Vienna tram ride colorized 1906

[Quijote]

It does, doesn't it. I'm not a "black and white" snob, one of those effetes that swear by monochrome film; colour does it for me.

I said I was no fan of the black and white aesthetic. I may want to rethink that after reading this article and watching the teaser:
Vampyr review – Dreyer’s hallucinatory undead classic comes back from the grave
https://www.theguardian.com/film/202...from-the-grave

[Peter]

Amazing restoration of 1896 - where are Brahms and Mahler?

[Schenkerian]

This restoration is ineffably moving. Brahms would have had but a few months to live when this was photographed, if the date is as stated. Did you notice the pamphleteer on the street? Either that or they were flogging tickets to those dreadful Mozart concerts even as far back as 1896!! And all of this before the horrors.

I can only use the words of Shakespeare to define my response to these haunting images:

'What a piece of work is a man: ...... In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world..'

[Quijote]

Amazing restoration of 1896 - where are Brahms and Mahler?

Thanks for posting that, wonderful to think that Brahms or Mahler (and a nearly dead Bruckner and a younger Schoenberg) could have been captured walking along these streets.
For me, time to plan a revisit to Vienna.

[Peter]

Thanks for posting that, wonderful to think that Brahms or Mahler (and a nearly dead Bruckner and a younger Schoenberg) could have been captured walking along these streets.
For me, time to plan a revisit to Vienna.

My thoughts exactly, I haven't been since that scorching hot summer of 2003.

[Hollywood]

My thoughts exactly, I haven't been since that scorching hot summer of 2003.

I remember that summer as well Peter. Summers in Vienna for the last 10 or so years have been much hotter than normal. Many places here (including my flat) don't have A/C so indoors it gets a hell of a lot hotter than outside. You want to be able to enjoy the Beethoven sites there are to see here in Vienna and not get heat stroke and end up in hospital.

[Peter]

I remember that summer as well Peter. Summers in Vienna for the last 10 or so years have been much hotter than normal. Many places here (including my flat) don't have A/C so indoors it gets a hell of a lot hotter than outside. You want to be able to enjoy the Beethoven sites there are to see here in Vienna and not get heat stroke and end up in hospital.

Well despite the heat, it was a very enjoyable trip thanks to you! I'm still in contact with Bernard.

[Hollywood]

Well despite the heat, it was a very enjoyable trip thanks to you! I'm still in contact with Bernard.

I really enjoyed it too. Please give my best "Beethoven greetings from Vienna" to Bernard the next time you're in contact with him.

[Schenkerian]

I'd love to visit Vienna again before the magnificent A380 goes out of commission. Emirates is a first class airline, especially for super-long haul flights. But Covid is still putting a cloud over everything!!

Here is more restored, speed-corrected and colourized film of Vienna. Circa 1905 to 1915. Often these restorations have sound very cleverly added, but not in this case. Note how well-dressed and urbane they all appear; no body piercing, tatts, t-shirts, decolletage or torn jeans. And you'll see them all in the Prater too.

Somebody has taken very special care of this early nitrate film sufficiently well enough to make restoration possible. It was volatile and disintegrated into powder if not stored properly. We've lost thousands of films in this way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er6eMZtKN_0

I often wonder how the horses fared on a bad day when they were ill or not feeling well!!??

[Sorrano]

Doesn't seem to be as many gawkers in this one as the previous one. I also noted there were several smoking, something you don't see much of today in public places (at least in the US).

[Schenkerian]

Doesn't seem to be as many gawkers in this one as the previous one. I also noted there were several smoking, something you don't see much of today in public places (at least in the US).

The Austrians are still big smokers or, at least, they were when I was last there. I must say that was one of the things we found off-putting, especially at bus stops and rail stations.

