A Weblog of Curious Things.
Media referred to by suffix as follows:
Friday, 31st March into Saturday, 1st April, 2006, am
128.V: Tarkovsky: Solaris, from VHS, widescreen, 128.V, 159'20"
I have not seen the US remake with George Clooney. More of as ghost story than a hi tec sci-fi, this is very slow moving and my least favourite Tarkovsky. I had forgotten a great deal of it since I last saw it ten or so years back. The Russian concept of wide-screen television in those days was a very curved tube and now very retro-looking thing.
Saturday, 1st April, 2006, pm
274.D: Free with Independent Newspaper: Chabrol: Le Boucher, widescreen, 1969
275 - 76.D: Bought, W. H. Smith, Middleton: Hitchcock: Lifeboat, 2 x DVD set, 1944 etc.
Sunday, 2nd April, 2006, am
273.D: 2 Krazy Kat cartoons, King Features, 1963:
Collectors' Item & No Such Luck, 5'32" + 4'57"
238.D: 2 Chaplin Keystone comedies, 1914:
Cruel, Cruel Love & The Landlady's Pet (Star Boarder), 9'11" + 12'37"
272.D: Wm. A. Wellman: Lady of Burlesque, 1942, 89'59"
Sunday, 2nd April, 2006, pm
273.D: 2 Krazy Kat cartoons, King Features, 1963:
Carnival Capers & Happy Daze, 5'00" + 4'57"
238.D: 2 Chaplin Keystone comedies, 1914:
20 Minutes of Love & Caught in a Cabaret, 10'01" + 15'55"
274.D: Chabrol: Le Boucher, 1969, widescreen, 88'45"
Monday, 3rd April, 2006, pm
Microgroove records bought Oldham:
5 x 10" LPs with Booklets, Fabbri: The Great Musicians, 1969 - 70 @ 10p each:
13.GM: Mozart: Flute & Harp Concerto, Storck, Patéro, Faerber, from Vox
38.GM: Franck: Violin Sonata, Gulli, Cavallo, from ??
39.GM: Corelli Concerti Grossi & Trio Sonata. Eckhardt etc, from ??
43a.GM: Mozart: Symphonies 1 & 40, Kehr & Pantelli, from ??
46.GM: Brahms: PC No.2 Finale, Sandor & Haydn Variations, Horenstein, from Vox
Another batch of The Great Musicians filled a few gaps, completing the Franck set of three, for example. The Corelli was a single issue devoted to that composer. The Brahms Concerto is complete elsewhere on a Vox disc. I did not previously have Horenstein's Haydn Variations in stereo, assuming the stereo is genuine. I think it is. I had these Baden-Baden issues on Delta mono records.
7 x 12" LPs
5333.M: Vaughan Williams: Sinfonia Antartica, LPO, Boult, 1953, original Decca LXT mono pressing;
5334.S: Purcell: Dido & Aeneas, Barbirolli, 1966, original 1966 Angel pressing with booklet;
5335.S: Rachmaninov: 3rd Piano Concerto. Ashkenazy, Previn, Decca
5336.S: Rossini Overtures, Karajan, 1961, Columbia semi-circle label;
5337.S: Rawsthorne Chamber Music, Cardiff Festival Ensemble, Argo;
5338.M: Hindemith: Symphony in Bb, Schoenberg & Stravinsky, Eastman, Fennell, Mercury, 1957;
5339.S: Walton Choral Music, Christchurch, Argo, 1971.
It is said that every subsequent LP reissue of the Boult Vaughan Williams discs was a downgrading. I already have the Ace of Clubs and Eclipse (artificial stereo) reissues so here at last is the original. Or is this LXT pressing itself a recut? If non-recut Deccas can be found in good condition, they can sound splendid. The Purcell was likewise an original. These white angel pressings are somewhat sought-after, though I doubt if this one is especially valuable. It does come with a lavish booklet so it beats the cfp reissue into a cocked hat. I turned out also to have a cfp reissue of the Karajan Rossini record. The Previn-Ashkenazy version of Rachmaninov's 3rd Concerto had previously evaded me. I had his earlier version under Fistoulari. This completes the set of the Concertos with these players, though they are fairly common discs.
