Lou Reed Sings “Sweet Jane” Live, Julian Schnabel Films It (2006)

in Film, Music | November 28th, 2017

“Lou Reed’s Berlin is a dis­as­ter, tak­ing the lis­ten­er into a dis­tort­ed and degen­er­ate demi­monde of para­noia, schiz­o­phre­nia, degra­da­tion, pill-induced vio­lence and sui­cide,” wrote Rolling Stone’s Stephen Davis in 1973, adding that “there are cer­tain records that are so patent­ly offen­sive that one wish­es to take some kind of phys­i­cal vengeance on the artists that per­pe­trate them.” Could this “last shot at a once-promis­ing career,” as Davis described it, real­ly have come from the one­time leader of as influ­en­tial a band as the Vel­vet Under­ground — from the man who could, just three years ear­li­er, have writ­ten a song like “Sweet Jane”?

Yet Lou Reed sur­vived Berlin’s drub­bing, and indeed spent the next forty years ful­fill­ing his promise, to the very end draw­ing the occa­sion­al round of pans (most resound­ing­ly for Lulu, his 2011 col­lab­o­ra­tion with Metal­li­ca) that ver­i­fied his artis­tic vital­i­ty. By the 21st cen­tu­ry, crit­i­cal opin­ion had come around on Berlin, and in 2003 even Rolling Stone put it on its list of the 500 great­est albums of all time.

Three years lat­er, Reed took the then-33-year-old rock-opera album on tour, play­ing it live with a 30-piece band and twelve cho­ris­ters. Painter-film­mak­er Julian Schn­abel designed the tour and shot a doc­u­men­tary of five nights of its per­for­mances in Brook­lyn, releas­ing it in 2008 as Lou Reed Berlin.

In the clip above, you can see the very last song of the show, played dur­ing the film’s clos­ing cred­its. It isn’t “Sad Song,” which draws the cur­tain over Berlin, but the last of a three-part encore that ends with none oth­er than “Sweet Jane.” Hav­ing first appeared on the Vel­vet Under­ground’s 1970 album Loaded (#110 on the Rolling Stone list to Berlin’s #344), the song became a favorite in Reed’s live per­for­mances in the decades there­after, an evo­ca­tion of a par­tic­u­lar cre­ative era in a career that encom­passed so many. “Good­bye, Lou,” Davis said to Reed at the end of his Berlin review, but for that album, and even more so for the man who made it, the show had only just begun.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cap­tures Lev­on Helm and The Band Per­form­ing “The Weight” in The Last Waltz

Jef­fer­son Air­plane Plays on a New York Rooftop; Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures It (1968)

Jean-Luc Godard Shoots Mar­i­anne Faith­full Singing “As Tears Go By” (1966)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

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Helen Mirren Now Teaching Her First Online Course on Acting

in Film, Online Courses | November 20th, 2017

FYI: If you sign up for a Mas­ter­Class course by click­ing on the affil­i­ate links in this post, Open Cul­ture will receive a small fee that helps sup­port our oper­a­tion.

Mas­ter­Class remains on fire. In recent months, the new online course provider has announced the devel­op­ment of online cours­es taught by lead­ing fig­ures in their fields. And cer­tain­ly some names you’ll rec­og­nize: Mar­tin Scors­ese on Film­mak­ing, Her­bie Han­cock on Jazz, Dr. Jane Goodall on the Envi­ron­ment, David Mamet on Dra­mat­ic Writ­ing, Steve Mar­tin on Com­e­dy, Ron Howard on Direct­ing and Wern­er Her­zog on Film­mak­ing too. Now add this to the list: Helen Mir­ren on Act­ing:

Writes Mas­ter­Class:

Oscar, Gold­en Globe, Emmy, and Tony win­ner Helen Mir­ren is one of the great­est actress­es of our time. In her first online class, she dis­cuss­es the dual­ism that is core to her method: the neces­si­ty for mas­ter­ing tech­nique (craft) and then let­ting go so that your imag­i­na­tion can take over (art). Learn how to break down a script, research char­ac­ters, and mas­ter tech­niques so you can tran­scend them to find free­dom in every role.

