F For Fake

Before I make a start on volume 2 of Simon Callow’s Orson Welles biography, I’m currently reading the 2015 book Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles' War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News, A Brad Schwartz’s excellent and engrossing account of the “Panic Broadcast” and crucially, the ensuing wave of terror that swept the country. Or perhaps not. In his forensic investigation of the event, Schwartz draws on some 2,000 letters sent by listeners to CBS and the Federal Communications Commission in the wake of the broadcast, the majority, complimentary of the dramatization, while others were critical of the misuse of radio to confuse and in some cases frighten listeners. But this relatively small strata of negative opinion was hardly representative of stories of apocalyptic evacuations or people arming themselves to shoot at marauding tripods. Schwartz makes a compelling case that the press had greatly amplified a few stories of genuine panic to kick-start a slow news day, and more insidiously to score points against the newspaper’s most threatening rival, radio. Elsewhere Schwartz delivers an illuminating early history of the medium thru the prism of the War of the Worlds broadcast, taking in the March of Time series, and influential radio productions like the 1926 BBC show Broadcasting the Barricades, and the 1938 show Air Raid which also married artifice with verisimilitude. Recommended reading.

Psychick Ajanta

Another obsessive round of Throbbing Gristle listening, and today it’s the turn of TG’s date at the Ajanta Cinema in Derby in April 1979. Illuminated Records put the entire concert out as Thee Psychick Sacrifice in 1982 and it was a good selection – not only were the group in fine form on the night but the Ajanta date is notable for the first public airing of Convincing People, and there are very early versions of Persuasion and What A Day (which the Industrial tape simply calls Day Song), all months away from being hammered out at the 20 Jazz Funk Greats sessions. If Ajanta looks ahead to the third album there’s some backward glances to D.o.A - Hamburger Lady ("An old favourite we hope you'll enjoy"), unfolds with incredible menace and on this particular night the sluggish air-raid siren sounds remarkably like Thomas Bangalter’s music for Irréversible. Elsewhere the squally noise of D.o.A.’s title track is heard spliced with what sounds like one of Chris Carter’s electro-pop confections, and the voice of the male prostitute on Valley of the Shadow of Death makes an appearance for the intro to What A Day. Flyers for the Ajanta show promised a screening of After Cease To Exist but the plan was nixed when the group discovered the theatre’s projector was being repaired. Incidentally, the Ajanta show features a nice little TG in-joke with the inclusion of some sampled dialogue belonging to pornographer John Lindsey, who directed Cosey Fanni Tutti in the 1976 hardcore short Sex Angle.

The Lady in the Lake

Brace yourself for a sock on the jaw – below, actor Dick Simmons delivers a sucker punch in the 1947 film The Lady in the Lake... I'm currently reading Simon Callow's Road to Xanadu and matters have turned to Orson Welles' proposed film adaptation of Heart of Darkness which was to be filmed from the viewpoint of the main character Charles Marlow. Fascinating to ponder what Welles might have conjured up and with that in mind I dug out my copy of Robert Montgomery’s Lady in the Lake, an adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel seen thru the eyes of another Marlow, private eye Philip, on the trail of a missing dame. Chandler called the film "a cheap Hollywood trick" and I can appreciate his misgivings, the plot turns are ultimately undone by the distractions of the subjective camera - cigarette smoke wafts out from the bottom of the frame, Audrey Totter moves in unnervingly close for a smooch and everyone speaks directly to the screen (to rather eerie effect). Evidently MGM were not about to get bogged down by the enormous technical complexities that defeated Heart of Darkness, and the Lady in the Lake experiment feels awfully contained - almost completely studio-bound, and forgoing long takes for shorter cuts joined by whip pans, the subterfuge is however unconvincing. One unexpected point of interest for me was the striking choral score by Maurice Goldman which dare I say has a touch of Lux Aeterna about it, several years before Ligeti conceived the piece. The Warners DVD comes with a commentary track which I must delve into to hear more about this interesting curio.

