Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”…

The Berlin Film Festival will screen Fritz Lang’s original version of “Metropolis”at a gala ceremony on Feb. 10, 2010!

The film, originally feared lost, was recently discovered in an Argentine museum.

“The cult sci-fi classic, penned by Lang and Thea von Harbou in 1924, was the most expensive film ever made in Germany” when it premiered on Jan. 10, 1927.

See the full article HERE.

Invasion…they’ve finally landed!

Sunday, October 30th, 1938, at 8pm, Orson Welles’ adaptation of H. G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” was broadcast to an unsuspecting America. Howard Koch had rewritten the story (with extensive revisions by Orson Welles) as a radio drama. The programme began when an announcer said, “The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air in The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells.”

Orson Welles came on air (as himself) and announced: “We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own…”

After his introduction a weather report was broadcast, this was followed by music from Ramon Raquello and his orchestra. The dance music was then interrupted by a bulletin from Mount Jennings Observatory in Chicago where explosions had been observed on Mars (so it was claimed). The dance music was resumed only to be interrupted once more by another news bulletin, this time Professor Richard Pierson, an astronomer at the Princeton Observatory is interviewed by newsman, Carl Phillips.

During the interview Pierson is handed a note which Phillips explains to listeners contains news of a huge shock near Princeton – it was “almost earthquake intensity” and must have been a meteorite or something…

A following news flash states: “It is reported that at 8:50 p.m. a huge, flaming object, believed to be a meteorite, fell on a farm in the neighborhood of Grovers Mill, New Jersey, twenty-two miles from Trenton.”Carl Phillips reports from Grovers Mill that the meteorite is a 30-yard wide metal cylinder that is making a hissing sound. The top is rotating. Then Phillips reports:

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying thing I have ever
witnessed. . . . Wait a minute! Someone’s crawling. Someone or . . . something. I can see peering out of that black hole two luminous disks . . . are they eyes? It might be a face. It might be . . . good heavens, something’s wriggling out of the shadow like a gray snake. Now it’s another one, and another one, and another one. They look like tentacles to me. There, I can see the thing’s body. It’s large as a bear and it glistens like wet leather. But that face, it . . . ladies and gentlemen, it’s indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it, it’s so awful. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is kind of V-shaped with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate.”

So his report continued:

“A humped shape is rising out of the pit. I can make out a small beam of light against a mirror. What’s that? There’s a jet of flame springing from the mirror, and it leaps right at the advancing men. It strikes them head on! Good Lord, they’re turning into flame!

“Now the whole field’s caught fire. The woods . . . the barns . . . the gas tanks of automobiles . . it’s spreading everywhere. It’s coming this way. About twenty yards to my right…”

Silence followed. Then an announcer: “Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been handed a message that came in from Grovers Mill by telephone. Just one moment please. At least forty people, including six state troopers, lie dead in a field east of the village of Grovers Mill, their bodies burned and distorted beyond all possible recognition.”

The Mercury group’s Halloween show continued with more of the same. Listeners across the states were stunned. Announcements are made that the state militia is mobilizing, seven thousand men, but soon they are burned-up by the Martian “heat ray”. The “Secretary of the Interior,” (sounding just like Franklin Roosevelt) speaks to the shocked audience: “Citizens of the nation: I shall not try to conceal the gravity of the situation that confronts the country, nor the concern of your government in protecting the lives and property of its people. . . . we must continue the performance of our duties each and every one of us, so that we may confront this destructive adversary with a nation united, courageous, and consecrated to the preservation of human supremacy on this earth.”

“All across the United States, listeners reacted. Thousands of people called radio stations, police and newspapers. Many in the New England area loaded up their cars and fled their homes. In other areas, people went to churches to pray. People improvised gas masks. Miscarriages and early births were reported. Deaths, too, were reported but never confirmed. Many people were hysterical. They thought the end was near.

Hours after the program had ended and listeners had realized that the Martian invasion was not real, the public was outraged that Orson Welles had tried to fool them. Many people sued. Others wondered if Welles had caused the panic on purpose.”

They’d had a brief glimpse of the Waiting Darkness.

“The Haunting”

And with Halloween fast approaching, the original theatrical trailer for the classic Robert Wise 1963 ghost film, “The Haunting”.

“Turn of the Screw 2

And just for the sake of it, a scene from the 1961 film “The Innocents” based, of course, on “The Turn Of The Screw” by Henry James.

“Turn of the Screw”

Benjamin Britten’s opera “Turn of the Screw” (adapted from James’ novella of the same name) is probably the spookiest opera in the entire history of opera!

See the short clip below.

Kazuhiko Nakamura

In praise of Kazuhiko Nakamura – one of the best!

The Vampire

In his work titled “The Vampire” Edvard Munch depicts the simplest of scenes: a woman with rich red hair (flowing blood red?) leaning over the neck of a strangely passive male. This male might be crying, and to the casual observer, the woman attempting to comforting him. But no. That was not what Munch had in mind. Look at the shadows surrounding them both: the waiting darkness is threatening to swallow them; here there is alienation, a sense of loss, a sense that reality itself is endangered – embodied in the form of the painting, and in Munch’s use of colour.

Originally titled “Love and Pain” the painting was thought by some to represent the troubled artist’s visits to prostitutes – his empty search for love in the physicality of the flesh; others felt it was a macabre vision of his favourite sister following her death. It certainly created outrage and controversy.

August Strindberg wrote a prose-poem on Munch’s paintings:

“Golden rain falls on the unfortunate kneeling creature who craves of his evil genius the boon of death by the prick of a needle. Golden fibres which bind to earth and to suffering. A rain of blood flows in torrents over the accursed head of him who seeks the misery, the divine misery of being loved, that is – of loving.”

Vision of the last judgement

Blake’s vision of the end of things material, seems an appropriate point to commence a blog on the waiting darkness – Blake was a visionary, poet, painter, engraver, radical and genius. He saw into the darkness, spoke to the angels, and created a universe of emblem and symbol which lives on long after him…and will continue long after all of us!