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Michael Gaughn

Flipping Quentin’s Vista

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Flipping Quentin's Vista
Flipping Quentin's Vista

Flipping Quentin’s Vista

Flipping Quentin’s Vista

theater photos courtesy Lance Alspaugh,
the Vista Theatre

EXCLUSIVE | Legendary filmmaker Quentin Tarantino and private-cinema maestro Theo Kalomirakis join up to transform a neighborhood hangout into an international film-lover’s destination

by Michael Gaughn
July 29, 2022

Building a movie theater on the dirt lot where D.W. Griffith shot the massive Walls of Babylon sets for his once revered now reviled silent-movie epic Intolerance is kind of like building on an old Indian burial ground. And yet that’s where LA’s Vista Theatre rests, and it’s hard not to

Flipping Quentin's Vista

sense the presence of silent movies past—and of a whole alternative, and slightly unsavory, history of Hollywood—emanating from it like a wraith.

The Vista has been through a lot. Originally christened the Lou Bard Playhouse and offering both live performances and movies, its premiere screening in 1923 featured the biggest child star of the day, the now forgotten Baby Peggy. Assuming its current name
c. 1930, the theater became something of a changeling, for a while showing first-run films, then second-run, foreign, and classic, during the ‘60s dabbling in some very adult burlesque, and, for an extended stretch, soft then hardcore porn.

After a brief stint as a revival house, the

The Vista has been through a lot. Originally christened the Lou Bard Playhouse and offering both live performances and movies, its premiere screening in 1923 featured the biggest child star of the day, the now forgotten Baby Peggy. Assuming its current name c. 1930, the theater became something of a changeling, for a while showing first-run films, then second-run, foreign, and classic, during the ‘60s dabbling in some very adult burlesque, and, for an extended stretch, soft then hardcore porn.

Vista transitioned back to first-run in the mid ‘80s, but thanks to midnight screenings, a steady flow of special events and premieres, cameos in films like True Romance and The Swinger, and the lingering reputation of its shapeshifter past, it’s become a magnet for independent, cult, and B movies and other manifestations of alt. The sidewalk beneath its marquee is pitted with celebrity handprints à la Grauman’s Chinese. You won’t find any Cary Grants or Steve McQueens there, though, but Bud Cort, Kenneth Anger,

After a brief stint as a revival house, it transitioned back to first-run in the mid ‘80s, but thanks to midnight screenings, a steady flow of special events and premieres, cameos in films like True Romance and The Swinger, and the lingering reputation of its shapeshifter past, it’s become a magnet for independent, cult, and B movies and other manifestations of alt. The sidewalk beneath its marquee is pitted with celebrity handprints à la Grauman’s Chinese. You won’t find any Cary Grants or Steve McQueens there, though, but Roger Corman, Bud Cort, Ray Harryhausen, Kenneth Anger, and the cast of Dark Shadows instead.

So it’s not hard to see why the Vista might catch Quentin Tarantino’s eye. A patron for years, Tarantino came to resonate so strongly with the theater’s vibe that he decided to snatch it up, freshen it up a bit, and see if he couldn’t turn it into a must-see destination for rabid film nerds like himself.

Ray Harryhausen, and the cast of Dark Shadows instead.

So it’s not hard to see why the Vista might catch Quentin Tarantino’s eye. A patron for years, Tarantino came to resonate so strongly with the theater’s vibe that he decided to snatch it up, freshen it up a bit, and see if he couldn’t turn it into a must-see destination for rabid film nerds like himself. 

His affection for the Vista seems to

spring as much from what it’s not as from what it is. It’s not an opulent movie palace like Disney’s flagship El Capitan 11 miles down the road but a kind of mini palace with a neighborhood-hangout feel. And it’s not located in the heart of Hollywood, like the El Capitan, Grauman’s, Pantages, or Cinerama Dome, but in a nebulous no-man’s land tucked between Los Feliz, Silver Lake, and, just down Sunset Blvd., Little Armenia. It might be wry but not wrong to think of the Vista as the brick & mortar equivalent of the defiant outsider, the unbowed survivor.

It’s a little harder to understand the theater’s attraction for designer Theo Kalomirakis, whose reputation rests largely on bringing exuberant flair, tempered by tasteful restraint, to creating private cinemas, a category of design that too easily and often descends into excess and kitsch in the hands of others. But much of the Vista, from its iron-maiden-like box office to its well-intended stabs at hieroglyphics to its looming Nile-Delta-by-way-of-Topeka pharaohs, is pretty much an altar to kitsch.

His affection for the Vista seems to spring as much from what it’s not as from what it is. It’s not an opulent movie palace like Disney’s flagship El Capitan 11 miles down the road but a kind of mini palace with a neighborhood-hangout feel. And it’s not located in the heart of Hollywood, like the El Capitan, Grauman’s, Pantages, or Cinerama Dome, but in a nebulous no-man’s land tucked between Los Feliz, Silver Lake, and, just down Sunset Blvd., Little Armenia. It might be wry but not wrong to think of the Vista as the brick & mortar equivalent of the defiant outsider, the unbowed survivor.

It’s a little harder to understand the theater’s attraction for designer Theo Kalomirakis, whose reputation rests largely on bringing exuberant flair, tempered by tasteful restraint, to creating private cinemas, a category of design that too easily and often descends into excess and kitsch in the hands of others. But much of the Vista, from its iron-maiden-like box office to its well-intended stabs at hieroglyphics to its looming Nile-Delta-by-way-of-Topeka pharaohs, is pretty much an altar to kitsch.

above | the auditorium, designed in an Egyptian style meant to reflect the Vista’s Intolerance roots, will be kept pretty much as is

It’s not like Kalomirakis even knew the Vista existed before he took on the assignment of translating Tarantino’s wishes into a satisfying reality. His involvement is due mainly to some deft but determined bird-dogging by the previous owner, Lance Alspaugh, who’s been retained to manage the theater and shepherd the renovation. A devotee of Kalomirakis’ work, Alspaugh slipped a copy of Private Theaters, the sumptuous coffeetable-book presentation of the designer’s early efforts, in front of Tarantino at a planning meeting. 

As Tarantino flipped through the book, Alspaugh started making the case for retaining Kalomirakis but quickly realized he could save his breath. It was clear from Tarantino’s expression he was hooked. “We don’t really need to talk about this anymore,” he said. “This is obviously the guy.”

Kalomirakis politely declined the first time Alspaugh called—and the second, and the third. Content with the life he’s carved out for himself since moving back to Greece, Kalomirakis was taking on few new projects; plus, his experience with commercial theaters is limited. But, adopting the same tactics he deployed to convince famed designer Joseph Musil, who had renovated the El Capitan, to flip Coronado’s Village theater, Alspaugh quietly persisted, with his gentle persuasion eventually winning Kalomirakis over.

The Theo/Quentin honeymoon proved short-lived, though. Having been told the plan was to leave the Vista’s auditorium pretty much as is, Kalomirakis assumed his mandate was to do the rest of the theater in the same Egyptian Deco style. And although Tarantino liked Kalomirakis’ initial design, he ultimately deemed it too elegant, coming back with suggestions for faux cinderblock walls and an outsized RC Cola 

It’s not like Kalomirakis even knew the Vista existed before he took on the assignment of translating Tarantino’s wishes into a satisfying reality. His involvement is due mainly to some deft but determined bird-dogging by the previous owner, Lance Alspaugh, who’s been retained to manage the theater and shepherd the renovation. A devotee of Kalomirakis’ work, Alspaugh slipped a copy of Private Theaters, the sumptuous coffeetable-book presentation of the designer’s early efforts, in front of Tarantino at a planning meeting. 

