The Top 20 Russian Films, According to Russians

in Film | August 28th, 2020

Ask an Amer­i­can film stu­dent to name the mas­ter­pieces of Russ­ian cin­e­ma, and you will get a selec­tion of Tarkovsky (Solaris, Stalk­er, The Mir­ror) and a soup­con of Eisen­stein. And no doubt those are true, rev­er­en­tial clas­sics. But what do Rus­sians con­sid­er their best-loved films? That’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent mat­ter.

This list from the Russ­ian Film Hub presents 20 films rat­ed by Kinopoisk, the country’s ver­sion of imdb.com–movies that hold a spe­cial place in their hearts, ones that have affect­ed the cul­ture, the ones that peo­ple can quote by heart. There’s not one Tarkovsky here at all.

Bet­ter yet, all these films are avail­able to watch on the Russ­ian Film Hub site, and with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles. (Most are YouTube embeds from the Mos­Film chan­nel, but not all).

1. Ivan Vasi­lye­vich Changes His Pro­fes­sion
2. Oper­a­tion Y and Shurik’s Oth­er Adven­tures
3. The Dia­mond Arm
4. Only Old Men Are Going to Bat­tle
5. Gen­tle­men of For­tune
6. The Dawns Here Are Qui­et
7. Kid­nap­ping, Cau­casian Style
8. The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes and Dr. Wat­son
9. Heart of a Dog
10. Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears
11. The Cranes Are Fly­ing
12. Offi­cers
13. White Bim Black Ear
14. Fate of a Man
15. Office Romance
16. They Fought for Their Coun­try
17. Broth­er
18. Bal­lad of a Sol­dier
19. The Girls
20. Wel­come, or No Tres­pass­ing

Now, there are a few films on the list that art house fans will rec­og­nize. The Cranes Are Fly­ing won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1958, one of the high­est acco­lades a Russ­ian film had received in the post-war peri­od. Mikhail Kalatozov’s film is set before and after World War II, and lead actress Tatyana Samoylova’s Veroni­ka is as icon­ic a role as Ingrid Bergman in Casablan­ca, guar­an­tee to make an audi­ence weep at the end. (The film is avail­able to screen to Amer­i­can view­ers, as you can watch in on Cri­te­ri­on Chan­nel and HBO Max.)

Sim­i­lar­ly Grig­o­ry Chukhrai’s Bal­lad of a Sol­dier is a well-loved war dra­ma, direct­ed by a man who had fought in World War II him­self. Despite a series of prob­lems dur­ing pro­duc­tion, it has gone on to be inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized. (It too is only avail­able to Amer­i­can view­ers through Cri­te­ri­on.)

How­ev­er, the rest of these titles will be new to a vast major­i­ty of non-Rus­sians. The top three on the list and num­ber sev­en are by Leonid Gaidai, Russia’s best known com­e­dy direc­tor, sim­i­lar to a Blake Edwards or a Harold Ramis. Gaidai’s plots usu­al­ly cen­ter around con­men and mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty, and the num­ber one film in the list–Ivan Vasi­lye­vich Changes His Pro­fes­sion, from 1973, is a time trav­el caper where an apart­ment man­ag­er and a bungling bur­glar are trans­port­ed back to the 16th cen­tu­ry, while Tsar Ivan the Ter­ri­ble is brought into 1973. It gets com­pared to Mon­ty Python, Napoleon Dyna­mite, and Han­na-Bar­bera car­toons on Let­ter­boxd, and while the word play might not make it through the trans­la­tion, it is con­sid­ered hilar­i­ous regard­less. (All four of Gaidai’s films were huge box office hits.)

Also of note is Wel­come, or No Tres­pass­ing, a wacky kids’ camp com­e­dy (think Wes Anderson’s Moon­light King­dom) in which the young’uns get one over on their adult cap­tors. Direc­tor Elem Klimov would go on, 20 yeas lat­er, to direct Come and See, one of the most har­row­ing and bru­tal anti-war films out there.

Not every film is from the height of the Cold War, either. Broth­er, from 1997, is a gang­ster film set in the mean streets of St. Peters­burg, and is con­sid­ered one of the most pop­u­lar post-Sovi­et Russ­ian films.

