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At this point, we all need a good laugh

Video by slickgigolo.
Internet Scout: Larry J. Kolb, ex-CIA.
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Harold Lloyd: A rare early short and an interview

This rare early short has been beautifully restored. Below it, a three-part interview on CBS in the early 1960s.
Harold Lloyd: Captain Kidds Kids by FMO-Movies
Thanks to my Far Flung Correspondent, Pablo Villaça in Brazil, for the CBS links.
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Werner Herzog meditates on The Tree

How to Mom Dance, as demonstrated by Michelle Obama for Jimmy O’Fallon

I’m trying to imagine other First Ladies doing this. I suspect Nancy Reagan would have had some moves.

“The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe

The Tell-Tale Heart

Edgar Allan Poe

TRUE! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why WILL you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How then am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story.

It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture — a pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me my blood ran cold, and so by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever.

Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded — with what caution — with what foresight, with what dissimulation, I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night about midnight I turned the latch of his door and opened it oh, so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern all closed, closed so that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly, very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man’s sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this? And then when my head was well in the room I undid the lantern cautiously — oh, so cautiously — cautiously (for the hinges creaked), I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights, every night just at midnight, but I found the eye always closed, and so it was impossible to do the work, for it was not the old man who vexed me but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he had passed the night. So you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed , to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.

Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch’s minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers, of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was opening the door little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea, and perhaps he heard me, for he moved on the bed suddenly as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back — but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness (for the shutters were close fastened through fear of robbers), and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.

I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening , and the old man sprang up in the bed, crying out, “Who’s there?”

I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed, listening; just as I have done night after night hearkening to the death watches in the wall.

Presently, I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief — oh, no! It was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself, “It is nothing but the wind in the chimney, it is only a mouse crossing the floor,” or, “It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp.” Yes he has been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions ; but he had found all in vain. ALL IN VAIN, because Death in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel, although he neither saw nor heard, to feel the presence of my head within the room.

When I had waited a long time very patiently without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little — a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it — you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily — until at length a single dim ray like the thread of the spider shot out from the crevice and fell upon the vulture eye.

It was open, wide, wide open, and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness — all a dull blue with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones, but I could see nothing else of the old man’s face or person, for I had directed the ray as if by instinct precisely upon the damned spot.

And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses? now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart. It increased my fury as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.

But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eye. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder, every instant. The old man’s terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment! — do you mark me well? I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me — the sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man’s hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once — once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But for many minutes the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.

If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence.

I took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly so cunningly, that no human eye — not even his — could have detected anything wrong. There was nothing to wash out — no stain of any kind — no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that.

When I had made an end of these labours, it was four o’clock — still dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart, — for what had I now to fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbour during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises.

I smiled, — for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search — search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.

The officers were satisfied. My MANNER had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears; but still they sat, and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct : I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definitiveness — until, at length, I found that the noise was NOT within my ears.

No doubt I now grew VERY pale; but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased — and what could I do? It was A LOW, DULL, QUICK SOUND — MUCH SUCH A SOUND AS A WATCH MAKES WHEN ENVELOPED IN COTTON. I gasped for breath, and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly, more vehemently but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why WOULD they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men, but the noise steadily increased. O God! what COULD I do? I foamed — I raved — I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder — louder — louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly , and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! — no, no? They heard! — they suspected! — they KNEW! — they were making a mockery of my horror! — this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! — and now — again — hark! louder! louder! louder! LOUDER! —

“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! — tear up the planks! — here, here! — it is the beating of his hideous heart!”

With thanks to Old Hollywood, which is an extraordinary collection.

More than 140 of my pages are linked at the bottom of the right column.
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Gabby Giffords made me cry. America? And you?

