Category Archives: Movies

Moving pictures for snappers

Life with Mahler

Movies, Photographs

Life without him is not living.

How can anyone live without Mahler? Standing at the cusp between the classical romanticism of Tchaikovsky and Schubert and the atonality of Stravinsky and Berg, he changed music as we know it. Whether through his beautiful songs or his massive symphonies, one’s understanding and appreciation of nature is raised an order of magnitude through listening to his works.

Absent a few documentaries, the only dramatic movie of Mahler’s life is the one made in 1974 by Ken Russell, much of it filmed in the Lake District of England, as the production budget was tiny and the crew could scare afford to decamp to the Tyrol for the right scenery. Proving again that money and results are frequently poorly correlated in movie making, Russell does a masterful job, with his usual obsessions and eccentricities thrown in.

In addition to dramatic intensity, the movie has some exceptional photography, a few frames of which I excerpt below. My original was a VHS copy which was pretty bad, though it was in widescreen. Now I have tracked down an ex-rental DVD which is a little better, though unfortunately in 4:3 format. One day someone will remaster this long forgotten out-of-print work and put it on BluRay with proper formatting. Meanwhile, the second rate DVD is all I have, so excuse the poor quality of what follows.

Mahler is acted by Robert Powell, every bit as special here as in Zefirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth. He gives it his all, never overacting.

The movie opens with some extraordinary imagery. After we see his lakeside hut explode in flames the director cuts to Mahler’s wife, Alma, trying to escape from a cocoon – the allegory being how his genius stifled her far from trivial musical talents.

Alma Mahler tries to escape from the cocoon.

The narrative takes place on a train where Alma tries to decide, over the course of the journey, whether to leave Mahler for a dashing soldier. Needless to add, Russell cannot resist a funny dig at Visconti’s Death in Venice, with this scene glimpsed on the train platform:

Mahler as von Aschenbach.

Another cut to a lakeside scene recalls nothing so much as Thomas Eakins’s famous picture:

A recreation of Eakins’s The Swimming Hole

The Swimming Hole by Thomas Eakins.

As the train wends its way through the Austrian countryside there is an unforgettable image of Mahler as music plays in his head.

Robert Powell IS Mahler.

But if I have one favorite moment from this orgy of imagery served up by Russell, it is the scene where Mahler threatens to dunk Alma in the lake from the same little hut which explodes in flames at the start of the movie. Set to the concluding bars of the first movement of the Sixth Symphony, you have to be clinically dead if the hairs on your back do not rise at this lush combination of sound and picture:

The lovely Georgina Hale is Alma Mahler.

A few years back I loaded up the CD player in my car with all of Mahler’s symphonies and drove up the coast highway of California from San Diego to the Oregon border, then inland across Death Valley listening to nothing else. If you want to appreciate what music tells you about nature, I recommend a like course of action.

It’s been said that the Austrians’ greatest genius was to convince the world that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian. There is no need for such posturing here, for Mahler was quite simply the greatest musical creation of a nation which gave us anti-semitism, an anti-semitism which he took on and conquered in his all too brief life. The movie is highly recommended. I confess that parts of the Second Symphony are dancing in my brain as I type ….

Update may 24, 2023:

Well, it’s finally here. I just watched a Japanese remastering of Mahler on the big screen. No more scratchy VHS definition. No more castrated 4:3 format. In glorious 16:9 widescreen BluRay quality. Thank you, Japan, and I’m still wiping the tears from my face. A glorious piece of movie making.

Barry Lyndon

Movies, Photographers

A must see

Like the great English film maker David Lean, the American Stanley Kubrick made but a handful of movies. As with Lean’s oeuvre, there’s not a dud to be found. Indeed, I recall many years ago buying my first DVD player and the first movie I bought to see on it was, of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But if it’s visual richness you crave, then the Kubrick movie you will like most is the little played Barry Lyndon. In addition to a superb performance by Ryan O’Neal (when did you last use those words about O’Neal?) there is the sublime beauty of Marisa Berenson. Kubrick was nothing if not technically competent, having started life as a stills journalist photographer, and I recall at the time of its release stories circulating of Kubrick’s use of special Zeiss still camera lenses on his Mitchell movie camera.

Well, here’s the scoop from Ed DiGiulio, the expert who adapted the Zeiss f/0.7 (f/0.7!) 50mm lens for Kubrick’s camera, which Kubrick proceeded to use for the candlelight scenes in the movie. The effect is magic. The lens – like the fabulous Leitz 180mm f/3.4 Apo-Telyt-R which I used for many years on my Leicaflex SL – was commissioned by NASA.