You'd expect 'gawkers' because the moving picture camera was still very much a novelty when that (claimed) 1896 film was taken. And the operator made himself conspicuous because of the hand-cranking required to make this basic and primitive camera work. Here is an explanation of these types of cameras of the period. The one in this demonstration took 35mm film, so I'm presuming this was the standard gauge of the era.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTEJ0a1zS4Q

[Schenkerian]

This Camera, a Mitchell, is 100 years old this year and it was built circa 25 years after the camera demonstrated in the first posting above. Just as in aviation, the film camera underwent rapid development and sophistication once the principles were actually understood. In the case of aviation it was the thrust and power needed to get an aircraft airborne and with the camera it was the new mechanism for moving the film fluently through the gate into the magazine, allowing for 'special effects' while shooting and for the gyro movement up and down of the camera on the tripod. I noticed during this discussion of the Mitchell that this version of it (No. 5) could be motorized or hand cranked, and had a 'variable speed' device too - which was remarkable. It was set for 24fps but could move much faster (for slow-motion projection) or much slower (for fast motion-projection). Designers worked that out very early, as they did coming to an understanding about standardized filming and projection and the need for synchronization of speeds. This was actually achieved virtually at the beginning of the 20th century.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZrkK2qy23Q

I worked in film (and television) and we used Mitchell variable speed/high speed 16mm cameras in the early 1970s, along with Arriflex 16mm. It's all changed now, of course, with digital but film stock itself is another complex and interesting subject which has now been relegated to history.

[Schenkerian]

Following the previous comments I posted about movie cameras, here's one of the great pioneering American cinematographers Karl Struss. In this picture you'll see an early sound film camera from 1928. By this time cameras had become larger and more unwieldly than the earlier silent models and on this camera the magazine is covered by a 'blimp', which was used to try and dampen noise of the internal mechanism when using (still-primitive) microphones. It would be only a short while before yet another stride was made in cinema; the mobile frame, where the camera actually started to move rather than remain stranded in a static position and relying upon editing to get to the next shot (as had been the case in the earliest years of cinema). In short, when sound came along it temporarily sent film techniques right back to their origins until technicians figured out how to get the camera quietened down, agile enough to move and sophisticated enough for complex cinematic effects.

http://la3dclub.com/library/images/Struss.jpg

Struss was also a still photographer. Here is one of his pictures.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...truss_nude.jpg

Struss worked on many important films, including Fred Niblo's "Ben Hur",1924. But his most accomplished (early) film was FW Murnau's "Sunrise" (1927) in which he collaborated with another pioneer Charles Rosher. That film is visually beautiful and filled with incredible artistry. If anybody has the time I'd highly recommend this 'partially-synchronized' film from 1927:

The very first great American cinematographer was Billy Bitzer who photographed D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation", 1915. Bitzer and Griffith effectively created a standardized grammar which would influence the moving image right up until the digital era. Here is Bitzer with Griffith circa 1920. Notice how small the camera is compared to the one photographed for Struss just 8 years later, after the advent of sound.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ffith_1920.jpg

I cannot over-emphasize the huge influence that German Expressionist cinema had on film-making for nearly 100 years.

[Schenkerian]

[Schenkerian]

The photograph above shows the greatest and most influential American cinematographer, Gregg Toland, sitting beside the Mitchell BNC camera which he used for "Citizen Kane". The American Society of Cinematographers is trying to restore that camera for historic reasons.

Toland influenced everybody, right up to the incredible Roger Deakins today. Toland died at just 44 years of age in 1948; this was an incalculable loss to cinema. In the years immediately following "Citizen Kane" Toland's work on that film was regarded as esoteric and it was sidelined, along with the film itself. But it wasn't long before it became the benchmark for cinema, especially in the monochrome medium - where Toland shone. There were other great American cinematographers of colour, like Leon Shamroy, and this was an art unto itself. But Gregg Toland primarily worked in black and white, achieving incredible chiaroscuro effects with his Mitchell.

The studio lights used in that period were harsh and primitive compared to what's available today but Toland created visual mastery with the meagre tools at his disposal. None of it would have been possible without the Mitchell camera and the myriad lenses which Toland used to fashion his artistry - the most compelling being "deep focus'. "Citizen Kane" is not my favourite film - not even close - but it remains a testament to the collaboration between film geniuses - Director Welles and Toland - as had been the case with Griffith and Bitzer, the Coen Brothers and Deakin, David Lean and Freddie Young. Just to name some.

Five years after "Citizen Kane", Gregg Toland created more magic with (IMO) the greatest American film ever made, "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) William Wyler. Another incredible partnership. In this scene, Toland's use of framing and lighting and Wyler's instructions for his (real life) double-amputee Harold Russell (Homer) not to move his arms and put them around his girl is only marred by the single matt close-up which is back-projected. The effect of this scene could never be conveyed with words.