As Tarantino flipped through the book, Alspaugh started making the case for retaining Kalomirakis but quickly realized he could save his breath. It was clear from Tarantino’s expression he was hooked. “We don’t really need to talk about this anymore,” he said. “This is obviously the guy.”

Kalomirakis politely declined the first time Alspaugh called—and the second, and the third. Content with the life he’s carved out for himself since moving back to Greece, Kalomirakis was taking on few new projects; plus, his experience with commercial theaters is limited. But, adopting the same tactics he deployed to convince famed designer Joseph Musil, who had renovated the El Capitan, to flip Coronado’s Village theater, Alspaugh quietly persisted, with his gentle persuasion eventually winning Kalomirakis over.

The Theo/Quentin honeymoon ended up being brief, though. Having been told the plan was to leave the Vista’s auditorium pretty much as is, Kalomirakis assumed his mandate was to do the rest of the theater in the same Egyptian Deco style. And although Tarantino liked Kalomirakis’ initial design, he ultimately deemed it too elegant, coming back with suggestions for faux cinderblock walls and an outsized RC Cola dispenser that would overwhelm what Kalomirakis had in mind for the concession stand. (There’s even talk of a Mold-a-Rama.)

It wasn’t until Kalomirakis heard about the decidedly casual grunge-ish look planned for the coffeeshop and gaming arcade that will occupy the storefronts to either side of the Vista that he got where Tarantino’s trying to go. Not wanting the theater to feel so exclusive that anyone hesitates to enter, Tarantino instead wants to create an everyman’s retreat that evokes his own early experiences of going to the movies.

dispenser that would overwhelm what Kalomirakis had in mind for the concession stand. (There’s even talk of a Mold-a-Rama.)

It wasn’t until Kalomirakis heard about the decidedly casual grunge-ish look planned for the coffeeshop and gaming arcade that will occupy the storefronts to either side of the Vista that he got where Tarantino’s trying to go. Not wanting the theater to feel so exclusive that anyone hesitates to enter, Tarantino instead wants to create an everyman’s retreat that evokes his own early experiences of going to the movies.

That realization was a revelation for Kalomirakis. The common bond between him and Tarantino, it turns out, is exactly that intense love, born in childhood, for the whole experience of watching movies—a shared origin story that runs so deep it’s been the inspiration, and constant source of sustenance, for both of their careers. Seeing that Tarantino was more interested in staying true to his emotional roots than to the bones of the Vista gave Kalomirakis a new and more potent source of inspiration to draw on.

Embracing that come-one-come-all, come-as-you-are dynamic, Kalomirakis quickly created a new design that Tarantino just as 

Flipping Quentin's Vista

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quickly blessed—which is a good thing since the renovation is already well under way, with the lobby already gutted. Early, likely optimistic, estimates pointed toward a December reopening; early to mid 2023 is looking more realistic.

But there’s a whole other layer to this story, one that’s been all but lost in all the attention paid to the acquisition and renovation. That Tarantino is having the projection booth rebuilt to accommodate his personal dual-format 35mm/70mm projectors isn’t too surprising given his well-known preference for film over digital. But what might get the savvy to sit up and take note are his plans to show first-run movies on film, having prints struck even for titles pegged for digital-only release—which is of course damn near everything. 

To that end, Tarantino has formed a kind of cabal with other movies-on-film fans like Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Judd Apatow, with this formidable band of insiders pooling its resources to get prints made and help put the Vista firmly on the radar of the film-forever crowd. Since probably no one but Tarantino has the necessary sway and determination to pull something like this off, it seems likely the Vista reborn will be—and remain—one of a kind.

It’s obvious Tarantino’s Vista isn’t going to be just some neighborhood haunt or famous filmmaker’s vanity project but, in its unassuming way, a mecca, an off-the-beaten-path everyone’s-invited celebration of the movies, a unique night out for anyone seeking a new old way to see the latest fare on film. 

Michael Gaughn—The Absolute Sound, The Perfect Vision, Wideband, Stereo Review, Sound & Vision, The Rayva Roundtablemarketing, product design, some theater designs, a couple TV shows, some commercials, and now this.

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Review: Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

review | Breakfast at Tiffany’s

related review

Miss Golightly, I Must Protest!

Some thoughts on Yunioshi

Because this film has been so viciously damned, and Blake Edwards was so relentlessly hounded, for Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi, and because those misperceptions still hang over Tiffany’s like a shroud, I would be remiss to review the film without weighing in. 

Talking about the merits of Rooney’s performance is probably not the right way to tackle this, but I think partly what irks the political reeducation crowd is that Yunioshi actually is funny, even at this late date. Yes, there are a couple of moments that are a little too broad, but we are talking about Mickey Rooney after all. 

The better tack, probably, is to talk about the glaring double standard that’s been applied to the film. Why hasn’t anybody gotten their dander up about Sally Tomato? Here’s a Jewish-American actor—Fred Flintstone, for chrissakes—playing an Italian in a stock-ethnic way just this side of Chico Marx. If one ethnic caricature is offensive, then they should all be. The seemingly endless number of warnings at the beginning of this innocuous film includes “yellowface.” It should say “goombah” as well. And yet Tomato raises nary a peep.

Following all this to its logical conclusion, Marlon Brando’s Vito Corleone—a mongrel Midwesterner playing an Italian mobster—ought to be damned as well. But—and maybe I’m just being short-sighted—I don’t ever see that day coming. If it does, we should all give up on the movies and play solitaire instead. But then someone would take issue with how the figures are portrayed on the playing cards. 

If you want to get pissed off at anybody in Tiffany’s, it ought to be Paul Varjak. That was a creaky conception from the start that unintentionally exposed all the many biases of the time and ultimately created more problems than it solved. And George Peppard could never act his way out of a rain-soaked paper bag. That’s offensive.

—M.G.

Ignore all the culture-wars propaganda—this ultimate Audrey Hepburn vehicle still reigns as one of the great romantic comedies

by Michael Gaughn
July 17, 2022

There are so many things to be said about Breakfast at Tiffany’s—not in a nostalgia-dripping stroll-down-memory-lane kind of way but more in a “this thing still reverberates like crazy—why?” kind of way. And, like anything with potency in the present moment, those reverberations have an inevitable dark side.

But let’s tackle the upside first. It’s a little too obvious to begin with Audrey Hepburn, but how can you not? What she does with her character is still breathtaking, somehow managing to stay true to the depth and nuance of Truman Capote’s original conception of Holly while shepherding her through all the standard-issue Hollywood attempts to blandify her, emerging with a conception that somehow manages to synthesize and transcend both.

She owns this film, in a way very few other actors have ever owned a film. And, yes, I know that’s what everybody loves about Tiffany’s—but that tends to be because of all the charming, kooky stuff, not because Hepburn succeeded in investing Holly Golightly with a soul. 

Usually, you’d give the director some credit for that, and Blake Edwards was brilliant in many ways, but no other female character in his work even comes close to being as fully developed or compelling. Golightly exists leagues beyond what he was able to accomplish elsewhere.

And keep in mind Edwards was still pretty much a yeoman when he made this film, with really only a couple of slapstick-driven service comedies (The Perfect Furlough and Operation Petticoat) under his belt. The sudden growth in his maturity as a filmmaker is more than obvious, and, as much as I love the original Pink Panther film and some of his other work, it’s a tremendous loss he never did another movie like this one—which suggests that Tiffany’s was one of those born-of-the zeitgeist miracles, like Casablanca, less the product of individual will and more the product of spontaneous generation. 

Other things to praise: Like The Apartment, Tiffany’s manages to capture the spirit of New York at that early-‘60s moment when the city was at its peak, unknowingly perched on the edge of a precipice. And it does this despite—or maybe because of—having been made mostly on LA soundstages and only partly on location in NY. It remains a beautiful film to look at—much more beautiful than it deserved to be considering the production values of other similar productions from the time.

