Special effects in CASABLANCA
Honestly Kolaga
TCM is promoting their Warner Bros tough-guy films with some
guy saying that James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart didn't need
special effects. This promo goes so far as to claim that
CASABLANCA doesn't have any special effects.
How does rear-projection (I hope I'm using the right term)
count? Rick and Ilsa go for a spin in his sports car.
I can't think of very many films of the 1930's & 40's that
mounted a camera near a car so that the scene could be
shot on the street. Yes, there are a few -- SULLIVAN'S
TRAVELS wild ride sequence for instance.
So should rear-projection count as a special effect?
---
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Michael Morgan
What effects there are in Casablanca, aren't to special. The plane in
back of Rick et al at the end is a not to scale with midgets walking
around it! Tho I would agree I am NOT looking at what is going on around
the actors, the story is the thing here.
FilmGene
<<So should rear-projection count as a special effect?>>
Of course it should. And so do the innumerable miniatures used in the film.
Most studio films used special effects. However, in those days they were meant
to be "invisible" for the most part. The extreme use of special effects today
with the result that the audience is looking for them, would have been
considered very bad form in the forties.
Gene Stavis, School of Visual Arts - NYC
Kolaga Xiuhtecuhtli
Stop-motion animation is the earliest and best example of a special
effect. KING KONG (1933?) must have used all the effects possible
at the time. I'm not any sort of authority so excuse me if I get
some of the names wrong here. The opening sequence of CITIZEN KANE
also has some sort of animation I think.
There's the matte shot -- these figured prominently in FORBIDDEN
PLANET but they also were used wherever a castle was needed. The
Emerald City in THE WIZARD OF OZ is seen in the distance via
a matte.
There's the painted backdrop. Example: the back of the set
in DEAD END is the of the wall of the sound stage but there is
a street painted on it.
There was extensive use of models. Trains and buildings were
frequently depicted this way. Example: a car skids off the
road in the opening sequence of PROTECTOR OF THE FLAME and
a train plunges into a river in NOAH'S ARK.
There were the special camera lenses -- used to convey a state
of mind such as dizziness. Example: GOING HOLLYWOOD -- a drunk
scene.
There was the effect at the end of THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR where
Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison walk into the sky.
There is the multiple exposures that are used to depict a man
transforming such as Spencer Tracey in DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE.
But for sure, special effects were rarely an end in themselves.
On the other hand, I'm sure that there would have been another
KING KONG if the studio people could be convinced that they
would recoup the expense. As it stands, there was THE DEVIL-DOLL
(1936) with Lionel Barrymore using small people (dolls really)
to exact his vengeance. And there was Albert Deeker as DR. CYCLOPS.
Vincent
On Sat, 07 Mar 1998 03:16:53 GMT,
Sp_am_Kil_ler...@worldnet.att.net (Kolaga Xiuhtecuhtli)
wrote:
>Stop-motion animation is the earliest and best example of a special
>effect. KING KONG (1933?) must have used all the effects possible
>at the time. I'm not any sort of authority so excuse me if I get
>some of the names wrong here. The opening sequence of CITIZEN KANE
>also has some sort of animation I think.
Interestingly enough, CITIZEN KANE has a stop-motion sequence in it
from KING KONG. There is rear-projection during the picninc sequence
with the birds flying around that's right straight from Kong's Skull
Island.
Vincent
vr...@ix.netcom.com
http://users.aol.com/VRV1/index.html
mack twamley
Vincent wrote in message <3501739a...@NNTP.ix.netcom.com>...
#####################
Citizen Kane used not only the footage of the Skull Island jungle in the
Florida picnic scene, but in the News on the March obituary, as the building
of Xanadu is described, they use a snippet from Alfred Newman's score for
Gunga Din.
FRAJM
><<So should rear-projection count as a special effect?>>
>
>Of course it should. And so do the innumerable miniatures used in the film.
