A rare screening of Stan Brakhage’s legendary experimental feature film, Dog Star Man (1961-1964, 75 min.), in its original silent 16mm format, as the filmmaker intended.  A new print will be shown.

Screens with Legendary Epics Yarns and Fables, Part 2: Stan Brakhage (Stephen E. Gebhardt and Robert Fries, 1969, 9 min.), an interview film with no interlocutor.

“I wanted it to be as real from the very beginning as life happening.” — Stan Brakhage

Four years in the making, this influential and much-revered abstract work is widely regarded as the masterpiece of legendary filmmaker Stan Brakhage, who made more than 350 films over 50 years. A psychedelic freakout, mytho-poetic dissertation and aesthetic shot-across-the-bow all in one, Dog Star Man is an unforgettable work of high artistry, as challenging as it is rewarding.

Unlike Brakhage’s later and better-known painted films, Dog Star Man draws mainly on filmed actualities. Its components are all contained in the stunning Prelude. Over the next four parts these elements are fragmented, manipulated and recombined in a mosaic of increasing complexity.

On one level the film depicts an intensely mythic spiritual quest, a deeply personal farago informed by Brakhage’s lifelong study of poetry and symbolism. On another level it is a purely visual tour de force of editing and composition that can be experienced solely on its own (or your own) terms.

Dog Star Man was a landmark that proclaimed the vibrancy of the experimental cinema, both by its length and for its radical departure from (most) prior experimental film aesthetics.  It influenced (and often divided) the discussion, creation, and very conception of experimental cinema for decades to come. For Brakhage, Dog Star Man represented an aesthetic rebirth, moving past the psychodramas of his youth, which he was already respected for, into the visually tactile poetry of his mature years.

Time Magazine, 1967:
“Stan Brakhage, 37, a husky hypochondriac who lives with his wife and five children in a log cabin in Colorado, has radically rewritten movie grammar. By fragmenting his films into frames, Brakhage has established the frame in cinema as equivalent to the note in music; whereupon he proceeds to make films with frames the way a composer makes music with notes.”

Fred Camper:
“More than any other filmmaker, he defined the cinema as a visual being, liberating it from non-visual considerations, and as visually useful for expressing a totality of thought.”

Jake Euker, PopMatters.com:
“Dog Star Man [is] a 74-minute epic on what Brakhage calls ‘the big daddy’ theme, or man in his natural state as father, husband, lover, and provider, pitted against nature, and seen from the atomic to the astral levels. …Its very conception — a portrait of a man in all of life’s roles — recalls in part James Joyce’s depiction of Leopold Bloom in Ulysses. Dog Star Man is a work of realism into which abstraction intrudes. It was in this film that he first scratched and painted designs directly onto film, and his use of such devices as under- or over-exposing film or experimenting with focus, not only render much of Dog Star Man truly abstract, but signal the full acceptance by the filmmaker of those methods which bloom so magnificently in his later work.”

P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde 1943-1978:
“Dog Star Man develops in mythic and nearly systematic terms the universal vision inherent in lyric films. More than the entire body of the American avant-garde cinema, this work is situated in the rhetoric of romanticism, in its description of the emergence of conscience, the cycle of the seasons, the battle of man against nature and the sexual ambivalence in the visual evocation of an earthly titan bearing the comic name, Dog Star Man.”

August 4, 2010
Dog Star Man (1961-1964)
Northwest Film Forum (advance tickets available now)

Stan Brakhage’s landmark experimental feature film, shown in its original 16mm format and silently, as intended by the filmmaker.  Screens with Legendary Epics Yarns and Fables. Part 2: Stan Brakhage (1969), a short interview film by Stephen Gebhardt and Robert Fries.

September 23, 2010
First Words: The Birth of Sound Cinema, 1895-1929
Northwest Film Forum

A program of rare short films tracing the evolution of sound from its earliest experiments through its transformation of the entire industry.  Plus, period 78rpm records played on a real Victrola by collectors Robert Millis and Jeffrey Taylor of the bands Climax Golden Twins and AFCGT.

November 11, 2010
Breakaway: Films by Bruce Conner
Northwest Film Forum

A rare opportunity to see a selection of Conner’s outstanding film works in their original format, celebrating what would have been his 77th birthday.

Also: we’re hoping to have another Halloween Spook Show Spectacular — stayed tuned for updates!

Part of the year-long 69 series.

Northwest Film Forum
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
8:00 PM

16mm (original format) / 71 min.

A selection of landmarks in avant film from 1969, featuring classic short works by many of the year’s greatest pioneering artists. Featuring classic “analog” films and examples of the birth of digital cinema, with early video art and even some of the first digital computer animation ever made.

Watch streaming video and more info about the artists and films

Invocation of My Demon Brother
Kenneth Anger, with synthesizer soundtrack by Mick Jagger
His last film for 21 years.

Our Lady of the Sphere
Larry Jordan
Surreal cut-out animation by a master

Moon 1969
Scott Bartlett
Mesmerizing video/film art

Le Labyrinthe
Piotr Kamler, with electronic score by Bernard Parmegiani
created for Pierre Schaeffer’s ORTF in Paris

Binary Bit Patterns
Michael Whitney
Pioneering digital computer animation

Beatles Electronique
Electronic Moon no. 2
Jud Yalkut and Nam June Paik
Visionary video art

Hermann Nitsch: An Introduction to the O.M. Theatre
Stephen Gebhardt
A shocking documentary of the ground-breaking Aktionist performance artist and composer

Part of the year-long 69 Series.

Northwest Film Forum
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
8:00 PM

16mm (original format) / 88 min.

A schizoid sampling of the incredibly diverse underground documentary and newsreel film scenes in 1969. The Black Panthers meet Pentecostal Christians amidst the psychedelic ruins of Chicago’s Democratic Convention Riots. Plus, a rarely-shown early interview with the legendary Kuchar Brothers.

Just added: Fallout Shelter Analysis by Computer Graphics, a Dept. of Defense instructional film for what was then a cutting-edge computer interface using a “light pen” stylus.

Testimony
Brian Patrick
A group of Pentecostal Christians in Athens, Ohio

Mayday!
California Newsreel
A “Free Huey” rally held by the Black Panthers in San Francisco, on the May 1 international labor holiday. Crypto-commie perennial Bob Avakian makes an appearance at the microphone as well.

Legendary Epic Yarns and Fables, Part 4: The Kuchar Brothers
Stephen Gebhardt
A no-holds-barred interview with the legendary underground exploitation filmmakers

Leo Beuerman
Gene Boomer
An Oscar-nominated look at the life of a severely handicapped man in Lawrence, Kansas

Campaign
Tom Palazollo
The 1968 Democratic Convention and its aftermath as seen through a local experimental lens

Just added!
Fallout Shelter Analysis by Computer Graphics
University of Utah Computer Center, for ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), US Dept. of Defense

Grand Illusion Cinema
Friday, October 30, 2009

Carnivorous Cartoons, Shocking Shorts, Asphyxiating Animation, Terrifying Trailers, Putrescent Previews…and Real Live Mayhem!

Do you dare to witness the ultimate onslaught of MONSTER MAYHEM as the Grand Illusion Cinema is overrun with creeps, spooks, ghouls, and fiends? Join us on our journey into the strange, dark world of the SUPERNATURAL as we try to make contact with the other side and invite the diabolical denizens of the spectral realms into our theater. You will see a GHOST! But you may not SURVIVE! Be there on October 30th and behold as the phantoms take over the screen for a night of the most unbelievably SHOCKING, THRILLING, and AMAZING fright films ever to scream their way into your rapidly melting mind. Can you survive the GRAND ILLUSION SPOOK-SHOW SPECTACULAR? See if you have what it takes!!

Poster for 'Zorro's Fighting Legion', 12 chapter movie serial

It’s official — The Sprocket Society will be curating Secret Sunday Matinee II at the Northwest Film Forum this spring, March 1 – May 24, 2009!

Now at a later time — 3 PM (by popular demand).  Each show will be a full two hours of classic and rare movie entertainment.  Series passes will be available.

Our movie serial this time will be Zorro’s Fighting Legion (1939), one of the all-time classics from the legendary Republic Studios, packed with literally non-stop action and featuring legendary stunt work.

The Secret Features — dating from the 1920s through the 1950s or so — will lean toward westerns, adventure, and swashbucklers, but we’ve got some curveballs in mind to keep you on your toes.  There will be two all-silent film programs (except for the serial, of course), and the return of the 13th Episode Show, a series-finale cavalcade of extra-special surprises.

The shows will remain family-friendly (suggested for ages 10 and up), but we’ll be aiming for a slightly older audience this time — sort of a kiddie matinee for grown-ups.

No self-respecting weekend matinee would be caught in public without its shorts, and there are even more surprising and rare treasures in store this time around — silents and sound, cartoons, comedies, music, trick films, experimental animation, and the just plain odd.