And final­ly, the list has room for an adap­ta­tion of Sher­lock Holmes that, accord­ing to review­ers on Let­ter­boxd, rivals that of Jere­my Brett and Basil Rath­bone.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Film Posters of the Russ­ian Avant-Garde

Watch Hun­dreds of Free Films from Around the World: Explore Film Archives from Japan, France, and the U.S

The Simp­sons Reimag­ined as a Russ­ian Art Film

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Documentaries on the Groundbreaking Work & Life of Ursula K. Le Guin & Four Other Trailblazing Artists, Streaming Free this Week

in Film | August 25th, 2020

What sort of art will emerge from this unprece­dent­ed moment in his­to­ry, when the glob­al coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment grew expo­nen­tial­ly, and syn­chro­nous­ly.

And not to pre­sume, but to hope, what will humans think of that lit­er­a­ture in 50 or 100 years’ time?

Over the course of a not quite hour-long Amer­i­can Mas­ters episode devot­ed to author Ursu­la LeGuin, flux emerges as a major theme of the sci­ence fic­tion pioneer’s life and work.

The youngest child of A.L. Kroe­ber, the founder of aca­d­e­m­ic anthro­pol­o­gy, LeGuin, who died in 2018, crit­i­cized her­self for hav­ing been slow to open her eyes to the injus­tice around her.

It became a pre­oc­cu­pa­tion in sto­ries like The Ones Who Walk Away from Ome­las, a thought exper­i­ment in which the read­er must con­sid­er the ethics of a pros­per­ous hap­py soci­ety, whose good for­tune depends on the suf­fer­ing of a cap­tive child.

The Dis­pos­sessed arose from her curios­i­ty as to what “a gen­uine, work­ing anar­chist soci­ety (would) be like.”

(Answer: flawed, like every oth­er human soci­ety.)

One of her best known books, The Left Hand of Dark­ness, pub­lished in 1969, pre­fig­ured the com­ing bat­tle for gen­der equal­i­ty, and so much more, by cre­at­ing a tru­ly gen­der flu­id world in which the androg­y­nous inhab­i­tants’ month­ly peri­ods of sex­u­al activ­i­ty con­ferred tem­porar­i­ly male or female bio­log­i­cal sta­tus at ran­dom.

It was hailed as a fem­i­nist ground­break­er, but as time went on, LeGuin found her­self in hot water for hav­ing gone with the mas­cu­line pro­noun as a default way of refer­ring to her androg­y­nous char­ac­ters:

At first, I felt a lit­tle bit defen­sive, but, as I thought about it, I began to see my crit­ics were right. I was com­ing up against how I write about gen­der equal­i­ty.

My job is not to arrive at a final answer and just deliv­er it.

I see my job as hold­ing doors open or open­ing win­dows, but who comes in and out the doors? What do you see out the win­dow? How do I know?

The book is still in print, should new gen­er­a­tion of read­ers feel com­pelled to plumb the text for prob­lem­at­ic pas­sages. Why should the many reflec­tions, essays, and think pieces that marked the 50th anniver­sary of its pub­li­ca­tion be the last word?

Worlds of Ursu­la K. Le Guin is avail­able to stream for free on PBS through Mon­day August 31, along with four oth­er Amer­i­can Mas­ters episodes fea­tur­ing artists who, like Le Guin, broke the exist­ing molds:

Ter­rence McNal­ly: Every Act of Life

Over a six-decade career, four-time Tony-win­ner and out­spo­ken LGBTQ activist Ter­rence McNal­ly wrote dozens of trail­blaz­ing plays, musi­cals, operas and screen­plays about sex­u­al­i­ty, homo­pho­bia, faith, and the pow­er of art.

Raúl Juliá: The World’s a Stage

The charis­mat­ic actor from Puer­to Rico was cel­e­brat­ed for the range and ver­sa­til­i­ty he brought to roles on stage and screen, from Shake­speare­an plays to the “The Addams Fam­i­ly.” Though his career was cut short by his death at age 54, he paved the way for gen­er­a­tions of Lat­inx actors.

