Tag Archives: Film

Salem Film Fest 2015

We’re in the midst of the eighth annual Salem Film Fest, featuring a diverse menu of documentary films from all over the world. I’m for any initiative that plays to Salem’s worldly past rather than its witchy one, and this extremely well-planned festival does just that: its slogan is Come to Salem, See the World and this year you can embark on a “curated itinerary” following the themes of arts and artists, films about music, righting wrongs, films about identity, contemporary political and social issues, land and sea, and living on the edge–giving it all. Several screenings include Q and A sessions with the filmmakers, and there are also forums which explore particular aspects of documentary production. I always have an ambitious itinerary of my own, but generally end up only seeing one film. Perhaps I’ll do better this year. This weekend I saw Dennis Mohr’s Mugshotwhich examines the cultural significance of these little pictures, from law enforcement tool to celebrity signal to object of art. It was great, perfectly mixing past and present and imagery in my favorite way. Then I got focused on an academic project (a good thing) and missed American Experience Presents, about the making of the iconic PBS series, later on Saturday afternoon as well as today’s screening of Sex and Broadcasting, focused on the independent New Jersey radio station WFMU. There are still several screenings left of what looks like the “feel good” film of the festival, The Optimists, about a Norwegian volleyball team for women aged 66 to 98, so I think I’ll probably see that one, and I’m also interested in Seeds of Time, which examines one man’s mission to save the world through seed-saving and crop diversity.

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Optimists

Seeds of Time

Cats and dogs:  the festival mixes its worldliness with local perspectives by including shorts by local college students and promotional “Salem sketches” which offer a frame of city life in very short films–a minute or two. I love this one featuring our local cobbler (and his cat) and even though “Snow Place like Salem” dates from a few years ago, it perfectly captures life in Salem this winter.


Film Fonts from the 1930s

Big time transition here from the 1180s to the 1930s but that’s my life! As even the casual reader of this blog may know, I’m an avid classic film buff who is regularly tuned in to Turner Classic Movies–on which I watch (or glance at, while I’m doing other things) even bad movies. It doesn’t matter: if the plot doesn’t hold my attention something else will:  the sets, the costumes, even the titles. The other night an extremely lightweight Ann Sothern film from 1936 entitled The Smartest Girl in Town (working model “Cookie” Cooke seeks rich husband and reluctantly falls for a man whom she presumes is another model but is in fact–and of course–a millionaire) caught my attention simply by its title sequence, featuring an amazing font which I had never seen before. I taped the film and have since gone back again and again just to look at these letters:

Film Font 1936

And aren’t they amazing? Look at all those circles and parallelograms–they really liven up what looks (to my untrained eye) like a pretty standard 1930s font. My preoccupation with this particular title drove me to look for those of some of my favorite films from this era, and led me to discover a great resource: the website of Dutch graphic and web designer Christian Annyas, who has collected hundreds of screen shots of film titles from the 1920s to the present in his The Movie Title Stills Collection. You can search by title, designer, director, or actor, but the best thing to do is just browse through the decades so you can see the evolution of letters on film. I did that briefly, and then went right back to the 1930s, which produced my favorite films and my favorite fonts, and here are just a few of them:

design-for-living-movie-title

Design for Living (1933): almost as good a title as The Smartest Girl, but a much better film. It’s very modern, and is basically about a menage à trois!

39-steps-title-still

The 39 Steps (1935): Hitchcock attended to every little detail–all his titles are great.

theodora-goes-wild-title-still

Theodora Goes Wild (1936): not sure this is as classic as some people say, but it is charmingly well-acted by Irene Dunne and Melvyn Douglas–and I love this font!

Film Font Godfrey

My Man Godfrey (1936): more 1930s shadows–the “forgotten man” gets into the picture!

Film Font Dead End 1937

Dead End (1937): a more realistic Depression-in-New-York film by William Wyler with Humphrey Bogart and one of my favorites, Joel McCrea.

Film Font Wings

Only Angels have Wings (1939): I don’t really care for this sandy font, to tell the truth, but as this is probably my favorite movie of that stellar movie year 1939, I felt I had to include it. You can tell we’re about to go through a typographical transition…….


