"Art Now and Then" does not mean art occasionally. It means art NOW as opposed to art THEN. It means art in 2020 as compared to art many years ago...sometimes many, many, MANY years ago. It is an attempt to make that art relevant now, letting artists back then speak to us now in the hope that we may better understand them, and in so doing, better understand ourselves and the art produced today.
Most of us have, no doubt, heard of H.G. Wells; but few of us know about the man whom he credited with making his most famous book famous--his illustrator Henrique Alvim Correa.
There are many different factors involved as to whether an artist becomes historically memorable. Quite apart from the element of technical skills, there is the vision needed to take an object, scenario, or theme and give in life on paper or in some sculptural medium. These two skills we often lump together. We call it "talent." In the world of art, talent is a "given." Without it in sufficient quality, the artist will go nowhere. All else involves persistence, daring, drive, good health, intelligence, wise judgement, and sometimes, just plain dumb luck. These latter items, of course, are not limited just to art, but are relevant to many other pursuits. Taken alone though, none of them items will lead and artist to success. The life of the Brazilian artist, Henrique Alvim Corrêa is a near-perfect study as to the difficulties artists face in flirting with art history.
The man of the three-legged war machine.
In 1876, Alvim Corrêa was born into a wealthy Rio de Janeiro family. His father was a prominent lawyer who died when his son was seven years old. The boy's mother remarried a wealthy banker in 1888, who then moved the family to Lisbon in 1892. Alvim Corrêa was 16 years old at the time. A year later they settling permanently in Paris. When Alvim Corrêa turned eighteen, he began his formal instruction in art under the military painter Édouard Detaille. Military themes had been extremely popular in French art since the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871, which France lost). Corrêa followed in his instructor's footsteps, exhibiting well-received military paintings in the Paris Salons of 1896 and 1897.
Henrique Alvim Corrêa, based on H. G. Wells' 1906 The War of the Worlds
Then, in 1898, Alvim Corrêa suddenly quit his studies and, against the wishes of his family, married 17-year-old Blanche Fernande Barbant, daughter of the engraver Charles Barbant, who was himself a successful illustrator of books by Jules Verne, among other authors. The newlyweds moved to Brussels where their first child was born later that year. Cut off from his family’s financial support and connections in the art world, Alvim Corrêa had to scrape together whatever commercial work—advertisements (even house painting)—he could find to make do. By 1900 his finances were stable enough that he was able to move his family to Boitsfort (a suburb of Brussels) where he opened a studio.
The title page from the deluxe edition of H.G. Well's novel, War of the Worlds, illustrated by Henrique Alvim Corrêa.
Corrêa's Martian can of worms.
Although still virtually unknown as an artist, Corrêa hustled persistently to exhibit his work. He developed a style of strong contrasts and dynamic movement in both drawing and paint-ing, trying his hand at surreal dream-scapes, caricatures, action figures such as military men or working wo-men. Corrêa's landscapes often fea-tured real and fictional themes of eroticism and violence individually and in combination. Today we would likely categorize him as a fantasy artist. In 1903 he read H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds whereupon he decided to draw his vision of Wells’ Martians, which fit quite well with the recurring themes in his private work. Then, entirely unsolicited, Alvim Corrêa took his handful of drawings to London where he showed them to Mr. Wells. The two were complete strangers, yet the author was so impressed with Corrêa's artwork that he invited him to illustrate the upcoming special edition of The War of Worlds by Belgian publisher L. Vandamme.
Notice the resemblance of Corrêa's three-legged war machine to the AT-AT war machines in STAR WARS: The Empire Strikes Back.
Alvim Corrêa returned to Boitsfort where he spent two full years working on the illustrations. At the same time, he organized a solo exhibition of his own work which opened in 1905 and garnered him significant recognition. Corrêa went back to London that year to show Wells the finished group of 32 drawings. Wells loved them and in 1906, they were published in the large format, illustrated French edition of The War of the Worlds. Each of the 500 copies of the special edition was numbered and signed by Henrique Alvim Corrêa. Wells later said of the illustrations: “Alvim Corrêa did more for my work with his brush than I with my pen.”
Might we call this Wells' World War Zero?
With an accolade such as that from one of the most popular authors of the era, Corrêa might well have been on his way to fame and fortune as a science-fiction illustrator. Wells alone could have kept him busy, having written eight books. Unfortunately Corrêa, spent much of 1905 in Switzerland where he had surgery in an attempt to stop the tuberculosis torturing his lungs and intestines. The good news was that he recovered from the surgery. The bad news was, he still had TB. The powerful drive that made him a successful illustrator could not overcome tuberculosis. He was forced to slow down his work schedule considerably, yet even at that, Alvim Corrêa continued to produce unique art, like Visions Erotiques, a collection of 20 erotic drawings entwining sex and death that he published under the pseudonym Henri Lemort (Henry the dead) in 1908. In 1910 he put together another exhibition of his work, this time alongside that of other artists.
