Monthly Archive for September, 2010

First Year Blogging: A Salmagundi—Part One

September 27, 2010 in John’s Bailiwick
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The "Kino-Eye" of Dziga Vertov

This is a frame grab from the last shot of Russian experimental filmmaker Dziga Verov’s 1929 homage to the cinematographer, Man with a Camera. The film is a metaphor for the cinematographer as voyeur and documenter of the world at large, the Kino-Eye, the artist who observes life’s passing parade and transforms it through his alchemy into entertainment.

When I began film studies at USC, it was not my intention to become a cameraman, an editor, a director, or any of the hands-on jobs of movies’ creators. My cinematic heroes would not have been Gregg Toland, Sam O’Steen or David Lean—but Andre Bazin, French film theorist and scholar, a veritable godfather to the New Wave. Bazin died at age forty on November 11, 1958, the day after Francois Truffaut began filming The 400 Blows. Truffaut dedicated the film to him.

Film Writer Andre Bazin.

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Arion Press in the Age of Kindle

September 20, 2010 in John’s Bailiwick
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Johannes Gutenberg

In 1455, the Gutenberg Era began in Europe with an edition of the Bible, using movable type and a printing device adapted from an existing wine press. Known as the “42 line Bible,” only about 180 copies of this seminal book were made. Forty-eight are known to still exist. This is one of them, the copy housed at the Library of Congress.

Gutenberg Bible, Library of Congress.

For the next 450 years the printed book reigned supreme as the principal repository for the knowledge and wisdom of mankind. Books were printed in extravagantly opulent editions with tipped in art; they were also printed in cheap pulp editions that were meant to be read once and tossed. Today, both ends of this printing spectrum are on life support or so claim the digerati futurists. True, you don’t have to do a Google search to know that newspapers and book publishers are vanishing faster than disappearing ink. The Gutenberg Era may eventually survive only in the name of its eponymous electronic iteration, a website dedicated to making available online all the world’s books that are in public domain.

Gutenberg.org wiki link

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Engaged Observers: At The Getty

September 13, 2010 in John’s Bailiwick
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There are times when viewing art and photography so profoundly transcends the realm of aesthetic appreciation that the emotions it evokes make it impossible to even begin a dispassionate discussion. Imagine how much more impossible it is to write about. This is exactly the conundrum I face at this moment as I try in my feeble way to confront the current photography exhibition at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. About the only thing I can write with any clarity is this: “Go to the Getty. Go now.”

“Engaged Observers” banner above the Getty Photo Galleries.

This deeply moving exhibition, subtitled Documentary Photography since the Sixties, now hanging in the Getty’s expansive photo galleries until November 14 (it won’t travel), focuses on the work of ten “engaged” photographers. They are not merely photojournalists out on specific assignments, though several bodies of work did begin this way. These men and women have committed their careers and lives to creating demanding, long-term photo essays, often spanning years, that document in a near cinematic sense a broad range of socio-political experience.

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The Cinematographer Today: Evolution or Devolution — Part Two

September 6, 2010 in John’s Bailiwick
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This summer Turner Classic Movies has been running films with the banner “Summer Under the Stars.” On Sunday, August 22, actor John Mills was profiled. The major film that evening was David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter. Mills won an Oscar for his wordless performance as the character Michael, as did cinematographer Freddie Young, who won all three of his Academy Awards on consecutive Lean films.

The screening was preceded by a documentary about the movie’s making. Ryan’s Daughter was photographed in 65mm. Early on, Young’s Super Panavision camera is shown tracking atop sea cliffs outside the village of Killary. After the sweeping skies of the title sequence, the opening image of the film is an extreme long shot of those cliffs.

“Ryan's Daughter,” opening shot frame grab.

That tiny speck, hardly visible in the frame grab above, moving along the ridge toward the cliff edge, is actress Sarah Miles chasing her parasol which has just been swept over the cliff. On the 32 inch TV in my Anchorage hotel room, I could barely discern a human figure. The next shot was closer on her. I wisely decided to shut off the TV right then. How can you watch a film photographed in this scale on television?

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