“Harold Lloyd , in conjunction with his producer Hal Roach, grasped the virtues of athletic performances on screen as a means of helping to train the masses somatically in order to handle the demands of life in threatening urban settings. The actor’s thrilling performances were meant to invigorate spectators emotionally and enable them to acquire the neurological skills and physiological dexterity they needed to inhabit the world safely.”

“It was in the aural media that the project initiated earlier in…

Eye
"Visions of Excess, Selecteed Writings, 1927-1939"
Georges Bataille

Cannibal delicacy. It is known that civilized man is characterized by an often inexplicable acuity of horror. The fear of insects is no doubt one of the most singular and most developed of these horrors as is, one is surprised to note, the fear of the eye. It seems impossible, in fact, to judge the eye using any word other than seductive, since nothing is more attractive in the bodies of…

Implicit Complicity: Henry King and Gregory Peck
Miguel Marías
Donostia Zinemaldia
Filmoteca Española

[continuação]

Gregory Peck, for instance, has starring roles in six of King’s films between 1949 and 1959. The director and the actor understood each other perfectly, and Peck rarely performed better than he did under King’s direction. For his part, King rarely obtained such excellent work from other actors, although in Hollywood even his detractors acknowledged that he was one of the best directors of actors, who…