Metropolis

Today I went to the Tampa Theatre to see a one-time only showing of the newly restored 1927 movie Metropolis.

It's always great to see movies in this theater because inside it looks like this:



It was considered a "movie palace" when it was built in 1926 and may have shown Metropolis on its original American tour.

Here's the trailer:



The movie had only ever been shown in its original length in Europe, after which it was shortened for world distribution. The cut parts were thought lost forever, but they recently found 25 extra minutes and what we saw was the result of their incorporation.

The Tampa Theatre is one of only twelve theaters in America to screen the movie. Our theater wasn't the first to screen it, but it was the first in North America to present the movie with the original score, played by organ, as it was originally shown in Europe.

I got there an hour and a half early and found a line:



The movie sold out. (1400 people can be seated in the theater.)

This is one of the people who made the show such a success:



He came from Michigan to play our Mighty Wurlitzer Organ, the 1920's version of surround-sound. He replaced an entire orchestra, even pushing buttons to control percussion instruments. Well, he almost replaced an entire orchestra. He did have to pound on the organ when someone on screen was pounding wood.

This is him at the organ's controls:



While the movie was playing the organ's controls retracted part-way into the stage and the organist watched the movie along with the audience, making sure the sound stayed in sync with the action on screen.

The organ is a powerful instrument, they said there are ten tons of it hidden in the walls. When you saw machines moving on screen, the organ would have a sound effect for them and you could feel the sound in your body, like you were right in front of the machines. All the sound effects were incorporated into an orchestral score, and it was amazing to hear one man perform everything so well.

The movie itself was good. It had strong political messages often presented in Christian terms that weren't offensive (I say that as an atheist) and also seemed pertinent to our times.

It's a sci-fi movie where poor workers and elite thinkers live in separate communities. They don't understand each other, even though they need each other to survive, because they never intermingle. Kind of like America today.

The heroine is a community organizer working out of a church. She tries getting the two sides together, telling them they are all brothers. She literally brings a group of poor children to the rich community and says "Look, these are your brothers!"

Some of the political messages are easy to spot, because they are shown in bold text on screen (with exclamation points). In the movie, the heroine is mainly talking to the poor. She doesn't want the workers to be violent because the elites are their brothers, and someone is sure to come along soon to bring them together. In reality, she's talking to the movie audience, both the workers and the thinkers.

"Look, these are your brothers!"

Something to remember in the heat of American politics, because we all need each other and attacking each other will only destroy us.

I will leave you with that thought, and some shots of the theater's decorative details:

Cover girl: 1807

--From La Belle assemblée--

Every issue of La Belle assemblée had a beautiful woman on the cover, "photoshopped" in effect by an artist's hand. They were all celebrities, but also royalty and therefore politically powerful.

When your celebrities are movie stars I suppose you consider it fashionable to be informed of their latest movies. Likewise, when your celebrities are politicians, politics becomes fashionable for you.

How much of a person's "depth" is just just chasing after what is fashionable; chasing after stars?

Lassie: 1868

A draper at Tungkwan had a black dog, who was sagacious and fond of his master. On one occasion the draper while returning from market, where he had been selling his cloth, was attacked, robbed, and half killed. The dog followed the thief, and never left him until he went into a house, when the sagacious animal ran to his master's brother and made so many extraordinary demonstrations that the brother was induced to follow the dog and was led to the spot where the wounded man lav. The dog still appeared dissatisfied and eventually induced the draper's brother to follow him to the house of the thief. When they reached it the dog pinned the thief by the leg, the cloth was found in the house and the rascal was thus brought to justice.

--From The China Magazine--

I can't tell if this really happened, but I know people like these type of stories. They like imagining their pets as intelligent, almost human. Isn't this vanity? If your dog likes you, and your dog is intelligent, that means you must be good because an intelligent creature likes you. I suppose this also explains the "my child is so smart"  phenomenon, and it probably carries over to people's feeling about their friends.

Everyone I like probably isn't as nice as I think they are!

Movie Night

I was trying to make a list of my favorite Chinese movies, and I couldn't help but notice almost all of them are somehow connected to either Taiwan or Hong Kong. Mainland Communist China, with its huge population, doesn't seem to be generating any content entertainment-wise; nothing that I enjoy anyway.

A few days ago El Pollo Real said:

Maybe I'm wrong but I don't see an emerging entertainment culture which is China-based.

Dude, I think you're right.