I doubt if the Rawsthorne chamber works record sold many copies. This is an ex-library copy so may be worn. The Fennell disc is certainly badly worn in parts so I expect some bad blasting. Still, it is a rarity and reconnects me to a disc I last heard in 1972! The Walton choral works were last heard in 1974 - this LP contains three little carols which were otherwise unavailable.
Tuesday, 4th April, 2006, pm
300.V: recorded from BBC2 tv, Digital: Hitchcock: Under Capricorn, 1949, 112'02"
from Web: Buñuel: Las Hurdes, documentary, dubbed, 1933, 28' c
Awake, awake, lest the Angel of Death steal upon you unawares!
Wednesday, 6th April, 2006, pm
VHS opera tapes bought Bury, £1:50 each:
301.V: Monteverdi: Orfeo, Ponelle, 1988 c
302 - 03.V: Wagner: Die Walküre, Kupfer/Barenboim, Bayreuth, 1992
2 x LP set, bought Bury, £1:
5340 - 41.S: Elgar: Complete Organ Music, Hunt, Robinson, Worcester, 1976, RCA
Friday, 7th April, 2006, pm
264.D: Herzog: Heart of Glass, 1976, widescreen, 90'23"
Nodding during second half of this.
Saturday, 8th April, 2006, pm
Gramophone Magazine for May 2006 bought with sampler CD, Prestwich
137.XCD: Gramophone on CD, May 2006
264.D: Herzog: Heart of Glass, 1976, widescreen, 90'22"
version with commentary plus trailer: 3'26"
Sunday, 9th April, 2006, pm
277.D: Free with Observer Newspaper: N. Roeg: Don't Look Now, 1973, widesceen, 105'
278 - 81.D: Cagney 4 x DVD set, bought HMV, Manchester, £19.95
(Angles with Dirty Faces, The Public Enemy, The Roaring Twenties & White Heat)
Sunday, 9th April am into Monday 10th April, 2006
279.D: Warner Night at the Movies, 1931, 21'30"
Beer & Blood, documentary on The Public Enemy, 2005, 19'33"
Wm. A. Wellman: The Public Enemy, 1931, 80'34" + 0'42"
version with commentary by Robert Sklar & trailer
Monday, 10th April, 2006
DVD Note: Cagney Signature Collection, Warner Brothers
It's a big advance on VHS but there will be Higher Definition formats along any day soon. The early adopters will decide what wins. The hard core will go on forking out for ever better renditions of their favourites but I think the only sane attitude to technology is to treat each new media as additional. Hitchcock was in my DVD phase and I shall resist any urge to upgrade to as new format for some believed enhancement. The day may come when the DVD player is used for back catalogue. It will join the other dead and dying media in my personal museum - LP, cassette tape, 78 rpm, dead trees, shelves of old magazines. These piles can induce a certain middle-aged melancholia: time no longer appears infinite and a tolerant policy towards second-hand vinyl gives way to amazement that I ever had the confidence to believe there was time to play it all. If buying an old disc was a inexpensive link with the past it was also writing a cheque drawing on some future hour of time to play it.
So I suppose the four disc Cagney set was a minor extravagance, given that three of the movies were sitting on the shelf in reasonable VHS incarnations. Still, the package comes tricked out with a wealth of extras - not just Commentaries and Documentaries but the Warner Nights at the Movies packages, which rescue a lot of obscure shorts, newsreels and cartoons from the vaults. I like the idea of recreating something of the world around the big movie as well as the excuse to resurrect things which might otherwise be hard to market. That is especially true of the shorts.
A lot of care has been taken over these films and they will all stand repeated viewings.
