THE INGRID CHRONICLE.  SPRING 2002-03-19

Let’s start off with an article sent in by Michelle Fryou. It’s a very interesting and unexpected idea about “Casablanca”

March 18, 2002

ARTS ONLINE

They'll Always Have Paris (and a Scholarly Web Site)

By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL

Here's clicking at you, kid.

As the first step in an ambitious program to establish the Internet as a future forum for film study, the American Film Institute plans to collaborate with the Georgia Institute of Technology to create a scholarly Web site for the movie "Casablanca."

The site, which is still in the early stages of development, is meant to be a prototype for a virtual cineplex containing interactive academic studies of classic movies. Accessible through the institute's AFI.com site, the analysis of each film would then be digitally linked to pertinent scenes on a DVD in an online student's computer. With "Casablanca," for instance, clicking on "flashback" might show Humphrey Bogart's Rick and Ingrid Bergman's Ilsa cavorting in Paris.

Details of "Casablanca: A Critical Edition," as the project is called, are still sketchy. Officials at the film institute - which is dedicated to advancing and preserving film, television and other forms of moving image and is not part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - and at Georgia Tech declined to comment until legal issues, including permission from Warner Brothers to use "Casablanca," are resolved. Warner Brothers has not responded to a request for information.

Nonetheless, the project's shape is gradually emerging, based on public remarks by the participants and comments by several people who are familiar with the project. The "Casablanca" site is designed to use computers and the Internet to expand the ways in which films are studied, potentially educating a broader audience.

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, a University of Maryland professor who specializes in digital studies, attended a conference last year where the project was discussed. He said, "To my knowledge, this represents the first attempt to use the kinds of editorial methods that literary scholars have often employed for major literary figures. It takes that methodology and attempts to bring it to bear on film."

So as movie buffs turn their attention toward Sunday's Academy Awards ceremony, a small team at Georgia Tech in Atlanta remains focused on "Casablanca," the Oscar winner for best picture in 1943 and the institute's choice as the second greatest American movie after "Citizen Kane."

Two Georgia Tech professors, Janet H. Murray, who is also a film institute trustee, and Robert Kolker, are supervising the project. Last year the National Endowment for the Humanities said it would give the project a grant for $180,000, $19,000 more than the total cast budget for "Casablanca." The endowment declined to release information about its grant, which has yet to be paid.

But after the grant was announced, Mr. Kolker told a Georgia Tech alumni magazine: "We will be going shot by shot. There will be analysis for every shot in the film. It will be cross referenced and heavily multimedia. There are a lot of very minute details."

In addition to scholarly text annotating each shot, one can easily imagine how digital technology could help dissect a film. For instance, various versions of the "Casablanca" script could be compared scene by scene. An online visitor could review every passage in which "As Time Goes By" is played or all of the film's long shots.

The work of another Georgia Tech professor, Stephen Mamber, provides some insight into what the project might eventually yield. While at U.C.L.A. in the 1990's, Mr. Mamber created a digital study of Alfred Hitchcock's film "The Birds."

Hitchcock was known for his storyboards, which used small illustrations to depict how he intended to shoot a scene. Mr. Mamber took digitized versions of storyboards from "The Birds" and synchronized them with the film, allowing them to play simultaneously in separate windows on the computer screen. "When you can look at them as the film is unfolding, you can see how extraordinary Hitchcock's ability to visualize a movie was," he said.

Mr. Mamber also took tiny thumbnail images of the film's 1,100 shots and arrayed them on one screen, allowing instant access to any point in the movie. He also took the film's daily production notes and linked them to what was shot that day so that students could view the scenes in the order in which they were shot.

Mr. Mamber's "Digital Hitchcock" was never intended as a commercial product. But in 1999 he suggested that it be put on the Internet. "There's a huge appetite for these kinds of supplemental materials," he said. The Center for Motion Picture Study of the academy, which supplied many of the historical documents, denied his request to put it on the Internet, he said.

By working in advance with the film institute and the movie studio, the Georgia Tech team seems determined to make sure that it's not the same old story when it comes to getting permission to work with "Casablanca." Putting the academic material online but not the film itself is expected to assuage the studio's concern about copyright violations, since anyone using the Web site would have to have a DVD copy of the movie to make proper use of the online content.

This is not the first time in the arts that disks have been augmented with online content. In 1995 the Voyager Company started to distribute CDLink, a free program that allowed anyone to write interactive Web- based liner notes for albums. If one had a copy of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in the computer's CD-ROM drive, the owner could read an online essay about that Beatles album and click on certain sentences to hear relevant musical passages.

Since then music labels like Sony have issued CD's that when played in a computer give access to online content like songs and interviews. The movie industry has followed suit with DVD's that unlock Web-only behind-the-scenes video clips and the like.

Why not cram all of these goodies onto the disk itself? The film industry has certainly done well marketing DVD bonus materials to consumers, and viewers would not have to endure long waits while downloading complex material from the Net.

