Scrooby's Musings

Started by Scrooby, March 08, 2022, 12:28:53 AM

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Scrooby

Has anyone ever mentioned the distinct connection between the boisterous New Year's Eve party in Phantom Thread and this similarly designed scene in Blondie of the Follies (1932) starring the ultimate 1930s Hollywood insider Marion Davies?





Best wishes.

Scrooby



With Scroobified Subs. Please ensure to activate subs!



Best wishes.


WorldForgot

Hell yeah ~ will bookmark

Scrooby

PRIEST OF ZEUS
O Oedipus, master of our city,
you see here seated in assembly
before you the years of these suppliants :
some here have not yet strength in wing to rise,
while others are all too heavy in age.
I, a priest of Zeus, shall speak on behalf
of all these unmarried youths and old men
gathered here. Know that the other cityfolk
sit in the city-centre by the two
temples of Athena, holding their sacred
olive branches in hand beside the banks
of Ismenus, who gives us divinations
(if read rightly) in the ashes of fire.

Our city is overcome, as you see,
helpless to lift its head up from the depths
of bitter death. Withering is the fruit
inside their rinds, wilted on their branches
in our land. Withering are our cattle
in our fields. Our women, too, bear stillbirths
only. Some hard god has set a hateful
plague on us and carries off the city
person by person, decimating us,
the ancient race of Cadmus,
and granting Hades the wealth of our lives.

I and these children sit here before you
not as before a god, but as before
the first of men, as master of affairs
between earth and heaven. You came to us
and freed the city from the Sphinx's terrible
song, though having no knowledge beforehand
of this, and with no instruction from us.
Men say a god helped you; in any way,
at that time you straightened out our city.

Now, o most excellent king Oedipus,
we come here to your hearth to beg for help.
Whether you find strength through the word of gods,
or know the truth in your own mortal heart,
in my life I have seen how experienced
men are the best counsellors of people.
Please now, o best of men, save our city!

But whatever you do, please be careful
about it—for your sake, you who are sung
in songs of praise as saviour of our Thebes!
Let it not be written that you lifted us
back to our feet only for us to fall
back down. Let all men remember your reign
as the city's restorative to health.

Once before you gave us prosperity,
a good omen for our present troubles.
Be that good man again! You must not rule
over a wasteland emptied of people.
What is a high city, or far-reaching ship,
without men there to work? It is nothing.

Scrooby

"I'm incurable."

μίασμα χώρας, ὡς τεθραμμένον χθονὶ
ἐν τῇδ᾽, ἐλαύνειν μηδ᾽ ἀνήκεστον τρέφειν. (ll. 97–8)

ἀνήκεστον = incurable

a. μίασμα χώρας = "miasma in our land"
b. χώρας = Oedipus

so,

c. Oedipus = incurable.

Scrooby



Please turn on subtitles. Enjoy.

Scrooby

When Gary walks into the trade exposition, the camera's aperture opens a split second or so before entering into the building (32.03).

(1) In spirit, this lensing moment recalls the amusingly allusive "power surge" effect (from 2001: A Space Odyssey) when Barry's stride switches to slo-mo while boarding the airplane in Punch-Drunk.

(2) This lensing moment recalls how PTA requested of his cinematographer to (paraphrasing) "not be so precise" in Barry's phone-sex scene; thus Robert Elswit intentionally added the "lurch" that the fine folks here will know.

(3) This burning-in-of-intentional-foible is artist's code for, "I'm taking this so seriously I'm even undercutting it." This is Fassbinder's strategy in Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss : while the camerawork is technically magnificent throughout, Fassbinder lays on music in a ludicrously slapdash manner in the second half of the film to intentionally undercut the visual precision : perhaps to undercut everything.

Bonus : Need I mention the thematic use of lens flares in Spielberg's new film? For a few times in an otherwise sedate production, Spielberg conjoins lens flares with the mother. (Thus, as with West Side Story, lens flares later in the film bring the character back to memory). At one moment, in a flare only film can capture, Spielberg evokes the inspiring last shot of 2001 : but instead of the fresh-eyed Baby, here the bubble holds mother and child. (Kubrick originally envisioned Saturn, not Jupiter, for Part IV—notice how Spielberg's flare recalls the shape of the wondrous ringed planet.)




Will this be the last great lens flare of note ever? Will PTA respond . . . ?

Happy holidays.

Scrooby

Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey into Night :

MARY (teasingly) : Oh you! You expect everyone to eat
the enormous breakfast you do. No one else in the world
could without dying of indigestion.