The course just opened for enroll­ment. Priced at $90, the course fea­tures 28 video lessons where Mir­ren “brings you behind the scenes to show you the secrets of her act­ing tech­nique.” And a down­load­able work­book that fea­tures sup­ple­men­tal mate­ri­als and les­son recaps.

Learn more about Helen Mir­ren Teach­es Act­ing here. And if you’re inter­est­ed in get­ting access to all of Mas­ter­Class’ cours­es, you can buy an All-Access Annu­al Pass.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Helen Mir­ren Holds Her Own (and Then Some) in a Cringe-Induc­ing­ly Sex­ist TV Inter­view, 1975

Helen Mir­ren Tells Us Why Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Is Her Favorite Artist (And What Act­ing & Mod­ern Art Have in Com­mon)

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What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchian: A Video Essay

in Film | November 14th, 2017

As soon as it began air­ing on ABC in the ear­ly 1990s, Twin Peaks got us won­der­ing where its dis­tinc­tive­ly res­o­nant odd­ness, nev­er before felt on the air­waves of prime-time tele­vi­sion, could have come from. Some view­ers had already seen co-cre­ator David Lynch’s films Eraser­head and Blue Vel­vet and may thus have had a more devel­oped feel for it, but for every­one else the nature and ori­gin of the “Lynchi­an” — as crit­ics soon began label­ing it — remained utter­ly mys­te­ri­ous. Now, with the long-await­ed Twin Peaks: The Return hav­ing com­plet­ed its own run, we’ve start­ed think­ing about it once again.

What does the Lynchi­an look like from the van­tage of the 21st cen­tu­ry? David Fos­ter Wal­lace, in an essay on Lynch’s Lost High­way twen­ty years ago, defined the term “Lynchi­an” as refer­ring to “a par­tic­u­lar kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mun­dane com­bine in such a way as to reveal the for­mer’s per­pet­u­al con­tain­ment with­in the lat­ter.” Lewis Bond, the video essay­ist who runs the Youtube chan­nel Chan­nel Criswell, goes a bit deep­er in “David Lynch — The Elu­sive Sub­con­scious.” What is it, he asks, that denotes the style of Lynch? “The same way a hall­way sink­ing into dark­ness is Lynchi­an, so is a white pick­et fence in a slice of Amer­i­cana.”

These and the enor­mous vari­ety of oth­er things Lynchi­an must “exude elu­sive­ness, and the enig­ma of what sig­ni­fies Lynchi­an sen­si­bil­i­ties lies in pro­duc­ing unfa­mil­iar­i­ty in that which was once familiar.“At first glance, that state­ment may seem as obscure as some of Lynch’s cre­ative choic­es do when you first wit­ness them. But spend a few min­utes with Bond’s wide-rang­ing video essay, tak­ing in Lynch’s images at the same time as the analy­sis, and you’ll get a clear­er sense of what both of them are going for. After exam­in­ing Lynch’s use of the sub­con­scious in his films from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent angles, Bond arrives at Pauline Kael’s descrip­tion of the film­mak­er as “the first pop­ulist sur­re­al­ist.”

“Although his work is puz­zling, and more often than not intend­ed to be so,” says Bond, Lynch “still man­ages to strike a chord with the way we feel.” Lynch, in oth­er words, puts dreams on the screen, but instead of sim­ply relat­ing the inven­tions of his own sub­con­scious — hear­ing some­one retell their dreams being, after all, a byword for an ago­niz­ing­ly bor­ing expe­ri­ence — he some­how gets all of us to dream them our­selves. What haunts us when we wake up after a par­tic­u­lar­ly har­row­ing night also haunts us when we come out of a Lynch movie, but the artistry of the lat­ter has a way of mak­ing us want to plunge right back into the night­mare again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Art of David Lynch”— How Rene Magritte, Edward Hop­per & Fran­cis Bacon Influ­enced David Lynch’s Cin­e­mat­ic Vision