Rothko: Pic­tures Must be Mirac­u­lous

One of the most influ­en­tial artists of the 20th cen­tu­ry, Mark Rothko’s sig­na­ture style helped define Abstract Expres­sion­ism. The cel­e­brat­ed painter’s lumi­nous paint­ings now set records at auc­tion, and are seen by mil­lions in Lon­don, Wash­ing­ton, D.C. and at the famous Rothko Chapel in Hous­ton.

Scott Moma­day: Words from a Bear

A for­ma­tive voice of the Native Amer­i­can Renais­sance in art and lit­er­a­ture, author and poet N. Scott Moma­day was the first Native Amer­i­can to win the Pulitzer Prize.

Here’s to ever-evolv­ing worlds, and acknowl­edg­ing the con­tri­bu­tions of those who helped make this change pos­si­ble.

Stream the five PBS Amer­i­can Mas­ters episodes men­tioned above for free through the end of August here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Ursu­la K. Le Guin’s Dai­ly Rou­tine: The Dis­ci­pline That Fueled Her Imag­i­na­tion

Ursu­la K. Le Guin Names the Books She Likes and Wants You to Read

Hear Neil Gaiman Read a Beau­ti­ful, Pro­found Poem by Ursu­la K. Le Guin to His Cousin on Her 100th Birth­day

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

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The Japanese Sculptor Who Dedicated His Life to Finishing Gaudí’s Magnum Opus, the Sagrada Família

in Architecture, Film | August 24th, 2020

“Ven­go de Japón.” With those words Japan­ese sculp­tor Etsuro Sotoo intro­duces him­self to us in “Stone Cut,” the short film from NOWNESS above. Since com­ing to Barcelona in 1978, Sotoo has not just mas­tered the Span­ish lan­guage but con­vert­ed to Roman Catholi­cism and ded­i­cat­ed much of his life to labor­ing on the com­ple­tion of the most famous build­ing in Spain: Antoni Gaudí’s mag­num opus, the Basíli­ca de la Sagra­da Família. Not that it was quite so revered when Sotoo first encoun­tered it: “Back in the day, no one real­ly cared about Sagra­da Famil­ia,” he says. “There were stones and rub­ble, but it was most­ly an aban­doned ruin. This sit­u­a­tion last­ed many decades.” 

Even the young Sotoo him­self had no inter­est in the archi­tect of Sagra­da Famil­ia, but “back then it was manda­to­ry to know Gaudí’s name. Slow­ly, my inter­est in Gaudí start­ed to grow in me. And today it keeps grow­ing.” As it should: for more than 40 years now, Sotoo has worked to com­plete what Gaudí left unfin­ished at the time of his death in 1926, a decade before the out­break of the Span­ish Civ­il War. That bit­ter con­flict not only put a stop to the con­struc­tion of Sagra­da Famil­ia for near­ly two decades, it also dam­aged what had already been built: the sculp­tures of its Por­ta del Rosari, for exam­ple, which it has fall­en to Sotoo to restore.

Sculp­tures con­sti­tute much of the elab­o­rate dec­o­ra­tion of Sagra­da Famil­i­a’s exte­ri­or and inte­ri­or, both of which present the view­er with nary a straight line nor a flat sur­face. Even in the incom­plete build­ing, the effect is at once organ­ic and oth­er­world­ly. “Gaudí is way beyond where we are today,” says Sotoo, and his film­mak­ing coun­try­man Hiroshi Teshi­ga­hara must have shared that sen­ti­ment, hav­ing paid trib­ute to the archi­tect with a wor­ship­ful 1984 doc­u­men­tary. The project of real­iz­ing the archi­tec­t’s unprece­dent­ed aes­thet­ic vision — the result of a con­ver­sa­tion “with God about some­thing very big and pro­found” — con­tin­ues to this day, 138 years after the com­mence­ment of its con­struc­tion, which moved slow­ly even dur­ing Gaudí’s life­time. “My client,” his­to­ry remem­bers him hav­ing said, “is not in a hur­ry.”