Curtmantle

Though my primary field is Tudor-Stuart history, occasionally I teach a more general English history survey which spans from Roman era to the seventeenth century. My biggest challenge in this course, which I am teaching this semester, is to refrain from settling into mere storytelling about the characters and exploits of a succession of colorful kings and queens. The students in this course are generally not history majors, and their knowledge and interest in history tends to be quite History Channel-ish, meaning that they are more interested in personalities than structures. I try to balance it all out, and for the most part I think I’m successful, but periodically I must slow down and simply consider the character and reign of a monarch in rather narrative fashion. Such is the case with King Henry II, nicknamed Curtmantle for the shorter French/Angevin mantle he supposedly wore, who was born on this day in 1133. It doesn’t matter how much I dwell on King Henry–they want more, and I’m wondering why? Of course the broad strokes and details of his life are dramatic–the rise to power in the wake of Civil War, his conquest and contests with Queen Eleanor, his family fights, his multi-front wars, the murder of Archbishop Becket in Canterbury Cathedral and the penitential consequences–I still think that it’s the popular characterization of Henry rather than the historical one that has captivated my students. Even though they’re far too young to remember Peter O’Toole in Becket (1964) and The Lion in Winter (1968), he is still their Henry.

Curtmantle O'Toole Becket

Curtmantle Lion in Winter

Peter O’ Toole in a publicity photograph for Becket (1964) and a still from The Lion in Winter (1968).

My students are so young they haven’t even seen or heard of O’Toole’s portrayal of Henry II, but when I ask them what they know about him, they describe O’Toole’s portrayal:  now that’s a powerful performance! Once again, we see that history is produced by film (sigh). But I think you have to go further back:  not (of course) to the actual era of Henry II, but to that which produced the characterization that inspired O’Toole’s performance. Henry became Henry because of his hand in martyring Becket, of course, but also because of his women: his wife Eleanor and his mistress Rosamund Clifford, the “fair Rosamund”. Henry’s struggles with the Church in general and Becket in particular appealed to 18th and 19th historians charting secular “liberation”, while their more romantic counterparts in the arts focused on the women: the Pre-Raphaelites in particular seem to have been obsessed with Eleanor and particularly Rosamund, featuring them both individually and together in mythical contest (based on an old fable alleging the Queen tried to poison the mistress). This is all very dramatic stuff, almost equaling the narrative of that dynasty of the (long) moment, the Tudors. I predict a Plantagenet comeback.

King Henry II

Henry II Thornycroft framed

Curtmantle chapbook

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Fair Rosamund 1916

Henry II as characterized by Alfred Crowquill’s Comic History of the Kings and Queens of England (Read & Co, c 1860) and Rosalind Thornycroft in Herbert and Eleanor Farjeon’s Kings and Queens (1932). A chapbook of folk ballads with Henry II and the Fair Rosamund on the title page, c. 1815-30, British Museum; Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamund by Evelyn de Morgan, 1905, De Morgan Centre, London;The Fair Rosamund by John William Waterhouse, 1916, National Museum Wales.


White Feathers

Another snowstorm, another snow day for me, but I am tired of thinking and writing about that particular form of white. Yesterday I was sitting on the couch watching the 1939 film The Four Feathers (what a great movie!) while intermittently selecting images for a PowerPoint presentation on the Hundred Years’ War and quite suddenly there was a paradox about white feathers: in the film, of course, white feathers are a symbol of cowardice, while in the late medieval past, they became associated with heroism after the teenaged son of King Edward III, thereafter known as the Black Prince, led the English troops to a momentous victory against the French at the Battle of Crécy in 1346. His adoption of the three white feathers and the motto “Ich Dien” (“I serve”) established an emblem which is still attached to the Prince of Wales today. So we have a feather quandary! What’s the story?

Black Prince BM

23020 - The Four Feathers

The Black Prince with his feather-plumed helmet in a c. 1670 print published by Robert Walton; British Museum; Harry Faversham (John Clements) receives his three white feathers from his former mates and is about to pluck a fourth from the fan of his fiancée, Ethne Burroughts (June Duprez).

The story that I have pieced together has many gaps in it–and (as is often the case) there is no one big moment when somebody proclaims: white feathers stand for cowardice! Clearly by the turn of the twentieth century the association was generally known in Britain (not elsewhere), as evidenced by the publication of the 1902 A. E.W. Mason novel on which the Four Feathers films are based and P.G. Wodehouse’s boarding school tale The White Feather (1907), as well as Admiral Charles Fitzgerald’s Order of the White Feather, an organization which encouraged young women to present young men out of uniform with white feathers “encouraging” them to enlist during World War One (many of you might remember the Downton Abbey episode from season 2 which featured several feather girls). Apparently the association comes from cock-fighting (game birds with white feathers proving to be not as “brave” as those without) and dates back to the eighteenth century, although the first visual references that I could find date from the Napoleonic wars. Before that, nothing:  just a lot of (presumably heroic or at least virtuous) kings and princes wearing plumage.

