Mulholland Drive

xp was just gonna ask is "slow-watching" ... watching a movie from front to back in normal time?

How do you view that scene in relation to Rebekah Del Rio's performance at Club Silencio?

I never connected this scene to Club Silencio - no hay banda indeed

oops sorry

(btw, this is the point on which the interviewer weirdly tried to buttonhole Lynch, in that DVD booklet interview)

(I hadn't made the connection, I'm too dense - guess the i'viewer wanted to show off that he did, lol)

yeah me neither, is what my post was meant to say

another favourite little thing from this film is the way the camera continuously rises in the shots in Winkies while Dan describes his dream

^word! when I first watched it, I was all "wtf?" Lynch actually talks about that in the same interview; apparently it took some work to rig up the right equipment for that effect in that small space (I had assumed it was just handheld).

!!

Yes, Eric H is correct, slow-watching is watching in normal time, maybe even backtracking on occasion, as opposed to running out of time because the purchase is due to expire and or it is time to sleep - what dreams may come? - and so FFWDing through bits and speedwatching.

How do you view that scene in relation to Rebekah Del Rio's performance at Club Silencio?

I think both that scene and Betty's amazing audition scene relate directly to Club Silencio, all of them play with the ways film and art create artificial realities that can convey and resonate with deep, real emotions. It's kind of the ultimate magic trick, I'll show you how it's done, but you'll still feel it anyway.

Dum, da-dum
Da-da-da-da-da-da-da
Oh, baby, I've told every little star

xp Nice, thx

Oh, baby, I've told every little star

I've always liked that song... not sure how I feel about it used in this context (can you ever hear Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" as non-creepy, after the Blue Velvet treatment?), but it was a good choice! (I had never heard "Sixteen Reasons Why I Love You" before.)

idgi, who's in drag?

Does he use Roy Orbison in other films besides this one and the other canonical one mentioned?

Hm. Apparently Lynch actually first heard "Crying," which led to him listening to more of the Big O and putting "In Dreams" in Blue Velvet. In my own Silencio Repertory Theater I will imagine how he would use "Leah" in a scene.

Or what would have happened if he had discovered The Louvin Brothers instead.

Here's Lynch on that song:

Rebekah just wanted to come over for a coffee and sing in front of us. She didn't want to record anything, but she came in and four minutes later—I think before she'd had her coffee—she's in the booth. And the one take that she sang, four minutes off the street, is the vocal that's in the film. THE ACTUAL RECORDING!

The weird thing is that she chose to sing that particular Roy Orbison song. I was about to start shooting Blue Velvet, and "Crying" came on the radio. I said, "Jeez! I've got to get that song to see if it would work in the film." In the end, it wasn't quite right, but I started listening to other cuts, and "In Dreams" came up. (...) Rebekah knows Barbara Orbison, Roy's second wife, and she's the one who translated "Crying" into Spanish, but it's just so strange that that was the song that was almost in Blue Velvet.

Oh, so that's why there is a Barbara Orbison credit/thanks in there. Great story, thanks!

I watched Bergman’s Persona last night, on HBO Max. I saw it college, but barely remembered the details (I’m just kultured enuff to have caught the general allusions in MD). It’s an interesting film; not exactly a masterpiece (though who am I to say). Awesome performances, of course.

Maybe I’ll revisit Altman’s 3 Women at some point (another one I saw decades ago), as I know it’s another touchpoint.

Hour of the Wolf is another Bergman that has something in common with a number of Lynch films - a character disintegrating into his fantasies (or being victimized by their embodiment).

Huh, never heard of that one

I wouldn't recommend it unless you've watched 60 other Bergman films.

3 women has many parallels with MD imo

The Silence has a number of shots in it that seem to have heavily influenced Lynch too. Basically he's a Bergman disciple.

Hadn’t thought about that but yeah.

I wouldn't recommend it unless you've watched 60 other Bergman films.

I love Bergman's films from 1963 - 1969 and am ambivalent about the rest. I'd like to see The Touch, although the only critic who admired it was Robin Wood.

I wouldn't recommend it unless you've watched Hour of the Wolf first.

Heh

I saw a handful in college, but the only one I have a strong memory of is Scenes From a Marriage (which I loved).

Previously I was only aware of the Ingrid Bergman connection.

Just want to call out my favorite shot from the movie. The long zoom-out at the start of this clip, from what looks like a live musical performance to what is then revealed as a radio broadcast and then as a filmed scene of a radio broadcast. It breaks the 4th wall and just keeps on breaking them. I think it's a perfect little encapsulation of what the movie has to say about both filmmaking and storytelling in general, including the stories we tell ourselves. Also, it's just gorgeous to watch.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Monday, April 19, 2021 12:00 PM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

man good post have not watched this in too long, its kind of sad the popular conception of lynch is dark/weird/abstract which doesnt give him credit for mastery of the form

Silencio.

I really have to ban myself from using the word vertiginous when talking about certain lynch moments but that (and inland empire locomotion) is this incredible moment where you feel the trapdoor give

El resto es silencio.

I think Hour of the Wolf was maybe the 4th Bergman film I watched and I still like it, totally worth seeing as long as you like the idea of Bergman doing gothic horror.

Yeah, I remember enjoying it, but that it was kind of atypical, Bergman-lite maybe, like almost a self-parody or close to what detractors thought he was doing.

Max von Sydow didn't turn into a werewolf, so it sucked

Count Floyd: "Oh well, it wasn't scary but they got depressed at the end, didn't they, kids? You think it's not scary to be depressed? Did you see them? They, they couldn't... function in this world... with the faces... all those faces..."

Watched this again last night and the crescendo of the old couple slipping under the door and terrorizing Diane until she finds the gun to end her screams ... it's just unbelievable what this guy does with overlapping images and sounds and effects. Nothing else like it in film excepting maybe the end of The Return.

Yep. Besides all his weirdness and originality, he's also just a virtuoso of image and sound.

Lol at Count Floyd coming over from the Midnight Cowboy thread. #onethread

What's amazing is how the old couple are smiling in exactly the same way at the beginning and end of the film. They might even be more terrifying in that hired car after meeting Betty/Diane.

Yeah, that whole thing is WTF.

Like where are they going and why are they behaving that way?

Having not watched this in the intervening decades since it came out all I could remember was the prurient interest and the general vibe, so was pleasantly surprised how much good stuff there was from beginning to end to appreciate. I don’t have much to add on that front. Trying to think of their is any use in comparing with a film on a somewhat similar theme, The Limey, but the two movies are so different, maybe don’t want to go there.

Also trying to remember the substance of a National Lampoon Bergman parody I read once, The Høwl of the Muppets.

xxp the smiles and laughter of the old couple are echoed by Adam Kesher and Camilla Rhodes later in the film
https://www.mulholland-drive.net/pics/cast/oldcouple1.jpg
https://www.mulholland-drive.net/pics/cast/adam_camilla.jpg
(images from mulholland-drive.net where of course someone noticed it way before I did https://www.mulholland-drive.net/theories/18.htm )

That’s an interesting pairing of images, but it’s hard to take a site seriously that conflates the two different “realities”:

First, we've seen how the hitman operates. It is hardly a stretch to imagine him taking out Adam in the process of killing Camilla. In fact, I think it's a bit of a stretch to imagine him killing ONLY Camilla. This guy murdered a vacuum sweeper for crying out loud.

(FWIW, I only vaguely know what to make of the old couple, but it does seem awfully reductive to declare they “represent Adam and Camilla”)