That’s All, Volk!

 

From Chuck Jones’ unauthorized remake of Lang’s DIE NIBELUNGEN, and indeed the whole Ring Cycle, condensed into seven minutes for easy consumption, WHAT’S OPERA, DOC? “The only epic we ever made.”

Once more I turn the dog-eared pages of Patrick McGilligan’s Fritz Lang, The Nature of the Beast. In the early ’70s, an elderly Fritz goes out to dinner with his young friend (or “friend”?) Howard Vernon ~

‘The headwaiter scurried over, whispering to Howard Vernon, “Mr. Lang…Mr. Lang…isn’t he connected with the cartoons?” Vernon whispered back, “No, that is Walter Lantz. This is Fritz Lang, the director.” “Because,” said the headwaiter, “I really wanted to tell him how much I love the Woody Woodpeckers.” “Oh,” said Vernon, “don’t tell him that.”‘

But damnit, Lang WAS involved with the cartoons!

Here is a frame from DIE NIBELUNGEN, which features an animated dream sequence by another Walter, Walter Ruttman.

This is only the most obvious bit of Langian cartoonery. Later in the saga, Kriemhild commands her troupe of Huns to “throw fire” upon the Nibelungen.

But the firebrands must have been insufficiently fiery to satisfy the perfectionist Lang, for in this shot they appear to have been enhanced by the artist’s hand. Certainly the flames have an altogether more “artistic” quality than those seen in most of the later shots.

I wouldn’t be so sure of this if there wasn’t abundant evidence of Lang’s ‘toon tendencies elsewhere in his oeuvre.

The traffic gliding along the elevated roadways of METROPOLIS is animated frame by frame. Filmed in Dynamation!

In WOMAN IN THE MOON, considerable use is made of animated charts plotting our Teutonic astronauts’ course moonwards.

Now here’s an explosion from THE TESTAMENT OF DOCTOR MABUSE:

It’s a thrilling, bizarre, surprising moment — a rolling metal drum full of petrol ignites and flies into the air, scratching the celluloid with slashing action lines that swirl about and bear the canister upwards out of frame.

America, America. Lang acclimatized himself to the American way of talking, and of viewing the world, by reading the funnies — like Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, a model of film noir style and content, with some of the same intrigue and rapid plotting as Lang’s earlier thrillers.

Flash-forward to Lang’s seventh American film, HANGMEN ALSO DIE, written by “Bert” Brecht. Taxi driver and Czech underground freedom fighter, played by the glorious Lionel Stander, is taken to be tortured by the Nazis. He flings himself through a window, gaining a quick death and robbing his captors of the chance to find out what he knows.

Lang startled Stander by demanding he throw himself through a REAL window. (”Listen, all directors want to kill actors,” ~ Wallace Beery) 

Stander, a man who very much knew his own mind, resisted defenestration.

Lang, just as stubborn, insisted that fake sugar glass Would Not Do. He compromised, surreally, on NO GLASS, forcing the special effects department to add little flying shards of cartoon window-pane in post-production:

…Connected with the cartoons…

…Connected with the cartoons…

Perhaps Lang, like Hitchcock, envied Walt Disney for his ability to “tear up his actors.”

Euphoria #49: “I’m SO tired!”

When I told film-wizard Robert Glassford of Blimey Productions about PROJECT EUPHORIA — my five-year-plan to collect moments of happy-making cinema, KILL them, and preserve the husks under glass — almost WITHOUT HESITATION he suggested this moment from ZOOLANDER:

And when I saw Robert’s vast, individually hand-crafted face light up with child-like glee at the memory, how could I refuse? To paraphrase Ring Lardner Jr, “I could, but I would hate myself in the morning.”

The key line that cracks Robert up is “I’m sorry, did my pin get in the way of your ass?” but what slays me is the simple and meaningless, “I’m SO tired!” which for some reason seems hilarious when shouted by a heavily-primped Will Ferrell.

Also I think Ferrell looks kind of glamorous, rather than grotesque. I tend to hate the way the Farrelly brothers mess up their actors’ faces with false teeth and zits and crap (everyone in KINGPIN is HARD TO LOOK AT and just the trailer made me depressed for DAYS), whereas here it’s kind of pleasure just to have somebody in front of us dressed like that. He looks like Ron Perlman as a killer bee.

A lot of the pleasure here is the joy of wilful stoopidness, which I suspect is rediscovered each generation and will either strike you as an early clue to the new direction or the end of civilisation as we know it. This will largely depend on whether you find the idea of Ben Stiller as a supermodel inherently amusing.

While I’m not convinced this is any kind of Golden Age of Comedy, I feel more enthusiastic about stuff like ZOOLANDER and especially ANCHORMAN, and also Judd Apatow’s stuff than I have about any modern U.S. film comedy in a while. It may not be “great cinema” but it’s bloody funny at times. I wish the film-making had more elegance to match the writing and playing, and I wish there were somebody who could construct complex visual gag sequences with clarity and style. But we seem to be getting two or three very funny films a year — pretty bad compared to the ’40s, but pretty good compared to most of the ’90s.

But then, I’m perhaps in a minority since I also thought Ben Stiller’s THE CABLE GUY was pretty good. And kind of intense. 

Win Big Prize! Here now, this.

 

So, I bought a Hitchcock box set because I didn’t have four of the films in it on disc, (STAGE FRIGHT, THE WRONG MAN, DIAL M FOR MURDER, I CONFESS) and it was cheap. But now I have dupe copies of NORTH BY NORTHWEST and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN.

And, coincidentally, a nice fellow appeared here and offered me free stuff.

So, in the spirit of PASS IT FORWARD, I’m going to give away my duplicate DVDs as free prizes in an inane competition.

In NORTH BY NORTHWEST, Cary Grant plays Roger O Thornhill. That middle initial is about all I have in common with him. We are told that the “O” stands for “nothing”.

Question One: If the “O” didn’t stand for “nothing”, what would it stand for?

Question Two (suggested by Comrade K.): If you met a stranger on a train, what would you ask him? Say he came from Peoria, Illinois, what then? Suppose he had a magic pencil.

Prizes go to answers that make me laugh, or at least smile audibly. It’s also good if you can incorporate some obscure film trivia.

I might send each disc to a different winner. If you already have the movies I might discuss some other prize. I might just sell them on eBay.

Basically, ANYTHING could happen. It’s not even a proper competition.

A group of huns celebrate their competition win. Note the plate-spinner on the left.

Oh, better have a deadline. Monday.