"In Soviet Russia, our dogs have twice as many heads as they do in the Capitalist West!"
Funny thing! Russians experimenting with dogs! I wonder what the reasoning was.
"Hmm, those Americans are winning this sciency spacey race-thingy... What to do, what to do...? Da, of course! We take a puppy head and put it on another doggy, and then we have a pet than can carry a newspaper in one mouth and a pair of slippers in the other! Na zdorovye, comrades!"
The Soviet scientist behind this and similar experiments was Sergei Brukhonenko. The following film is perhaps not for the faint of heart, but hugely fascinating for people with morbid interests like me. It's called Experiments in the Revival of Organisms (D.I. Yashin, 1940) and it's in public domain. The version below has English narration.
Of course, these kinds of experiments were executed mostly for propaganda reasons, showing Big Brother of the West how high tech the Dr. Frankensteins of Vodka County were. The dogs didn't live for long, and the reactions on external stimuli of the separated head are mostly reflexes. But yeah. Give me your opinions.
"I am a broker. There has to be some of them too."
Ah, come on - Swedish culture is fun. But since interest in my previous post on Hasse Ekman was quite absent (shame on you - I think that's a hate crime), perhaps one of the more eccentric Swedish film makers is more in your taste. I mean, we are rather weird at times.
"Abstinence or, for those who have someone, prolonged fidelity, are advised."
Roy Andersson is known for his bizarre and stale staging and absurd long takes, making almost every scene in his films inconveniently humorous. It's a spot on parody on Swedish manners: we do not like to speak in public, we are stale and uncomfortable with the unknown (whether it be strangers or foreign culture) and Jesus, we have no humor.
[Interestingly enough, this somewhat malicious portrait of Sweden is the extreme opposite of the other picture of us: the sexually promiscuous population that loves to bathe topless. Can't the world decide if we are boring or exotic? I feel this fact gives me great difficulties in defining my own personality.]
"You know - just about anything could suddenly turn up down there, in the warmth and damp."
Anyways. Roy Andersson, nicknamed "slapstick Ingmar Bergman) has made several popular films and TV commercials, often leaving the audience scratching their heads wondering whether to laugh at it, love it or reject it. Of course, if you choose to reject Roy Andersson you have no taste in art at all.
What I will now introduce to you is a work of his called Something Has Happened (Någonting har hänt, 1987), a short film that deals with the (then) ongoing AIDS paranoia. The humor in this piece is not the disease itself (we Swedes do still not maliciously laugh at disasters, mind you), but rather the different approaches doctors and the public take to explain the origins of the disease.
It was of course the homosexuals' fault. Or was it the monkeys? Or black people? It's really bizarre to see a an embarrassing "professor" trying to share his Negro-in-the-damp-jungles-of-Africa theory to a classroom full of wax-doll looking students, accompanied by bored coughing. The above mentioned blocking of the actors, stale and bizarre like a 16th century painting, add to the weird humor.
"It could have been a Negro who was wandering about down there one day - like this."
Something Has Happened was shown at film festivals world wide in 1993, and was obviously well received. I would have loved to hear the audience's opinion. Note that the film is not a documentary- it's a staged satire on common assumptions and theories at the time.
"And now to something completely different" (yes, I'm well-read on stiff humor from all nations) - Roy Andersson has in 40 years (1967-2007) only made nine movies, according to IMDb. Quality rather than quantity, it seems.
"It's very, very natural."
Give Roy 24 minutes of your time, or face a slow, painful death by ingesting plague infested rats.
Life, is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming. -Myrna Loy
Myrna Loy was born Myrna Williams in Radersburg, Montana, 1905. Her first name was given to her by her father after a train station that he liked the name of. She was of Welsh and Scottish ancestry, and when she was seven years old she moved to Helena, Montana with her family. At the age of twelve she made her first stage appearance in a dance she had choreographed herself.
"I was a homely kid with freckles that came out every spring and stuck on me till Christmas."
Picture of Myrna Williams in 1918.
When she was thirteen (1918) her father died, and she moved to Los Angeles with her mother and younger brother. At that time motion pictures was still a new phenomenon, and she soon joined the enormous wave of actresses swarming the studios, all wanting to become the next Mary Pickford. She started it off by improving her dancing skills and performing at local stage productions.
Myrna became a dance instructor in a building only 300 feet from the MGM studios, so she used to walk over to the gates and stand there, dreaming of becoming an actress. After six years of hard work as a dance instructor and theatre actress before someone in the film industry finally discovered the talanted red-haired beauty. In 1925 Myrna changed her surname from Williams to Loy and was cast i her first role for Warner Bros. Pictures, What Price Beauty? with silent film actress Nita Naldi, Myrna ironically credited as "Vamp", a role she for a time would be typecast as, along with other forms of exotic women and mistresses.
Myrna Loy in The Crimson City (1928).
