Tim Burton’s Hansel and Gretel Shot on 16mm Film with Amateur Japanese Actors (1983)

in Film, Television | June 18th, 2014

The Dis­ney Chan­nel aired Tim Bur­ton’s Hansel and Gre­tel only once, on Hal­loween night in 1983, but it must have giv­en those few who saw the broad­cast much to pon­der over the fol­low­ing three decades. For all that time, the 35-minute adap­ta­tion of that old Ger­man folk­tale stood as per­haps the hard­est-to-see item in the Edward Scis­sorhands and The Night­mare Before Christ­mas auteur’s cat­a­log. Of course, back in 1983, the 25-year-old Bur­ton had­n’t yet made either of those movies, nor any of the oth­er beloved­ly askew fea­tures for which we know him today. He had to his name only a cou­ple of ani­mat­ed shorts made at CalArts and a stop-motion homage to his hero Vin­cent Price. Still, that added up to enough to land him this project, his first live-action film made as an adult, which he used as an out­let for his fas­ci­na­tion with Japan.

Using an all-Japan­ese cast, shoot­ing with the 16-mil­lime­ter aes­thet­ic of old mar­tial arts movies, and tak­ing a spe­cial-effects tech­nique or two from the Godzil­la man­u­al, Bur­ton’s Hansel and Gre­tel looks (and sounds) like no ver­sion of the sto­ry you’ve seen before, or will like­ly ever see again. But at least you can now watch it as often as you like, owing to its recent sud­den appear­ance on Youtube after that long absence from pub­lic viewa­bil­i­ty, bro­ken only by screen­ings at the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art and the Ciné­math­èque Française. In it we expere­ince the inter­sec­tion of the grotesque as rep­re­sent­ed by Grim­m’s Fairy Tales, the grotesque as rep­re­sent­ed by the Bur­ton­ian sen­si­bil­i­ty, the new and strange free­dom of ear­ly cable tele­vi­sion, and the sheer audac­i­ty of a young film­mak­er — not to men­tion a heck of a hand-to-hand com­bat ses­sion between Hansel, Gre­tel, and the Witch who would make them din­ner. Her din­ner, that is.

via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tim Bur­ton’s Ear­ly Stu­dent Films

Vin­cent, Tim Bur­ton’s Ear­ly Ani­mat­ed Film

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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Lars von Trier’s Animated Movie Made When He Was 11 Years Old

in Film | June 18th, 2014

Words like “adorable” and “cute” don’t come read­i­ly to mind when talk­ing about Dan­ish direc­tor Lars von Tri­er, but that’s exact­ly how you can describe the stop motion ani­mat­ed film he made when he was 11 years old. Sure, you can also describe the two-minute short — Turen til Squash­land: En Super Pølse Film (The Trip to Squash Land: A Super Sausage Film) — as creepy and vague­ly unset­tling, adjec­tives much more com­mon­ly applied to the film­mak­er.

Von Tri­er is, of course, cinema’s reign­ing bad boy. His Antichrist is a scar­ring descent into mad­ness filled with bad sex, talk­ing fox­es and hor­rif­i­cal­ly graph­ic self-muti­la­tion. Any­one who’s seen the movie will nev­er look at a pair of scis­sors in the same way. His 2011 movie Melan­cho­lia is a glo­ri­ous ode to depres­sion and glob­al anni­hi­la­tion; a beau­ti­ful anti-rev­el­ry on how much every­thing in the world sucks. And his most recent movie, Nympho­ma­ni­ac, is a 4‑hour long movie — divid­ed in two, Kill Bill style — fea­tur­ing some of the most joy­less unsim­u­lat­ed onscreen cou­plings this side of the Paris Hilton sex tape.

Turen til Squash­land, on the oth­er hand, is about a sen­tient sausage who rides a black whale to res­cue a bun­ny rab­bit. The film was shot by the tweenaged Tri­er (he added the ‘von’ to his name in film school) on his Super 8mm cam­era in 1967. In terms of tech­nique and design, it is shock­ing­ly good. The short has a naïve sweet­ness that Wes Ander­son often aspires to while hav­ing the uncan­ny dream-like qual­i­ty of an ear­ly David Lynch movie.

