expec­ta­tions of nar­ra­tive log­ic but doesn’t quite try to shock them into indig­nant out­rage. In fact, to mod­ern eyes, the movie feels at times like a par­tic­u­lar­ly unhinged Mon­ty Python skit. Picabia him­self once assert­ed that Entr’acte “respects noth­ing except the right to roar with laugh­ter.” So watch, laugh and pre­pare to be con­fused.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

The Seashell and the Cler­gy­man: The World’s First Sur­re­al­ist Film

David Lynch Presents the His­to­ry of Sur­re­al­ist Film (1987)

A Tour Inside Sal­vador Dalí’s Labyrinthine Span­ish Home

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 vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Charles & Ray Eames’ A Communications Primer Explains the Key to Clear Communication in the Modern Age (1953)

in Design, Film, Technology | November 13th, 2014

You might think that a movie about infor­ma­tion from 1953 couldn’t pos­si­bly be rel­e­vant in the age of iPhone apps and the Inter­net but you’d be wrong. A Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Primer, direct­ed by that pow­er cou­ple of design Charles and Ray Eames, might refer to some hope­less­ly quaint tech­nol­o­gy – com­put­er punch cards, for instance – but the under­ly­ing ideas are as cur­rent as any­thing you’re like­ly to see at a TED talk. You can watch it above.

In fact, the film made for IBM was the result of the first ever mul­ti-media pre­sen­ta­tions that Charles Eames devel­oped for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia and UCLA. Using slides, music, nar­ra­tion and film, Eames broke down some ele­men­tal aspects of com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the audi­ence. Cen­tral to the film is an input/output dia­gram that was laid out by Claude Shan­non, the father of infor­ma­tion the­o­ry, in his 1949 book, The Math­e­mat­i­cal The­o­ry of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion. As the per­haps over­ly sooth­ing nar­ra­tor intones, any mes­sage is trans­mit­ted by a sig­nal through a chan­nel to its receiv­er. While in the chan­nel, the sig­nal is altered and degrad­ed by noise. The key to effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion is to reduce “noise” (con­strued broad­ly) that inter­feres with the mes­sage and to gen­er­al­ly sim­pli­fy things.

The issue of sig­nal vs noise is prob­a­bly more rel­e­vant now in this age of per­pet­u­al dis­trac­tion than it was dur­ing the Eisen­how­er admin­is­tra­tion. Every email, text mes­sage or Buz­zfeed arti­cle seen indi­vid­u­al­ly is clear­ly a sig­nal. Yet for some­one try­ing to work, say on an arti­cle about a short film by Charles and Ray Eames, they are def­i­nite­ly noise.

The Eames use the terms “sig­nal,” “noise,” and “com­mu­ni­ca­tion” quite broad­ly. Not only do they use these terms to describe, say, a radio broad­cast or a mes­sage being relayed by Morse code but also the cre­ation of archi­tec­ture, design and even visu­al art.

The source of a paint­ing is the mind and expe­ri­ence of the painter. Mes­sage? His con­cept of a par­tic­u­lar paint­ing. Trans­mit­ter? His tal­ent and tech­nique. Sig­nal? The paint­ing itself. Receiv­er? All the eyes and ner­vous sys­tems and pre­vi­ous con­di­tion­ing of those who see the paint­ing. Des­ti­na­tion? Their minds, their emo­tions, their expe­ri­ence. Now in this case, the noise that tends to dis­rupt the sig­nal can take many forms. It can be the qual­i­ty of the light. The col­or of the light. The prej­u­dices of the view­er. The idio­syn­crasies of the painter.

Of course, a paint­ing — or a poem, or a film by Andrei Tarkovsky — is a dif­fer­ent kind of sig­nal than an email. It’s mes­sage is mul­ti­lay­ered and mul­ti­va­lent. And while a gen­er­a­tion of cul­tur­al the­o­rists would no doubt chafe at Eames’s reduc­tive, Mod­ernist view of art, it is still inter­est­ing to think of a paint­ing in the same man­ner as smoke sig­nals.

