NERVEN (NERVES) by crazy kraut Robert Reinert is fondly recalled in today’s edition of The Forgotten. It’s over at the Daily Notebook and you can watch the whole film for afters.
And, as if that weren’t too, too much, here’s a rather fine limerick, on the theme of existentialism (“still a hot topic at the time”). I urge you to check out the others — quite possibly the largest collection of Edgar Ulmer-themed five-line poems ever collected in one heap.
Since the very founding of America, November the 10th has been known as MIKE JITTLOV DAY, so it’s fitting that this week’s edition of The Forgotten focuses on the eccentric genius of a filmmaker who is called Mike Jittlov. It’s so apt!
For those of you with no interest in wizardry, you can read some limericks on the subject of Edgar Ulmer’s DETOUR, some by myself.
Actually, DETOUR is a sublime work of celluloid wizardry. So, sorry — if you don’t like wizards, there’s nothing for you here. Move along now.
Part two of B. Kite and Alexander Points-Zollo’s video essay, THE VERTIGO VARIATIONS, is now up at Moving Image Source. Recommend you head over and download the QuickTime movie rather than watching the streaming version, which necessarily is of inferior visual quality.
I contributed an idea to this one — as the filmmakers were looking for more ways to distort and disturb Hitchcock’s beautiful images, I suggested encoding the film at a very low bitrate. At its most extreme, this degrades the image to blocky Mondrian patterns which turned out quite beautifully. Although I have an official DVD of Edgar Ulmer’s STRANGE ILLUSION that’s almost as distorted.
I’m loving this series and looking forward to the third and final part — each episode promises to be stranger than the last. Here, much of the focus is on a part of VERTIGO you may never have seen, and which is universally despised by those who have seen it. Typically, Kite and Points-Zollo find a way to admire it…
Shadowplay