The one movie from the list I might call a Mainland Chinese production, is Hero. The director of the movie was forced to perform hard labor for over a decade. Most Chinese intellectuals of his generation had a similar experience, or died in concentration camps. For several years all universities were effectively shut down, and China started with a mainly rural population, so it's not surprising that they are short talented people. It's why I don't expect the Chinese to take over the world anytime soon.

Anyway, here's my list (you're welcome to offer suggestions in the comments):

Fallen Angels



In the Mood for Love



2046



Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon:



Hero:



Eat Drink Man Woman:

(Worth it just to look at the food.)



Master of the Flying Guillotine:



Saving Face:



Almost any non-Hollywood Jackie Chan movie.

---

One year ago: 1860

Where is the face we loved to greet,
The form that graced the fireside seat,
The gentle smile, the winning way,
That bless'd our life-path day by day?
Where fled those accents, soft and low,
That thrilled our hearts "one year ago?"

--From Harper's New Monthly Magazine--

I've spent a year blogging, today. Along the way, I've skimmed a lot of magazines and read a lot of books partway through. Some things I put a great deal of thought into, and other things were happy accidents.

Looking at history is looking at other people's memories. Looking at nature is looking at the world around us. The sophist wonders: '...if anyone really "learns lessons" from history, or if we just interpret everything to fit our preconception of the world.' To that I say: if we are controlled by our preconceptions and our preconceptions are false, then let's flood ourselves with facts; nothing weakens a lie like lots of facts, and weakening a lie is the first step to dispelling it.

Playing with your food: 1667

This is a continuation of yesterday's post. The philosophers, having bled a sheep until it was faint and given it a blood transfusion from a calf, have noticed the sheep seems strong again:

Then resolving to bleed the Sheep to death, we bound her the second time, and opened the emittent part of the Vein again; whereupon having bled about 60 ounces, she fell into Convulsions; and after the loss of about 5 ounces more, she died upon the place: and being dressed by the Butcher, there did not, in all the usual places, appear above 3 ounces of blood; and the whole Sheep looked a lovely white; and the meat of it (to the taste of those, that eat of it) was very sweet.

The Sheep being dead, we resolved likewise to see the Calf bleed to death...

...about 25 ounces of blood, of a very lovely and vivid colour...

--From Philosophical transactions--

I find it interesting that they call the sheep a "she" instead of an "it", have no problem slaughtering and eating the sheep after curing it, and then comment on the loveliness of the flesh of the sheep and the blood spewing from the calf.

Someone might say: "If you saw an animal being slaughtered you would have a problem eating it." But if everyone around you acted like nothing gross was going on, and you didn't have the idea that it was gross in your head, it wouldn't bother you at all. Thirty years ago I might have made the statement that no one in America would eat raw fish, but now sushi is sold in supermarkets. Has the idea that eating raw fish is gross stopped people from eating it, or encouraged it?

Time for reflection

Do cats care when a new decade arises? No, and why should they. Every day is the beginning of a new ten year period. But human minds seem to find some special fascination with the end of each year, decade, or century. Not that this is wrong, per se. What bothers me, is that people wait until the end of these periods to reflect on the past, when they should be reflecting on the past every day of their lives.

Evidence of cause and effect doesn't just make itself shown at the end of years or decades, it's much more elusive than that; sometimes easily visible, and sometimes popping up at odd intervals. Look for it at only certain times, and you may never see a thing, or lack the abilities to see anything useful.

Clouds

I've read about, but never seen, people who paint only clouds. I'd like to see a room full of canvases painted by old masters, of nothing but bits of sky with clouds in them. Or an entire museum; each room a different time or weather condition. How lovely that would be!

Envy

The rich don't know how to be rich anymore. There's no real reason to envy them, except maybe out of habit. I mean, what do they have today, that an ordinary person couldn't purchase a pretty good substitute for? Or make themselves? No one's going to be touring their houses in a hundred years. They're probably not even made out of materials that would last that long.

Home Sweet Home

We tend to think of "home" as a fixed place, but I think of it as some sort of emotional excretion. It just kind of collects when we stay in one place; like we shed "home" particles wherever we happen to be.

Reflections on Francis Bacon: 2009

Often disagreements about God degenerate into shouting matches because the participants aren't there to discuss, they are there to live out a revenge fantasy against those who have taken away their faith in God, or made them have the faith in the first place.

