Cockatoo scene from Citizen Kane

I've always wondered about that cockatoo. But maybe THAT is why people call it "the best movie ever made".

In the jungle, the mighty jungle

There are days, and this is one of them, when I am totally fed up with the internet. What started off as a potentially invaluable source of information has become a vast juggernaut, with useful stuff increasingly buried by the crap that is posted every day (and hardly anything is ever taken down). The more this stuff accumulates, the harder it is to find anything, which is ironic but is never mentioned. I won't get into the racism, the ranting, the hiding in the bluff behind cover of anonymity, so you can say any damn hateful thing you want. 

But once in a while, you find the end of a thread, and you think,hmm, maybe it's not so freaking useless after all. The old magic returns, if only for a moment.

For years, a thought would come into my head, I'd rack my brains fruitlessly for a while, then give up and let the thought slide back into oblivion. It had to do with Tarzan. More specifically, Tarzan movies. More specifically than that, the Tarzan movies that used to come on TV on Saturday afternoons.

It was some sort of a Tarzan series, and I am sure the movies were badly butchered, but we didn't care because we had nothing to compare them to. Certainly we didn't get to see the erotic swimming sequence (did anyone? I find it hard to believe it wasn't cut from theatrical versions) from Tarzan and his Mate. They probably even censored the crocodile-wrasslin' scenes with their sped-up film and elaborate editing (to make it look as if an actual crocodile were involved) because they were too violent for the kiddies in the 1960s.

The series had some sort of title card with palm trees and birds and stuff on it, and there was this music. It was the weirdest stuff, because it seemed to have animal sounds in the background. Bird calls and stuff. There was very little actual music involved, just atmosphere. A piano was playing, and someone was rhythmically scraping something. You only got to hear a snippet of it while The Tarzan Show title card came on, but they'd also play a bit of it after commercial breaks (and there were a lot of them).

So was this, as they say, "a thing"? Did it still exist, could I find it?  How do you find something like this when the clues are so vague? I just started googling terms like "music with birds in background" and "bandleader who uses bird sounds" (for in retrospect, it's obvious this was some sort of lounge music). I was astounded at how quickly I scored a hit. Soon I was playing a video with this cheesy, lounge-y, '50s-style music, about as exotic as Dorothy Lamour in a sarong, which I had not heard in - um - four, or - seven, or - a lot of years. 

What made me laugh is the realization that those aren't even bird sounds - they're band members squeeee-ing and hooting and rattling to sound like birds. Could have fooled me. I have no plans to cultivate a taste for the genre, which is called exotica(and here I always thought that had something to do with sex!). But at least now I know what it is. The internet still has the power to inform.

I don't know if Martin Denny got any royalties for The Tarzan Show, but probably not - they likely just stuck the record on and hoped for the best. As is almost always the case, I can't find any information on the actual video, which I think is quite lovely. Who knows how many times it has been pirated and passed around. But isn't that what the internet is all about?

Please note. This is a summer repeat. I just saw a  couple of Tarzan movies and loved them so much that I just had to dredge up the gifs that went with this post. They took a lot of time, effort and love to make. Hope you enjoy them. I work hard at this, you know?

Love in the jungle

Ten-second Cinema: Nosferatu in five easy takes

 

Hello, and welcome to your first lesson in German Expressionism. Here we have a very creepy fellow who doesn't look at all like a proper vampire, but nevertheless, that's what he's supposed to be.

Here at Ten-second Cinema, we stick to the good part. It saves a lot of time. Nosferatu really is creepy but anyone's standards. It all has to do with the lighting, and the apparent stillness of the creature. 

Here we have Ed Asner in an earlier incarnation, grabbing what must be a mosquito out of the air and eating it while a scientist and a dismayed constable look on.

Since it's hard, if not impossible to tell a story in ten-second snippets, I grab whatever arresting images I can find. Everyone's on edge here. Nosferatu seeks a creamy neck, and WILL find one soon.

I don't know why they don't just put him in the slammer here and now. He's obviously a pervert.

No one can explain why the titles are so crooked in this thing. But it gives away the ending. Critics have mentioned the eroticism in the story, and it's true that "offering her blood freely" is creepily - no, I won't say sexy, but fraught with something-or-other. The implication in vampire movies has always been that fear is entwined with desire. To be honest, if I had my pick, I'd choose Bela Lugosi. Or maybe even Grandpa Munster.

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Oscar, Oscar, OSCAR!

 

It's hard to find a gif with Oscar Levant in it, and when I do it's always an oddball one. Here he seems to be the epicentre of the room, yet Gene Kelly keeps on hitting him in the face (why?) while he maintains that deadpan, Buster Keatonesque non-expression.

 

This one has That French Guy in it, the one I hate, who is the main reason I don't watch An American in Paris when it comes on, approximately weekly, on Turner Classics. I don't like that Stairway to Paradise or whatever it is because That French Guy is just a swish and not good for Gene Kelly, not a wholesome influence.  He's better off with his grouchy, slouchy roommate, who can play the piano like nobody's business.

 

(I also don't like that stupid "I got" thing with the street kids, though it's sexy when Gene Kelly runs his hand up Leslie Caron's thigh when they're dancing at the end. Can't find a gif of that.)

 

 

 

This is a more typical, Rodin-esque Oscar pose, as he thinks to himself, what a couple of stupid jerks, the French guy is probably a poof the way he keeps making eyes at Gene. Everyone else is moving in this, but Oscar is the still point, the eye of the hurricane.

 

This is what I mean about the poof-iosity, the poof-i-tudinousness of An American in Paris. Gene Kelly puts a tablecloth on his head and pretends to be a girl in a kick line. It's positively perverse. Meantime Oscar, who is adorable and sexy at the piano, shedding some of that saturnine quasi-Bogart-esque grimness, is his usual head-nodding piano-playing self. Just a Gershwin-playing fool.


"Everyone in Hollywood is gay, except Gabby Hayes — and that's because he is a transvestite."

The Wicked Witch: Isn't She Lovely

While we're on the subject of Oz, let's get away from dead munchkins hanging from trees for a while and look at a little snippet of Margaret Hamilton's screen test for The Wizard of Oz. This wasn't an audition, as she was an obvious shoo-in with her ascetic face and gorgeously witch-y voice. I think this was a test of makeup and costume: the producers didn't want another Buddy Ebsen on their hands (he nearly expired from the lead-based makeup for the Tin Man and had to wait thirty more years to attain legendary status as Jed Clampett on The Beverley Hillbillies).

She does a little good-natured witching, showing her hands to the camera,  etc., but from .16 to .20 she suddenly smiles so radiantly that you wonder how she ever could've played such a . . . witch. She actually looks lovely, sunny, and full of good humour.

Who'd a thunkit, eh?

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