>
>Most studio films used special effects. However, in those days they were
>meant
>to be "invisible" for the most part. The extreme use of special effects today
>with the result that the audience is looking for them, would have been
>considered very bad form in the forties.
>
>
>
It took a while but I think I finally figured out the credit one often sees in
older films for "process photography". I assume it covers rear projection,
matte shots, and a variety of other optical special effects and transitional
effects like wipes and fades.
Or am I wrong?
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
http://members.aol.com/frajm/
"All over the room throats were being strained and minds broadened."
-- P. G. Wodehouse, Piccadilly Jim
FRAJM
Sp_am_Kil_ler...@worldnet.att.net (Kolaga Xiuhtecuhtli) wrote:
>Stop-motion animation is the earliest and best example of a special
>effect. KING KONG (1933?) must have used all the effects possible
>at the time. I'm not any sort of authority so excuse me if I get
>some of the names wrong here.
Have you ever seen the 1925 _Lost World_ with Wallace Beery and Bessie Love?
The story is from Conan Doyle about dinosaurs surviving in a remote plateau.
The stop-motion animation is by Willis O'Brien. That and the story line itself
are interesting precursors of _King Kong_. And the effects are impressive, to
say the least.
Your other comments about the effects in various movies reminded me of the
Topper movies. I think that they, especially the original _Topper_, are a
monument to special effects. They were designed by Roy Seawright, who perfected
his magic in _The Invisible Man_. The difference here is that they were being
used to induce laughs not horror. But the effects, clever as they were, would
not have worked half so well if Roland Young hadn't been up to the physical
demands of his role as Cosmo Topper; he twists, jerks, spins, drags, and
generally contorts himself in his ongoing struggle with disembodied spirits and
animated crockery, all the while trying to waylay the humans' suspicions and to
get the ghostly Kerbys to leave him alone. The scene in the court room when his
clothes and hair appear to smooth themselves is by itself a masterpiece of
special effects and physical comedy. Young was nominated for a Best Supporting
Actor Oscar, but lost to Joseph Schildkraut.
FilmGene
<<It took a while but I think I finally figured out the credit one often sees
in
older films for "process photography". I assume it covers rear projection,
matte shots, and a variety of other optical special effects and transitional
effects like wipes and fades.>>
Yes, it is largely true. However, there were other credits which further
refined this. "Montages by...", Optical Effects by....", for instance, not to
mention "special effects by....".
Luis Canau
Sp_am_Kil_ler...@worldnet.att.net (Kolaga Xiuhtecuhtli) wrote:
[...]
> As it stands, there was THE DEVIL-DOLL
>(1936) with Lionel Barrymore using small people (dolls really)
>to exact his vengeance. [...]
What do you mean with "doll really"? Some shots had the "small" people
superimposed(sp?) on the scene, and some used giant furniture. It was great
for the time. And a lot of it still looks convincing. Well, in some shots when
the 'dolls' where really not doing anything they were really dolls.
Luis Canau_________________________________
<luis....@mail.EUnot.pt> EUnot -> EUnet)
Cinema: http://home.EUnet.pt/id005098/cinedie
_________Pro - w i d e s c r e e n_______________
Kolaga Xiuhtecuhtli
>Sp_am_Kil_ler...@worldnet.att.net (Kolaga Xiuhtecuhtli) wrote:
>
>[...]
>> As it stands, there was THE DEVIL-DOLL
>>(1936) with Lionel Barrymore using small people (dolls really)
>>to exact his vengeance. [...]
>
>What do you mean with "doll really"? Some shots had the "small" people
>superimposed(sp?) on the scene, and some used giant furniture. It was great
>for the time. And a lot of it still looks convincing. Well, in some shots when
>the 'dolls' where really not doing anything they were really dolls.
What I meant was that the dolls were dolls that Barrymore's character
managed to "bring to life." I don't remember how the figurines were
"brought to life" and I think that perhaps it involved some sort of
Voodoo sacrifice maybe. Maybe a real person had to be killed or
something to make the dolls. The dolls were inanimate but Barrymore
could activate them (like in THE GOLEM) and give them orders.