Watch this site for more info soon…

August 31 – November 23, 2008
Northwest Film Forum
1515 12th Ave., Seattle (on Capitol Hill, between Pike and Pine)
Sundays at noon, except Sun. Nov. 2 @ 4:00 PM

The Sprocket Society and the Northwest Film Forum proudly present The Secret Sunday Matinee, a 3-month series that recreates the weekend matinees of yesteryear.

For three generations or more, a weekend matinee meant you got to see cartoons, all kinds of short subjects, and — most importantly — the next thrilling episode of a movie serial. And of course, a thrilling feature.

This fall, The Sprocket Society recreates that lost tradition with the Secret Sunday Matinee.

• Series Details
• Press Coverage
• Poster Gallery
• Weekly Show Guide
• 16mm Projection
• Images
• Tickets

Ticket Information for The Secret Sunday Matinee (archival)

SORRY, THIS SERIES IS OVER. NO TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE. The information below is archival only. To learn about upcoming events sponsored by The Sprocket Society, subscribe to our email list.

Join the Secret Matinee Club now! The Club Meets at: Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave. (206-267-5380) – on Capitol Hill, between Pike & Pine

Meetings are Held: every Sunday at 12 noon, through Nov. 23, 2008 (13 weeks)
Special time 4:00 PM on Sun. Oct. 26 only.

One-day and Series Memberships:

Membership in the Club** grants you admission to movie screenings at the Secret Matinee Theatre! Series memberships are were available online at BrownPaperTickets.com, and at the NWFF Box Office.

One-Day Membership:

Buy advance tickets online, or at showtime at the NWFF Box Office.

• $8.50 General Public
• $6.00 Children under 12 and seniors over 60
• $5.00 NWFF Members

Series – 13 weeks:

Buy a series pass online or at the NWFF Box Office.

• $65 General Public
• $25 NWFF Members New members welcome
• $130 Family Membership (admit 4)

SORRY, THIS EVENT IS OVER. NO TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE.

Thurs. May 15, 2008 / 8:00 PM — one show only!
Northwest Film Forum – 1515 12th Ave.(on Capital Hill between Pike and Pine)
Tickets: 8.50 / $5.00 for NWFF members / $6.00 for children under 12 and seniors
Advance tickets available online at BrownPaperTickets.com

Event Details | Program Notes | Related Links | Press Release | Photographs | Event Poster | Further Reading

Spectacular sci-fi and fantasy epics made between 1901–1912 by the father of special effects, accompanied by unusual musical selections including early electronic music, avant garde jazz, and the Master Musicians of Jajouka. One film will be shown with a rare live performance of its original 1904 narration, accompanied by Victrola DJing by Climax Golden Twins.

Long before Star Wars, King Kong, or even Birth of a Nation there was the greatest and most influential film illusionist of all time: a puckish French magician named Georges Méliès. One hundred years later, the whimsical “trick films” made by Monsieur Méliès include some of the most iconic images in movie history and continue to amaze and delight with their jaw-dropping creativity and vision.

On May 15, 2008 at 8:00 PM, the Northwest Film Forum and The Sprocket Society join to celebrate the magic of Georges Méliès with a program of his greatest sci-fi, fantasy, and adventure mini-epics made between 1901 and 1912. All films will be shown from hard-to-find 16mm prints. Included are well-known favorites like A Trip to the Moon and Conquest of the Pole, as well as rarely-shown delights such as The Merry Frolics of Satan, Palace of the Arabian Nights, and others.

As a special treat, 1904’s The Impossible Voyage will be presented with a rare live performance (in English) of the original narration penned by Méliès himself. The musical accompaniment will be provided by the experimental group Climax Golden Twins, who will create an audio collage using 78 RPM records from their vast collection of rarities, played live on real Victrolas right there in the theater.

The remaining program includes two tinted and hand-colored prints, a rare extended version of A Trip to the Moon, and an equally rare “complete” print of The Kingdom of the Fairies. The musical selections chosen for these are as adventurous as the imagery they accompany, and include:

• A special remix of Eskimo by The Residents, prepared by Seattle producer Scott Colburn
• The Master Musicians of Jajouka
• Free jazz by Chicago’s legendary Hal Russell NRG Ensemble
• Dada scat jazz by Fred Lane
• …and more.

A brief introductory talk about Georges Méliès and his work will precede the films.

Please note that this program is not affiliated with Flicker Alley, although we do encourage you to check out their wonderful new Méliès DVD box set. All films shown tonight are 16mm prints; no video will be used.

Special thanks to David Shepard of Film Preservation Associates for permission to use his translation of Méliès’ original narration for “The Impossible Voyage.”

Program Notes

• Georges Méliès: Impossible Voyager – Special Effects Epics, 1901-1912 — 15pp. illus. (PDF, 1.9 mb)

Related Links

• Georges Méliès bio – from Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema by Stephen Herbert and Luke McKernan
• Georges Méliès: An in-depth look at the cinema’s first creative genius by Michael Brooke (@ FilmJournal.net) – a growing blog devoted to documenting Méliès’ hundreds of films.

Event Poster

Web version. Original poster design by Brian Alter.



Further Reading

• John Frazer, Artificially Arranged Scenes (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1979). Invaluable. Hands-down the best English-language book about Méliès and his films. Sadly, it’s also rare as hens’ teeth. Includes extensive biographical information, a history of Star Films, and an exhaustive filmography with detailed descriptions and production notes about all Méliès films known to survive at the time of publication. Illustrated throughout.
• David Robinson, Georges Méliès: Father of Film Fantasy (London: BFI/Museum of the Moving Image, 1993). An extremely thin but well written and researched book published as a companion to a Méliès retrospective by the British Film Institute. Probably the best introduction, but somewhat hard to find.
• Paul Hammond, Marvelous Méliès (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975). Thin but very worthwhile, albeit organized in rather scattershot fashion. Profusely illustrated throughout, with solid research for the time. Includes a non-annotated filmography with survival status (circa 1975). A fine if dated book.
• Maurice Bessy and Lo Duca, Georges Méliès, Mage (Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1961; orig. Prisma Editions, 1945 in an edition of 2,000) Alas, only ever published en Français and also fairly rare, but the first extensive biography and a true treasure trove of rare illustrations, including original production sketches. Also includes extensive excerpts of Mes Memoires by Méliès.
• Stan Brakhage, The Brakhage Lectures: Georges Méliès, David Wark Griffith, Carl Theodore Dreyer, Sergei Eisenstein (Chicago: The Good Lion/School of the Art Institute, 1972) Transcripts of lectures given as part of a credit course at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago during the fall and early winter of 1970-71. Available for free (legal) download.
• Elizabeth Ezra, Georges Méliès: The Birth of the Auteur (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000). A slim book emphasizing analysis and geared toward the film school and theorist crowd. Still, it has a lot of useful information.
• Frank Thompson, The Star Film Ranch: Texas’ First Picture Show (Plano, TX: Republic of Texas Press/Wordware Publishing, 1996). The only book devoted to the film work of Georges’ brother, Gaston Méliès, who ran the US office of Star Films. Relocating to Hot Wells, TX in 1910, Gaston began producing his own films, primarily westerns, very few of which survive today. Includes an extensive filmography, with lengthy quotes from the trade press of the day. Illustrated.
]]> http://sprocketsociety.org/2008/05/15/georges-melies-impossible-voyager/feed/ 0 http://sprocketsociety.org/2008/04/13/keep-warm-burn-britain/ http://sprocketsociety.org/2008/04/13/keep-warm-burn-britain/#comments Mon, 14 Apr 2008 06:34:34 +0000 Spencer Sundell http://sprocketsociety.org/journal/?p=414 Films, Performance, and Music with Ross Lipman, Ruby Thicket, and The Philistine Liberation Orchestra

Sunday, April 13, 2008
The JewelBox Theater at The Rendezvous
2322 2nd Avenue, Seattle (in Belltown)
7:00 PM — $5.00 suggested donation

Event Details | Press Releases | Photographs | Related Web Sites

The Sprocket Society is proud to present the Seattle debut of Los Angeles filmmaker Ross Lipman with a program featuring an excerpt from his latest original work-in-progress – performed live as a Magic Lantern / slide show – plus a selection of his earlier experimental short films and documentaries. There will also be live music by Seattle’s own Ruby Thicket, plus The Philistine Liberation Orchestra.

Ross Lipman’s Keep Warm, Burn Britain! is a personal memoir of the squatters movement in East London during the 1980s. It chronicles the lives of the anarchists, outcasts, and punks who lived in a small enclave of abandoned buildings south of the Thames, known as “Squatter’s Paradise.” Tonight Lipman performs an excerpt of this work-in-progress as a Magic Lantern / slide show; ultimately it will be a feature-length 35mm film. It features music by Thoth, the legendary NY street performer who is the subject of an Academy Award-winning documentary short.

