Visual Arts II: Sculpture, Film, Architecture & More

I've watched all of two silent films, Eisenstein's groundbreaking Battleship Potemkin (#39 above) and Metropolis, which is an amazing film for its time (1927):



I have watched a few scenes from a couple of Chaplin flicks, but I've never been into silent films. During that time a lot of directors were still treating film like theater instead of its own unique medium, but judging from the video you posted, the director and/or cinematographer had a nice eye for light, which was something that wasn't given a lot of consideration by most filmmakers at that time.

 

Actually, I've never considered cinematography something that should be judged separately from the other aspects of a film. It can be judged separately, and it is judged separately by critics and the judges handing out awards, which is why it has its own category, and it can be completely ignored by an audience that is more interested in the story, screenplay and characters. I agree with you that it should be considered along with the other aspects of a film but it is a rare thing, indeed, when you get the best of all worlds, and I think you get that in the collaboration between David Lean (director), Freddie Young (cinematography) and Robert Bolt (screenplay) in Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.

 

There seems to be a clear difference between the the very expansive tableaus, of which you take greatest note, and the films in which I appreciate, along with a taut story, artistically elevated cinematography. But I will give another example, of a film which I would say, merges great storytelling with masterful cinematography: Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. Please tell me, you have seen at least this classic.





Like The Beguiled, this film has a lot of interior shots, because it is about the same general theme of being confined, and caught in a trap. The suffocating element, of an apartment atmosphere, is tangibly evoked, in the imagery. And I cannot think of a film, that imparts the NY City atmosphere, any better that this one.

The cinematography is as much a part of creating the psychological effect of the film, as is its script. I will relate a story I've heard about one particular shot. The director, Polanski, told the cinematographer to set up his camera for a scene in which Rosemary gets a phone call, outside of the room with the phone, the door of which is only half open. The cinematographer couldn't figure out why he would want this, as it would not allow a full view of the main character (sitting on the bed, IIRC). But that is how it was filmed, and the cinematographer related how, when he saw it in the premiere, when that scene came on, he noticed everyone in the theater leaning forward and to the side, as if trying to peek around the door, obstructing their view-- exactly the reaction that Polanski had wanted!

More clips. The first two are actual scenes from the film. Nothing especially striking, about them, except their realism, which is what makes this supernatural story, so powerful:











That last one included the lullaby, which was the film's theme music. A funny thing I'd read, in the You Tube comments, for a post of just the song, on its own, was one person's saying that his mother, always used to sing this to him, when he was a child.

 

I just found this additional GREAT Video analysis of Rosemary's Baby -- and I don't say that, just because it echoes what I had just written, about the realism of the film: it is, in fact, credited in this video, as being the film which christens a new genre, of "Horror Realism." The video also talks about "Urban Paranoia," forcing an "Intimacy with Strangers," which I had touched on, in my post, as well as of Rosemary being "Trapped (and Controlled)," of course. But there is so, so much more, in this 10 minute analysis. Very interesting. I highly recommend it.

 

I wish I could say I've watched the entire movie, but I've only had an opportunity to watch part of it because it is rarely broadcast on TV for some inexplicable reason - it's not like movie theaters and television aren't filed with productions containing dark, demonic and evil content. What I have seen of the movie is very good, though - Polanski did I nice job with that film.

Martin Scorcese is very good at that, too. In contrast to Lean and Young's vast sweeping cinematography in Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, Scorcese will shove the camera up in tight on his actors/characters to produce a claustrophobic and uncomfortable effect that dramatically heightens the tension and intensity in a scene. It's a device he uses in a lot of his films - Raging Bull and Casino are two good examples - and he uses it to great effect.

Incidentally, while I concede that I much prefer the cinematography in Citizen Kane and Ran over the storylines and screenplay, that's not to say the storylines and screenplays in those movies are crap. Many have praised both in Citizen Kane, and Ran is an adaptation of King Lear, which was written by the man I consider the greatest writer who ever lived. Furthermore, with Kane, you have the film's troubled relationship with William Randolph Hearst, which is an interesting story in itself.

 

While we're on the topic of great cinematography and screenplays, there's the interesting story of this film:



While I love everything about this film, it's notable that it bears little resemblance to Boris Pasternak's exquisitely written novel. About 5 years ago I decided to read the book and realized that one could make a film that was truer to the novel and wind up with an almost completely different movie. While Robert Bolt and David Lean made Yuri Zhivago's love affairs the central part of the film, they play a considerably smaller role in Pasternak's novel, which is about the inner life of the protagonist and his conflicts with the outside world. Not surprisingly, the inner life of the protagonist mirrors the inner life of the author and his conflict with the Bolshevik Revolution and the men responsible for it. The scene where the author criticizes the revolution and revolutionaries and expresses the theme of the book - Man is born to live - is not even included in the film, but here it is in a scene from the novel where Yuri is talking to his mistress Lara:

Lara Guishar: You've changed, you know. You used to speak more calmly about the revolution , you were less harsh about it.

