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cjlasky7I am a music guy. I love listening to music, analyzing music, I love singing (even if my wife doesn't like my singing), and I love the history of modern music. I am always awestruck how each advance in technology has fueled a burst of creativity, as artists use the new technology as a fresh canvas for their creations: the invention of the phonograph. The microphone. Stereo. Multi-track recording. Synthesizers. Digitization. And on and on it goes, as we anticipate the next leap forward...
Film developed along a parallel track in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the advent of moving pictures creating an entirely new industry, followed closely by the equally seismic development of synchronized sound.
Damien Chazelle's Babylon is a frenzied, warts-and-all look back at those early days of movies--the wild west of film shoots at the tail end of the silent era, and the tumultuous conversion to talkies. Chazelle, as usual, cannot put an artistic endeavor on screen without placing its participants under extreme stress, or at worst, in mortal danger (see: Whiplash). Film production in the California desert is barely controlled chaos, with multiple sets shooting simultaneously, hundreds of (underpaid) extras, fragile equipment and a complete disregard for safety precautions. (Brad Pitt's character barely misses getting a spear through his head, and he shrugs it off as part of his working day...)
The excess on set is reflected in off screen life as well. Chazelle starts off the movie with a 20 minute party in the Hollywood hills, an insane, pornographic bacchanal with every vice known to humanity in full display. There is an ocean of alcohol, mountains of drugs, writhing naked dancers, golden showers, and a full-on orgy. A young actress ODs in the private suite of a Fatty Arbuckle-like comedian, and his producers sneak the body out by distracting the crowd with an elephant.
Yes, an 🐘.
It's all very entertaining, but...the point? It just seems that Chazelle wanted to stuff every sordid detail from Kenneth Anger's "Hollywood Babylon" into his movie, partly for titillation, partly to show how much of themselves these people put into their movies (and partly because he had the budget). But, bodily excretions aside, this isn't really anything new. The excesses of Hollywood's silent era are already part of the legend; the conversion to talkies was covered by Singing in the Rain (which Chazelle refers back to a number of times here); and James Ivory filmed The Wild Party before Chazelle was even born.
I can hear my wife lecturing me: "Jesus, not every movie has to be ABOUT something, Mr. Snobby Pants. It can just be a fun ride." Make no mistake about it: Babylon is a fun ride. You have Margot Robbie devouring huge, heaping chunks of scenery as wild child starlet Nellie LeRoy; Pitt oozing jaded movie star charisma (as an analog to silent screen heartthrob John Gilbert); seedy, sleazy cameos from Eric Roberts and Tobey Maguire; elaborate sets and a fantastic, propulsive jazz score from Justin Hurvitz.
But Chazelle so obviously wants to make a Statement about Movies. Pitt's Jack Conrad makes long speeches about using the innovations in the medium to ennoble the human spirit--even as those very changes doom him to obsolescence. Chazelle nods toward the racism of early Hollywood (but underserves the characters of color) and he serves up a coda that is practically an explosion of images of cinema past and present, at points verging on the abstract.
He doesn't quite make his case. For all the fuss, the overall takeaway from Babylon is: "Movies...good!" Kinda knew that already.
************
For a better example of how movies ennoble the human spirit, check out James Freedman's documentary on the life of Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Pictures.
It seems almost impossible that Laemmle's name has faded into obscurity in recent decades; but maybe his contributions to cinema were so vital, so vast, that he's blended into the very fabric of movie history.
Laemmle, a German immigrant, had a rich full life before he even saw a motion picture. A department store magnate in Wisconsin, he sold his business in the early 1900s and moved to Chicago in search of inspiration. He found it in nickelodeons--the forerunners of modern movies--and quickly forged a new business empire.
Laemmle and his fellow movie distributors had one constant thorn in their side: Thomas Edison. Edison was determined to be the only source of moving pictures to the general public, and he was fanatical in pursuing patent lawsuits to keep distribution under his control. (It's darkly funny that, in a movie discussing Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, Thomas Edison is the main villain.)
The drive to keep his independence and stay out of Edison's control had beneficial side effects: he stopped buying Edison's content and started making his own with Universal Pictures. In order to get some distance from Edison's harassment, Laemmle moved Universal out to California--effectively creating Hollywood! (Thanks to Laemmle's efforts, the U.S. government eventually declared Edison's patent corporation an illegal monopoly--removing the chains from around the neck of the movie industry.)
Along with his business acumen, the documentary focused on Laemmle's eye for talent. He started the careers of John Ford, William Wyler and George Cukor--and a wunderkind of a producer named Irving Thalberg (who was a main character in Babylon as well). His stable of writers, directors and producers carried elements of European expressionism into American movies--creating the eerie magic of Universal's monster movies.
The movie is close to a hagiography, but it does have dark undertones, as Laemmle hit the limits of what movies could do against the forces set against him. He was helpless as the Nazi propaganda machine destroyed the German distribution of "All Quiet on the Western Front"; and he waged an uphill battle against the rampant anti-Semitism in the U.S. State department that stonewalled his efforts to rescue Germany's Jews.
