In this short film from 1896, Georges Méliès shows off not one magic trick but actually four. He makes a woman disappear. He makes a skeleton appear. Then he makes the skeleton disappear and then he brings the vanishing lady back. Today, of course, we all know how these tricks were done but just imagine how audiences in 1896, many of whom were still amazed that movies could exist at all, would have reacted to this short film. This film provides a look into a simpler and more innocent time. Watching this film, I found myself wishing that I could feel the wonder at a movie that someone in 1896 would have. Sadly, audiences are far more jaded today.
Personally, I liked that both Méliès and the Vanishing Lady stepped back onstage to take a little bow. Even in those early days of cinema, they understood the importance of connecting with the audience.
With the arrival of both October and our annual horrorthon, today’s Blast From The Past is here to help us get in the mood with some head action.
In this short film, director Georges Milies plays a magician who can remove his head. Fear not! When he removes his head, another head quickly appears on his shoulder. Pretty soon, our magician has one head on his shoulders and three other heads chatting away on a table. Everything’s fine until it’s discovered that, apparently, the heads aren’t very talented when it comes to singing.
Obviously, today, we know how camera tricks like this are done. We tend to take them for granted. But consider this, when watching The Four Troublesome Heads: this film was made in 1898. At a time when the movies themselves seemed like an act of magic, Georges Melies was removing his head and then trying to perform a song.
Yes, this the same Georges Melies who was played by Ben Kingsley in Martin Scorsese’s Hugo. That’s a great film, by the way. It marks the only time that Christopher Lee appeared in a Scorsese film. Go watch it, if you haven’t already.
I don’t even smoke and I still think anti-smoking commercials are annoying.
Take this one from 1999, in which some weirdo harasses students as they try to leave their high school. He gets an interview from one student, who seems to be annoyed with the whole thing and …. OH MY GOD, THAT’S ROB MCELHENNEY FROM IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA!
In the year 2001, Ben Affleck wasn’t only Matt Damon’s best friend. He was also a commercial spokesman!
For instance, he narrated this creepy commercial for Diet Coke. Oddly enough, he doesn’t say anything about Diet Coke but he does say a lot about his wife’s underwear and then, eventually, the underwear that he saw in “the hamper as a kid.” Wait, what? Weirdo.
I actually get what this commercial is attempting. Diet Coke is a soft drink for real people and real people get married and eventually stop having sex. But do real people tell complete strangers about it? Of course, they do now but this commercial was before social media.
This is from the same ad campaign that featured Renee Zellweger watching her neighbor take a shower and sing. (I shared that commercial last week.) Since we didn’t see Renee’s face in that previous commercial and since we don’t see Ben’s face in this one, I like to think that this commercial is a sequel to the previous one. Renee eventually married the guy across the street and then started wearing cotton underwear. And I assume that the guy stopped singing.
Wow, this was a depressing world that Diet Coke created.
In the year 2000, Renee Zellweger was not only starring in movies and working her way to eventually winning two Oscars. She was also apparently spying on her neighbor across the street.
Did it not occur to this guy to get curtains for his bathroom? And also, how loudly is he singing that Renee can hear all of the lyrics to I Want You Want Me? If Renee can hear him from across the street, I can only imagine what it must be like to live right next door to the guy.
That said, I do think this is kind of a cute commercial. The guy is adorable in his dorky way and I’d probably watch him too. But I don’t think he and Renee are ever going to get together because it might kind of creep him out to know that she’s been watching him in the shower for all this time. To be honest, this commercial feels more like a Sandra Bullock movie than a vehicle for Renee Zellweger.
And what exactly does any of this have to do with Diet Coke?
In this 1954 short film, two rival gangs are fighting. They both come from the same neighborhood. The members of both gangs grew up poor. All of them feel like there’s no hope for them. They’re all angry and sad and fatalistic. In fact, there’s only one difference between the two gangs. One gang is made up of white kids and the other gang is made up of Mexicans. That’s the only reason the two gangs fight.
The leader of the Mexican gang knows that things have got to change. While looking over the quarry where, years ago, his younger brother died while trying to be as tough as him, the leader of the gang remembers the early days of the gang and how what started out as a place for outsiders to feel like they belonged soon became something violent and destructive. The community wants to have a dance but the threat of violence is in the air. Can he defuse the situation? Maybe that friendly detective could help….
Gang Boy is a Sid Davis production, a look at how poverty and prejudice were fueling the rise in gang violence in the 50s. Unusually, for a Sid Davis film, it’s remarkably nonjudgmental. There is, of course, all the “you’ve ruined your life” melodrama that one would usually expect from Davis but the final blame is put more on society than the members of the gang.
Speaking of the members of the gang, the cast of this film was apparently made up of actual gang members who all hated each other. The film may end with the promise of a better tomorrow but it’s hard to avoid the feeling that a fight broke out as soon as the camera stopped rolling,
Personally, I think of this as being a prequel to West Side Story. Before the Sharks and the Jets learned how to dance, there was …. GANG BOY!