5 x cheap DVDs bought Poundshop, Harpurhey:
282.D: Alan Rudolph: Head AKA Premonition, 1971
283.D: Roberto Faenza: Corrupt Lieutenant AKA Corrupt, 1981
284.D: John Huston: Moulin Rouge, 1952
285.D: Ken Annakin: Three Men in a Boat, 1955
286.D: Lewis Gilbert: The Good Die Young, 1954
2 x LP discs, bought Cheetham Hill:
5342.S: Nutcracker & Peer Gynt, VPO, Karajan, 1962, Decca Wideband label
5343.S: Prokofiev: 2nd Piano Concerto, Balaghová, Czech PO, Ancerl, Supraphon, 1963
Tuesday, 11th April, 2006, pm
273.D: 2 Krazy Kat cartoons, King Features, 1963:
Serious-ous Business & Arty Smarty, 5'09" + 5'00"
238.D: 2 Chaplin Keystone comedies, 1914:
A Busy Day & The Fatal Mallet, 6'08" + 9'53"
282.D: A. Rudolph: Head, AKA Premonition, 1971, 79'26" - Source: 23rd Century DVD, price: £1
Renamed Head by the distributors, this 1971 picture was originally entitled Premonition by the director Alan Rudolph. Head probably gives a better idea of its druggy content. To call it a druggy horror flick would be to create expectations which this gentle, character-led picture would disappoint. Three hippy blokes, trying to make it as musicians, take a cabin in the woods. When the weed gives out, they take to smoking an evil local herb with fatal consequences.
The drama comes and goes. At times an ominous sense of doom stalks them but the tension is dissipated in trippy sequences. There is a Prologue, which paints in the bad trip undergone by the eldest of the hippies some years before. His prickly relationship with a tippling college professor is a story recapped later but to no very evident purpose. We keep expecting that someone might explain the mysterious phallic red flowers but they don't. Are there hints of homo-eroticism in the difficult relationship between the male leads and their shared dreams? Possibly.
This being the seventies, a babe turns up on horseback for no very good reason except to make a pretty picture. Though his part is poorly concieved, the third, black member of the team has the best screen presence yet remains marginal to the drama. No one could say this is a good film but it might leave traces of unease for longer than most cabin-in-the-woods features since. One unusual shot, where the camera appears to have been strapped to the front of the actor recalls a similar scene in Scorsese's Mean Streets - but that was three years or so in the future!
Series-ous Business & Arty Smarty, Krazy Kat Cartoons, King Features, 1963
These seemed a cut or two above the others seen so far. Condensed into five minutes, these managed a lot of inventive gags. The first allows Ignatz, the mouse to control the picture as a film director so we pass from background to background and genre to genre at lightning pace. In the second, he is an artist, able to control the scene with his magic pencil. Both these are essentially chases of Ignatz and Officer Pup, with Krazy Kat appearing only at start and finish.
A Busy Day & The Fatal Mallet, Chaplin Keystone shorts, 1 reel each, 1914
The Busy Day is mainly fighting, though Chaplin is here in drag. A real world setting is used as his feisty harridan fights all comers for her man. When the water is sighted, we know the end must be nigh. These films always seem to move towards saturation in lieu of resolution.
The Fatal Mallet has a lot in common with Krazy Kat - the characters throw bricks at each other. Here there are more suitors than ever and for a while it looks as if the mallet may well have been fatal. Alliances are quickly formed and as quickly broken. If Death appears to take one character, along comes a youngster to try his luck. At this date, the young pretender is unceremoniously despatched with a kick. Again it all ends in the drink.
Tuesday, 11th April, 2006, pm
280.D: Angels with Dirty Faces, documentary, 2005, 22'14"
Angels with Dirty Faces, trailer, 3'09"
Wednesday, 12th April, 2006, am
280.D: Warner Night at the Movies, 1938, 33'00"
Curtiz: Angels with Dirty Faces, 1938, 93'16"
version with commentary by Dana Polan
Wednesday, 12th April, 2006, pm
283.D: R. Faenza: Corrupt Lieutenant aka Corrupt, 1981, 101'04" Source: 23rd Century DVD, £1
Thursday, 13th April, 2006, pm
279.D: Wm. A. Wellman: The Public Enemy, 1931, 80'33"
followed by second viewing of Beer & Blood, documentary, 19'34"
Friday, 14th April, 2006, pm
46.S: Brahms: 2nd Symphony, Columbia SO, B. Walter, r. 1960, 40'56"
3128.S: Boccherini: Cello Concerto, M. Gendron, Lamoureux, P. Casals, r. 1960, 22'08"
3137.M: Debussy: La Damoisselle Elue & Berlioz: Les nuits d'étè
V. de Los Angeles, Boston SO, C. Munch, 1955, 19'11" + 30'15"
3133.M: Schumann: 3rd Symphony, Vienna Festival Orchestra, H. Swarowsky, 1957 c, 27'11"
Saturday, 15th April, 2006, pm
3133.M: Chopin: Les Sylphides, Vienna Festival Orchestra, H. Swarowsky, 1957 c, 20'42"
Whose orchestration? Could it be original Glazunov version?