In 1928 Myrna was given the leading part in The Crimson City, playing a Chinese woman named Isobel or State Street Sadie (reference to Sadie Thompson, perhaps?). Others in the cast include Conrad Nagel and Anna Mae Wong (whom Myrna was chosen for the part over!). The same year she also had a part as "Girl in China" in the silent comedy A Girl in Every Port (also starring Louise Brooks as "Marie, girl in France"), which in 1952 was remade with Groucho Marx in the leading role.
When the talking pictures era began, Myrna's characters began to destinguish from one another. She appeared as a chorus girl in The Jazz Singer (1927), and in The Desert Song (1929) she improvised a foreign accent, sang and danced. But her real breakthrough was when she got a part in a crime melodrama with MGM Studios, Manhattan Melodrama (1934), opposite Clark Gable and her future co-actor William Powell. The director was a man named W. S. Van Dyke, who saw the potential of Myrna Loy. It is said that he, to test her sense of humour, pushed her into a swimming pool at a Hollywood party once. She passed the test, and Van Dyke saw to it that she got the leading part in his next film, The Thin Man (1934).
"I never enjoyed my work more than when I worked with William Powell. He was a brilliant actor, a delightful companion, a great friend and above all, a true gentleman."
Nick and Nora Charles, and their devoted dog Asta.
It was as Nora Charles, the sophisticated and loyal wife to detective Nick Charles (played by earlier mentioned William Powell), that Myrna Loy made her big breakthrough. To be able to starr in it, she gave the crew a deadline on three weeks, since she had signed for another picture afterwards. The picture was filmed in two weeks, and was a huge success, mostly due to the perfect chemistry between the two main actors and the snappy dialogue. The Thin Man got five sequels, all starring Myrna Loy and William Powell.
Myrna Loy and William Powell became such a popular film couple that they not only made several Thin Man films together, but all in all they made 14 pictures together. During this period she was one of Hollywoods busiest and highest paid actors, and made films such as Wife vs. Secretary (1936) with Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, Petticoat Fever (1936) with Robert Montgomery and Libeled Lady (1936) with William Powell, Jean Harlow and Spencer Tracy. But when World War II broke out she abandoned her acting career to focus on the war effort, working closely with the Red Cross. She toured frequently to raise war fonds, and was so outspokenly against Adolf Hitler that her name appeared on his blacklist. She fought for Civil Rights and was active in UNESCO.
Her movie career slowed down after that. She appeared as Aunt Bea in the Doris Day thriller Midnight Lace (1960), but after that she didn't act in a film until 1969 and The April Fools with Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve. She returned to the stage, but wasn't over-the-top active their neither.
"I admire some of the people on the screen today, but most of them look like everybody else. In our days we had individuality. Pictures were more sophisticated. All this nudity is too excessive and it is getting very boring. It will be a shame if it upsets people so much that it brings on the need for censorship. I hate censorship. In the cinema there's no mystery. No privacy. And no sex either. Most of the sex I've seen on the screen looks like an expression of hostility towards sex."
In 1965 she received The Sarah Siddons Award (the award that borrowed the name from the made-up award in All About Eve, 1950) for her work in Chicago Theatre, and in 1988 she receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Kennedy Center. She was never nominated for an Academy Award, but in 1991 she received an Academy Honorary Award for hr career achievement. She accepted it via camera with the short speech:
"You've made me very happy. Thank you very much".
That was her last public appearance.
With her third husband, producer and screenwriter Gene Markey, in 1948. They were married 1946-1950.
She was married four times but had no children in any marriage. Referring to her typecasting as the loving wife, Myrna said following:
"Some perfect wife I am. I've been married four times, divorced four times, have no children, and can't boil an egg."
She had twice in her life (1975 and 1979) having had to make a mastectomy. She died in 1993 during surgery.
Video Clips:
An interesting slide show with pictures from Myrna Loy's early film career.
Let Me Die a Woman is a dramatized pseudo-documentary made by cult soft porn director Doris Wishman (1912-2002) in 1972. The subject is transsexuals, both male and female, who want to make / have done a sex change operation. The film wasn't released until 1978.
The films mixes educational scenes with dramatizations of real events with soft porn. All through the film Dr. Leo Wollman, a sex change specalist, guides us through transsexual group meetings, interviews and even a sex change operation. The film was rejected by UK cinema, and wasn't released there until 1982, more than 10 minutes shorter.
Let Me Die a Woman is really interesting, amusing and bizarre. Of course you have to realize that it isn't a documentary in the true meaning of the word. The transsexuals and the operations are real, but they obviously had a script to read from. It would be sad otherwise, if they always sounded like bad actors when speaking. I will return to the fascinating woman Doris Wishman in later posts, the woman who often is called "the female Ed Wood".
Most of her films made during the 1960's and 1970's were made for the American sexploitation film market. All self learned she used the camera in an innovative way, experimenting with angles, close-ups and cutting. In that way she had far more talent than earlier mentioned Ed Wood. She was one of the most prolific female directors through cinema history and was making films until her death. Her last finished film was Satan Was a Lady(2001). On her death bed she said that she would continue making films in hell.
