![]() ![]() In 1926 Virginia Woolf wrote of early cinema’s potential to make visible “some secret language which we feel and see, but never speak,” asking: “Is there any characteristic which thought possesses that can be rendered visible without the help of words?” Prompted by a screening of The Cabinet of Dr. Everything has life, is connected, ripples, reacts, full of possibility. In which a clown named Koko, inspired by vaudeville and the costumes of German clowns and Bessie McCoy doing “The Yama Yama Man,” dances and sings and stretches and transforms-like he is made of rubber, like he is fluid, of some unholy substance, like he takes part in his own animation, like his graphic consistency is of another world entirely, which it is. In which long icicles that hang over a doorway spontaneously curl themselves up and then down, like thick ribbons or locks of hair or muscled, alien fronds, and then grow faces to sing in chorus, her step-mama the Queen! In which a mouse pokes its head from the pocket of a pair of long johns spread as a red carpet for a curvaceous, black-clad, squeaky-voiced, enormous-headed woman, and raises its hat, hiya kid! In which suits of armor weep and dance, fall apart and tumble to the ground benevolent trees liberate a woman bound to them with rope and seven dwarves ski down a hill with their beards streaming behind them like wind socks. In which a mirror sprouts arms with white-gloved hands and buffs a vain Queen’s nose with a small towel that it pulls from its backside. ![]() James Infirmary Blues” sung by Cab Calloway, available on YouTube and the Internet ArchiveĮditor’s note: In light of the fact that movie theaters in New York City, where 4Columns is based, and other cities throughout the US remain closed during the coronavirus pandemic, we have invited our contributors to revisit films that are particularly significant to them and that are easily found online.Ī world in which nothing is indifferent to us, nor we to it, imagine. ![]() “That delicious character”: the shape-changing, fantastical world of the 1933 film.īetty Boop: Snow White, directed by Dave Fleischer, animated by Roland C. ![]()
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