The film’s nar­ra­tor con­tin­ues:

But besides noise, there are oth­er fac­tors that can keep infor­ma­tion from reach­ing its des­ti­na­tion in tact. The back­ground and con­di­tion­ing of the receiv­ing appa­ra­tus may so dif­fer from that of the trans­mit­ter that it may be impos­si­ble for the receiv­er to pick up the sig­nal with­out dis­tor­tion.

That’s about as good a descrip­tion of cable new pun­dits as I’ve ever seen.

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

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Design­ers Charles & Ray Eames Cre­ate a Pro­mo­tion­al Film for the Ground­break­ing Polaroid SX-70 Instant Cam­era (1972)

Charles & Ray Eames’ Icon­ic Film Pow­ers of Ten (1977) and the Less­er-Known Pro­to­type from 1968

Charles and Ray Eames’ Pow­ers of Ten: The Clas­sic Film Re-Imag­ined By 40 Artists

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 vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Watch “The Fountain of Youth,” Orson Welles’ 1958 Pilot That Almost Reinvented TV

in Film, Television | November 12th, 2014

Amer­i­cans say that they love cre­ativ­i­ty but in fact they don’t. As Jes­si­ca Olien notes in Slate, think­ing out­side the box tends to freak peo­ple out. Stud­ies show that teach­ers favor dull but duti­ful stu­dents over cre­ative ones. In the cor­po­rate world, sug­ges­tions made by cre­ative work­ers rou­tine­ly get ignored by their supe­ri­ors. As art crit­ic Dave Hick­ey suc­cinct­ly notes, “Every­body hates it when something’s real­ly great.”

This is prob­a­bly as good a way as any to under­stand Orson Welles’s stunt­ed career. Here was a man of such genius that he rad­i­cal­ly trans­formed just about every cre­ative medi­um he touched. His 1937 pro­duc­tion of Julius Cae­sar, set in con­tem­po­rary Fas­cist Italy, was the toast of Broad­way. His noto­ri­ous radio adap­ta­tion of War of the Worlds was so effec­tive in cre­at­ing a sense of unfold­ing calami­ty that it caused an actu­al pub­lic pan­ic. And his mas­ter­piece Cit­i­zen Kane was so orig­i­nal that it per­plexed audi­ences when it came out. Now, of course, Kane is wide­ly con­sid­ered one of the best movies ever made. In spite of Welles’s ter­rif­ic nat­ur­al tal­ents – he made Kane at age 25 – he con­sis­tent­ly found him­self shut down by the pow­ers that be. The stu­dio butchered Welles’s fol­low up movie The Mag­nif­i­cent Amber­sons, and he strug­gled with stu­dios and financiers for artis­tic con­trol of just about every movie since.

In the 1950s, Welles tried to trans­form anoth­er medi­um – tele­vi­sion. As Dan­ger­ous Minds recent­ly unearthed, Welles made a pilot for The Orson Welles Show in 1956, an anthol­o­gy series backed by Lucille Ball’s pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Desilu. The series was nev­er picked up osten­si­bly because it was (and still is) noth­ing like what you’ve ever seen on TV. Welles incor­po­rat­ed noirish light­ing, rear pro­jec­tion, pho­to stills, in-cam­era set changes and a host of oth­er tech­niques bor­rowed from radio and the stage. Though the net­work dashed all hope of a series, NBC ulti­mate­ly did air the pilot episode — “The Foun­tain of Youth” — on its Col­gate The­ater in 1958.