Watch an Epic, 4‑Hour Video Essay on the Mak­ing & Mythol­o­gy of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

An Ani­mat­ed David Lynch Explains Where He Gets His Ideas

What Does “Kafkaesque” Real­ly Mean? A Short Ani­mat­ed Video Explains

What “Orwellian” Real­ly Means: An Ani­mat­ed Les­son About the Use & Abuse of the Term

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

 

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What to Say When You Don’t Understand Contemporary Art? A New Short Film, “Masterpiece,” Has Helpful Suggestions

in Art, Comedy, Film, Life | November 6th, 2017

Mas­ter­piece, Run­yararo Map­fu­mo’s short film above, will feel very famil­iar to any­one who has strug­gled for words to share with a friend after his or her under­whelm­ing Off-Off-Broad­way solo show, open mic per­for­mance, or art instal­la­tion…

Equal­ly famil­iar, from the reverse angle, to any artist who’s ever invit­ed a trust­ed friend to view his or her pas­sion project, hop­ing for approval or at the very least, inter­est… some­thing more robust than the pal­try crumbs the friend man­ages to eek out under pres­sure.

A British Film Insti­tute Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val select­ed short, Mas­ter­piece focus­es on a tight group of male friends… one of whom has reached beyond the com­mu­nal com­fort zone in the ser­vice of his art. His earnest­ness con­founds his old pals, who clown around out­side the gallery where they’ve gath­ered for an after hours pre­view of his work, one staunch­ly assert­ing that he only showed up because his mum made him, and also, he was told there’d be free food.

Once inside the friends are left alone to puz­zle out his mas­ter­piece. What to say? Maybe they should draw par­al­lels to the cur­rent socio-polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion? Per­haps they could tell their friend his work  is rem­i­nis­cent of Ger­man Expres­sion­ism?

Yoko Ono or Mar­cel Duchamp would have made a more apt com­par­i­son, as writer-direc­tor Map­fu­mo is sure­ly aware. Mas­ter­piece is notable for more than just its pitch-per­fect take on artist vs. befud­dled but still sup­port­ive friends. As Map­fu­mo told Direc­tors Notes:

I’ve been told time and time again to “write what you want to see.” I start­ed think­ing about what that meant to me in a every­day con­text. These char­ac­ters are black men that I recognize…I didn’t want the con­flict to revolve around their iden­ti­ty but rather through their obser­va­tions. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How to Look at Art: A Short Visu­al Guide by Car­toon­ist Lyn­da Bar­ry

An Online Guide to 350 Inter­na­tion­al Art Styles & Move­ments: An Invalu­able Resource for Stu­dents & Enthu­si­asts of Art His­to­ry

Your Brain on Art: The Emerg­ing Sci­ence of Neu­roaes­thet­ics Probes What Art Does to Our Brains

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her most recent artis­tic endeav­or is The­ater of the Apes Sub-Adult Divi­sion’s pro­duc­tion of Ani­mal Farm, open­ing next week in New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Meet Daryl Davis, the Black Blues Musician Who Befriended 200 Klan Members & Made Them See the Errors of Their Ways

in Current Affairs, Film, Life, Music | November 6th, 2017

Musi­cian Daryl Davis is a great, lum­ber­ing bear of a man with a very, very long fuse.

His dis­po­si­tion and his race are equal­ly crit­i­cal com­po­nents of his decades-long project—engaging, as a black man, with mem­bers of the KKK, the Nation­al Social­ist Move­ment, and oth­er groups espous­ing white suprema­cy.

Diplo­ma­cy seems to be the major les­son of his glo­be­trot­ting child­hood. His father was a State Depart­ment offi­cial, and wher­ev­er the fam­i­ly relo­cat­ed, Davis went to school with the chil­dren of oth­er for­eign ser­vice work­ers, what­ev­er their race. This hap­py, mul­ti­cul­tur­al expe­ri­ence left him unpre­pared for his return to his coun­try of ori­gin, when he was one of just two black pupils at his Bel­mont, Mass­a­chu­setts ele­men­tary school, and the only black Cub Scout in his troop.

