convenience isn’t everything

November 24th, 2015

Julia over at Pages of Julia just reviewed Rear Window, and it made me think about when I was growing up, when you couldn’t see Rear Window at all.

Five Hitchcock movies, including Vertigo, considered by some to be the best movie made in Hollywood during the 20th century, were unavailable for almost thirty years.

My first though was that things aren’t like that now. These days it seems like every old movie, every out-of-print book, every old TV show, is available all the time.

But, as I think about it now, this is not universally true. And that’s sort of nice, even if it can be frustrating. Everything shouldn’t be handed to us all the time. I like it that there are still a few subway stations in New York named after streets which do not currently exist, and some streets where nobody knows what they’re named after. I like it that there’s no explanation anywhere in Lord of the Rings of who Tom Bombadil is. 🙂

So, here are three movies which I would really like to see. But I can’t, at least not easily.

 
1. The Other Side of the Wind (directed by Orson Welles). The most difficult to see, since it doesn’t exist, or at least not in a form where anybody can see it.

This is Orson Welles’ last film, or it would have been. There are periodic efforts to get it finished, usually driven by the invaluable Peter Bogdanovich, but no result yet.

I’ve seen the clips, of course, but that’s it. So far.

 
2. Renaldo and Clara (directed by Bob Dylan). I have seen it, more than once, but it’s pretty much impossible to see now.

I saw the four-hour version twice (my goal was to see it six times in all, so that I would have spent a whole day watching it), and another time I went to see the four hour version, but they didn’t get the reels in time, so they offered to let us see the two-hour version, and then an hour into that a guy rushed in carrying the cases with the full version, and they stopped the two-hour version and let us vote on what to do. We voted for watching the last three hours of the four-hour version.

Movie theaters used to be different.

But these days Dylan is not allowing it to be shown or released, for whatever reason. Someone had it up on YouTube in little chunks, but they were forced to take it down. That was all right — 3-minute segments on YouTube is no way to watch a movie.

 
3) Chelsea Girls (directed by Andy Warhol). You can see it in museums and occasionally in movie theaters (I’ve seen it that way twice), but it’s difficult to show, since it requires two screens and two projectors.

There’s seven hours of film (I think Wikipedia is wrong), taking somewhat over three and a half hours to show (the two screens are never exactly in sync). Pretty much impossible to describe. Funny in spots, awkward in others, tedious in others (as I recall, one half-hour segment consists of Nico trimming her bangs). In one scene, the camera loses interest in a conversation and wanders up to examine the ceiling instead.

Some day I will see it again, though I may need to go to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh to do it.

Of course, if it was available on two DVDs, and you had two screens…

But no, everything shouldn’t be so easy.

Entry Filed under: writing

6 Comments Add your own

  • 1. SB Roberts  |  November 25th, 2015 at 8:56 am

    30 years without the ability to see Vertigo? Boy, and I think it’s rough when Disney puts something back into the “vault” and I miss the chance to have it for a few years.

  • 2. Maggie  |  November 25th, 2015 at 7:14 pm

    This reminds me of the pre-Internet days when I would hear a song on the radio and the DJ didn’t announce the name of it. So the song would be lost and virtually unknown to me until the next time it played. But with the Internet, you can have instant gratification: type in a few of the lyrics, and you instantly know what the song is, who the artist is, what year it came out, and whole bunch of other stuff… mystery over. It’s less fun that way.

  • 3. Anthony Lee Collins  |  November 26th, 2015 at 12:13 pm

    Bryna: As I talked about over at Julia’s blog, it was a big deal when the “Five Lost Hitchcocks” were re-released in theaters. Every few months there would be another one, and my then-wife and I went to every one. It was kind of special to be part of it (even though a couple of them aren’t exactly masterpieces).

    My other great Hitchcock achievement was that I saw Dial M for Murder in a theater once, in 3D (as it was intended to be shown), and it was very educational, since suddenly everything about the movie made sense.

    Maggie: And sometimes people would hear a song, and then bother some poor record store clerk (“Do you have that new song, the one that goes like this: [enthusiastic humming]?”).

    You know, back when there were record stores and record store clerks. 🙂

  • 4. pagesofjulia  |  November 27th, 2015 at 8:41 pm

    Thanks for sharing, Anthony. I confess I didn’t think too much of it, in the age of online rentals and Netflix and all that long-tail stuff. I still haven’t found a convenient way to watch Red Skies of Montana yet.

  • 5. Anthony Lee Collins  |  November 28th, 2015 at 11:31 am

    And some movies, including some significant ones, are just gone. Film stock, if not cared for properly, doesn’t last forever. Some old-time radio programs have a lot of episodes still in circulation as audio files, but some — including some of the best and most popular — are mostly gone.

  • 6. pagesofjulia  |  November 30th, 2015 at 11:05 am

    Totally. The fragility of this and other formats is frightening when you think of it.

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