Love is a battlefield

Arthur Hill and Uta Hagen in the original 1962 production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? at the Billy Rose Theatre... The Gate Theatre in Dublin is currently staging a revival of Edward Albee’s masterpiece and with that in mind I re-read my copy of the play last night. No substitution of course for seeing the play in a theatre but Albee’s text remains as funny, provocative and disturbing as ever. I’ve read the play perhaps three times over the years (more times than I’ve seen the Mike Nichols film) and the final act revelation of the fantasy that George and Martha have constructed to prop up their burnt out relationship still feels unnerving with every read. Throughout the play I kept on thinking of Fassbinder's quote about marriage being the most insidious trap mankind has ever devised for itself, and while I don't agree in general, it certainly suits these poor fools. One powerful and unexpected side effect of reading the play last night was that I found myself being a little bit catty towards my wife afterwards, and I wonder did Albee delight in sending audiences home with all those long unspoken frustrations, disappointments and petty betrayals bubbling to the surface.

Sans Sous-titres

I’ve been delving into Potemkine’s epic Eric Rohmer boxset over the weekend, and despite knowing I was forfeiting extras for luminous HD transfers, I can’t help but feel annoyed at the wealth of intriguing French-only supplements on offer. The La Boulangère de Monceau disc has two particularly valuable short films – the charming 11min Présentation ou Charlotte et son Steak, starring a rather dashing Jean-Luc Godard, and more substantially, the 22min Edgar Allen Poe adaptation Berenice which was photographed by Jacques Rivette and features a memorably intense performance by Rohmer himself as a man with a peculiar obsession that leads to a genuinely disturbing denouement. The film is so visually expressive (and inventive) one can appreciate the film without a lick of French but the presence of substantial unsubbed narration is frustrating ! Fortunately, Tim Lucas has penned a helpful synopsis of the film on his blog. The two teabags that come with the set are probably the most useful extras, but so far I’ve resisted the urge to indulge…

Sayōnara Tomita

The killing fields of 2016 claims another much loved artist… Isao Tomita, the Japanese composer died on May 5th and this morning I’ve been listening to Tomita’s 1974 album Snowflakes Are Dancing. I can’t profess to being a huge fan, Tomita’s music sounded a little too close to muzak for my tastes (it would have sounded very appropriate coming from the PA of the futuristic subterranean city in THX-1138) but nevertheless I’m very fond of the Debussy album. For a taster, check out the beautiful rendition of Clair de Lune. My copy of Snowflakes Are Dancing is an original RCA Red Seal pressing, not in the least rare or valuable but I prize it for David Hecht’s stunning artwork reworking Marcel Baschet's famous Debussy portrait for the 20th century, and the great shot of Tomita at his moog on the flipside. It’s maddening that subsequent CD issues have tampered with the artwork either by obscuring it within an ugly frame or reducing it to small quadrant to make room for a silly High Fidelity blurb.

I mentioned THX-1138 a moment ago and Tomita connects with another favoutrite film of mine, Apocalypse Now. Francis Ford Coppola approached Tomita to synthesize his father Carmine’s score, but according to Tomita, speaking at his Red Bull Music Academy lecture in 2014, RCA would not let him record for Warners who put out the soundtrack album. Interestingly, on the Workprint version of the film, during a montage of helicopter shots that precedes the air strike on the village, the temp music sounds very much like a Tomita piece. Still, what’s heard in Apocalypse Now is a very close approximation of the Tomita sound - the cue heard as Willard reads Kurtz's letter (just before the sampan massacre) sounds remarkably like Tomita's version of Mars, The Bringer of War. I like to think that some of his DNA is in the film...

Hellbound details

A sequel of sorts to my earlier post... Chris Herzog's warm appraisal of Arrow's Hellraiser boxset in the latest issue of Video Watchdog has me regretting my decision to make-do with my old Anchor Bay set. Chris is especially complimentary about the transfers, particularly Hellbound which I'm most keen to see in HD. I've always been fond of spotting cultural references tucked away in the corners of the frame, say a book or a record casually placed within the camera's field of vision by a director or set designer. Hellbound includes a few sequences set inside Dr. Channard's study which is littered with all sorts of esoteric lore - spectral photographs, prints of pentagrams and sigils, Enochian symbols and so on. The limitations of DVD doesn't permit much scrutiny, but one can easily make out the famous 1912 photo of Aleister Crowley in his magician’s robes hanging on the wall, or when the camera fleetingly gazes upon Channard's preserved specimens, a copy of David Barash's renowned book The Whisperings Within: Evolution and the Origin of Human Nature sits nearby. In a later scene when Kirsty grabs the photograph of Captain Elliot Spencer, one can briefly glimpse a book entitled The Internal Inferno, which I believe is a mock-up, but nevertheless a nice little addition by the set designer Michael Buchanan that 99% of the audience will pay no attention to. Perhaps, the increased clarity Hellbound Blu will reveal more interesting curios...