The cur­rent push to com­plete Sagra­da Famil­ia has a more press­ing dead­line: the year 2026, the cen­te­nary of Gaudí’s death, at which time less than a quar­ter of the project was com­plete. (You can see a 3D ren­der­ing of the remain­der of the process in this video from the Sagra­da Famil­ia Foun­da­tion, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.) But that time frame only cov­ers com­ple­tion of the struc­ture, includ­ing the eigh­teen spires Gaudí envi­sioned as rep­re­sent­ing the Twelve Apos­tles, the Vir­gin Mary, the four Evan­ge­lists, and Jesus Christ. The dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments should be fin­ished by the ear­ly 2030s, grant­i­ng more breath­ing room to arti­sans like Sotoo — who, hav­ing spent four-decades being reshaped by Gaudí him­self, knows that archi­tec­tur­al genius can’t be rushed.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Antoni Gaudí’s Unfin­ished Mas­ter­piece, the Sagra­da Família, Get Final­ly Com­plet­ed in 60 Sec­onds

The Isamu Noguchi Muse­um Puts Online an Archive of 60,000 Pho­tographs, Man­u­scripts & Dig­i­tized Draw­ings by the Japan­ese Sculp­tor

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

An Intro­duc­tion to Hagia Sophia: After 85 Years as a Muse­um, It’s Set to Become a Mosque Again

The His­to­ry of West­ern Archi­tec­ture: A Free Course Mov­ing from Ancient Greece to Roco­co

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Face of Bill Murray Adds Some Joy to Classic Paintings

in Art, Comedy, Film, History | August 21st, 2020

Bill Mur­ray isn’t one of those actors who dis­ap­pears into a role.

Nor is he much of a chameleon on can­vas, how­ev­er icon­ic, as artist Eddy Tori­goe demon­strates with a series that grafts Murray’s famous mug onto a num­ber of equal­ly well-known paint­ings.

Tori­goe told Digg that he was inspired by acci­dent, when he was struck by the uncan­ny resem­blance between Gilbert Stuart’s Lans­downe por­trait of George Wash­ing­ton, and a pho­to of Mur­ray post­ed by a Red­dit user.

He down­loaded both images and bus­ied him­self with Pho­to­shop.

The rest is his­to­ry.

The Pres­i­den­tial update is an improve­ment in ways. Mur­ray-faced Wash­ing­ton appears kind­ly, and not averse to a bit of fun. No teeth of enslaved peo­ples com­pro­mis­ing that mouth.

While Mur­ray is capa­ble of main­tain­ing a straight face—wit­ness his work in Lost in Trans­la­tion, The Razor’s Edge, Ham­let 2000, and Torigoe’s homage to Whistler’s Moth­er, above—more often than not a cer­tain puck­ish­ness shines through.

One won­ders what would have befall­en painter Jacques-Louis David had he bestowed The Emper­or Napoleon in His Study at the Tui­leries with Murray’s goofy expres­sion.

And it’s well estab­lished that a key ele­ment of Grant Wood’s oft-par­o­died Amer­i­can Goth­ic is the pok­er faced reserve of its male sub­ject.

Had they been alive today, it’s con­ceiv­able that Lucas Cranach the Elder’s por­trait of Mar­tin Luther might have depict­ed a lighter side of his friend, some­thing more Mur­ray-esque. Though giv­en the Ref­or­ma­tion and his 95 The­ses against Indul­gences, maybe not….

Explore more of Eddy Torigoe’s Bill Mur­ray-enriched mas­ter­pieces of art, includ­ing self-por­traits by Rem­brandt, Fri­da Kahlo, and Picas­so, on his web­site.

via My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Bill Mur­ray Explains How a 19th-Cen­tu­ry Paint­ing Saved His Life

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

Mas­ter­pieces of West­ern Art with All Gluten Prod­ucts Removed: See Works by Dalí, Cézanne, Van Gogh & Oth­ers

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

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There Are Only 37 Possible Stories, According to This 1919 Manual for Screenwriters

in Books, Film, Writing | August 20th, 2020

“Great lit­er­a­ture is one of two sto­ries,” we often quote Leo Tol­stoy as say­ing: “a man goes on a jour­ney or a stranger comes to town.” That’s all well and good for the author of War and Peace, but what about the thou­sands of screen­writ­ers strug­gling to come up with the next hit movie, the next hit tele­vi­sion series, the next hit plat­form-spe­cif­ic web and/or mobile series? Some, of course, have found in that apho­rism a fruit­ful start­ing point, but oth­ers opt for dif­fer­ent premis­es that num­ber the basic plots at three (William Fos­ter-Har­ris), six (researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vermont’s Com­pu­ta­tion­al Sto­ry Lab), twen­ty (Ronald Tobias), 36 (George Polti) — or, as some strug­gling screen­writ­ers of a cen­tu­ry ago read, 37.