Also showing tonight are these short films by Lipman:

10-17-88 (1989, 16mm)
A film of optically printed collage of found and archival footage, with audio collage by John Shaw on themes from Debussy and Ellington. An investigation of one’s self within the sociological theater of our cultural history, breaking out to speak to archetypal memory.

Afternoon in Bottle Village (2007, DV)
A requiem for Grandma Prisbrey’s cathedral of light, built entirely of glass bottles, pencils, and industrial detritus. With a score improvised on a broken piano by Jodie Baltazar (aka Monotrona).

The Gift: Michael Barrish Screen Test (1997, Super-8)
A screen test for a film that was never made, a feature-length narrative about the unbridgeable gap and connection between a father and son.

“Lipman’s films chronicle the lives of men and women on the periphery of our vision; who slip through the cracks in the system, who walk invisibly by us each day. His medium ranges from photographs to Super-8, 16mm and 35mm film, and each work orchestrates light, language, and silence to create cinematic portraits that fall on a spectrum between document and story.”
— Konrad Steiner, filmmaker, curator, San Francisco Cinematheque/Kino 21

ROSS LIPMAN is internationally known for his film/video and performance work, as well his writings and restorations of independent cinema. His 16mm and 35mm experimental films have screened throughout the world at venues such as London International Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives (NYC), the Los Angeles Film Forum, the San Francisco Cinematheque, Sixpackfilm/Top-Kino (Vienna), Chinese Taipei Film Archive (Taiwan), and many others. Lipman’s works have been collected by institutions and museums including the Sammlung Goetz in Munich.

Lipman is also one of the world’s leading figures in the restoration of independent cinema, working at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Among the films he has restored are works by John Cassavetes, Kenneth Anger, John Sayles, Emile de Antonio, Sid Laverents, and Orson Welles. In 2007, the National Society of Film Critics gave Lipman their Film Heritage Award “for the restoration of Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep and other independent films.”

Lipman’s writings on film and its preservation have been published and anthologized in the Journal of Film Preservation, Mining the Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memories (Univ. of California Press, 2007), Big as Life: An American History of 8mm Films (New York Museum of Modern Art/San Francisco Cinematheque, 1998), and elsewhere. Lipman has presented on film preservation topics at Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) conferences, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the Orphan Film Symposium (New York University), and elsewhere.

On April 11, 2008 at the Pop Conference at EMP, Lipman will present his lecture “Mingus, Cassavetes, and the Politics of Improv”, using film clips, texts, and still photographs to examine the complex and explosive collaboration of John Cassavetes and Charles Mingus for the film Shadows (1959) at a pivotal moment in the history of independent cinema, jazz, and race relations.

RUBY THICKET are an acoustic band from Seattle fronted by singer-songwriter John Shaw (vocals, guitar, bass, harmonica) and featuring Bob Barraza (vocals, drums, shakuhachi flute, ukulele), Jillian Graham (vocals, guitar), Robert Hinrix (vocals, mandolin, bass) and Mac McClure (vocals, bowed saw). They have self-released a CD, You Never Know What You’ll See, sample MP3s of which can be downloaded from their web site.

Press Releases

• Event press release – Sprocket Society, issued Mar. 24, 2008 (PDF, 46 kb)
• Ross Lipman press kit & CV (PDF, 74 kb)

Photographs

Credit: Ross Lipman

• Still from Afternoon in Bottle Village (Ross Lipman, 2007)
  • Web-ready Jpeg
    (350 x 263 pixels, 72 dpi, 27 kb)
  • Hi-Res Jpeg
    (2816 x 2112 pixels, 180 dpi, 1.8 mb)
• Stills from Keep Warm, Burn Britain! (Ross Lipman, work-in-progress)
  • Still 1 of 2: Train Exterior
    • Web-ready Jpeg
      (400 x 179 pixels, 72 dpi, 23 kb)
    • Hi-Res Jpeg
      (2816 x 2112 pixels, 288 dpi, 2 mb)
  • Still 2 of 2: Train Interior
    • Web-ready Jpeg
      (300 x 450 pixels, 72 dpi, 23 kb)
    • Hi-Res Jpeg
      (2048 x 3072 pixels, 288 dpi, 2.4 mb)

Related Web Sites

• Ruby Thicket (band) — Performing tonight.
• 2008 Pop Conference at EMP — Shake, Rattle: Music, Conflict, and Change — On Fri. April 11 at 2:00 PM, Ross Lipman will deliver his lecture “Mingus, Cassavetes, and the Politics of Improv”.
• About Thoth (2002, Mark Sanders Productions) — Information about the Academy Award winning short documentary. The legendary street performer provided the music for Ross Lipman’s Keep Warm, Burn Britain!, presented tonight.
• Canyon Cinema: The Films of Ross Lipman — Catalog information about films by Ross Lipman distributed by Canyon Cinema.
• Grandma Prisbrey’s Bottle Village — The subject of Afternoon in Bottle Village (2007). History, photographs, general background info.
• Oblivio: Stories and such by Michael Barrish — Blog of Michael Barrish, subject of The Gift: Michael Barrish Screen Test (1997).
• National Society of Film Critics Awards 2007 (unofficial link): FILM HERITAGE AWARD “to Ross Lipman of the UCLA Film and Television Archive for the restoration of Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep and other independent films.”
]]> http://sprocketsociety.org/2008/04/13/keep-warm-burn-britain/feed/ 0 http://sprocketsociety.org/2008/03/04/sound-found/ http://sprocketsociety.org/2008/03/04/sound-found/#comments Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:52:00 +0000 Spencer Sundell http://sprocketsociety.org/journal/?p=188 Featuring The Mysterious Island and Noah’s Lark (both 1929). And beer.

Tues. March 4, 2008 at 8:00 PM
At the Northwest Film Forum – 1515 12th Ave. (on Capital Hill between Pike and Pine)
Free for NWFF members. $8.50/general admission. $6.00/children under 12 and seniors.

Event Details | Program Notes | Original Posters | Critical Reception | Survivial of Film and Sound Elements | Related Links | Further Reading

Don’t miss this rare screening on 16mm of a lost sci-fi epic and a rare cartoon from the dawn of sound film! Presented as part of NWFF’s Search and Rescue series.



An original colored lobby card for The Mysterious Island (1929)

The Mysterious Island (MGM, 1929) stars Lionel Barrymore and Lloyd Hughes (of The Lost World), and was directed by Lucien Hubbard (with uncredited co-direction by Maurice Tourneur and Benjamin (Häxan) Christensen. We will be showing the Vitaphone sound version, including scenes with dialog as well as a synchronous score with music and sound effects.

Meant to be MGM’s million-dollar answer to Metropolis, it premiered just days before the great stock market crash and failed at the box office. With spectacular art direction by Cedric (Wizard of Oz) Gibbons, the film features some of the most striking images of the genre, including armies of undersea “gill men” and diving suits that look like something from Alien. Originally shot in two-strip Technicolor, only a few b/w prints survive today and the film has never been released to home video.

Plays with Noah’s Lark (Paramount, 1929), the first “Talkartoon” produced by the legendary Fleischer brothers (Betty Boop, Popeye, Superman), which premiered the very same month as The Mysterious Island. Directed by Dave Fleischer, animated by Al Eugster, music supervision by Max M. Manne.

Program Notes

• Search and Rescue: Sound Found program notes – 2 pp., illus. (PDF, 664 kb)

Original Posters



US poster for The Mysterious Island (1929)



French poster for The Mysterious Island (1929)

Contemporary Critical Reception

New York Times, 1929

“[J]ust the sort of thing that will fill children with mingled feelings of awe and delight. A fantastic undersea melodrama.”

Variety, 1929

“[A] wealth of special sets, costumes, mechanical devices and elaborate miniatures. Its impressiveness and unusualness are unquestioned, and therein rest its box office possibilities.”

Survivial of Film and Sound Elements of The Mysterious Island (1929)

No complete prints of The Mysterious Island (1929) with the original tinting and two-color Technicolor sequences are known to survive in any format. However, a single 35mm nitrate reel from the original release is in the non-circulating collection of the UCLA Film and Television Archive. According to the available catalog information, it is from a Dutch release print (with Dutch intertitles), and consists of a mixture of amber-tinted and two-color Technicolor footage.



Sea creatures from The Mysterious Island (1929)

The UCLA archives also hold a complete set of original Vitaphone record discs. These may be the same set of discs discovered in 1995, as reported by The Vitaphone Project in their newsletter Vitaphone News (vol. 3, no. 1; Summer/Fall 1995).

At some point, reportedly in the 1950s, 16mm black-and-white sound reduction prints were made by MGM for television distribution. 16mm prints were also made for the home and educational markets apparently well into the 1970s; tonight’s print is believed to have been struck in 1977.

The Turner Library has a complete print of unknown format, but probably a 16mm TV print released circa the late 1950s or early ’60s — probably the same version shown tonight. On rare occasions the film is shown on the Turner Classic Movies cable channel.

It seems probable that other film archives might have prints in one format or another, but exhaustive Internet searches have produced no information to that effect. The sole known exception to this is Swank, a non-theatrical distributor which offers a 16mm print for rent.

