Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Slavko Vorkapich



  • Slavko Vorkapich isn’t exactly burning up YouTube, but they do offer this brief montage he made for the opening of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s Crime Without Passion (1934). He called his work “symphonies of visual movement.” You can read about him and look over a bibliography and a list of his credits at Film Reference, or check out The Innocence of the Eye: A Filmmaker’s Guide, Ed Spiegel’s reflection on his mentor’s style and methods. For more Vorkapich films, see Unseen Cinema - Early American Avant Garde Film 1894-1941.

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    posted by Ray Young at 10:42 PM

    3 Comments:

    Anonymous Peter Nellhaus said...

    While most of the film isn't that good, I did actually go to a midnight screening of his 1961 film, The Mask.

    10:37 AM EST  
    Blogger Flickhead said...

    New Line Cinema picked up The Mask in the mid-'70s for the midnight show circuit. You're right: it's not that good, but the hallucination scenes are interesting!

    4:58 PM EST  
    Anonymous Doug said...

    Hi, my name's Doug Graves. I'm a huge Slavko Vorkapich fan! I own the unseen cinema DVD box set and my favorite disc is the light rhythms one with all of the great Vorkapich montages, including this awesome one you posted! I love his montages for Skyline Dance (1928)
    Money Machine (1929)
    Prohibition (1929)
    The Firefly- Vorkapich edit (1937)
    and Maytime (1937). i also love the beautifully shot and edited visual tone poem "Moods of the Sea" that he made with Hhis colleague the Hungarian montagist John Hoffmann. Vorkapich and Hoffmann made another visually awesome film called Forest Murmurs that I was lucky enough to see last year at USC's film school movie archive. It was also an elegant nature poem, done on 35mm black and white. I would love to see all of John Hoffmann's montages for Hollywood films!

    I think Vorkapich's montages are stunning, dynamic, visceral kinetic examples of Pure Cinema! I love his powerful camerawork, graphics, and rapid-fire editing. He's The Man!

    1:04 AM EST  

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