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Image of the Day
Dec. 13th, 2010 08:53 pm
Address Unknown (1944)
Address Unknown (1944)
Things to Come (1936)
May. 5th, 2010 09:11 pm
H.G. Wells apparently hated Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou's science fiction epic, Metropolis (1927), and considered it an attack on science. When he was given control of the production of Things to Come by producer Alexander Korda, he told director William Cameron Menzies that he wanted to make the anti-Metropolis. Whatever Menzies thought of Metropolis, what resulted was something that shared both the visual sophistication and message-heavy narrative clumsiness of the movie that Wells wanted to refute.
( This modern world is full of voices ... )
QOTD: Seven men to a gong
May. 3rd, 2010 08:18 amJust been watching Fairbanks’ Thief of Bagdad again and am suddenly (and very belatedly) struck by W[illiam] C[ameron] M[enzies]’s very obvious influence on Dr. Seuss. Actually influence seems almost too small a word: Suess’ worlds seem direct caricatures of childhood memories of WCM, and the imagery in some of his books, the landscapes resembling impossibly vast stages, the wobbly parades, feathers everywhere, seven men to a gong, is pretty much identical. Golly!
-- Simon Kane in comments on the Shadowplay blogpost William Cameron Menzies is out of his mind, where we've been having a jolly good time discussing Menzies -- worth a look just for Jordan Benedict's little bomb of information about the Hungarian designer, Laslo Maholy-Nagy, who connects Things to Come to 2001: A Space Odyssey
-- Simon Kane in comments on the Shadowplay blogpost William Cameron Menzies is out of his mind, where we've been having a jolly good time discussing Menzies -- worth a look just for Jordan Benedict's little bomb of information about the Hungarian designer, Laslo Maholy-Nagy, who connects Things to Come to 2001: A Space Odyssey
Image of the Day
May. 2nd, 2010 07:33 pm
Things to Come (1936)
"The brotherhood of efficiency. The freemasonry of science."
Image of the Day
Apr. 26th, 2010 08:15 pm
Kiki (1926)
Kino recently released two DVDs featuring the Talmadge sisters: The Constance Talmadge Collection and The Norma Talmadge Collection. They unexpectedly turn out to be quite a William Cameron Menzies fest. You wouldn't know it from IMDb, which lists him as the art director for Constance's Her Sister from Paris (1925) (which I thus watched first of the four movies on the two disks), but doesn't mention that he served as the same for Constance's Her Night of Romance (1924) and Norma's Kiki, screen-capped above. The other thing all three romantic comedies have in common is the impossibly debonair love interest played by Ronald Colman. The design work is gorgeous, but it benefits particularly in Kiki from the pictorial skills of director Clarence Brown. Brown loves depth effects, captured here in the mirror's frame, which reveals two lovers turning their backs on each other, although only one of them sees it.
Image of the Day
Apr. 18th, 2010 09:45 pm
The Young in Heart (1938)
"Your whole family are rather complex, aren't they?"
Invaders from Mars (1953)
Apr. 10th, 2010 11:38 am
Is Invaders from Mars the first of the paranoid alien invasion films of the '50s? It's the same year as It Came from Outer Space and three years earlier than Invasion of the Body Snatchers. What it shares with those two movies is the paranoid fear that your normal-looking neighbors and loved ones are actually the embodiment of an alien evil that is trying to take over not only the world but your very self. Invaders from Mars explores this paranoia from the point of view of a child whose parents have been taken over by invading Martians, giving it a very primal nightmare quality. It works on some of our deepest fears of isolation and abandonment and abuse.
The movie was directed by William Cameron Menzies, who is a fascinating figure in the classical Hollywood era. He has recently gotten love from Dave Kehr and David Bordwell. (Bordwell is strangely dismissive of Invaders from Mars. Maybe he just doesn't like science fiction.) Menzies is mostly known as an art director and production designer, perhaps most famously on Gone with the Wind. He only directed a few films, including an earlier science fiction film Things to Come (1936), based on the H.G. Wells novel. Menzies hit his stride in the late-silent era, designing several of Douglas Fairbanks' big budget spectaculars amongst many other great films, and what's striking to me about Invaders from Mars is how much it looks like a silent movie, particularly the Expressionist films of Weimar Germany.
( Many more stills below the cut )
Image of the Day
Apr. 9th, 2010 09:35 pm
Invaders from Mars (1953)
"Could I see the back of your neck?"
“He wanted to photograph ceilings and didn’t give a damn what the actors were saying.”
-- Lyle Wheeler quoted by David Bordwell in "William Cameron Menzies: One Forceful, Impressive Idea"