A Symphony of Symbols

Following on from my screening of Herzog’s Nosferatu at the weekend, I watched Murnau’s film yesterday evening - the chance to view both films in close succession seemed too good to pass up. Watching the film again I was particularly mindful of producer Albin Grau’s contributions within the film – the set design and most significantly, Count Orlok's grotesque appearance. Grau’s occult preoccupations finds expression in the document the real estate agent is seen reading early on in the film – a coded message from Orlok which looks more like a page from a grimoire. Some additional cabalistic symbols can be spotted in the film, in the book Hutter is given about vampires, but Grau’s biggest graphical contributions to the film are the several posters he designed to promote the film. Murnau’s film is often erroneously referred to an expressionist film, an impression which may be due to Grau’s memorable promotional artwork which depicts the Count (and the town of Wisborg) in all sorts of strange and unlikely proportions.

Seeing both films again, Herzog’s film is more faithful to Murnau’s than I previously gave it credit for, the remake (which seems like an irreverent term for it), re-stages many shots, both significant (the doomed ship drifting into port) and incidental (the morbid looking cuckoo clock), although two of my favourite moments from the Murnau, the fast-motion arrival of Orlok’s coach and the frenzied stacking of the coffins on the cart, were not, understandably so, replicated by Herzog. On that point I think the Murnau just inches ahead of the Herzog, the phantasmagoria of Silent Cinema seems best suited to this particular story. Brad Stevens on the commentary track found on the MOC edition, suggests that Orlok himself is exerting a strange control over the film with regard to these starling moments of surrealism, a notion I find most agreeable.

The Phantom of the Night

This weekend I've been poring over 4 newly arrived issues of Video Watchdog and I suspect the contents of these issues will strongly influence my viewing choices over the next few weeks. Tim Lucas' illuminating feature on Herzog's Nosferatu (and its various permutations) in #182 inspired me to finally watch my copy of the BFI Blu-Ray. On my last pass of the film, courtesy of Anchor Bay's 2000 DVD I noted a tired looking transfer so the Blu-Ray is a tremendous sight for sore eyes. The shift to HD always wrings out details I might have previously missed, and the BFI disc is particularly strong on skin tones and textures - those extraordinary shots of the slack-jawed mummies in the opening sequence, and Kinski and Isabelle Adjani's makeup, Adjani's especially in the film's climax where she lies on her death bed like a beautiful but lifeless porcelain doll. Seeing the film again, after an absence of a few years, I must conclude that something has gone badly wrong with the film's ending - the slain vampire crumpled up in the corner of the bedroom seems discourteous somehow, and worse still Bruno Ganz's Harker brandishing fangs and setting off (in daylight!) presumably to spread the vampire plague feels like cheap conclusion to an otherwise fine film.

Son of Frankenstein

I treated myself to a rare midnight movie this weekend and what was originally intended to be Dracula's Daughter (to belatedly mark Bram Stoker's anniversary on April 20th) was swapped at the 11th hour for another waif and stray, Son of Frankenstein. This was my first screening of Rowland Lee's film and I was pleasantly surprised by this very worthy followup to the James Whale originals. It was Karloff's last outing as the Monster, and hardly surprising, Wyllis Cooper's screenplay all but reduces him to a mindless brute and it must have been disappointing for the actor to watch from the wings as Basil Rathbone winds up to near hysteric levels and Bela Lugosi steals the entire show as Ygor. Still Cooper's screenplay did raise a smile early on in the film when Rathbone's eponymous heir addresses that age-old misconception "Why, nine out of ten people call that misshapen creature of my father's experiments... Frankenstein"