In this 1964 short film from Sid Davis, a teenage girl has been arrested. It turns out that her boyfriend was a bank robber. Even though she didn’t know that he was a criminal when she got together with him, the theme of this film appears to be that she should have known and, as a result of being foolish, she is now the worst person who ever lived.
In other words, this is a typical Sid Davis production. Sid Davis films were always the most judgmental of all the old educational films. Sid Davis specialized in using holier-than-thou narrators, who would often say things like, “And now, you’ve ruined your life.” In this film, the narrator is a judge who is fond of saying that juveniles are “delinquent in good sense.” As proof, he tells the story of two lovers who were robbed, a babysitter who was murdered, and another girl who was assaulted by a man who asked her out on a date. In each case, the judge seems angrier with the victims than with the actual criminals. As for the case of the unknowing girlfriend of the bank robber, the judge has no choice but to sentence the girl to 3 months of hard time at a juvenile detention center. It’s for her own good because she was delinquent in good sense.
Sid Davis’s film are still popular today, precisely because they are so bizarrely angry and judgmental. If Sid thought 1964 was a dark time for society, one can only imagine what he would think of 2022! Watch Name Unknown below and ask yourself, “In this crazy world of ours, is there room for forgiveness?”
In the picture above, you can see Lucy (played by Olga Soler), the title character of the 1975 educational short, Lucy. Lucy is 15 years old and she spends almost all of her time with her boyfriend, Joe (Michael D’Emidio). As Lucy herself explains her narration (which is provided by an actress named Marilyn Gold), her entire life revolved around Joe. Since Joe dropped out of school, Lucy dropped out of school too. Since Joe wanted to spend all of his time walking around New York City, Lucy did the same. They thought they were in love. One discreet sex scene later and Lucy’s pregnant!
Lucy is a bit different from some of the other educational films that I’ve seen about teenage pregnancy. Though initially shocked and angered, Lucy’s parents are eventually supportive. Joe doesn’t run away but instead promises to do whatever he can to help, though Lucy ruefully acknowledges that it won’t be much as Joe doesn’t even have a high school diploma. Though a friend offers to help Lucy get an abortion, Lucy decides to have her baby and social services shows up to help her. At the end of the film, Lucy is still not sure whether she’s going to keep her baby or give it up for adoption. She just knows that her life will never be the same. Compared to just about every other educational film that I’ve seen about this subject, Lucy takes a rather low-key and matter-of-fact approach to its story. It’s well-made but rather depressing.
It’s also a rather obscure film. I couldn’t find much about the film on the IMDb. Is the Paul Glickman who is credited as the film’s director the same Paul Glickman who edited some of Larry Cohen’s best films? Who knows?
Now, I know I’ve probably made this film sound really depressing to sit through but there is a dance scene towards the start of the film. That helps.
Green Stamps were a little bit before my time but they sound like they were fun. From what I’ve been able to pick up, apparently you could get green stamps at any store and then you could exchange them for various goods at the Green Stamps distribution center. Apparently, the more you spent, the more green stamps you received. At least, that’s how I think they worked. As I said at the start of this paragraph, they were a bit before my time.
In fact, just about everything I know about Green Stamps comes from watching Engagement Party, a 30-minute film from 1956, on TCM. In Engagement Party, Carl Landis (Craig Hill) is the son of the owner of Landis Department Store. Soon, Carl will be taking over the family business. Unfortunately, the family business isn’t doing so well and, until Carl can figure out how to turn things around, Carl is reluctant to marry his girlfriend, Ellen (Gloria Talbott).
When Carl first meets Elliott Winston (Leon Ames), a friend of Ellen’s family, he rolls his eyes when Elliott mentions that he works for the people behind Green Stamps. Carl is a frequent eye roller, largely because Carl is a jerk. Carl explains that he considers Green Stamps to be a scam and there’s no way that he would allow them to be distributed in his store. Elliott takes it upon himself to show Carl the error of his ways.
Basically, this is just a 30-minute commercial for Green Stamps but, from a historical point of view, it’s an interesting little time capsule of the world of 1956. To me, the most interesting thing about this short film is the fact that Carl really is just a totally self-righteous jerk. Why would Ellen want to marry someone who simply will not stop talking about how much he hates Green Stamps? Get a life, Carl. To his credit, Elliott Winston can barely seem to hide his intense loathing for Carl. Even when Elliott’s being friendly, you can tell that he just wants to take a swing at him.
For your education and your enjoyment, here is a Blast From The Past….
98 years ago today, director Herk Harvey was born in Lawrence, Kansas. Today, Harvey is best-remembered for his only feature film, 1962’s Carnival of Souls. Carnival of Souls is a Halloween favorite here at the Shattered Lens and it’s a film that has been cited as being an influence on everyone from Sam Raimi to Martin Scorsese to David Lynch.
However, before and after he directed that ground-breaking film, Herk Harvey made his lesson directing educational short films. Today, in honor of what would have been his birthday, the Shattered Lens presents Why Study Speech? This 1954 short film explains why all high school seniors should study speech when they get to college. It opens with a somewhat quirky montage that, if nothing else, serves to remind us that we’re watching a short film from the man who, just 8 years later, would direct Carnival of Souls.
Through the Shattered Lens 