For those who have read the book, can you follow the storyline from Corrêa's illustrations?
Alvim Corrêa worked almost to the day he died in 1910 at the age of thirty-four. Yet, outside of a small circle of rare book collectors and Wells connoisseurs, Corrêa remained virtually unknown, even in his own country. In the early 1970s Brazilian art historians brought him back into the limelight as a native son of great talent and innovation. Over the following decades his work, especially the Wells drawings, went on display at museums all over Brazil and elsewhere. His original drawings for The War of the Worlds remained in his family until 1990 when 31 of the original 32 were sold to a private collector, along with a poster announcing the special edition (top) and a charming note Wells wrote to Alvim Corrêa in November of 1903 in which he told Corrêa he was “very glad indeed you like my Moon Men.”
Michael Condron's sculpture of a Wellsian Tripod, in Woking, Surrey.
The Brazilian public did not know Corrêa's work until the mid-1960s for several reasons. First, because his career was limited to Europe, and the fact that he died very young. Then, during the German invasion of Brussels in 1914, his studio was looted and his work destroyed. Also, to make matters worse, in 1942, a German ship transporting his original graphic works and the brass printing plates to Brazil was sunk. This explains the late rediscovery of his works. Although still little known, Corrêa's illustrations for Wells' classic have been influential as the book has been republished with illustrations by other artist who have been strongly influenced by him. Even TV and motion picture versions of Wells' The War of the Worlds owe much to Corrêa original vision.
Just for fun, click on the arrow (above) and listen in on the most famous adaption of H.G. Wells sci-fi classic, the 1939 radio broadcast of Orson Welles' (no relation to H.G.) Mercury Theater that, despite warnings, seemed so real as to cause a major panic on the U.S. east coast--THE MARTIANS ARE COMING! THE MARTIANS ARE COMING!
The term "genius" may be one of the most overused words in the English language, especially in the arts, especially in this century. Picasso had it. So, of course, did Einstein. In literature there was Hemingway, possibly Eugene O'Neill. In music--the Gershwins, Irving Berlin. In poetry--Frost and Sandburg. I know I'm leaving out dozens of others, but it's hard to know where to draw the line. Where does genius stop being genius and become merely outstanding? Overused, yes, but what else can you call a young boy who is memorizing Shakespeare by the age of six, studying art, music, writing poetry, and publishing cartoons by the age of ten; writing plays, producing them, and acting in them by the age of fifteen; and is doing Broadway by the age of eighteen? Want more? By the age of 25 he was writing, producing, and starring in his first Hollywood production, a film that today is ranked by film critics as among the best two or three films ever made. To put it in perspective, if Michelangelo had been such a genius, he would have finished the Sistine ceiling in his mid-twenties (instead of 35).
Panic radio, H.G. Wells meets Orson Welles
George Orson Welles was bedecked with the "genius" label almost from birth. Underneath, in parentheses could also have been the French "L'enfant Terrible." Born in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 1915, the son of a part time alcoholic inventor and a talented pianist, who died when he was six (his father died when Orson was fifteen), Welles had a troubled, turbulent childhood until the age of eleven when he was enrolled in the highly progressive Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Illinois. There, given practically the run of the drama department, he wrote, directed, produced, and acted in everything from nativities (he played the Virgin Mary) to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in which he played both Antony and Cassius so effectively the production was disqualified from a drama competition for cheating (the use of ringers).
Run for your lives, the Martians have landed!
His first professional roles came at the age of sixteen when, on a vacation in Ireland to paint, American actress, Catherine Cornell, tagged him for her touring company of Romeo and Juliet. He played Mercutio, and later, on Broadway, playing both Chorus and Tybalt. His deep, resonate voice won him roles both on stage and in radio during the thirties, most notably in the famous The Shadow. He was so busy he was often unceremoniously dumped into an ambulance to get him from one job to another on time. Working for the Federal Theater Projects he learned the arts and crafts of directing, staging such innovations as the first all-Negro production of Macbeth in a Haitian setting. In 1937, he founded his Mercury Theater Players and opened with a modern-dress version of Julius Caesar which drew bold comparisons to Fascist Italy of the time. But it was his 1938 Halloween radio production, War of the Worlds (above, left), about a Martian invasion of New Jersey which brought his name to national prominence; and despite disclaimers at the beginning, was so realistic it caused a national panic (above).
Three Oscar nominations, one win.
Three years later, in 1941, Orson Welles was in Hollywood with carte-blanche to do just about anything he wanted with the film medium. What he did was Citizen Kane (right), a thinly disguised film biography of William Randolph Hearst. So devastating was his portrayal of Kane, the script which he co-wrote with Herman Mankiewicz, and the cutting-edge film techniques he employed as the film's director, he was nominated in three categories for an Academy Award. He and Mankiewicz won for their script. Enormous pressures were put on RKO not to even release the film (principally by the Hearst media monolith); and while it was a critical success, it was never a box-office hit.
