#Cinema history

[littlehorrorshop]

newly-discovered fragment of Theda Bara in Cleopatra (1917)

#Cleopatra #Theda Bara #1917 #silent film #classic film #classicfilmblr #cinema history #history #black and white #vintage #bbelcher #gif #mine #theda bara* #cleopatra*

[diioonysus]

old hollywood women + childhood pictures

#old hollywood or silent era #old hollywood #silent era #theda bara #veronica lake #mary pickford #marilyn monroe #audrey horne #judy garland #hedy lamarr #jean harlow #hazel scott #fay wray #women in history #history #cinema history

[goryhorroor]

horror + countries firsts

#horror #horror movies #le manor du diable #a page of madness #the cabinet of dr. caligari #the x-ray fiend #the mask #il mostro di frankenstein #three beggars #the awful dr. orloff #dr. jekyll and mr. hyde #the house of the devil #moviesedit #cinema history #horroredit #filmedit #cinema

[scotianostra]

One of Scotland's' most iconic films, Local Hero was released on February 18th 1983.

In the days before mobile phones we used to use things called phone boxes when we were not at home, and the phone box in Local Hero has become as iconic as the film itself.

There aren’t many films that have a 100% Tomatometer , on the movie website Rotten Tomatoes, backed up by an impressive 87% audience score, it should be all you need to know when choosing a movie to watch, expecially if you haven’t seen it before. IMDb also rate it highly with 7.4 out of 10.

Bill Forsyth’s oil-refinery comedy isn’t billed as a weepy. It is, however, a love poem to Scotland, and that’s what brings the lump to my throat.

Quirky, wry, gentle are words most often used for this comedy on the movie database site, IMDb, the starting point for many of my posts about those Scots in the acting profession in my posts. They brief story line on the site does not hint at the emotional turbulence you might soon be experiencing. So maybe it’s just me being a big sissy. Wouldn’t be the first time I lost the plot. All it says is "An American oil company sends a man to Scotland to buy up an entire village where they want to build a refinery. But things don't go as expected." The film is so much more than this and it stands the test of time much better than other Forsyth films like Comfort & Joy and Gregory's Girl, well in my opinion anyway!

Crackpot Texan oil magnate Felix Happer (Burt Lancaster) gets the idea that a small Scottish fishing village would be a marvellous acquisition for his so-rich-it-makes-you-sick company, Knox Oil and Gas, so he sends an executive gopher named MacIntyre (because that sounds Scottish, yeah – played by Peter Riegert) to close the deal and get the pipeline pencilled in.

“Mac” is met by some local “dork” called Oldsen (a young Peter Capaldi), who attempts to steer him through a tartan microculture that includes a lawyer-cum-publican/hotelier (Denis Lawson) who tapdances while standing on a chair shouting “Stella” – the name of his ever-randy wife; there is a super-hard marine biologist played by Jenny Seagrove who, after delivering a short lecture on the North Atlantic drift, ends up helping Oldsen to find that pistol in his pocket; and then there is a scene in which a very whisky-sodden Mac calls Texas from a red phone box on the harbourside, a phone box that has featured in so many peoples snaps when visiting Pennan in Banffshire.

Other bits of business in the film involve a salty Russian seafarer and overflying warplanes. You can see how it got the comedy tag, and I haven’t even mentioned the thing with the rabbit. And you can see how Mac ends up smitten.

This is all top material from a very talented writer/director, with photography and music from Glasgow born Mark Knopfler matches the acting and direction perfectly. But on first viewing I found myself asking halfway through, “What is this film actually about?” After not very much thought, I came to the conclusion that it was not a How Things Never Go According to Plan story, but a love poem to Scotland and the Scots. A bit slushy, but never mind. It’s only a film.

The scene when Mac phones to describe the Northern Lights, to me is very special, but the scene that prompted the lump in my throat at the end of the movie is when, having failed in his mission to secure the Knox refinery deal and mutilate one of Planet Earth’s most beautiful locations, Mac returns to his frigid steel-and-glass Houston apartment. He stands at his kitchen counter wondering what to do next, the hushed march of oil capitalism buzzing gently outside. He pulls from his coat pocket a handful of pebbles and shells, smelling one of them poignantly remembering as he spreads them on the work surface.

As Knopflers music gently plays he goes to his balcony and looks out to the city......the scene fades to black, then reopens 4,500 miles away, where, on the harbour side of a small Scottish fishing village, we see the phone box, perhaps ringing and the credits begin as the horns of Going Home blast out.

Others in the film include Rikki Fulton, Alex Norton, Kenny Ireland, John Gordon Sinclair and of course Burt Lancaster.