I guess I don't remember the story too well. Let me just mention
that Lionel Barrymore disguises himself as an old woman for most
of the film. It's all kind of twisted and it's Tod Browning film.
David P. Hayes
Most of us know the esteemed position accorded "Citizen Kane" in
film-history books. Arthur Knight's well-regarded 1957 book "The Liveliest
Art" accords it space and praise. David A. Cook's "A History of Narrative
Film" (Norton, 1981) gives "Citizen Kane" a full section (comprising of
three of the four sections within a one of the book's seventeen chapters).
A Prentiss-Hall textbook, "Understanding Movies" (Fifth Edition, 1990)
devotes the final chapter to it, calling it "Synthesis," and using the film
to deal with the topics of the previous ten chapters.
Pauline Kael wrote a "New Yorker" essay subsequently published in book form
in which she discusses some of the earlier films to use techniques which
others have attributed to "Kane." Some other such writers have not been
cautious about acknowledging earlier films which have a better claim to
originating "Welles's" techniques.
Mack Twamley and Vincent (vr...@ix.netcom.com) recently posted in
rec.arts.movies.past-films about "Citizen Kane" using footage from RKO's
earlier "King Kong" as background. (messages
<6ds0k2$oih$1...@usenet11.supernews.com> and
<3501739a...@NNTP.ix.netcom.com>) Footage, though, is not the only
thing in "Citizen Kane" to have been used earlier. For all the lavish
praise heaped upon "Citizen Kane" for its originality, there are too many
attributions to it that "scholars" have made that the film doesn't deserve.
Herein is my list of techniques employed in "Citizen Kane" which saw earlier
use in films made by directors other than Welles.
Knight would write that, "Of [Welles's first] two films, 'Kane' has received
the greater attention, ... partly because of its unique four-part story
construction...." Yet multiple flashbacks and storytellers were to be found
in: "The Power and the Glory" (1933). Preston Sturges wrote the screenplay
about the rise of a railroad tycoon from obscure origins, opening with
discussion of his death, then having two characters (one of whom had known
him for many decades) relate in flashback the events of the man's life; when
the film returns to the present, we hear the two narrator's opposing
evaluations of the protagonist's moral character. (Sturges reportedly
opened his written-directed "Sullivan's Travels" (1941) with a
film-within-a-film revealed to having been shown in a projection room, so as
to copy from Welles after Welles had copied from him.)
Fake newspaper headline merely an alternative: "You Only Live Once" (1937).
In "Kane," we see a newspaper headline reading "Kane Governor" before we
discover this is merely a mock-up in a newspaper office; subsequently, the
Enquirer's personnel opt to print instead "Fraud at Polls." In "You Only
Live Once," after the fate of Henry Fonda' character has been put in the
hands of a jury, we see a headline reading "Taylor Freed in Massacre!," then
one reading "Taylor Jury Deadlocked!" As in "Kane" four years later, a
newspaper editor makes a selection, and it is for the third mock-up: "Taylor
Guilty!"
Opening/closing on a mansion, in fact a matte, with smoke: "Rebecca" (1940)
Fake newsreel that is not revealed to be a film-within-a-film until its
length has been run, and thus can be mistaken by the audience to not be part
of the feature film: "The Bellamy Trial" (1929) with Leatrice Joy and Betty
Bronson. Alexander Walker's "The Shattered Silents" describes film as "one
long courtroom scene punctuated by flashbacks.... It opened without title or
cast credits: simply a newsreel-type prologue of documentary impact leading
up to the court-house and the start of the trial, a device calculated to
gain authority from the public's familiarity with the new sound newsreels."