No other single individual ever mastered virtually all aspects of the dramatic arts.
Welles went on to direct and perform in over forty productions during the next twenty years, among them such classics as The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Jane Eyre (1942), The Third Man (1949), Othello (1952, left), Touch of Evil (1957), and Chimes at Midnight/Falstaff (1966). Add to that work as an actor or narrator in another 42 films, everything from Canterbury Tales to Bugs Bunny Cartoons. Awards flooded his last years--an honorary Oscar in 1970, a Life Achievement Award in 1975 from the American Film Institute, the French Legion of Honor in 1982, and The Directors Guild's D. W. Griffith Award in 1984. Yet, ironically, he may be best remembered for his "We will sell no wine before its time" TV commercial for Paul Masson wines, or for his 300-pound bulk. Welles died of a heart attack in 1985. Friends complained in his later years, that those in Hollywood most willing to applaud his accomplishments were the same ones who wouldn't give him a job. But perhaps his greatest contribution to the arts came from the fact that his work probably inspired more filmmakers than that of anyone since D. W. Griffith. And not only that, he was also known to be quite a good painter.
Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane utters my favorite line from the movie: You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars *next* year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in...60 years.
As a long-time movie buff who now seldom watches movies, I rely on various movie lists in deciding which films to write about. It might be overstating the case to say there are as many lists as there are movies and writers, like myself, who think they know something about the arts and crafts of film making, but not by much. I've never counted, but I think I'd be safe in saying there are several dozens of such lists, perhaps numbering more than a hundred (which is, in fact, several dozen). I've always had a preference for "top ten" lists but some run the number up to one-hundred, even as high as a thousand, at which point the diverge to such a degree as to be meaningless. Some break their lists down by genre, which is interesting, but dilutes the importance of the lists themselves. IMDb (Internet Movie Database) has a good list, as does the AFI (American Film Institute), AMC (American Movie Channel), Wikipedia, The New York Times, Time magazine, and, who knows, maybe even Times Square. I also have a top ten list: Jim Lane's Top Ten American Movie List.
May 1, 1941, RKO Palace, New York
Insofar as the all-time top ten movies, there is a fairly consistent group of great pictures which are universally admired. And, though the order may vary somewhat, the titles do not. For instance, I placed Citizen Kane at number nine on my list. AFI has it at number one (this year). Such discrepancies can be accounted for by the fact that such lists are not static (most of the best ones are revised yearly) and the fact that some lists (like mine) consist solely of American movies while others are international in scope. Of all the top movie list films, Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (top and above, left) is likely the one film on virtually all such lists, and usually in the top five. In perusing the plethora of motion picture list postings, it occurred to me that, though I'd written on Orson Wells, I'd never written about his one greatest film, except for one brief paragraph devoted to it in my broad discourse on his life in general.
Breakfast at the Kane's, a montage sequence in which Welles chronicles the deterioration of the Kane marriage over a period of years. It features one of the low camera angle shots for which the film is famous.
The first Mrs. Kane, Ruth Warrick in her movie debut.
Citizen Kane has always been something of an enigma. Though a perennial list-topper, my guess is that fewer people have actually seen this movie than any other film on the many top-ten lists. There are several reasons for that. First of all, it's an old film (1941), not ancient, but not one falling within the lifespan of most of the people alive today (including my own). Second, it's in black and white, which further dates it as ancient in most people's minds. Third, though Orson Welles is not exactly unknown, even today, very few people have ever actually seen him, or his work, in any context, even his 1970s Paul Masson wine commercials ("We will sell no wine before it's time."). Finally, Citizen Kane is not an easy film to watch, to enjoy, to understand, or appreciate. Those who do appreciate it (or claim to) very often do so because film critics and connoisseurs insist they should appreciate it. After all, it's near the top of virtually everyone's top ten move list, right?
Welles' low-level camera shots in some cases, required that studio floorboards had to be removed to accomodate the camera operator.
The second Mrs. Kane, Susan Alexander, played by Dorothy Comingore
In teaching art in the public schools, I used to include at every level a unit on "Movies as an Art Form." I taught Citizen Kane to my third-year high school students. Though I tried, it was not the most popular film in the curriculum (I've also taught it at the college level). One might think a film about the mass media, the super rich, and political intrigue would be as relevant today as in 1941. Wrong. All three of these primary elements in the story have changed so much since that era as to be barely recognizable to viewers today. In general, costume dramas like War and Peace, Gone With the Wind, and Ben-Hur tend to age pretty well. The problem with Citizen Kane is that the costumes are too familiar while the movie's themes are not. Of course we have today wealthy media moguls like Kane (the Donald comes to mind) who dabble in politics, but they tend to be fodder for late night comedians rather than serious candidates. We also have politics stirred into the entertainment industry (and vice-versa), but that tends to be taken with a "so what" attitude by those who largely consider them one and the same anyway. Add to that the fact that few people today have ever even heard of William Randolph Hearst (upon whom Kane is closely based). And then there's "Rosebud." Even people who have seen the film sometimes come away disappointed, having missed the few brief seconds near the end which ties together the whole complex recounting of the millionaire title character's long, desperate search for happiness.
