Film
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The Yale University Art Gallery is screening two Bruce Conner films generated by the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1961: Report (1967) and Television Assassination (1975).
The screenings will be followed by a discussion with Marisa Nakasone, Marcia Brady Tucker Senior Fellow, Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, and J.D. Connor, Assistant Professor, History of Art, Yale University.
Thursday, November 21, 5:30 PM
Yale University Art Gallery
1111 Chapel Street (at York Street)
New Haven, Connecticut.
The Motion Picture Association of America adopted an age-based movie rating system in 1967, taking effect the following year. Initially, there were only four ratings.
| Rating |
Restriction |
| G |
General Audiences: All Ages |
| M |
Mature Audiences: Parental guidance |
| R |
Restricted, 16+ with parent |
| X |
Adults Only |
These ratings replaced the all-or-nothing system in use since the 1930s, colloquially known as the Production Code, and segmented the movie audience by age and allowed for adult-themed movies to proliferate.
The ratings have gradually evolved in the nearly fifty years since their introduction. G and R remain largely intact to this day. M evolved to the confusing GP, meaning General Audiences with Parental Guidance, and then to now-familiar PG. And in the 1980s, PG movies that were considered a tad too violent were rated PG–13 as a middle-ground between PG and R. However, the X rating was something almost mythical. In my adolescent-of-the–1980s mind, an X-rated film was always a pornographic film, and anything X-rated was a sexually explicit, adults-only affair. It might still connote that to the kids of today.
Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones at a Times Square theater in New York, May 31, 1980. (AP Photo/Dave Pickoff)
Study film for a few years, and you will learn that the X-rating was applied to many more films, including some that didn’t have much sexual content. For example, the 1969 Haskell Wexler film Medium Cool was initially assigned an X before an appeal reduced it to a more appropriate R rating. The film has no depictions of sex at all, although there is an extended violent sequence of documentary footage, shot by Wexler and his crew, where the Chicago police pummel protestors at the Democratic National Convention. It’s disturbing, but not X-rated disturbing.
Medium Cool (1969) has some violent scenes of the police riot in Chicago.
The X-rating was applied to seventy-two films in its first four years, from 1968 to 1972. This peak coincided with the so-called golden age of porn, beginning in the 1970s.
| Year |
X-Ratings |
Notable Titles |
| 1968 |
3 |
Birds of Peru, The Miracle of Love, Sin with a Stranger |
| 1969 |
13 |
Make Me a Angel, Sex of Angels, To Hex with Sex |
| 1970 |
22 |
The Dean’s Wife, Satanis: The Devil’s Mass, Sexual Freedom In Denmark |
| 1971 |
34 |
Bunny and Clod, The Dirty Movie, Erotic Salad, Snuff |
Whither the X rating? In 1990, the Motion Picture Association of America replaced the X rating with NC–17. The rating was designated for films that were for adults but non-pornographic. Initially, films embraced the NC–17 rating as a desirable substitute for being branded with a pornographic rating or marginalized by not being rated at all.
| Year |
NC–17 Ratings |
Notable Titles |
| 1990 |
18 |
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover, Henry and June, Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down |
| 1991 |
16 |
In The Realm Of The Senses, Dice Rules, Rodney Dangerfield ‘Nothin’ Goes Right’ |
| 1992 |
7 |
Bad Lieutenant, The Loves Of Lady Chatterly |
But as video stores and movie theaters began to associate the new NC–17 rating with the old X rating, fewer films would take the NC–17. Instead, they would surrender the rating, remaining an unrated film, or appeal for a milder R rating. Today, the rating is very rarely used. In the last three years, only five films have taken the NC–17 rating.
| Year |
NC–17 Ratings |
Titles |
| 2011 |
3 |
El Infierno, A Serbian Film, Shame |
| 2012 |
0 |
|
| 2013 |
2 |
Blue is the Warmest Color, Lucky Bastard |
For a rating that has been around longer than the original and fabled X rating it replaced, the NC–17 appears to be a bust. Instead of classifying high-brow, adult-themed films and pave the way for more of them, it has mainly marginalized them away from a theater near you.
