Moments From the Movies: 32 Days of Movies "refreshes" starting today

Every day through July 2, I will be posting a new collection of film clips on Vimeo, in 32 chronological chapters stretching from the silent era to the digital age.

Three and a half years ago, I launched an ambitious video project called "32 Days of Movies" which collected clips from almost everything in my collection (at the time). The clips lasted 30-45 seconds. They were assembled in roughly chronological order and then divided into 32 chapters (roughly 7-9 minutes each), ending with a song from the particular era those clips belonged to. At the time, unfortunately, I limited myself to Blogger's video program and there were many, many technical limitations and hiccups. Sometimes the video was so pixelated that the screen became unviewable.

I have decided to fix this problem by re-uploading each of the chapters in higher quality on Vimeo. Just for fun I will be restoring them one day at a time. So the journey begins anew today, with Day 1 - "Dance of the Silents." The video follows the jump, along with explanations of how you can follow this series.

Avant-Garde: FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART

Check out this list for the hundreds of films included in "Film as a Subversive Art."

Many years ago, while living in New York, I found myself reading Rousseau on a park bench, studying for a course on Political Theory. In this case homework led to something more long-lasting (however short the actual meeting) than an A on the test. An elderly man, about eighty, was sitting nearby with a female companion and, noticing my book, began talking to me. He had been educated by his parents according to the precepts of Rousseau's Emile, and this early education had given him a lifelong openness to all sorts of experiences, a fondness for the offbeat and unconventional, and a unique way of seeing the world. We talked for a while, and I discovered his life story was fascinating. He had fled Hitler's Austria, and in New York, just after the war, he had founded (with his wife) one of the first major film societies in the U.S., Cinema 16 - which would grow to become the most successful membership-based film society in American history.

Cinema 16 screened everything from political documentaries to foreign films to scientific movies to the occasional Hollywood picture (Hitchcock appeared at the theater to introduce The Man Who Knew Too Much). But its bread-and-butter was avant-garde cinema, a form (in all its different forms) that its administrator adored with the passion many reserve for their favorite genre or movie star. Frustrated by the inability of many friends and proteges to get onboard with experimental cinema, and eventually drawn into a rivalry with Jonas Mekas, whose Anthology Film Archives was founded in the early sixties in part as an alternative to Cinema 16's operation, this man eventually decided to write a book, exploring and celebrating not just the avant-garde, but all forms of subversive cinema from the political to the aesthetic to the topical to the completely personal. When Cinema 16 folded in the early seventies (never having received funds from government or corporation, it was reliant on the support of its members, which eventually dwindled), this book would remain as his enduring legacy.

The man was Amos Vogel, and the book was Film as a Subversive Art. At the end of our pleasant conversation, Vogel gave me his business card and I still have it - a playful sketch of an absent-minded bearded man trotting off with a reel of film unspooling from under his arm. He did not mention his book at the time and only years later would I purchase it, but it's become one of my cinematic treasures. While focusing on the offbeat and provocative, it is in fact a manifesto for a wide-ranging cinematic love with a keen eye for how subversion is ingrained in the very substance of the material itself - its ability to freeze, preserve, repeat and upend the physical world around us. Today I cover three films introduced to me by this book, and my entries include Vogel's capsule on the film in question and an embedded video of each movie.

But that's not all - such a brief sample could hardly convey the vast riches contained in this great book. I've tracked down several of the selected shorts on You Tube and so a dozen videos follow the post. Some of these selections are narrative, some purely abstract, some are animated, some live-action, some documentary while others are fiction, and still others defy any description. They demonstrate Vogel's broad taste, and his talent for spotting cinematic treasures in every corner. The avant-garde is, in many ways, not the far wing or the margin of cinema, but its very heart and soul, the - if you will - main stream of the medium. I would suggest watching all of these films when you get the chance, perhaps one each day after finishing the main entry. You won't be sorry; if some of these are new to you, as they were to me, then you'll be as thankful as I am for that warm spring day in New York.

Falling into the Future 2006 - 2009 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 32

Thirty-second chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films

(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)


View "Chapter 32: Falling into the Future"

Falling into the Future

Today we end quietly, mournfully, and, I think, beautifully. Many of these clips deserve that adjective - there is a sinuous grace to the films in this chapter, a kind of painterly impression as if figures and backgrounds on a canvas were being animated. As if, in a way, we had returned to the very roots of cinema, yet with a memory of where we'd been. This is less death than a kind of anti-birth, which makes the final clip deeply appropriate. It might help here to explain that my storytelling sensibility trends neither optimistic nor flatly pessimistic, but rather toward the tragic. Tragic conclusions are at once sad and deeply transcendent - not a happy ending, but still a glorious one. This certainly describes the last two clips, over which I played a single soundtrack - the music derives from the second film but works equally well with the first. Together they form a kind of swan song, and so this chapter's final moments can stand with the 40s dream chapter and the lightning montage ending the 60s episode as one of the most unified and telling moments in the video series.