When I was a kid, one of the Toronto stations would broadcast movies after midnight that weren’t available on American TV. I would sneak downstairs after everyone else was asleep and gorge myself on fare I was probably too young to be watching. (In the case of Bloody Mama, definitely too young.) That’s how I first saw Tiffany’s, and it was the first time I remember being entranced by the look of a film. It was so much more vivid than anything else I’d ever seen that it seemed almost magical.

If I saw it again today presented that way, I’d probably be horrified. But there was something inherent in the quality—maybe best called “power”—of those images that wasn’t quashed by the limitations of the medium or the device. Tiffany’s, seen in 1080p on Prime, was faithful to that experience. I can’t say I was entranced—too much time has passed—but I was engaged and impressed. Can 4K improve on that? Possibly—but only if Paramount can resist inflicting the same “grain—bad; digital—good” revisionism that made a travesty of The Godfather. 

The dialogue tracks are surprisingly clean—so clean you can easily make out whenever there’s a dubbed line. Originally mixed in mono, there’s nothing particularly good or bad about the stereo version here, except for a couple of jarring instances of hard panning. My biggest beef is that Henry Mancini’s score is presented in the Living Stereo style of his soundtrack albums, with that unrealistically wide soundstage making it feel like the music exists somewhere outside the film. 

It’s hard to watch Tiffany’s and not get a little wistful about Mancini. His scores for this and The Pink Panther three years later are probably his best—evocative, ingenious, tasteful, never bombastic, setting the appropriate mood instead of telling you what to feel, polished expressions of the second American renaissance. But the British Invasion left him lost without a rudder and he could never recover his bearings long enough to ever summon up anything half as good as what he did so effortlessly in the early ‘60s.

The film’s biggest problem is structural, and might come from Edwards never having dealt with material this complex before. The whole thing starts to unravel around the 2/3s mark, which is when most movies start to come apart when the director doesn’t fully grasp his material. The problem is, Tiffany’s isn’t just a light and fluffy romantic comedy. Edwards and screenwriter George Axelrod had retained enough of Capote’s novella that its darker undercurrents start to deeply trouble everything at the point where the filmmakers have to start pulling all the threads together, causing the movie to go full-blown schizophrenic, oscillating wildly between dramatic scenes and silly vignettes that tend to rob the more serious moments of their power. This created an insoluble dilemma that led to the infamous “I own you” conclusion, with the now thoroughly unpleasant George Peppard asserting his blond-haired, blue-eyed straw-man’s rights over the beaten Golightly. All of that somehow doesn’t sink the film completely, but it’s a hell of a note to end on.

Miss Golightly, I Must Protest!

Some thoughts on Yunioshi

Because this film has been so viciously damned, and Blake Edwards was so relentlessly hounded, for Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi, and because those misperceptions still hang over Tiffany’s like a shroud, I would be remiss to review the film without weighing in. 

Talking about the merits of Rooney’s performance is probably not the right way to tackle this, but I think partly what irks the political reeducation crowd is that Yunioshi actually is funny, even at this late date. Yes, there are a couple of moments that are a little too broad, but we are talking about Mickey Rooney after all. 

The better tack, probably, is to talk about the glaring double standard that’s been applied to the film. Why hasn’t anybody gotten their dander up about Sally Tomato? Here’s a Jewish-American actor—Fred Flintstone, for chrissakes—playing an Italian in a stock-ethnic way just this side of Chico Marx. If one ethnic caricature is offensive, then they should all be. The seemingly endless number of warnings at the beginning of this innocuous film includes “yellowface.” It should say “goombah” as well. And yet Tomato raises nary a peep.

Following all this to its logical conclusion, Marlon Brando’s Vito Corleone—a mongrel Midwesterner playing an Italian mobster—ought to be damned as well. But—and maybe I’m just being short-sighted—I don’t ever see that day coming. If it does, we should all give up on the movies and play solitaire instead. But then someone would take issue with how the figures are portrayed on the playing cards. 

If you want to get pissed off at anybody in Tiffany’s, it ought to be Paul Varjak. That was a creaky conception from the start that unintentionally exposed all the many biases of the time and ultimately created more problems than it solved. And George Peppard could never act his way out of a rain-soaked paper bag. That’s offensive.

—M.G.

Michael Gaughn—The Absolute Sound, The Perfect Vision, Wideband, Stereo Review, Sound & Vision, The Rayva Roundtablemarketing, product design, some theater designs, a couple TV shows, some commercials, and now this.

PICTURE | Tiffany’s, seen in 1080p on Amazon Prime, is amazingly faithful to one of the most beautifully shot Technicolor films ever

SOUND | The dialogue tracks are so clean you can easily hear when there’s a line dub, but the stereo mix of Mancini’s score fails to integrate it with the rest of the film

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Music for Art’s Sake

Music for Art's Sake

Music for Art’s Sake

The desire to have an expansive art collection on display made filling this Manhattan apartment with sumptuous sound a challenge

by Michael Gaughn
July 13, 2022

The one inescapable truth of Manhattan real estate is that, no matter how prodigious the space or the wealth of resources at hand, getting what you want requires being a master of the art of compromise. The trick is making it all happen without feeling squeezed—space-wise, convenience-wise, performance-wise, pleasure-wise.

Everything about Hudson Yards would be considered generous, even by Manhattan standards. A gleaming-new city within the city resting above the railroad yards in midtown, its opulent living spaces offer heart-of-the-island convenience, killer views, and, when it comes to square footage, a decent amount of room to roam. But there are limits. 

Paint Me a Picture

Consider this scenario: You have an extensive collection of paintings and sculpture you want to have on display to both ponder and savor. The collection will fill virtually all of the walls and much of the floor. But you also want to fill your space with music, which you’re used to experiencing at a level of quality on par with your other art. So where do the speakers go?

That was the challenge facing Anthony Chrisostomo of Home Theater of Long Island who, along with co-owner Nick Tzortzatos, had worked with the client for years, having provided the

photos & video | John Frattasi, Gusto Multimedia

photos & video | John Frattasi, Gusto Multimedia

entertainment and smart-home amenities for her residences in Morristown and Stone Harbor, New Jersey. They’d been able to easily meet her needs before—but they’d also had a lot more room to work with.

The client didn’t want any speakers on the walls at Hudson Yards—but even if she’d been willing to consider it, building policy frowns heavily on breaching anything in the apartments. As Chrisostomo explained, “This building has more requirements than any other one we’ve worked in because it’s above the rail yards, so there’s heightened security.” Also, two of the walls in the main living area are filled with floor-to-ceiling windows offering views of downtown from Chelsea to Battery Park and up and down the Hudson River. So placement options were limited—beyond limited.

the minimalist sculptural form of Meridian’s 7200SE speakers proved the ideal complement to the client’s extensive collection of art

Music for Art's Sake

the minimalist sculptural form of Meridian’s 7200SE speakers proved the ideal complement to the client’s extensive collection of art

Then there was the Meridian factor. The client already has speakers from that high-performance audio brand throughout her two main residences and very much wanted them in her pied-à-terre as well. But Meridian’s offerings are known as much for being bold statements in design as for their sound and engineering. They’re not bland little boxes you tuck discretely away in a cubby or corner—you put them proudly on display.

That proved to be both a plus and a minus. The top-tier 7200SE models in the main living area can be appropriately described as sculptural, and their clean modernist lines dovetail nicely with the other art in the room—so, that problem solved. But having freestanding speakers means having cables, and cables have to run somewhere, and cables are, at best, unsightly. But since the Meridians have the necessary electronics built in, they require just a single wire carrying the music source. Chrisostomo was able to use the standard networking lines already threaded throughout the building to send sound to the speakers, which meant only having to have one thin strand of cable running from the wall.

