Weekend links 785

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A 1933 poster for the second of Fritz Lang’s Mabuse films.

• Good news for those who missed the original run (from 2002–2013), Arthur Magazine is now available for the first time as a complete set of free PDFs. I was laterally involved with the magazine from the outset, mostly as a remote supporter, but I also did several covers and interior illustrations for the early issues.

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler by Norbert Jacques (translated by Lilian A. Clare); and two books by J. Sheridan Le Fanu: Short Fiction, and a novella, The Room in the Dragon Volant.

• New music: Spilla by Ensemble Nist-Nah; and Sea-swallowed Wands by Jolanda Moletta and Karen Vogt.

With his compulsions for systems and architecture, his command of shadows and symbolism-imbued sets and props, Lang is never less than arresting. Yet few of the films make complete statements; Lang’s art, in this period, is seemingly as much a fugitive as are his archetypal characters. That is, until the moment that his long journey to the direct subject matter and cultural framework of the 1950s United States, addressed in the terms and by the means available to him in Hollywood, abruptly comes to superb fruition with The Big Heat.

Jonathan Lethem on Fritz Lang in Hollywood and one of the greatest noir pictures of the 1950s

• This week in the Bumper Book of Magic: an enthusiastic review at The Joey Zone. My thanks to Mr Shea!

• Mixes of the week: A mix for The Wire by Nina Garcia; and Isolated Mix 133 by Pentagrams Of Discordia.

• At Colossal: David Romero’s digital recreations of Frank Lloyd Wright’s unrealised buildings.

• At Smithsonian magazine: John Last investigates the history of the Tarot.

• At Planet Paul: An interview with artist Malcolm Ashman.

• At the Daily Heller: A porno gag mag with attitude.

Hodgsonia

Das Testaments Des Mabuse (1984) by Propaganda | (The Ninth Life Of…) Dr Mabuse (1984) by Propaganda | Abuse (Here) (1985) by Propaganda

Weekend links 784

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An illustration by HB Ford for The Violet Fairy Book (1906), edited by Andrew Lang.

• New music: An Aesthetic – Experiments in Tape by Hawksmoor; Leylines (2025 remaster) by Aes Dana; A Fragile Geography (10th Anniversary Reissue) by Rafael Anton Irisarri.

• “Skoda Auto designers reimagine Ferat Vampire car from cult classic 1981 Czech horror film”.

• At Colossal: Chris Ware illustrates a postwoman’s day to celebrate 250 years of USPS.

Seen today, the failure of Sorcerer looks like a grim prophecy of where the film industry would be headed in the years to come. It signaled that the creative ambitions of the New Hollywood, and its indulgence of stubborn renegade auteurs, had been cast aside for a new and dispiriting blockbuster ethos. Decades later, that ethos is still with us: a Hollywood dominated by digitally smoothed, effects-encrusted moviemaking, where every backdrop looks fake (even the real ones) and action sequences carry no physical weight. It’s a wretched landscape, and Sorcerer positively towers over it. To watch the film now, from its electric opening moments through its gaspingly bleak denouement, is to encounter something more than just a magnificent ruin or an object of cultish reclamation: a thwarted masterwork that is thwarted no longer.

Justin Chang on the bleak magic of William Friedkin’s Sorcerer.

• At the BFI: The Red Shoes wallpaper by the film’s designer Hein Heckroth.

All This Violence by Caspar Brötzmann Massaker.

• RIP Lalo Schifrin and Rebekah del Rio.

• The Strange World of…Jon Spencer.

In Ultra-Violet (1983) by Cinema 90 | Violet Ray Gas (2009) by Violet | Violetta (2012) by Demdike Stare

Sanquirico’s theatrical settings

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Work-related research over the past couple of weeks has had me looking for pictures of theatres in the 19th century, especially backstage views. The latter proved harder to find than I expected although I did turn up a few useful reference images after scouring the picture libraries. Nuova raccolta di scene teatrali (1828) by Alessandro Sanquirico is an Italian book that surfaced during the searches, not something I wanted but it’s another collection of imaginary architectural views which I always like to see. Sanquirico was set designer for La Scala in Milan so most of these designs are for opera sets, although several are labelled “ballo“, a type of theatrical dance which evidently required dramatic settings. As to the designs, there’s more variety than you find among earlier generations of theatrical designers like the Bibienas, a family of artists who specialised in very detailed Baroque interiors. The Romantic era demanded tempestuous drama and greater spectacle, hence Sanquirico’s views of castles, caves, prisons, conflagrations and fanciful depictions of the ancient world. The selection that follows is only a small sample; the book has 242 plates in all.