Home Video



Closer view of a sea creature from The Mysterious Island (1929)

To the best of our knowledge, the 1929 version of The Mysterious Island was never officially released to home video. The IMDB.com records for the film indicate a LaserDisc version was released, but no other information is provided — no distributor, no year(s): it’s literally a empty page. Given that IMDB is prone to error (for example, J. Ernest Williamson is listed as Producer when he only did special second-unit underwater photography), and in the absence of any other confirmation, we believe this not to be true.

DVD-R copies occasionally appear on the collectors’ grey market, and copies are known to circulate on the BitTorrent file-sharing network. But given the rarity of physical prints, these are probably video captures of a cable-cast by Turner Classic Movies made by enterprising aficionados. Even these are fairly rare.

Related Links

• The Mysterious Island (1929) — extensive plot summary and commentary by “Lyzard” from the web site, And You Call Yourself a Scientist
• UCLA Film & Television Archive catalog entry: The Mysterious Island (1929) — details about the single nitrate film reel (Dutch version) and the complete set of original Vitaphone sound discs in their collection.
• J. Ernest Williamson — Williamson was the first filmmaker to actually shoot underwater, using a kind of special diving bell he called the “photosphere.” He was engaged by MGM to shoot what were intended to be positively epic scenes for The Mysterious Island. However, extended production complications and consecutive hurricanes hitting his Bahamanian location resulted in the destruction of the huge underwater sets and ultimately only a couple of his shots made it into the final release. Learn more about his pioneering work below.
  • “With Williamson Beneath the Sea” by Brian Taves (Journal of Film Preservation, Volume XXV No. 52, April 1996)
  • Williamson’s ‘Photosphere’ by Gidi Raanan

Further Reading

Sadly, there is precious little information to be found about The Mysterious Island (1929). Some of the better science fiction film encyclopedias and a handful of web sites include capsule descriptions of it.

Following are recommended books relevant to early sound films, early animation and the Fleischer brothers, and related topics.

• The Coming of Sound by Douglas Gomery (NY: Routledge, 2005) — The best place to start for those interested in the subject. A short, scholarly-yet-approachable, and absolutely outstanding book on the advent of sound film, capably and convincingly (albeit somewhat bitterly) challenging core assumptions by Crafton. Includes a chapter on non-US sound innovations.
• The Talkies: American Cinema’s Transition to Sound 1926-1931 by Donald Crafton (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997) — Widely acknowledged as the best (if Amero-centric) history of the conversion from silent to sound film.
• The Shattered Silents: How The Talkies Came to Stay by Alexander Walker (NY: William Morrow & Co., 1979) — A shorter, more approachable history of the early talkie era, though some of its facts have since been superceded by research by Gomery, Crafton and others.
• Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898-1928 by Donald Crafton (University of Chicago Press, 1982; 1993 ed.) — The authoritative work on silent-era animation, with extensive discussion of the vital role played by Max and Dave Fleischer. The 1993 edition includes a new afterword with with chapter-by-chapter updates.
• How Motion Pictures Are Made by Homer Croy (NY: Harper & Brothers, 1918) — Includes a lengthy discussion of the underwater photography innovations by J. Ernest Williamson. Extremely rare, but it can be found in the non-circulating reference collection of the Seattle Public Library, and on the Google Books web site (where it can also be downloaded as a PDF).
• Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons by Leonard Maltin (NY: Plume, 1987 rev. ed.) — An excellent and profusely-illustrated historical survey, which devotes an entire chapter to the career of the Fleischer brothers.
• Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleischer and the Animation Revolution by Richard Fleischer (University Press of Kentucky, 2005).
• Witchcraft Through the Ages: The Story of Häxan, the World’s Strangest Film, and the Man Who Made It by Jack Stevenson (Godalming, England: FAB Press, 2006) — Includes a relatively brief section about Benjamin Christensen’s tenure at MGM, including his stint as director of The Mysterious Island. Also a highly recommended (if slim) book about the titular film and the director.
]]> http://sprocketsociety.org/2008/03/04/sound-found/feed/ 0 http://sprocketsociety.org/2007/07/06/ballard-backyard-movie-party-v-soundies-and-stuff/ http://sprocketsociety.org/2007/07/06/ballard-backyard-movie-party-v-soundies-and-stuff/#comments Sat, 07 Jul 2007 06:50:04 +0000 Spencer Sundell http://sprocketsociety.org/journal/?p=428 Friday, July 6, 2007 was the Sprocket Society’s second backyard movie party of the season.

Because of the mid-summer lack of dark hours (and the presence of neighbors), we opted to dispense with the customary feature and go with a program of short films plus a 30 min. “featurette” — namely the absolutely brilliant film An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Only one problem: somehow I forgot to actually pack it with the other films after setting it aside. This was a real bummer, since it’s truly an amazing film. But lesson learned: always always always make a list and do a dummy check, no matter what. Twice.

Actually this was not the only glitch of the evening: the landlord’s yard workers had unexpectedly dispensed with the sheet we’ve been using for a screen, prompting a last-minute run to Fred Meyer for a new king-size. (Yes, “alabaster” works quite well, thanks.)

Still, we were able to have a full show. I substituted an extended excerpt from a 1957 CBS documentary about brainwashing (which I’d originally intended to play less of and perhaps overlap a little with Owl Creek). I also did what all good backyard movie programmers should do and brought a couple extra shorts, just in case. Et voila.

A mixed reel of seven different Soundies provided the backbone for the first two-thirds or so of the program. We’d show a soundie, then switch over the other projector for a cartoon or other short, and then back again.

As you can see from the film list below, the evening was positively chockablock with cinema entertainment. Yet, more than one person remarked on how quickly the nearly two hour program flew by. (Yeah, we wound up pushing the run-time anyway.)

SOUNDIES

Though originally a specific trade name, Soundies now collectively refer to short musical films produced by Minoco, RCM, and other companies mainly in the 1940s for use in coin-operated film jukeboxes, a fad in bars and nightclubs at the time until television came along. A direct precursor to the modern music video, a large number of these films were released and still survive, documenting the (mostly-white) musical culture of a generation.

More than 1800 of the Soundies mini-musicals were made, covering all genres of popular music, from classical to big-band swing, and from hillbilly novelties to patriotic songs. Some Soundie reels even included cheesecake segments — burlesque routines and even striptease acts — aimed at GIs on leave.

Because of the mirror optics used in the Soundie machines, the films were printed backwards — the image flipped left-to-right — so it would appear appear properly on the screen. This is why a number of this evening’s selections are reversed; they are original Soundie prints. Others are corrected copies of the originals.

Tonight’s seven musical selections were interspersed throughout the program.

More about Soundies and related films:

• “About Soundies”
• Wikipedia: Soundies
• “Soundies – A new form of Entertainment” by Nigel Bewley
• Soundies – A Musical History (PBS, March 2007)
• Book: Scott MacGillivray and Ted Okuda, The Soundies Book: A Revised and Expanded Guide (2007)
• Numerous streaming soundies at Archive.org
• Scopitone Blog
• ScopitoneArchive.com

FILM PROGRAM

Silent films shown tonight were accompanied by recorded musical selections, which are indicated in the notes below.

The Whistler and His Dog (1941, Minoco Productions, USA)
Guitarist Alvino Rey & His Orchestra, with Dick Morgan.
3 min. / B&W / sound

A gag instrumental featuring peppy whistling and men barking.

Alvino Rey was one of the first adopters of the electric guitar and the first successful pedal steel recording artist. As a result, he had an enormous impact on the sound of the time.

Born Alvin McBurney in 1908 in Oakland, CA, his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, when he was ten. As a teenager he experimented with amplifying acoustic instruments, beginning with a banjo he received as a birthday present. His professional career as a banjoist began in 1927, and the following year he began playing electric guitar in Phil Spitalny’s Orchestra. He studied guitar with vaudeville performer Roy Smeck, and took on the name Alvino Rey to capitalize on the late-20s craze for Latin music.

In the late 1930s, Rey performed in the bands of Russ Morgan, Freddy Martin, and a six-year run with Horace Heidt and His Musical Knights. There he met Luise King (of the King Sisters), whom he married in 1937. In 1939, Rey, his wife, and a number of others left Heidt’s band to start their own. After a stint as the house band for Mutual Broadcasting, Rey and his orchestra started scoring hits and ventured out on their own.

In 1941 Rey’s group substituted for an ailing Dinah Shore at New York’s Paramount Theater, which led to more exposure, and soon they were one of the most popular acts in the country, garnering top ten hits and making appearances in a number of Hollywood films. In 1942 Rey reorganized his orchestra, bringing in a brass section. This film documents the earliest incarnation of that ensemble.

After 1950 Rey continued to lead smaller groups. His television debut came in 1957, on the Nate King Cole Show. In 1965 he reunited with the King Sisters as part of their King Family Show television program, which ran on ABC until 1969. Rey’s groups continued to make regular appearances at Disneyland and elsewhere into the 1980s.