A naive bystander might wonder “Why not go wireless?” And Chrisostomo acknowledges that would have been an option. “But that would have detracted from the aesthetics of the space because we would have had to place equipment within the room to feed and power the speakers.”

The master and guest bedrooms weren’t as daunting because they’re smaller spaces where sound is needed mainly for TV viewing. And both placement and wiring were much simpler since less imposing speakers could be clustered around the screens. The master bedroom has the demure for Meridian M6 speakers wedded to a Leon soundbar placed beneath  the screen, while the

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the master bedroom (above) and guest bedroom (below)

soundbar in the guest bedroom is joined with a pair of Meridian DSP3200s, which are decidedly compact but clearly born from the same design lineage as the statement speakers in the main living area.

A Place in the Sun

Though not as big a challenge as the speakers, the “art everywhere” and “no breaching” edicts made implementing lighting and shading control a little more interesting than it would usually be. Art and sunlight are mortal enemies but, thanks to the western-facing curtain wall, the sun blasts into the apartment for hours leading up to twilight. Just sealing out the light—and thus the views—wasn’t an option, though. 

But because the tech involved is far more discreet than it would have been for the speakers, wireless was an option here, with Chrisostomo able to deploy a Lutron Homeworks QS system that automatically adjusts the raising and lowering of the shades for the time of day. Paired with semi-transparent shading material that sufficiently dims the room without entombing it, warm evening light still suffuses the space but without threatening the art.

It’s probably not surprising to learn that the quality of light, in all its many forms, was

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especially important to the client—which led to her getting fairly heavily involved with setting up the automation. “She’s very particular about the different moods she wants to set,” said Chrisostomo, “so she got really granular when it came to each button and what it was going to do.”

And the Lutron system treats the apartment with the proper respect, with the minimalist controls able to be mounted on the walls while looking like they’re integrated into the walls. The combination of wall keypads and desktop controllers placed within easy reach give the client complete but unobtrusive control over the many moods of her space.

It’s hard to emphasize just how flexible and responsive technology—and the designers and integrators who deploy it—have become within the past few years. Just about everything involving high-end home entertainment used to be a major bait & switch, promising effortless comfort and infinite pleasure and delivering something that not only didn’t live up to the promise but was frustrating, even maddening, to use. Not just the tech but the design mindset of the recent past wouldn’t have been able to make something like this Hudson Yards dwelling happen, instead forcing the homeowner to settle for a series of unacceptable compromises that would have seriously detracted from the quality of her life. But the fetters are now off, and the evidence of the new paradigm is abundant. The trick, of course, is hooking up with a design team that’s attuned to your desires but once you’ve cleared that hurdle, the course is clear and the finish line now easily with reach.

Michael Gaughn—The Absolute Sound, The Perfect Vision, Wideband, Stereo Review, Sound & Vision, The Rayva Roundtablemarketing, product design, some theater designs, a couple TV shows, some commercials, and now this.

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Cineluxe Showcase

Cineluxe Showcase

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secret cinema

tucked away in a manor house in the lush English countryside, this high-performance private theater proves to be something very much more than just an intriguing novelty

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rooms for improvement

the entertainment spaces in this Australian home are undeniably spectacular—but after a decade in use, they were ready for a major sonic makeover

“This story could have easily just been about the Theo Kalomirakis-designed Art Deco home cinema. Or it could have focused instead on the jawdropping one-of-a-kind entertainment area, with its discreet stage, ability to accommodate 250 guests, and epic views of Sydney Harbor. But there turned out to be an even bigger—though not quite as showy and obvious—story to be told, about how these kinds of high-end spaces have become so elaborate and flexible and the trends and technologies influencing and supporting them are evolving so quickly, that we’re now being presented with an unprecedented array of opportunities—but also the continual challenge of staying ahead of the curve.”     read more

inside the ultimate
home entertainment space

this domestic entertainment complex includes not just one of the great home theaters but also a nightclub, a gaming arcade, and even a café 

“Designer Theo Kalomirakis and acoustician Steve Haas have collaborated on a number of cost-no-object home theaters, but probably none of those efforts has been as ambitious, versatile, or well-realized as the Paradiso. Seventeen years in the making, this Southern California gem is actually an entire home-entertainment complex built around an Italianate piazza. The reference-quality 15-seat home theater doubles as a fully-fledged concert hall. The nightclub features a hydraulic stage and can handle anything from a rock band to a jazz group. Next door to the club resides an arcade, containing the homeowner’s extensive collection of pinball machines and video games. There’s even a g-force flight simulator.” read more

a tribeca trendsetter

the desire for a casual movie-watching space in this apartment’s main living area led to the creation of a high-performance hideaway theater

“Ed Gilmore casually bringing some shots of a project he’d done in Tribeca up on his computer monitor was a major “a-ha” moment for me. The first shot showed a stylish, obviously comfortable living area that also served as a billiards room, dining room, and kitchen. The second showed the same room transformed into a home entertainment space a lot of people would die for. That, a completely intuitive part of me screamed, perfectly represents the new paradigm. Others apparently agree with that conclusion because people just won’t leave Ed alone about the Tribeca space. Ironically, even he admits it’s not perfect—but it’s getting there, as the client invests more and more in turning what was initially a whim into a room that can blow a typical movie theater out of the water.”     read more

luxury made easy

a prefabricated premium theater that not only met but exceeded the client’s high expectations

“Seeing the interest in dedicated theater rooms decline over the past few years, legendary designer Theo Kalomirakis has helped form Rayva, a company devoted to dramatically simplifying the process of designing, engineering, and installing high-end theaters. Rayva recently completed a signature installation in Westchester County, north of New York City, that’s meant to show that the company’s streamlined approach to theater design can yield a luxury result.”     read more

music for art’s sake

the desire to have an expansive art collection on display made filling this Manhattan apartment with sumptuous sound a challenge

“The one inescapable truth of Manhattan real estate is that, no matter how prodigious the space or the wealth of resources at hand, getting what you want requires being a master of the art of compromise. The trick is making it all happen without feeling squeezed—space-wise, convenience-wise, performance-wise, pleasure-wise. Everything about Hudson Yards would be considered generous, even by Manhattan standards. A gleaming-new city within the city resting above the railroad yards in midtown, its opulent living spaces offer heart-of-the-island convenience, killer views, and, when it comes to square footage, a decent amount of room to roam. But there are limits.”     read more

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Luxury Made Easy

Luxury Made Easy

Luxury Made Easy

Showcase

Inside the Ultimate
Home Entertainment Space

Achieving Serenity

A Tribeca Trendsetter

A prefabricated premium theater that not only met but exceeded the client’s high expectations 

by Michael Gaughn
December 19, 2019

Legendary designer Theo Kalomirakis not only created the concept of home theater but has been the standard-bearer for luxury home cinema for his entire career. His two best-selling coffeetable books—Private Theaters and Great Escapes—are filled with lavish theaters created in every imaginable style.

Seeing the interest in dedicated theater rooms decline over the past few years, Theo has helped form Rayva, a company devoted to dramatically simplifying the process of designing, engineering, and installing high-end theaters. Rayva recently completed a signature installation in Westchester County, north of New York City, that’s meant to show that the company’s streamlined approach to theater design can yield a luxury result.

I talked to Theo about some of the challenges and triumphs of creating this strikingly contemporary space.

Did this begin as a Rayva theater?

No. The client saw a custom theater I had designed for a friend of his and said, “Let’s do something similar for my house.” I told him, “We can come up with something based on one of the designs we’re developing for Rayva. I think there is one that would fit your house very well.”

The room was above the garage, in a new space, and it was ready for the theater. But it was perforated with windows on three sides. So I said, “It’s not good to put a home theater in a room with windows. The light creates a problem, and, more importantly, the sound will bounce off the glass.” He said, “I don’t mind if you want to cover the windows. It’s the garage. We don’t need to touch them from the outside. You can close them from inside.”