Leslie, a Puerto Rican transsexual, tells us about her difficult childhood and the becoming of a woman.
Dr. Leo Wollman, the narrator and informant.
Dr. Wollman tells us the story about the man who couldn't afford a sex change operation, and in his desperation tried to do it himself. With a hammer and chisel.
A group meeting for pre- and post- operation transsexuals.
A genetical male has developed breasts due to a hormone treatment.
"Not all dildos are used for medical purposes." Dr. Wollman tells us.
Illustrations of the male and the female sex organs.
A not-so-cosy sex change operation scene. But interesting and informative.
A dramatization of a story about a newly operated transsexual who had a hurry using her new vagina.
An example of successful sex after a sex change operation.
A film adaptation of the Elinor Glyn novel (author of It, filmed with Clara Bow in 1927, and Three Weeks), directed by Sam Wood (director of the Marx Brothers movies A Night at the Opera from 1935 and A Day at the Races from 1937). Elinor Glyn accompanied at the shooting of the film. For most of the 20th century this film was thought to be lost, but was found 2003 in a private collection in the Netherlands. (A short and fascinating documentary of the restoration is included later on in this post.)
It was great news when this film finally was found since it contained two of the greatest star of that era, the only time they acted together on screen - Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino. The film begins with a young girl, Theodora Fitzgerald (Swanson), who falls out from a rowing boat. A handsome, rich young man, Lord Hector Bracondale (Valentino), sees her from his boat and quickly jumps into the water to her rescue.
Lord Bracondale jumps for Theodora's rescue.
Theodora give Lord Bracondale a narcissus flower.
Theodora's half-sisters wants her to get married to a rich man.
The dramatic incident is soon over, and Theodora thanks her hero by giving him a narcissus flower. They say goodbye and Theodora follows her father home. While at home Theodoras half sisters convinces her that she has to get married soon, to a rich man who can restore their lost family fortune. Not wanting to hurt her father, she acts when an opportunity comes - a rich old man, Josiah Brown (Robert Bolder), proposes to her and she accepts. They go away for their honeymoon, spending it in "a quaint inn, high in the snow-clad Alps".
The scent of narcissus brings the youth together.
However, fate seems to want Theodora and Lord Bracondale to get together ones again. It happens that Lord Bracondale, his mother and his fiancée spend their holiday at the same place at the same time. In the dining room, a waiter finds a lost handkerchief next to Lord Bracondales table, and asks the company if it belongs to them. It doesn't but Lord Bracondale recognizes the perfume, even though he at first can't replace it. However, the handkerchief finds its rightful owner. Lord Bracondale follows it with his eyes, but since Theodora sits with her back to him, a bell doesn't ring.
Theodora recognizes her hero.
The next morning, Theodora and her lady friend Jane McBride (Mabel Van Buren) go mountain climbing. In an attempt to take a picture of her friend, Theodora takes one too many steps back, and falls over the cliff. From a distance, Lord Bracondale happens to see the woman hanging in a rope around her waist, fainted. He quickly runs for her rescue, again, and ends upp at a cliff alone with Theodora while the other in the company go back for help. All alone on that cliff together, recognizing each other, forbidden feelings start to grow.
For a start Theodora enjoys Lord Bracondales company, but when she no longer can control her feelings she gets scared. She made a vow when marrying Josiah Brown, that she fears she is going to break. She decides that she and Lord Bracondale must never see each other again. But even if not fate wanted otherwise, Lord Bracondale surely wouldn't give up the love of his life that easy.
I can't express how grateful I am for the restoring of Beyond the Rocks, which in my meaning is an immortal classic for every silent era devotee to see. The cast is brilliant, and Valentino (who I always thought was a little androgynous) in this picture is extremely handsome, if not even smoking hot! (But I guess I'm not a normal woman, either.) I understand the panic among his devoted fans when he died. At two occasions there are historical retrospects (or perhaps the characters imaginations and fantasies running a little wild); one takes place in the 18th century, and the other in Ancient Egypt. They add a little humour and glamour into the movie, and even though they might be a little odd, they are not in the least negative in any way.
See this film if you get a hold of it. A romantic drama with Swanson and Valentino can't be missed!
Quotes:
[to Lord Hector Bracondale] Theodora Fitzgerald: Fate seems to send you to me when I most need you, Lord Bracondale.
[when smelling a narcissus] Lord Hector Bracondale: I shall always associate this wonderful perfume with you.
Theodora Fitzgerald: I could never live under the shadow of my broken word!
Lord Hector Bracondale: Darling, we have passed the rocks and here are the safe waters beyond.
Documentary: The restoration of Beyond the Rocks.
Below: A picture from the filming of Beyond the Rocks, with a yawning Gloria Swanson to the left, Valentino with the script, author Elinor Glyn with the big hat and director Sam Wood to the right. (Click for a larger picture.)
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