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I was a late adopter to YouTube. I never liked that it used only Flash to display its videos in its early days, making my over-clocked PowerBook get hot from watching a video. I also disliked the low default resolution of its videos. For years, the typical YouTube video had 360 lines of horizontal resolution, which was fine for watching on the web, but if you wanted to use it for close study, you were almost better off watching a VHS and certainly better off finding a DVD.
Over time, I began using it here and there for quickly locating films I hadn’t seen in years. For example, in my experimental film class, YouTube was useful for compiling a screening list. I could locate films I considered screening, and verify that they matched my memory of them. In this case, YouTube was a wonderful resource for teaching and research.
But today, YouTube reminded me how it can be a terrible resource for teaching and research. As a way to search for a specific video, it’s great. But treating it like an archive will disappoint you. It’s simply too impermanent to use as reliable teaching tool. Some videos are so evanescent—here yesterday, gone today— that they may as well have never have existed on the site.
On a WordPress site for my American Film Industry class, I posted separate entries for two films we referenced in the class. Each entry included a embedded video clip from YouTube. As I went to look for review those entries today, the two clips are gone.
The poster image for a clip from Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? on YouTube.
The first entry included an embedded YouTube clip from a somewhat forgotten film, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957). The clip was of an “intermission” towards the end of the film, where the lead actor, Tony Randall, breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience. As US audiences of the 1950s abandoned the movie theater for the comfort of watching television at home, this forced intermission reminded audiences of the sacrifices television viewing demanded they make: a smaller picture, radio interference, vertical scroll, and snow. And of course, let’s not forget about the interruptions from advertisers, which are an object of satire in this film about advertising.
Although a poster image for the clip still appears on the blog entry, the embedded clip will not play. The error notice indicates that the clip was taken down because the “video contains content from Fox, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.” Fox does indeed own the rights to the film, as the film was released by 20th Century-Fox and will hold the copyright until the middle of this century. But the clip hosted on YouTube allowed me to use it in accordance with fair use doctrine. My use of the clip was for comment and criticism and constituted only a part of my blog post, albeit an important part. The short clip on YouTube and my associated blog post could even serve as promotion for a forgotten film that could be resuscitated. Depictions of the American mid-century advertising industry might have been exploited some years ago. Instead, the clip was taken down, and the film will remain in obscurity.
I posted the second entry, on Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, to demonstrate the influence of the French New Wave on Bonnie and Clyde. The clip demonstrated the use of jump cuts in the film. As any student of cinema knows, Breathless popularized the use of the jump cut, and it gave young filmmakers of the 1960s a feeling of “breaking the rules.”Arthur Penn used it extensively, most noticeably in the opening sequence of the film when Bonnie Parker is filled with ennui in her room and becomes excited when a stranger comes to her home.
When I went to review the blog post, the clip was gone. YouTube indicates that the “video is not available in your country.” It’s seriously disappointing that the clip is gone because it robs my students the opportunity to see the nine jump cuts in a thirty-five-second sequence. To demonstrate this, I either have to search for another YouTube clip that will be undoubtedly be blocked in the future or resort to circumventing the copy protection on a DVD to extract that clip.
Film scholars have been pretty insensitive to the myriad ways you can watch films. Most of the earliest film scholars watched in a theater with a group of people. They assumed that would be the only way to watch films, primarily because it was the only way to watch films. In some cases, a particular screening would have been a one-and-done situation. Consequently, they wrote about the film so that it survived beyond the evanescence of a theatrical exhibition.
This is a good weekend to be a film geek because you can watch films in ways that might seem novel or even foreign to most viewers today. Sure, you can watch a film at the New York Film Festival and pay as much as $25 to watch a film that will be out in New York–area theaters anyway. However, that’s not the case for the Views from the Avant-Garde series, which I plan on attending this Friday. For a more worthwhile glimpse at film exhibition, you could recreate the experience of watching a silent film in a movie palace and compare it to watching a film at a drive-in theater. Here’s how.
