| Author | Message | ||
     Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
Anyone here familiar with the work of early cinema pioneer, Georges Melies? I had the enjoyment of seeing some of his very early films at the National Media Museum a few years ago, when his grand-daughter (I think it was, or grand-niece?) gave a talk there. I was reminded of it today when I saw an early cinema magazine in a charity shop, with perhaps his most iconic image on the cover from this little gem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxB2x9QzXb0 It's worth typing "georges melies" into a search on YouTube if you want to see more of his work. There's quite a bit of it there. | ||
| Steve Jensen (Stevej) Username: Stevej Registered: 07-2009 Posted From: 82.0.77.233 |
Brilliant.  Why can't modern film-makers be as imaginative, instead of constantly striving after realism and 'believability'? This is my favourite piece of early cinema. So beautiful it's like a holy icon come to life: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAqnUPqj3JY | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 213.158.199.97 |
I'm reading a book on German cinema at the moment, most notably on UFA. Which I was pleasantly surprised received a name check in the absolutely brilliant Inglorious Basterds. I know it's not a popular film round these here parts, but it's my film of the year so far. | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.18.104 |
It's my second favourite Frank after 'Antichrist' and slightly before 'Moon'. I loved all the cinema references too and found the film itself genuinely (rather than self-consciously) thrilling in a way Tarantino hasn't been since 'Jackie Brown'. As for early cinema my own favourite and largely forgotten pioneer is Polish director Wladislaw Starewicz whose work is as visually nightmarish (and absurdly funny) as anything David Lynch or Jan Svankmajer turned out - like watching an archive recording of a bad dream. Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-mjK9X5bKw He was turning these kind of films out from 1909 on. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
That Starewicz is superb. I've never seen that before so thanks ever so much for that. Is it just me, or was there so much more ART in film in those days? I'll echo what Steve says: Why can't modern film-makers be as imaginative, instead of constantly striving after realism and 'believability'? | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
The word visionary is bandied about too much nowadays but one thing all the outstanding pioneers of cinema needed to be was genuinely visionary. From Melies to Dreyer to Starewicz to Griffiths to Lang to Chaplin to O'Brien to Hitchcock, etc, etc... they were literally inventing a new artform as they went along - like those prehistoric cavepainters before them. That's why their work still looks so fresh and artistic today imho. | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 213.158.199.76 |
Stephen/Caroline - couldn't agree more. Stephen - Will see Anti-Christ soon, and really looking forward to Moon, also 'Let the Right One In'. Glad I'm not alone about Taratino's latest. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.47 |
I loved Inglourious as well as I documentd on another thread | ||
| Frank (Frank) Username: Frank Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 213.158.199.76 |
Weber - sorry, mate. Didn't see it. I adored the movie, as did everybody in the cinema who started applauding once it was over. And not because it was over. I'm probably going to see it again this weekend. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
>>The word visionary is bandied about too much nowadays but one thing all the outstanding pioneers of cinema needed to be was genuinely visionary. From Melies to Dreyer to Starewicz to Griffiths to Lang to Chaplin to O'Brien to Hitchcock, etc, etc... they were literally inventing a new artform as they went along - like those prehistoric cavepainters before them. That's why their work still looks so fresh and artistic today imho.<< Agreed, Stephen. But I guess one could say the same nowadays about new developments in cinema - CGI, 3D, etc. The thing is, it just doesn't seem the same somehow. Maybe we're just old fashioned!  | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
All the accepted conventions of cinema as art were put in place by those pioneers in the first 30 years or so of the medium. Think of the excitement of first experimenting with a whole NEW artform never before seen in the history of the human race - that's what the technological capture of moving images provided. All the technological advances in cinema since - the addition of sound, 3D, CGI, etc. - have merely been tweakings of the artform. It would take an equally startling new technology to be invented for us to feel that same rush of experimentation - something akin to the capture of thought. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
>>Think of the excitement of first experimenting with a whole NEW artform never before seen in the history of the human race - that's what the technological capture of moving images provided. << I thought about that when I first saw those Melies films at that event at the National Media Museum. The sense of wonderment which the people seeing moving images on a screen for the first time must have felt would have been amazing. I did actually have a similar feeling when I went to see my first ever 3D film a few years ago. It was really quite a bad film - "Haunted Castle" I think it was called - but had been produced for the huge IMAX screen more or less purely to show off the new 3D technology. There was one actor, and everything else was animated. But the effect - when you've never seen things step out of the giant IMAX screen at you before - was amazing. I was so gob-smacked I went back to see it twice more! Having said that, I haven't been to see a 3D film since - the films available just don't really appeal to me. Now, if they could somehow re-do some of the old classics as 3D films, that would be different. Imagine Boris Karloff stepping out of the screen at you ... | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
That's the thing about 3D. It's always fun the first few times but quickly becomes bothersome I find. It's as if our minds - knowing this is only an illusion and really a 2D image that's been fiddled with - grow irritated by the distraction and always draw us back to good old flat cinema in the end. I really think CGI will come to be seen as an equally dead end distraction with films of this last 20 years, that overly relied on it, coming to be seen as painfully dated and unrealistic compared to the "more real" cinema that went before. |