In 1978, he was an inaugural inductee of the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame. After retiring to Salt Lake City, Rey took up the classical guitar. He and Luise kept active with his jazz quartet until they finally retired in 1994. Luise died in 1997. Rey died on February 24, 2004, in Draper, Utah.

According to my pal Scott Colburn, Alvino Rey is the grandfather of Win Butler of Arcade Fire. Scott happened to engineer Arcade Fire’s current album, Neon Bible.

Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties: “Snidely Mounted Police” (1962, Jay Ward Prod., USA)
Series credits info @ Big Cartoon Database
5 min. / color / sound


First aired August 11, 1962.

Yes, clothes really do make the man. Inspector Fenwick decides to throw a coming-out party for his daughter, Nell. Dudley thinks it is strange because Nell is a little too old for the party (she’s 37 1/2). The Inspector tells Dudley that this is really a trick for Snidely Whiplash, who won’t be able to resist attending. When Snidely arrives, he checks his black top hat and cape and they’re switched with a Bullwinkle hat (complete with antlers) and a brown coat. Without his black hat and cape, it is impossible for Snidely to be a villain: when he tries to collect mortgages, everyone laughs at him.

Back at Mountie headquarters, Dudley puts on the hat and cape and immediately becomes possessed by evil, ties up the Inspector, sets off a bundle of dynamite, and runs off to do dastardly deeds. Meanwhile, Snidely is depressed. One of his henchmen runs in to tell him of a new arch villain who is about to break his record for tying old ladies to train tracks. Snidely runs to Inspector Fenwick to demand that Dudley Do-Right apprehend the villain. But alas! Dudley is the villain! Snidely is recruited into the Mounties (”Stalwart, true, eyes of blue”) with the mission of capturing Evil Dudley. This he does in nothing flat. When Snidely dons his hat and cape (they’re his property after all), he becomes a villain again and all is right with the world.

Legend has it that Dudley Do-Right was based on a writer’s one-time neighbor, Dennis Dudley. The story goes that Dennis was a Canadian who never had much luck with the ladies, was a strict Christian, and who always did what he thought was right, thus Dudley Do-Right. But Alex Anderson, Jr. — who is Dudley’s creator of record — said in an interview that he “created Dudley Do-Right because I had seen Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald in the film Rose Marie. He plays a singing, stout-hearted Mountie and was such a dork and is so completely unbelievable [laughter]. I thought it was really bad casting.”

According to Don Markstein’s Toonopedia:

Dudley was first seen in in 1948, in [a Jay Ward-produced pilot show called] The Comic Strips of Television, where he was test-marketed along with Crusader Rabbit. His first actual use in a series, however, came in 1961, when Rocky & His Friends switched networks to NBC and changed its name to The Bullwinkle Show. It was one of the back-up features, along with such holdovers from the original series as Peabody’s Improbable History and Fractured Fairy Tales. It proved the most popular of the lot — and the only one to later get a show of its own. Its 39 four-and-a-half-minute episodes were rerun in 1969-70 as the lead feature of ABC’s The Dudley Do-Right Show.

Or at least, 38 of them were. One episode, “Stokey the Bear”, about a bear hypnotized into starting, rather than preventing, forest fires, was pulled from the series after one airing. The US Forestry Service objected to what it saw as degradation of its mascot, Smokey the Bear.

Related Links:

• Interview with Alex Anderson — by John Province, from Hogan’s Alley: The Online Magazine of the Cartoon Arts, vol. 2, no. 4. Anderson was a childhood friend of Jay Ward and was the creator of Bullwinkle, Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Dudley Do-Right. His uncle was no less than animation pioneer Paul Terry (of Terrytoons fame).
• Wikipedia: Jay Ward
• Toonopedia: Jay Ward Productions

Take Me Back to My Boots and Saddle (1941, USA)
Carson Robison and His Buckaroos, with Rudy Vallee & Pearl Pickens.
Directed by Will Jason.
3 min. / B&W / sound

A lovely song, featuring some serious cowboy whistling action.

Carson Jay Robison was one of the first country music stars, and is often known as “the granddaddy of the hillbillies.”

Born in 1890 in Oswego, Kansas, his father was a champion fiddler, while his mother was a singer and pianist. By the time he was 14 he was already playing guitar professionally, and by age 15 he’d begun playing in bands. In 1922, he became one of the first cowboy singers on radio when he began to appear on station WDAF, Kansas City. In his early career, Robison recorded with Frank Luther (as Bud and Joe Billings) and Vernon Dalhart, with whom he toured extensively between 1924 and 1928. Robison’s first solo recording was his song “The Little Green Valley,” cut in 1928 for the Okeh label. In 1931 he formed his own group The Pioneers, later renamed The Buckaroos (the group featured in this film), which toured and recorded for the next 25 years. They were the first country and western band to tour England.

According to historian Douglas Green, Robison was the first to popularize “Home on the Range”. As late as 1948, he had a chart entry with “Life Gits Tee-Jus, Don’t It?”, and the year before his death he recorded the novelty rock & roll number “Rockin’ and Rollin’ With Grandmaw.”

Robison died on March 24, 1957 in Pleasant Valley, New York.

Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties: “Snidely’s Vic Whiplash Gym” (1962, Jay Ward Prod. USA)
Series credits info @ Big Cartoon Database
5 min / color / sound

First aired September 2, 1962.

Despite feeling “fit as a fiddle, and ready for love,” Dudley loses an arm-wrestling contest to Nell. Inspector Fenwick is dismayed, and sends Dudley off to build himself up. Only one problem: the gym Dudley chooses is Vic Whiplash’s Gym. Naturally, the place is run by Snidely, who subjects Dudley to “building down” with diabolic “exercise machines” made of giant hammers, a punching machine, and other tormenting punishments.

Dudley emerges with a Certificate of Good Shape…but actually he’s in terrible shape, shrivelled and shaking and puny. When Nell arm-wrestles him this time, he’s thrown clear across the room. In shame, Dudley quits the Mounties to find a civilian job. But no one will hire “such a puny.” At last, a lumber baron not paying any attention hires him. As Dudley struggles to meet the 20 trees a day quota, in no time at all his muscles grow to Schwarzenggerian proportions. Yet he still thinks he’s puny. In the end, Nell tells him it’s all in his head and, repeating “I’m not puny! I’m not puny!” to himself, he trounces Snidely and gets his money back. But Nell still beats him in arm wrestling.

The Leo Diamond Harmonica Quartet (194?, USA)
3 min. / B&W / sound

A buncha dudes play harmonica on a New York roof top for a salaciously winking hussy (who looks an awful lot like a young Mitzi Gaynor).

Leo Diamond was the chief harmonica soloist recording in the “high-fidelity” LP era. Formerly a flute and piccolo player, he won a contest playing harmonica with Edwin Franko Goldman’s band in New York City’s Central Park. This led to eighteen years with Borrah Minevitch’s Harmonica Rascals, after which he formed his own trio, the Harmonaires. This led him to Hollywood, where he appeared in Coney Island, As Thousands Cheer, Seven Days Leave, and Sweet Rosie O’Grady. His harmonica soundtracks include Calamity Jane, The Eddie Cantor Story, Living it Up, and Miss Sadie Thompson.

Wabbit Twouble (1941, Warner Brothers, USA)
Directed by Robert Clampett. Animation by Sid Sutheland, plus Rod Scribner and Robert McKimson (uncredited). Voices by Arthur Q. Bryan and Mel Blanc.
8 min. / color / sound

Elmer Fudd expects to find “west and wewaxation” during his visit to Jellostone National Park, but he sets up camp in Bugs’ backyard, and the rabbit (and a neighboring bear) definitely don’t have leisure in mind. Mayhem and hilarity ensue. When Elmer finally leaves, in a fit of pique he chops up the Jellostone sign…right in front of a park ranger. Off he goes to jail, where “at wast” he can enjoy his “west and wewaxation”…only his cell-mates are Bugs and the bear.

This was the first Bugs cartoon directed by Clampett. The titles and credits are all in “Fudd-ese” (e.g. “Diwected by Wobert Cwampett”). For this cartoon Elmer was redesigned as a fat man (based on voice actor Arthur Q. Bryan’s own physique) in an attempt to make him funnier. “Fat Elmer” would only make four more appearances — The Wabbit Who Came to Supper (1942), The Wacky Wabbit (1942), Fresh Hare (1942) and Any Bonds Today? (1942) — before returning to the slimmer form by which he is better known.

Old Hank (1938, USA)
Freddie Fisher and The Schnickelfritz Band
3 min. / B&W / sound
Probably excerpted from the feature film “Gold Diggers in Paris” (1938), starring Rudy Vallee.

