Captain Flashback
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CAPTAIN FLASHBACK A fanzine composed for the 418th distribution of the Turbo-Charged Party-Animal Amateur Press Vagabond Auteur: Association, from the joint membership of Andy Director René Clair’s Life in Film Hooper and Carrie Root, residing at 11032 30th Ave. NE Seattle, WA 98125. E-mail Andy at Recent issues of CAPTAIN FLASHBACK have [email protected], and you may reach Carrie at been populated by a fascinating Frenchman at [email protected]. This is a Drag Bunt Press large in America, young German and American Production, completed on 4/21/2021. adventurers trying to break that Frenchman out of an Austrian prison, and how they joined CAPTAIN FLASHBACK is devoted to old fanzines, even more ridiculous schemes in the new French cinema, monster movie hosts, and other world. I had no particular intention of fascinating phenomena of the 20th Century. All continuing this trend, and yet found myself material by Andy Hooper unless indicated. encountering another noteworthy Frenchman Contents of Issue #29: who made an extended visit to Britain and Page 1: Vagabond Auteur: America, then returned to France to pursue Director René Clair’s Life in Film another series of remarkable creative Page 2: A Key to Interlineations in Issue #28 endeavors. In rapid succession, I discovered a Page 13: Comments on Turbo-Apa #417 pair of diverting fantasy films, then found that Page 16: Fanmail From Some Flounder Dept: they were directed by the same person; and Letters to CAPTAIN FLASHBACK. then learned that he also directed the highly Page 18: I Remember Entropy Department: successful 1945 mystery feature And Then Crime Cat Crusader” There Were None, as well as the 1935 British A comic strip by D. West comedy The Ghost Goes West. Learning that Published in SNAPSHOT #1, February 2002 the same person made the landmark silent fantasy Paris Qui Dort, marketed to English- speaking countries as The Crazy Ray, I simply have to ask: Why has no one ever heard of writer and director René Clair? The man who would become René Clair was born in Paris on November 11th, 1898 and christened with the stately moniker of René- Lucien Chomette. His father was a successful soap dealer, and the Chomette family resided in the Les Halles neighborhood, which was home to the city’s most famous marketplace between the 11th Century and 1971. As young boys, René-Lucien and his older brother Henri explored every corner of Les Halles, and the picturesque people who lived and worked there would be a lifelong inspiration. He attended two respected schools, the Lycée René Clair with composer Erik Satie (seated) Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand; he on the set of Relâche in 1924. was reading philosophy when he turned 18 [Continued on Page 2] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Issue #29, April 2021 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Key to Interlineations published in March in CAPTAIN FLASHBACK #28: Page 3: “We can learn to hang drywall together. It’ll be fun.” Line from the 2019 novel Famous Men Who Never Lived by K. Chess. Clearly a work of fantasy. Page 4: “I’m so happy I have little cartoon birds flying around my head.” Sherriff Mike “Big Black” Thompson (Corey Reynolds), on the SYFY Network’s Resident Alien. Page 5: “She says the cartoon birds usually mean you’re unconscious.” Deputy Liv Baker (Elizabeth Bowen), via proxy, from Chris Sheridan’s Resident Alien. Page 6: “A person doesn’t change just because you know more.” Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli) explains her loyalties, The Third Man (1952). Page 7: “Constantinople suited me better.” A line from director Carol Reed’s original opening narration for his film The Third Man (1952). Page 8: “And now for some more of my incantational rites.” Catchphrase of the mysterious “Scorpio” on Pittsburgh station WPGH in 1976 and 1977. Page 9: “From the right distance, all movement looked like fate.” Also a line from the 2019 novel Famous Men Who Never Lived by K. Chess. Page 10: “They talk about the people and the proletariat.” & Page 11: “I talk about the suckers and the mugs – it’s the same thing.” Harry Lime (Orson Welles) explains his world view in The Third Man (1952). Page 12: “Chess is the struggle against the error.” Attributed to chess master Johannes Zukerfort (1842-1888). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Vagabond Auteur reel, René-Lucien Chomette became René Continued from Page 1 Clair, a name that he would use for the rest of his professional life. and volunteered to serve as an ambulance driver at the front. Dada on Deadline René Clair appeared in a half-dozen movies René-Lucien was profoundly disturbed by the between 1920 and 1922; the most noted of horrors he observed in the First World War; these was director Jean Feuillade’s dramatic perhaps fortunately, his spine was injured in a serial Parisette in 1921. He was fascinated road accident, and by the time he was able to by all aspects of movie-making, and in 1922, drive again, the front had moved well away became the editor of a new “film supplement” from Paris. He wrote a book of shell-shocked to the monthly Théâtre et Comœdia illustrés. poetry titled La Tête de l’homme, which With an introduction from his brother Henri remained unpublished; but then began to Chomette, also a writer and director, Clair compose articles for L’Intransigeant, a one- travelled to Belgium and assisted the director time left wing daily that was slowly creeping Jacques de Baroncelli on several features in toward the right. It was an apt home for 1923 and 1924. Chomette, who was drawn to the avant-garde, but later developed an intractable nostalgia He finally got a chance to direct a project of for pre-war France that drove him toward the his own in 1924. In collaboration with sentimental and fantastic. producer Henri Diamant-Berger, he created a comic short feature titled Paris qui Dort His first involvement in the performing arts (“Paris which Sleeps”). In this story, a scientist came about through his friendship with Marie- invents a ray which freezes – paralyzes – a Louise Damien, a singer who performed under large proportion of the population of Paris, the stage name “Damia.” Chomette wrote often in embarrassing and inconvenient some song lyrics for her; impressed, if not positions. As the fraction of the city that infatuated, she persuaded him to come with remains at large comes to understand the her to Gaumont Studios during a 1920 casting situation, many of them set about call and he ended up playing the leading role systematically looting the city. in a film titled La Lys de la vie. Told that his chewy name was a trifle long for the credit 2 When the buzz around this short film became quite noticeable, Clair was approached by Francis Picabia and Erik Satie, who asked him to make a short film to be shown as part of their Dadaist ballet Relâche. (The title was a phrase meaning “cancelled” when applied to posters advertising theatrical performances, Ironically, the first performance was cancelled when principal dancer and choreographer Jean Börlin was too ill to appear.) Clair’s nonsensical short Entr’Acte starred Satie, Picabia and several other well-known avant- garde artists, and served to put him in their creative company. His next feature was a fantasy revolving around mesmerism and hypnotic suggestion, Le Fantome de Moulin-Rouge (1925). Clair adapted the screenplay from a novel by Walter Schlee, and the picture starred Albert Prejean, who had also appeared in Paris qui Dort. Prejean, Jean Börlin and ingenue Dolly Davis I Love Paris were the leads in Clair’s 1926 feature Le When sound was introduced to movies, Clair voyage imaginaire, The IMDB gives this was initially skeptical; he had no issues telling synopsis: “In a daydream, a shy bank clerk is stories without recorded sound, and regarded led by a fairy into a subterranean world where it as largely duplicating information he was people transform into animals and waxworks already communicating visually. But he also come to life. Lucie, his office crush, follows saw the potential of sound to convey him but a bad fairy is intent on keeping them information that was otherwise hidden to the apart.” viewer and to expand the environment in In 1927, Clair began working at Films which the story was told. Between 1930 and Albatros, a studio with the resources he 1933, he made four features utilizing sound, needed to make larger and more dramatic Sous les toits de Paris (“Under the roofs of stories. In 1927 he completed Le Prole du Paris”), Le Million, A nous la liberté (“Freedom Vent (“The Prey of the Wind”), and two For Us”) and Quatorze Juillet (“Bastille Day”). features in 1928, the comedy Un chapeau de All of these films featured an idealized view of paille d’Italie (“The Italian Straw Hat”) and a working-class Parisians – the people who had comic-melodrama Les Deux Timides (“Two populated his world as a child -- and an Timid Souls”). For these features, Clair wrote affection for the city that was embraced by adapted screenplays, collaborated on many audiences around the world. visual elements with designer Lazare Meerson The 1931 feature A nous la liberté has had a and supervised the editing of the film. He was particularly enduring reputation as Clair’s one of the first French directors to realize the masterpiece. The story of two convicts who role of an “auteur.” He developed a reputation escape to an odyssey that transforms them as one of the most creative directors in the into industrial magnates (and these are field and was seen as a peer of D.