Reality Cinema 2002 - 2006 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 31

Thirty-first chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films
(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)

The first clip contains footage from inside the World Trade Center on September 11, and the third includes images of a violent bus hijacking in Brazil. Neither contains graphic content, but as with the Rodney King footage from Chapter 27, it may not be something people are comfortable watching in this context.

View "Chapter 31: Reality Cinema"

Reality Cinema

This was the age of ubiquituous "reality" - reality TV of course, but also a slew of film documentaries, a form that had never been more popular or prolific. This entry contains more documentaries than any other, from historical subjects to on-the-spot current affairs to raw cinema-verite-style concerts. Some of the non-documentary clips reflect this fascination with reality as well, from ultra-low budget "home movies" to the stylized humanism of a prolific and creative Asian cinema.

Yet there's an element of escapism too, not the old-fashioned bang-bang kind, but something more ethereal and moody - a sort of impressionistic daydream stylization reflecting the era of iPod and internet, in which inner space expanded to swallow up a whole generation. Sometimes the two trends (impressionism and realism) merge, as they do in the last clip, a sad and brilliant sequence mirroring the first clip across an unbridgeable gap of time and space. To a certain extent, today's chapter plays like a fitful waking dream, mixing fragments of memory, fantasy, and reality.

Before reverting to a more straightforward title, I considered calling Chapter 31 "Screening Reality" as a play on words, because this was a time not only of reality onscreen but filters and strategies applied to take the edge off of it.

(continued below, along with NSFW warnings)

The Millennial Mood 1999 - 2002 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 30

Thirtieth chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films

(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)


View "Chapter 30: The Millennial Mood"

The Millennial Mood

From optimism to despair (which arrives next week), the fleeting mood of the new millennium can sometimes seem longer ago than ten years. Yet we are still living in its aftermath - here are several movies stylized to the nth degree, in a fashion that would come to characterize the new century. The clips tend either towards a candy-colored lightness or (more often, at least in this early stage) a grim, monochrome palette - color photography is more than ever a tool to capture an impression rather than a filter to catch reality.

(continued below, along with NSFW warnings)

Living in the Nineties 1995 - 1999 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 29

Twenty-ninth chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films

(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)


View "Chapter 29: Living in the Nineties"

Living in the Nineties

When I was in jr. high, I used to see infomercials for a CD compilation called "Living in the 90s." It struck me as absurd at the time - nostalgia for a decade that was still unfolding - but it also made me think. How would people remember the nineties? From the standpoint of 1997 or so, the decade seemed hard to classify. The eighties were gaudy, flashy, and plastic, the seventies shaggy and mauve, the sixties bright and psychedelic. Of course it was easy to think this way when I'd more or less missed out on these eras and could only soak up the pop culture's later depictions of them. Yet I had to wonder: would later decades be able to classify and identify the nineties in such a way?

I'm still not so sure we can - partly because the pop culture had become too self-aware and fast-paced to fall into a "natural" groove, partly because there were few larger-than-life events (with the Cold War over, economic prosperity fostering complacency and inward absorption) to unify cultural experience. Yet if the nineties can be characterized, I think these clips capture some of its spirit.

(continued below, along with NSFW warnings)

Pulp and Popcorn 1993 - 1995 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 28

Twenty-eighth chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films

(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)


View "Chapter 28: Pulp and Popcorn"

Pulp and Popcorn

Here is where the history of the movies truly begins to coincide with my own personal movie history. I was ten years old in the fall of 1993, and already an avid movie buff, combing the weekly listings to see what was coming out, studying the box office reports as if they contained esoteric messages from the beyond, and wandering down the hallway of coming attractions at the local movie theater to study the teaser posters. That said, I think I only saw one of these films in theaters at the time - however, I was aware of the presence of all of them, and it was only a few years later that I would see them on video as a teenager.

(continued below, along with NSFW warnings)

A Dark Dawn 1990 - 1993 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 27

Twenty-seventh chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films
(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)

Today's chapter includes footage from the Rodney King assault, an essential element of the scene that incorporates it; that sequence is an important part of both American and cinema history, but not something everyone will feel comfortable watching in this context. So fair warning.