Laemmle, despite all obstacles, managed to rescue 300 Jewish families from Europe before he died in 1939. The final shots of the movie are pictures of the families he saved and their succeeding generations. They are the living symbols of Carl Laemmle's legacy in our culture and in the world.
Film developed along a parallel track in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the advent of moving pictures creating an entirely new industry, followed closely by the equally seismic development of synchronized sound.
Damien Chazelle's Babylon is a frenzied, warts-and-all look back at those early days of movies--the wild west of film shoots at the tail end of the silent era, and the tumultuous conversion to talkies. Chazelle, as usual, cannot put an artistic endeavor on screen without placing its participants under extreme stress, or at worst, in mortal danger (see: Whiplash). Film production in the California desert is barely controlled chaos, with multiple sets shooting simultaneously, hundreds of (underpaid) extras, fragile equipment and a complete disregard for safety precautions. (Brad Pitt's character barely misses getting a spear through his head, and he shrugs it off as part of his working day...)
The excess on set is reflected in off screen life as well. Chazelle starts off the movie with a 20 minute party in the Hollywood hills, an insane, pornographic bacchanal with every vice known to humanity in full display. There is an ocean of alcohol, mountains of drugs, writhing naked dancers, golden showers, and a full-on orgy. A young actress ODs in the private suite of a Fatty Arbuckle-like comedian, and his producers sneak the body out by distracting the crowd with an elephant.
Yes, an 🐘.
It's all very entertaining, but...the point? It just seems that Chazelle wanted to stuff every sordid detail from Kenneth Anger's "Hollywood Babylon" into his movie, partly for titillation, partly to show how much of themselves these people put into their movies (and partly because he had the budget). But, bodily excretions aside, this isn't really anything new. The excesses of Hollywood's silent era are already part of the legend; the conversion to talkies was covered by Singing in the Rain (which Chazelle refers back to a number of times here); and James Ivory filmed The Wild Party before Chazelle was even born.
I can hear my wife lecturing me: "Jesus, not every movie has to be ABOUT something, Mr. Snobby Pants. It can just be a fun ride." Make no mistake about it: Babylon is a fun ride. You have Margot Robbie devouring huge, heaping chunks of scenery as wild child starlet Nellie LeRoy; Pitt oozing jaded movie star charisma (as an analog to silent screen heartthrob John Gilbert); seedy, sleazy cameos from Eric Roberts and Tobey Maguire; elaborate sets and a fantastic, propulsive jazz score from Justin Hurvitz.
But Chazelle so obviously wants to make a Statement about Movies. Pitt's Jack Conrad makes long speeches about using the innovations in the medium to ennoble the human spirit--even as those very changes doom him to obsolescence. Chazelle nods toward the racism of early Hollywood (but underserves the characters of color) and he serves up a coda that is practically an explosion of images of cinema past and present, at points verging on the abstract.
He doesn't quite make his case. For all the fuss, the overall takeaway from Babylon is: "Movies...good!" Kinda knew that already.
************
For a better example of how movies ennoble the human spirit, check out James Freedman's documentary on the life of Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Pictures.
It seems almost impossible that Laemmle's name has faded into obscurity in recent decades; but maybe his contributions to cinema were so vital, so vast, that he's blended into the very fabric of movie history.
Laemmle, a German immigrant, had a rich full life before he even saw a motion picture. A department store magnate in Wisconsin, he sold his business in the early 1900s and moved to Chicago in search of inspiration. He found it in nickelodeons--the forerunners of modern movies--and quickly forged a new business empire.
Laemmle and his fellow movie distributors had one constant thorn in their side: Thomas Edison. Edison was determined to be the only source of moving pictures to the general public, and he was fanatical in pursuing patent lawsuits to keep distribution under his control. (It's darkly funny that, in a movie discussing Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, Thomas Edison is the main villain.)
The drive to keep his independence and stay out of Edison's control had beneficial side effects: he stopped buying Edison's content and started making his own with Universal Pictures. In order to get some distance from Edison's harassment, Laemmle moved Universal out to California--effectively creating Hollywood! (Thanks to Laemmle's efforts, the U.S. government eventually declared Edison's patent corporation an illegal monopoly--removing the chains from around the neck of the movie industry.)
Along with his business acumen, the documentary focused on Laemmle's eye for talent. He started the careers of John Ford, William Wyler and George Cukor--and a wunderkind of a producer named Irving Thalberg (who was a main character in Babylon as well). His stable of writers, directors and producers carried elements of European expressionism into American movies--creating the eerie magic of Universal's monster movies.
The movie is close to a hagiography, but it does have dark undertones, as Laemmle hit the limits of what movies could do against the forces set against him. He was helpless as the Nazi propaganda machine destroyed the German distribution of "All Quiet on the Western Front"; and he waged an uphill battle against the rampant anti-Semitism in the U.S. State department that stonewalled his efforts to rescue Germany's Jews.
Laemmle, despite all obstacles, managed to rescue 300 Jewish families from Europe before he died in 1939. The final shots of the movie are pictures of the families he saved and their succeeding generations. They are the living symbols of Carl Laemmle's legacy in our culture and in the world.
