You can basically just enjoy this one. They started changing up the background, introduced instruments you didn’t normally hear in their music, made heavy use of fades, and only the two guys ever appeared to be in the same place and time during the entire video. That last one is kind of interesting for a song whose title is automatically associated with love and marriage. The lovers they are standing in for aren’t physically together with each other in the video. Oh, and they actually have ending credits. You don’t see that everyday.
That’s all I have to say about this one. It’s not one of my favorites of there’s in both song and video.
They finally escaped the white dimension! Too bad it was for a lousy song and video.
Okay, there are a few things of note here.
First is the obvious. They are on location rather than in a studio. However, they don’t really make use of it. It feels like it was out of necessity or they felt it was humanizing instead of having them all dolled up as usual. They would make better use of location shooting in their later videos such as Knowing Me, Knowing You.
We get the first video that implies a relationship between band members beyond the band. This is something that would be crucial to Knowing Me, Knowing You. I don’t know if any of them ever paired off like Fleetwood Mac was famous for doing, and it doesn’t matter to me either.
This is also the first video that has a title on it. We’ll see that on I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do and Mamma Mia as well.
This is also the first video where we not only see to people go face-to-face, but they do it to the point where they look like they are either about to make-out or head-butt each other.
We get our usual use of profile shots, but there’s also something you didn’t really see in Waterloo and Ring, Ring. We’ve seen the camera pan and around band. However, this is the first video where we move from a head shot of one member to another without an edit. It really only serves to match the pace of the video with the song in the same way as the quick face-to-face and comic book inserts do, but we’ll see it used to great effect in Knowing Me, Knowing You. Still, like this; Waterloo; and Ring, Ring, this moving around means that the performance the band is giving is still going on even if the camera is somewhere else. It makes me wonder how scripted a lot of these early videos were, and how much was Hallström telling them to get up there and recreate one of their live performances while he built a video around it on-the-fly.
I guess you could call this music video a dry-run for Knowing Me, Knowing You.
I’m glad I am doing this as a retrospective. That way I can build upon their previous videos. What do we add this time?
We get the quick zooms at the beginning that people who grew up during the 1990s probably remember from the music video for the Rock Version of Ready To Go by Republica. Also, I know I will say it again when I get to a music video directed by Michael Bay, but one of the most important reasons that music videos are not to be ignored in the history of cinema is because they changed the way editing was done. This video is a good early example. Elected by Alice Cooper from 1972 and Stayin’ Alive by The Bee Gees from 1977 are better examples, but it’s still worth mentioning with Waterloo because it will become more noticeable when we get to videos like Take A Chance On Me and SOS. As you watch any of those videos, notice how it isn’t just a song played over a film, but a film and a song transformed into an integrated whole. That’s a big change from many films that came before music videos that used music in service of the film rather than it being a two-way street.
Also, while the phones were kind of stupid in that alternate version of Ring, Ring; the Napoleon bust nicely ties the band, song, and their costumes together with him to immediately set the theme and speed of the song.
There’s something subtle in this music video that is easy to miss. You still have the profile shots where they aren’t looking at the camera. You still have the shot through the girls to Benny on the piano. You have the addition of the girls looking at each other to sing. The thing that is subtle and easy to miss is that during the low angles, the band is all looking straightforward whereas they do look up when the camera shoots them from a high angle. You’ll see that featured prominently in SOS, as if they are looking up to you for help. Here it looks like they refuse to look down, but only straightforward and upward towards their future. The crane shots are also more impressive in this one, than Ring, Ring.
One of my favorite things about the video is the ending. Ring, Ring ended on a cheesy freeze-frame. This one has the camera move further and further between Frida and Agnetha until you are left with a blank white shot that it lingers on even after the song has stopped. It is a nice way to visually match the vocals drifting off because the camera is also drifting off of the subjects (the band). It also visually matches the song coming to an end.
One negative thing I can say is that an edit was left in at about one minute-and-five-seconds that feels like it is there to cover up a goof.
I was originally planning to start 2017 off by working through the videos that aired on the first day of MTV. At the last minute, I decided I would do a retrospective of the music videos of ABBA with special days off for certain holidays or events. It is a little tough to do and kind of easy. It is tough because once you get back into the 1970s, then you run into several problems.
First, it is sometimes difficult to tell whether a music video is just a release of a live performance they gave or is what we think of as a music video. This is a particular problem with ABBA since the more and more I look at YouTube, the more and more I become convinced that every performance they ever gave is on there. A good example of this issue is that there is another version of Ring, Ring. The problem is that while it could be released as a music video, it really looks like it was a live broadcast rather than something recorded in advance. I will probably do that though. Another great example is Mony Mony by Tommy James & The Shondells. It could easily be a music video or something they did live. It’s not like A Whiter Shade Of Pale by Procol Harum or Nights In White Satin by The Moody Blues that are clear-cut music videos.
Second, you really get into the issue of different versions. In the case of Dancing Queen, it looks like there might be four different versions. This also includes the Spanish versions of some their songs. In the case of the song Happy New Year, there are two different versions of the video. They didn’t just dub the video in Spanish. They actually reshot certain things, maybe shot some new material, and rearranged parts of the video. It’s distinctly different.
