Sunday, April 29, 2007
Film Golden links
Posted by Jonathan Rosenbaum on Sun, Apr 29, 2007 at 9:48 AM
As more and more buried treasures have been brought to light on the Internet, half a dozen recent finds seem especially worthy of notice:
1. We still don't have access to the original version of John Cassavetes' Shadows after critic Ray Carney tracked down the only existing print and showed a video of it twice at the Rotterdam Film Festival in early 2004. I was lucky enough to see it at the time, and even though I regard it more as a fascinating and historically important curiosity than as a lost masterpiece, I agree with Carney, and disagree with Cassavetes' widow, Gena Rowlands, that it should be available to the general public. In the meantime, however, Carney has posted three clips of this version on his website (scroll down a bit). What he's made available is only a little over four and a half minutes from the film, and Carney's name and URL are stamped on every frame, but it's still enough to give one a taste of Charlie Mingus's eccentric original score (especially during the credit sequence)--and enough to support Carney's thesis that this is a finished film, flaws and all, and not a mere work print.
2. On the same site, higher up, one can find links to an invaluable Danish web site with links to a good many interviews with filmmakers and critical pieces (including, I've just discovered, a couple of my own, on Alexander Dovzhenko and Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema). There are also several filmed interviews on the same site and, even better, trailers by Godard for eight of his own features.
3. The treasures to be found at YouTube appear to be endless: Alain Resnais' first major short, Les Statues meurent aussi (1953, see photo), written by Chris Marker—admittedly without subtitles (though I've never seen a subtitled print);
4. Orson Welles's unreleased nine-minute trailer for F for Fake, starring his late cinematographer Gary Graver;
5. And three videos of the great jazz pianist Lennie Tristano playing at the Half Note in Manhattan, 1964, in a quintet with his two most gifted pupils, Warne Marsh (tenor sax) and Lee Konitz (alto sax). The visual quality of the videos may be atrocious, but I'm still grateful for these precious mementos, having caught this amazing group around the same time at what may have been the same gig.
6. Finally, as Dave Kehr recently reminded me on his own web site, you can access most of Orson Welles's major radio shows between 1937 and early 1940 for free at another excellent site.
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cinephiles might be interested in another site called ubuweb: http://www.ubu.com/film/index.html in it, there are online movies of old experimental classics, by such people as Bunuel, Clair, Ivens, and Maya Deren, also by Agnes Varda, the Dziga Vertov group, Brakhage, Bill Viola and Yoko Ono!!! there are also interviews with artists and poets.
Another great Youtube find: lots of Kenneth Anger's famous shorts including stuff that was made in the last 10 years. Jonathan, I'm part way through your Orson Welles book that just came out. Just curious, has David Thomson ever responded to the heaps of criticism and scorn for his "Rosebud"? Or does he just remain aloof on the subject?
If anyone can post, or knows where I can access an English translation of the text of "Les Statues Meurent Aussi" I can copy and paste it in the description next to the film on YouTube- it would really be a nice addition.
I'm not sure if you noticed Jonathan, but your piece on JLG's HISTOIRE(S) is rather truncated on the Danish website. I'm comparing it to the Film Comment version (perhaps the shorter version was an edit by you or one of the publications?). This is really unfortunate. The long Film Comment version is one of my favorite of all your pieces. It irrevocably set me on the 'road to Godard'. I still try to stay true to its spirit. In 2003 I saw a beautiful english subtitled print of Les Statues at American Cinematheque. I wish I knew where it came from. Thanks to ZeroCrowell for all the marvellous clips! SLON's THE TRAIN ROLLS ON (about Medvedkin and the Soviet film trains) is particularly welcome. For everyone else who doesn't know, besides a lot of HISTOIRE(S),ZeroCrowell has up two other great Godard history/cinema/art videos up; THE OLD PLACE and LIBERTE ET PATRIE. Bill Krohn and I agreed, the latter is a masterpiece (along with L'ORIGINE...).
Dear Mr. Rosenbaum, Having seen the workprint yourself, do you think this is the version that Jonas Mekas saw and championed above the final release version? The clips on Mr. Carney's website are intriguing... Also, I can't help but draw paralells between the suppression of the SHADOWS workprint by Gena Rowlands and the supression of Welles original version of OTHELLO by Beatrice Welles. It's sad to think these films are being held from the public. On his website, Carney also reports that he's tried to give the material to several archives but has met resistance (he claims UCLA refused out of deference to Rowlands). Do you think this is really the case? If an American Archive won't take the SHADOWS workprint why wouldn't Carney offer it to a foreign archive like BFI or The Cinematheque Ontario? Couldn't they just sit on it until all the dust settles?