As iconic as it is symbolic, Charles Foster Kane (Welles) astride his publishing empire.
All this is not to in any way lessen the importance of Welles, the man, or Welles the actor, or Welles the highly creative independent filmmaker. The man excelled in all these areas, and never more so than in Citizen Kane. The film is especially difficult because it begins at the end. Few filmmakers, then or now, would have the guts to kill off the title character within the first few minutes of their movie. Welles did so, thus turning the entire film into a flashback. Flashbacks are a tricky, even "dangerous," storytelling device for any director. Welles wrote them book on flashbacks. His innovative camera angles, his lighting, his screenplay, his intermixing of newsreel footage and newspaper headlines are iconic models taught in every film schools today. Welles was daring, co-writing (with Herman Mankiewicz), directing, producing, and starring along with a hand-picked cast of then unknown acting talent, in a film no studio would touch (RKO wouldn't have touched it if they'd realized at the time what Welles was up to). His thinly disguised delving into the private life of public figures, and the gradual degeneration of an idealist into an eccentric, power-hungry recluse all serve to elevate Welles and his much appreciated, but unbeloved masterpiece (as compared to Casablanca, for instance) to its place as the intellectual favorite near the top of virtually all movie lists. Yet, the film's all-time domestic gross clocks in at little more an one-and-a-half million dollars.
Though long associated with Christmas, the snow globe is really as much or more an emblem of winter.
It's mid-February and so far, we've had a relatively mild winter--cold, but no blizzards or major accumulations of snow--while some areas have had more than their fill of the white stuff already. We do get a quickly-melting inch or so from time to time, what my wife calls "decorative" snowfalls, but seldom anything worth shoveling. (Hurray for global warming!) Regardless of the depth, snow makes an otherwise brown, gray, dreary landscape into an exquisitely beautiful winter wonderland. About a 130 years ago a company in Paris came out with a much smaller, more manageable "decorative snowfall" in the form of a glass orb filled with water and tiny white flakes featuring a miniature figure of a man holding an umbrella (in a snowstorm?). They promoted and sold them at the Paris World Exhibition in 1887.
A self-portrait by the inventor? Probably not.
Be that as it may, the real "inventor" of the snow globe was an Austrian man named Erwin Perzy, though he apparently did so accidentally. In 1900, while living outside Vienna, where he ran a medical instrument supply business, Perzy was asked by a local surgeon to improve upon Thomas Edison’s then-new lightbulb, which the surgeon want-ed made brighter for his operating room. Drawing upon a method used by shoe-makers to make quasi-“spotlights,” Perzy placed a water-filled glass globe in front of a candle, which increased the light’s magni-fication. Then he sprinkled tiny bits of re-flective glitter into the globe to help brighten it. But the glitter sank too quickly, so Perzy tried semolina flakes (commonly found in baby food) instead. They didn’t quite work, either, but the appearance of the small, white particles drifting around the globe reminded Perzy of snowfall. Wasting no time, he quickly filed the first official patent for a snow globe, or Schneekugel (in German). By 1905, he was churning out handmade snow globes by the dozens. Often they featured small church figurines made from pewter—through his company, Firm Perzy. They became so popular among well-to-do Austrians that in 1908, Perzy was officially honored for his treasured item by Emperor Franz Joseph I.
Typical of the content, style, and decoration of late-19th-Century snow globes. Notice, it makes no reference whatsoever to either Christmas or winter.
The snow globe appeared at a time when upper-middle-class families, newly wealthy from the Industrial Revolution, began collecting intricate, artistic objects and displaying them in their homes. Though it’s unclear exactly how much these early globes cost, they were expensive due to the amount of time necessary to paint, mold, and assemble them. After World War I concluded in 1918, a boost in tourism led to greater demand for eye-catching souvenirs—especially snow globes. Gradually, news of the whimsical trinket reached America. In 1927, a Pittsburgh man named Joseph Garaja applied for the first snow globe patent in the U.S. and with it, he introduced a radical new means of production: underwater assembly. This ensured that each globe would be fully filled with liquid and saved a significant amount of time and money—transforming the snow globe from an expensive indulgence into the affordable commodity we know today. Within a few years, snow globes were being sold for as little as $1 (around $19 today).
Orson Wells/Citizen Kane's fragile, if somewhat melodramatic, snow globe.