When Belmont’s Cub Scouts were invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in a 1968 march to com­mem­o­rate Paul Revere’s ride, his troop lead­ers tapped the 10-year-old Davis to car­ry the flag, pro­vok­ing a furi­ous reac­tion from many white spec­ta­tors along the route.

His pri­or expe­ri­ence was such that he assumed their bile was direct­ed toward scout­ing, even after his par­ents sat him down to tell him the truth.

Now, as the sub­ject of Matt Ornstein’s doc­u­men­tary, Acci­den­tal Cour­tesy (watch it on Net­flix here), Davis mus­es that the unusu­al cir­cum­stances of his ear­ly child­hood equipped him to insti­gate and main­tain an open dia­logue with the ene­my. He lis­tens care­ful­ly to their opin­ions in the expec­ta­tion that they will return the cour­tesy. It’s a long game approach that Davis refus­es to play over social media or email. Only face-to-face.

Over time, his even-keeled man­ner has caused 200 card-car­ry­ing racists, accord­ing to NPR, to renounce their for­mer path, pre­sent­ing their cast-off hoods and robes to their new friend, Davis, as a rite of pas­sage.

One of the most fas­ci­nat­ing parts of the doc­u­men­tary is the tour of his klan memorabilia—patches, jew­el­ry, pock­et knives and belt buck­les. He is able to explain the col­ors, insignia and prove­nance of the robes as method­i­cal­ly as he dis­cuss­es musi­cal his­to­ry.

Pre­sum­ably, some of this knowl­edge was hand­ed down from the for­mer owners—one of whom vol­un­teers that Davis is far more knowl­edgable than he ever was about the ins and outs of klan hier­ar­chies.

Davis doesn’t wait for an out­spo­ken racist to renounce his beliefs before claim­ing him as a friend.

It’s fair­ly easy to feel clemen­cy toward those Davis has nudged toward a whole new set of val­ues, such as soft-spo­ken for­mer-Grand-Drag­on-turned-anti-racist activist, Scott Shep­herd, or Tina Puig, a moth­er of two who was tak­en aback by Davis’ offer of a ride to the far away fed­er­al pen­i­ten­tiary where her white suprema­cist hus­band was serv­ing a ten-year sen­tence.

It’s queasi­er to watch Davis pos­ing with a smile in front of Con­fed­er­ate flags at a klan ral­ly, or staunch­ly refrain­ing from com­ment as jacked up suprema­cists spew vile, provoca­tive remarks in his pres­ence.

Not every­one has—or wants to have—the stom­ach for this sort of work. The most heat­ed encounter in the film is the one between Davis and Bal­ti­more-based Black Lives Mat­ter activists Kwame Rose, Tariq Touré, and JC Faulk.

As direc­tor Orn­stein told PBS’ Inde­pen­dent Lens:

Daryl oper­ates under the prin­ci­ple that if you aren’t hear­ing view­points that are dis­taste­ful to you, that they are also not hear­ing yours. I think there’s wis­dom in that. We saw this last elec­tion cycle how not doing that end­ed in not only dis­as­ter for this coun­try, but a lot of infight­ing and yelling into echo cham­bers and news that serves to rein­force what you already believe. The eco­nom­ic argu­ments that Tariq and Kwame present in the film have a tremen­dous amount of valid­i­ty, but in no way does this dimin­ish the impor­tance of what some­one like Daryl does. If we all took the time to speak to even one or two peo­ple we dis­agree with and both real­ly hear them and be heard that alone would begin to make a dif­fer­ence.

You can watch Acci­den­tal Cour­tesy on Net­flix here. (If you don’t have a sub­scrip­tion, you could always sign up for a 30-day free tri­al.) We have also added an NPR pro­file of Davis above.

Below you can watch a fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with Davis recent record­ed on the Jor­dan Har­bin­ger Show.