To Andy R.: The reason why the version of my Histoires(s) article is truncated is as follows: The ECM audio version of the series contains the original piece I did for Trafic (which is actually better than the Film Comment version, at least in my opinion, because it has more material about Finnegans Wake), but it's in English and missing the final section, which is all about copyright. I suspect but can't be sure that Godard himself might have been responsible for this suppression. So, when Barnes and Noble asked to run an excerpt from this piece to promote the ECM set, I made a point of compensating for ECM's mischief by restoring everything from the article that was suppressed or censored in ECM's version--and this is the bit that wound up on the Danish web site. To Danny O.: What I saw, as Ray Carney argues, wasn't a work print but the film's original version. And yes, that's what Jonas Mekas saw as well. As for the rest, I'd rather not comment or speculate any further.
I've just read the ECM version of your piece (I've had this for years but, to be honest, I remember recieving it, flipping to the end, not seeing "Paramount belongs to us" and hence regarding it as simply truncated from the Film Comment version and so never reading it! Not very rigorous of me, so I'm glad you pointed this out). The comparisons to Joyce are indeed illuminating. Your quoting Dedalus's "History a nightmare from which I am trying to awake" is remarkably appropriate to Godard's giant, layered film which (almost sentimentally, were it not for all that just happened in the film up to that point!) ends with the author waking up (via Borges). What I miss in reading the ECM version, rather than the FC, are your reflections on the hermetic versus the engaged Godard -- a distinction still quite useful in assessing his most recent work -- and the slightly more in-depth (and up to the minute) paragraphs on Godard as critic. This includes the long excerpt from Godard's short essay on Tregenza's TALKING TO STRANGERS, you in turn evoking his review of MONTPARNASSE 19 (a strange and unforgettable review that speaks volumes about the New Wave), his + Mieville's film NUMERO DEUX, and all those ideas of fiction/reality very relevent to HISTOIRE(S) itself. I also like the still frames from HISTOIRE(S) included in the FC version...did you choose those? Joyce is represented there at least (ERREUR VIRGINIA MAYO)!
PS- I was particularly willing to reengage with writing on HISTOIRE(S) at this moment because it just screened in Los Angeles; its second screening in LA since the premiere early last year. It was sold out and had encore screenings last year, whereas this year it screened to only about 20 people. I blame the DVD, perhaps a not inferior way to watch a work like this.
Re: LES STATUES MEURENT AUSSI, I saw a beautiful English-subtitled print at Cinematheque Ontario in 2000. It was part of a Resnais short films screening which also included TOUTE LA MEMOIRE DU MONDE, LE CHANT DU STYRENE, VAN GOGH, GUERNICA and GAUGUIN. I remember it being a free screening, but very sparsely attended. All those films could fit comfortably on one DVD, and what a treasure that disc would be...
Another wonderful link that I think was also originally pointed out by Mr. Kehr is to the American home movies of Fritz Lang found at: http://ahc.uwyo.edu/onlinecollections/digital/lang/motionpictures.htm These are films taken around the time of "The Return of Frank James" and both show Lang's commitment to the west as a real and mythic, or perhaps better put as a, "mythically real" place.
Andy: Forgive my ignorance, but how is Joyce represented in "ERREUR: VIRGINIA MAYO"? No, if memory serves, I didn't choose the still frames in Film Comment.
The way I wrote it, I conflated the two. Joyce is represented by three HDC stills in FC, his face superimposed between a Poussin painting (Massacre of the Innocents) and a Gabin film (?), with the words "C'EST MOI" printed over them. This is in 2a, I believe, during the Daney interview, when Godard is talking about how cinema histories differ from literary histories. With ERREUR VIRGINIA MAYO I was only cheekily referring to the other stills in the FC version, and the BIRD OF PARADISE reference in HDC; ERREUR is printed over a spewing volcano and a shot of Virginia Mayo. The stills here are well chosen because its right around your paragraphs about Godard as shoddy (though transformative) historian (the ERREUR title being one of Godard's own curious self-corrections within the work). In 1998, in the absence of the internet, these were the only stills I could glimpse of HDC!
With the death of Buchwald, do you know how he became part of Playtime , being a newspaper columnist in Paris and what part of the English Dialogue he wrote (Barbara?). Also, the original was 6 track (Marc Dondey,Tati,1989) but the DVD is only Stereo.
Sorry, I don´t know any more details about Buchwald´s work for Tati. But I suspect he wrote dialogue for all the American women in the film. Your point about the sound is well taken.
It looks like the clip of Les Statues Meurent Aussi has been removed from YouTube. Too bad. Is this short film available anywhere else? Thanks!
The stock has gained 150% from Oct 8, 2007 to Oct 22, 2007. By the way check this company MDFI. Their stock is set to increase because of their association with Apple iphone and Complete Care Medical. Find more about this company and stock http://www.growurmoney.com/medefile/
Girish, I've been looking for english subtitled versions of Resnais shorts for about a year now... is there anyone you from from Ontario who would know where those came from?
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