The sto­ry itself is a deli­cious­ly iron­ic fable adapt­ed from a short sto­ry by John Col­lier. Dressed in a tuxe­do and with a per­pet­u­al wry smirk on his face, Welles nar­rates. (Welles also wrote, direct­ed, set designed the show along with arrang­ing its music.) The less said about the sto­ry, the bet­ter, but it involves a self-obsessed actress, an equal­ly nar­cis­sis­tic ten­nis star and an embit­tered sci­en­tist who claims to have dis­cov­ered the secret to eter­nal youth. Watch it above and think about the fas­ci­nat­ing road TV could have trav­eled.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Eight Inter­views of Orson Welles by Film­mak­er Peter Bog­danovich (1969–1972)

Watch Orson Welles’ The Stranger Free Online, Where 1940s Film Noir Meets Real Hor­rors of WWII

The Hearts of Age: Orson Welles’ Sur­re­al­ist First Film (1934)

Orson Welles Explains Why Igno­rance Was His Major “Gift” to 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 vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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A Visual Introduction to Soviet Montage Theory: A Revolution in Filmmaking

in Film | November 6th, 2014

Between 1908 and 1913, Amer­i­can film­mak­er D. W. Grif­fith made over 400 movies. Over that time, he, along with his fel­low Hol­ly­wood direc­tors, devel­oped con­ti­nu­ity edit­ing. Using such tools as match­ing eye­lines – cut­ting so that the actors appear to be look­ing at each oth­er across dif­fer­ent shots – and the 180-degree rule – which keeps the actors from switch­ing places on the screen – Grif­fith and his cohorts cre­at­ed a visu­al gram­mar that let audi­ences for­get the film’s arti­fice and dis­ap­pear into the sto­ry. By the time Grif­fith released his huge­ly influ­en­tial (and huge­ly racist) mas­ter­work A Birth of A Nation in 1915, the rules of con­ti­nu­ity edit­ing had more or less been worked out. This form of sto­ry­telling was so suc­cess­ful, and prof­itable, that it has been used for just about every Hol­ly­wood movie that has come out since.

Yet just as these rules were being cod­i­fied, film­mak­ers, most­ly Euro­pean, looked for oth­er ways to tell a sto­ry. Ger­man direc­tors like F. W. Mur­nau and Robert Wiene exper­i­ment­ed with cin­e­mat­ic depic­tions of the sub­con­scious. French film­mak­ers like René Clair used cam­era tricks and odd fram­ing to cre­ate works of for­mal beau­ty. But it was the film­mak­ers in the new­ly formed Sovi­et Union that real­ly con­tributed a new way of think­ing about film – Sovi­et Mon­tage. You can watch a video about it above.

When the Bol­she­vik Rev­o­lu­tion washed over the coun­try, the num­ber of films in the USSR dried up. One of the few movies avail­able at VGIK, aka The Moscow Film School, was Griffith’s sprawl­ing Intol­er­ance (watch it online here). Lev Kuleshov, a young teacher there, start­ed to take apart the movie and reorder the images. He dis­cov­ered that the mean­ing of a scene was rad­i­cal­ly changed depend­ing on the order of the shots. This led Kuleshov to try an exper­i­ment: he jux­ta­posed the image of a man with a blank expres­sion with a bowl of soup, a young corpse in a cof­fin and a pret­ty girl. You can watch it below.

Invari­ably, audi­ences praised the actor for his sub­tle­ty of per­for­mance. Of course, there was no per­for­mance. The con­nec­tion between the two images was made entire­ly with­in the head of the view­er. This real­iza­tion would for­ev­er be com­mem­o­rat­ed in film schools every­where as the Kuleshov Effect.

Using the French word for assem­ble, Kuleshov called this “mon­tage.” At the school, how­ev­er, there was con­sid­er­able debate over what mon­tage exact­ly was. One of Kuleshov’s stu­dents, Vsevolod Pudovkin envi­sioned each shot as a brick, one small part that togeth­er with oth­er small parts cre­at­ed a cin­e­mat­ic edi­fice.