Yuri Zhivago: The point is, Larissa Fyodorovna, there are limits to everything. In all this time something definite should have been achieved. But it turns out that those who inspired the revolution aren't at home in anything except change and turmoil: that's their native element; they aren't happy with anything that's less than on a world scale. For them, transitional periods, worlds in the making, are an end in themselves. They aren't trained for anything else, they don't know about anything except that. And do you know why there is this incessant whirl of never-ending preparations? It's because they haven't any real capabilities, they are ungifted. Man is born to live, not to prepare for life. Life itself - the gift of life - is such a breathtakingly serious thing! Why substitute this childish harlequinade of adolescent fantasies, these schoolboy escapades?

Needless to say, one can see where this would have gotten Pasternak into enormous trouble with the Soviet authorities who publicly denounced him in Pravda and threw his mistress Olga Ivinskaya into Lubyanka prison. Of course, he was unable to accept the Nobel Prize in Literature he received in 1958 and it wasn't until 1989 that his son Yevgenii was able to receive the prize posthumously for his father who died in 1960.

(By the way, if anyone is interested in reading the novel, do yourself a favor and get the original translation by Max Hayward and Manya Harari.)

 

More great films...

We had a bad storm Saturday night that knocked out our sat TV and I almost popped this classic in the DVD player - I think I'm going to watch it (again) next weekend:



Arguably, more relevant today than it was in 1968....

 

I would be remiss not to include Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940) on the list of greatest films ever made.

Granted, Disney had teams of animators working on this production, but if they had to create 24 cells per second (standard sound film frame rate is 24 FPS) then it's not hard to imagine the enormous amount of work that went into this film - and all of it was done by hand:

 

Here's an interesting video on the making of the "Firebird Suite" segment in Fantasia 2000:

 

@Talon

On Doctor Zhivago: Film is superior when it comes to showing action, hence the appropriateness of their being called "movies." When it comes to showing someone's "inner life," or thoughts, ideas, and concepts, literature not only has the advantage, but the greater audience. That is to say, it is not surprising that a movie is going to focus on sex, or on action, instead of serious socio-political dialog, if its producers and studio, want to turn a profit from it.


On Rosemary's Baby: I do not understand, if film is a special interest of yours, your reason for not having seen this classic film. One can either "stream" movies on their televisions, or rent a download of the film, to their computer. I don't know the specifics of these things, but I am always seeing advertisements, and options on my phone screen, to "watch movie." It would only cost a few bucks, I imagine, for such an old film. It almost seems as if your thinking is that it is only going to be similar to the work of Martin Scorsese, so your familiarity with his work, is sufficient. I have, of course, seen Scorsese films, and I do not see the comparison.

The next thing I half expect you're going to tell me, is that you've never watched The Graduate, but that you think it might be comparable to Citizen Kane.

 

All true, and money may not have been the only reason why the studio, producers, director, et al, deviated so far from a novel that had, for the most part, won Boris Pasternak the Nobel Prize in Literature. Furthermore, given the fact that many films have been made about the inner lives of its characters - the film Amélie I mentioned in Post #37 happens to be one of them - one can't help but wonder why they did (?). I've also wondered what Pasternak would make of the film and screenplay, but those are two more things I'll never know...

It's easy to understand, actually. I live on old homestead in the middle of nowhere and streaming and downloading movies is not an option for me, so unless a movie is broadcast on my satellite TV network or offered on its standard pay-per-view fare I'm not going to be able to see it. Secondly, I don't have a lot of free time on the weekends and in the evenings to watch a lot of TV, and when I do have some free time I am more likely to spend it reading a book. So a combination of multiple factors has to come together at the same time for me to see any classic film I haven't had an opportunity to see before - like it running on Turner Classic Movies on a weekend night when my wife and the weather are permitting.

I don't think that at all, and my comparison concerned one specific aspect of filmmaking that you see in some films but not in others.

I may compare films and filmmakers, but I would never make the mistake of judging one or the other based on the merits of other films and filmmakers. One of the beauties of Film (and the artists who create it) is its diversity - vive la différence - and that goes for people's subjective views and opinions on any given film or Film in general.

I hate to disappoint you, but I have watched part of The Graduate and I can't imagine how it is comparable to Citizen Kane in any way. Perhaps, someone can find a comparison to be made somewhere - people can find similarities in just about anything if they want to - but in this case that someone isn't me, nor would it necessarily be me.

 

Here's a rather obscure film (1962), based on Franz Kafka's novel The Trial, that Orson Welles said was the best film he ever made. As one might imagine Kafka's story is very surreal and the cinematography is very good:

 

Just for fun....