It’s tempt­ing to parse Turen til Squash­land to gain some insight into von Tri­er’s lat­er auteurist obses­sions. Does von Trier’s ten­den­cy to place the vul­ner­a­ble and the love­able in the clutch­es of a cru­el and heart­less vil­lain start here? While the ever-adorable Björk ends up dan­gling from the end of a rope in Dancer in the Dark, the bun­ny in this movie thank­ful­ly makes it out alive. Cas­tra­tion is anoth­er reoc­cur­ring theme in von Trier’s work. Does that have any­thing to do with the free-range sausage pro­tag­o­nist? And does the talk­ing fox in Antichrist have its ori­gins in this movie’s trio of head spin­ning rab­bits?

The one ele­ment, how­ev­er, that has no con­nec­tion to his lat­er work is the short’s end, which shows a plac­ard read­ing “Slut.” That has noth­ing to do with his lat­est movie or von Tri­er’s com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship with women. The word “slut” means “The End” in Dan­ish.

More ani­mat­ed films can be found in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Steven Spielberg’s Debut: Two Films He Direct­ed as a Teenag­er

Tim Burton’s Ear­ly Stu­dent Films: King and Octo­pus & Stalk of the Cel­ery Mon­ster

See Carl Sagan’s Child­hood Sketch­es of The Future of Space Trav­el

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.

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Stanley Kubrick Talks Cinema, Chess, ESP, Vietnam & His Cat in Interviews with Michel Ciment (1975–1987)

in Film | June 13th, 2014

Cinephiles cer­tain­ly know the name of Stan­ley Kubrick, and die-hard cinephiles just as cer­tain­ly know the name of Michel Ciment, the French crit­ic behind cel­e­brat­ed vol­umes on such auteurs as Elia Kazan, Joseph Losey, John Boor­man, Theo Angelopou­los, Fritz Lang, and, yes Kubrick him­self. Ciment has placed the direc­tor’s work, which includes the likes of Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clock­work Orange, “among the most impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions to world cin­e­ma in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.” In an attempt to do jus­tice to the mind of his sub­ject while writ­ing Kubrick, he put in no small amount of time with the man him­self. At the top of the post, you can hear an assem­blage of mate­r­i­al from a five-part inter­view between Ciment and Kubrick orig­i­nal­ly aired on the French radio pro­gram A voix nue, itself pieced togeth­er from a series of con­ver­sa­tions between crit­ic and direc­tor record­ed between 1975 and 1987. So we ulti­mate­ly have here, as the per­son who put the clip on Youtube notes, “a recon­struct­ed hour of Kubrick talk­ing about cin­e­ma, chess, ESP, art, writ­ing, Viet­nam, his cat, the 18th cen­tu­ry, and even Fear and Desire.”

But with this fas­ci­nat­ing mate­r­i­al comes a caveat: “As the inter­views were broad­cast for French audi­ences, a French voice-over was added through­out the entire audio in post-edit. This meant that you’d hear Kubrick talk for about three or four sec­onds and then have a trans­la­tor jump in and repeat what he said in French at a loud­er vol­ume. Usu­al­ly the trans­la­tor would step in and cut off the first or last words that Kubrick was say­ing, or some­times just talk over the top of him.” The result, with the French most­ly excised and the Eng­lish remains stitched into a solid­ly Kubrick­ian hour, does make for “a very demand­ing and irri­tat­ing way to lis­ten to the inter­views” which “involves a lot of con­cen­tra­tion to fil­ter out the inter­preter and keep piec­ing togeth­er the flow of what Kubrick says.” Yet he does say plen­ty worth hear­ing, espe­cial­ly for those already famil­iar with his fil­mog­ra­phy. But if this audio does indeed wear down your patience, feel free to check out one of the less tax­ing ways to get a dose of Kubrick and Ciment: for exam­ple, the three con­ver­sa­tions on Bar­ry Lyn­don, The Shin­ing, and A Clock­work Orange so con­ve­nient­ly tran­scribed — in Eng­lish! — at The Kubrick Site. You can also lis­ten to Stan­ley Kubrick’s 1965 Inter­view with The New York­er here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fear and Desire: Stan­ley Kubrick’s First and Least-Seen Fea­ture Film (1953)