Anoth­er stu­dent, Sergei Eisen­stein, pro­posed a far more dynam­ic, and rev­o­lu­tion­ary, form of mon­tage. Eisen­stein saw it “as an idea that aris­es from the col­li­sion of inde­pen­dent shots.” An intel­lec­tu­al well versed in the­o­ry, Eisen­stein com­pared mon­tage to Karl Marx’s vision of his­to­ry where a the­sis smash­es into its antithe­sis and togeth­er, from that wreck­age, forms its syn­the­sis.

Eisenstein’s great­est exam­ple of mon­tage, and indeed one of the great­est exam­ples of film­mak­ing ever, is the Odessa Steps scene from his mas­ter­piece Bat­tle­ship Potemkin. In it, Czarist sol­diers mas­sacre a group of pro­tes­tors, most­ly women and chil­dren. You can watch it below.

As you can see, it’s a pow­er­ful piece of pro­pa­gan­da. There is no way to come away from this movie and not feel like the Czarists are any­thing but mur­der­ous vil­lains. (Nev­er­mind that the movie is wild­ly inac­cu­rate, his­tor­i­cal­ly speak­ing.) Shots of a griev­ing moth­er jux­ta­posed with images of bay­o­net wield­ing troops result in a sur­pris­ing­ly vis­cer­al feel­ing of injus­tice.

In his writ­ings, Eisen­stein out­lined the vary­ing types of mon­tage – five kinds in all. The most impor­tant, in his eyes, was intel­lec­tu­al mon­tage – a method of plac­ing images togeth­er in a way to evoke intel­lec­tu­al con­cepts. He was inspired by how Japan­ese and Chi­nese can cre­ate abstract ideas from con­crete pic­tograms. For exam­ple, the Japan­ese sym­bol for tree is 木. One char­ac­ter for wall is 囗. Put the two togeth­er, 困, and you have the char­ac­ter for trou­ble, because hav­ing a tree in your wall is cer­tain­ly a huge pain in the ass. You can see an exam­ple of intel­lec­tu­al mon­tage in the end of the Odessa steps sequence when a stone lion seem­ing­ly ris­es to his feet.

Eisen­stein decid­ed to push this idea to the lim­it with his fol­low up, Octo­ber. The movie is deeply strange to watch now. In one famous sequence, Eisen­stein com­pares White Russ­ian gen­er­al Alexan­der Keren­sky to a pea­cock and to a cheap Napoleon fig­urine. It’s proved to be an inter­est­ing intel­lec­tu­al exer­cise but one that left audi­ences, both then and now baf­fled.

And below is anoth­er, slight­ly fun­nier, cer­tain­ly more con­tem­po­rary, exam­ple of intel­lec­tu­al mon­tage.

Many of the land­mark films men­tioned above can be found in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hitch­cock on the Filmmaker’s Essen­tial Tool: The Kuleshov Effect

Watch Bat­tle­ship Potemkin and Oth­er Free Sergei Eisen­stein Films

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

Watch Ten of the Great­est Silent Films of All Time — All Free Online

The Film­mak­ing of Susan Son­tag & Her 50 Favorite Films (1977)

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 vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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27 More “Essential Films for the Student of Philosophy,” As Suggested By Open Culture Readers

in Film, Philosophy | November 4th, 2014

A post of ours last week on philo­soph­i­cal films piqued the inter­est of many a film-lov­ing, philo­soph­i­cal­ly-inclined read­er, and raised an impor­tant and per­haps unan­swer­able ques­tion: just what is a “philo­soph­i­cal film”? Does such a crea­ture even exist? Read­er Albert Hoff­man sug­gest­ed that “a real­ly great movie always is a philo­soph­i­cal movie, always opens the path to impor­tant philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions.” I find that state­ment hard to dis­pute, but then find myself also agree­ing with anoth­er read­er, Assy­outi, who writes “all bad films can be resources for philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion.” Why not? What a philo­soph­i­cal film is depends, per­haps, on the def­i­n­i­tion of words like “philo­soph­i­cal,” “film,” and “is.”