That was an interesting challenge. I wanted to cover the windows, but I wanted the client to still be able to have access to them. So, the windows dictated the design. And because Rayva panels are in increments of four feet, I could place one in front of a window and have it removable if access was needed.

I felt very vindicated that this process we’ve developed allows even difficult rooms to become theaters, because you don’t have to touch the structural elements in the room or the engineering elements. And, because of the flexibility of our design elements, we can deal with difficult design challenges.

What did the client tell you were his expectations for the room?

He just wanted to have a great theater. He said, “Cost is not the issue. I just would like to have the best technology, the best design, the best seats.” I shared with him brochures with Cineak seating. And, sure enough, he selected one of the best-looking seats and picked the softest, more plush leather, which is what he got.

And then we selected the carpet. Usually that happens at the end of the design process and the clients are overwhelmed with all the expenses of equipment and woodwork and everything. So, I automatically suggested just a plain grey industrial-quality nylon carpet that in a room like that would cost, at most, five, six thousand dollars. But I also showed him something that was plusher, like wool. He immediately went with the wool. He said, “Listen—I’m not going to use a nylon carpet. I spent so much money on the theater, I want the carpet to match the quality of the rest.”

I was trying to protect his budget, but clients who know what they want are different from ones who do things just because they want to save a penny here and a penny there. With such clients, I respect the focus on the ultimate quality rather than focusing on sticking to a certain budget.

photos | Phillip Ennis

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What was the installation process like?

Rayva doesn’t do the actual installation, so when we started the project, we reached out to Nick Di Clemente from Elevated Integration. When Nick introduced himself to the client, he found out the client had additional needs. This was a newly renovated home and he needed whole-house audio as well. So Nick got the contract for the rest of the house, which he was very happy about.

What, for you, are some of the highlights of this space?

The client selected our Origami design. The good thing about the triangles of this design is that they allow flexibility of placement. We were able to use Wisdom Audio speakers—and there were lots of them and they’re big—without any conflicts with the room design.

This theater has a very different, outside-the-box design. In home theater, you expect to see columns and panels repeating themselves. You expect moldings that are gilded and wall panels that upholstered with brocade fabric. With Rayva, we tried to move away from that aesthetic because we wanted to change the perception of what a home theater can look like.

That’s why we bring in artists and architects that aren’t related to home theater to create the Rayva designs. With our guidance, their visions can be turned it into something that’s functional and can work with a variety of room sizes.

Also, this theater is designed with wall-to-wall acoustical treatments specified by Steve Haas’s company SH Acoustics. Steve worked hard to get the best possible distribution of acoustical treatments within the limitations of the design. When the theater was finished, he spent two days calibrating the Wisdom Audio speakers to the room specifications and made the theater sound unbelievable.

What was the client’s reaction when he saw the finished theater?

The client is very happy. He told me his kids practically live in that space.

Was there anything else you wanted to mention?

I want to tell you something—we put pictures of the theater on Houzz, where we can monitor which ones resonate with end-users. And we were surprised to find out that we got a lot of likes for the interior but got more likes for the marquee outside. Go figure! I didn’t take that as an insult but as an indication that people still relate to having a marquee outside a home theater. So, we will be creating a marquee as a Rayva product and will make it available as an accessory.

Michael Gaughn—The Absolute Sound, The Perfect Vision, Wideband, Stereo Review, Sound & Vision, The Rayva Roundtablemarketing, product design, some theater designs, a couple TV shows, some commercials, and now this.

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A Tribeca Trendsetter

showcase

ACHIEVING SERENITY

INSIDE THE ULTIMATE HOME ENTERTAINMENT SPACE

LUXURY MADE EASY

A Tribeca Trendsetter

The desire for a casual movie-watching space in this apartment’s main living area led to the creation of a high-performance hideaway theater

by Michael Gaughn
November 29, 2018

Ed Gilmore casually bringing some shots of a project he’d done in Tribeca up on his computer monitor was a major “a-ha” moment for me. The first shot showed a stylish, obviously comfortable living area that also served as a billiards room, dining room, and kitchen. The second showed the same room transformed into a home entertainment space a lot of people would die for. That, a completely intuitive part of me screamed, perfectly represents the new paradigm.

Others apparently agree with that conclusion because people just won’t leave Ed alone about the Tribeca space. Ironically, even he admits it’s not perfect—but it’s getting there, as the client invests more and more in turning what was initially a whim into a room that can blow a typical movie theater out of the water.

Having since had a chance to actually visit the space, and to shoot some video there, I recently circled back around with Ed to talk about all things Tribeca.

People seem to love that installation because it says that almost any room can now be transformed into a legitimate entertainment space.

I think what we did was to, in a minimally invasive way, create a home theater experience in a room that, if you looked at it from any angle, you would immediately say it couldn’t be done there. There was just no way.

Aesthetically, the room had already been designed before you came into the picture. How were you able to navigate those waters?

We just needed to be open and try to find really unique solutions that would both satisfy a high-end level of performance as well as maintain a certain aesthetic value the client wanted us to maintain, and be true to the bones of that room. I don’t think that’s any rare talent. The issue was that he had interviewed a lot of other AV guys who told him right off the bat, “No, we won’t do that.” And that wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear. So we were lucky enough to be able to convince him that we could do it, and it could be compelling.

Tribeca video | Alyssa Neece
photos & Sound Advice video | John Frattasi

“We needed to be open and try to find unique solutions that would both satisfy a high-end level of performance as well as maintain a certain aesthetic value the client wanted us to maintain, and be true to the bones of that room.”

—Ed Gilmore

a retractable screen, ceiling speakers, and a projector on a lift allow the apartment’s main living area to be transformed into a better-than-movie-theater entertainment space

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That communal area wasn’t supposed to be the main entertainment space, right?

Right. The den is the room where he really sits and watches most of his TV. That was the room he wanted to spend some money on. This other room was kind of an experiment for him.

But as he saw it implemented, immediately he thought, “I’m going to sink some more money into this room.” And that’s exactly what he did. That’s what he did with the Kaleidescape Strato, that’s what he did with the Steinway Lyngdorf, and what he’s about to do with projection, by upgrading the projector there as well.

Are people fascinated by that room because it’s a kind of outlier or because it represents a trend?

I think it’s a little bit of both. It’s tapping into a trend, that trend being that people aren’t interested in having dedicated rooms for specific purposes like a theater, or even a dedicated music room.

There’s also an aspirational aspect to it as well. It resonates with people because it’s well done. I mean, it’s a really beautiful space. And it’s well thought out. And that goes back to the developer, who did a really nice job on that building. The dimensions of the room are great, and it has this wonderful warm feeling to it without really needing much in terms of other types of interior design. 

But these particular clients do have taste, and they’ve been around the block a few times in terms of renovations. He is a serial renovator. And so their choice of artwork, their choice of furnishings—those little details that they have there are great. And I think that resonates with a lot of people, too. 

If luxury is really about details—about somebody caring enough to make sure every last thing is done right—Tribeca would seem to qualify.

I think you and I agree on this, right? Attention to detail is really what matters in a luxury space. People have asked me about what luxury is, and I typically say that it needs to be inspirational. But that doesn’t mean it really needs to be noticeable. It’s something that kind of unfolds. And by the time you realize what’s happening, you’re kind of taken by surprise by it. And it’s organic—it feels like it was always part of what was meant to be there. 