View "Chapter 27: A Dark Dawn"

A Dark Dawn

The early nineties was a time that Dickens could have written about, full of hope and promise alongside frustration and worry. The Cold War was over and Mandela was sprung from jail, but an uncertain world - characterized by the Gulf War and violence in the Balkans - was cause for concern as well as relief. In America, the economy slumped while police brutality and racial violence dominated the headlines - yet there was also a certain optimism in the air, an excitement about a new era, characterized by new forms of pop culture, from hip hop to postmodern TV shows. This spirit, a continuation of yesterday's but with a darker edge, found its expression in the cinema too.

(continued below, along with NSFW & spoiler warnings)

New Age 1987 - 1990 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 26

Twenty-sixth chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films

(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)


View "Chapter 26: New Age"

New Age

There was something in the air. Perhaps it was the breeze of "Glasnost" spreading outward from Russia, as the Soviet government once hoped Communism itself would. Maybe it was the end of the Reagan era in America, with a restless populace hoping to move away from the dominant spirit of hardheaded materialism (well-represented in today's second clip). Or it could have been generational - after all, these were the years when the baby boomers, onetime youthful rebels now on the cusp of middle age, with families, mortgages, and careers, came into their own, culturally speaking.

The engineers of pop culture are always going to be people between about thirty-five and fifty-five and the boomers were just entering that age group. Sure enough, more than half the filmmakers in this chapter were born between 1946 and 1954 - and most likely this new, entirely postwar generation brought a new perspective to film. Anyway, for whatever reason, there was a loosening, a freshness, and a spirit of wondrous inquiry to cinema, television, and pop culture in general in the late eighties and well into the early nineties. You could call it a mood of curious mysticism.

Musical Countdown - 42nd Street

This is an entry in the Wonders in the Dark musical countdown - an epic enterprise; make sure you check out the whole thing!

This post consists of an essay and a video piece (not just a scene from the movie intended as an addendum, but something I actually created as an important part of my contribution to the countdown). You can take it any order, but I open with the video to highlight its relevance to this entry. It shows through juxtaposition and structure what I am saying in the essay itself, and maybe makes my point better than words can do.

The five-minute video opens with dialogue from the film, follows with a rehearsal montage set to "Getting to Be a Habit With Me" (showing the progression from casting call to finished production), and closes with the dance sequence of "Young and Healthy" in its entirety, just to show what the film was building up to. Altogether the video demonstrates how the raw and often frustrated urges of the characters for sex and power are sublimated and transmuted into the discipline of a creative act, and then shows the end result in all its glory. The essay pursues the same theme.

And don't worry - they're both fun!

•

42nd Street (1933/United States/directed by Lloyd Bacon & choreographed by Busby Berkeley)

stars Warner Baxter, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Bebe Daniels, George Brent, Guy Kibbee, Una Merkel, Ginger Rogers

written by Rian James, James Seymour and Whitney Bolton from Bradford Ropes' novel • photographed by Sol Polito • designed by Jack Oakey • music by Al Dubin & Harry Warren • edited by Thomas Pratt & Frank Ware

The Story: Determined to direct a hit show, even if it kills him, Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) struggles with romantic entanglements, last-minute injuries, and a nervous ingenue named Peggy (Ruby Keeler). Will the curtain open or come crashing down on "Pretty Lady"?

_____________

"Pretty Lady" - the stage extravaganza at the center of 42nd Street - owes its existence solely to sex. Well, don't we all? Some musicals present themselves as good, clean fun but 42nd Street, God bless its dirty face, is not one of those musicals. At the root of its massive appeal, kinetic energy, and increasingly exciting narrative and musical structure are three simple motivating factors: sex, sex, and sex. Well, a fourth too: money – and in this film the two are wound around each like the two strands of DNA.

As Chaos Theory holds that a butterfly need just flap its wings to spawn a typhoon halfway around the world, so Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels) has only to spread her legs. Thus is birthed a larger-than-life production, upon which the career of a broken, possibly dying director relies, through which a naïve young ingénue will become the biggest name on Broadway, and from which two hundred hustling, horny, hungry human beings will draw their daily bread (and dreams of glory). Dirty old man, sugar daddy, and cuckold Abner Dillon (Guy Kibbee) tells Dorothy he’ll do something for her (finance the show she wants to star in) if she’ll do something for him (guess what?). And with that, we’re off!

The Weird Eighties 1984 - 1986 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 25

Twenty-fifth chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films

(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)


View "Chapter 25: The Weird Eighties"

The Weird Eighties

On the morning of my fourth birthday, I innocently tuned in to a Saturday morning cartoon based on "The Pied Piper of Hamlin." Apparently I was not familiar with the story, because when the piper led all the children off to, well, candyland, or death, or oblivion or whatever awaited them away from the safety net of parental observation, I became greatly distressed. As I recall I even wanted to put off my birthday party, though by the time the guests (and their presents) had arrived I had moved on. The version of "Pied Piper" I saw was, I recall, a fairly straightforward animation and thus not the version you will see in today's chapter.