These remarks occur in the opening exchange of husband and wife on the morning of the play. In every response the mother gives at this time, as at all other times at day or night, a kernel of negativity is transacted to her interlocutor, however pleasant the appearance of her outward vibe. Her character is the proverbial "conversation killer" : an everflowing spring of negativity. The mother is a product and symbol of her environment. Perversely comically (in the manner of Sophocles and PT), her husband and sons unwittingly caused, and still perpetuate, her fall and subsequent escape into morphine addiction; and as they suffer the consequences of the family disaster, they determine her, while they heartily drink their whisky, the criminal in the Situation.

But in PT, Alma is associated with the life-giving nature of food, and praises with wonder the hunger of the artist whose rapid mind burns energy as fast as light.

This aspect of Alma is a positive. As is PTA's association with the world's foremost playwrights.

Best wishes and happy holidays.


Scrooby

Oedipus Maximus : a Reboot

Note : This play follows line 862 in Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus.

Jocasta and Oedipus. Daytime pillow-talk in bed after sex.
   
JOCASTA : I've been waiting for us to speak.

OEDIPUS : About what?
 
JOCASTA : What we know, and fear to say, even in a sigh—for the slightest breath might bring disaster upon us.

OEDIPUS : And so you would have us speak of this now?

JOCASTA : Just now we're safe here inside our knowledge. No one can hurt us.

OEDIPUS : What knowledge?

JOCASTA : I think you know.

OEDIPUS : I don't.

JOCASTA : Be a man!

OEDIPUS : As opposed to your child?

JOCASTA : You do see.

OEDIPUS : Today I see.

JOCASTA : And so? What shall we do with this new knowledge? Destroy ourselves, or fight? I for you, and you for me. Together we must fight for us!

OEDIPUS : As mother and son? Or husband and wife?

JOCASTA : I love you all in all. I cannot discriminate my passion. Not now. As sweet as it is to know my son is alive, sweeter still is the loving touch my husband gives. This, I think, is what I would suffer most in losing.

OEDIPUS : You would have us love as husband and wife before the eyes of the city?

JOCASTA : Nothing was said that those people would understand.

OEDIPUS : But Tiresias—

JOCASTA : The old man who revealed his apathy for the city? Loftiness in the low is derisory. He won no supporters with his words. You came away the victor.

OEDIPUS : Yet he said—

JOCASTA : The truth only we three know! And no one will believe him.

OEDIPUS : Only three? And the gods? Do you not think of the pestilence?

JOCASTA : Inside the house, or out?

OEDIPUS : What are you saying?

JOCASTA : I'm saying your skepticism is infuriating, in husband or son! You see the truth yet would deny your responsibilities. You have a marriage to protect, and a parent. Yet you fret, like a child.

OEDIPUS : When one knows what one is doing, responsibility is the good guide. When one is lost, responsibility is a tangled maze.

JOCASTA : A maze? Who better to navigate a labyrinth of thought than you, Oedipus, known to all everywhere as master of men in mind, champion of the Sphinx! You heard that horrible priest—he kindly reminded the people that you required no help from them to find the solution. You have the people's love. You impress them.

OEDIPUS : Yet they're dying and beg for help.

JOCASTA : I beg you, show me no more weakness! Rats enter into even the least opportune gap.

OEDIPUS : You speak of protecting ourselves? Do we even have the right to go on?

JOCASTA : You speak of "right"? What right have you not to protect us?

OEDIPUS : Shall I say it?

JOCASTA : What we know is inconsequential. Everything is permitted—if we allow it.

OEDIPUS : Is this love you defend for me, or for yourself?

JOCASTA : You mock the love of a mother for her son?

OEDIPUS : No. But I'm skeptical of the love of a wife for a husband.

JOCASTA : If we stay firm we shall survive this.

OEDIPUS : But you spoke before the people of summoning the witness of the king's murder. Soon they'll learn I'm the reason for the city's sickness.

JOCASTA : What I said before the people is inconsequential! What else do you say before the illiterate mob but empty promises? You and I shall ask no further questions about our past. You shall seek out no further clues. As for Creon, the theatre of sending him to Delphi allows us a pretext for punishment. Call it lies and sedition.

OEDIPUS : Not even your own brother escapes your hand?

JOCASTA : Would you rather we sacrifice ourselves to Creon?

OEDIPUS : Who won't fall before your glorious lies?

JOCASTA : If lies keep us living, why obey deadly truth?