Michael Gaughn—The Absolute Sound, The Perfect Vision, Wideband, Stereo Review, Sound & Vision, The Rayva Roundtablemarketing, product design, some theater designs, a couple TV shows, some commercials, and now this.

about Gilmore’s Sound Advice

Since 1991, Ed Gilmore and Gilmore’s Sound Advice, Inc. have been designing, deploying, and servicing hundreds of integrated systems by strictly adhering to a word-of-mouth recommendation policy. Typical systems consist of audio & video distribution, home theater, lighting & shading systems, enterprise-level network/WiFi & telephony, along with HVAC & security systems integration. In 2016, Sound Advice created one of the most unique showroom & event spaces in New York City. 

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Review: Alphaville

Alphaville (1965)

review | Alphaville

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Who knew Godard’s future would turn out to be our now?

by Michael Gaughn
June 29, 2022

The question I constantly wrestle with when reviewing an older film is why anyone should care about the movie if they’re not already on its wavelength. The point of reviewing isn’t to share you personal favorites list with the reader, with a kind of take-it-or-leave-it attitude about whether they’ll actually enjoy it. Worse is the reviewer who just piles on, merely echoing the blind conformity of the herd. The only reason to write up any film, old or new, is to create what you hope is common ground with the reader, to give them a glimpse of what you appreciated (or disdained) in the hopes they’ll seize the ball from there and run with it, having their own experience, not just a carbon copy of your own.

Any truly sentient creature in the present should find plenty to pick up on in Alphaville. It’s probably the only valid glimpse of the future ever committed to film, riding joyously, for all its dire predictions, on the back of pulp fiction and sci-fi—and, it needs to be pointed out, given how quickly and completely Godard would soon turn against Hollywood, American pulp fiction and sci-fi. 

Most visions of the future latch onto the technology, trying to second guess how science will develop—which will always be a sucker’s bet—and the characters, even when they adopt what seem to contemporary audiences odd behaviors, are always us just projected into the future essentially unchanged from who we are now. (Hello!—all you Star Trek fans out there.) What Godard does instead is anticipate the elaborate, increasingly lopsided dance between human nature and its extension in technology, with his focus squarely on the human, and, in truly uncanny ways, anticipates our rapid devolution and the world of the present, awash in a drowning tide of lost souls. 

Some of his more cogent prognostications:

—The rise of the myth of the eternal present, which blocks people from considering the past or the future so that, as dire and empty as it is, the current state of things seems like the best of all possible worlds.

—Reducing culture to our most primitive urges to make it easier to control mass behavior. (Anybody who disagrees this has come to pass hasn’t been paying much attention to blockbuster movies, recent politics, or Facebook algorithms.)

—Embracing and fetishizing that Western science is only superficially rational and objective and is driven, more than anything else, by the idea of purging Original Sin. (As the movie’s supercomputer intones: “The acts of man through the centuries will gradually, logically destroy him. I, Alpha 60, am merely the logical means of this destruction.”)

The list of searing insights is much longer than the above, but this will give you the drift. Of course, my descriptions are too reductive and nothing but a travesty of what Godard actually wrought—but the point is that, his gaze steely, and undistracted by positivism and other hucksterist notions of progress, he got it all frighteningly right.

It’s not the job of any film to predict the future, of course, or be any kind of handbook or teachable moment or push any kind of social agenda. That’s the antithesis of cinema. Godard was resonating to something he sensed in the air—the imminent disappearance of the poetic soul—in other words, the soul—and worked to express that almost inexpressible event as accurately and evocatively as he could.

I know: I’ve made this all sound very cerebral and dry and bleak. It’s not—Alphaville is a truly fun film that, like all early Godard, has cinematic thrills, both big and small, in virtually every shot. And, as with A Woman Is a Woman and Contempt, he underlines at the very beginning that this is “just” a film, with the computer telling us about the importance of legend for disseminating fictions to the masses—thus providing a typically paradoxical justification for the movie’s crime-fiction and sci-fi trappings. And it’s easy to confuse Godard’s exploiting of comic-book conventions, with their broad-stroke ideology and cheap sentiments, as his own thoughts and feelings, but that’s all part of his effort to keep you off balance so you keep questioning and paying attention.

Watching Alphaville in SD on Amazon Prime, I was surprised by how good parts of it looked. Then I watched it in HD on iTunes, and I saw the same cinematography bloom. The 1080p version is murkier than the SD stream, with more contrast and with the blacks more crushed, but the additional resolution allows for more subtle gradations—something Godard and Raoul Coutard took full advantage of and which is fundamental to appreciating the film, and that isn’t even hinted at in the lower-res version. There are closeups of Anna Karina that have a richness and subtle glow reminiscent of the best black & white portrait photography, and that contrasting of the luminous with the harsh is key to conveying her position as a pod-person-like succubus who’s also the possible vessel of human salvation. The film’s famed rendering of the striking but cold interiors of modern office spaces feels bracing, almost seductive at 1080p, falls flat in SD. I don’t know if a good 4K transfer could open up the images even more, but I’d be curious to find out. 

This is a particularly nuanced mono mix so polyvalent it reminded me of Phil Spector’s ability to convey layers and layers of depth in a single channel. Crude to today’s jaundiced ears, all that really matters is whether it expresses what Godard meant it to express, and it does. The strange sense of Alpha 60’s voice and the society’s electronic communications being in the immediate foreground while sounds of the actors and their environments sit in the mid ground is unsettling. And Godard’s signature mucking around with what ought to be diegetic sound—for instance, the sound of the perversely brief fight scene soon after hero Lemmy Caution checks into his hotel room suddenly drops away when Godard cuts to an angle through a window, but the music playing within the apartment continues on—comes across with plenty of presence. But also with a decent amount of distortion—but that’s OK. It rings true. 

The on-set sound is very raw, full of the reverberations of the spaces, but that adds to the documentary-like sense of immediacy—the reality of this clearly fictional but sadly plausible world.

You don’t have to watch Godard to see Godard. There is hardly a film made since the early ‘60s he hasn’t influenced in some way and, with their relentless efforts to appropriate because they lack the emotional depth to actually create, many contemporary directors now mimic his tropes verbatim. But the distance between innovator and imitator couldn’t be greater—kind of like having a burger at Applebee’s instead of Boon Fly Cafe. There’s a resemblance, but the resemblance is probably the least meaningful thing about the experience. Applebee’s is safe, predictable, bland; dead, not alive. And so it goes with Godard. 

Michael Gaughn—The Absolute Sound, The Perfect Vision, Wideband, Stereo Review, Sound & Vision, The Rayva Roundtablemarketing, product design, some theater designs, a couple TV shows, some commercials, and now this.

PICTURE | In 1080p on iTunes, the film is a little murky, with crushed blacks, but the resolution allows some of the images to look properly subtle and rich, creating the necessary contrast between luminous and harsh

SOUND | The mono mix is unusually nuanced, helping to convey the unsettling juxtaposition between the omnipresent supercomputer and the spellbound citizens

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Review: Contempt

Contempt (1963)

review | Contempt

Only Jean-Luc Godard could create an epic that’s all about intimacy

by Michael Gaughn
June 12, 2022

Godard again. If A Woman Is a Woman is the most accessible of his films, Contempt (Le Mépris) is the most mainstream, with a CinemaScope presentation, exotic locations, and a cast featuring Brigitte Bardot and Jack Palance. Where Woman Is a Woman takes a decidedly oblique look at the Hollywood musical, here Godard directs his loving, withering gaze at the Hollywood epic. 

Of course the whole exercise is droll, with the “epic” scenes staged with what would clearly be the catering budget for a Hollywood production. The main characters in the film within the film of The Odyssey are literally a bunch of statues, with the whole shot in extreme widescreen, which Fritz Lang famously quips “wasn’t made for man—it was made for snakes and funerals.”

But all of Godard’s films have that kind of sardonic carapace, and you’re likely to feel little more than annoyed or mildly amused if you don’t take up the challenge of trying to pierce their protective shell. For all its trappings of a travesty epic, Contempt—as Godard states explicitly during the opening credits—is a meditation on how the movies frame and channel our desires. The pivot for this is all the many shots of Bardot nude, which range from pinup to the bedroom intimacy of a couple in love. 