Watch it

Originally hailing from Iowa and dubbed “The Colonel of Corn”, Freddie Fischer led this early novelty band to stardom, serving as inspiration for a whole genre of whacked-out comedic rag-timey jazz gussied up in hick duds that included the Hoosier Hot Shots and, of course, Spike Jones and His City Slickers.

The Schnickelfritz Band had its start in Winona, Minnesota in the fall of 1934 when they began playing at the Sugarloaf Tavern and broadcasting over the local radio station, KWNO. In 1937, they were discovered by Rudy Vallee’s agent. Vallee put the band on his network radio program as guest stars and they hit the big time. Decca signed the act for a number of successful records, and in 1938 they made their screen debut in Gold Diggers in Paris alongside Rudy Vallee. That year they were so hot, they got top billing over no less than Glenn Miller at the Paradise Restaurant in New York City.

In 1939, a number of band members left to form The Korn Kobblers. Fisher reorganized the Schnickelfritz band, and went on to open a club in Hollywood called The Radio Room, near the Brown Derby, where they played nightly billed as “America’s Most Unsophisticated Band”. They also went on to appear in the feature films The Sultan’s Daughter (1943) and Make Mine Laughs (1949).

After suffering a heart attack, Fisher left the music business and ultimately settled in Aspen, CO, in 1952. There he opened a “Fixit Shop” and became locally famous for haunting the town dump for hidden treasures, gold electroplating local tree leaves for sale to the burgeoning tourist crowd, and for his daily letters to the editors of the local papers. In later years, he occasionally performed in local clubs with his son King and participated in local jazz festivals. He died from a heart attack following his appearance at the Easterjazz Concert in 1967.

More info and videos at FreddieFisher.com.

Paris to Monte Carlo (1905, Star Films, FR)
(Original title: Le Raid Paris-Monte Carlo en Deux Heures)
Produced and Directed by Georges Melies
8 min. /B&W with hand-colored scenes / silent

Music: “Civilization” by Dick “Two Ton” Baker, “Fun in the Fundus” by Fred Lane.

From the Star Films catalog: “King Leopold of Belgium has come to Paris to renew his acquaintances among the dainty ‘Parisiennes’ who for some time past have known how to appreciate his great fondness for their society. He ardently desires to make a trip to Monte Carlo, the celebrated watering place and gambling resort in the principality of Monaco, but his time is so limited that he cannot give up the seventeen hours necessary for the trip by express from Paris to the Riviera. He chances to meet, wholly by accident, an automobile manufacturer who makes a proposition to accomplish the journey in two hours, and it is this surprisingly rapid journey which is portrayed by the cinematographe.”

A classic Gallic farce that includes none of the above exposition (although it may have been included in M&eacutue;li&egraves’ customary live narration). While visiting Paris, King Leopold II of Belgium decides to make a speedy trip to the pleasures of Monte Carlo. While preparing to leave, the car accidentally backs over a gendarme, flattening him like a sheet. Bicycle pumps are used to re-inflate him. As the king and his driver careen across the French countryside, they cause all manner of mayhem. Upon finally arriving at festive Monte Carlo, the car flies through the air and crashes into a bandstand full of well-dressed socialites. The king emerges waving imperiously, oblivious to the outraged mob around him.

This film was originally commissioned by the Folies Bergère for use in a revue, written by Victor de Cottens, which ran for 300 performances. It was a satire of the real King Leopold II of Belgium, a famous boulevardier with a taste for Parisian dancers and fast cars, and a legendary reputation for accidents and reckless driving. The troupe of the Folies Bergère appear in the film, including cameos by the Swedish giant Antonich and English music hall star Little Tich (Harry Relph), a dwarf famous for his comic routines employing boots with 28-inch wooden slats attached to the soles. Little Tich previously appeared in a 1900 sound film produced by the Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre company.

The sub-rosa Belgian reference (and Leopold’s practically psychotic rule of the Belgian Congo colony) lends piquance to the opening musical selection, which includes the refrain “Bingo bango bongo / I don’t want to leave the Congo / No no no no no no….”

KP Serenade (1942, USA)
The Hoosier Hot Shots
3 min. / B&W / sound

Alas, not one of their old-style madcap numbers but a comparatively sedate WWII-era song poking fun at KP duty. The outdated vaudeville innuendo is still funny in unintentional ways.

The Hoosier Hot Shots were an American quartet of madcap musicians who entertained on stage, screen, radio, and records from the mid 1930s into the 1970s. The group initially consisted of players from the state of Indiana. From their beginnings on local Indiana radio in the early 1930s, the Hot Shots went on to a successful national radio career on the National Barn Dance at WLS in Chicago, Illinois and a successful and prolific recording career, before moving to Hollywood to become featured stars in many Western movie serials.

Clink! Clink! Another Drink! (1942, USA)
Spike Jones and His City Slickers, with Mel Blanc as The Singing Drunk.
3 min. / B&W / sound

Watch it.

An excellent and typically rousing number by Spike and the gang, one of nine Soundies the group made. If you watch closely, you can see a Soundie machine at one point during the film.

Lindley Armstrong “Spike” Jones was the undisputed king of the style of madcap novelty jazz comedy pioneered by Freddie Fisher. The band’s instrumentation included washboards, pots and pans, modified horns, and a table full of sound effects gear (incuding the occasional starter pistol). Their playing was full-speed-ahead, and tight as hell.

In addition to original hits like “Der Fuhrer’s Face”, Jones specialized in insane parodies of classical music and popular tunes, such as the sedately romantic “Cocktails for Two” which was transformed with gunshots, screaming, loud clanging bells, and spectacular vocal solo of manic gulps and mouth farts.

From 1937 to 1941, Jones was the percussionist for the John Scott Trotter Orchestra, which played on Bing Crosby’s first recording of “White Christmas.” In 1941, he formed his own band — the City Slickers — and after successful radio appearances secured a contract with RCA, recording with them until the mid-’50s. Spike Jones and the City Slickers had their own radio show (1945-49), appeared in nine Soundies and several feature films, and starred in variety TV shows on NBC and CBS (1954-61). In later years Jones toned down the act, even recording a straight-faced album of Christmas songs.

Jones died from emphysema in Beverly Hills, California on May 1, 1965, at the age of 54.

Synchromy (1971, National Film Board of Canada, CA)
Produced and directed by Norman McLaren
8 min. / color / sound



This remarkable film is the apotheosis of Norman McLaren’s many “animated sound” films, duplicating the soundtrack in multicolor in the image itself so that you literally see what you hear. Beginning with the simplicity of a single intermittent tone, the film gradually builds in complexity until it becomes a dizzying fugue.

Winner of more than eight international film awards.

Around 1950, Evelyn Lambart and I worked out a method of shooting sound track optically on film, without using a microphone or regular sound system, but with the use of an animation camera. We called it “animated sound,” because it was shot frame by frame, onto the soundtrack area at the edge of the picture.

For pitch control we used a set of 72 cards, each having stripes or striations, and each representing a semi-tone in a chromatic scale ofsix octaves. The more stripes the higher the tone, the fewer the strips, the deeper the tone.

Our first set of cards (with [which] the music for Neighbors [1952] was made) had soft-edge undulating stripes, corresponding roughly [with] sine-wave sound. A later set of cards had simple hard-square-wave sound. It is with the square-wave cards that I shot the music for Synchromy.

The volume was controlled by varying the width of the sound track. A moveable shutter controlled this width. If the shutter was almost closed, the extremely narrow band of striations would give a pianissimo note. If the shutter was wide open, the broad band of stripes would give fortissimo. All intermediate degrees of volume were possible by regulating the position of the shutter, which was calibrated in decibels.

In Synchromy the music was composed first, and filmed by the above method. It started with a single musical part, later to be joined by another, and finally a third (mid-pitch, treble and bass).

These three parts were shot on separate strips of film, which were recorded and finally mixed in the normal manner onto magnetic tape and thence to standard optical track for release prints.

To create the visuals, the three striated-card sound tracks were kept separate and in their striated form. By means of an optical printer they were moved over into the picture area of the film.

Since the shape of the sound track opposite a single frame of film is a long, narrow column, and since the visual frame is rectangular, it was possible to fit as many as eleven columns for sound tracks, side by side in the picture area.

At the very outset of the film, where there is just one musical part, only the central column carries the striations; but somewhat ater the same striations are moved into one or more of the other columns.

What is on the screen, be it in one or several columns, is strictly the striated images of the original sound shot with cards. Thus, there is exact parallelism between sound and image. When the second and third musical parts enter they are clearly visible as such.

While optically shifting the sound track into the picture area, we added colour by filtering a black-and-white master positive, and its dupe-negative. We opticalled one column at a time (the rest being masked off).

In columns with no striations, or with just white striations on a coloured ground only one pass was needed.

Where there were coloured striation on coloured ground, two passes were needed, one using clear-on-black master positive, the other using its matching black-on-clear negative.

Towards the end of the film, where all eleven columns were active, it we wished both ground and striations to be coloured, 22 passes were required.