OEDIPUS : You put me in three minds at once. (to himself) I must focus on the most vital question.

JOCASTA : You mean, How do we get away with this?

OEDIPUS : (hesitating) Yes.

JOCASTA : You see? Our thoughts are still each other's. This proves our love remains strong.

OEDIPUS : As mother and son?

JOCASTA : No more of that! What do you want? To persuade me to hang myself? This is how we were meant to be—as man and wife. Now that we've faced facts, now we must protect ourselves. To do anything otherwise is imbecilic. You'd sacrifice ourselves to morality, when no one knows the truth?

OEDIPUS : Three people know. And the gods—that's one side too many.

JOCASTA : And if there are no gods? Then no one can stop us.

Enter CREON, with sword.

JOCASTA : How boldly you step, my brother! What motivates this audacious intrusion?

CREON : This is how I greet a man who would have me dead.

JOCASTA : Rubbish! Take no notice of chatter in public!

CREON : You would have me ignore a death sentence given me?

OEDIPUS : Leave us.

CREON : Would you rather I speak my mind before the ear of the city?

Oedipus rises from bed and stands before Creon.

OEDIPUS : Speak what?

CREON : I come armed with the truth, which will protect me.

JOCASTA : What does he want? Enough riddles; speak out clear!

CREON : I know the man in my sister's bed is the plague killing the people.

OEDIPUS : What is this?

CREON : Abusing me with threats of the word "traitor" came, I think, from fear. Of what?

OEDIPUS : Not of you. That sword sharpens your tongue. Careful.

CREON : Oedipus, how perverse is the humour of the gods! Delphi spoke plain to us! μίασμα χώρας, I was told. Think of it : χώρας is Thebes. You are Thebes. The oracle's message was so simple you missed it clear in front of your eyes! For your sake I explained nothing to the elders. Oedipus, I come not to hurt you. I come bearing a sword to say I held my tongue for you.

OEDIPUS : A drawn sword is no requirement to speak your mind.

CREON : I will not lift it without provocation.

OEDIPUS : Have I reason for that? As it is, you deliver no news. I heard the truth as you spoke it.

CREON : You admit you killed Laius, yet sleep in his bed beside his wife? How solid is the blood inside you! This shameful union may be lighter than the prophecy you fled from, but is questionable.

JOCASTA : Questionable how? Say what you mean.

CREON : The king promised the people that the murderer of Laius must leave the city.

As Jocasta speaks, she rises from bed and stands before Creon.

JOCASTA : The city's heard riddles from oracles, nothing more. Speculation is plentiful, rendering all words useless.

CREON : Hence my sword? Don't fear me, sister.

OEDIPUS : We don't.

CREON : What have you decided? Everyone in Thebes must die so you two may live?

JOCASTA : Would you rather we die? You may live, too.

CREON : I live yet!

OEDIPUS : You live now.

CREON : You said you would summon a slave from the fields for questioning. Why?

OEDIPUS : Creon knows all else yet asks why?

CREON : Okay. The place where three roads meet. The roads coming in from Delphi and Daulis. Why is that spot so important for you to think on?

OEDIPUS : You question your king?

CREON : Not the king—my sister's husband.

OEDIPUS : You said you would not raise your sword.

JOCASTA : Creon, you well know that spot was where my first husband died.

CREON : It's where Oedipus killed him.

OEDIPUS : All know the story by now. I was defending myself.

CREON : A second time you admit you were there!

OEDIPUS : The king died there. Now say your words and go!

CREON : If you were there, at the place where the three roads meet, why do you seek testimony of that bloody work from the mouth of an ancient slave?

Oedipus, master of mind, pauses.

JOCASTA : Creon, what is your concern here? The king speaks to placate the people. Here in Thebes, crooked words straighten things out.

CREON : Crooked words—in this room, too?

OEDIPUS : Enough! What do you want?

CREON : The pestilence is punishment for some other atrocious act, isn't it? Some other shameful work of yours. What other reason is there for you to root through the past, except that you're searching for some other answer?

JOCASTA : What of it?

OEDIPUS : I would speak to him no more, dear wife.

JOCASTA : He has angered me. (to Creon) Aren't you ashamed of that spectacle before the people, begging those imbeciles for their faith, as if honoured to be among them? Perhaps you wish to be their foremost man?

CREON : Forgive me, queen, but your husband is our foremost man.

JOCASTA : Speak your desire!