But staying at that level would be love on Hollywood’s terms. Godard for the most part either eschews or exaggerates most of the traditional gestures used to express desire in movies, for instance brilliantly taking our dependence on the soundtrack to tell us what to feel and pumping George Delerue’s music cues so far past 11 that it feels like the film’s on the brink of a core meltdown. The music here isn’t used to just Mickey Mouse or accompany the action but is compensatory, both a parallel commentary and a force of nature. The lead characters are too cool with their emotions, too distanced from them to realize how deeply, almost inexorably, those surging undercurrents are guiding their actions—but the score makes it clear they’re playing with fire.

The masterstroke, though, is Godard turning widescreen on its head, most effectively deployed in the virtuoso half-hour-long scene in Bardot and Michel Piccoli’s unfinished apartment where we watch their marriage implode in real-time, shown in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio that transforms their domestic space into a battlefield and makes their feints and jabs, regroupings, and head-on assaults the offensives of massed armies. Godard here journeys back to the roots of Homer, using the movie spectacle as his sleek but insubstantial modern vessel.

The point of the above is that there’s plenty of meat here—so much that the film reveals some satisfying new level on every viewing—but that doesn’t mean it’s all prepared and presented with equal flair. The most egregious fumble is Palance, who often feels robotic, and who Godard encourages to behave like the worst kind of caricature of the ugly American. Godard’s disdain is so fierce it blinds him, resulting in a performance so predictable and one-dimensional it ultimately defangs some of his most telling points.

 If A Woman Is a Woman is an evocative and indispensable record of Paris in the very early ‘60s, Contempt is an equally valuable document of the last, intense upwelling of modernism before it was devoured by the postmodernist beast, of the offshoot style that began to emerge in the mid ‘50s and was just beginning to get its bearings and bear its richest fruit when it was cut down and purged by the conformist, lowest-common-denominator impulses of mass culture, the army of the children of the machine. 

But while the current online manifestation of A Woman Is a Woman is satisfying enough for now, the version of Contempt on Amazon Prime (which I would imagine is the same that’s on Google Play and elsewhere) can be maddening, offering tantalizing glimpses of how the film originally appeared but ultimately feeling like a faded family photo from the era. Studio Canal created a 4K intermediate  for a theatrical release a few years ago, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, but hopefully we’ll get a chance to glimpse it soon enough. 

Be warned that the sound is pretty awful, but it’s apparently just being true to the source tracks. Delerue’s music is distorted throughout, as is much of the dialogue track, and the quality of the dialogue recordings is all over the place, especially in the projection-room scene. But I wouldn’t want it any other way. Better a movie that bears traces of its origins than one that feels artificially pure, the product of endless lines of code.

One, kind of pointless, regret, though—because not much can be done about it—is that the original mix was mono. That seems like a lost opportunity, especially given all the widescreen blocking in Bardot and Piccoli’s apartment, where it seems like stereo could have been used to play off all the different presentations and meanings of distance. 

Contempt is ultimately about how Hollywood romanticizes everything, even when it’s being sadistically cruel, and the dismal odds of anything resembling real emotion being heard above all the style- and genre-driven din. Nobody would ever use the words “gregarious,” “ebullient,” or even “warm” to describe Godard. There is something  fundamentally cold about both him and his work. But you can sense him, in his early films at least, constantly trying to fend off the deadening chill of alienation, using abstraction, of all things, to keep his films fundamentally and intensely human.

Michael Gaughn—The Absolute Sound, The Perfect Vision, Wideband, Stereo Review, Sound & Vision, The Rayva Roundtablemarketing, product design, some theater designs, a couple TV shows, some commercials, and now this.

PICTURE | Watching Contempt on Prime can be maddening, offering tantalizing glimpses of how the film originally appeared but ultimately feeling like a faded family photo from the era

SOUND | Be warned that the mono sound is pretty awful but it’s apparently just being true to the source tracks

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Review: A Woman Is a Woman

Probably Godard’s most accessible film, this remains a charming dissection of the American musical—and an indispensable record of Paris in the early 1960s

by Michael Gaughn
June 4, 2022

Watching a Godard film is a lot like taking an exam in 20th-century philosophy administered by a brilliant but sadistic college professor. No matter how certain you are of your answers, he will always find some fiendishly abstruse and cryptic way to prove you wrong, relishing making you feel like a dope in the process. Godard is the film snob’s equivalent of a secret handshake, the thing the cognoscenti deploy to mock and spit on the peasantry.

And it doesn’t help that his work became more and more harsh and inscrutable as the ‘60s went on, until he reached his Vertov Group period, doing highly politicized, abstract films in collaboration with Jean-Pierre Gorin that are for the most part both wearisome and gratingly coy. 

But there is still that initial period of the early ‘60s where, yes, he was aggressively and blatantly reinventing cinema, but he was doing it playfully, with abundant energy and wit, not yet embarrassed by his obviously sincere romanticism. Films like Bande à part, Contempt (Le Mépris), Alphaville, and Pierrot le Fou remain fresh and unmatched and, from beginning to end, exhilarating. Maybe the most accessible of that early batch is Godard’s riff on the Hollywood musical, as a way of riffing on the whole artifice of movies, A Woman Is a Woman (Une femme est une femme). 

You don’t need to get film-school analytical to explain the joys of this movie. It’s easier to just tick them off: Anna Karina, who the camera (and clearly Godard) loves and who devours the camera in turn; Raoul Coutard’s véritê shooting style, in subtle but evocative Eastmancolor, which keenly documents early ‘60s Paris without turning it into a series of postcards; the gags, which are admittedly quirky and smartass but still startlingly funny; and that constant playing with and questioning of film technique, which somehow hasn’t dated a day and energizes the movie in a way that can never be done by coloring within the genre lines.

Godard was always a radical, but he was a radical who knew he had a large international audience, especially in America, and while his affection for American culture soured as the ‘60s went on, and while his skepticism is apparent throughout A Woman Is a Woman, he also knew Hollywood was the lingua franca of moviemaking at the mid century, and you can sense he’s almost in awe of what it was able to churn out. 

This is probably best on display in the long scene where Karina and Jean-Paul Belmondo sit at a table in a small cafe while she struggles with whether to sleep with him to spite her live-in boyfriend. It’s all very New Wave-y with a lot of oblique comments and a lot of jump cuts. But then Karina asks Belmondo to play a Charles Aznavour record on the jukebox, and the movie basically just stops for three and a half minutes while the tune plays out. Yes, that was revolutionary for the time, and is still radical because, unlike the theme-park experience of most contemporary movies, which essentially straps you in for the duration then guides every millisecond of the ride, inducing carefully graduated jolts along the way, Godard wants you to use that caesura to inject your own thoughts and feelings into the film, to essentially collaborate with him—which is why A Woman Is a Woman can never be the same for any two people who come across it, or for any one person viewing it more than once. 

But that moment, by leaning on pop music, is also very Hollywood, is Godard knowing that, if he was going to unravel the fabric of the typical movie-watching experience that drastically, he needed to toss a sop to make it palatable. Sadly, his subversive impulse here would, like everything, be ultimately coopted and corrupted by mainstream filmmaking, leading to the now pervasive use of pop songs as a crutch to cover up the filmmakers’ basic lack of creativity (and feeling).

But you don’t have to watch A Woman Is a Woman at anything approaching that level to enjoy it. Even skimming its surface brings pleasures you won’t find elsewhere. Coutard’s cinematography is groundbreaking, justly famous, and remains sublime. There are salient examples everywhere but a couple of the most striking (both night shots) are Karina and Jean-Claude Brialy standing in front of a shop window with “Lancome” in white neon behind them and Brialy stepping out onto the apartment balcony with the boulevard lights floating off into the distance. The former is very much like what Russell Metty was doing in Douglas Sirk films like All That Heaven Allows, but shot simply, on location, without soundstages or lighting grids, and with a documentary-size crew. 