This is a very long, slow paced film and one which is essential viewing for those with non-American attention spans – meaning you can sit still without popcorn and colored, sugared water for 3 hours – and a love of visual beauty. It’s the sort of movie that makes you go out and buy a 100″ screen for your home theater. I did.

Here’s a schematic of the Zeiss Planar lens together with the enormous (over 5″ diameter) Kollmorgen wide angle adapter which DiGiulio refers to:

Marisa Berenson? None other than the great-grand-niece of that art plunderer and self-appointed Renaissance expert, Bernard Berenson, but a whole lot nicer to look at.


Marisa Berenson by candlelight in Barry Lyndon. Staney Kubrick, Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7 lens

Kubrick’s last movie was Eyes Wide Shut, released in 1999, the year he died. Another visual masterpiece, it is also distinguished by another actor who couldn’t act before he crossed Kubrick’s path, Tom Cruise. Watch it for a radiant Nicole Kidman.

Update June 2013:

Watching Barry Lyndon in the newly remastered Blu-Ray version is a revelation. Maybe the best art film ever, with luscious cinematography by Joe Alcott whose credits include three other Kubrick masterpieces – ‘A Clockwork Orange’, ‘The Shining’ and the unsurpassed ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.

Update July 2015:

There’s a fine 6 minute documentary on the Mitchell cameras, the Zeiss f/0.7 lens and the costumes here.

The March 1976 issue of American Cinematographer with details about the cinematography can be downloaded here.

A Fantasy

Movies, Photographers, Short stories

The Sixties relived.

By way of introduction let me say that, as a boy of 15, I was already fascinated with the hobby of taking pictures. So when I saw Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-up in 1966 on its theatrical debut, it was a matter of moments to write to the star and ask for an interview. To my amazement, a neat, handwritten note came back from David Hemmings, the star of the movie, not two weeks later, granting me my wish.

Quite what an interview entailed I had no idea, but when I arrived at his mews home in Kensington, Hemmings greeted me with great warmth and, within moments of our handshake, proffered a nice tape recorder the better with which to take notes. Cleaning out a closet the other day I came across the tape, which I had all but forgotten about, and set to transcribing it for this journal.

Hemmings had just finished filming and was, in modern parlance, still ‘channeling’ the character of Thomas, the photographer-protagonist in the picture, so he insisted on conducting the interview in the character of the photographer he portrayed, and further requested that I address him as ‘Thomas’ rather than as ‘David’.

TP: Thomas, the movie opens with you looking a bit, shall I say, worn. What was all that about?


Looking a bit worn. Click the picture for the map.

DH: Yeah well, you know, Britain was going through one of its interminable labour disputes at the time so I was down the Consort Road in Southwark taking pictures for my new book on the working class. These laid off workers would be collecting their money at the dole office and I got into the whole thing. Thought it would be better to look like one of them. Not too hard given the night I had just had with those birds. Talk of insatiable!

TP: And the car?

DH: Well, no effing way I was going to drive the Rolls down Southwark way. They would have pinched my tires and mascot in seconds. Anyway, let me tell you, that car is a piece of crap. Constantly in the garage. New water pump, constant tuning and 10 miles to the gallon. I’m thinking of getting one of those Minis, actually.


Piece of crap

TP: Who’s your favorite model, Thomas?

DH: There are so many it’s hard to choose, but I would have to say it’s Veruschka. A real pro, always on time. She’s some sort of Russian countess or something. Great legs, too. God, this woman is fit.


Some sort of Russian countess

TP: How did the picture in all the ads come about?

DH: Well, after that Veruschka session, I was pretty shagged out and in need of a drink, but she insisted on just one more roll of film. So I had David, my assistant, load up the Nikon and had at it. And it just happened, you know? That bum of an assistant took the snap of me making out with her.


It just sort of happened

TP: So you favor the Nikon?

DH: Nah! Look, I’ll use whatever the latest publicity roll-out gives me. It’s all free, as long as I flash it about a bit, you know? Like they gave me this Hasselblad for studio work and it’s OK, I suppose. When it’s not in the shop with the Rolls, getting something fixed. Last week the magazine jammed, this week it’s the shutter. God, if only people knew how bad these things are.


I’ll use whatever they give me

But I do like the Nikon, I must admit. I almost feel like I’m armed with it. I keep one in the glove compartment of the Rolls for street snaps. Like, the other day I was down at this antique place in Woolwich picking up a big wooden propeller for the studio (cost me eight quid, I can tell you) and wandered over to Maryon Park nearby. Grabbed the Nikon, of course. It was a windy day and I thought what with the trees and all, something good might come of it. That’s when that bloody Antonioni wasn’t using the crew to spray the grass green. Jesus! Italian wanker.