House on Haunted Hill

The Ebert Club is invites you to share this classic William Castle B-rated movie, streaming free. And please join the Club and explore an eclectic assortment of discoveries. Your subscription helps support the Newsletter, the Far-Flung Correspondents and the On-Demanders on my site. – Roger Ebert

House on Haunted Hill (1959) Directed by William Castle. Produced by William Castle. Written by Robb White. Starring Vincent Price, Carolyn Craig, Elisha Cook, Carol Ohmart, Alan Marshal and Julie Mitchum.Synopsis: House on Haunted Hill is the tale of five people invited to spend the night inside a haunted house by an eccentric millionaire, Fredrick Loren, whose throwing a “party” for his fourth wife Annabelle – with the stipulation that the power will be out and the all the doors locked at midnight; allowing no escape. Anyone who stays inside the house for the entire night, assuming they’re still alive come morning, will receive $10,000 each.The five guests all arrive in separate funeral cars with a hearse leading, which he says may be empty now – but they may be in need of it later. Frederick explains the rules of the party and gives each of the guests a .45 pistol for protection. Frederick’s wife tries to warn the guests that her husband is psychotic, causing them to be very suspicious of him now, especially Nora Manning who becomes convinced he’s trying to kill her when she keeps seeing mysterious ghouls –  including the ghost of Annabelle, who’d apparently hanged herself after being forced to attend the party….holy crap, what the hell’s going on..?!

For more B-rated treasures, go here to join the Club 

P.S. ~ IMDb reports: “William Castle used a gimmick called ‘Emergo’ in theaters. When the skeleton rises from the acid vat in the film, a lighted plastic skeleton on a wire appeared from a black box next to the screen to swoop over the heads of the audience. The skeleton would then be pulled back into the box as the skeleton in the film is ‘reeled in.’ Many theaters soon stopped using this effect because when the local boys heard about it, they would bring slingshots to the theater; when the skeleton started its journey, they would pull out their slingshots and fire at it.”

Claude Chabrol, RIP. The master at midpoint

Claude Chabrol, who died Sunday, Sept. 12 at 80, was a founder of the New Wave and a giant of French cinema. This interview, which took place during the 1970 New York Film Festival, shows him at midpoint in his life, just as he had emerged from a period of neglect and was making some of his best films.

By Roger Ebert

NEW YORK — Claude Chabrol’s “This Man Must Die” is advertised as a thriller, but I found it more of a macabre study of human behavior. There’s no doubt as to the villain’s identity, and little doubt that he will die (although how he dies is left deliciously ambiguous).

Unlike previous masters of thrillers like Hitchcock, Chabrol goes for mood and tone more than for plot. You get the notion that his killings and revenges are choreographed for a terribly observant camera and an ear that hears the slightest change in human speech.

For this reason, particularly, it’s necessary to put up a squawk and insisted on the film’s original subtitled version; without the rhythm of the sound track, the movie simply doesn’t work. New Yorkers saw the subtitles, of course, but Allied Artists apparently decided to let the rest of the country see a wretched botch of a dubbing job.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the dubbed version flopped; “Z” ran for months in its exquisite subtitled version, but flopped in the neighborhoods because a lousy dubbed version was substituted.

Let’s face it. Movies by director like Chabrol or Costa-Gavras are intended for the more literate section of the movie audience. You can dub a spaghetti Western and nobody cares, but mess with Chabrol and you’re eliminating the very quality audiences respond to in his work.

In any event, we’re seeing the good version here, and it is one of the best Chabrol films since he began his new career as a student of murder. With Godard veering ever more erratically into left field, and Truffaut exhibiting an alarming tendency to get cute, it’s actually beginning to appear that Chabrol will become the front-running French director of the 1970s – commercially, and maybe even artistically.

Yet as recently as 1967, in his “Interviews with Film Directors,” Andrew Sarris was actually able to write about Chabrol in the past tense: “He quickly became one of the forgotten figures of the nouvelle vague . . . Chabrol found himself so demode by the mid-1960s that he was forced to accept commissioned projects to keep his hand in.”

But just then, when his career as a serious director seemed most in doubt, Chabrol arrived at the 1968 New York Film Festival with “Les Biches.” It was an artful combination of lesbianism and very Chabrolian irony, with a nice bit of murder at the end, which forced you to re-think all the characters. And Chabrol, the first of the New Wave directors to be hailed and the first to be dismissed, was very clearly back in business again.