 

Purely subjective, of course, but quite a few great films:

 

I had been making a point, related to your replying to my comments about the classic status of Rosemary's Baby, with interjecting something about a similarity, in Coppola's work. I guess I had misunderstood you-- but my point had been about your seeming to fall back on a few classic films, one of which, has been Citizen Kane. I was not saying that film was like The Graduate, any more than The Godfather is like Roman Polanski's film. That is why I'd said, "the next thing I half expect you're going to tell me..."

The buried headline: you have only watched part of The Graduate?!!

 

The ending, unfortunately. Ordinarily, I wouldn't drop into a film like that, but I was curious what all the fuss was about and thought I'd catch the rest of the movie some other time, so I figured "what the heck". Granted, I only saw a short but presumably important part of the film but the ending hasn't inspired me to see the rest of the film. At some point I'll probably have the opportunity to do so, but it hasn't left me contemplating whether or not I should rush over to Amazon and buy the film sight unseen like I did with Green Book (2018 ) and am thinking of doing with The Fall (2006), which I haven't seen and cinematography geeks have been raving about.

I'd be interested to hear what you think of The Graduate. I was a wee lad when it came out in 1967 and I get the impression that there is a narrow generational and perhaps cultural connection to the film that people my age and younger aren't going to make, and this article in The New Yorker only fuels that conjecture:

Of course, the inability for many to connect may be taking place more on a more individual level with people who don't share the perspectives, experiences, anxieties, alienation, disillusionment, anomie, etc., of the characters in the film and the people their age (particularly Benjamin's age).

And then one sees reviews like this:

and then there are articles that fall somewhere in between:

 

Ack - pardon the typos/editing above...

 

Shifting gears, in the Visual Arts-Painting thread I posted some work by Robert Rauschenberg, including this piece which combined two-dimensional and three-dimensional elements:



This got me to thinking about Rauschenberg's installations and installations in general, so I thought I would take things in that direction beginning with the next post below....

(cont.)

 

While one could say artists have been creating installations for a long time (think Bernini's Baldacchino di San Pietro in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican), when I think of them in the Modern or Modern Art sense, I'm inclined to trace their origins back to Alexander Calder (1898-1976) who is most famous for his mobiles and sculpture:







It seems Modern installation art began taking off in the 50s with Calder, Rauschenberg and other artists.

In the next several posts I'm going to start posting some installations by contemporary artists, beginning with several colorful pieces by Emmanuelle Moreaux...

(cont.)

 

(cont.)

The first of three installations by French artist Emmanuelle Moreaux - Forest of Numbers

 

(cont. from above)

Moreaux's Color of Time

 

(cont. from above)

...and finally, 100 Colors Falls

 

And now from the bright colors of Emmanuelle Moreaux to Henrique Oliveira's earthy Tapumes...







When I first saw the shot at top it reminded me of the heavy brush strokes in an Expressionist painting...

 

I don't need to read random reviews of The Graduate, to know that it is widely considered a great film, that it's loved by most film goers, and that it has been greatly honored by film "authorities."

<Snip>
In 1996, The Graduate was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[9][10] It is currently (as of the 2007 rankings) ranked by the American Film Institute as the 17th greatest American film of all time, having originally been ranked 7th in 1997
<End Snip>

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Graduate


The Graduate is something of a rarity, for me: a film that I can watch again and again, without it losing its punch, or my getting bored with it. Even films that highly impress me, in their first viewing-- like, say, Fight Club-- usually result in diminishing returns, if I try re-watching them. But there are few, that always seem compelling; a couple of other examples of these, would be the films Identity, and Let Me In.

Watching just the denouement of The Graduate, makes no sense, to my mind-- all the meaning, to the film's conclusion, comes from what has been well depicted, throughout the rest of the film, leading up to the ending. It is about an aimless questioning of the path that life and society have prescribed. One could view the story as an existentialist experience; that is, it is to be enjoyed moment to moment, for the journey which is unfolding. It is also a very humorous film, which you would not likely realize, from just seeing the closing part of the story.

While I had been alive for a couple of years, prior to the film's 1967 release, it was obviously made by, and directed toward, a generation that was before my time. Nevertheless, it is one of those timeless tales, that still holds great appeal, for me-- though it sounds as if we are about the same age. You are probably more correct, in your speculating that the connection people feel has more to do with their individual perspectives, or general social dispositions, rather than having actually been a part of a certain culture, of that time. That said, I believe it has very broad appeal.

It was an innovative film, in various ways. The most easily notable, being that using the songs of a pop group, as a film's soundtrack (other than in a film about that group, as in A Hard Day's Night), had never before been done. Now, of course, putting pop songs into films, is common practice.

The cinematography, particularly the camera angles, I assume you are aware, also have enjoyed renown, especially the shot of Dustin Hoffman, taken through the legs of Anne Bancroft, while the character Ben says, "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me." The way we see things through Ben's eyes, and hear through Ben's ears, in the pool scene-- in which Ben is modelling the scuba wetsuit, given him by his father, for their family's adult friends-- also comes to mind.

 

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