Four Feathers 1902

Edward VI by Holbein MET

First edition of Mason’s Four Feathers (1902); a Holbein miniature of young Prince Edward (later King Edward VI) who, though never formally crowned Prince of Wales, is always depicted with the title’s emblem, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Whatever its origins, the white feather/cowardice connection is a strictly British one. Both across the Atlantic Ocean and across the English Channel, no such association developed. French kings and nobles are routinely pictured with white plumage in the early modern era, including the ever-popular, and always-courageous, Henri IV, who compelled his troops to ralliez-vous à mon panache blanc! (follow my white plume!). At the same time that Napoleon is comically portrayed by caricaturist William Elmes “with a white feather in his tail”, Henri IV is ideally depicted with a white feather in his helmet, leading the troops. A real contradiction–and I’m not sure I’m buying the “cowardly cock” theory either. Just look at one of British artist Hilton Lark Pratt’s white-tailed fighting cocks: that’s one tough bird!

Napoleon with White Feathers 1813

Henri IV NYPL

Fighting Cock Hilton Lark Pratt

William Elmes’, “Little Bony sneaking into Paris with a white feather in his tail”, 1813, Napoleonic Period Collection, University of Washington Digital Collections; Henri IV at the Battle of Ivry, 19th century, New York Public Library Digital Collections; Hilton Lark Pratt (1838-1875), “Fighting Cock”, National Trust for Scotland


Taking on the “Hot” Tudors

I am deep into the preparations for my summer graduate institute next week: “The Tudors: History, Media and Mythology”. As I’ve got the history and historiography down, my preparations encompass watching lots of videos! This will be the first course that I’ve taught which extensively uses film and focuses on representations as much as historical realities, but I decided to take it on for several reasons. After this last decade or so of Tudor mania it has become increasingly clear to me that many, if not most, of my students’ historical perspectives were shaped first and foremost by popular culture, so I have to address these interpretations and depictions more directly rather than just leaving them on the side. And there are so many! As Cynthia Herrup notes in her 2009 article in Perspectives on History, the American Historical Association’s magazine, “Students have always come to class with firm ideas drawn from fiction, but now they have multiple visualizations that convince them, on the one hand, that they “know” the history, and on the other hand, that the historically accurate Elizabeth (or Mary, or whoever) is infinitely malleable.” Several of my colleagues have been teaching World War (s) history and film courses for a while, and why not me (and the trendy Tudors?) And lastly, our summer institutes are intense, one-week courses that meet every day, all day long, which is a good format for showing films and clips and having discussions.

So these are the themes that I am pursuing now (subject to change until right up until Monday morning): the absence of Henry VII, the first Tudor: why isn’t he hot? I certainly think he is. The interplay of Tudor projection (through histories, portraits, plays) and modern representations. I like to see the past and present connect (sort of) through projection onto representation. The development of a veritable cults devoted to Mary, Queen of Scots (one of Edison’s earliest films pictures her execution!) and more recently, Anne Boleyn. All sorts of Elizabeth sub-topics: I could have devoted the course entirely to her. And I would also like to demonstrate and discuss the transition from “public television history” to “premium cable history” and back again: after all, The Tudors was produced for Showtime but also broadcast on the BBC (despite David Starkey’s fierce objections).

Tudor Themes & Representations, in images:

Tudors 1

Tudors White Queen

The newly-crowned Henry VII! In stills from the 1972 BBC mini-series The Shadow of the Tower and the last episode of the 2013 BBC/Starz mini-series The White Queen (with his mother Margaret Beaufort, who has somehow made her way to the Battle of Bosworth).

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Robert Shaw in A Man for All Seasons

Tudors Eric Bana

Projection: Petworth House copy of Hans Holbein’s incredibly-influential portrait of Henry VIII (© National Trust images/Derrick E. Witty), creating very big SHOULDERS for Robert Shaw (in A Man for all Seasons, 1966) and Eric Bana (The Other Boleyn Girl, 2008) to fill!