CREON : I have one question to ask—

OEDIPUS : Whose side you're on?

CREON : I take no side. I defend truth.

OEDIPUS : (smiles) Uncle—

CREON : Uncle?

OEDIPUS : That's the truth.

In an instant Creon is writhing on the ground, mouth gushing blood, his tongue severed.

JOCASTA : My brother!

OEDIPUS : His lack of loyalty has left him at a loss for words.

JOCASTA : He writhes in agony! Creon! You lost your way in the maze of the city, when all the time your home was here, where you would have been safe. But you were a blind boy.

OEDIPUS : It's done. He shall breathe out his treason no longer. Darling, while my hands worked, a thought entered my mind. The oracle that led me on the way to where the three roads meet—said nothing of this. Perhaps the oracle reaches a limit of dark, as we do, beyond which nothing is clear. How is it I have come to know this only now?—The world I live in is mine to create. Nothing that is not my own shall have dominion here. And the bright light here shall be of you, Jocasta!

JOCASTA : Come to me now, on the body; this warm soft foundation.

OEDIPUS : Ah, the blood! Kiss me!

JOCASTA : Mmmm, to be fucked as gods! Let them all rot! Let them die in their filth down to dust! No one left here but us! The whole city, our own palace! Ah, son! Our love has made us stronger than Fate! Time has bent to our will! We've won!

Darkness.

CHORUS
O may I convey
what must be heard seriously,
in all my words
and in all my acts;
to set before all
the laws of high-footed Heaven,
whose duration is forever,
there where solitary father lives.

Our nature must not be a forgetting.
We shall not be a place of oblivion
where one passes the night.

Let me instead enter into the completion of Divinity.

Confidence is the parent of tyranny.
Confidence, when overstuffed idly
with nothing beneficial, high in the head
moves forward into a sheer fall
from compulsion into anguish.
There, one is subject to unstable footing.

I pray that God does not undo our city.
I know I must not fall,
but preserve and protect fairness always.
No one must keep me from preserving the Word.

Please may I enter the completion of Divinity.

May the unrighteous know Justice;
otherwise why stand by in patience and pray?
But faded in the air is the ancient knowledge.
The living fail to see value,
and the god-words are followed nowhere.
Gone is the worship of the Word.

But may I enter into the completion of Divinity.

Oedipus stands at the window by the marriage bed.

JOCASTA : Come back to bed, son.

OEDIPUS : Soon.

JOCASTA : Look how your chest hair sticks to your sweat on my body. When we're making love you remind me of your father. You're as strong as he was. Stronger. How happy I am! You've taken the hands of silence from around my neck. I breathe free again.

OEDIPUS : Free?

JOCASTA : What do you mean?

OEDIPUS : (turning to another subject) We must remove the dead from the palace.

JOCASTA : Listen. You shall tell the city that Creon went to consult the oracle a second time. He'll vanish along the way, never to return—just as Laius.

OEDIPUS : Were you born so treacherous, mother, or did life teach it you?

JOCASTA : You would have me apologize for showing a survival instinct for my family?

OEDIPUS : I myself might feel shame for a heart colder than stone.

JOCASTA : Says the man who murdered my brother! I say you should think me warm indeed. Did you not feel it inside of me?

OEDIPUS : I wonder.

JOCASTA : We must stop this bickering! Consider what's next.

OEDIPUS : When I sharpen my eyesight everything blurs.

JOCASTA : What's that doublespeak?

OEDIPUS : Tiresias lives.

JOCASTA : But who would brag of listening to him? Those who don't scorn him show him ridicule. He's chosen to live outside the city, so why would any citizen lift a finger to protect him? Who loves the person who insults them? No, son, Tiresias cannot hurt us. Why do you speak of him?

OEDIPUS : (silent)

JOCASTA : If you love your wife you will lift that sword and run it through the old fool.

OEDIPUS : I wonder how a man may sneak up on someone who knows he's coming.

JOCASTA : How aimless you sound!

OEDIPUS : My eyes are sharp.

JOCASTA : Mind your mother!

OEDIPUS : Mind your husband!

JOCASTA : Darling. What would you have me do?

OEDIPUS : We must know what the old man knows. Till then what we know is nothing.

Tiresias is there, led by the hand of his young daughter, Manto.

TIRESIAS : I come to answer your plea.

OEDIPUS : Which one?

TIRESIAS : "Save me, save us."

JOCASTA : You've limped here on your cane to help the murderer?

TIRESIAS : I would say the "motherfucker". (to Oedipus) Do I hit the mark now?