Third, there are undocumented videos. This is always a problem. Meat Loaf will be a nightmare when I decide to do his 1980s videos rather than just the Bat Out Of Hell ones. In the case of ABBA, mvdbase and IMVDb have them covered pretty well. Also, the ABBA VEVO channel seems to have just about every official video they made, including the one called The Last Video that isn’t documented in either database.
Fourth, there are videos out there that were made after the group either broke up or came into existence years after the song was released. A video for Joy Division’s Atmosphere was made years after the group broke up after the suicide of Ian Curtis. Also, there is a music video for Money by Pink Floyd that sure looks like it was made in the 1970s. It is even listed as having been released in 1973. However, they also list that Wayne Isham directed the music video. Isham would have had to have been fifteen when he made it. When you go to his IMDb page, you can find a big list of his music videos. Money was actually made in 1989.
Finally, there are going to be videos that I can see possibly exist, but I can’t find a copy of to embed. A great example of that is this video right here. According to mvdbase, there is a music video for People Need Love that came out either just before, or after this one. I can find live performances of that song. I can’t find a music video.
In general, I will be leaning towards the conservative side of things. If I come across something later on that I clearly missed, then I will add it.
Now for the video.
This is about as basic an ABBA music video as you are going to get. You have them in a straight line with the primary focus on Agnetha and Frida, and they are all trapped in the white dimension. However, as we go through their music videos, you can see the evolution of the promo film to what we think of as a modern music video.
One of the hallmarks of an ABBA music video is the profile shot. You can also see Hallström played with focus during those shots. My favorite part of the profile shot is when it doesn’t cut from them singing to the guitar, but instead pans down from their faces and changes focus to bring a very close-up shot of the guitar being played into focus.
I also like the part of the video when the video uses a side shot through Agnetha and Frida so we can see Benny on the piano.
I get the strong feeling that Hallström looked at earlier music videos like the one for Hello, Goodbye by The Beatles, and started thinking how he could change that up using different filmmaking techniques. It’s a similar video, but there’s a polish and style missing from it that is in this one. Ring, Ring would become a basis for You Better Run by Pat Benatar in 1981 and other such simple put-the-band-on-a-set-and-have-them-perform videos.
Owe Sandström and Lars Wigenius were costume designers on this music video.
You can watch Sandström talk about ABBA costumes in general below.
After spending the last two weeks watching the endless mayhem of the Friday the 13th franchise, I was really in the mood for a nice, low-key romantic comedy and that’s exactly what I got on Tuesday night when I went to the Dallas Angelika and saw Salmon Fishing In The Yemen.
Now, I have to admit that I come from a family that is full of people who like to fish. I, however, am not one of them. First off, as I’ve explained here numerous times, Lisa does not do water. Second, I have never seen the appeal of spending hours doing nothing just on the off-chance that you might catch a slimy fish that you’re just going to toss back into lake or river or wherever it is that they’re just trying to live their lives day-to-day. (Seriously, it seems like that would be very traumatic for the fish.) I understand that there’s supposed to be some zen nature thing that comes along with fishing but … no, I just don’t get it.
Fred Jones (played by Ewan McGregor) would disagree with me. Fred is a world-renowned expert on fish and fishing who works for the British government. It quickly becomes apparent that Fred is more comfortable fishing than dealing with other human beings. (The film goes as far as to have another character suggest that he has Asperger’s syndrome but I’m going to disagree with that diagnosis because, quite frankly, I think that the current popularity of characters and celebrities with self-diagnosed Asperger’s syndrome is really more of a case of lazy characterization than anything else.) Anyway, Fred is stuck in a failing marriage and is suffering from a huge case of ennui but that all changes when he meets Harriet (Emily Blunt).
Harriet is a neurotic girl whose boyfriend Robert (a very handsome and charming Tom Mison) is serving in Afghanistan. Harriet works for a consulting firm that has been contracted by a wealthy sheikh (Amr Waked) who wants to introduce salmon fishing to the desert country of Yemen. While Fred claims that the sheikh’s idea is impossible, the British government decides that the project has a lot of PR value and soon, both Fred and Harriet find themselves in Yemen, attempting to introduce salmon into a foreign habitat, dealing with suspicious and militant locals, and, of course, falling in love.
Salmon Fishing In The Yemen is an undeniably uneven film and it didn’t really change my opinion of fishing but I still enjoyed it. It’s a genuinely sweet-natured film and, as was proven last year in Beginners, nobody falls in love on-screen as convincingly as Ewan McGregor and he and Emily Blunt have a very likable chemistry. They make for a super cute couple and you really do find yourself hoping that they get together and really, what else can you ask for when you go to a see a romantic comedy?
I was a bit less impressed with the film’s attempt at political satire but that may have had more to do with my own election year fatigue than anything else. That said, the Prime Minister’s press secretary is played Kristin Scott Thomas and she literally gives one of the most ferocious performances that I’ve ever seen. She snarls and snaps with such skill that she made even the film’s most heavy-handed moments entertaining. Perhaps her signature moment comes when another character offers her his resignation and she snaps back, without missing a beat, “Accepted.” Scott Thomas utters that one line with the perfect combination of venom, annoyance, and gratitude.
Seriously, somebody get Kristen Scott Thomas her own HBO sitcom. She deserves it.
Through the Shattered Lens 