(Oddly enough, although M-G-M distributed this film, it had been produced by
the Hearst News Service.) As "Kane" viewers should know, "Kane" lacks
opening cast and credits listings, although the film begins with a studio
logo, a "Mercury" title, and a main title. Given that the main title and
the fake newsreel are separated by the impressionistic death sequence,
audience members of 1941 might not have been settled into the feature film
before being hit with the title of "News on the March."
A marriage disravels in a shot of a meal being consumed at a table with a
large gulf separating the spouses: "Rebecca" (1940). (The 1940 film does
not have "Kane"'s quick cutaways from one year to another, but the latter
technique does have predecessors, to be listed by me later.)
Shots are framed to include ceilings: many Hitchcock British films, several
lesser-known American 1930s features.
Lengthy shots: "Rebecca" (1940), "Shop Around the Corner" (1940).
Expressionist photography to make scary a shot of a bald man: "Mad Love"
(1936, photographed by "Kane" cinematographer Gregg Toland)
Deep focus: "Working Girls" (1931), "Rebecca" (1940), "Dead End" (1937,
another Toland work)
Moving shot that "wipes" in a miniature or distant set: "King Kong" (1933),
"Algiers" (1938). It is often reported that in "Kane," the catwalk of the
opera house where Susan Alexander performs, was not physically connected to
the stage, and neither of them were in reality linked to the intervening
ropes, although all three "elements" were optically combined to make one
shot. In "Kong," the exterior shot of the theater where Kong will be
unveiled is made up partially of newsreel footage shot at the premiere of
"City Lights." In "Algiers," the final shot begins with Charles Boyer and
Joseph Calleia on a dock, then pans up to what they were watching: a ship
leaving; that ship was optically added to "Algiers" by copying it from the
final shot from "Pepe Le Moko," the film of which "Algiers" is a remake.
Blonde second wife shown lonely within large rooms: "Rebecca" (1940). (I
credit Rudy Belmer's laserdisc commentary track for "Rebecca" for pointing
out the "Rebecca"/"Kane" similarities cited here.)
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Welles's use of sound has drawn attention, not only for how he used it in
"Citizen Kane," but also in his next film, "The Magnificent Ambersons." The
following passage, from Knight's "The Liveliest Art," is typical:
"In radio Welles had developed a special montage technique using a crescendo
of voices, each saying a sentence or sometimes merely a fragment of a
sentence. This he carried over into film, photographing the various
speakers in close-up against a blank background. Spliced together in quick
succession, the shots gave the impression of a whole town talking--and,
equally important, what the town was talking about. Welles even altered
traditional dialogue techniques to create a more vivid, more realistic
feeling in his scenes. It has long been a stage--and now a
movie--convention to permit one character to complete a speech before the
next begins to reply. Actual conversations of course, rarely progress in
this fashion. One person speaks and then, often before he has finished the
sentence, the listener interrupts with his own opinion. In a roomful of
people, no one dreams of remaining silent until one speaker has completed
his remarks. Numerous conversations take place simultaneously, overlapping
one another, even drowning out one another. Welles, after seeking to
reproduce this effect in radio, found it even more suitable for films, where
the source of the words is always visible. He had toyed with it a bit in
'Citizen Kane,' as in the quick succession of breakfast quarrels that signal
the growing estrangement between Kane and his wife...."
But there were predecessors:
Cutting mid-line to have another character finish the line, as if everyone
is thinking and talking about the same thing: "The Half- Naked Truth"
(1932), which starred Lee Tracy and Lupe Velez, although the scene in
question was of one-scene players.
Cutting mid-line to have another countryman finish the line: "Penn of
Pennsylvania" (U.S. title: "Courageous Mr. Penn") (British 1941).
Overlapping dialogue: "Unaccustomed As We Are" (Laurel & Hardy short, 1929)
and its remake, "Blockheads" (1938); "The Front Page" (1931) and its remake,
"His Girl Friday" (1940).
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Knight praised in "The Magnificent Ambersons" "...the long carriage ride
through the town's main street, the camera catching in the polished windows
the reflection of buildings and people on the other side of the street to
create an extraordinary sense of the three-dimensional reality of the town
itself."