The deists think the proponents of science are like they themselves used to be, people who have given in to doubt but not yet repented. The hard-core atheists think the deists are like they used to be, proponents of ideas that will lead to shameful self-realizations. Both are worried about backsliding and science gets stuck in the middle.

But what neither of them understand is that some of us have faith in science; we haven't given up our faith as either of them have, we never lost it. And I call it faith because of the enormity of the questions we seek to answer and the inadequacy of the tools with which we seek to answer them: our fragile human reason and our frail human senses.

To make a call: 1898

To "make a call" has an inelegant robustness of tone to one not used to hearing it; but Americans cannot plead that they are not used to hearing it. And the expression is not only general, but universal here. "Paying visits," the neat substitute for the rougher phrase, is not yet in colloquial use.

If you "made a call" you were visiting someone in person; people had telephones, but they would "call someone up" if they decided to do "telephoning".

It is a good rule to stay only fifteen minutes at a formal, at any rate a first call, unless, of course, urged to stay longer for some special reason.

When you did make your call you only got fifteen minutes to leave an impression; the original fifteen minutes of fame.

Above all, don't keep her standing an hour, while you lecture or "orate," or go over somebody's history, while everybody else sits about looking foolish.

Calling was kind of like the acting out a blog. Someone would sit at home and a stream of people would come in leaving comments; some of the comments were weird and went on forever.

Put your card on a convenient place in the hall, or on the tray the servant holds out for you, and mention your name to the manservant, if there is one.

You would leave little cars with your name on them, to let people know you were there.

This also makes me think of blogs. Sometimes I see blogs as establishments I visit. I make the rounds every once in awhile to make sure everyone is still alive.

Leaving other people's cards is a rather precarious business, and done at the caller's risk! It is not pleasant to meet your hostess driving in just as you sail out with the consciousness of having done a good stroke for a friend.

And no sock-puppets!
--From Etiquette for Americans--

Free Music, 1836 edition

I can remember getting magazines with CDs full of free songs, but in the past it was not unusual to see sheet music printed right in the pages of your magazine. Most of the music in this volume of The Lady's Book is dead, you wont see recordings of it anywhere, no matter how popular the publisher said it was. But this particular piece of sheet music is from an opera that is still performed:



Unfortunately, I couldn't tell which piece in the opera matches the sheet music because of something very strange. The opera is Italian, but the sheet music is in English:



Was this to make it more accessible to magazine readers or how it was originally performed? To find out I went digging for information in this book:

Mrs. Wood, formerly Miss Paton, and Lady Lennox, of London, her husband, Joseph Wood, a tenor with a sweet voice...

Joseph Wood must be the "Mr. Wood" mentioned on the sheet music:

This company brought out "Cinderella," "Guy Mannering," and, on February 14th [1835], for the first time, Bellini's delightful opera " La Sonnambula,"—Amina, Mrs. Wood ; Bodolpho, Brough ; Almno, Wood ; Alettio, Walton ; Lisa, Mrs. Rowbotham. This opera was a great success. It held the theatre for fifteen nights. The managers were so much impressed with their good fortune that they commissioned Thomas Sully to paint a full- length portrait of Mrs. Wood as Amina. He produced a splendid likeness, and the picture decorated the lobby of the Chestnut Street Theatre for many years.

And this must be the performance. It doesn't tell me if the opera was performed in English or Italian, though. But there is more:

(Talking about another opera) The translation of the libretto was by J. Reese Fry and William H. Fry, and they gave great attention to the scenery, costumes, and accessories.

"Translation" could mean "interpretation." However, in talking about even other operas:

...his first appearance upon the American stage, translated from the Italian libretto, and rendered with the music of Rossini.

...and during her engagement introduced for the first time on the American stage " Cinderella" in English, with the original music by Rossini...

They played the " Marriage of Figaro," and some other pieces, in English.

I still can't say if the opera from the sheet music was performed in English or Italian, but I do know that some operas were translated and performed in English.

There are opera purists who only want to hear vocals performed in the original language. There are also people who think of translations as innovative. But when the translation is almost as old as the opera itself I have to wonder about claims of authenticity and innovation.

I guess I would tend to side with the purists, but I still want my innovations. I wont pretend to be an opera fan, but this was the only version of the opera I found interesting, and if there were more like it I might change my mind.

Now I need to find it on DVD.

UPDATE: Found it! It's not an entire opera, just a collection of arias shot in a music-video style. One reviewer said it was awful because it wasn't "serious and sensible;" sounds perfect to me.