Silent Film
I’m a big fan of the Loew’s Jersey. Built in 1929, it is a landmark movie palace that has been restored over the years to resemble its original state. Whereas most movie palaces have been divided into multiplexes, altered beyond recognition, transformed into retail stores or churches, or are simply torn down, this one has remained a viable venue for film screenings and live performances.
To showcase their restoration work and to preserve a forgotten form of moviegoing, the Friends of Loew’s Jersey occasionally screen movies, including silent films and an annual horror movie series around Halloween.
The Friends of Loew’s Jersey will be screening two films on Sunday, October 5, beginning at 3:00 PM. My Best Girl (1926) stars Mary Pickford and the man she married after Douglas Fairbanks, Charles “Buddy” Rogers. To add to the authentic experience of the show, there will be live organ accompaniment during the screening. Neat! There will also be a short film, Movie Night, starring Charlie Chase. It’s a rare chance to watch silent films as they would have been seen in their day. And if you don’t mind breaking from the authentic 1920s experience, go get Indian food after the show.
Drive-In
Starting this Friday, October 4, you can see films in a “drive-in” theater at the New York Hall of Science in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
The Empire Drive-In is more of an art installation than a bona-fide drive-in movie theater. The installation is open during the hall’s regular hours, but on select days, it transforms into a drive-in theater. To create the drive-in experience, there are sixty cars and trucks, salvaged from a nearby junkyard, installed to accommodate visitors. The screenings run from October 4 through October 20, although you should check the schedule because they’re screenings films only on select days. On those days, the installation is only open until 2:00 PM, presumably to allow time to prepare that evening’s screening.
Since the beginning of September, Turner Movie Classics has been running a ridiculously long festival of movies representing the history of cinema. The festival last fifteen weeks, into December, which happens to be the same duration of a college semester. Each week, TCM airs an episode of the 2011 documentary The Story of Film and a program of representative films to accompany each episode.
It doesn’t happen too often, but events like this make me miss cable. Sometimes.
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A few weeks ago I posted images of six films I screened in my History of Cinema class at Queens College. As part of the final exam, students were to name five of the six films and provide the country of production and, if appropriate, the avant-garde movement.
Here are the answers:
Anemic Cinema
Celebrated artist Marcel Duchamp produced this film using a spirograph and other graphics that rotated on screen. Like much of Duchamp’s work, the film was a Dadaist work that utilized word play. In this still, the text translates to “If I give you a penny, will you give me a pair of scissors?” According to Katrina Martin, however, Duchamp is playing with colloquial French expressions and this actually translates to “If I give you a penny, I will give you a fuck.”
The Man with a Movie Camera
What can I say about this film? There are two items in the picture, a man and a movie camera, so I figured that would be easy. I was also looking for an image from this film that would show off two influential art movements in the Soviet Union: montage and Constructivism.
The challenge was to find a still that had montage within a single shot. Montage generally edits two shots together to create a specific and deliberate meaning, but I can’t show that in a single still. This one demonstrate the ability of montage to show “editing” within a single shot. Moreover, Constructivist integrated machinery into everyday objects, including the human form.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Not to spoil too much here, but in this still, Alan reacts to seeing Cesare in his room. He is terrified. In this shot, Cesare’s figure casts a shadow against the wall on the right side of the frame. The set of the room is highly stylized. It is not shown in classical Renaissance perspective, but instead has very sharp angles. This approach to composition was common in German Expressionism.
Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
This is another German Expressionist film but from 1922 and directed by F.W. Murnau. The shadowy composition is again present here and is there to cast a sense of terror. Moreover, no one who has seen this film will forget Count Orlock’s appearance. It has to be one of the most chilling figures in cinema.
Un Chien Andalou
This is the seminal surrealist film, produced in France, by future film icon Luis Buñuel and celebrated painter/sculptor Salvador Dali. Early in the film is perhaps one of the most unforgettable images in cinema history: the cutting of a woman’s eye. The film rejects any narrative causality and instead follows the logic of dreams, as surrealists were wont to do.