Boris Karloff checks out the latest newfangled gadget of 1939, the slimline widescreen television

Meanwhile I'm currently re-visiting Simon Callow's Orson Welles biography The Road to Xanadu (in preparation for reading Vol 3) and I was struck by something I read in the passage that describes Bright Lucifer, a play Welles initially wrote in 1932 and returned to throughout the decade before ultimately shelving it with the arrival of War of the Worlds and Citizen Kane. What I found particularly interesting about this Gothic melodrama is that one of the characters is described in Callow's words as a "star of Horror movies". Callow opines that Welles was drawing his characters from life and I wonder did Welles have a particular actor in mind ? The New Yorker, writing about the play in 1938 considered Boris Karloff as Welles' inspiration, while in 2014, Mike Teal over at Wellesnet felt the character was "clearly modeled on John Barrymore". Welles' script is currently unavailable, so it's hard to say either way, but it's interesting to consider that Welles' champion in later life, Peter Bogdanovich also devised a character who was a Horror movie star (albeit one in descent) for his debut feature Targets. Bogdanovich first met Welles in 1968 so it's extremely unlikely he lifted the idea from Welles' unproduced, and as far as I know, unpublished play, so I would consider this a rather delightful coincidence.

TG on Celluloid

Another French connection, this time an unsavory one… pictured below, my copy of Throbbing Gristle’s D.o.A album on the French Celluloid label. Celluloid earned the wrath of Industrial Records when the label put out unauthorized copies of the Second Annual Report and D.o.A. I’m unaware of the exact circumstances of the fallout – a quick flick through Simon Ford’s book doesn’t offer any explanation, but TG (or perhaps Genesis P-Orridge) outlined their position in no uncertain terms in the 1982 RE/Search book William S. Burroughs/Brion Gysin/Throbbing Gristle. I picked up my copy of the Celluloid D.o.A in the early 90’s, a few years before I discovered it was a counterfeit but I’ve never felt inclined to “Destroy all copies” as the RE/Search book advises. Interestingly, Celluloid also put out Industrial’s Thomas Leer & Robert Rental album The Bridge in 1979 (to little controversy it seems), and what’s more, Celluloid’s website, which includes the label’s complete discography omits the two TG albums, the crime airbrushed from history so to speak…

J’adore Sordide Sentimental !

Office chit-chat about winning the lottery always sends me cruising eBay for things I could never afford, and this morning, I’m looking at some highly coveted singles released by the Sordide Sentimental label, typically a numbered, limited edition 7” single packaged in an A4-sized sleeve containing various inserts and idiosyncratic French/English liner notes. Three releases in particular are holy grail objects for me: Throbbing Gristle’s We Hate You (Little Girls) / Five Knuckle Shuffle, Joy Division’s Licht Und Blindheit and Tuxedomoon’s Une Nuit Au Fond De La Frayere / Egypt, the latter two in particular for the great artwork by French fantasist Jean-François Jamoul. The 1980-issued Licht Und Blindheit single (which contains Atmosphere/Dead Souls) is interesting to muse on, Jamoul’s illustration of a figure descending into a netherworld seems to echo Anton Corbijn's famous 1979 photograph of Joy Division at the staircase of Lancaster Gate tube station. More significant still is the beautiful painting inside the Licht Und Blindheit package, depicting a mysterious hooded figure - a predominant feature of Corbijn's 1988 video for Atmosphere... As for those lottery winnings, a German seller is selling what looks like an excellent edition for a cool €1,000 which is a good price – I’ve seen lesser quality editions on sale for almost double that price (any copy going for less will surely be a counterfeit).

More stunning artwork courtesy of Jean-Louis Dupré (Throbbing Gristle) and Jean-François Jamoul (Tuxedomoon). No obvious links emerge between TG and Tuxedomoon but interestingly the collage inside the Tuxedomoon package, designed by Sordide Sentimental co-founder Yves Von Bontee recalls similar work by Genesis P-Orridge, while the photo of indeterminate origin could pass for a COUM action. The TG single is the more collectible of the two and contains impenetrable Jean-Pierre Turmel liner notes and a collage that would be best described as NSFW. Incidentally Jean-Louis Dupré is the brother of Lawrence Dupré who designed TG’s camouflage uniforms.