#scotland #scottish #history #cinema history #comedy gold #move #classic #Bill Forsth

[clothedwthesun]

people keep complaining about that scene in rwrb where they're dancing to get low and alex and henry stand and stare at eachother while everyone else is down but people have failed to consider that that was high camp

#cinema history #firstprince #rwrb #e.txt

[theodoradove]

With a concentration of painters, sculptors, writers, photographers, poets, performers, immigrants, beatniks, homosexuals, communists, devil worshipers, and uncategorized eccentrics, San Francisco had tolerance for everything except people from Los Angeles. -- Mark A. Vieira, Hollywood Horror: From Gothic to Cosmic, on the Bay Area in the 1950s-60s

#san francisco #cinema history #west coast is the best coast #(this is introducing a section primarily about the pauline-kael-fueled film scene in berkeley) #hollywood horror: from gothic to cosmic #mark a. vieira #also i'm pleased this font does the drop numeral vertical alignment #or whatever that is actually called #(please tell me if you know)

[mavochkapivnichna]

Wild horses of fire (1964)

#ukrainian folklore #ukrainian film #ukraine #ukrainian cinema #cinema history

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Lois Weber

Director and screenwriter Lois Weber was born in 1879 in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. Weber's 1914 film The Merchant of Venice was the first American feature film directed by a woman. In 1916, she was the highest-paid studio director, man or woman, in the country. By 1940, Weber had directed more than 130 shorts and features. She made controversial films that dealt with social issues like abortion and birth control, and pioneered techniques such as double exposure and split screen.

Lois Weber died in 1939 at the age of 60.

#film #women in film #cinema #cinema history

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Happy 100th birthday to the Little Tramp

It was 100 years ago today (Feb. 7, 1914) that Charlie Chaplin's iconic Little Tramp character first appeared in a film called Kid Auto Races at Venice. It was, like most films of the day, a short film, apparently improvised, in which Chaplin, dressed as his character, was filmed at a real-life cart race event in Venice, California, causing havoc. It wasn't Charlie's first film - he'd played a bit of a villain in an earlier film released less than a week earlier, and had already filmed his first Tramp movie, but it wouldn't come out until a few days after this one - but this was the one that introduced to the public the character he would play for the next 22 years (up until the classic Modern Times in 1936, not counting a talking variant he played in The Great Dictator a few years after that). And the level of his influence on people like Robin Williams and Jim Carrey was profound.

I wonder if the people attending the event back in 1914 realized they were seeing history in the making?

#charlie chaplin #cinema history #the little tramp #kid auto races at venice

[escapismthroughfilm]

#babylon #2022 #damien chazelle #diego calva #margot robbie #brat pitt #2020s cinema #cinema history #cinematography #movie screenshots #movie screengrabs #movie screencaps #movie frames #movie #movies #cinematography appreciation #escapism through film #the beauty of cinema #video #babylon 2022 #my ss

[vintage-ukraine]

Filming of “The Lost Letter” in Poltava Region, 1972

#The Lost Letter #cinema history #Poltava #Ukraine #Ukrainian cinema #1970s #vintage photography

[iconuk01]

#cinema history

[principiumindividuationis777]

Blacksmith Scene (1893), arguably the first true motion picture, practically speaking.

#Blacksmith Scene #William K.L. Dickson #Thomas Edison #cinema history #Victorian #black and white #historical #tw: flash

[lombardie-colorings]

Marilyn Monroe.

Photographed by Andre de Dienes, 1946.

Colored by Lombardie Colorings.

-

I've always loved Andre's work with Marilyn. I've saved a few of his photographs of her to color, and I truly appreciate the sense of groundedness and feeling of down-to-earth Andre was capable of getting from Marilyn. In his work, it's almost as if her larger-than-life persona is simply stripped away; there's a feeling of genuine earnestness from his work, and in it, we can see the most honest portrayal of the woman Marilyn really was. It's really truly masterful photography, and I'm so grateful the pair worked together for as long as they did.

#marilyn monroe #history #film #film history #cinema #cinema history #artists on tumblr #digital art #digital painting

[mirriorball]

a lovely little "animation" from the victorian era, created using a phenakistoscope ❦

#animation #vintage art #vintage animation #animations #victorian art #victorian paintings #victorian era #vintage paintings #phenakistoscope #victorian #animation history #film history #cinema history #victorian history #soft aesthetic #vintage aesthetic #princess aesthetic #1800s artist #1800s art #1800s painting #1800s aesthetic #1800s

[moonincapricorn]

Lumière ! L'aventure commence

#Youtube #cinema History