Hollywood discovered the snow globe around 1940. The 1940 Oscar-nominated drama Kitty Foyle, used one as a plot device to trigger flashback scenes. And in 1941, the Orson Welles epic film, Citizen Kane, also featured a snow globe, (made by none other than Erwin Perzy) in its now-legendary opening sequence, wherein Charles Kane dies while holding a glass sphere containing a wintery miniature log cabin, which falls and shatters on the ground. Sales of snow globes increased 200-percent. By the 1950s, snow globes had become an American phenomenon employed for advertising, having been used to promote civilian morale during World War II featuring tiny soldiers. The introduction of plastics and injection-molding further improved the snow globe with pricey particles used for the “snow” replaced with cheap plastic “flitter.” Adding glycol to the water helped it fall more slowly. Snow globes could be found in gift shops across the country, becoming a highly sought-after souvenir during the post-war tourism boom. Walt Disney’s earliest-known snow globe, with its miniature Bambi, dates to 1959.
When arranged in a grouping, the impact of artisan snow globes is often greater than the sum of its parts.
As collectors' items or art objects, snow globes have since became so common they've earned the designation as "kitsch," a term reserved for art that has become too successful. Quite frankly, the label is often well-deserved. However, the key factor is not the globe itself, or even the "snow," but the tired, trite content commonly depicted. Notwithstanding Citizen Kane, when you've seen one stylized church, one Alpine village, or grove of woodland firs, you've pretty much seen them all. Yet, as illustrated in the snow globes above and below, there is room for a considerable range of uniquely original content if an artist takes the time to seek it out. (As seen in the video at the bottom.)
Snow globes evoke memories of childhood before snow became a shoveling nuisance.
The polar bear in a snowstorm. Trite? Or cleverly humorous.
In recent years, artists have employed words within the snow globe as a medium to proclaim a message, or perhaps illustrate periods of art history as seen below. As an art instructor, I used to refer to a blank sheet of drawing paper as a "polar bear in a snowstorm" (right). Despite their century-long period of development, snow globes are not hard to make. In fact, they are ideal as DIY projects for both adults and children (under close supervision by adults, of course).
The snow globe as a message medium--funny, educational, sometimes even obscene.
Amazon offers an empty snow globe kit priced at $32 (with free shipping). The kit includes easy to assemble instructions, floating bits of "snow," a dark cherry wood base, and a six-inch clear glass globe. Just add water and stir. For the more economy minded, materials needed are a glass or plastic jar (with screw-on lid), waterproof glue, plastic figures, trees, or other decorations, distilled water, glycerin, white glitter (available at craft stores) and an optional ribbon with an optional bow to cover up the base (lid). Be sure to remove the label from the jar.
The form is not important, it's what's inside that counts.
West Side Story's Tony (Richard Beymer) and Maria (Natalie Wood) give a 1950s twist to the Romeo and Juliet balcony--Shakespeare at his best.
Robert Wise,West Side Story producer/director.
In reading the title above, if you've already started humming or singing Tonight, or Maria, or maybe I Feel Pretty, chances are, sometime within the past 50 years, you've fallen under the street smart spell of Robert Wise's and Jerome Robbins' West Side Story. When I wrote naming the top ten American movies of all time (06-17-12), I was forced by the others to relegate this musical masterpiece to number ten. It was the only musical on that list and with good reason. No other Broadway musical adapted to film, before or since, has ever come close to the soaring spiritual uplift of this Romeo and Juliet inspired masterpiece about a bunch of street gang juvenile delinquents sprinting and dancing their way across the streets of Manhattan's lower west side. It's gritty not pretty like My Fair Lady. It's tart, if not downright bitter, unlike Wise's syrupy sweet, Sound of Music. Even today, after some fifty years, it's still authentically front-page relevant, unlike Singing in the Rain, or especially, simpering-silly Grease. Only the 2002 Miramax production of Chicago comes close to capturing the filmed-on-the-streets immediacy Wise demonstrates in this, the high point in his lengthy career.
The Jerome Robbins move that became the West Side Story's dance trademark.
The nearly nine-minute prologue of West Side Story, despite it's length, stands in my mind as the best pieces of opening cinematography ever created. It sets the pace, sets the scene, introduces the characters, winds the tension to the snapping point, doing all this with little more than a half-dozen words of dialogue and flat-out the best choreography ever captured on film. Leonard Bernstein's overture, coupled with Jerome Robbin's tense, yet graceful choreography, and Wise's on-the-money directing and taunt editing, forms a triumvirate of talent demonstrated again and again over the course of the next 152 minutes. Add to this a young, vibrant, yet highly experienced cast of performers, and the mix truly does, to employ a trite, over-used, film trailer phrase, "explode on the screen."
Co-director Jerome Robbins demonstrates for George Chakiris the dance move seen just above in the film.