 

https://youtu.be/8mIsh1HYgHc

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Lib­er­al Arts Edu­ca­tion Helped Derek Black, the God­son of David Duke, Break with the White Nation­al­ist Move­ment

How Super­man Defeat­ed the KKK (in Real Life): Hear the World-Chang­ing 1946 Radio Dra­ma

Albert Ein­stein Called Racism “A Dis­ease of White Peo­ple” in His Lit­tle-Known Fight for Civ­il Rights

Noam Chom­sky Explains the Best Way for Ordi­nary Peo­ple to Make Change in the World, Even When It Seems Daunt­ing

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her cur­rent project is The­ater of the Apes’ Sub-Adult Divi­sion’s pro­duc­tion of Ani­mal Farm, open­ing this week in New York City.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch a Step-by-Step Breakdown of La La Land’s Incredibly Complex, Off Ramp Opening Number

in Dance, Film, Music | October 30th, 2017

La La Land, writer and direc­tor Damien Chazelle’s award-win­ning Valen­tine to Hol­ly­wood musi­cals, attract­ed legions of fans upon its release last Decem­ber.

Their ardor is book­end­ed by the enmi­ty of Broad­way diehards under­whelmed by the stars’ singing and danc­ing chops and those who detest musi­cals on prin­ci­ple.

The above video may not lead the detrac­tors to swal­low Chazelle’s Kool-Aid col­ored vision, but lis­ten­ing to chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Mandy Moore’s behind-the-scenes blow-by-blow of the com­pli­cat­ed open­ing num­ber, “Anoth­er Day of Sun,” should inspire respect for the mas­sive feat of cin­e­mat­ic coor­di­na­tion below.

This may be the first time in his­to­ry that a chore­o­g­ra­ph­er has sin­gled out the Trans­port Depart­ment for pub­lic praise.

Remem­ber how your folks used to freak out about you dent­ing the hood when you capered atop the fam­i­ly Coun­try Squire? Turns out they were right.

One of the Trans­po’ crew’s cru­cial assign­ments was plac­ing vehi­cles with spe­cial­ly rein­forced hoods and roofs in the spots where dancers had been chore­o­graphed to bound on top of them. Get­ting it wrong ear­ly on would have wast­ed valu­able time on a two day shoot that shut down an exit ramp con­nect­ing the 110 and 105 free­ways.

The real La La Land con­jures fan­tasies of Ange­lyne clad in head-to-toe pink behind the wheel of her match­ing pink Corvette, but for this num­ber, the Cos­tume Depart­ment col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Trans­port Depart­ment to diver­si­fy the palette.

In oth­er words, the red-gowned fla­men­co dancer could emerge from a yel­low car, and the yel­low-shirt­ed krumper could emerge from a red car, but not vice ver­sa.

Mer­ci­ful­ly, the art depart­ment refrained from a total col­or-coor­di­na­tion black­out. That moment when a gust of wind catch­es the skirts of the blonde conductor’s yel­low dress plays like an inten­tion­al trib­ute to Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, when in fact it was a lucky acci­dent made all the more glo­ri­ous by the sun­ny draw­ers she was sport­ing under­neath.

Oth­er day-of acci­dents required on-the-fly inge­nu­ity, such as enlist­ing three burly crew mem­bers to pro­vide off screen help to a per­former strug­gling with a mal­func­tion­ing door to the truck con­ceal­ing a Latin band with­in. (With tem­per­a­tures soar­ing to 104°, they were hot in more ways than one.)

Moore was also off-cam­era, hid­ing under a chas­sis to cue the skate­board­er, who was unfa­mil­iar with the 8‑count the 30 main dancers were trained to respond to.

Oth­er “spe­cial skills” per­form­ers include a BMX bik­er, a Park­our traceur, the director’s hula hoop­ing sis­ter, and a stunt woman whose abil­i­ty to back­flip into the nar­row chan­nel between two parked cars  land­ed her the part… and kept her injury-free for over 40 takes.