3128.S: Haydn: Cello Concerto in C, M. Gendron, Lamoureux, P. Casals, r. 1960, 26'07"
2486.S: Brahms: 3rd Symphony, Columbia SO, B. Walter, r. 1960, 33'12"
3131.S: Vaughan Williams: Concerto Accademico, N. Grumlicková, Prague SO, P. Maag, 1963, 16'39"
285.D: Annakin: Three Men in a Boat. 1955, 87'08"
Easter Sunday, 16th April, 2006, pm
107.D: H. Higgin: The Racketeer, 1929, 65'31"
117.D: H. Higgin: Hell's House, 1932, 71'15"
Easter Monday, 17th April, 2006, am
192.D: R. Boulter: Brighton Rock, 1947, 88'24"
Easter Monday, 17th April, 2006, pm
276.D: A Conversation with Hitchcock, CBC, 1963, 49'33"
The Making of Lifeboat, documentary, 2005, 19'56"
265.D: W. Herzog: Stroszek, 1976, widescreen, 103'32" plus trailer, 3'17" &
265.D: W. Herzog: Stroszek, 1976, widescreen, 103'31"
version with commentary by the director & Norman Hill
Tuesday, 18th into Wednesday 19th April, 2006
129.V: S. Peckinpah: The Wild Bunch, widescreen, from broadcast, September 1996, 138'15"
129.V: ??: The Celluloid Closet, documentary, first half only, 45'14"
This fragment came as a surprise. If the second half was ever recorded, back in 1996, it may have been taped over. Still, I suppose the earlier material is the most curious.
Wednesday 19th April, 2006, pm
2 x LP discs bought, Bolton:
5344.M: Brahms: Violin Concerto, Gioconda de Vito, Philharmonia, R. Schwarz, 1953, MFP 2003
3rd copy, earlier pressing, higher level
5345.E: Beethoven: Violin Concerto, Menuhin, Philharmonia, Furtwängler, 1953, Volksplatter,
Cologne, from Electrola Breitklang electronic stereo issue, bootlegged?
273.D: 2 Krazy Kat cartoons, King Features, 1963:
Odd for Art's Sake & Tourist attraction, 5'01" + 5'01"
238.D: Chaplin Keystone comedy, 1914: The Knockout, 24'55"
286.D: L. Gilbert: The Good Die Young, 1954, 93'57"
Thursday, 20th April, 2006, am
280.D: M. Curtiz: Angels with Dirty Faces, 1938, 93'18"
Friday, 21st April, 2006, am
277.D: N. Roeg: Don't Look Now, 1973, 105'28"
Friday 21st April, 2006, pm into Saturday 22nd April, am
278.D: Top of the World, documentary on White Heat, 16'50"
278.D: R. Walsh: White Heat, 1949, version with commentary by Drew Casper, 108'40"
Saturday, 22nd April, pm into Sunday, 23rd April, pm
Away in Southport
Sunday 23rd April, pm into Monday, 24th April, am
278.D: White Heat: Warner Night at the Movies, 1949, 21'19"
273.D: 3 Krazy Kat cartoons, King Features, 1963:
Alp Wanted; Monumental Love; Network Nitwit, 15'06"
Tuesday, 25th April, 2006
4 x Newspaper Free DVDs, bought in Bury & Heywood:
287.D: C. Morahan: Clockwise, John Cleese comedy, 1985, 92'
288.D: D. Drury: Defence of the Realm, conspiracy thriller, 1985, 92'
289.D: B. Forbes: Whistle Down The Wind, childhood fantasy, 1961, 94'
290.D: K. Reisz: The French Lieutenant's Woman, Pinter screenplay, 1981, 119'
Quite a pleasing crop of British films. I think I have seen them all but many years ago on tv.