In any case, the orig­i­nal­ly ref­er­enced list of 44 “essen­tial movies for the stu­dent of phi­los­o­phy,” com­piled in 2010 by Matt Whit­lock for Mubi, laid out some fair­ly spe­cif­ic cri­te­ria, name­ly that such films “(seem to be) incar­na­tions of clas­sic philo­soph­i­cal thought exper­i­ments or movies that have a major philo­soph­i­cal prob­lem as a main theme.” Yet, in addi­tion to films that fea­ture philoso­phers as char­ac­ters or par­tic­i­pants, this seems to me broad enough to cov­er an enor­mous range of movies—from Hitchock’s Ver­ti­go, a favorite of “pervert’s guide” the­o­rist Slavoj Žižek (above), and near­ly every film crit­ic every­where, to (speak­ing of bad films) Bill and Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture.

As I men­tioned in the pre­vi­ous post, the four years since Whitlock’s list have pro­duced a num­ber of movies that deserve inclu­sion, sev­er­al of which were high­light­ed in the com­ments. Addi­tion­al­ly, read­ers men­tioned sev­er­al over­looked films that cer­tain­ly meet the bar. And if we are to loosen up our definitions—and why not—the list expands even fur­ther. In that spir­it of inclu­sion, we offer an adden­dum to Whitlock’s 44, below, with the ever-nec­es­sary dis­claimer that this new list does not in any way exhaust the sub­ject. We do hope, how­ev­er, to spark fur­ther dis­cus­sion and, more impor­tant­ly, intro­duce inter­est­ing, thinky movies for read­ers to dis­cov­er. So, with­out fur­ther pre­am­ble, here are 27 more “essen­tial movies for the stu­dent of phi­los­o­phy,” in no par­tic­u­lar order, as sug­gest­ed by our always astute Open Cul­ture read­ers:

  1. Mind­walk (1990)
  2. Rosen­crantz & Guilden­stern Are Dead (1990)
  3. My Din­ner With Andre (1981)
  4. Step­pen­wolf (1974)
  5. Wings of Desire (1987)
  6. Cocteau’s Orphic Tril­o­gy—Blood of a Poet (1930), Orphee (1950), Tes­ta­ment of Orpheus (1959) [yes, this is three films, but we’ll count them as one for the pur­pos­es of this list]
  7. Pos­si­ble Worlds (2000)
  8. The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
  9. The Holy Moun­tain (1973)
  10. THX 1138 (1970)
  11. 99 Francs (2007)
  12. Un Chien Andalou (1929)
  13. Enter the Void (2009)
  14. Stalk­er (1979) — fea­tured ear­li­er today on OC
  15. Viva La Muerte (1971)
  16. I Stand Alone (1998)
  17. Iris (2001)
  18. World on a Wire (1973)
  19. Locke (2013)
  20. The Wid­ow of Saint-Pierre (2000)
  21. The Tri­al (1962)
  22. Life of Bri­an (1979)
  23. Being There (1979)
  24. Bladerun­ner (1982)
  25. Out­landish: Strange For­eign Bod­ies (2009)
  26. Is the Man Who Is Tall Hap­py? (2013) — see the trail­er above.
  27. Thir­teen Con­ver­sa­tions About One Thing (2001)

As you sure­ly know, the list that pleas­es every­one has yet to be invent­ed, so if you don’t find your sug­ges­tions on this one, please don’t take offense. The exer­cise has been more than worth the price of the tick­et for me—I’ve added quite a few titles to my nev­erend­ing list of films I absolute­ly must see before that whole buck­et thing. No doubt even the hippest among you has found a sur­prise or two here to add to yours. And if you’re dying to add num­ber 28, 29, 30, etc. then, please, let us know in the com­ments below. Or, if you want even more sug­ges­tions, check out the titles that were men­tioned on our Face­book page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

44 Essen­tial Movies for the Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy

Watch The Idea, the First Ani­mat­ed Film to Deal with Big, Philo­soph­i­cal Ideas (1932)