OEDIPUS : What help can you offer?

TIRESIAS : None to Creon. Did I not tell you he wasn't your trouble?

OEDIPUS : What help?

TIRESIAS : Hear the deaf begging to hear!

OEDIPUS : Healing is needed here, but of a different sort from the city.

JOCASTA : (to Oedipus) Why do you say that?

TIRESIAS : (to Oedipus) You see now I've no care to be you?

OEDIPUS : (pauses) The king agrees.

TIRESIAS : Ha! To how many people am I speaking?

JOCASTA : What is going on here?

TIRESIAS : Oedipus, mother calls you.

OEDIPUS : You said this day would be destructive. I'm sure you didn't come here to watch.

TIRESIAS : You need not reach for that sword.

OEDIPUS : Speak then! What on your tongue is so pleasurable to my ears?

JOCASTA : (to Oedipus) I demand to know what's happening!

TIRESIAS : (smiling) Who may obey quicker—son or husband?

JOCASTA : I cannot abide the man. I am burning down this bedchamber after this. The air has been poisoned today.

Silence.

JOCASTA : I am utterly lost.

OEDIPUS : (to Tiresias) You didn't answer the Sphinx's riddle because you wanted me here. Why?

JOCASTA : What?

OEDIPUS : Stop talking!

TIRESIAS : You've schooled yourself since morning, but you're still an imbecile.

JOCASTA : This is unbearable.

OEDIPUS : Tell me then—you blind bastard—what don't I see?

TIRESIAS : One answer.

OEDIPUS : One answer?

TIRESIAS : The one answer to three questions will answer yours.

Darkness.

Oedipus alone.

OEDIPUS : What does that blind bastard see? Three questions, he said. Why didn't Tiresias answer the Sphinx's riddle himself? He left it for me to solve, and thereby win the kingship, who had no care for it (let the gods be my witness!). I am sure of the second question, too : Why did she give me up? Mother didn't want me—but my wife does. Is there any solace at all in that? Ah, gods! Why must I speak aloud, as if to an audience? What is happening? Who of me is speaking, and who is listening? Then there is the third, the third open eye, who watches the other two, and sees the split. And there are three of us : I, Jocasta, Tiresias. What is going on here? Continue, Oedipus, continue. What is the third question, the question you must ask yourself? Approach the problem in a different way. Which one answer answers the two questions I now know? The answer to the second is clear : Mother gave me up because she had no care for me. And the first answer may be just as clear : Tiresias didn't answer the riddle because, simply put, he didn't care to. So the answer to the three questions is "Care". (pause) So what is my question I must ask myself, the question that answers everything?

Darkness.

Jocasta is there, in bed.

JOCASTA : My king, you look unhappily lost in thought.

OEDIPUS : No, mother, I found my way back—after you gave me away.

JOCASTA : Yes, you came back to me.

OEDIPUS : Earlier you celebrated an empty heaven. I say shudder at it. For which is more absurd—order or coincidence? It doesn't matter—either one brought us to this. Confidence makes us a motherfucker.

JOCASTA : My goodness, this is the longest day I've lived through! So what if gods populate the sky. Are they worthy of us? There's nothing to them but self-interest. And they take pleasure in our idiocy!

OEDIPUS : They may yet take pleasure in our punishment.

JOCASTA : Punishment for what?

OEDIPUS : For anything.

JOCASTA : You rave on like that old fool. (pause) Do you know the answer he spoke of?

Oedipus gets into bed beside Jocasta.

OEDIPUS : I'm getting closer. (kissing her neck) The answer we seek is "Care".

JOCASTA : Mmmm. "Care". What do you think that means?

OEDIPUS : I don't know what thinking is anymore.

JOCASTA : (pushes him away) Then here's a word of education for you. How long did you think it would be before the news that you sought out one of our fieldhands was heard by all? Did you think the one we wanted would have stayed silent about what he knows?

OEDIPUS : What does he know?

JOCASTA : Nothing. He's dead. Along with the shepherd I gave you to.

OEDIPUS : Whose tracks are you covering, exactly?

JOCASTA : For one so lost in thought you're terribly thoughtless!

OEDIPUS : Am I? You gave me to a shepherd, who gave me to a slave, who gave me to my foster parents, Polybus and Merope. Is that thought strong enough for you? You made me fear them. My entire life, I feared what was kind to me, while everything I desired was poisonous!

JOCASTA : I made? I say it was your questionable interpretation of the oracle that decided your fate.

