Charlie Chaplin & Edna Purviance in The Immigrant (1917, dir. Charlie Chaplin)
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
Charlie Chaplin & Edna Purviance in The Immigrant (1917, dir. Charlie Chaplin)
Julie Christie shopping for groceries in Malibu (1968, photo by Ron Galella) (via)
On why she isn’t interested in marriage:
“Men don’t want any responsibility, and neither do I.”
![Fahrenheit 451 (1966, dir. Francois Truffaut)
“Someone told me the story of Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, because I was saying science fiction is uninteresting and arbitrary. But when I was told, ‘This is about a society where books are banned, and where the firemen, instead of putting out fires, burn the books that they find,’ I wanted to make the movie, because I wanted to show books in difficulty, almost as if they were people in difficulty. It took me years to raise the money, and finally I had to make the picture in England, which was a serious handicap, but I kept the same idea.
There were four or five book-burnings [in the film]. In the first one you could see the books in piles of 10 and 20, while in the last one you could read the type as it was consumed by the flames, you could see the pages curling, and I wanted the audience to suffer as if it were seeing animals or people burning.”
-Francois Truffaut](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l5ozmhUiSL1qzdvhio1_r4_500.jpg)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966, dir. Francois Truffaut)
“Someone told me the story of Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, because I was saying science fiction is uninteresting and arbitrary. But when I was told, ‘This is about a society where books are banned, and where the firemen, instead of putting out fires, burn the books that they find,’ I wanted to make the movie, because I wanted to show books in difficulty, almost as if they were people in difficulty. It took me years to raise the money, and finally I had to make the picture in England, which was a serious handicap, but I kept the same idea.
There were four or five book-burnings [in the film]. In the first one you could see the books in piles of 10 and 20, while in the last one you could read the type as it was consumed by the flames, you could see the pages curling, and I wanted the audience to suffer as if it were seeing animals or people burning.”
-Francois Truffaut
Bernard Herrmann - Fahrenheit 451: Prelude/Fire Engine/The Bedroom/Flowers of Fire/The Road & Finale (via The Fantasy Film World of Bernard Herrmann)
“When [Francois] Truffaut spoke to me about doing the score for the film, I said, ‘…You’re a great friend of [avant-garde composers] and this is a film that takes place in the future. Why shouldn’t you ask one of them? ‘Oh no, no,’ he said. ‘They’ll give me music of the twentieth century, but you’ll give me music of the twenty-first.’
I felt that the music of the next century would revert to a great lyrical simplicity and that it wouldn’t have truck with all this mechanistic stuff. Their lives would be scrutinized. In their music they would want something of simple nudity, of great elegance and simplicity. So I said, ‘If I do your picture, that’s the kind of score I want to write- strings, harps, and a few percussion instruments. I’m not interested in all this whoopee stuff that goes on being called the music of the future. I think that’s the music of the past.’”
Deeply heartfelt and rich in impressionistic nuance, Fahrenheit 451 was the composer’s finest screen work since Psycho and proof, for those who needed it, that Herrmann did not need a Hitchcock thriller to write a brilliant score.
-excerpted from A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann by Steven Smith
Neal Hefti - Batman Theme (via Batman: Batman Theme And 19 Hefti Bat Songs)
Batman (1966, dir. Leslie Martinson)
Valentin Zubkov & Valentina Malyavina in Ivan’s Childhood (1962, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky)
“Beautiful? It’s all a question of luck. I was born with good legs. As for the rest… beautiful, no. Amusing, yes.”
-Josephine Baker (1934, photo by George Hoyningen-Huene, via Conde Nast archive)
Footage of Josephine Baker in late 1920’s Paris, performing her notorious “Banana Dance” & making moves that will look familiar to anyone who’s seen a music video in the last 20 years.
A good piece on Baker’s dance career & how her shows were received in France & the US here.
Josephine Baker - La Vie en Rose (via L’âme des poètes: Volume 3) (English translation here)
“Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. It is a land one can never tire of exploring. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from inside, and turning into poetry.”
-Carl Theodor Dreyer, Thoughts on My Craft
(Anna Karina in 1962’s Vivre Sa Vie watches Renee Maria Falconetti in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc)
Better Homes & Gardens: Dream Evil Labs edition -Fredric March in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931, dir. Rouben Mamoulian)
Photographer: Gordon Head
JS Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D minor
After its use in 1931’s Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, the Toccata & Fugue, attributed (controversially) to Bach, became a staple of 1930s horror films, leading to it becoming shorthand for “Evil, cobwebbed shenanigans are about to ensue” in popular culture.
Robert Cummings & Norman Lloyd in Saboteur (1942, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
Georges Delerue - Shoot the Piano Player: Charlie (via Georges Delerue: Music from the Films of Francois Truffaut)