Les Biches

“Les Biches” was the first film Chabrol made with Andre Genovese, a young Parisian who is, Chabrol says, the only producer he has ever been able to work happily with. They followed it with “La Femme Infidele” (1969), Chabrol’s greatest critical success since “Les Cousins” a decade earlier. Then came “This Man Must Die,” “Le Boucher,” one of the hits of this year’s New York Film Festival, and “Le Rupture,” still unseen in the United States. (“We’re certainly going to have to change that title for the American release,” Chabrol notes cheerfully.)

Taken together, this group of films seems to announce that, at 40, Chabrol is finally realizing the great promise of his early career, There have been 18 Chabrol features so far, and they reflect a distinctly erratic chapter in the history of the New Wave. Chabrol was there at the very beginning, first as a critic for Cahiers du Cinema and then as the director of perhaps the first New Wave film. His “Le Beau Serge” (1958) preceded Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” by a few months, and when Godard’s “Breathless” appeared the original triumvirate of New Wave directors was established. It still rules.

Chabrol’s sensationally successful “Les Cousins” followed, also in 1958, and the next year he made “A Double Tour” and “Les Bonnes Femmes.”

Although he was by then routinely linked with Truffaut and Godard, his style and taste in material didn’t resemble theirs (nor did they resemble each other, of course, although they made a convenient grouping because of their common disregard for the existing writer-dominated French cinema.)

Chabrol’s 1962 “Landru,” from a screenplay by Francoise Sagan about a World War I mass murderer, can be seen in hindsight as characteristically Chabrolian but having little connection with the concerns of other New Wave directors. It was coolly professional and exhibited the fascination with murder that has been his subject in all the recent films produced by Genovese.

Le Boucher

“Landru” was a commercial and critical success, but “Ophelia” the same year was a failure, beginning a period of involuntary idleness for Chabrol. He married the actress Stephane Audran in 1962 (she was Jean-Louis Trintignant’s former wife and had starred in “Les Cousins”). And then he announced a number of projects, but nothing came of them. In 1964 he directed the first of three comedy thrillers he considers potboilers.

All three were frankly jobs done for money, and if some auteur critics defended them, not many others found them worthy of Chabrol. A 1967 “comeback” project for Universal’s European production division, “The Champagne Murders,” starred Anthony Perkins and was praised in France. But the mutilated U.S. version was a disaster.

One night recently, Chabrol sipped a Scotch and soda in the Greenwich Village apartment of a friend, and talked about it.

“How do you become a director? First, you must start. Second, you must find a producer who is a human being. Andre Genovese is a human being. I can say of all my previous producers that I hated them and they hated me. Just before I met Andre, things were at their blackest. I was doing ‘The Champagne Murders,’ and the producer, so called, was a young man named Jay Kanter who was in charge of Universal’s operation over there.

“He was a good agent, they told me. Why not? But as a producer he was a joke. After I finished the film, they brought in an editor who was described as a ‘doctor.’ He was supposed to make a film out of my film. So what did he do? He made a hodgepodge. For the English version, he cut out 20 -minutes, and inevitably they were the exact 20 minutes for which I made the film.”

Chabrol spread his hands in a gesture of futility. “Editors have an uncanny ability to find what you feel is most important, and cut it out,” he said. “I could have made a stink, but I wasn’t in a very strong position just then. At least they let me have the final cut for the French version. Perhaps I’m not the purist I ought to be. When we were all writing for Cahiers, we looked at Hollywood films that everyone thought were commercial, and we discovered art and morality in them. Fifteen years later, with these recent films of mine, perhaps I’m taking art and morality and making them commercial . . .”

In a sense he’s correct, although “commercial” is a word too negatively charged to describe the exquisite subtlety of “Le Boucher” or “This Man Must Die” (even if they are advertised as thrillers).

Perhaps professionalism is the quality that ought to be substituted; the early Cahiers critics appreciated that quality to such a degree that they actually prized directors whom accepted routine assignments and turned them out competently. Even today, when the budget is not exactly critical, Chabrol makes a point of telling you that John Ford shunned covering shots, and that every shot Chabrol takes is in the film.