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Daugh­ter Shares Pho­tos of Her­self Grow­ing Up on Her Father’s Film Sets

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

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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Salvador Dalí & Walt Disney’s Destino: See the Collaborative Film, Original Storyboards & Ink Drawings

in Animation, Art, Film | June 12th, 2014

Unlike­ly col­lab­o­ra­tions in pop music abound: Run DMC and Aero­smith? It works! U2 and Luciano Pavarot­ti? Why not? Robert Plant and Ali­son Krauss? Sure! Any­one and Ker­mit the Frog? Yes. They don’t always work out, but the attempts, whether kismet or train­wreck, tend to reveal a great deal about the part­ners’ strengths and weak­ness­es. Unlike­ly col­lab­o­ra­tions in fea­ture film are some­what rar­er, though not for lack of wish­ing. I would guess the high finan­cial stakes have some­thing to do with this, as well as the sheer num­ber of peo­ple required for the aver­age pro­duc­tion. One par­tic­u­lar­ly salient exam­ple of an osten­si­ble mis­match in ani­mat­ed movies—a planned co-cre­ation by sur­re­al­ist Sal­vador Dalí and pop­ulist Walt Disney—offers a fas­ci­nat­ing look at how the two artists’ careers could have tak­en very dif­fer­ent cre­ative direc­tions. The col­lab­o­ra­tion may also have fall­en vic­tim to a film indus­try whose eco­nom­ics dis­cour­age exper­i­men­tal duets.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured the ani­mat­ed short— Des­ti­no—at the top of the post. The 6 and a half minute film shows us what Dalí and Disney’s planned project might have looked like. Recre­at­ed from 17 sec­onds of orig­i­nal ani­ma­tion and sto­ry­boards drawn by Dalí and released in 2003 by Disney’s nephew Roy, Des­ti­no gives us an almost per­fect sym­bio­sis of the two cre­ators’ sen­si­bil­i­ties, with Walt Disney’s Fan­ta­sia-like flights smooth­ly ani­mat­ing Dalí’s flu­id dream imagery. Accord­ing to Chris Pal­lant, author of Demys­ti­fy­ing Dis­ney, work between the two on the orig­i­nal project also moved smooth­ly, with lit­tle fric­tion between the two artists. Meet­ing in 1945, Dalí and Dis­ney “quick­ly devel­oped an indus­tri­ous work­ing rela­tion­ship” and “ease of col­lab­o­ra­tion.” Pal­lant writes that “Disney’s desire for absolute cre­ative con­trol changed, and, for the first time, the ani­ma­tors work­ing with­in the stu­dio felt the influ­ence of oth­er artis­tic forces.” I imag­ine it might prove dif­fi­cult, if not impos­si­ble, to micro­man­age Sal­vador Dalí. In any case, the fruit­ful rela­tion­ship pro­duced results:

Des­ti­no reached a rel­a­tive­ly advanced stage before being aban­doned. By mid-1946 the Dis­ney- Dalí col­lab­o­ra­tion encom­passed approx­i­mate­ly ’80 pen-and-ink sketch­es’ and numer­ous ‘sto­ry­boards, draw­ings and paint­ings that were cre­at­ed over nine months in 1945 and 1946.’