Throbbing Gristle Heaven

Pictured below, Cosey Fanni Tutti and Genesis P-Orridge at Heaven, December 23rd 1980. Photo courtesy of Akiko Hada... My thanks to the TG FB group for sharing a link to artist and videographer Akiko Hada’s website showcasing 20 years of music photography – well worth a visit. And with that in mind I’m listening to the Heaven show this afternoon, one of the finest of the late-era concerts. Rough Trade issued the show on cassette as Beyond Jazz Funk, and the title is not as wry as one might expect, with Cosey and her trumpet trying to get away with as much jazz as possible on this particular night. But mostly, the Heaven show is TG at its most rhythmical, and abrasive - perhaps as a consequence of the lo-fi recording which lends Chris Carter’s beats a real crunch. Dossier put the show out on CD in 1993 with sleeve notes by Gen, stating that “…this is essentially the last, unified performance by TG. Internal Tensions and transitions took an irreparable toll shortly hereafter”.

As 1980 rolled over to 1981, the group’s days were numbered, the mission close to termination, and performances were increasingly patchy. The Lyceum show in February sounds particularly listless, and while Heaven lacks the white heat improvisation of earlier TG concerts (the set is similar to San Francisco 6 months later), it makes up for it with sheer energy, the psychic youth responding in kind, with enthusiastic cheers, whistles and calls for the hits – one audience members requests Hamburger Lady throughout, but to no avail. Derek Jarman filmed a portion of the concert for his abstract Super8 short T.G.: Psychic Rally in Heaven (with some cuts from the Second Annual Report for the soundtrack). Incidentally, a few lines of dialogue from Alan Clarke’s theatrical version of Scum can be heard at one point, I’m guessing it was a favourite of Sleazy’s…

Voodoo Macbeth

I’m on a Shakespeare binge at the moment with all the programmes and events to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death tomorrow. I rounded off some bedtime reading last night with the passage from Simon Callow’s Road to Xanadu covering Orson Welles’ 1936 production of Macbeth for the Federal Theater Project. The so-called "Voodoo Macbeth" has always held a special fascination for me, the production’s all-black cast and its transposition to Haiti mark this out as one of the more unique adaptations of The Scottish Play. 4mins worth of footage from the production’s climactic scene is available but it doesn’t quite do justice to Callow’s vivid and exciting account – the riot of colorful costumes, the striking jungle castle set, the innovative, eerie lighting, and the cacophonous voodoo drumming.

Macbeth (right stage) meets with the Three Witches (centre stage)

Callow indulges in some terrific anecdotes too, my favourite, Welles just 21 years old, enjoying some bacchanal nights in Harlem’s bars and fleshpots with his Macbeth, Jack Carter, a man with Underworld connections, memorably described by John Houseman as “the most furious man I ever knew”. Macbeth productions are steeped in bad luck but Houseman remembers the production as one of the few occasions where Welles didn’t break a leg or suffer a similar calamity, but one dismissive critic evidently felt the touch of evil – when his review appeared, one of the cast members, said to be a genuine witch doctor, placed a hex on the critic who took ill the following day and was dead by the end of that week... Wikipedia has an excellent overview on the production here

Mellow Earth

Pictured below, a memorable shot from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre hitched to the sleeve of Earth's debut long-player... I'm currently listening to Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version and looking at the CD I wonder did Dylan Carlson have that memorable shot from Tobe Hooper's film in mind when selecting that image. I didn't hear Earth 2 when it first came out in 1993 but I remember well the puzzled reaction to the album, such was its radical minimalist take on Metal, not to mention the fact that Earth emerged from Seattle at the height of grunge. Sub Pop evidently knew it, and in what looks like a desperate sales pitch, the CD's rear sleeve has a handful of gushing blurbs from listeners tuning-in and turning-on to Earth's soporific sound - "Forget drugs and alcohol, I am now very, very mellow". Gazing at these giant blue skies I am too.