Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows. If you only knew how strange it is to be there.
So begins Maxim Gorky’s famous description of watching a film in July 1896. The whole experience of being at the Silent Film Festival in Pordenone is a bit like this, but it applies perhaps most precisely to this evening’s showing of a recreation of Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre from 1900. Watching the flickering ghosts of French actresses, singers and dancers from over a century ago – and what’s more watching some of them in colour and with original synchronised sound – was truly strange. Strange and rich and wonderful and moving and, well, magnifique. The 80-minute programme, which was receiving its world premiere, was alone worth the trip to this festival (although I have other posts in process) – and in a way I still cannot quite believe what we saw – and heard. read more »
While I enjoy – and try to make some sense of – Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone (posts coming soon), let me recommend as warmly as possible two books and two terrific critical articles. The first recommendation is The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, which “the Master” published (in instalments initially) in 1880-81. It hardly needs me to affirm that this is a great, great novel. The second book is the recently published Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpieceby Michael Gorra. Gorra is an American academic but he writes for the rest of us in an elegant style that effortlessly combines erudition with engagement. I would say this is the best and most rewarding extended work of criticism that I have encountered in a long, long time. read more »
Being in Pordenone (see my initial post here) inevitably means that I am thinking a lot about moving image archives – but there is more to my current focus of interest than that. This feels like a moment when the tectonic plates of the archive world are starting to shift, and while I do not have the time to explore that idea here I will most definitely be returning to it in the coming weeks. To get you thinking, can I recommend Changing channels, a blog post by Luke McKernan, and a related post, also by Luke, about new access services available at The British Library. Take a look too at Mark Brown’s recent Guardian piece about the BFI’s plans, BFI to launch online player with 10,000 films from its archives. Interesting times, my friends. Meanwhile, across the jump is the start of a list of links to other pieces that have caught my eye in recent days. read more »
So I’m excited. Over the weekend I booked my flight, and today I have confirmed my hotel reservation. This time next week I’ll be in Pordenone for the best part of a week of early and silent cinema. Which to many of you may not sound like the ideal holiday (for that’s what it is) – but I’ve been looking forward to doing this for years. Each year – and 2012 sees the 31st edition – this small Italian town hosts Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, which is the world’s key festival of silent film. I have been for a couple of days many moons ago, and I have long promised myself that I would find time to immerse myself properly in the festival’s wonders. And, finally, that time is now. read more »
This really does feel like the end of an era. On Saturday, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger died at the age of 86. That’s him above, with another American media giant, Katharine Graham, proprietor of the The Washington Post, in 1995 (credit: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times). Sulzberger was publisher of The New York Times from 1963 to 1992 (and chairman of the company for another five years), and not too many newspaper men get the kind of tribute that President Obama paid yesterday, calling him ‘a firm believer in the importance of a free and independent press, one that isn’t afraid to seek the truth, hold those in power accountable and tell the stories that need to be told.’ Sulzberger’s 1971 fight to publish the Pentagon Papers is the defining moment of his – and his paper’s – story, but as is clear from the paper’s compelling obituary, Clyde Haberman’s Publisher who transformed the Times for new era, there is so much more. The NYT also has an evocative online slide-show, from which the image above comes. Across the jump… more links to more stuff (and now with further links added since Sunday). read more »
I know I am coming late to this, but tonight I am off to the Clapham Picturehouse to see Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina with Keira Knightley (above). Despite the so-so reviews, I am intrigued to see how the film-set-in-a-theatre idea comes off. Tolstoy’s great novel is also probably the novel that would run Middlemarch the closest if I was allowed only a single book on a desert island (assuming I had a complete Shakespeare, of course). Which led me to muse on earlier screen manifestations of this tale of love, loss and redemption – and across the jump I have assembled seven YouTube clips of trailers and extracts, as well as the links that will take you to the two parts of a complete (legal) adaptation from Mosfilm with spectacular visuals made in the Soviet Union in 1967. For more about these and other adaptations, see this Wikipedia list. Enjoy. read more »
To Shakespeare’s Globe – or at least to the Sackler Studios just round the corner – for a wonderfully jolly staged reading on Sunday of Philip Massinger‘s comedy A New Way to Pay Old Debts. Probably written in 1625, this is one of the more popular dramas from the theatre just after Shakespeare’s death. Even so our theatre companies invariably seem to prefer yet another Romeo and Juliet to presenting this comedy – or indeed to exploring the contemporary repertory of nearly 500 surviving plays from the period 1576 to 1642 that are not by Shakespeare. Which is exactly why Globe Education’s excellent Sunday afternoon series called Read not Dead came into being seventeen years and two hundred performances ago. read more »
Today we film for Sky Arts the first of four (and, we hope, more) Rosenblatt Recitals from Wigmore Hall. The American bel canto tenor Lawrence Brownlee, accompanied by painist Iain Burnside, is giving a programme of songs by Verdi, Poulenc, the contemporary American composer Ben Moore, Rossini and Mozart – and we will be there with six cameras to translate it to the screen. The programme will be shown on Sky Arts next year. In the meantime, follow the links for more – and enjoy Lawrence Brownlee from an earlier Rosenblatt Recital singing ‘Ah, mes amis, quel jour de fete’ from Donizetti’s La fille du régiment.
A time there was when I posted weekly a group of links to things that I recently read or watched online. Then I stopped for a while. And now – I think – I am going to start again. Maybe it’s just a sense of autumnal rain and the nights drawing in, but I also feel reconnected with the blog after some weeks away – in part because finally finally we have managed to get Google Analytics working (don’t ask) and everything here seems less imaginary and more, well, real. So let’s see how it goes. A first selection is across the jump – – and since the weekend I have added additional links. But before that I might mention that on Tuesday evening there was a free screening of our RSC/BBC Julius Caesar film (above) at The British Museum. Despite it being outdoors, some three hundred turned up to watch, and many of them stayed to the end. The projection screen was several degrees too bright but it was definitely interesting to see the film in this way. read more »
I have to admit to squeezing in another late summer cultural mini-break (see here for my Shakespeare trip last month). Last week I was in the French town of Arles for a couple of nights, catching the end of Les Rencontres Arles Photographie (it closes 23 September). Les Rencontres is the famous festival of photography that has been held in Arles each summer since 1970, and I have long meant to go. The smart thing to do is to be there for the opening week, when along with the various parties and talks, there are photographic projections in the town’s classical ruins. But that’s for another time – this year, my friend Michael Jackson and I grabbed the chance for a trip to the south just before the autumn set in. (Incidentally, that’s Édouard Belin above, receiving a telephotograph in 1920 – the relevance of this will become clear below.)