VHS video tape, bought Bury:
304.V: A. Hitchcock: Topaz, theatrical cut, 1969, 120'
Shorter by about 15 minutes than the Director's Cut on the DVD, this old video version preserves the tighter cut which Hitchcock supervised after the disastrous previews. The cuts were many and mainly small but they did not rescue the movie from a critical mauling and box ofice disaster. The ending used is the suicide one which was assembled from existing footage with a gunshot on the soundtrack. After the widescreen titles - the film reverts to open matte.
2 x LP discs bought, Bury:
5346.S: Tchaikovsky: Francesca & Romeo, Philharmonia, Giulini, Columbia, 1963
5347.S: Elgar: Symphony No.2, Hallé, Barbirolli, 1964, single disc reissue, 1979
Wednesday, 26th April, 2006, am
048.D: Hitchcock: Topaz, 3 alternative endings, 7'00" c
048.D: Hitchcock: Topaz, documentary, 2000, 29'21"
048.D: Topaz, trailer, 3'00"
also watched first part of the movie simultaneously on tv the theatrical cut & director's cut on computer
NB: Both these versions are presented in open matte format, the video has titles in widescreen.
Wednesday, 26th April, 2006, pm
afternoon, away in Fleetwood
287.D: C. Morahan: Clockwise, John Cleese comedy, 1985, 92'03"
I enjoyed this film and thought it had been underrated. That was until the ending, which goes badly awry. Ironically, it is a matter of timing. Maybe writer Michael Frayn had attempted to graft too many ideas onto his farcial plot. Anal retentive timekeeper and headmaster, John Cleese, misses a train and the resulting diversions take us deep into his past to uncover a history of slackerdom. It ought to involve some sort of new understanding but the final conference scenes are a terrible disappointment. Frayn, like the embarrassed hosts, can only keep ushering his uninvited entourage of guests into an upstairs room in lieu of any resolution. Now over twenty years old, the road vehicles look positively antique! The fact this surfaced as a newspaper give-away - from The News of the World, of all ghastly rags - must have given many a second chance to catch up with this box-office flop. I was glad to.
Thursday, 27th April, 2006, am
288.D: D. Drury: Defence of the Realm, conspiracy thriller, 1985, 91'54"
Saturday, 29th April, 2006, am
275.D: A. Hitchcock: Lifeboat, version with commentary by Drew Casper, 1943, 93'28"
Saturday, 29th April, pm
195.D: F. Lang: Dr Mabuse, The Gambler, Extras, Documentaries etc, 52'29"
253.D: Chaplin in Mabel's Married Life, 1914, 12'55"
253.D: Chaplin in Laughing Gas, 1914, 13'35" from non-theatrical print, 16mm?
284.D: J. Huston: Moulin Rouge, 1952, 114'15"
Perverse love in Paris. A crippled artist chasing worthless creatures who despise him for his defects. Where have we seen that one before? Willy Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage had been filmed at least twice before this biopic of Toulouse-Lautrec. Of course, most of that work is set in a grey England, after the artist has given up his vocation. I rather like the way Leslie Howard suffers from the youthful Bette Davies in the 1930s version. Here, as the stunted artist, José Ferrer hardens his face and voice to an icy mask so we have to conjecture the warmth within. Meanwhile the gaity of the can-can and the colour of the art offset the squalor of the streets of shame.
Not an easy film to relate to Huston's others. A sympathy with outsider-figures resurfaces in such later work as Fat City and Wise Blood. A lot of critics seem to have given up on Huston in a huff, finding only a sporadically-engaged film-maker with occasional aspirations to artiness. Though famous enough, it is on the strength of a few films only that his reputation rests.
This 1952 Technicolor picture filmed in England & France won two Oscars - Art Direction and Set Direction. The cheap Wienerworld DVD may be all we are likely to get as the movie has lapsed into the Public Domain, along with other Romulus productions of the time. They were the company responsible for foisting Laurence Harvey on an unresisting fifties public but mercifully he isn't in Moulin Rouge!
