Philip Jose Farmer Has Died

Science fiction pioneer Philip Jose Farmer "passed away peacefully in his sleep," his website noted this morning. The 91-year-old author was best-known for his Riverworld series, a surreal collection of books about a world where historical figures mingle on a watery planet. Wikipedia counts six Hugo Award nominations for the author during his long and illustrious career.

One of his Riverworld books, Gods of Riverworld (Putnam, 1983), featured a distinctly Louise Brooks-looking character on the front of the book. And I seem to recall an interview or review which mentioned the author's fondness for the actress.

Here is the publisher supplied description of the book: Thirty-five billion people from throughout Earth's history were resurrected along the great and winding waterways of Riverworld. Most began life anew--accepting without question the sustenance provided by their mysterious benefactors. But a rebellious handful burned to confront the unseen masters who controlled their fate--and these few launched an invasion that would ultimately yield the mind-boggling truth. Now Riverworld's omnipotent leaders have been confronted, and the renegades of Riverworld--led by the intrepid Sir Richard Francis Burton--control the fantastic mechanism that once ruled them. But the most awesome challenge lies ahead. For in the vast corridors and secret rooms of the tower stronghold, an unknown enemy watches and waits to usurp the usurpers . . . 

O sono silente

It seems as though Louise Brooks is more popular in Europe than in the United States. Here is an article from a few days ago (from Galicia, in Spain) mentioning the actress . “ 'O sono silente', espectáculo inspirado no cine mudo, no Teatro Colón" appears on the Xornal website.

“O sono silente”, espectáculo inspirado no cine mudo, no Teatro Colón
Inspirase na actriz Louise Brooks e nas súas principais películas.

Miércoles, 18 de febrero de 2009

XORNAL.COM I A Coruña.- Mañá, xoves 19 de febreiro, ás 20.30 horas, o Teatro Colón Caixa Galicia acollerá a representación de ‘Sono Silente’, un espectáculo inspirado no cine mudo dos anos 20 e 30 que toma como referente a imaxe potente da actriz Louise Brooks e dous dos seu filmes máis coñecidos “The Canary Murder Case” e “Pandora’s Box”.

A ausencia da palabra, a forza da imaxe, o valor da mirada e a linguaxe corporal e xestual coinciden, en gran medida, coa visión plástica e poética das obras de BStudio. Unha análise da imaxe estereotipada da muller no discurso cinematográfico da época, para describir e clasificar os roles que se lle asignaban aos papeis femininos.

Este proceso ten como obxecto cuestionar o sentido da muller, tanto como figura dentro da pantalla, como creadora fóra dela.

BStudio é unha compañía de danza contemporánea (danza-teatro) que ten como obxectivo desenvolver unha linguaxe persoal de “corpos reflexivos” que sirva para expresar emocións e sentimentos. Representa coreografías sociais, conta historias próximas ao público que esperten a súa curiosidade e reflexión dentro dunha plástica que penetre polos sentidos. A dramatización, a escenografía, o vestiario e a música amalgámanse coa danza para ir máis alá dun mero espectáculo de danza.

Screen Seductresses tickets to be won!

The FutureMovies website in Britian is giving away tickets to a upcoming screening of Pandora's Box (1929) at the BFI, in London. 

Women have always been a commanding presence on the cinema screen and BFI Southbank, in association with the Birds Eye View Film Festival, are presenting a season of films dedicated to these vamps, vixens and femmes fatales. The season features an extended run of Joseph H. Lewis’s electrifying love-on-the-run cult classic Gun Crazy, in which Bart (John Dall) loves guns without wanting to kill, but Laurie (Peggy Cummins) yearns for violent excitement… Other highlights include Barbara Stanwyck’s glacial turn in Double Indemnity, Rita Hayworth’s infamous Gilda and ‘the miracle of Louise Brooks’ in Pandora’s Box. This is just a selection of the great films on offer; for more information seewww.bfi.org.uk/femmesfatalesfuturefilms.

To find out more about the ticket give away, visit this webpage. And good luck!

From Carmilla on-line

I recently came across an archived write-up of Pandora's Box, which was posted to Carmilla on line, an Italian blog devoted to dissident literature and the imagination. This recent blog was titled "Oblique visioni (dall'estrema sinistra) 2," and it contains short entries on various classic films. Here's what Carmilla on line had to say about Pandora's Box, which is called Lulu in Italy:

36-Lulù di Georg Wilhelm Pabst, Germania 1928

La vamp fatale all’ennesima potenza: dai romanzi di Wedekind, Pabst trae la tragica vicenda di Lulù, bellissima donna attorniata da uomini allupatissimi e amata financo da una donna, cosa che sugli schermi mai era accaduta. Lulù provoca, in un crescendo melodrammatico, disperazione (e morte) in padri e figli, amici e protettori, tutti incapaci di resistere al suo proverbiale fascino, fino al tragico epilogo quando, dopo romanzesche e complicate avventure (un po’ noiose, tutto sommato), finisce a prostituirsi a Londra e ha il suo primo (e ultimo) incontro mercenario (anche se nella fattispecie rifiuta il denaro e lo fa per carenza d’amor) con il giulivo Jack lo Squartatore. Il nonno degli odierni serial killer, disorientato da cotanta disponibilità, sembra sul punto di cedere, ma poi la sua natura (come lo scorpione wellesiano) prevale e la bella dama, assetata d’amore e altro, viene accoltellata in un raptus inarrestabile. Che dire? La serata era iniziata pessimamente: il Lumière era riuscito a creare un piccolo evento portando il sommo poeta Sanguineti a discettare sul destino di questa femme fatale un po’ zoccola. Chiaramente, siccome la sfiga ci vede benissimo e prende la mira anche al buio, dalla Cineteca Nazionale è arrivata una copia de I bambini ci guardano e non della Lulù: disperazione e stridore di denti! La gran folla convenuta è stata ammansita con prossimamente vari e cine-Chiambretti, finché non è pervenuta una copia videoregistrata del film di Pabst e non si è proceduti a una videoproiezione, francamente non meno godibile (quanto a qualità dell’immagine) dello standard delle pellicole di settanta anni fa. Purtroppo l’operazione d’immagine non ha funzionato: la proiezione è iniziata con più di un’ora di ritardo e, alla fine, Sanguineti ha parlato solo per cinque minuti. Peccato: il film, anche se in certi momenti è sbrodolato e tedioso, ha momenti molto belli e Louise Brooks appaga la mia curiosità di verificare quanto il mito rispondesse a realtà. Era proprio una bella gnocca. (Cineclub Lumière; 28/2/98)

Molly Haskell on Lulu in Hollywood

The well known film writer Molly Haskell surveyed five autobiographies by actresses in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. One of them was Louise Brooks' Lulu in Hollywood. Here's what Haskell had to say.

After laboring for much of the 1920s in Hollywood, the black-helmeted Kansas-born free spirit Louise Brooks had to go to Europe to become a star. She was a revelation in two mesmerizing German silent films directed by G.W. Pabst, "Pandora's Box" (1928) and "Diary of a Lost Girl" (1929) -- but then Brooks, independent-minded to a fault, refused to compromise once Hollywood came calling, and she basically threw her career away. By the late 1940s, she was working as a saleslady at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York. She was rescued by admirers, chief among them James Card, curator of the George Eastman House film archive in Rochester, N.Y. He persuaded Brooks to move to Rochester, where she lived in the 1950s as a recluse, watched films, her own and others, and was reborn as a writer. (She was also rediscovered as an actress by Kenneth Tynan, who championed her work in an influential piece for The New Yorker.) "Lulu in Hollywood" -- Lulu was the ill-fated innocent who drove men to distraction in "Pandora's Box" -- is a collection of Brooks's often brilliant essays. Some of the pieces recount her own joyous romp through the 1920s as a Ziegfeld showgirl (a job she enjoyed more than making movies) and party-girl courtesan. Other essays shimmer with insight as she discusses the work of Humphrey Bogart, W.C. Fields, Greta Garbo, Lillian Gish and others. She paints a vivid picture of Bogie, for instance, still showing vestiges of the stiff stage actor in "The Roaring Twenties" in 1939, when he appears helpless opposite James Cagney, whose "swift dialogue" and "swift movements . . . had the glitter and precision of a meat slicer . . . impossible to anticipate or counterattack."

Haskell is well known as the author of the seminal 1974 book, From Reverence to Rape. She can also be seen discussing films with Robert Osborne on TCM, and has a just released a new book through Yale University Press, Frankly, My Dear: "Gone with the Wind" Revisited (part of their Icons of America series). Haskell has written about Brooks on at least a couple of occasions in the past. Once in the aforementioned From Reverence to Rape - discussing the treatment of women in the movies - and in a 1974 article in Film Comment, where she discussed the 1928 Howard Hawks film, A Girl in Every Port.

Bangless Lulu, or P703-69

Lulu in Hollywood - the Russian Edition

Today, I was thrilled to receive the Russian-language edition of Louise Brooks' Lulu in Hollywood. I knew I was getting something special when I removed the package from my mailbox. The book was wrapped unsealed in plain brown butcher's paper and tied with string! Just like a present. It was addressed to me both in English and in Russian, and in forward leaning cursive lettering which reminded me of my Polish grandmother's handwriting.

The book was sent to me compliments of the publisher. This new edition was published late last year by Rosebud Publishing, a new enterprise located in Moscow. Scanned below are the front and back covers.

          
 

I was also thrilled to see the Louise Brooks Society and my name (in Russian) acknowledged on the copyright page. Just call me Tomacy from now on. This hardback book, which is 290 pages, is about the same size as an American softcover book. It measures 6 x 8 inches. And, as far as I can tell, it includes the same material found in the University of Minnesota reissue from 2000. The book begins with the introduction by Kenneth Tynan, and concludes with the afterword by Lotte Eisner and a filmography - all in Russian. The big difference is the number of images. There are four 16 page inserts featuring portraits and film stills, as well as other miscellaneous images scattered throughout the book.



All in all, it is a very nice production. I am very pleased to have it. Thank you Rosebud Publishing! I looked around online and found a European website from which this book can be purchased. The website is called RUSLANIA and the catalog page featuring this new edition can be found here. There may be other places on the internet to purchase this book. That is the first one I came across. Curiously, the RUSLANIA page shows a copy of the book with a different cover. I am presuming that it is an earlier design. I have to admit, I like it better than the actual cover as depicted above.

The back of this new edition contains a brief bit of text in Russian which I am curious to know what it means. Can anyone translate it? I would really appreciate it. Please post an translation in the blog comments.