What beautiful thing is this? Only Karl Grune’s dizzying DIE STRASSE, the subject of this week’s edition of The Forgotten, available now at The Daily Notebook.
Maybe after I’ve watched every film illustrated in Gifford’s Pictorial History of Horror Movies, it’ll be time to start on Siegfried Kracauer’s From Caligari to Hitler? A daunting task, despite the smaller number of illos…
1)
Some smart person pointed out I should have a banner for The Late Show: The Late Films Blogathon, December 12th-18th. I got carried away and did several. This means we can now have a mini-quiz ~
2)
All of these images are from prominent director’s last movies. Who are the directors are what are the movies?
3)
And which do you think would make the best banner?
4)
I’m quite content to let everybody use whatever banner resonates most powerfully with their particular chakra, if chakra is the word I’m looking for. But if there’s a clear favourite, maybe that one can be the official banner, or something.
5)
On your marks, get set ~
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GO!
7)
Nice Christmassy feel to this last one.
Boris Karloff, dusky-hued in BEHIND THAT CURTAIN.
Boris again, dusky-hued again, in ISLE OF THE DEAD.
It’s Boris Karloff’s birthday!
It was only last year that I learned about Boris’s Indian ancestry. It seemed to make so much sense. It accounts for the darker pigmentation around his eyes, and may even account for his stage name: by assuming a Slavic name, William Henry Pratt could account for his colouring without admitting to any non-white heritage. This was in an age when the British spoke of someone like Boris having ” a lick of the tar-brush.”
Even if his appearance were accounted for, Boris still found the only parts he could get were exotic types, and sinister westerners. Without the simple ethnic explanation, those shadowy eyes became a repository for malevolent projections. Or maybe he was just naturally scary-looking.
Still, Boris had more range than he’s credited with: see FIVE STAR FINAL, an excoriating attack on yellow press scandal sheets from Mervyn LeRoy and Warner Bros. Eddie Robinson is the editor who destroys a whole family with his muck-raking tactics, and Boris is boozy reporter and sex pest (“Don’t get in a taxi with him”) T. Vernon Isopod. He’s grotesque, yes, simpering and slurring and lisping and leering, but he manages to be hilarious until the sheer repulsiveness of his profession tips him over into monstrousness of a different kind.
Happy Birthday Boris!
shadowplay 