Roy E. Dis­ney dis­cov­ered Dalí’s Des­ti­no art­work in the late 90s, lead­ing to his short re-cre­ation of what might have been. Above, you can flip through a slideshow of twelve of those draw­ings and sto­ry­boards, cour­tesy of Park West Gallery, who rep­re­sent the work. The Des­ti­no mate­ri­als went on dis­play at the Draw­ings Room in Figueres, Spain. The exhi­bi­tion fea­tured “1 oil paint­ing, 1 water­colour, 15 prepara­to­ry drawings—10 of which are unpublished—and 9 pho­tographs of Dalí in the cre­ative process of this mate­r­i­al, of the Dis­ney cou­ple in Port Lli­gat in 1957, and the Dalí cou­ple in Bur­bank.” You can see many of those pho­tographs in the exhibit’s pam­phlet (in pdf here, in Span­ish and Eng­lish; cov­er image below), which offers a detailed descrip­tion of the orig­i­nal project, includ­ing its nar­ra­tive con­cept, a “love sto­ry” between a dancer and “base­ball-play­er-cum-god Cronos” meant to rep­re­sent “the impor­tance of time as we wait for des­tiny to act on our lives.”

DaliDisneyexhibit

Inspired by a Mex­i­can song by Arman­do Dominguez, Des­ti­no, on its face, seems like a very strange choice for Dis­ney, who gen­er­al­ly traf­ficked in more rec­og­niz­able (and Euro­pean) folk-tale sources. And yet, the exhi­bi­tion pam­phlet asserts, the co-pro­duc­tion made a great deal of sense for Dalí, “if we con­sid­er that one Dalin­ian con­stant is his bring­ing togeth­er of the elit­ist artis­tic idea and mass cul­ture (and vice ver­sa) […]. Des­ti­no becomes a unique artis­tic prod­uct in which Dalin­ian expres­sive­ness is com­bined with Disney’s fan­ta­sy and sonor­i­ty, mak­ing it a film in which Dalí’s images take on move­ment and Disney’s fig­ures become ‘Dalinised.’ ”

And yet, while both Dalí and Dis­ney worked excit­ed­ly on the project, it was ulti­mate­ly not to be, at least until almost six­ty years lat­er. Des­ti­no would have been part of a “pack­age film,” like Fan­ta­sia, a com­pi­la­tion of short vignettes. John Hench, a Dis­ney artist who worked on the project with Dalí, spec­u­lat­ed that the com­pa­ny “fore­saw the end” of such fea­tures. Pal­lant, how­ev­er, goes fur­ther in spec­u­lat­ing the film “would have resem­bled a poten­tial box-office bomb” for Dis­ney, who remarked lat­er that is was “no fault of Dalí’s that the project… was not completed—it was sim­ply a case of pol­i­cy changes in our dis­tri­b­u­tion plans.”

This cryp­tic remark, writes Pal­lant, alludes to Disney’s plans to focus his cre­ative ener­gy on “safe” fea­ture-length projects “to strength­en the company’s posi­tion with­in the film indus­try.” While such a deci­sion might have made good busi­ness sense, it prob­a­bly doomed many more Des­ti­no-like ideas that might have made the Walt Dis­ney com­pa­ny a very dif­fer­ent enti­ty indeed. One can only imag­ine what the stu­dio might have become had Dis­ney opt­ed to pur­sue exper­i­ments like this instead of tak­ing the more prof­itable route. Of course, giv­en the mar­ket pres­sures on the movie indus­try, it’s also pos­si­ble the stu­dio might not have sur­vived at all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

Impres­sions of Upper Mon­go­lia : Sal­vador Dalí’s Last Film About a Search for a Giant Hal­lu­cino­genic Mush­room

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

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

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Glenn Gould: Off and On the Record: Two Short Films About the Life & Music of the Eccentric Musician

in Film, Music | June 11th, 2014

Cana­di­an pianist Glenn Gould was one of those child prodi­gies whose spec­tac­u­lar tal­ents were matched by some seri­ous eccen­tric­i­ties. As an infant, Gould report­ed­ly hummed rather than cried, he had per­fect pitch at age 3, and he grad­u­at­ed at the age of 12 from the Roy­al Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music in Toron­to. Unlike just about every oth­er musi­cian on the plan­et, Gould report­ed­ly didn’t seem to need to spend hour upon hour prac­tic­ing his instru­ment. Instead, he had the envi­able abil­i­ty to prac­tice in his head. His inter­pre­ta­tions of Brahms, Beethoven and espe­cial­ly Bach were hailed as genius.

