Fox Movietone news and newsreels

I will probably have a more comprehensive post later in the week, but for now here are several interesting Fox Movietone Newsreels and news shorts:

Thomas Edison dies; with clips from an interview of Edison on his 84th birthday.





The first sound recording of Gandhi. The sound is rough here, but there is a transcript on the original YouTube page.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY9Avdn2Z38&feature=related



Shaw swims, discusses the U.S. Constitution, etc.





The 1932 Presidential campaign; the death of Rin Tin Tin





And now for something completely different.

A few interesting film and music clips

I thought I would post few interesting videos I've seen lately.

Eugeniuz Bodo was one of the great stars of Polish cinema in the1930's. He died in a Soviet labor camp in 1943.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugeniusz_Bodo

Here he is in the 1937 Polish film "Pietro Wyzej" (Upstairs).





The quality is pretty poor in places, but this is great!





"Snake Hips" - sung by Sharon Lynn, with Ann Pennington dancing. This is from the 1929 film "Happy Days", which was the second wide screen film ever made. However the wide screen print no longer exists.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020949/






The best known version of "Mack the Knife" (Moriat) was recorded by Bobby Darin in 1958 , but the first recorded version was by Harald Paulsen from 1928. The song is from "Der Dreigrochenoper" (The Threepenny Opera). Paulsen played Mack the Knife in the original 1928 production in Berlin.







http://www.originalsproject.us/

The Originals Project is a great site with lots of information on obscure original versions of songs that later became hits for other performers. There will be a post soon on some very interesting original versions.

Happy Halloween! - horror films from the silent era.

For my Halloween post I thought I would focus on some early horror films.

Here's a good introduction the the genre.

http://www.filmsite.org/horrorfilms.html

Many of you may be familiar with the French director Georges Melies, whose pioneering films include "A Trip to the Moon" (1902). His directed the very first horror film, "Le Manior du Diable",from 1896.

Here is a brief excerpt, with modern narration.




Three more by Melies:











The first version of Frankenstein was filmed by Edison Studios in 1910. The quality is poor in places, There is only one known surviving copy, and it remained unseen by all except for its owner for many years.



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0001223/

Here is F.W. Murnaus's 1922 film "Nosferatu", the first filmed version of the Dracula legend. Murnau was successfully sued by Bram Stoker's widow for copyright infringement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._W._Murnau





There are several very interesting films from the silent era here.


http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=91D988B577595EA6&page=1



This is a great bibliography of horror films, from 1895-1950

http://www.classichorror.free-online.co.uk/azmovies.htm

I will discuss the Carl Dreyer film "Vampyr" in a separate post on Dreyer.

Sound and color in early film

From the beginning of film history, there were attempts to incorporate sound and color into film. The early attempts are very primitive by today's standards, but very interesting.

Edison's first attempt at incorporating sound and film involved the use of the kinetophone, in which film was watched a film through the peepholes of a kinetoscope. The cabinet of the kinetoscope contained a phonograph, and the viewer/listener heard the sound through a pair of ear tubes.

Information about kinetoscopes and kinetophones can be found here.

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bledison_kinetoscope.htm

http://inventors.about.com/od/kstartinventions/a/Kinetoscope.htm

Here is the earliest Edison sound film, from 1894.





I don't know anything about this film, but it's very cool.




Sound films really came of age through the development of "sound on film" where the sound was optically recorded on the side of a film strip. The helped solve the problem of synchronization, which was poor in earlier sound films. Several researchers developed a "sound on film' process but it was the one developed by Lee De Forest that became commercially successful.

Although the first full length film to use De Forest's process was "The Jazz Singer" from 1927, it was used in several shorts, starting in 1923.

Here's a great one, featuring Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake.



Here's a preview of a future post on color in early hand painted film, from 1895.




The Wikipedia article on the history of sound in film is really good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_film