When the screen version of the Broadway hit was first being developed by Walter Mirisch and his brothers in the early 1960s as part of a 12-picture deal with United Artists, the obvious choice for producer and director was Robert Wise. Wise had experience in film-making dating back to the 1930s when he was film and sound editor for the old RKO studios. At the age of 35, his work with the legendary Orson Wells earned him an Oscar nomination as sound editor for Wells' classic Citizen Kane. However, some twenty years later, Wise had, at that point in his career, never even been involved with a musical film, much less directed one. So, Mirisch brought in the Broadway production director/writer/choreographer, Jerome Robbins mostly to handle the complicated dance scenes. Then, about halfway through shooting, when the production began to run over budget, they summarily fired him. Nonetheless, his contribution to the film's artistic values was so important, Wise insisted upon sharing directorially credit with Robbins. His decision won them both Academy Awards.
Fresh faces, fresh energy, even after fifty years, West Side Story has lost none of its freshness, as seen here in the current Broadway revival.
Fifty years is a long time for any film to remain at the top of the heap in its genre. Filmed in the early 60s (it was released in 1961), West Side Story was based upon the 1957 hit Broadway play, based upon Robbins early experiences growing up on Manhattan's lower East side, with a plot influenced by, based upon, borrowed from, or perhaps some might say, stolen, from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. (Robbins wasn't the first or the last to do so.) In any case, no one ever trafficked in stolen goods so adroitly or with such artistic flair. Despite what might seem to be a somewhat dated background, the film, West Side Story, even after fifty years does not look "dated." There are no computer-generated special effects to subtract from the sheer talent displayed by the cast. Wise even eschewed the special effects photography of his day. Wise was "old school," working with talent such as Natalie Wood, Rita Moreno, and George Chakiris, slated to later become Hollywood legends in their own right. So, go right ahead with the Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim West Side Storysong you've been singing all this time. You're not showing your age, only your good taste.
The fictional Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) posed nude for a drawing by Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio). Seldom has a work of art played such an important role in another work of art.
James Cameron, Oscar night, 1998
A little over a year ago, I posted my list of top ten American movies ever made (06-17-12). There I listed James Cameron's 1997 epic blockbuster, Titanic, as number six. As anyone in the movie industry will tell you, $200-million in the hands of even as talented a filmmaker as Cameron, does not guarantee a great work of cinematic art (or even a profit at the box office). Cameron was as cognizant of this axiom as any of his nervous financial backers at 20th Century Fox or Paramount Pictures. (It took two major film studios plus a substantial hunk of Cameron's own cash to finance the massive, over-budget undertaking.) It would not be exaggerating in the least to say this awareness was crucial in Cameron's meticulous approach to the work of art he wrote, co-produced, co-edited, and directed himself. The film was technically, historically, dramatically, and aesthetically right "on the money." It was right on the "money" insofar as the box office was concerned as well, the first film in history to gross more than $2-billion worldwide since its release.
Cameron directing as the Titanic sinks. Titanic didn't sink in theaters.
Cameron was not the first filmmaker to assume such a "starring" roll in his own production. D. W. Griffith did it first in Birth of a Nation. For all practical purposes, David O Selznick did everything but play Scarlett in GWTW. Kubrick took similar control of Dr. Strangelove, as did Orson Wells in Citizen Kane. Besides writing, producing, directing and editing, Wells actually did take on the starring roll in his picture. All four made my top-ten list. The quirky Woody Allen has been a similar "one man band" as well. You might even say this could well be a the surest approach in the search for cinematic perfection. One has only to argue with oneself.
Despite Cameron's best directorial efforts (or perhaps because of them) the ship itself became the Academy Award winning star of the movie.
Despite what Titanic's opening credits might suggest, the movie was not a one-man show. DiCaprio, Winslet, Billy Zane, and Kathy Bates, to name just a few, played important "supporting" roles in Cameron's masterpiece, though none were deemed as Oscar worthy (Cameron's screenplay and DiCaprio were not even nominated). As the eleven Oscars garnered by the movie suggests, the art of filmmaking continues to be "art by committee" (Cameron carried home only three gold statues). Only two other films have ever done as well, and only Cameron's own Avatar (2009)has since exceeded Titanic at the box office. Such "winners" at movie awards ceremonies have often been known to thank the "little people" who have made their success possible.
Cameron's full-scale movie set, built along the Baja coast, was as titanic as the ship itself. His "ocean" held 17-million gallons of water. Only two decks along the ship's starboard side were functional.
Gloria Stuart as the 101-year-old Rose
Cameron rose above such trite, deprecating gratitude, but he would have extended the length of his three acceptance speeches by several hours had he not done so. The initial underwater photography at the wreck site was groundbreaking, as were the full-size and scaled models crafted by his art directors, Peter Lamont and Michael D. Ford. Post-production special effects were nothing less than breathtaking. The soundtrack and hit song (My Heart Will Go On), from the movie won similar accolades. It's a notable tribute to Cameron's managerial strengths that of all the many awards heaped upon Titanic, virtually every one went to those on his team behind the camera. Only 87-year-old Gloria Stuart (best supporting actress, Screen Actor's Guild), who played the aging, present-day Rose, won an acting award.