OEDIPUS : Questionable? (puts hands around her neck) My fate?

JOCASTA : Stop that! Let me go!

OEDIPUS : Let you go? Go where? Where do you want to go?

JOCASTA : Son! Husband! Oedipus! Stop!

OEDIPUS : First tell me I fuck better than father!

It dawns on Oedipus, breathing hard, that Jocasta is dead.

OEDIPUS : (loudly) Servant!

SERVANT : Yes?

OEDIPUS : Bring the children here.

SERVANT : Yes, sir.

Darkness.

Oedipus
What is this life that I am living through?
What plan works through me, decided long ago
and meant to motivate generations to come?
If this is true, what is a person worth
if there is no idea where it all leads,
regardless of a concentrated gaze?
So what is it to be responsible,
when everything known is wrong from the start?
And Destiny? No matter what direction
I took, my route would always have ended
here? So all my vaunted intelligence
are indeed thoughts of an imbecile. But
now I'm awake, and my eyes are so wide
they're liable to fall out. Don't make me
do it. Who says that inside me? No, no.
I don't know. Now you know you never knew.
Destiny took me where I had to go,
for obscurities I will never know.
So we the living sacrifice ourselves
for a future we know nothing about.
I'll show you how much you care, you bastards.

Oedipus blinds himself with Creon's sword.

Oedipus
Ah! Now I have rooted out the poison
from my body—the light of the sun, gone!
Now I'll educate myself. I will grope
my way like a very Tiresias
until I learn to see again. Inside
of me something cared enough to use me
to live, and it lived on light. It's dead now.
Known to all, understood by none, Oedipus
has left this body vacant, and is gone.
This has no name; "I" was lost with the light.
This now goes haltingly to start again.
Destiny wants This alive. To do what?
For what thing in the world is This to—care?
Perhaps the one saviour we have to save
the powerless from Destiny, is Care?
When I learn what care is, I will know This.

Darkness.

A spark of flame. The Chorus and Tiresias stand by the burnt wreck of the palace.


CHORUS : What happened?

TIRESIAS : The truth caught fire.

CHORUS : Have all the living burnt to ash in this abominable pyre?

TIRESIAS : See here, the children of the former king stand with me. Earlier I led them to safety, before the flames consumed the marriage bed.

CHORUS : Is our king dead?

TIRESIAS : The king is gone, and has taken the pestilence with him. Do you breathe easier? The air is clear.

CHORUS : O good king, you who loved the people, come back!

TIRESIAS : (smiles) Oedipus is not coming back. He's learned to care.

End.



Scrooby



Scrooby

Now King Minos solemnly promised the god to sacrifice
a body of one hundred bulls, once the king touched foot to Crete,
and all his ships were landed, and Minos had decorated
his palace with all the spoils of his wartime victories.

The scandal of his mother's adultery spread far and wide,
however, as its repulsive issue, the two-shaped baby,
lay open to all. So Minos resolved to hide away
the disgrace, by prisoning it in a many-winding maze. 

Daedalus, famous artist, celebrated architect,
fabricated the work with much inbuilt confusion, leading
the eye into uncertainty, into error, into wandering
along hallways of ingenious digressions ever-changing.

Just so the liquid Maeander plays through the Phrygian land,
winding ambiguously so that stream runs alongside stream
till the waters see themselves flowing back into the waters :
Maeander at play uncertainly from source to open sea.

Daedalus, in just this way, perfected innumerable
intricacies in his maze; and so difficult was his work,
he barely extricated himself from his own creation.

Ovid, Metamorphoses, VIII.152–68.

Scrooby


Scrooby

For most of cinema history, the electrical production quirk known as "out of phase" was deemed a grave cinematographic error (in the same category as unanticipated lens flares). In later times, however, first-rate filmmakers employed this flickering-of-light effect as a technique to generate subliminal tension (or whatever else).

Examples :

1. Kubrick : A Clockwork Orange



2. Fassbinder : Unfortunately I cannot remember which film, but it is an outdoor shot with house and trees.

3. Scorsese : Taxi Driver



4. Kubrick : The Shining



5. PTA : The Master



PTA's employment of the technique is the most visually subtle of these examples, requiring a large screen to discern the effect clearly.

Since "out of phase" is a celluloid phenomenon, is PTA's use the last of its kind . . . forever?




WorldForgot

Scrooby, your posts are insightful af and I appreciate reading more in the new year!

That said; celluloid will never die.