Half of the fin­ished film’s grid­locked cel­e­brants are CGI gen­er­at­ed, but the live per­form­ers had to remain in synch with the pre-record­ed song by Justin Hur­witz, Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul, a par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge giv­en the size of the out­door film­ing area. Exec­u­tive music pro­duc­er Mar­ius de Vries and engi­neer Nicholai Bax­ter solved that one by loop­ing the track into each car’s radio, plus a num­ber of hid­den speak­ers and two more on a mov­ing rig.

Moore was deter­mined to keep her care­ful­ly plot­ted moves from feel­ing too dance‑y—the only time the dancers per­form in uni­son is at the very end, right before they hop back down, reen­ter their vehi­cles, and slam their doors shut as one.

For a more nat­u­ral­is­tic vision, watch direc­tor Chazelle’s iPhone footage of the main dancers rehears­ing in a park­ing lot, pri­or to the shoot.

Fun­ny how, left to their own devices, these Ange­lenos seem to wear almost as much black and grey as their coun­ter­parts on the east coast….

The exu­ber­ance of the orig­i­nal has giv­en rise to numer­ous com­mu­ni­ty-based trib­utes and par­o­dies, with stand-outs com­ing from the Xia­men For­eign Lan­guage School in Chi­na, North Carolina’s Camp Mer­rie-Woode, Notre Dame High School in Chazelle’s home state of New Jer­sey, and a 17-year-old Ari­zona boy mak­ing a prompos­al to lead­ing lady Emma Stone.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rita Hay­worth, 1940s Hol­ly­wood Icon, Dances Dis­co to the Tune of The Bee Gees Stayin’ Alive: A Mashup

1944 Instruc­tion­al Video Teach­es You the Lindy Hop, the Dance That Orig­i­nat­ed in 1920’s Harlem Ball­rooms

The Addams Fam­i­ly Dance to The Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She is cur­rent­ly direct­ing The­ater of the Apes Sub-Adult Divi­sion in George Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm, open­ing next week in New York City.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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New Documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold Now Streaming on Netflix

in Film, Literature | October 29th, 2017

Quick note: Net­flix just launched a new doc­u­men­tary Joan Did­ion: The Cen­ter Will Not Hold. It’s a por­trait (nat­u­ral­ly) of the now 82-year-old lit­er­ary icon, Joan Did­ion, that’s direct­ed by her own nephew Grif­fin Dunne. If you have a Net­flix account, you can start stream­ing the 90 minute doc­u­men­tary here. If you don’t, you could always sign up for Net­flix’s 30-day free tri­al.

If you read the reviews of the film (at the New York­er, New York Times, NPR, etc), you’ll hear echoes of what God­frey Cheshire has to say over at RogerEbert.com:

A fond and appre­cia­tive por­trait of one of Amer­i­can journalism’s super­stars, “Joan Did­ion: The Cen­ter Will Not Hold” may not con­tain any rev­e­la­tions that will sur­prise those who’ve fol­lowed Didion’s elo­quent, often auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal writ­ing over the years. But the fact that it was made by her nephew, actor/filmmaker Grif­fin Dunne, gives it a warmth and inti­ma­cy that might not have graced a more stan­dard doc­u­men­tary.

Again, you can start stream­ing here…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Jim Jar­musch Doc­u­men­tary on Iggy Pop & The Stooges Now Stream­ing Free on Ama­zon Prime

Long Strange Trip, the New 4‑Hour Doc­u­men­tary on the Grate­ful Dead, Is Now Stream­ing Free on Ama­zon Prime

Read 12 Mas­ter­ful Essays by Joan Did­ion for Free Online, Span­ning Her Career From 1965 to 2013

Joan Did­ion Reads From New Mem­oir, Blue Nights, in Short Film Direct­ed by Grif­fin Dunne

Watch the New Trail­er for the Upcom­ing Joan Did­ion Doc­u­men­tary, We Tell Our­selves Sto­ries In Order to Live