Yet the technique in "Magnificent Ambersons" had predecessors:
Shiny windows reveal other side of street: "Four Sons" (1928) and especially
"Riley the Cop" (1928), both by John Ford. (It should be recalled that
Welles would state that he learned film technique from seeing forty viewings
of Ford's "Stagecoach.")
--
David Hayes
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RalphBener
Kael's "Raising Kane" is one of her best, most readable lengthies. But, one
should beconcrned as to how much she doesn't attribute to Orson Welles. She
never interviewed him while preparing the piece.
Ralph Benner
http://members.aol.com/RalphBener/Benner.html
David P. Hayes
RalphBener wrote in message
<19980310113...@ladder02.news.aol.com>...
>Kael's "Raising Kane" is one of her best, most readable lengthies. But, one
>should beconcrned as to how much she doesn't attribute to Orson Welles. She
>never interviewed him while preparing the piece.
The two post-"Raising Kane" books that I cited both deal with this, Cook on
pages 347-48, the Prentiss-Hall text on 431-32.
Jeff Williams
David P. Hayes wrote in message <6e2iuu$g...@bolivia.earthlink.net>...
>Shots are framed to include ceilings: many Hitchcock British films,
several
>lesser-known American 1930s features.
>
>Lengthy shots: "Rebecca" (1940), "Shop Around the Corner" (1940).
>Deep focus: "Working Girls" (1931), "Rebecca" (1940), "Dead End" (1937,
>another Toland work)
I think the real innovation in Kane was the combination of these techniques
used in single shots. Long takes were popularized (I hesitate to say
"pioneered", since I'm sure others had the idea before this) by Renoir in
films such as Grand Illusion - however, these were not particularly
difficult takes in and of themselves (most of them were medium shots,
hand-held, without a lot of movement and mostly naturally lit). The same
could be said for the long takes in Rebecca (at least those that I remember
offhand). Renoir also uses deep focus to an extent in Grand Illusion (I
have not seen "Working Girls"), but again it's lit by natural light and
therefore not very impressive.
Deep focus and ceiling framing in a long take is a combination almost
impossible to pull off, even today. Deep focus, especially with the film
stocks available in the 1940's, requires a tremendous amount of light -
lights which are typically positioned above the set to keep them out of the
shot, something that's obviously not possible if you're framing the ceiling.
You've then got to position them off to the sides of the frame, which then
presents a problem if you're going to move the camera at all. Welles does
this in Citizen Kane at least half a dozen times, which again is something I
rarely see in films even today. In many of the shots Welles uses
practicals - he purposely shows the set lighting in the shot disguised as a
prop (the party scene at the newspaper is a perfect example of this), but in
several of the shots it's difficult for anyone I've spoken to to figure out
exactly where the light is coming from.
So at least with respect to these three innovations attributed to Kane, I
don't think it's any one of them individually, but all three of them
together in combination that Welles could be said to have pioneered.
// Jeff Williams
// jeff-w...@NOSPAMbigfoot.com
// http://www.geocities.com/soho/2024
// To send email remove "NOSPAM" from the address.
David Roy
Honestly Kolaga wrote in message <6dnuip$4...@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net>...
:TCM is promoting their Warner Bros tough-guy films with some
:guy saying that James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart didn't need
:special effects. This promo goes so far as to claim that
:CASABLANCA doesn't have any special effects.
:
:How does rear-projection (I hope I'm using the right term)
:count? Rick and Ilsa go for a spin in his sports car.
No idea whether or not it should count as a special effect. (Not very
special effect, possibly...) But he does more than just go for a spin in a
sports car. He goes for a drive around Paris (in a scene set before the
Occupation, but filmed whilst Paris was firmly held by the Germans) and
manages to get from the Arc de Triomphe (central Paris) to somewhere in the
countryside in about thirty seconds flat.
David