#LarryJordan #RauldaSilva #TheRimeOfTheAncientMariner #SamuelTaylorColeridge “With all its playfully subversive irony, its festive nonchalance, its carnival antics, Jordans film takes Bedfords repurposing to new levels in effectively releasing Rime from the stuffy museum-like encasement of its reputation. ― Nancy Isenberg, Repurposing Rime of the Ancient Mariner in the Postmodern Age(An essay, 2007) In my previous post, Ive mentioned that Gustave Dorés beautiful illustrations have played a significant role in the sustaining and growing fame of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the pioneering poem originally published in 1798 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge among the genre of English Romantic literature, since Dorés powerful engravings have never ceased to inspire many different artists to refashion this masterpiece with the help of technological developments into a variety of media, among which I focused on a musical work of the same name composed in 1975 by a British composer and orchestral arranger David Bedford because it has been regarded as the turning point in the history of Rimes postmodern repurposing according to an essay Repurposing Rime of the Ancient Mariner in the Postmodern Age written by Dr. Nancy Isenberg, a professor of history in Louisiana State University, in a sense that it was the first example of repurposing The Rime made by a well-recognized artist whose various achievements as well as continued dedication to musical education of young people have surely made him qualify as a very influential figure within the mainstream culture. Bedfords composition thus pushed out the boundary of its cultural collocation. In other words, his work removed the elitist barrier, shall we say, of how the classic poem has to be treated, and therefore encouraged other artists to deal with it in a bolder and more creative manner. In the next two years after the release of Bedfords musical piece, two filmmakers took The Rime into another new world of animation. In 1976, an American filmmaker Raúl daSilva, who was already well-renowned at that time for his pioneering technique of photoanimation, produced the first-ever film adaptation of The Rime, where he displayed the collection of illustrations created by several artists primarily including the engravings by Doré using the photoanimation technique. The film also features the newly recorded voice-over narration by a famous British actor Sir Michael Redgrave as well as the additional use of sound and music to complement its difficult language and support the visualization of the poem. DaSilva claimed that his motive was to create a film with a compelling anti-violence message and also to praise the sanctity of the natural world, both clearly reflecting the anti-war and the ecological climate in the U.S. in the 1970s, and thus it makes sense that the film has not only won multiple prizes but also gained the reputation of a must for schools, and an excellent choice for public libraries(Library Journal, 1986) as it successfully renders the otherwise-difficult poem comprehensible by young readers. In the following year, an underground American filmmaker Larry Jordan produced another film adaptation of The Rime, which was again an animated film but resulted in a totally different work of art compared to the daSilvas film although both of them were based on the same poem. Jordan was so fascinated with the Dorés engravings that he basically used them as the only visual source for the film and uniquely assembled them into a film using the stop-motion animation technique rather than the photoanimation technique used by daSilva. Jordan also focused on the surreal yet still romantic aspect of the poem, and thus actively involved himself toward purely aesthetic endeavor, whereas daSilva engaged himself fully in the achievement of an educational and thought-provoking film. In terms of animation, Jordans film appeared to me much more stimulating as it boldly includes unique directorial ideas by the filmmaker, e.g. monochrome screen using Technicolor, quivering camera to describe the intensity of thunderstorms, and glittering objects for visual effects, as well as various movements of characters and original creatures, e.g. the albatross falling from the sky as it was shot, and the butterflies that sweep in and out of the wedding sequence, all of which make the film more aesthetically pleasing and psychedelic, possibly reflecting the flower-power movement of those days. Last but not least, Id like to quote the words of Dr. Nancy Isenberg that I think well represent the sharp contrast between the two animation films: Reverent to the humanitarian values of pacifists and to their love of life that had evolved to embrace the world of all living creatures, daSilvas Rime reproposes the poem as a homage to noble ideas, a call for a return to values that had been forsaken by the dominant capitalist culture. Jordans Rime, on the other hand, appears to be more attune to the poems purely creative energy than to its philosophical ponderings, as if its purpose were simply to harness that energy, re-elaborating and releasing it in updated terms. Please enjoy the 40-minute full footage of the Jordans film attached on this post if youre interested, and feel the purely creative energy that Jordan was captivated by and thus tried to harness in the film. The following post, which is going to be the final article of the trilogy, shall we say, regarding The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, will feature plausibly the most important repurposing of The Rime including the episode of my first meeting with this classic poem. ***Film**** Full footage of the animation film The Rime of the Ancient Mariner(1977) produced and directed by Larry Jordan (narrated by an American actor Orson Welles) https://youtube/watch?v=oRGnoFf2cZQ ***Reference*** An essay Repurposing Rime of the Ancient Mariner in the Postmodern Age(2007) by Dr. Nancy Isenberg (Louisiana State University, Department of History) host.uniroma3.it/docenti/isenberg/2010_2011/Isenberg_Repurposing_Rime_2007.pdf
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 06:31:50 +0000
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