If I'd seen that in my tender youthful condition I probably would not only have postponed that day's party, but all future ones as I curled up in a ball in my room, a nervous wreck for all time (seriously, it's pretty creepy - and cool; see for yourself). But the film featured below reminds us of a crucial fact, and one that ties in to some of my other childhood frights (namely the bizarre and ghoulish "Hansel & Gretel" episode of Shelley Duvall's "Faerie Tale Theatre"), if not this particular one. It's a fact that people sometimes forget but those of us who were young enough to live through the era with the fresh, easily perplexed eyes of childhood certainly remember: the eighties were weird.

(continued below, along with NSFW warnings)

60 Years of Cinema (in 40 Seconds)

The twenty-fourth chapter in "32 Days of Cinema" already went up this morning, but I'm bumping it (still check it out though! I think it's one of the most interesting ones) to mention something else, albeit related to the series. Saturday night I put up an extract from Chapter 19 on Wonders in the Dark: the rapid-fire video montage which concludes a leg of the series by recapping everything already covered in well under a minute (each film appears for just four frames). This fragment, titled "60 Years of Cinema (in 40 Seconds)" seems to have been a hit; it was praised in all too flattering terms by fellow blogger Srikanth Scrivasson, who also said it "plays out like the output of a malfunctioning super-projector in its final minutes of operation." This afternoon it was linked up on Huffington Post and got some tweets, so I thought I would share it again here. Those of you who've seen Chapter 19 (which, to be honest, is an audience in the single digits) will have already seen it, but the You Tube clip is cleaner and higher-quality, crucial since the images flash by so quickly. Hope you enjoy it again, or for the first time:

You can also view the segment in its original home, as the climax to Chapter 19, and check out all the entries in the ongoing "32 Days of Cinema series" in my Video Gallery.

Read the comments on Wonders in the Dark, where this video was originally published.

Searching For Answers 1980 - 1983 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 24

Twenty-fourth chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films

(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)


View "Chapter 24: Searching For Answers"

"I just need time to think things over!" "Why is it necessary to have more than this, or to even think about having more than this?" "What did he say?" "We're sick...I think we're dying..." And then there are the scenes with little to no dialogue: an eerie occult ritual led by a beautiful woman, stepped right out of an Egyptian hieroglyph; a moody man pensively staring out the train window, stranger in his own sprawling country; a girl and her boyfriend sharing a note and then awkwardly separating, perhaps for the last time, as cars whiz by on the highway; a globetrotting camera, capturing dogs on an African beach and a traditionally-dressed Japanese standing silently "in the midst of the long moving shadows that the January light throws over the ground of Tokyo." Like "A Violent Release" early in the series, it's simply uncanny, and unexpected, how perfectly all of today's clips merge into a single theme: the quest for answers, and the mixed messages one gets in return.

(continued below, along with NSFW warnings)

'Neath the Marquee Moon 1976 - 1980 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 23

Twenty-third chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films
(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)

View "Chapter 23: 'Neath the Marquee Moon"

'Neath the Marquee Moon

A decadent chapter for a decadent decade, but whereas disco, leisure suits, and cocaine excess dominated late seventies pop culture, these clips have a bit more class. Okay, coke features a couple times, but so do lush color (and even lusher black-and-white), artfully nightmarish imagery, and killer music. There's an otherworldly feel to today's selections, from the blue lasers of a final concert to the surreal, almost lunar landscapes of two different warzones to the Manhattan skyline twinkling like an earthbound Milky Way...indeed the (original, thank you) scene with an actual alien may be the least far-out of all. Though we only see the Moon once (or twice, if you want to be clever about it), it seems to exert a tidal pull on the zeitgeist, at least as represented here.

(continued below, along with NSFW & spoiler warnings)

Pray For Us Sinners 1974 - 1976 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 22

Twenty-second chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films

(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)


View "Chapter 22: Pray For Us Sinners"

Pray For Us Sinners

The social spillover from the sixties continued into the mid-seventies. Whereas initially the frustration and alienation had been countered by a sense of excitement and community, by this time it just felt like rot. Watergate exemplified the United States' disillusionment with itself and its institutions, yet perhaps the country's misfortune was the cinema's good fortune. After focusing on Europe and Asia for several entries, today we return to America; for the first time in ten chapters, Hollywood films dominate the selections. But what a difference! If in 1959 the clips seemed to be quietly escalating their style and tiptoeing toward a more adult content, fifteen years later the American cinema has passed completely into a dark, radical maturity (fair warning: much of today's chapter is not safe for work).