Because Genovese respects this, Chabrol says, he gives Chabrol a free hand in making his films, and that, you see, is why the last three years have been so productive for Chabrol.

“Most of the French producers,” Chabrol explained, “are like Zanuck. No, not like Zanuck. Like a little Zanuck. I have a certain regard for Zanuck himself. You know I used to work for him. That’s right! I was the Paris publicity man for 20th Century-Fox in 1955.”

Chabrol sipped his Scotch very seriously, for comic timing, and then allowed himself to grin. “When I quit,” he said, “you’ll never guess who got my job. I gave it to Jean-Luc Godard. Of course he was even worse as a publicity man than I was.

“He always made sure to have the lavatory key. He would come into the office and look busy for an hour, and then say he was sick. Then he would lock himself in the lavatory and read scripts. I know the feeling because I like to read all the time myself, when I’m not watching movies. During the war I was sent out into the country — I must have been about 10 at the time — and I read detective novels all day.

Ten Day’s Wonder

“It was at that time I first read ‘Ten Days Wonder,’ by Ellery Queen, which will be my next film. In writing the script, I worked from the very same copy of Ellery Queen that I read 30 years ago.

“When I wasn’t reading I was going to the movies. I saw ‘Snow ‘White’ at least 10 times between 1937 and 1940 and I think it influenced my work, a little. It was a good horror film. The death of the witch was the best thing Disney ever did. Of course, murder always heightens the interest in a film. Even a banal situation takes on importance when there’s a murder involved.

“I suppose that’s why I choose to work with murder so often. That’s the area of human activity where the choices are most crucial and have the greatest consequences. On the other hand, I’m not at all interested in who-done-its. If you conceal a character’s guilt, you imply that his guilt is the most important thing about him. I want the audience to know who the murderer is, so that we can consider his personality.”

Chabrol said he is rather happy right now about the way his career is going.

“With the films since ‘Les Biches,’ I think I’m on the right track. Not that I was ever on the wrong track, but I believe that period of idleness helped me think things over. You might consider a concert pianist, suddenly unable to give concerts. So he sits at home and practices for two or three years, until somebody hires him again. And then they don’t think about the two years, they think about how well he plays . . .

“Certainly I’m happy right now making these films about murder. My interest isn’t in solving puzzles, but in studying human behavior. Nothing else interests me so much. I’m not a chansonnier, a man obsessed with the events of the day. I am a Communist, certainly, but that doesn’t mean I have to make films about the wheat harvest. I think Godard’s political films have been messy. Right now, Jean-Luc seems to be going through a bachelor’s crisis: Should I marry politics or remain free?”

Chabrol leaned forward to share a confidence.

“I’ll tell you a Party secret,” he said. “Spiro Agnew is a double agent. Of course, he doesn’t know it, but that’s the best kind of agent there is — because he can never blow his own cover!”

His face opened into a beatific smile. He finished his Scotch. He sighed. “Now we go back to France to make a film about murder again,” he said. “In this one, I kill everyone, but it’s no big deal. They’re living at the beginning and dead at the end. In between, there’s a story about a man who breaks the Ten Commandments, one by one. Catherine Deneuve will star, and of course Orson Welles will play God.”
I have many Chabrol reviews online. Use Search on my home page. Here is my Great Movies Collection review of Le Boucher.
From the Telegraph, the best Chabrol obituary..

Chabrol’s 50th and final film: “Inspector Bellamy” (2009)

☑ All of my TwitterPages are linked under the category Pages in the right margin of this page.

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Many of my losing entries in the New Yorker’s daunting Cartoon Caption Contest

It has become a ritual for me to enter the New Yorker’s weekly Cartoon Caption Contest. I won only once, long ago in April 2011, and the magazine’s cartoon editor, Robert Mankoff, wrote a blog about that. In his blog he included three of my losing submissions he enjoyed…and one that was too tumescent, perhaps, to get past the magazine’s board of editors. I believe that one (above) was the funniest I’ve ever submitted. But look over these losers and I’ll link Mankoff’s blog down at the bottom
Go here for Robert Mankoff’s blog.
And click here to enter this week’s contest.

