Oddly, German photographic technology was more advanced than that in the west.
E.g., we see that, like any good socialist, national or international, Adolf was for the children:
Posted on 03/06/2017 8:47:12 PM PST by nickcarraway
The End of a Beautiful Friendship
Why America fell for Casablanca, and why the classic film is losing its hold on movie lovers.
In 1957, the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square kicked off its Humphrey Bogart series with the 1942 classic Casablanca.* Bogart himself had just died, and the response to the film was rapturous. By the fourth or fifth screening, “the audience began to chant the lines,” the theater’s then-manager told Noah Isenberg, author of We’ll Always Have Casablanca: The Life, Legend and Afterlife of Hollywood’s Most Beloved Movie. It was the dawn of the art-house era, the moment when film was beginning to be taken seriously as an art form by college students who flocked to theaters like the Brattle to see the work of Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, and Michelangelo Antonioni. Casablanca didn’t exactly rank among those auteurist masterpieces—even the movie’s most ardent champions have always described Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz and credited to screenwriters Howard Koch and Julius and Philip Epstein, as the quintessential product of the Hollywood studio system. But it nevertheless became a cult object for a generation or two of cinephiles, particularly young men, over the next several decades.
Allen Felix, the fictional film-critic hero of Play It Again, Sam, Woody Allen’s 1969 play and 1972 film, epitomizes that breed of young man. The film begins with the closing scene of Casablanca, in which Rick Blaine (Bogart) nobly parts from Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) on a misty North African tarmac. Then the camera cuts to Woody Allen’s rapt face, his mouth gaping, as he inhales the movie’s glossy, yearning romance. Felix lives in an apartment wallpapered with movie posters, most of them featuring Bogart, and as he bumbles his way through a largely unsuccessful love life, the phantom of the movie star in his trademark
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
All politics aside, French is a very beautiful, elegant language to many of us who are not at all fluent.
It even sounds attractive to the ear when the speaker is angry. Of course, if I had to actually learn what was being said by some angry Frenchman, I would probably get over that particular impression very quickly.
Some of the derivative dialects are also intriguing; such as Haitian Creole or Quebecois, the french spoken in Quebec, Montreal. I just wish the French would fight a little bit harder to preserve their country from The Invaders. Oh well, maybe Mademoiselle LePen will win in a few months.
Read the whole thing. It is gobbledy gook. I don’t understand it.
I still don’t understand his assertion as to why Casa Blanca is “losing its hold on movie goers”.
All I can tell, is millenials and younger need action movies with tons of rapid input or they get bored and fall asleep. They can’t follow a developing plot or have the patience for a growing character. Everything has to be immediate action and furious fights, explosions, fast edits, quick scenes. A movie like Shane or High Noon would just put them to sleep.
They can’t last through the slowly rising tension of a suspenseful build-up to the ultimate climax. They need a mini-climax every 5 minutes or so or they get bored.
One of the greatest movies ever.
Just the other day overheard a twentysomething man tell his lady friends how no one could compare with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and why couldn't they have actors and actresses like that these days.
Oddly, German photographic technology was more advanced than that in the west.
E.g., we see that, like any good socialist, national or international, Adolf was for the children:
You Must Remember This bump
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures. - See more at: http://www.rense.com/general32/americ.htm#sthash.F2hDihJd.dpuf
I understand it and I love the French language too. It is an adjective driven, descriptive language. It helps to pin things down, but it has more emotion. German is more defining, and French is more expansive. English is more useful, somewhere in between those two (I am biased toward English, as it’s my mother tongue).
Funny how I always thought Italian, which I mostly do not understand, sounds so beautiful, but when you hear two Italians on the road in a bit of road rage, or teen boys getting raucous on a train, it’s not as beautiful sounding. Lol.
Early films were plot/character driven; recent films are all about special effects.
“The Searchers” has many little things in the beginning that come back later. It relies on the mental capacity of the viewer to add them up.
Todays films are all CGI and loud sound tracks with no relying on the viewer’s ability to recall something they saw 20 minutes ago.
“2001” looses a lot when not seen in its original cinarama format.
“Oh well, maybe Mademoiselle LePen will win in a few months.”
Just maybe she’ll be a modern Joan of Arc. Because it sure looks like it will take the hand of God to save Western Europe.
You weren’t enthralled by Ingrid Bergman? Forsooth!
Another favorite of mine is Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. Sidney Greenstreet made a great bad guy.
>>Oddly, German photographic technology was more advanced than that in the west.
Not odd at all. Color photography requires advanced film chemistry compared to B&W. The Germans were leaders in the chemical industry starting in the 19th Century. In the early part of the 20th Century, IG Farben is a key name, which company begat Agfa, BASF, and Bayer.
Film was just an area they led the world in.
I saw 2001 alone as a first release in an almost empty *huge* Cinerama theater as a boy. It was a weekday matinee, and I think my mother and grandmother were shopping next door. That theater was later divvied up into 2 or 3 theaters.
Needless to say, it made quite an impression.
Let’s not forget that 50 or 70 years ago, the actors cost more than the special effects. Now you can CGI a plane crash into a building, and at the end of the movie there is no debris to clean up. Compared to a 20 Million Dollar package of emotion and ego, and it is easy to see why movie-makers tend to the special effects.
Nonetheless, the Krauts were not the vanguard in color photography.
The Russians had them beat by a world war or two.
E.g.:
 Young Russian peasant women in front of traditional wooden house, in a rural area along the Sheksna River near the small town of Kirillov. Early color photograph from Russia, created by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii as part of his work to document the Russian Empire from 1909 to 1915. |
Article is BS - author just pulling the old “deconstructionism” trick of criticizing something/someone then re-lensing to fit some other narrative.
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