And while Amazon Prime’s presentation isn’t the last word—you long for a 4K release while praying nobody will be dumb enough to attempt what currently passes for a restoration—it’s so true to the elegant grit of the original film that very little is lost by watching it this way. The colors are rich but never over pumped, and the subtlety of the gradations—essential to presenting this film—is for the most part maintained. It’s legitimate to hope something better will some day come along, but it will need to be significantly better than what’s offered here to mean anything at all.

The audio isn’t pristine, but it wasn’t at the time, and the patina of the era—reflected in the heavy reverberation in a lot of the music cues—is essential to the film’s impact. Putting the score on an equal footing with the dialogue and then bringing cues in and out like he was arbitrarily flicking an on/off switch was a big part of what Godard was after, using the lulling reassurance we usually take from wall-to-wall film music to yank us out of our complacency—kind of like taking a toy from a baby to ultimately return it in the end. So, while the score isn’t very well mixed by contemporary standards, it’s actually a stunning mix if you’re focusing on the needs of the film, which is as it should be.

There’s only one real irritant here: The size, thickness, and black border around the subtitles, which are all out of scale and a constant distraction. Retaining the original crappy-looking titles baked into the print would have been a huge improvement all the way around. 

There is really only a handful of movies that qualify as true classics, a number small enough to rest comfortably in the palm of your hand; films that transcend the zeitgeist, fleeting emotional attachments, and the aura created by relentless marketing and that tap into far deeper and more sustaining currents than the vast majority of fare. This is one of them. But given the aversion, which still persists, to foreign films—or at least to the ones that don’t try to ape American films—it’s necessary to make the case a little more forcefully here than you have to for the Hollywood standards. So let’s try this: You can’t say you know and love movies if you haven’t at least tried Godard. And possibly the best place to begin that journey is the current release of A Woman Is a Woman.  

Michael Gaughn—The Absolute Sound, The Perfect Vision, Wideband, Stereo Review, Sound & Vision, The Rayva Roundtablemarketing, product design, some theater designs, a couple TV shows, some commercials, and now this.

PICTURE | Amazon Prime’s 1080p presentation isn’t the last word but it’s so true to the elegant grit of the original film that very little is lost by watching it this way

SOUND | The audio isn’t pristine but does a serviceable job of maintaining the patina of the era, which is essential to the film’s impact

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Review: The Lady from Shanghai

The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

review | The Lady from Shanghai

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Probably Orson Welles’ most eccentric—and biting—film, Shanghai features two for-the-ages supporting performances

by Michael Gaughn
June 1, 2022

Why review an older film like The Lady from Shanghai if it’s not a restoration or appearing in 4K for the first time? Partly because certain older films are far more vibrant and relevant than others and it’s worth it to pluck the gems from the pile. Partly to underline for anyone who’s gotten burned by checking out catalog titles online that the consistency of the quality of their presentation has improved tremendously of late. And partly because, in a culture obsessed with living in a perpetual present and with erasing history on its way to erasing memory, it’s important to push back by emphasizing the value of the past.

Citizen Kane kind of sells itself. It hasn’t yet been pulled down from its pedestal—and hopefully never will be—so you don’t really need to say a lot about the film itself when reviewing something like the 4K release. But what about the other Welles, the stuff he tried to make within the studio system but that was inevitably extensively retooled on its way to release, the films you have to work at a little to appreciate because you have to peer around all the obstructions erected by the studio if you want to catch glimpses of the film Welles originally made?

The Lady from Shanghai wasn’t just reshot and recut by Columbia, it was savagely beaten into submission. But enough of Welles’ effort survives in the theatrical release, even though broken and bruised, to make watching it a satisfying experience. In fact, the tension between what he created and what the studio did to it actually played into his hands, making the film even edgier, even more collage- and dreamlike.

Shanghai comes from the period when Welles had exhausted almost all his credit in Hollywood and was on the verge of becoming a caricature, ensconced so deep inside his arrogance that he was all but blind to when he just looked silly.  That too much of his smugness shows through to make him believable as a wide-eyed innocent in no way diminishes the value of this film. He offers up so much else to be savored that it’s more than worth it to look beyond his perpetual gloat.

Shanghai is usually labelled a film noir, and I guess that pertains, as far as it goes—but it doesn’t go far enough to define what it really is, which is a dense cluster of character studies of a depth and incisiveness—and of the kind of people—Hollywood hardly ever allows. And the irony of that is that this movie isn’t really that much about the romantic leads, Welles and Rita Hayworth, but about the two law partners, Grisbee and Bannister. You can watch it for the stylistic stuff, but you’ll be missing the real meat if you don’t surrender utterly to what Everett Sloane and Glenn Anders put forth. 

Sloane delivers one of the best performances ever captured on film—the kind of thing he might have been able to do in Kane if he wasn’t relegated to playing a thinly-drawn ethnic stereotype and if he and Joseph Cotten weren’t in constant danger of Welles eating them alive. You’re led to believe early on that his character is the villain, and he is, in a way, but who’s the villain, and the definition of villainy, is so slippery in this film that you’re left more with the impression of a brilliant but broken man whose physical paralysis has come to cripple his entire being. 

As for Glenn Anders—there’s something miraculous about what he pulled off here. His performance is famously eccentric, but gloriously so, and fully, and impishly, fledged. It shouldn’t work, but it does, partly because Anders and Welles make his madness insidious. While Sloane’s crafty attorney is to some degree descended from Victorian mustache twirling, Anders is something new, the craziness of a heedless society embodied, that craziness then spreading out and permeating the rest of the film. (It’s hard not to watch Anders now and not see anticipations of Jack Nicholson’s Jack Torrance in The Shining.)

Partly because of all the reshoots, and partly because of the state of the film, the look of Shanghai is all over the place, but the moments that are solid—especially the camera lingering over Hayworth on the Circe, the probing closeups of Sloane, and the jarring closeups of a sweating, twitching Anders—look strikingly good in 1080p on Prime. Unless somebody does a digital makeover and turn this into a kind of 4K comic book à la The Godfather—which isn’t likely—Shanghai will always look this uneven. But if you see this movie as off-kilter to its core, as you should, then that’s OK.

(A quick update on the whole “films looking good on Prime” thing: I’ve been spotchecking titles, pretty much at random, and you can’t take this as gospel, but I would say the odds are about 3:1 of a film looking pretty damn good if you dive into the catalog offerings. There’s a lot of room for improvement, of course, but Prime is becoming a boon for anyone who cares about the entire breadth and depth of film and not just the fleeting shiny objects of the moment.)

As usual, there’s not much to be said about the sound. It probably wasn’t that good to begin with, and this presentation is probably faithful to whatever there was to work with. Wish they’d balanced out the disparity between the dialogue and the music cues, and between some of the scenes, but that’s not a dealbreaker. 

Every time I want to dismiss Orson Welles as more than a bit of an overweening jerk—which he was—I find myself getting pulled deep into something like Lady from Shanghai or Touch of Evil, works so sublime and subversive and of their own world they almost forgive all his many sins. Almost.

Michael Gaughn—The Absolute Sound, The Perfect Vision, Wideband, Stereo Review, Sound & Vision, The Rayva Roundtablemarketing, product design, some theater designs, a couple TV shows, some commercials, and now this.

PICTURE | The look of Shanghai is all over the place, but the moments that are solid—especially the closeups—look strikingly good in 1080p on Prime

SOUND | The sound probably wasn’t that good to begin with, and this presentation is probably faithful to whatever there was to work with

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