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Yes, it’s another film by a German filmmaker, F. W. Murnau. But this film, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, was produced in the United States, not Germany, and was stylistically similar to Expressionism, although it was made well after the movement had its hey-day in Germany. This still is from the first third of the film. The man, played by George O’Brien, is about to kill his wife, played by Academy Award–winning Actress Janet Gaynor, and make it look like she accidentally drowned. You can see the compositional similarities between this image and that of the still from Caligari. Also, O’Brien’s posture is not unlike that of Orlock in Nosferatu.
Students in my class would have undoubtedly noticed that I absolutely love this film—it’s easily one of my all-time favorites—and some would remember it because I heard a few people crying at the end of the film.
As *Sunrise* is perhaps the last silent film made in Hollywood, it also might be the best.
Do you fancy yourself a fan of silent film?
This was part of the final exam in my silent film history class. Can you give the title, country, and the associated avant-garde movement?
I’ll reveal the answers in a subsequent post.
When you get to be a thirty-something year-old in New York, or any big city really, your wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend likely goes away without you. I think the commonly used term for this state is being a “bachelor” or some derivation of being single. However, that’s not an accurate term since it implies that you’re newly single not that you’re without your partner for a temporary period of time. There has to be a better term.
A few weeks ago in my silent film class, I screened a series of European films. One of the films featured the pioneering French silent comedian Max Linder. The film was called Troubles of a Grasswidower (1908). In the film, Linder’s character’s wife leaves for a bit. (“I’m going home to mother”) The comedy is a pretty standard formula for a time when gender roles were quite strictly defined, not unlike Mr. Mom (1983) where household chores are challenging. In Troubles of a Grasswidower, Max has to maintain the home while his wife is away. He struggles with chores familiar to us, such as washing the dishes and making the bed, and other deprecated tasks, such as plucking a chicken.
While the film makes for entertaining physical comedy, I have been sharing the title with many of my friends about the common situation of being without your partner. The Oxford English Dictionary offers two definitions, although the entry indicates that the following is the more common usage:
- grass widow (n.)
- A married woman whose husband is absent from her.
As one would expect, there is the derivative of the term for men, too. What’s good for the gander is apparently good for the goose:
- grass widower (n.)
- a man living apart from his wife.
While many of us in this situation are not married, thus the term does not entirely apply to us, it is still a wonderful, antiquated term to reintroduce to contemporary usage. And when I think of bachelor, it implies you’re partying. That’s not alway the case for me. In an age when bartenders and barbers dress up like film pioneer W.K.L Dickson, you’ll forgive me for mistaking our era for the late nineteenth century.
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Earlier this morning, Blockbuster Express delivered the bad news:
Your preferred Blockbuster Express kiosk is going away.
Since moving to Long Island City, five years ago, we never had a video store other than this automated box. With the closing of our Blockbuster Express machine, the closest semblance to a video store will now be gone.
It’s not the greatest loss. We can stream just about any title available at one of these kiosks. The film studios release a movie title to these kiosks on the same day as it is available to rent on iTunes, for example, usually thirty days after the Blu-ray and DVD release. Moreover, our kiosk never had Blu-ray disks. The only way to watch a high-definition video was to either rent from a kiosk elsewhere or to stream the title. There was no real appreciable difference in price either: iTunes charges between four and six dollars for a twenty-hour rental, versus two and four dollars for a Blu-ray disk from Blockbuster Express.
To an old-timer like me, losing a “video store” would have been devastating in a different era. Did you know that people use to rate a New York City neighborhood based in part on the presence of bookshops, video stores, and record shops? It seems crazy to think about since those barely exist in any neighborhood. We’ve never had those in my years in Long Island City. And later this week, we won’t even have this video store proxy either.
My friend, terrific filmmaker, and overall good dude is a raising money to complete his film on the rich history of baseball in Panama.
This project is serious. He received a Fulbright grant to start it. Let’s help him finish.