Daniel Den­nett and Cor­nel West Decode the Phi­los­o­phy of The Matrix in 2004 Film

Two Ani­ma­tions of Plato’s Alle­go­ry of the Cave: One Nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles, Anoth­er Made with Clay

The Drink­ing Par­ty, 1965 Film Adapts Plato’s Sym­po­sium to Mod­ern Times

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

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Charles & Ray Eames’ Short Film on the Mexican Day of the Dead (1957)

in Film | October 31st, 2014

As much fun as Amer­i­cans have on Hal­loween, we could learn a thing or two from the Mex­i­cans. Their Día de los Muer­tos, the cel­e­bra­tion of which spans Octo­ber 31 to Novem­ber 2, gets more elab­o­rate, more seri­ous, and some­how more jovial at the same time. The robust Mex­i­can cul­ture of Los Ange­les, where I live, assures us a range of Día de los Muer­tos fes­tiv­i­ties each and every year, most impres­sive­ly the well-known cross-cul­tur­al blow-out at the Hol­ly­wood For­ev­er Ceme­tery. But I passed my most mem­o­rable Día de los Muer­tos on the cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­dad Nacional Autóno­ma de Méx­i­co where, the year I went, they’d put togeth­er an entire field of shrines to the dead, nor­mal enough for the hol­i­day, but that time around they’d decid­ed to theme them all after Jorge Luis Borges sto­ries. (An Argen­tine, yes, but this has become a Latin Amer­i­can hol­i­day.) Every so often, the pow­er went out — Mex­i­co City, remem­ber — plung­ing the thou­sands of us there amid the hun­dreds of rep­re­sen­ta­tions of  “The Aleph,” “Funes the Mem­o­ri­ous,” and, appro­pri­ate­ly, “The Gar­den of Fork­ing Paths,” into peri­od­ic dark­ness.

As much as I would rec­om­mend such an expe­ri­ence, maybe you would­n’t want to make it your intro­duc­tion to the Mex­i­can Day of the Dead. Maybe you’d pre­fer this short film from famed design­ers (and, per­haps not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, Ange­lenos) Charles and Ray Eames, a film that paints a por­trait of Día de los Muer­tos through its icons and arti­facts just as their acclaimed Pow­ers of Ten paint­ed a por­trait of Earth at every scale. “In Mex­i­co,” explains its nar­ra­tor, “an inti­mate accep­tance of death extends far back into pre-His­pan­ic times. In the Aztec cul­ture which pre­ced­ed the com­ing of the Spaniards, death shows itself again and again — a famil­iar image. These ancient things of this land were joined over the cen­turies with the Span­ish cel­e­bra­tion of All Souls. Togeth­er they form a uni­ver­sal fes­ti­val of many facets and many dimen­sions — the Day of the Dead.” Through its cem­pasú­chitl flow­ers, its sug­ar skulls, and, yes, its angel-guid­ing rock­ets, The Day of the Dead exam­ines just what this end­less­ly fas­ci­nat­ing hol­i­day has, over the cen­turies, come to mean.

The Day of the Dead  (1957) will be added to our big col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down to the Bone: A Clay­ma­tion for The Day of the Dead

Design­ers Charles & Ray Eames Cre­ate a Pro­mo­tion­al Film for the Ground­break­ing Polaroid SX-70 Instant Cam­era (1972)

Charles & Ray Eames’ Icon­ic Film Pow­ers of Ten (1977) and the Less­er-Known Pro­to­type from 1968

Charles and Ray Eames’ Pow­ers of Ten: The Clas­sic Film Re-Imag­ined By 40 Artists

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Happy Halloween! Louis Armstrong Performs Skeleton in the Closet (1936)

in Film, Museums, Music | October 31st, 2014

Should you hap­pen to be in the vicin­i­ty of Coro­na, Queens this Hal­loween after­noon, the Louis Arm­strong House Muse­um will be wel­com­ing trick-or-treaters ’til 6pm. (Fun-sized Snick­ers be damned! Go any­way, just to see “To Jack Bradley, the ‘Great­est’ Pho­to Tak­er,” a col­lec­tion of can­did, pri­vate moments cap­tured by the friend Satch­mo described as his “white son.”)