One of the most powerful subjects in art has always been "the end of time". Dating back to well before Michelangelo's Last Judgment, the apocalypse
has been painted, written about, drawn about, filmed, sung, and translated into about every area of the fine arts with the possible exception of architecture. Apocalyptic buildings might be a stretch, though certainly memorials exist to the holocaust, which perhaps comes close. Of course, the catalyst for the most recent "end is coming" thinking was the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st. Just as the news media doesn't care much for optimism, the same applies to artists. Even though this millennium arrived without incident, it is unlikely artists will stop thinking about the end of time. They'll simply find new ways of interpreting it.
Raphael, Vonnegut, Updike, and Orson Wells have all have all tread in the path of Biblical prophecy, imagining the end as an act of God, an act of man, as a heavenly reward, or as hellish earthly terror. In London, shortly before the new millenium, there was a whole wall of paintings at the Illustration House, a Soho gallery, where science fiction artist Vincent Di Fate guided a private tour of the end of time. Di Fate's paintings borrowed from Michelangelo's Last Judgement, from Raphael's St. Michael, and from William Blake's gloomy, 1805 drawing, TheNumber of the Beast is 666, among others. From literature, he borrowed from H.G.Wells' War of the World and Edgar Allen Poe's The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion. From the movies Di Fate referred to Independence Day, Dr. Strangelove, and On the Beach. From music he drew from songs such as Bob Dylan's A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall and Prince's 1999. W.B. Yeats wrote of bloody anarchy in his poem The Second Coming and in the area of drama, avant-garde playwright Richard Foreman, whose many works include the apocalyptic Symphony of Rats, was also a source. The man did his homework.
Today, apocalyptic types have December 21, 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar, to worry about. Unlike prophets, artists don't have to accurately predict the future. They just have to reflect our feelings about it. So get out your brushes and shades of black, but hurry, this will all passe' in two or three years...unless...
Some of the worst films ever made--most written, directed, and produced by Ed Wood. He even took on a starring role in one of them.
As a public school art instructor I considered the cinematic arts to be on a par with painting, drawing, art history, sculpture, and other creative art forms. Of course costs made it impossible to give students hands-on moviemaking experience, but like a course in literature, we studied the classics as appropriate to the ages of the students involved. Those included Gone With The Wind, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ben-Hur, Bridge on the River Kwai, Fantasia, and a number of others too numerous to mention. Over the years, using this format, I've tended to concentrate on some of the greatest names in the film industry such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Wells, Walt Disney, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick, David O. Selznick, Martin Scorsese, and again, a number of others too numerous to mention. Though quite varied in their talents and approaches to filmmaking, they were the best Hollywood has had to offer. Today, as a change of pace, let me highlight a man considered by virtually everyone in the business as the worst filmmaker in cinematic history--Ed Wood.
The resemblance is uncanny, but that's about all the two men ever shared in common.
If you've never heard of Ed Wood until now, believe me, you ain't missed much. And even if you are familiar with the work of Edward D. Wood, it's likely due to Tim Burton's sympathetic 1994 biopic starring a very close lookalike, Johnny Depp. The film received two Academy Awards. Ed Wood was an American filmmaker, actor, and author. In the 1950s, Wood directed several low-budget science fiction, crime and horror films, notably Glen or Glenda, Jail Bait, Bride of the Monster, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Night of the Ghouls and The Sinister Urge. In the 1960s and 1970s, he transitioned towards sexploitation and pornographic films, while also writing over eighty pulp crime, horror, and sex novels. Notable for their campy aesthetics, technical errors, unsophisticated special effects, ill-fitting stock footage, eccentric casts, idiosyncratic stories and non sequitur dialogue, Wood's films remained largely obscure until he was posthumously awarded a Golden Turkey Award for Worst Director of All Time in 1980, renewing public interest in his life and work.
Wood proved to be no better as an actor than as a writer, producer, or director.