Gould also tend­ed to dress in a win­ter coat and gloves no mat­ter what the tem­per­a­ture was out­side. This result­ed in Gould get­ting arrest­ed in Mia­mi for being a sus­pect­ed vagrant. While per­form­ing, he would fall into some­thing close to an ecsta­t­ic state, shak­ing his head and twist­ing his tor­so in a man­ner that raised more than a few eye­brows in the but­toned-down world of clas­si­cal music. But per­haps his most famous eccen­tric­i­ty was that, like Jazz pianist Thelo­nious Monk, Gould had a habit of hum­ming along as he played.

Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor made a pair of gor­geous­ly shot doc­u­men­taries about the pianist in 1959. Glenn Gould – Off the Record, which you can see above, shows Gould relax­ing at his lake­side cot­tage north of Toron­to. In the movie, we see that he leads a soli­tary life — his only com­pan­ions are his piano and his pet dog – where he can focus com­plete­ly on his music.

In Glenn Gould – On the Record, below, Koenig and Kroitor show Gould in the stu­dio try­ing to get a record­ing to match his pre­cise vision. It also focus­es on the har­ried record­ing engi­neers who strug­gle to record the music com­ing out of Gould’s piano and not his mouth. Both films released by the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1962)

Glenn Gould Offers a Strik­ing­ly Uncon­ven­tion­al Inter­pre­ta­tion of 1806 Beethoven Com­po­si­tion

The Art of Fugue: Gould Plays Bach

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.

 

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Terry Gilliam, Guy Ritchie & Alejandro González Iñárritu Direct Soccer Ads for Nike

in Film, Sports, Television | June 10th, 2014

Even if you don’t hail from one of the world’s many soc­cer-lov­ing coun­tries (you know, the ones that don’t call it “soc­cer”) sure­ly you can get on board for the World Cup. Here in the Unit­ed States, I often hear “I just watch it for the ads” said about the Super Bowl. And if that game’s breaks show­case some pret­ty cool spots, then its non-Amer­i­can foot­ball equiv­a­lent offers an even high­er lev­el of pro­mo­tion­al spec­ta­cle. Last year, we fea­tured Brazil and 12 Mon­keys auteur Ter­ry Gilliam’s two ven­tures into the form of the World Cup com­mer­cial, “The Secret Tour­na­ment” and “The Rematch,” the first of which you can watch at the top of the post. They came com­mis­sioned by Nike in 2002, and six years lat­er the for­mi­da­ble shoe man­u­fac­tur­er put a pre­sum­ably decent chunk of its mar­ket­ing bud­get behind anoth­er fea­ture film­mak­er with a vision: Lock, Stock, and Two Smok­ing Bar­rels and Snatch direc­tor Guy Ritchie. The result, “The Next Lev­el,” appears below:

“The entire film is seen as if through the eyes of an ama­teur foot­baller fast-tracked into the big time,” says the web site of The Mill, the adver­tis­ing agency behind the spot. “We see what he sees in the thick of the action, on and off the pitch: the foot­work, the fouls, the goals and the girls. Film­ing in Lon­don, Man­ches­ter and Barcelona with per­haps the world’s small­est cam­era (SI 2K) took a month. The Mill pushed post pro­duc­tion to the extreme, ven­tur­ing into some unchar­tered FX ter­ri­to­ry, set­ting up a new data pipeline for the cam­era (used here for the first time in com­mer­cial pro­duc­tion) and to track shots pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered impos­si­ble.” These hyper­ki­net­ic, celebri­ty foot­baller-filled two min­utes cer­tain­ly do take the wish-ful­fill­ment aspect of sports fan­dom to the next lev­el, or at least a more lit­er­al one. The Mill and Nike would then step up to a three-minute pro­duc­tion with Ale­jan­dro González Iñár­ritu, he of Amores Per­ros and Babel, for 2010’s “Write the Future,” a med­i­ta­tion on how, in sports as else­where, one good move might lock in a des­tiny, or one bad move might shat­ter it:

The Mill calls it “one of our biggest jobs to date,” with “a stag­ger­ing 236 VFX shots made up of 106 foot­ball shots which includ­ed a CG sta­di­um com­plete with flags and ban­ners, crowd repli­ca­tion using Mas­sive, grass clean up and replace­ment, and full roto­scope of all the play­ers.” Impres­sive, sure, but some sure­ly feel that such a degree of labor and atten­tion placed on adver­tis­ing dur­ing tele­vised match­es takes away from the beau­ty of the Beau­ti­ful Game itself.  “Soc­cer is a lie,” says the dis­ap­point­ed would-be foot­baller pro­tag­o­nist of Eduar­do Sacheri’s new nov­el Papers in the Wind. “It’s all a farce … And yet … some­how … there’s still a ‘but.’” You may also con­sid­er the adver­tis­ing enter­prise a lie, but when it can bring togeth­er rare tal­ents from cin­e­ma as well as the rest of the cul­tur­al world for high-impact moments like these, well, some­how… there’s still a “but.” Just think back twen­ty years to anoth­er Nike ad, the one with the clas­sic turn by none oth­er than William S. Bur­roughs:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch “The Secret Tour­na­ment” & “The Rematch,” Ter­ry Gilliam’s Star-Stud­ded Soc­cer Ads for Nike

Beat Writer William S. Bur­roughs Spreads Coun­ter­cul­ture Cool on Nike Sneak­ers, 1994

Video: The Day Bob Mar­ley Played a Big Soc­cer Match in Brazil, 1980

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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Deleted Scene from Almost Famous: Mom, “Stairway to Heaven” is Based on the Literature of Tolkien

in Film, Music | June 9th, 2014

If you came of age dur­ing the 1980s, you might asso­ciate Led Zep­pelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” with junior high school dances — an awk­ward phase of life you’d just as soon for­get. For me, it’s hard to think of “Stair­way to Heav­en” and not cringe. But if you first heard the song in 1971 (when it was released) or soon there­after, per­haps you have bet­ter asso­ci­a­tions. That’s what film­mak­er Cameron Crowe was part­ly try­ing to get across in this delet­ed scene from his 2000 film Almost Famous. In the clip, a high-school boy tries to coax his moth­er (played by the great Frances McDor­mand) into let­ting him write for Rolling Stone. Cen­tral to his pitch is the idea that rock music is intel­lec­tu­al, that “Stair­way to Heav­en” is based on the lit­er­a­ture of Tolkien — some­thing that has been debat­ed by crit­ics and schol­ars. As for why the scene did­n’t make it into the movie, you’d think that it’s because of the song’s length. 8 min­utes is a long time for a film to go with­out any dia­logue. But appar­ent­ly it came down to per­mis­sions. Crowe told Com­ing Soon.Net : “Led Zep­pelin had already giv­en us four songs at a nice price but they said, ‘Stair­way to Heav­en’ we’re not going to give to any­body, and we had already shot a scene that was to ‘Stair­way to Heav­en’ so what was great was we end­ed up putting the scene on the DVD and say­ing ‘Put your record on NOW and score it your­self.’ ” You can try that at home and see if it changes your thoughts on “Stair­way to Heav­en,” for bet­ter or for worse.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dutch­man Mas­ters the Art of Singing Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” Back­wards

‘Stair­way to Heav­en’: Watch a Mov­ing Trib­ute to Led Zep­pelin at The Kennedy Cen­ter

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

Hear Led Zeppelin’s Mind-Blow­ing First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

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The 5 Essential Rules of Film Noir

in Film | June 5th, 2014

“That’s life. Whichev­er way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you.” – Al Robert (Tom Neal), Detour

Film Noir. When you think that phrase, the mind is imme­di­ate­ly drawn to images of leg­gy ice queens, rum­bled losers in fedo­ras, guns, neon and cer­tain dead­pan cyn­i­cism. Film Noir wasn’t a self con­scious move­ment in the way the French New Wave was. It wasn’t a brand name like a Mar­vel super­hero epic. But it did tap into some­thing dark in the Amer­i­can post­war zeit­geist and became for a spell huge­ly pop­u­lar. It also cre­at­ed some of the most unfor­get­table images in film his­to­ry.