If pre-exist­ing engage­ments pre­vent you from haunt­ing Coro­na today, vir­tu­al chills await you, above, with “The Skele­ton In The Clos­et,” Armstrong’s show-stop­ping num­ber from 1936’s Pen­nies From Heav­en. (That masked man on the drums is fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor Lionel Hamp­ton.)

The vin­tage Hal­loween con­tent is a real treat. Gimme ghosts, gob­lins, and an “old desert­ed man­sion on an old for­got­ten road” over psy­cho gore or depressed pre­fab sex­i­ness any day, not just Octo­ber 31.

Pen­nies From Heav­en was Armstrong’s first major screen appear­ance. At the insis­tence of star Bing Cros­by, his turn as a math­e­mat­i­cal­ly-chal­lenged band­leader snagged him a main title cred­it, a first for an African-Amer­i­can actor appear­ing oppo­site whites.

The role itself is not a pil­lar of race advance­ment, but Ricky Ric­car­di, the Arm­strong House’s Archivist notes that Arm­strong remained fond of the work, reen­act­ing an entire scene from mem­o­ry when he and Cros­by appeared as guests on the David Frost Show in 1971.

Ric­car­di sub­jects “The Skele­ton in the Clos­et” to a close musi­cal and per­for­mance analy­sis on his Won­der­ful World of Louis Arm­strong blog, a major source of year round good­ies for Arm­strong fans.

Rat­tle your bones!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Louis Arm­strong Plays His­toric Cold War Con­certs in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

Watch the Ear­li­est Known Footage of Louis Arm­strong Per­form­ing Live in Con­cert (Copen­hagen, 1933)

Louis Arm­strong Plays Trum­pet at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids; Dizzy Gille­spie Charms a Snake in Pak­istan

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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44 Essential Movies for the Student of Philosophy

in Film, Philosophy | October 30th, 2014

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “philo­soph­i­cal film”? The Matrix, most like­ly, an obvi­ous exam­ple of a movie—or franchise—that explores time­less ques­tions: Who are we? What is real­i­ty? Are our lives noth­ing more than elab­o­rate sim­u­la­tions pro­grammed by hyper­in­tel­li­gent super­com­put­ers? Okay, that last one may be of more recent vin­tage, but it’s close­ly relat­ed to that ancient cave alle­go­ry of Plato’s that asks us to con­sid­er whether our expe­ri­ences of the world are noth­ing more than illu­sions ema­nat­ing from a “real” world that lies hid­den from view. Anoth­er influ­ence on The Matrix is Rene Descartes, whose dual­is­tic sep­a­ra­tion of con­scious­ness and body receives the max­i­mum of dra­mat­ic treat­ment.

But The Matrix is only one film among a great many that con­cern them­selves with clas­sic prob­lems of phi­los­o­phy. In a 2010 post for Mubi, Matt Whit­lock com­piled a list of 44 “Essen­tial Movies for a Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy.” Along with The Matrix, oth­er films of the past cou­ple decades get men­tions—Richard Lin­klater’s Wak­ing Life, The Tru­man Show (“the true home of Plato’s Cave in mod­ern movies”), Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind, I Heart Huck­abees, Being John Malkovich, Incep­tion. Also appear­ing on the list are clas­sics like Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Rashomon and Ing­mar Bergman’s The Sev­enth Seal—which illus­trates, Whit­lock writes, “The Angst of The Absurd.” All of these films appear under the sub­head­ing “Famous thought exper­i­ments or dis­cus­sion of a famous philo­soph­i­cal prob­lem.”

