Holst film

[Guest]

Did anyone else see the Tony Palmer biopic of Holst on BBC4 this evening?

I just found it bizarre. For much of it, the imagery and the music just didn't seem to mesh (things like images of activities on the banks of the Ganges overlaying the Perfect Fool ballet music, and (hilariously) Neptune from the Planets mixed in with shots of Jupiter.)

Probably about 20 minutes was given over to excruciatingly bad arrangements of I Vow to Thee My Country and In the Bleak Midwinter - whereas not a note was featured of either Savitri, the Choral Fantasia, the Choral Symphony or the Hymn of Jesus

I've seen a number of Tony Palmer's films, and most of them have been at least fairly good. In this case, I think he lost the plot, and that anyone coming to the film with no prior knowledge of Holst would be left with a severely skewed view of his oeuvre.

[DracoM]

Totally disagree.

Yes, the mesh of sound and picture was bizarre on occasions, but it introduced us to a wide range of Holst's music, life and cultural provenance. Worth it.
Sorry you disliked it so much.

See other thread.

[kernelbogey]

[...] See other thread.

I.e. In the Bleak Midwinter

[Stanfordian]

Yes, I thought it was generally disappointing but reasonably interesting. Overlong overall and tediously prolonged in many specific places such as his exotic North African holiday and many of the music excerpts were too extended for my taste. What that that section about the naked women in Algiers all about? Unless I missed it I didn't hear any mention of his teacher the great Sir Charles Villiers Stanford.

[lordmhoram]

Totally disagree.

Yes, the mesh of sound and picture was bizarre on occasions, but it introduced us to a wide range of Holst's music, life and cultural provenance. Worth it.
Sorry you disliked it so much.

See other thread.

Thanks for the pointer to the other thread - I hadn't spotted it.

I persist in my view that the range of Holst's music presented could have been a lot more comprehensive, and that they left out a lot of the best bits.

[Ferretfancy]

I've only just watched my recording of the Holst programme, which did seem overlong. One of the problems with this type of documentary is that directors always feel the need for a peg to hang the programme on in order to reveal the truth about the composer. In this case Tony Palmer decided that Holst's North African experience was the key to his creativity, which seems a very contrived argument. Holst was more of an enigma than that.
My main gripe, however, was the way in which all the archive footage, including the interview material with Imogen, was displayed in 16:9 ratio when it was originally filmed in 4:3.
Thus we were treated to silent shots of ridiculously pudding shaped happy schoolboys etc. while poor Imogen in profile looked like ET. In a documentary intended for a reasonably discerning audience this sort of thing simply won't do, and Tony Palmer is no slouch when it comes to technical issues, so why was this ?
Not one of his better efforts I'm afraid.

[LHC]

My main gripe, however, was the way in which all the archive footage, including the interview material with Imogen, was displayed in 16:9 ratio when it was originally filmed in 4:3.
Thus we were treated to silent shots of ridiculously pudding shaped happy schoolboys etc. while poor Imogen in profile looked like ET. In a documentary intended for a reasonably discerning audience this sort of thing simply won't do, and Tony Palmer is no slouch when it comes to technical issues, so why was this ?
Not one of his better efforts I'm afraid.

FF this irritated me as well. I remember that when his film on the Wagner Family was shown, all the archive footage in that film was also shown in the wrong aspect ratio. It must therefore be a conscious decision by Palmer and not attributable to a mistake by the broadcaster. I must say I find it hard to believe that a film maker of many years experience could make such a wrong-headed and visually illiterate decision.

[Boilk]

. It must therefore be a conscious decision by Palmer and not attributable to a mistake by the broadcaster. I must say I find it hard to believe that a film maker of many years experience could make such a wrong-headed and visually illiterate decision.

Since Palmer must edit his own films, he knew exactly what he was doing, and I can only come to the conclusion that it was laziness which resulted in 4:3 footage being distorted into 16:9. If there was a documentary on Palmer himself, he might have something to say about archive footage (or imagery) of himself being shown in 16:9 when it was created in 4:3

More attention was evidently paid to providing seemingly endless populist renditions of "I Vow to Thee My Country" - another miscalculation.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

My main gripe, however, was the way in which all the archive footage, including the interview material with Imogen, was displayed in 16:9 ratio when it was originally filmed in 4:3.

This can be annoying. It's pure laziness, which is unforgiveable. Remember all those widescreen TVs in Curry's and Comet that exhibited fat people and elliptical spheres all day. The staff there probably didn't know any better, but I presume Tony Palmer does.

[salymap]

I didn't notice any of that but I suppose with my old 4:3 TV I wouldn't would I ?

[Serial_Apologist]

Remember all those widescreen TVs in Curry's and Comet that exhibited fat people and elliptical spheres all day.

Ah - so THAT's where the fashion for obesity started from.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Did anyone see the widescreen version of Disney's Fantasia? Stokowski and the Philadelphia were kept in 4:3 Academy format, but Mickey Mouse and all the other cartoon characters were blow sideways to a widescreen format. The setting sun in "The Rite of Spring" looked like a rugby ball.

Some years later, Fantasia was re-released with Dolby stereo sound, with a new hi-fi soundtrack with a different conductor and orchestra. I have the LP of this, which is rather good. However, subsequent releases, including the VHS and DVD versions, all reverted to the original sound and picture formats.

[Ferretfancy]

Eine Alpensinfonie

Fantasia suffered badly in being re-released in different formats,and I remember being a bit bored in the cinema seeing the version with the newly recorded music track.
Disney's original concept included a an early form of stereo which Stokowski had been interested in since the early 1930s. The idea was to have a separate set of optical tracks on 35mm film running in synch with the picture, feeding a row of speakers behind the screen, and I believe it had a limited number of showings in this form. Some of the crude juggling of sound levels on the mono version reflects this.
I have a CD on the Iron Needle label which has stereo recordings made by Stokowski in 1931 at the Bell Laboratories, including extracts from Pictures at an Exhibition, very crude and not very precise in imaging, but an interesting curiosity.