We have heard the chimes at midnight. “Falstaff,” by Orson Welles, free online

Great Movie / Roger Ebert / June 4, 2006

There live not three good men unhanged in England. And one of them is fat and grows old.

How can it be that there is an Orson Welles masterpiece that remains all but unseen? I refer not to incomplete or abandoned projects that have gathered legends, but to “Chimes at Midnight” (1965), his film about Falstaff, which has survived in acceptable prints and is ripe for restoration. I saw the film in early 1968, put it on my list of that year’s best films, saw it again on 16mm in a Welles class I taught, and then could not see it for 35 years.

It dropped so completely out of sight that there is no video version in America, Britain or France. Preparing to attend the epic production of both parts of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, I wanted to see it again and found it available on DVD from Spain and Brazil. Both versions carry the original English-language soundtrack; the Brazilian disc is clear enough and a thing of beauty. What luck that Welles shot in black-and-white, so there was no color to fade.

This is a magnificent film, clearly among Welles’ greatest work, joining “Citizen Kane,” “The Magnificent Ambersons,” “Touch of Evil” and (I would argue) “The Trial.” It is also magnificent Shakespeare, focusing on Falstaff through the two “Henry IV” plays to his offstage death in “Henry V.” Although the plays are much abridged, it is said there is not a word in the film not written by Shakespeare.

Falstaff, “this huge hill of flesh,” is one of Shakespeare’s greatest characters — the equal, argues Harold Bloom, of Hamlet. He so dominates the Henry IV plays that although Shakespeare promised he would return in Henry V, he reconsidered; the fat knight would have sounded the wrong note in that heroic tale, and so we learn from Mistress Quickly of his death, as he “babbl’d of green fields.”

Welles was born to play Falstaff, not only because of the physical similarity but because of the rich voice, sonorous and amused, and the shared life experience. Both men lived long and too well, were at odds with the powers at court and were constantly in debt. Both knew disappointment, and one of the most sublime moments in Welles’ career is simply the expression on his face at the coronation of Henry V, when he cries out “God save thee, my sweet boy,” and the new king replies, “I know thee not, old man.”

Prince Hal, later Henry V, is played in the film by Keith Baxter, who looks dissolute enough in the roistering at the Boars Head Tavern, but as early as Act 1, Scene 2 is an unpleasant hypocrite in the monologue where he admits his present misdeeds but promises to reform at the right time. In Shakespeare, this is a soliloquy; in Welles, Falstaff listens in the back of the shot and is forewarned. Later, in an echo of that composition, the prince looks impatiently toward the field of battle as Falstaff, behind him, questions the concept of honor. That each man hears the other’s intended soliloquy adds a dimension to both.

Welles as director uses some of his familiar visual strategies; the vast interiors of Henry IV’s castles contrast with the low ceilings and cluttered rooms of bawdy houses, just as the vast space of Kane’s great hall contrasts with the low ceilings and dancing girls of the New York Inquirer. Royalty in “Chimes at Midnight” is framed by vast cathedral vaults, with high windows casting diagonals of light. Welles uses dramatic camera angles, craning to look up at the trumpeters atop the battlements as Henry IV rides off to battle.

At Mistress Quickly’s, on the other hand, Falstaff and his roisterers have great freedom of movement involving doorways and posts, barrels and vertiginous staircases, barking dogs and laughing wenches. He and other actors circle verticals and one another as they speak, just as Welles and Joseph Cotten circled in “Citizen Kane” and “The Third Man.” And watch the use of deep focus when he begins a shot with Hal seated in the background and, as news of his father’s death is conveyed, Hal stands and moves forward, finally looming over the camera in foreground. All one shot.

The scene of the battle of Shrewsbury is justly famous. It lasts fully 10 minutes, chaotic action at a brutal pitch, horses and men confused in smoke and fog, steel crashing against steel, cries of pain, desperate struggles, confused limbs caked in mud and blood, men falling exhausted or dead. Barbara Leaming, one of Welles’ biographers, says the scene was created by careful framing; Welles at no time had more than about 100 extras, yet seems to have a multitude, and the violence of the struggle was studied by Mel Gibson before he directed “Braveheart.”