In the case of the "Casablanca" project, there are good reasons not to. For one thing, cinema is a relatively young medium, and research continues to produce new stories and artifacts.

There are technological considerations, too. DVD's may become a less viable format if the movie industry is ever successful in building a secure, copyright-protected video-on-demand system. If this occurs, the "Casablanca" prototype could serve as a template for accessing other films. One can envision a film institute essay about Bogart that would enable viewers to compare his performance in "Casablanca," "The Maltese Falcon" and "The African Queen."

Neither the timetable nor the cost for this is known. In the case of the "Casablanca" project, one assumes that the studio would want to be paid for access to the supplemental materials, as would film experts for their contributions. Whether that could be offset by per-use fees or a subscription plan remains to be seen.

Despite these questions, the digital "Casablanca" project may be the beginning of a beautiful friendship between the Internet and film scholarship.

NEW BIOGRAPHY OF ROBERT CAPA

Recently the “Times”, Britain’s “top newspaper” included an article in its Sunday supplement about a new biography of Capa and his affair with Ingrid was given considerable coverage. Michelle found it on an American website and kindly put the whole thing into our Yahoo Group as a message. This caused something of a stir, as we do have Ingrid fans who would rather not be reminded of her little “peccadillos”. Personally, I feel we are dealing with a human being [Ingrid!] and I think she would not have been human and certainly not her mildly bohemian self, if she had not succumbed to a few flings in her life. Remember that her father was an artistic, bohemian type of man and not a “cold” Swede, even assuming that typical Swedes are cold –this I don’t know.

The fact is that Ingrid did have an affair with Capa and was in love with him. It seems to me that Ingrid was a combination of the marrying kind and the easy-going bohemian. She would have married Capa, but he didn’t want to be tied down. So they remained friends. That’s it, in a nutshell.

Also, I, personally, don’t think we can discuss Ingrid’s films without referring to her as a person, because she did not act her film and theatre parts independent of her character – you cannot separate the two.

The Capa biography is by someone called Kershaw and may be of interest to those of us who like to read about people who touched Ingrid’s life.

ADAM HAD FOUR SONS

This delightful film is rarely mentioned these days, but it was shown on Channel 4 in Britain a few weeks ago. It was Ingrid’s second Hollywood film, made after she returned from filming “June Night” in Sweden. In the first part of the film she plays a very young girl, hired as a governess to four boys. She reminds me a little of the tomboyish nun, Sister Benedict, whom she was later to play in “Bells of St Mary’s”. Her first act on arriving at the family home, Stonehenge, is to have a go on the trapeze in the playroom; the idea was to pull yourself up by the wooden bar until your chin was over its top, as many times as you could, without letting go. Ingrid [as Emilie] did it nine times!

Adam Stoddard’s wife dies and then comes the Recession and he loses everything, including his house. Emilie has to go home to France. When the situation brightens up again, he is able to buy back the house and ask Emilie to return. This time Ingrid looks more mature and the strength of the character she plays manifests itself in exchanges with the “bad girl”, played by Susan Hayward. The film ends with Adam finally realising that he is in love with Emilie and, presumably, marrying her – though we don’t see this. Many incidents happen in between. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it.

Here are a few brief comments from the British press, the week it was shown:

“In this powerful melodrama, Ingrid Bergman stars as a governess hired to look after Warner Baxter’s family, shortly before tragedy strikes. There’s a cracking turn from Susan Hayward and Bergman’s star quality keeps you watching.”[Radio Times]

“An accomplished period melodrama, which traces the lives and loves of widower Warner Baxter and his four sons, from the untimely death of his wife to the boys’ service in World War I. Ingrid Bergman and Susan Hayward supply the romance and the recriminations.” {Daily Mail}

“Serene governess Ingrid Bergman and lying flirt Susan Hayward are the good and bad women in the life of widower Warner Baxter and his four sons. A polished period melodrama set before and during World War I”  {Daily Mail Weekend}

REVIVAL OF “THE CONSTANT WIFE”

First of all take a look at this:

and now this:

Above is my letter to the “Daily Mail”, as I just would not allow those slurs on Ingrid’s performance in “The Constant Wife” to go unchallenged! My original letter was a bit longer, but you know how editors love to edit! I got the point over, anyway. That play was a sell out. I managed to get a seat way at the back of the stalls in January 1974. Audiences loved Ingrid and the play. Ingrid is no longer here to defend herself, so watch out when anyone says something  to discredit her– they have me to contend with!

Here’s a lovely photo of Ingrid with John Gielgud during rehearsals [courtesy of IMDB]

That’s all for Spring! Remember Ingrid’s Spring films – “Intermezzo” and “Walk in the Spring Rain” – so different, so many years apart, but with the common denominator – INGRID was in them both!

I hope to resume the poem next time, as readers have requested it. I want to get this to Matt and up on the website before it’s Summer!

With love to all who care for Ingrid – she’s still the greatest!

Any comments and articles for future editions may be e-mailed to me:

Mary@ingrid 67.freeserve.co.uk