The year was 1919. Amer­i­ca’s biggest block­busters includ­ed D.W. Grif­fith’s Bro­ken Blos­soms, Cecil B. DeMille’s Male and Female, and The Mir­a­cle Man, which made Lon Chaney into a sil­ver-screen icon. The many aspi­rants look­ing to write their way into the ever more cel­e­brat­ed and lucra­tive movie busi­ness could turn to a new­ly pub­lished man­u­al called Ten Mil­lion Pho­to­play Plots by Wycliff Aber Hill. “Hill, who pub­lished more than one aid to strug­gling ‘sce­nar­ists,’ posi­tioned him­self as an author­i­ty on the types of sto­ries that would work well onscreen,” writes Slate’s Rebec­ca Onion. In this book he pro­vides a “tax­on­o­my of pos­si­ble types of dra­mat­ic ‘sit­u­a­tions,’ first run­ning them down in out­line form, then describ­ing each more com­plete­ly and offer­ing pos­si­ble vari­a­tions.”

Hill’s 37 basic dra­mat­ic sit­u­a­tions include such “hap­py sit­u­a­tions” as “res­cue,” “loved ones lost and recov­ered,” and “a mir­a­cle of God”; such “pathet­ic sit­u­a­tions” as “love’s obsta­cles,” “rival­ry between unequals,” and “a mys­tery”; and such “dis­as­trous sit­u­a­tions pre­cip­i­tat­ed with­out crim­i­nal intent” as “pos­sessed of an ambi­tion,” “enmi­ty between kins­men,” and “vengeance.” (Nat­u­ral­ly, Hill also includes a sep­a­rate cat­e­go­ry involv­ing crim­i­nal intent.) These dra­mat­ic con­cepts then break down into more spe­cif­ic sce­nar­ios like “res­cue by strangers who are grate­ful for favors giv­en them by the unfor­tu­nate one,” “an appeal for refuge by the ship­wrecked,” “the sac­ri­fice of hap­pi­ness for the sake of a loved one where the sac­ri­fice is caused by unjust laws,” and “con­ge­nial rela­tions between hus­band and wife made impos­si­ble by the par­ents-in-law.”

Already more than a few films new and old come to mind whose sto­ries pro­ceed from such dra­mat­ic con­cepts. Indeed, one could think of exam­ples from not just cin­e­ma but lit­er­a­ture, tele­vi­sion, the­ater, comics, and oth­er forms of nar­ra­tive art besides. Sit­u­a­tions we all know from real life may also fol­low sim­i­lar con­tours, which plays no small part in giv­ing them their impact when prop­er­ly trans­lat­ed to the screen. Clear­ly aim­ing for time­less­ness, Hill enu­mer­ates plots that could have been employed in sto­ries cen­turies before his time, and will con­tin­ue to be long after ours. But what, exact­ly, is the rela­tion­ship between plot and sto­ry? We now quote E.M. Forster on the mat­ter, specif­i­cal­ly a line from his Aspects of the Nov­el — a book for which Ten Mil­lion Pho­to­play Plots’ first read­ers would have to wait eight more years.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

Decod­ing the Screen­plays of The Shin­ing, Moon­rise King­dom & The Dark Knight: Watch Lessons from the Screen­play

10 Tips on How to Write a Great Screen­play from Bil­ly Wilder: Pearls of Wis­dom from the Direc­tor of Sun­set Boule­vard, Some Like It Hot, Dou­ble Indem­ni­ty & More

Ray­mond Chan­dler: There’s No Art of the Screen­play in Hol­ly­wood

Aaron Sorkin, Cre­ator of The West Wing & The Social Net­work, Teach­es Screen­writ­ing in an Online Class

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Back to the Arena: Battling the Hunger Games Prequel with Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast (#57)

in Film, Literature, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | August 19th, 2020

Remem­ber when The Hunger Games was every­where? Its author Suzanne Collins has decid­ed that young peo­ple could ben­e­fit from more explo­ration of Just War The­o­ry through the world of Panem, and so has pub­lished The Bal­lad of Song­birds and Snakes, a pre­quel cov­er­ing the ear­ly years of future pres­i­dent Cori­olanus Snow dur­ing the 10th Hunger Games.

Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt give their spoil­er-free reviews of the new book and look back on the orig­i­nal book tril­o­gy and its adap­ta­tion into four films (and do spoil those, in case you want to go watch them). We talk about what makes these nov­els “YA,” the func­tion of adapt­ing them to film, and the lim­its of the fran­chise’s premise and world-build­ing. Does the work cri­tique yet glo­ri­fy vio­lence at the same time? Will the film ver­sion of the new nov­el be our next Phan­tom Men­ace?

Some arti­cles we looked at includ­ed:

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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2020: An Isolation Odyssey–A Short Film Reenacts the Finale of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, with a COVID-19 Twist

in Current Affairs, Film | August 17th, 2020

From New York City design­er Lydia Cam­bron comes 2020: An Iso­la­tion Odyssey, a short film that reen­acts the finale of Stan­ley Kubrick­’s icon­ic film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. But with a COVID-19 twist. “Restaged in the con­text of home quar­an­tine,” Cam­bron writes, “the jour­ney through time adapts to the mun­dane dra­mas of self-isolation–poking fun at the navel-gaz­ing saga of life alone and indoors.” If you’ve been a good cit­i­zen since March, you will sure­ly get the joke.

via Colos­sal/Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Open­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey with the Orig­i­nal, Unused Score

James Cameron Revis­its the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Rare 1960s Audio: Stan­ley Kubrick’s Big Inter­view with The New York­er

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The Flying Train: A 1902 Film Captures a Futuristic Ride on a Suspended Railway in Germany

in Film, History | August 13th, 2020

We’ve been focus­ing a lot recent­ly on old films from the turn of the cen­tu­ry that a small group of enthu­si­asts have been “remas­ter­ing” using AI, smooth­ing out the herky-jerky fram­ing, upping the frame rate by inter­po­lat­ing between-frames, and more.

So what a sur­prise to find a recent look at a film in the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art’s film col­lec­tion from 1902 that already has the fideli­ty and smooth­ness, no AI need­ed.

The above footage is tak­en from the Wup­per­taler Schwe­be­bahn, the sus­pen­sion rail­way built in the Ger­man city of Bar­men in 1901. The Bio­graph pro­duc­tion company—best known to film stu­dents as the place where D.W. Grif­fiths got his start—was one of the most pop­u­lar of the ear­ly film com­pa­nies, and pro­duced mini-docs like these, called Muto­scopes.

The Muto­scope used 68mm film, a film stock twice as large as most films at the time. (70mm film real­ly only came into its own dur­ing the 1950s.) The 30 frames per sec­ond shoot­ing rate was also faster than the usu­al 18fps or 24fps, which means the illu­sion of real­i­ty is clos­er to the video rate of today. The Muto­scope was also the name of the company’s view­er, where the frames were print­ed on cards and could be watched through a viewfind­er. So we are watch­ing a film that was nev­er meant to be pro­ject­ed. (If you’re think­ing that the Muto­scope was also used for pri­vate view­ings of What the But­ler Saw, you are cor­rect.)

Despite the fideli­ty our favorite upscaler Denis Shiryaev still had a go at improv­ing the footage and adding col­or and sound. (There’s also a com­peti­tor work­ing on their own upscale and col­oriza­tion ver­sion called Upscaled Stu­dio). Which one is bet­ter, do you think? And how much was the expe­ri­ence improved?

And in case you’re won­der­ing, the Wup­per­tal Schwe­be­bahn still oper­ates to this day, look­ing very much like it did back in 1902. The total route is just over eight miles long and fol­lows the riv­er Wup­per for a lot of it, and ser­vices 82,000 com­muters a day. (Less so dur­ing COVID of course.) You can check out footage below. It def­i­nite­ly looks fun fun fun on the Schwe­be­bahn.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

Revis­it Scenes of Dai­ly Life in Ams­ter­dam in 1922, with His­toric Footage Enhanced by Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

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.

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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