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Continue reading “Sanquirico’s theatrical settings”

Weekend links 783

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An illustration by William Heath Robinson for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1914).

• New music: How To Shoulder The Radiance Of Revelations by Dadub; Leviathan by Stephen Roddy; and Echoes Of The Hollow Earth by Cryo Chamber.

• At Sight & Sound: “Every time I look at the film, it gets better.” Stephen Soderbergh on Jaws.

• At Public Domain Review: The Language of Form: Lothar Schreyer’s Kreuzigung (1920).

Leafing through the merveilleux-scientifique novels today allows for a dual rediscovery: firstly, it uncovers the previously unrecognised richness of Belle Époque scientific fiction, which did not perish with the works of Verne. The stories take in journeys to Mars, solar cataclysms, reading of auras, psychic control, weighing of souls, death rays, alien invasions, even strolls among the infinitesimally small. But exploring the genre also offers insights into the cultural history of the era, marked by a significant permeability between science and pseudo-science. Reading this work, we can learn a lot about the aspirations, fears and beliefs of early 20th-century Europe.

Fleur Hopkins-Loféron on the evolution of French science fiction after Jules Verne

• Mix of the week: A Twin Peaks mix for The Wire by Lori Eschler & Dean Hurley.

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Kefir.

Patrick Wolf’s favourite albums.

ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon

Frou-Frou Foxes In Midsummer Fires (1990) by Cocteau Twins | Midsummer Night (2010) by The Time And Space Machine | Midsummer Boulevard (2022) by Hawksmoor

Parade de Satie

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The first chimes of a period which began in 1912 and will only end with my death, were rung for me by Diaghilev, one night in the Place de la Concorde. We were going home, having had supper after the show. Nijinsky was sulking as usual. He was walking ahead of us. Diaghilev was scoffing at my absurdities. When I questioned him about his moderation (I was used to praise), he stopped, adjusted his eyeglass and said: ‘Astonish me.’ The idea of surprise, so enchanting in Apollinaire, had never occurred to me.

In 1917, the evening of the first performance of Parade, I did astonish him.

This very brave man listened, white as a sheet, to the fury of the house. He was frightened. He had reason to be. Picasso, Satie and I were unable to get back to the wings. The crowd recognized and threatened us. Without Apollinaire, his uniform and the bandage round his head, women armed with pins would have put out our eyes.

Jean Cocteau (again), writing in The Difficulty of Being about the opening night of Parade, the “ballet réaliste” he created for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Erik Satie wrote the music, Léonide Massine choreographed the dance, and Pablo Picasso designed the costumes and decor, with assistance from Giacomo Balla, one of the Italian Futurists. The reception for Parade wasn’t as thoroughly hostile as that received by Le Sacre du Printemps a few years earlier but there was bait enough for the reactionaries, with ragtime quotes in the dance and the music, and an everyday setting in which a group of street performers attempt to summon a crowd to see their show. Other details were overtly avant-garde: some of Picasso’s costumes were more like wearable cardboard sculptures, while Cocteau further antagonised the audience (and the composer) by adding the sounds of a typewriter, siren, pistol and steamship whistle to the music. The most significant response came from Apollinaire when he described the ballet in the programme notes as “une sorte de surréalisme“, giving the world a new word which we still use today.

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Parade de Satie by Koji Yamamura is an animated presentation of Satie’s music which sees the characters from the ballet—a Chinese magician, a small American girl, the acrobats, a pantomime horse—jumping and dancing around the screen while Satie, Picasso and Cocteau observe the proceedings. It’s a lively and witty film, probably more lively than the ballet itself when the hand-drawn performers are less encumbered by gravity or their unwieldy outfits. Yamamura has directed a single animated feature, Dozens of Norths, and many more shorts like Parade de Satie, including films based on a story by Franz Kafka (A Country Doctor) and the life of Eadweard Muybridge (Muybridge’s Strings). Being a pioneer of motion photography and inventor of the Zoopraxiscope, Muybridge is an attractive subject for animators. The naked figures from his studies of human and animal motion turn up in Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python animations, while Gérald Frydman directed a short biographical film about Muybridge, Le Cheval de Fer, in 1984.

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Previously on { feuilleton }
Jean Cocteau: Autoportrait d’un inconnu
Orphée posters
Cocteau and Lovecraft
Cocteau drawings
Querelle de Brest
Halsman and Cocteau
La Belle et la Bête posters
The writhing on the wall
Le livre blanc by Jean Cocteau
Cocteau’s sword
Cristalophonics: searching for the Cocteau sound
Cocteau at the Louvre des Antiquaires
La Villa Santo Sospir by Jean Cocteau