Well there’s one thing I can cross off my bucket list. (There’s a lot on there, and some of it’s weird.) I finally saw F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu: ein Symphonie des Grauens” (1922).
And am I damn glad I did! I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I love plenty of classic movies; “The 39 Steps” (1939) and “To Have and Have Not” (1944) are among my all-time favorites. But I’m accustomed to modern horror — my tastes generally extend only as far back as “The Birds” (1963) and “Night of the Living Dead” (1968).
I waited until I was in just the right mood. (This is the first silent film I’ve ever seen from start to finish — the only exception being Mel Brooks’ 1976 parody, “Silent Movie.”) Then I began it shortly before midnight.
The movie just worked for me. It was sublimely creepy.
I think it helped that the grainy, flickering, black-and-white period footage made this expressionist movie utterly atmospheric for a modern viewer. These, combined with the shots of Max Schreck superbly made up as “Count Orlok,” were damned unsettling. Schreck also appeared to be a great physical actor, with his gaunt stance and stilted, inhuman movements. (Was he unusually tall too?)
The vintage footage also enhanced my enjoyment of the movie in a way that Murnau probably couldn’t have expected. I know this is strange, but … nearly a century later, the thought that occurred to me several times during this movie was this: “Everyone involved in this production is long dead by now.” Yes, I know that is a morbid thought — I’ve never done that before! I think it was just the film itself that did that to me — it’s about undeath and immortality, after all.
It also helped that I’d read Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” (1897), of which this film is an unauthorized adaptation. The resulting lawsuit by Stoker’s estate is interesting reading: supposedly all copies of the movie were ordered by the courts to be destroyed, bankrupting Prana, the production company. But a permanent cult following developed for the few surviving prints.
Anyway, I followed this up with the palate-cleansing “Night on Bald Mountain,” the final segment of Disney’s “Fantasia” (1944). That combination, too, totally worked for me — I followed up the black-and-white nightmare-fuel of the seminal vampire film with some vivid, incongruously hellish Disney nightmare-fuel.
“Nosferatu” is in the public domain. You can view the entire film on Youtube at the link below.
This meme says the “THE 70’S,” but I encountered a little boy playing with something kind of like a balsa wood glider yesterday! I told him how much I loved these when I was his age.
His was a bit fancier — it might have been made of thin plastic. The gliders that I received from visiting aunts and grandparents were like the mostly unadorned balsa wood jobby that you see below. It came in a long plastic sleeve like the one pictured, and you had to assemble it yourself. (It wasn’t quite as high tech as the X-Box.)
Loop-de-loops were damn fun. It was slightly less fun seeing it snap off a wing or fin after a nosedive. Note to any well meaning aunts or uncles who might spy a balsa wood glider, if they’re still around: buy a couple of them for that kid in your life — these things break easily.
2016 has been good to me so far; I’ve been lucky to have a few pieces published since the start of the year. If you like my poetry and care to peruse my publications since January 1st, then just click the link below:
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
— from “The Burial of the Dead,” Section I. of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”
by Lady Ottoline Morrell, vintage snapshot print, June 1924
Source: Lady Ottoline Morrell [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
Despite it being highly recommended, I almost stopped watching “Time Lapse” (2014) after a few minutes. But I’m glad I stayed with it — it’s a smart, damn fun and unexpectedly dark time-machine tale that transcends its microbudget to become edgy and entertaining. I’d give it an 8 out of 10.
It begins weakly. A few strictly average actors perform what seems like a weak script right out of a sitcom doomed to cancellation. Its premise seems cheesy — three friends discover a mysterious camera that can take pictures of its subject as it will be 24 hours into the future. Its plot sounds trite and unwieldy. (They send themselves photographed notes containing advice from their future selves.) Even the film’s minimalist set (the movie appears to have only two of them) seems to betray the threadbare budget of an earnest-but-average film school project.
But, damn, was I pleasantly proven wrong. The script turns out to be quite strong, inviting the viewer down a progressively frightening and maddening rabbit hole alongside its characters. The acting improves, as George Finn settles into his role as the greedy, impulsive and least stable of the trio. (Trust me, this isn’t just a cliche sci-fi morality tale about greed; the movie has far more to offer than that.) Then Jason Spisak arrives and masterfully almost steals the entire movie, chewing the scenery as a fabulously frightening bad guy.
The last shot of this movie is absolutely killer.
Seriously, check this film out. It deserves its positive press, and I guarantee it’ll at least surprise you with how good it becomes.
Here’s a terrific piece by a wonderfully talented poet and a recent new friend of mine — August Arps.
“GOODNIGHT AND GOOD LUCK,” by August Arps
how do you cross the street
with tomorrow so completely
a near miss ?
are your skeletons as eloquent
as frost fire ?
and how do you account
for all the rain ?
seems a pity to lack so many hands as Shiva
in a downpour of your very own Sun.
when the clouds part with gathering
and gather yonder –
leaving you the view of your delirious star
and the valley of what
has never been
known.
goodnight and good luck.
may your hemispheres release you
from the globe, and your journey be wicked smart
through the jungles of unrelenting
deep.
may you find there what you lost by keeping
and abandon your crown of thorns, in favor
of a velvet noose
should the mysteries prove anguish,
is a virtue of mortality
or else the joke wouldn’t work
to pay the bills.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 