Ken Russell loves Busby Berkeley

And:

This isn’t a theory! Russell has talked often about his love of Busby Berkeley’s musical numbers (also: Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS; THE WIZARD OF OZ; THE BLUE ANGEL) and specifically homaged them in THE BOYFRIEND, but with a little squinting you can see their influence all over his work. Mad Ken correctly perceives them as nightmarish hallucinations (dreamed up by Busby in the bath under the malign influence of the dry martini, coincidentally Bunuel’s favourite tipple) and uses their Vigorously Oneiric Qualities regularly in his own work. The skull that moves in on us during the credits of GOTHIC is an even closer match for Wini Shaw in GOLD DIGGERS OF 1935, whom I’ve always referred to as The Floating Head of Death. She freaks me out, drifting in on me like that! Only Arthur Frayn from ZARDOZ is allowed to pull a stunt like that in my household. And even then, only once a year, on his birthday.

Now I’m wondering if the Floating Head Woman against the star-scape at the end of THE ELEPHANT MAN (”Nothing will die”), who fades from view, morphs into Virginia Madsen (we LOVE Virginia Madsen!), slips on a ruff and comes back at the start of DUNE, is also a descendant of Wini Shaw?

Put another way: does David Lynch love Busby Berkeley?

He’d be CRAZY not to!

Euphoria #9

Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine…

Regular reader and primo Shadowplay supporter Ed Park suggests this glimpse of the cinematic sublime, from Wes Anderson’s THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS:

Ed writes, “Wes Anderson, Gwyneth, Luke Wilson, and Nico’s finest moment—”

Before breaking off in sheer ecstasy. But once he has Gathered Himself, he continues:

“I think it’s the high point of the film and of the whole oeuvre, just beautiful, devastating. I’d always loved that Nico song, had a whole “history” with it (I bought the album in ‘92 while living in Korea, it became a soundtrack for me in an unfamiliar city) but this scene is so strong it completely supplanted my own memories….and I don’t mind a bit!”

Nice to have some Modern Cinema Euphoria in the mix. Very helpfully INDEED, Ed then supplies a piece he wrote on the film for the excellent Cinema Scope magazine, from which I’ll quote. This first part is the most eloquent and sympathetic reading of The Wes I’ve ever read:

“Anderson is, in a sense, deeply unfashionable: Uninterested in passing judgment on his characters, evading easy dramatics, he locates every character’s essential good nature with great economy, much of it through stylized locutions and telling wardrobe choices. Thus the jokes and the eye candy are not just sugar filigree but highly nutritious. Indeed, they’re crucial to his semi-fabulist but wholly sympathetic worldview, which extends from the lovingly anonymous American locale of Rushmore’s campus and dream-industrial environs to Tenenbaums’ storybook New York.”

 

And then, even more helpfully, Ed finishes on THE VERY SCENE:

“You can watch, again and again, as the sadness slips off Gwyneth Paltrow’s Margot Tenenbaum—emerging from a bus to find Luke Wilson’s awestruck, world-weary Richie waiting at the station, as Nico’s plangent “These Days” executes some rapturous alchemy of sunlight and lost time. Sic transit gloria, Max would say. But not as long as this scene is close to hand, ready for repeated unfoldings.”

*

I enjoyed hearing from my cinematographer pal Scott Ward how Anderson only ever uses the one lens,which is ideal for those Lesterish tableau shots he likes so much. Made me think of a Crime Story, a CAPER, in which some Anderson-hater (my friend Comrade K might be good in the role [although come to think of it, he does like some Anderson]) STEALS the Anderson Lens, and Wes is unable to make any more films until he gets it back. I mean, he can’t just go out and buy another one, right?

Wait, he can? Damn. They say the popularity of the mobile phone has ruined certain plot devices, but I bet Lens Shops have been just as destructive.

*

Anyhow, Miss Paltrow’s slo-mo promenade calls to mind the definitive Walk Thing, from Peckinpah’s THE WILD BUNCH. “I wanna do a Walk Thing,” declared Bloody Sam to his crew, and nobody knew what he meant. Now the Walk Thing is such a movie standard that groups of people walking purposely towards a long lens at 50 fps simply cannot be done, except as self-conscious spoofery (Peckinpah’s original is actually at normal speed).

But a single person can still get away with it, as Gwyneth, in her finest ever role, demonstrates admirably here.

Was also thinking some Goosebump Moments and Moments That Make You Cry might be good… for later.

Dra-cu-la!

 

James Bernard’s theme music tends to play out the title as if it were a song lyric. So the score for DRACULA goes “Dra-cu-la!” and the score for TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA goes “Taste - the - Blood - of  - Dra-cu-la!” etc. And that’s just fine with me.

Christopher Lee’s entrance as the Count is the best ever. I do like the Lugosi (the first half of that movie is really good, creepy and dreamlike and nonsensically populated with armadillos and a tiny coffin with a bug in it and MAN!) and the Spanish language version filmed at night while they were shooting Bela by day has a great shot that swoops up the stairs to meet the vamp coming down, and Gary Oldman in the Coppola version looks like Glenn Close in DANGEROUS LIAISONS and Barbra Streisand in FUNNY LADY at the same time and of course the Nosferatus are brilliant BUT!!!

Chris Lee’s entrance is tops and here’s why: ‘There’s nothing like the introduction of Dracula in that picture, in which Christopher Lee just walked down the stairs, sort of bounced down, and said “Hello, I’m Dracula.” Having been reared on Bela Lugosi, with whom you knew you were in trouble, Lee just seemed like a very sensible, sophisticated gentleman.’ — Martin Scorsese.

Lee is really scary here as he advances into huge close-up with a fairly wide-angle lens, fairly low: the shot is telling us to run for cover but there’s nothing in the performance to clue in the other guy in the scene, so for once the poignancy works without Harker looking like an idiot.

Scorsese’s other remarks are fun. On CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN: ‘The audience loved it, and there was a graphic quality to it that was… totally uncalled for! And was extremely endearing to us at about the age of fifteen.’

And more on Lee: ‘…he was a very likeable Dracula — we enjoyed his company, we could imagine socializing with him. We also liked Peter Cushing a great deal as Van Helsing, because he had such insight, and he was very precise in his movements within the frame.’

I kind of wonder if Scorsese’s teenage friends all admired the precision of Cushing’s movements… but Cushing certainly moves well, and often. An admirer of Laurence Olivier, he brings a comparable dashing physical gusto to his work, but as Scorsese observes, he’s more camera-wise.

The third horror star in this film is often overlooked: Michael Gough. His work in later horror films has attracted favourable attention, and Tim Burton made good use of him in his BATMEN and SLEEP HOLLOW films, carrying on where Vincent Price left off in EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, but it seems almost to be forgotten that he’s even in DRACULA.

Everyone who ever works with Gough remarks on how extremely clever he is, and so, with all respect to director Terence Fisher and writer Jimmy Sangster*, I tend to attribute this next bit of clever business to Gough:

Van Helsing brands Gough’s sweetheart on the brow with a crucifix, and as she screams, Gough clutches his own temples in sudden sympathetic pain.

A moment later, Cushing’s V-H dispatches the vampire gal with a businesslike stake to the heart, and Gough pulls the same stunt a second time, this time clutching his ticker.

Fine fine work from the Goughster.

*Sangster is amusingly modest about his writing abilities, but has written some fine films, a favourite of mine being THE NANNY. But at times he does live up to his reputation for rubbishness: his autobiography actually ends with the line “I hope you have enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it.” On CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, Lee was sulking about not having any lines, and Cushing told him “Think yourself lucky, have you READ the script?”