Variety was given to the visuals by frequently changing the track positions from one column to another. In general, the colouring was changed at the beginning and end of the musical sentences or phrases for variety’s sake; although no “coulour-sound-theory” was relied upon, pianissimo passages were usually in muted hues, and fortissimo passages in highly saturated contrasting hues.

Apart from planning and executing the music, the only creative aspect of the film was the “choreographing” of the striations in the columns and deciding on the sequence and combinations of colours.

– Norman McLaren (1984)

Related Links:

• Watch the film
• NFB online catalog: Synchromy
• NFB Portrait: Norman McLaren
• Review of Norman McLaren: The Master’s Edition DVD box set

An Edison Album (1894-1899, Edison Film Company)
Various titles and directors (see list below)
9 min. / B&W / silent

Music: Excerpts from Mass in C Minor (K. 427, “The Great Mass”) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as performed on period instruments by the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardner, cond. “Audamus te”, “Gratias”, “Domine”, and “Qui tollis”.

An anthology of 12 of the earliest films produced by the Edison Company, produced mainly for exhibition in their Kinetoscope “peep show” machines but also including titles that were intended for projection. It includes comedic skits, dance, actualities, the first trick film, the first sound film, and one of the first commercials.

Although a silent print (18 fps) projected at the faster standard sound speed (24 fps), all of the films appear to be in slow motion. The earliest Edison films were shot using extremely high frame rates, anywhere from 45 to 60 fps. This print was made from copies of the original films without adjusting the frame rate to modern standards. When combined with the Mozart accompaniment used this evening, the effect is actually quite beautiful.

Film Titles:

1. Chinese Laundry (aka (Robetta and Doretto no. 2]) (1894) — Directed by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson. Cast: Robetta and Phil Doretto (Phil Lauter). Filmed in the Black Maria studio in New Jersey. From the Maguire & Baucus catalogue: “The pursuit of Hop Lee by an irate policeman.”
2. Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1895) — Directed by Alfred Clark. Photographed by William Heise. Cast: Robert Thomae (as Mary, Queen of Scots). From the Maguire & Baucus catalogue: “Representing the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots. A realistic reproduction of an historic scene.” Quite possibly the very first trick film, in which a live actor portraying the doomed Mary is swapped out (by stop-action) for a dummy that then gets its head chopped off with an axe. The effect is actually nearly seamless (pardon the expression) and still prompts gasps from modern audiences. One cannot help but wonder if perhaps this was the true inspiration for Georges Méliès, rather than the legendary jammed camera accidentally “changing” a common horse cart into a hearse.
   
3. [Dickson Experimental Sound Film] (silent print) (1895) — The first attempt at synchronizing sound and film; a laboratory experiment never publicly released. To access streaming video of this film and read an extensive discussion about it, please see my earlier blog post.
4. Irwin-Rice Kiss (aka The Kiss, The May Irwin Kiss, The Widow Jones) (1896) — Directed by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson. Cast: May Irwin (Beatrice Byke), John C. Rice (Billy Bilke). From Maguire & Baucus catalogue: “An osculatory performance by May Irwin and John Rice. The most popular subject ever shown.” A legendary film depicting a scene (a moment, really) from an exceptionally popular stage show of the day. The film was one of the first bona fide smash hits of cinema, so much so that it even saved the job of the male actor, whom the producers felt was too old to continue in the role. The Kiss caused a scandal due its “lascivious” content, causing it to be banned in a number of cities.
5. Feeding the Doves (aka Feeding Pigeons) (1896) — Produced by James H. White, photographed by William Heise. A film imitating another by the Lumiere Brothers. From the Maguire & Baucus catalogue: “A farm yard picture, showing a young girl and her baby sister scattering grain to the doves and chickens. The fluttering birds and excited fowls give an abundance of action to the scene, which is one of the prettiest, clearest and most attractive ever taken.”
6. A Morning Bath (1896) — Produced by James White, photographed by William Heise. A black woman bathing her baby, who’s clearly unhappy about the experience, causing mom to unsuccessfully stifle her laughter. From the Maguire & Baucus catalogue (summary edited to remove offensive words): “This scene presents a[n]… African mother in the act of giving her struggling [child] a bath in a tub of suds. This is a clear and distinct picture in which the contrast between the complexion of the bather and the white soapsuds is strongly marked. A very amusing and popular subject.”
7. The Burning Stable (1896) — Produced by James White, photographed by William Heise. From the Maguire & Baucus catalogue: “Shows a barn actually in flames, from which four horses and a burning wagon are rescued by firemen and stable hands. The scene is exciting, full of action from beginning to end, and all its details are clearly and sharply defined. Thick volumes of smoke pouring from the doors and windows of the stable add greatly to the realistic effect.”
8. The Black Diamond Express (1896) — Directed and photographed by James H. White and William Heise. Shot near Wysox, Pennsylvannia, on 1 December 1896, it was intended to compete against American Mutoscope’s The Empire State Express (1896). Rail workers hammering spikes have to run out of the way when the Express comes racing through. From the Maguire & Baucus catalogue supplement: “This scene presents the famous Lehigh Valley ‘flyer’ emerging from a wood in the distance and approaching the camera under full head of steam. A section gang in the foreground, engaged in repairing track, wave their hats to the engineer, who is leaning out of the cab window. The snowy linen which the porters wave from the platform of the dining car adds to the effect produced. The ‘Black Diamond’ is undoubtedly the handsomest and one of the fastest trains in America, and the subject is the only one in existence showing an express train making seventy miles an hour.”
9. New York Street Scenes (1896-98) — Actually several early actuality films stitched together, primarily shots of the elevated train system.
10. Fatima (aka Fatima’s Dance and Fatima’s Coochee-Coochee Dance (1896, censored version) — From The Phonoscope (1899): “This is the lady whose graceful interpretations of the poetry of motion has made this dance so popular of recent years.” Fatima was a widely-known performer at the time, part of a fad for “exotic dances” that followed the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893. Ironically, the film also became one of the first cases of cincema censorship because of Chicago. In 1907, by order of a Chicago censorship committee, a grid-like pattern was printed on the film to partially obscure parts of Fatima’s bust and hips. In fact, in the first 2 or 3 years of production, some 25 percent of the Edison Company’s films shot were “coochee coochee” dance numbers. But as Charles Musser has noted, “Significantly, few of these films were ever listed in Edison catalogues-and then only long after their production. This suggests that a body of Edison films were circulated more or less clandestinely.” [Charles Musser, Edison Motion Pictures, 1890-1900 An Annotated Filmography, (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), pp. 131-132.] Yet these films were extremely popular. An 1896 letter from an Edison distributer to an exhibitor said, “A man in Buffalo has one of these films and informs us that he frequently has forty or fifty men waiting in line to see it.” [Ray Phillips, Edison’s Kinetoscope and Its Films: A History to 1896, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1997), pp. 139-140.]
11. A Wringing Good Joke (1899) — Photographed by Edwin S. Porter. A child pranks his snoozing father by hooking his tie into mom’s laundry wringer when she’s not looking. She cranks away until pop falls back and the entire wood laundry tub falls smack on his head.
12. Dewar’s Scotch Whiskey (aka, Dewar’s: Its Scotch) (1897) — One of the very first commercials, albeit with no evident mention of the product, and a ridiculously racist one at that. It consists entirely of three men in vaguely “Scottish” kilts, regalia, and very fake beards dancing with ridiculous uproar. This film was originally projected on an outdoor billboard.

Related Links:

• Inventing Entertainment: The Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies (Library of Congress)
• Kino Video: Edison: The Invention of the Movies 4-DVD box set

Brainwashing, Part 1 (excerpt) (1957, CBS TV)
Hosted by Walter Cronkite
20 min. (approx.) / B&W / sound

From the long-running CBS documentary series, The Twentieth Century (1957-1966). This is episode 6 from season one, first airing on November 24, 1957.

Dr. Hermina Boll (sp?) recounts and re-enacts her experience as a political prisoner of the Soviet police state in Hungary. Following the short-lived Hungarian uprising in 1956, Dr. Boll was convicted in a sham trial with secret charges, secret evidence, and no lawyer (sound familiar?). She was then imprisoned for many years. During the initial period she was interrogated frequently, subjected to sleep deprivation and other torture tactics. Eventually, she was simply locked in solitary confinement, where she languished for several years fighting mind-numbing isolation and boredom.

Dr. Boll calmly describes her experiences on studio sets that give an impression of the various cells she was held in.

Not shown was a second segment featuring an interview with a former UPI bureau chief who was imprisoned by Communists and brainwashed into publicly confessing he was a spy.

Related Links:

• More about “The Twentieth Century” series (Museum of Broadcast Communications, Chicago)
• “The Twentieth Century” episode guide (IMDB)
• Wikipedia: Hungarian Revolution of 1956

Superman (aka The Mad Scientist) (1941, Paramount, USA)
Produced by Max Fleischer. Directed by Dave Fleischer. Animated by Steve Muffatti, Frank Endres.
11 min. / color / sound

Academy Award Nominee, Best Short Subject (Cartoon), 1942.



