Old Hollywood
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
Drama in the Air (1904, dir. Gaston Velle) (via) “Who are nobler than the martyrs of science?” cried the lunatic. “They are canonized by posterity!” (May this terrible narrative, though instructing those who read it, not discourage the explorers of the air.) -Jules Verne, Drama in the Air (1851)

Drama in the Air (1904, dir. Gaston Velle) (via)

“Who are nobler than the martyrs of science?” cried the lunatic. “They are canonized by posterity!”

(May this terrible narrative, though instructing those who read it, not discourage the explorers of the air.)

-Jules Verne, Drama in the Air (1851)

via The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (1958, dir. Karel Zeman), an adventure film based on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Mysterious Island and other Verne tales: “This is a live-action black and white movie — but it uses every camera trick and every form of animation known in 1958…Methods include stop-motion, paper cutout, drawing and painting animation, drawn foregrounds and backdrops, dissolves, miniatures and models, double exposure (probably in-camera and superimposition), still images, traveling and stationary mattes — they’re all here. There were at least eight people watching; someone yelled out at one point ‘There are at least seven different things going on in this scene!’ (I counted eight.) And all this before the invention of blue screens! …There are lines drawn on sets, and even on people, to keep the original steel-engraving feel. The scenes of ships of the water have been treated with some sort of light, striped screen that makes the moving waves of real water take on the appearance of the engraved lines in a 19th century drawing of the sea. There’s a scene of a train coming down a track — the train is drawn; the wheels and the tracks are animated; the (real) engineer stands on an open platform in the engine’s cab and (real) people lean out of the (drawn) passenger car. (It’s so simple and powerful it takes your breath away.) Actors walk through back-projected sets; at the same time they’re walking behind animated full-sized paper cutouts of spinning flywheels and meshing gears, all this in front of a painted set in the middle-background. For maybe five seconds of screen time. There’s a scene of an animated shark attacking a real diver in a model set with painted water. We could go on…”  -excerpted from Locus magazine review (via) Trailer for the film here/ full film online starting here. 

via The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (1958, dir. Karel Zeman), an adventure film based on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Mysterious Island and other Verne tales:

“This is a live-action black and white movie — but it uses every camera trick and every form of animation known in 1958…Methods include stop-motion, paper cutout, drawing and painting animation, drawn foregrounds and backdrops, dissolves, miniatures and models, double exposure (probably in-camera and superimposition), still images, traveling and stationary mattes — they’re all here. There were at least eight people watching; someone yelled out at one point ‘There are at least seven different things going on in this scene!’ (I counted eight.) And all this before the invention of blue screens!

…There are lines drawn on sets, and even on people, to keep the original steel-engraving feel. The scenes of ships of the water have been treated with some sort of light, striped screen that makes the moving waves of real water take on the appearance of the engraved lines in a 19th century drawing of the sea. There’s a scene of a train coming down a track — the train is drawn; the wheels and the tracks are animated; the (real) engineer stands on an open platform in the engine’s cab and (real) people lean out of the (drawn) passenger car. (It’s so simple and powerful it takes your breath away.) Actors walk through back-projected sets; at the same time they’re walking behind animated full-sized paper cutouts of spinning flywheels and meshing gears, all this in front of a painted set in the middle-background. For maybe five seconds of screen time. There’s a scene of an animated shark attacking a real diver in a model set with painted water. We could go on…” 

-excerpted from Locus magazine review (via)

Trailer for the film here/ full film online starting here. 

Drama in the Air (1904, dir. Gaston Velle) (via)

“Who are nobler than the martyrs of science?” cried the lunatic. “They are canonized by posterity!”

(May this terrible narrative, though instructing those who read it, not discourage the explorers of the air.)

-Jules Verne, Drama in the Air (1851)

Above: The underwater funeral procession scene from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916, dir. Stuart Paton), the first fictional undersea film.

Below: Diagram for the Williamson photosphere, which was used to shoot the film. The camera & cameraman were placed in the photosphere and lowered into the sea, remaining connected to the surface via a watertight tube.

(via)

The Mysterious Island (1929, dir. Lucien Hubbard) (via), which was loosely based on Jules Verne’s 1874 novel of the same name. In the film, ocean explorers discover an underwater city populated by a race of aquatic creatures.

The Mysterious Island (1929, dir. Lucien Hubbard) (via), which was loosely based on Jules Verne’s 1874 novel of the same name.

In the film, ocean explorers discover an underwater city populated by a race of aquatic creatures.