THE TUDORS

Tudors Jane

Tudors Mary

The Beheaded Ladies: Anne Boleyn (as played by Natalie Dormer in The Tudors, 2009), Jane Grey (as depicted by Paul Delaroche, 1834, National Gallery, London) and Mary, Queen of Scots (whose execution was captured by a Dutch artist in 1586, National Gallery of Scotland). Why are we so continually fascinated by these romantic “martyrs”?

elizajesuscollege

Tudors Elizabeth Davis

Eternal Elizabeth: Queen Elizabeth is (relatively) ageless during her own lifetime, but age is definitely an issue in her afterlife! Portrait of the Queen c. 1590 (Jesus College, Oxford University) and Bette Davis in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, 1939.

 


Books for my Break

The break between the fall and spring semesters used to be one of my favorite times of the year; now that I am Chair it won’t be quite as long or restful. When you’re a professor, you think about your courses a bit and write up the syllabi, but this January I’ll be doing transfer evaluations, a bit of scheduling, advising, meetings, correspondence, and planning for the semester to come. Woe is me! Nevertheless, there’s still time for some reading so I have assembled my year’s end list of books. I probably won’t get through all of these but they’ll sit by my bed all year long and put me to sleep (no slight to the book; I fall asleep almost instantaneously and very forcefully). As usual, it’s a list (exclusively) dominated by nonfiction, and the first two BIG books will probably take me through most of the year: the first volume of Victoria Wilson’s Barbara Stanwyck biography (I’m a huge Barbara Stanwyck fan) and the recently-updated Field Guide to American Houses. The latter probably won’t leave my bedside for years to come–in fact, I should probably buy two copies of the latter, one for my bedside and the other for the car.

Barbara-Stanwyck-cover

Books field guide border

Two popular histories/biographies of gilded-age people on either side of the Atlantic (and around the world): I see a lot of parallels between Prince Edward and Prince Charles (though not the playboy characterization).

PicMonkey Collage

Fauna and Flora, past, present, future:

Book Barely Imagined Beings

Books for my break

I’m not really a cook or a foodie, but I do like reading about food: its production, its history, its role as a cultural force. Of all the food books that came out in this past year, these two titles appeal to me the most: one is quite specific and narrative in its approach, the other more general and historical:

PicMonkey Collage

What could possibly be more interesting than the story of punctation!!!??? and epistolary history (Simon Garfield is always on my list)?.

Books punctuation

Books to the Letter border


The Witchfinder on Film

Between weekend errands, I organized a little Vincent Price mini-marathon for myself, culminating in a truly horrible (in more ways than one) movie called The Conqueror Worm (1968), which was produced and released in Britain under the more appropriate title Witchfinder General. The film is very loosely based on Matthew Hopkins, the self-appointed “Witch-finder General” who was responsible for the condemnation and execution of more than 100 people for witchcraft in 1645-46, during one of the more chaotic phases of the English Civil War. Hopkins’ reign of terror in Essex represents the peak of the witchcraft hysteria in England, which was rather less hysterical than many hot spots on the European continent. I suppose that the American title, which alludes to a poem by Edgar Allen Poe, was chosen to take advantage of the popularity of Vincent Price’s Poe films like The Fall of the House of Usher, but the film has nothing at all to do with Poe.

witchfinder_general 1968

witchfinder-general-movie-poster-1968

I have a distant childhood memory of seeing bits and pieces of this film on television, certainly without my parents’ knowledge, as it is intensely and gratuitously violent: Price’s Hopkins (about 30 years older than the actual Hopkins) is lecherous and his fellow “witch-pricker” John Stearne is absolutely sadistic. These men might have possessed these qualities and tendencies, and they did torture their victims, but it’s no matter: the film is all about sensation, not context, and certainly not history. And in that typical 1960s manner, everyone is running around with swinging sixties hair. There are too many historical inaccuracies to list here; perhaps the most egregious is Hopkins’ ability to just string up his victims, with no presentation of evidence or trial. Even in this chaotic era, lawlessness did not reign. When Hopkins engages in “due process”, it’s the notorious, and seldom-implemented, “swimming test” for witchcraft. The posters above represent the general anachronistic and sensationalistic nature of the film quite well, while also conveying the spirit of the “burning times” when in fact all English witches were condemned to death by hanging. Better to refrain from the film altogether and view Hopkins through Malcolm Gaskill’s substantive-yet-accessible Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century Tragedy.

Witch Finder General 1647
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witchfinders
Frontspiece to Matthew Hopkins’ “Discovery of Witches”, published by Richard Royston, 1647, British Museum; Illustration from C.R. Weld’s History of the Royal Society, 1848; Malcolm Gaskill’s Witchfinders. A Seventeenth-century Tragedy (2007).


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