This is the first film in the legendary series of 17 animated Superman films from the Fleischer brothers.

In a brief prologue, we see how The Man Of Steel first came to Earth. After Krypton’s tragic destruction, he was found by the side of the road in rural Kansas and spent most of his childhood in an orphanage. An adult Clark Kent becomes a reporter for The Daily Planet.

Flash to the present. Perry White assigns Clark and Lois Lane to get information about a mad scientist who is threatening to destroy the city with a new super ray gun. But Lois wants to cover the story alone. Lois flies to the mad scientist’s lab and is captured by the renegade inventor. Watching helplessly, Lois witnesses the super ray gun destroying many of the city’s landmarks, including the Daily Planet building. Clark Kent changes into Superman, saves the Daily Planet building, and flies to the scientist mountaintop lab where he destroys the ray gun, saves Lois and brings the mad inventor to justice.

The first nine cartoons in the series were produced by Fleischer Studios. In 1942, Paramount called in considerable debt and ousted the Fleischer brothers, creating a shell company called Famous Studios, which produced the final eight shorts.

Max and Dave Fleischer were undeniably two of the most important and creative pioneers of animated film, producing innovative work and characters like Koko the Clown and Betty Boop, as well as the original Popeye and, of course, Superman cartoons. They also produced two feature films, Gulliver’s Travels (1939) and Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941), the latter doomed to box office failure in part by its release just 3 days before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (1906, Edison Film Co., USA)
Directed by Edwin S. Porter
7 min. / B&W / silent

Watch it.

Music: “I Like Stinky Cheese” by Dick “Two Ton” Baker, “Igra Cigana” by Boban Markovic Orkestar.

A live-action trick film based on the comic strip of the same name by Winsor McKay. A man binges on Welsh rarebit and beer, becoming thoroughly intoxicated. As he wends his way home, the world literally spins around him. But climbing into bed is no respite. He is bedeviled by tiny imps stabbing his head, then his shoes and clothes come to life and cavort about the room. Then the bed itself springs to life, taking to the air and flying at breakneck speed across the New York skyline. (The film’s skyline panorama is identical to that in The Twentieth Century Tramp, 1902.)

This was the Edison Company’s most popular film release in 1906, selling 192 copies that year.

Related Links:

• Wikipedia: Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend
• Book: The Complete ‘Dream of the Rarebit Fiend’ (1904-1913)

Synchromy

Reprised by popular demand, with applause both times.

]]> http://sprocketsociety.org/2007/07/06/ballard-backyard-movie-party-v-soundies-and-stuff/feed/ 0 http://sprocketsociety.org/2007/05/25/backyard-movie-party-4/ http://sprocketsociety.org/2007/05/25/backyard-movie-party-4/#comments Fri, 25 May 2007 22:36:36 +0000 Spencer Sundell http://sprocketsociety.org/journal/?p=309 This past Friday — Memorial Day weekend — was our first backyard movie party of the season, we being the usual suspects of Brian, Gary, and myself. The location, once again, was Brian and Gary’s duplex in Ballard, which I’ve come to start calling The Ballard CineYard — tho KinoHortus also crossed the mind. (”Kino” from kinoscope and “hortus” being the Latin for garden or park.) Attendance was a little sparse, probably owing to the double whammy of it being a holiday weekend and a Friday, but everyone seemed to have a good time all the same.

This was the first event we did under the moniker of The Sprocket Society, an idea me and Brian have been toying with which may or may not turn into something more. I was also able to use my new Elmo 16-CL, which meant matching projectors and no need to borrow the second one. Both were equipped with 38mm lenses, which meant an image about 50 percent larger than the standard 50mm lens — very nice.

Anyway, here’s the film list. As always, everything was shown from 16mm prints from my collection.



A still from 'Betty in Blunderland'

Betty in Blunderland (1934, USA, cartoon, b/w)
Directed by Dave Fleischer. Animated by Roland Crandall and Thomas Johnson.

Betty Boop falls asleep while working on a jigsaw puzzle of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” characters. The White Rabbit in the puzzle comes to life, and Betty follows him through a mirror into Blunderland, which is just like Wonderland, except that it has subway stations and a beverage called Shrink-Ola. Songs and wackiness ensue until the Jaberwock runs off with Betty. (Watch the film at Archive.org. Read an essay about this film by Paul Verhoeven.)

Take One (1970, USA, b/w & color)
An anthology of mostly obscure late-’60s period cartoons and short films by various artists, including student filmmakers.

• Ashes of Doom (1970, CA, live action, color) — Directed by Grant Munro & Don Arioli; Munro also appears as a vampire. A comedic anti-smoking PSA produced for the National Film Board of Canada.
• Pollution (1969, USA, animated, color) — Directed by James Conrad and other students of the Univ. of Southern California’s Animation Workshop Project. An animated treatment of the song (live version) by the great Tom Lehrer, which was also once shown on The Carol Burnett Show. (This is a different film from the 1966/1967 versions produced by Astrafilms for the US Communicable Disease Center.)
• 

  Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (1967, USA, live action, color) — Directed and written by George Lucas. An impressionistic depiction of a dystopian future in a surveillance state, and a man escaping from an underground city. Lucas’ famous but rarely-shown student film that helped launch his career and would later be the basis for his feature film, THX-1138. Showing this was only appropriate, since this night was the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Wars. (Watch the film via Google Video.)

• Eat to the Beat (n.d, animated, b/w) — A film by Ernie Schmidt. A parody of game shows and consumer culture.
• Lullaby (n.d., live action, b/w) — A bored married couple in bed, and the wife’s fantasy. Sorry, but I don’t have filmmaker info logged.
• Bananas (n.d., stop-motion animated, color) — Some fruit get it on. Sorry, again I’ve not logged the filmmaker credit.



A still from Melies' 'A Trip to the Moon'

A Trip to the Moon (orig. Le Voyage dans la Lune) (1902, FR)
Directed by Georges Méliès.
Shown with “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” by Pink Floyd, from Live at Pompeii.

The original science fiction epic (costing an astonishing 10,000 francs), borrowing liberally from Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, and thus a fitting prelude to the evening’s feature. This print includes the extremely rare concluding scene in which, after the travelers’ return to Earth, the citizens of the port town fete the heroes with medals and marching band, and a captured Selenite is paraded for public view. (Watch the film at Archive.org.)

The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (1961, USA dubbed theatrical version)
Originally: Vynález zkázy (1958, Czechoslovakia)
Aka A Deadly Invention (Britain) and Les Aventures Fantastiques (France)
Direction and Production Design by Karel Zeman. Screenplay by Frantisek Hrubín. Set Decoration by Zdenek Rozkopal.

“A magical world of baroque submarines and sailing ships, killer octopus and undersea bicycles dazzles audiences as human actors, puppetry, animation and fanciful scenic design interact to create a cinematic experience that is unique by any standards. Mixing slapstick comedy, action adventure pacing and Méliès style film magic, this little known Czechoslovakian gem transcends the juvenile literature at its source to create cinematic art of the highest order.” (Quoted from RottenTomatoes.com)

Based on the Jules Verne short story The Deadly Invention with additional elements from the novels Face the Flag, The Mysterious Island, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Master of the World.

The story concerns the machinations of evil millionaire Artigas, who plans to use a super-explosive device to conquer the world. Artigas operates from a pirate submarine, wherein he has imprisoned the explosive’s inventor, Professor Roche, Roche’s assistant Simon Hart, and Roche’s daughter Jana. All are spirited away to Artigas’ secret base inside a huge island volcano, where the professor — foolishly believing that Artigas is a humanitarian — designs and builds the enormous, fantastic machines required to make the super-explosive. The uncooperative Hart sees the truth of the situation and tries to stop Artigas’ mad plan. In the end, Hart and Jana escape in an observation balloon as Professor Roche, now stripped of his illusions about Artigas, detonates the explosive himself and destroys the entire island in a mammoth atomic explosion.

The real star of the show is Karel Zeman’s gorgeous production design, which makes everything on screen look like an 19th century engraving come to life. Indeed, Zeman drew extensively (sometimes verbatim) on the original illustrations created by Alphonse de Neuville and others for the French editions of Verne’s novels. Zeman’s effects work is spectacular, using nearly every trick available at the time: miniatures, forced perspective, stop-motion and flat animation, marvelously detailed sets, matte work, and more. The American distributer dubbed the approach “Mysti-Mation,” though Zeman himself never gave his techniques such an overarching name. If you can find it, the Wade Williams DVD of this film includes a bonus “making of” short showing Zeman and his crew creating the effects for this and other Zeman films. (Scarecrow in Seattle has it for rent.)

Some related links:

• Selected clips from The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (via YouTube)
• Original press materials (in German): page one and page two
• Video clips from Eastern European animation masters (including Zeman) via Darkstrider.net


Poster for 'The Fabulous World of Jules Verne'

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