(continued below, along with NSFW & spoiler warnings)

Welcome to the Arthouse 1972 - 1974 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 21

The twenty-first chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films

(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump & 2023 update: new version w/ different, more period-accurate closing song)



View "Chapter 21: Welcome to the Arthouse" (outdated as of 2023, see bottom of post)

Welcome to the Arthouse

Artistic expression, rather than pleasing a wide audience, seems to be the guiding spirit behind most of today's selections, although increasingly the two could go together. There are three genre pictures (a German sci-fi, a British horror, and an American gangster movie), yet these too wear their "artsy" ambitions on their sleeves. This was a period when attendance of "art houses" - those theaters devoted to playing foreign films, serious dramas, or eccentric comedies - thrived, and when even mainstream Hollywood movies were darker, more complex, more aesthetically sophisticated than they had been ten years earlier. It was a golden age for American film, but we'll see more of that tomorrow; today, the offerings are almost exclusively European (with an exception each from the U.S. and India).

Dispersed into the Seventies 1970 - 1972 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 20

The twentieth chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films
(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)

View "Chapter 20: Dispersed into the Seventies"

Dispersed into the Seventies

The sixties had ended. No "seventies" would replace them, at least not in the same sense. In society as in cinema, there was a turn inward, a slowing of that radical escalation, a dimming in the intensity, a muting of common purpose or collective identity. Young filmmakers of the sixties, however disparate their styles or themes, often spoke of one another as fellow travelers on some vague, unknown, but deeply felt common path. Not so much anymore. I hinted at this in Chapter 16, yet for a time the era's explosive energy concealed cinema's divisions and forked paths.

Around 1970, the tide went out, the counterculture, New Left, and youth movement all fragmented, and the hyped-up intensity of the sixties dissipated. Some contend that society never recovered, but for the cinema at least, this turned out to be as strong an era as the previous one, perhaps even stronger.

(continued below, along with NSFW & spoiler warnings)

To Become Immortal, and Then, to Die. 1969 - 1970 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 19

The nineteenth chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films
Stay tuned through the credits today, as there will be a surprise at the end
(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)

View "Chapter 19: To Become Immortal, and Then, To Die."

To Become Immortal, and Then, To Die.

Chapter 13 began it. Chapters 16 - 17 shifted it into full gear. Today, in Chapter 19, the sixties come to an end. I will let the images (and sounds) speak for themselves, but would like to note that this is my favorite chapter, in terms of its construction (there are no loose ends, everything adds to the building theme and aesthetic flow), its references (this is to me one of the most exciting, poignant, and fascinating periods in history, cinema or otherwise), and its ending. Or rather its endings...

(continued below, along with NSFW specifications & other warnings)

Shadow of '68 1968 - 1969 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 18

The eighteenth chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films
(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)

View "Chapter 18: Shadow of '68"

Shadow of '68

For four chapters, the energy of the sixties built and built, until yesterday it exploded, the sort of explosion that only builds upon itself, growing larger and larger. Today, in the chapter representing 1968 - 1969, we might expect to find its climax. After all, the whole world was in the throes of uprising, revolution, war, changing consciousness, rebellion - from the Tet to May '68 in Paris to the Prague Spring (and subsquent repression) to Chicago to...well, you all know the litany.

But on this screen today you'll find few Molotov cocktails, little long hair, no drugs. There'll be plenty counterculture tomorrow, in the last sixties entry, but today's chapter embodies cool restraint, dark intensity, and collected contemplation. Several scenes feature suited squares acting as if the whole world isn't falling down around them. This is not the surface tumult we are all familiar with, but rather its shadow, in several senses.

There's Something Happening Here... 1966 - 1968 • "32 Days of Movies" Day 17

The seventeenth chapter in "32 Days of Movies", an audiovisual tour through 366 films
(2015 update: included Vimeo embed after the jump)

View "Chapter 17: There's Something Happening Here..."

There's Something Happening Here...

We begin exactly where we left off yesterday, actually a split-second earlier, repeating that gunfire as if reliving the Big Bang for one brief, unexpected moment. And then it's on to the future - a girl tosses an apple in the air, holds it in her hands, and takes a big forbidden bite. With that the world bursts into glorious color and catches fire. Today black-and-white starts to disappear: most of these clips are in color and from now on, just like that, color will be the default for every chapter. This is only the most obvious aspect of gigantic swerve.