Film Noir hit its zenith in the late ‘40s, a time when vet­er­ans were return­ing home in droves after hav­ing wit­nessed unimag­in­able hor­rors. Under the weight of war trau­ma, men felt the brit­tle veneer of tra­di­tion­al mas­culin­i­ty – strong, sto­ic and dom­i­nant — crack and crum­ble. Film Noir tapped into this anx­i­ety. It’s no acci­dent that film schol­ars have called Film Noir the male weepy.

Above is a BBC doc­u­men­tary about the genre that lays out its rules. The movie fea­tures inter­views with direc­tor Paul Schrad­er, cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Roger Deakins and George Pele­canos who both wrote and pro­duced The Wire. Check it out.

Rule #1: Choose a Dame with a Past and a Hero with No Future

The noir pro­tag­o­nist is inevitably some hap­less schmuck who is doomed, suck­ered to death or ignominy by lust, greed or some dark­er sub­ter­ranean self-destruc­tive urge. And inevitably the cat­a­lyst for this fall is a dame. Usu­al­ly blonde. Always gor­geous. The femme fatale is inevitably the cen­ter of the movie and fre­quent­ly its antag­o­nist. Film Noir blunt­ly lays bare what wasn’t dis­cussed in polite soci­ety; that the way for a woman to get pow­er in Amer­i­can soci­ety was through sex. The gen­der dynam­ics in this genre are the stuff that has launched hun­dreds of PhD dis­ser­ta­tions.

Rule #2: Use No Fic­tion But Pulp Fic­tion

Stu­dios rushed to adapt the pulp works of Ray­mond Chan­dler, James M. Cain and par­tic­u­lar­ly Dashiell Ham­mett, the first true hard­boiled writer. Hammett’s nov­els like Red Har­vest and The Mal­tese Fal­con are terse, vio­lent and cyn­i­cal; they con­tain the DNA of the Film Noir.

Rule #3: See Amer­i­ca Through a Stranger’s Eyes

The rise of Nazism in Ger­many forced hun­dreds of writ­ers, film­mak­ers and com­posers like Fritz Lang, Robert Siod­mak and Bil­ly Wilder to the sun-dap­pled shores of Los Ange­les. With them, they brought the aes­thet­ics of Ger­man Expres­sion­ism — cant­ed cam­era angles, stark light­ing and grotesque shad­ows. It was a look that merged seam­less­ly with the bleak, ele­men­tal sto­ries of Noir. They also brought with them a war-weary foreigner’s sense of the coun­try, one that saw the bru­tal­i­ty and cor­rup­tion of Amer­i­ca beneath the patri­ot­ic bunting.

Rule #4: Make It Any Col­or As Long As It’s Black

They wouldn’t call it Film Noir if the movies didn’t use a lot of black.

Rule #5: It Ain’t What You say It’s the Way That you Say it

The Hayes code lim­it­ed how bawdy and vio­lent Film Noir could get. So film­mak­ers got cre­ative, using off-screen space and lots and lots of euphemisms. Check out what Lau­ren Bacall says to Humphrey Bog­a­rt in The Big Sleep.

Speak­ing of hors­es, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work out a lit­tle first, see if they’re front run­ners or come from behind, find out what their hole card is, what makes them run.

It’s pret­ty obvi­ous she isn’t talk­ing about hors­es. And if you want to see just how las­civ­i­ous her deliv­ery is, watch the film above.

And if you want to watch more Film Noirs, don’t miss our col­lec­tion of 36 Free Film Noir Movies, which fea­tures clas­sic movies by John Hus­ton, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, Ida Lupino and many oth­ers. It’s part of our big­ger col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Fritz Lang’s Cen­sored Noir Film, Scar­let Street, Star­ring the Great Edward G. Robin­son (1945)

Detour: The Cheap, Rushed Piece of 1940s Film Noir Nobody Ever For­gets

Watch D.O.A., Rudolph Maté’s “Inno­v­a­tive and Down­right Twist­ed” Noir Film (1950)

The Third Man: Film Noir Clas­sic on YouTube

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.

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