The battle is intercut with shots of a fat man in armor, hurrying and scurrying out of the way and finally playing dead. When Hal finds Falstaff flat on his back, he cries out, “What, old acquaintance! Could not all this flesh keep in a little life?” We know Falstaff is not dead, and Welles finds a way to let Hal know, too: the frost on the old man’s breath puffs out from beneath his visor. Yes, it was cold. Welles shot on location in Spain, in winter; his first shot shows Falstaff as a tiny figure in a vast field of snow, his last shows Falstaff’s coffin being pushed across snow toward his grave, and in several of John Gielgud’s speeches as Henry IV, we can see the frost on his breath.

That Gielgud played the king and others such as Margaret Rutherford (Mistress Quickly) Jeanne Moreau (Doll Tearsheet) and Fernando Rey (Worcester) also appeared in the film is a tribute to Welles’ reputation, for on a budget of less than $1 million he was, like Falstaff, not prompt to pay. Gielgud plays Henry IV as a dying man almost from his earliest scenes, plagued with guilt because of how he won his throne. His son is no consolation; the king envies Northumberland his son Henry Percy, known as Hotspur (Norman Rodway), and wishes “would I have his Harry, and he mine.” He excoriates the thief and whoremonger Hal and his low companions, none lower in deportment or loftier in essential humanity than Falstaff.

How good is Falstaff? Consider the way warm affection illuminates the face of Jeanne Moreau as Doll Tearsheet caresses and tickles her beloved old rogue. Note the boundless affection Falstaff has for all around him, so real that even Quickly forgives his debts and allows him to contract new ones.

Such scenes illuminate the life Welles poured into “Chimes at Midnight.” He came early to Shakespeare; he edited and published editions of some of the plays while still at prep school. On stage and screen, he was also Othello and Macbeth, his voice fell naturally into iambic rumbles, he was large enough for heroes and so small he could disappear before Henry V’s scorn. He once asked an audience, reduced by a snowstorm: “Why are there so many of me and so few of you?”

There was not something Falstaffian about Welles, there was everything. As a young man he conquered all that came before him (at Shrewsbury a knight meekly surrenders to the old man, awed by his leftover reputation). Welles grew fat and in debt, took jobs unworthy of him, was trailed by sycophants and leeches, yet was loved by good women and honored by those who could see him clearly. And he battled on, Quixotic as well as Falstaffian, commencing grand schemes and sometimes actually finishing them (indeed, his “Don Quixote” can now be seen in intriguing but incomplete form).

The crucial point about “Chimes at Midnight” is that although it was rejected by audiences and many critics on its release, although some of the dialogue is out of sync and needs to be adjusted, although many of the actors become doubles whenever they turn their backs, although he dubbed many of the voices himself, although the film was assembled painstakingly from scenes shot when he found the cash — although all of these things are true, it is a finished film, it realizes his vision, it is the Falstaff he was born to direct and play, and it is a masterpiece. Now to restore it and give it back to the world.

Walt Kelly, an immortal

The creator of “Pogo” died on this day in 1973.

☑ Click to expand.

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Werner Herzog reads “Go the F**k to Sleep”

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R. L. Burnside: A something man

I don’t like to link to music vidos that are only slideshows, without live performance footage. But this first clip is my favorite Burnside song, and I think it’s appropriate for hard times.

R. L. Burnside on Wikipedia.

The triumph of the day-fly

Thanks to my reader Carl Appleton for the link.
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The Best B-Rated Movie Trailers Ever!

Each year, as film critics publish their top 10 lists, I can’t help but feel a pang of genuine empathy for those who go unheralded – all those hard working wannabes and former television stars who’d poured their heart and souls into making the best bad movie they could, dammit. Seriously, there’s an art to making crap and I think we should celebrate it!  And so for what it’s worth, here’s my top 10 list of “The Best B-Rated Movie Trailers Ever!” – Marie Haws, Ebert Club Secretary.
10 – Message from Space (1978)