Tag: Claude Friese-Greene

Categories
This Film Is 100 Years Old

Nude Woman By Waterfall (1920)

Nude Woman By Waterfall is a short film from 1920, directed by Claude Friese-Greene, featuring a nude woman by a waterfall, and the same woman, not so nude, upon a cliff top. I reviewed it earlier in the year (well, “reviewed” it), and really loved it. It’s beautiful, beguiling, mysterious, odd, sad. All the best things in film, really.

Anyway, I rewatched it again today, because the always excellent Haiku Salut (who previously released/toured a live soundtrack to Buster Keaton’s The General) have released a new soundtrack for it, called Portrait In Dust.

Recorded as part of a project to re-score two films for the BFI (the other was 4 And 20 Fit Girls, from 1940, which they paired with Pattern Thinker), Portrait In Dust is a lovely piece of minimalist melancholy, which perfectly underscores the slightly unsettling ethereality of the film.

Anyway, it’s brilliant and I love it.

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Notes

1. I watched this on the BFI Player, while simultaneously listening to Haiku Salut on bandcamp

2. Earlier in the year I made a re-edit of this film, using the track Messy Hearts by Moon Ate The Dark as accompaniment.

3. In which I used all of Nude Woman By Waterfall except the shots of the nude woman by the waterfall.

4. I had hoped to show it somewhere

5. Sometime

6. But I fear that now the chance has gone

7. For a variety of reasons

8. Not least because Haiku Salut’s soundtrack is perfect.

9. And also everywhere is closed.

10. And always now shall be.

11. Maybe I should just project it out into the night

12. Onto the bamboo at the end of the garden

13. As they rustle in the wind

14. And weep in the rain.

15. Anyway I’ve added it to youtube here if you want a watch, but have no idea who long it will stay there, if their copyright robots allow it to live.

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Film Information

Title: Nude Woman By Waterfall
Director: Claude Friese-Greene
Year: 1920
Duration: 12 minutes
Watch: BFI; youtube (extract only)

Categories
This Film Is 100 Years Old

Coves And Caves (1920)

Claude Friese-Greene, who directed Nude Woman By Waterfall, was best known for his travelogues, of which Coves and Caves is an early example.

Coves and Caves is essentially a series of moving postcards, showing various landmarks and places round Cornwall, and I found it quite charming (no doubt helped by the way they’re all places within twenty minutes or so of where my brother and his family live).

There’s a whimsical lightness about it all that’s genuinely endearing.

And I really hope this baby is now 100 years old.

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Notes

1. I watched this on the BFI player here

2. Coves and Caves is the fourth part of a series, although I haven’t been able to find the others yet.

3. The Trevose Head lighthouse section is pretty incredible. I assume it’s not the first commercial aerial photography section on film, but it must be pretty close.

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Film Information

Title: Coves And Caves
Director: Claude Friese-Greene
Year: 1920
Duration: 12 minutes
Watch: BFI Player; youtube

Categories
This Film Is 100 Years Old

Nude Woman By Waterfall (1920)

An ethereal spirit fades into existence on a cliff high above the sea. Lost and alone, she falls to her knees, and prays for release. Her wish granted, she fades away into nothingness.

Yet her release is only temporary. She returns, trapped in a loop, her body locked into motion as surely as a train on a track, repeating, against her will, her gestures and her poses, even her prayers.

Except now her prayers aren’t for release, but understanding.

A jolt of memory, a split second vision. Hands on her shoulders, instructions in her ear. Her actions repeated and repeated until they reach the perfection of his demands. Until she stops being a person and becomes a vision.

Just not a vision of her choosing. A vision of his.

Now she begs for forgetfulness. But it is too late. There is no turning back. Memory forms by repetition. Understanding grows through memory.

And so she realises, slowly, the full horror of her existence.

This eternal torment.

An unremembered ghost trapped in someone else’s dream.

And so, she dreams.

She dreams.

It is all she has.

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Notes

1. I watched this on the BFI player here.

2. Nude Woman By Waterfall was directed by Claude Friese-Greene in 1920.

3. Claude Friese-Greene is best known for his travelogues, especially his 1926 film The Open Road, which was filmed using an early colour process developed by him and his father, William Friese-Greene.

4. I assume this was test footage, rather than anything meant for release at the time.

5. I watched this while listening to Messy Hearts by Moon Ate The Dark, which worked pretty well together.

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Film Information

Title: Nude Woman By Waterfall
Director: Claude Friese-Greene
Year: 1920
Duration: 12 minutes
Watch: BFI; youtube (extract only)