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Every Academy Award Winner for Best Cinematography in One Supercut: From 1927’s Sunrise to 2016’s La La Land

in Film | October 26th, 2017

A list of chrono­log­i­cal Oscar win­ners often tells you more about the state of the cul­ture than the state of the art. That is very true when it comes to Best Pic­ture, with musi­cals and epics tak­ing home the Acad­e­my Award dur­ing one decade, but being large­ly for­got­ten the next. So too is the award for Best Cin­e­matog­ra­phy, as seen in the sev­en-minute super­cut above. Show­ing every Acad­e­my Award win­ning cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er and their films, the super­cut’s choic­es for the one or two shots that sum up a bril­liant­ly lit pic­ture do make the Academy’s deci­sion at least jus­ti­fied. But it is sur­pris­ing how quick­ly so many of these films have slipped from the public’s con­scious­ness. (Like 2003’s Mas­ter and Com­man­der–when’s the last time you thought about that film?)

When the Acad­e­my first start­ed giv­ing awards for cin­e­matog­ra­phy, it went to the per­son first, not the pic­ture and the per­son involved. So when Karl Struss and Charles Rosh­er were nom­i­nat­ed for–ostensibly–their work on F.W. Murnau’s clas­sic Sun­rise–they also got cred­it­ed for the five oth­er films they had shot that year.

The cur­rent sys­tem was worked out in 1931, although up to 1967 awards went–and I think right­ly so!–to col­or and black and white sep­a­rate­ly. (And, to fur­ther com­pli­cate things, the col­or award was con­sid­ered a “spe­cial achieve­ment” award for a while until Gone with the Wind pret­ty much neces­si­tat­ed a change in pri­or­i­ties.) After 1967, the only black and white film to win was Schindler’s List.

Some­body with way more view­ing expe­ri­ence should weigh in on what makes a lot of these films Oscar-wor­thy in their cin­e­matog­ra­phy, but it does seem that at least through the 1960s, the Acad­e­my loved bold use of sat­u­rat­ed col­ors for one cat­e­go­ry, and an almost abstract use of high con­trast shad­ow and light for the oth­er.

Oth­er nota­bles: Alfred Hitch­cock­’s To Catch a Thief (a rather minor work) and Rebec­ca (a much bet­ter one) were his only two films to get the nod, with awards going to Robert Burks (but not for his work on Ver­ti­go, Rear Win­dow, North by North­west) and George Barnes respec­tive­ly. Stan­ley Kubrick has had two of his films win, with Rus­sell Met­ty for Spar­ta­cus and John Alcott for Bar­ry Lyn­don. (But not Gilbert Tay­lor for Dr. Strangelove!)

Stan­ley Kubrick has done slight­ly bet­ter, with Rus­sell Met­ty for Spar­ta­cus and John Alcott for Bar­ry Lyn­don. (But not Gilbert Tay­lor for Dr. Strangelove!) Mar­tin Scorsese’s Hugo and The Avi­a­tor both earned stat­ues for Robert Richard­son (who also won for Oliv­er Stone’s JFK). Roger Deakins has nev­er won, though he’s been nom­i­nat­ed 13 times, twice in 2007 for both No Coun­try for Old Men and The Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James by the Cow­ard Robert Ford.

And the most award­ed cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er? That’s a tie at four Oscars each for Leon Sham­roy (The Black Swan, Wil­son, Leave Her to Heav­en, and the stu­dio-destroy­ing bomb Cleopa­tra); and Joseph Rut­ten­berg (The Great Waltz, Mrs. Miniv­er, Some­body Up There Likes Me, and Gigi).

Make of this list what you will. (And feel free to do so in the com­ments!)

via Indiewire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

100 Years of Cin­e­ma: New Doc­u­men­tary Series Explores the His­to­ry of Cin­e­ma by Ana­lyz­ing One Film Per Year, Start­ing in 1915

Sig­na­ture Shots from the Films of Stan­ley Kubrick: One-Point Per­spec­tive

The His­to­ry of the Movie Cam­era in Four Min­utes: From the Lumiere Broth­ers to Google Glass

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. 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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