Grabbed the Nikon, of course. Click the picture for the map.

TP: So that’s when you latched on to the whole mystery thing? I mean, the body and all?

DH: Yeah. Let me tell you enlarging those snaps was sheer hell. Bloody Kodak and their TriX. When the (deleted) are they going to make this film with grain smaller than a piece of dead, cold porridge? Sure, I could use PanX or PlusX for less grain but then everything comes out kinda blurred, if you get my drift. And as for faster, have you ever used HPS? Basically every picture is the same – one big blob of grain.

Anyway, I had the 50mm on the Nikon that day and, boy, did I find myself wishing for something longer. I mean, I was miles from Vanessa when I snapped those images. Let me tell you, mate, one of these days Kodak will fix their film and you will get 36 wall sized enlargements from a roll one quarter the size and none of that poncing about with wet chemicals. Have you seen my carpets recently? Talk of hypo stains.


Poncing about

TP: So you found the body. Why no camera?

DH: Yeah, I found the geezer. Some sort of Italian judging by the suit. You know how these foreigners like to overdress. Hell, I could still make out his scent. Imagine, a man wearing scent. Christ! Let me ask you, have you ever touched a dead man?


Have you ever touched a dead man?

TP: Well, my old man when he died a few years back.

DH: Pretty yucky, huh? Let me tell you, this guy was COLD! To answer your question I had no camera as there’s no way you can take pictures at night. We’re talking 400 ASA here, mate, not some 21st century technology. Nah, I reckoned I had to come back in the day to get a snap and, of course, by the time I did, the stiff was gone.

TP: So nothing ever happened? No one was caught?

DH: Yeah, that’s about it. Bloody cops, what do they know? My assistant – he’s an East End lad – says all the cops are in cahoots with the Krays. Still, the park is kinda neat and I went back the other day to take some more pictures. Not hoping for another body, or anything, just street snapping.

TP: My favorite thing.

DH: Well, what do I come across but these kids with white faces playing tennis in the park. No bloody racquet or balls, though. Kinda fun once I got into it. Even retrieved a ball for them.


No racquets. No balls

Transcribed from the original tape of December 21, 1966.

At this point the tape ran out. Hemmings took it off the recorder and tossed it to me.

DH: Well, that’s it chum. Gotta run. By the way, once yer balls drop, come back and see me. I think that my assistant, that Bailey fellow, is pretty much on the way out. Keeps trying to rip my work off, know what I mean? And I’ll need someone to load my cameras.

* * * * *

Hemmings and Antonioni are gone, sadly, but their great film monument to the Sixties lives on.

Leni Riefenstahl

Hall of Shame, Movies, Photographers

To know her work is to understand.

Few would dispute that the greatest movie about the Olympics is Olympia, Leni Riefenstahl’s 1936 masterpiece chronicling the Aryan master race in the 1936 Olympics. It shows perfect specimens of the nordic man-god ideal variously chucking the discus, running like a gazelle (albeit slower than the schwartzer untermensch Jesse Owens), and generally being, well, white and superior. Sure it’s dated (whitey is unlikely to win much of anything in the modern sham known as the Olympic Games) but the photography is superb.

The movie follows on from one far greater, perhaps the most evil film ever made, Triumph of the Will. Watch it with an open mind and you, too, will be swept up in the cleverly managed tension which builds throughout the movie until her slightly less than Aryan leader finally makes his appearance for the 1934 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg. The style is one of a succession of still images rather than that of a movie. Between Riefenstahl’s adulation of this bad man and the Propaganda Ministry’s financing, she produced the greatest fake documentary yet made. I was forcibly struck by just how plagiarized her work has become in watching the old version of Spartacus with Kirk Douglas and just about any of the tedious Star Wars epics from Geroge Lucas (a man who has never met an actor he can direct). Look at any of the crowd scenes of the armies of bad guys from either director and you have a shameless rip off of the best/worst in Riefenstahl’s propaganda masterpiece. Look at the post war The Third Man and you have all her camera angles writ large by director Carol Reed. She left an indelible mark on the documentary genre.


Hitler’s favorite film maker supervises filming

Sure.

She was just following orders.


A big lens and no moral compass, Riefenstahl participates enthusiastically in the 1934 Nuremberg Nazi party rally.

They should have whacked her at Nuremberg – where could have been more appropriate? – along with all the others in 1946, and have saved the world another 50 plus years of her denials and apologia. Her total absence of shame rightly confines her to this journal’s Hall of Shame.

Update August 30, 2024:

This Guardian review of a new documentary about this evil woman confirms what I wrote back in 2008, above. They should have whacked her at Nuremberg.