Anoth­er cat­e­go­ry on the list is “Movies fea­tur­ing a philoso­pher.” The media-savvy Slavoj Žižek gets two men­tions, for 2006’s The Pervert’s Guide to Cin­e­ma and 2005’s Žižek! (excerpt above). Since Whit­lock com­piled the list, Žižek has received yet anoth­er fea­ture-length treatment—2012’s The Pervert’s Guide to Ide­ol­o­gy. Astra Tay­lor, direc­tor of Žižek!, also includ­ed him in 2009’s The Exam­ined Life, along­side Peter Singer, Michael Hardt, Judith But­ler, Sunau­ra Tay­lor, and Cor­nel West. After the doc­u­men­taries, we have “Movies with philoso­pher as a char­ac­ter,” includ­ing Derek Jarman’s Wittgen­stein, with Clan­cy Chas­say as the iras­ci­ble logi­cian, Rober­to Rossellini’s 1958 Socrates, star­ring Jean Syl­vere in the title role, and, of course, Bill and Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture, with Tony Steed­man as “So-Crates.”

The final three sub­cat­e­gories in Whitlock’s list are “Movies fea­tur­ing the ideas of par­tic­u­lar philoso­phers,” “Movies based on Nov­els writ­ten by famous philoso­phers,” and “Oth­er.” In the last bas­ket, Whit­lock places the PBS string-the­o­ry doc­u­men­tary The Ele­gant Uni­verse and Finnish per­for­mance artist M.A. Numminen’s bizarre adap­ta­tion of Wittgenstein’s Trac­ta­tus. Whit­lock nar­rows the field by rul­ing out “movies that make you think deep crazy stuff” or those with “some new ‘exis­ten­tial twist’ on com­mon top­ics.” Instead, he sticks to those films “that (seem to be) incar­na­tions of clas­sic philo­soph­i­cal thought exper­i­ments or movies that have a major philo­soph­i­cal prob­lem as a main theme… that include top­ics that a seri­ous stu­dent of phi­los­o­phy needs to under­stand.”

Like most such lists, this one doesn’t claim to be defin­i­tive, and the four years since its com­pi­la­tion have pro­duced sev­er­al films that might war­rant inclu­sion. Yet anoth­er ref­er­ence from 2010—William G. Smith’s Socrates and Sub­ti­tles: A Philosopher’s Guide to 95 Thought-Pro­vok­ing Movies from Around the World—casts a wider net. But Whitlock’s list seems to me a very use­ful start­ing point for think­ing about the rela­tion­ship between phi­los­o­phy and film. Below, see the first ten films on the list:

Zizek! (2005)
Exam­ined Life (2008)
Der­ri­da (2002)
The Ister (2004)
The Pervert’s Guide To Cin­e­ma (2009)
Being In The World (2010)
Bill And Ted’s Excel­lent Adven­ture (2001)
When Niet­zsche Wept (2007)
The Last Days Of Immanuel Kant (1994)
The Alchemist Of Hap­pi­ness (2004)

Take a look at his full list here, and by all means, offer your own sug­ges­tions for films that fit the cri­te­ria in the com­ments sec­tion below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wittgen­stein: Watch Derek Jarman’s Trib­ute to the Philoso­pher, Fea­tur­ing Til­da Swin­ton (1993)

Watch The Real­i­ty of the Vir­tu­al: 74 Min­utes of Pure Slavoj Žižek (2004)

Watch The Idea, the First Ani­mat­ed Film to Deal with Big, Philo­soph­i­cal Ideas (1932)

Daniel Den­nett and Cor­nel West Decode the Phi­los­o­phy of The Matrix in 2004 Film

Two Ani­ma­tions of Plato’s Alle­go­ry of the Cave: One Nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles, Anoth­er Made with Clay

The Drink­ing Par­ty, 1965 Film Adapts Plato’s Sym­po­sium to Mod­ern Times

Down­load 100 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

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

 

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