Edward D. Wood Jr. might be termed the Will Rogers of filmmaking: He never directed a shot he didn't like. It takes a special weird genius to be voted the Worst Director of All Time, a title that Wood has earned by acclamation. He was so in love with every frame of every scene of every film he shot that he was blind to hilarious blunders, stumbling ineptitude, and acting so bad that it achieved a kind of grandeur. But badness alone would not have been enough to make him a legend; it was his love of film, sneaking through, that pushes him over the top. Wood's most famous films are Plan 9 from Outer Space (during which his star, Bela Lugosi, died and was replaced by a double with a cloak pulled over his face), and "Glen or Glenda" (left), in which Wood himself played the transvestite title roles. It was widely known even at the time that Wood himself was an enthusiastic transvestite,
Hacks are nothing new in Hollywood. Since the beginning of the film industry at the turn of the 20th century, thousands of untalented people have come to Los Angeles from all over America and abroad to try to make it big (as writers, producers, directors, actors, talent agents, singers, composers, musicians, artists, etc.) but who end up using, scamming and exploiting other people for money as well as using their creative ability (either self-taught or professional training), leading to the production of dull, bland, mediocre, unimaginative, inferior, trite work in the forlorn hope of attaining commercial success.
The climactic scene from Plan 9 from Outer Space. The big man in the middle is Tor Johnson whom Wood used often in his films
Ed Wood as Glenda
Wood was an exceedingly complex person. He was born in 1924, in Poughkeepsie, NY, where he lived most of his childhood. He joined the US Marine Corps in 1943 at the height of World War II and was, by all accounts, an exemplary soldier, wounded in ferocious combat in the Pacific theater. He was habitually optimistic, even in the face of the bleak realities that would later consume him. His personality bonded him with a small clique of outcasts who eked out life on the far edges of the Hollywood fringe. After settling in Los Angeles in the late 1940s, Wood attempted to break into the film industry, initially without success, but in 1952 he landed the chance to direct a film based on the real-life Christine Jorgensen sex-change story, then a hot topic. The result, Glen or Glenda (above, right), gave a fascinating insight into Wood's own personality and shed light on his transvestism (an almost unthinkable subject for an early 1950s mainstream feature). Although devoutly heterosexual, Wood was an enthusiastic cross-dresser, with a particular fond-ness for angora. Moreover the film revealed the almost complete lack of talent that would mar all his subsequent films, his tendency to resort to stock footage of lightning during dramatic moments, laughable set design, and a near-incomprehensible performance by Bela Lugosi as a mad doctor whose presence is never adequately explained. The film deservedly flopped miserably but Wood, always upbeat, pressed ahead.
Some might consider Wood's sci-fi epic as being so bad it's good. It rates as a cult classic right up (down there with the 1960s smashed hit, The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
Wood's 1955 film starring Bella Lugosi, Bride of the Monster (below), unbelievably, somehow managed to earn a small profit during its original release, undoubtedly more of a testament to how cheaply it was produced than its value as entertainment), and Wood only shot a few seconds of silent footage of Lugosi (doped and dazed, wandering around the front yard of his house) for "Plan 9" just days before the actor died in August 1956. What few reviews the film received were brutal. Typically undaunted, Wood soldiered on despite incoherent material and a microscopic budget, peopling it with his regular band of mostly inept actors. Given the level of dialog, budget and Wood's dismal directorial abilities, it's unlikely that better actors would have made much of a difference (lead actor Gregory Walcott made his debut in this film and went on to have a very respectable career as a character actor, but he was always embarrassed by his participation in this film)--in fact, it's the film's semi-official status as arguably the Worst Film Ever Made that gives it its substantial cult following. The film, financed by a local Baptist congregation led by Wood's landlord, reaches a plateau of ineptitude that tends to leave viewers open-mouthed, wondering what is it they just saw. "Plan 9" became, whether Wood realized it or not, his singular enduring legacy. Ironically, the rights to the film were retained by the church and it is unlikely that Wood ever received a dime from it. His epic bombed upon release in 1959 and remained largely forgotten for years to come.
The poster was far better than the movie.
Wood's main problem was that he saw himself as a producer-writer-director, when in fact he was spectacularly incompetent in all three capacities. Friends who knew Wood have described him as an eccentric, oddball hack who was far more interested in the work required in cobbling a film project together than in ever learning the craft of film making itself or in any type of realism. In an alternate universe, Wood might have been a competent producer if he had better industry connections and an even remotely competent director. Wood, however, likened himself to his idol, Orson Welles, and became a triple threat: bad producer, poor screenwriter, and God-awful director. All of his films exhibit illogical continuity, bizarre narratives, and give the distinct impression that a director's job was simply to expose the least amount of film possible due to crushing budget constraints. His 1959 magnum opus, Plan 9 from Outer Space features visible wires connected to pie-pan UFOs, actors knocking over cardboard "headstones", cars changing models and years during chase sequences, scenes exhibiting a disturbing lack of handgun safety and the ingenious use of shower curtains in airplane cockpits that have virtually no equipment are just a few of the trademarks of that Edward D. Wood Jr. production (as seen in the video clip at the bottom). When criticized for their innumerable flaws, Wood would cheerfully explain his interpretation of the suspension of disbelief. It's not so much that he made movies so badly without regard to realism--the amazing part is that he managed to get them made at all.
Check out the full-length movie It Came from Hollywood on YouTube for more of the worst Hollywood has had to offer.