Sunday, 30th April, 2006, pm into Monday, 1st May, 2006, am
194.D: F. Lang: Dr Mabuse, The Gambler, Part I, 1922, 155'05"
Among the most ambitious products of the German silent cinema, Lang's Dr Mabuse, Der Spieler has not achieved the celebrity of his Metropolis or Niebelungen film. However, fate has been altogether kinder to it than to Metropolis and it has been possible to restore it to its original two-part form, making it a monumental four and a half hours in length.
In his commentary to Lifeboat, Drew Casper points to Hitchcock's blending of two great cinematic traditions: montage, as pioneered by the early Russian directors and German Expressionism, which concentrated meaning within the single frame. We tend to think of the purest examples of Expressionism being films such as Der Golem and Dr Caligari, which take us into legendary territory or the scewed perspective of disordered minds. Dr Mabuse represents a stepping back from that abyss: it is virtually an auto-critique of Expressionism.
The evil mind-bending Mabuse is the focus of the film and we sometimes see the magical effects of his hypnotic suggestions, notably in the use of magical text appearing on a card-table to distract a gambler. Also the film contains a very telling use of Expressionist design: long sequences take place within the palace of the aristocratic Tolds. The Duke is a connoisseur, himself something of a mad professor type. Art works and grotesque masks decorate the large spaces, much as they do the artist's quarters in Dreyer's Mikhael from the same period. There is even an ironic confrontation between the Duke and Mabuse. Asked how he views Expressionism, Mabuse dismisses it as a jumble of things. The irony seems to be that he cannot appreciate anything outside his own control.
Mabuse himself will adopt various masks throughout the picture, some of them as grotesque as any in the Duke's chambers. Yet Lang places his wicked anti-hero into the midst of a real society. These twenties decadents may be as caricatured as anything in Grosz or Dix but they inhabit real - if secret - spaces. The film unfolds in a series of hidden back-rooms - luxurious illegal casinos and drinking dens to be reached by a password. It was a vocabulary that would be carried over more or less intact into the Hollywood pictures about prohibition.
Yet in the large sets of Mabuse and the middle-distance photography, Lang was swallowing up the brief fragile flowers of Expressionism. Almost any of the stills from Mabuse should set the pulses racing. If it was a lost film, we would dream of its rediscovery and imagine it to be tremendously exciting. The story could be very adequately told in a series of annotated photographs and, to tell the truth, it more or less is. The camera rarely moves and there are so few close-ups that when they arrive, we think they must be a new discovery. The story is told at great length but it is so episodic that the inspiration of early French serials such as Fantomas seems to have been carried over into the structure as well as the theme. If we watched films just for the story, Mabuse wouldn't rank with a Republic Serial!
The extreme length of this restoration appears to be due to a religious adherance to16fps. By the same means, even incomplete prints of Metropolis can be made to run 139 minutes. There are some long intertitles and letters or newspaper notices which are repeated - surely a mistake! The intertitles are not always happily translated and one or two made me laugh out loud.
Surpringly for a prestige production of the period, there does not appear to have been an original music score for Mabuse. The modern small-ensemble score by Aloysius Zimmermann grated on my nerves after about ten minutes and he gets a short documentary in which he puffs his lame product. The other documentary materials are highly informative and include much later archive footage of Fritz Lang. We are spared a full-length commentary.
The big plus, after all these complaints is that the film has been reconstructed from surviving camera negatives so the quality of the picture is often first class. A few rough patches are untypical. Relatively few scenes employ the trademark Expressionist chiaroscuro lighting. Instead, Lang creates his luxury hotels and nightclubs as a symphony in soft grey tones. Some grain is evident but probably authentic. It has often been lamented that the sensuality of the early cinema-going experience is the least easy to convey with worn surviving prints. This restored version of Dr Mabuse may be the nearest we will get to recreating that. True, it is not an overly dramatic experience but having undergone it I am sure it will resonate in the mind of the viewer just as surely as it did in the minds of the professionals who went on to draw on its vocabulary for years afterwards. Dr Mabuse may not have finished his hypnotic work with us yet!
Coming soon, the 115 minutes of Part Two!