Johnny Depp – { feuilleton }

Julius Klinger’s Sodom

The more I look at the work of Austrian artist Julius Klinger (1876–1942), the more I like what I see. This Pinterest sample shows his versatility, equally at home with detailed illustration, often with a Beardsley-like quality, as he was with more Modernist design. Sodom (1689) (aka The Farce of Sodom, or The Quintessence of Debauchery) is the notorious Restoration drama attributed to John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, which is here illustrated by Klinger for an edition privately published in Leipzig in 1909. The play is one of the most flagrantly outrageous works in the English language, with a cast of characters that includes Bolloxinion, the King of Sodom, Cuntigratia, his Queen, and so on; you can see parts of it performed in The Libertine (2004) with Johnny Depp playing Rochester, and taking the role of Bolloxinion.

Klinger produced 16 illustrations in all. His picture of Salomé gets linked to this series on a number of websites but I’ve seen other sites that list it as a separate piece. Since Salomé isn’t mentioned anywhere in Sodom I’d also be inclined to keep them separate.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration #21
• Julius Klinger’s Salomé

Polanski details

Roman Polanski as Alfred in Dance of the Vampires (1967).

I’ve always admired the attention to detail in Roman Polanski’s films, a quality evident not only in his careful adaptations but also in areas that lesser filmmakers might ignore. Dance of the Vampires (1967) is a good example (sorry, I refuse to call it by the title MGM used for its edited US release): the sets and decor are remarkable, and the editing and camera work so skilfully blends studio constructions with location shots that for years I was convinced the film was made in a genuine European castle. The atmosphere is so carefully sustained that I found the whole thing as terrifying on first viewing as any Hammer film, despite the broad humour. In the set-piece moments Polanski (and soundtrack composer Krzysztof Komeda) put many of the later Hammer vampire films to shame.

The Vampire Portraits

The production design and art direction for Dance of the Vampires was created by Wilfred Shingleton and Fred Carter, both of whom later worked on Polanski’s Macbeth, and who fill the rooms with mouldering furnishings and rotting decoration. One striking sequence concerns a walk through a gallery of vampire portraits that are the creepiest paintings seen on film since Ivan Albright’s portrait of a decrepit Dorian Gray. Film credits in the 1960s were sparse so there’s no indication of the artist responsible. However, one portrait glimpsed at the end of the gallery (below) is a copy of the “Ugly Duchess” painting by Quinten Matsys.

Rosemary’s Book

A sign that filmmakers care about detail is when they make their fictional books look like the genuine article. The history of witchcraft in Rosemary’s Baby (1968) could easily have been glimpsed very briefly but Polanski shows Rosemary leafing through its pages in a sequence of Hitchcock-like view-reaction-view shots that make it appear as convincing as possible. The shots also make the viewer examine the book through Rosemary’s eyes, something Polanski does throughout the film.

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Howard Pyle’s pirates

The Buccaneer was a Picturesque Fellow by Howard Pyle (1905).

Seeing as how Johnny Depp and co. are sailing the Spanish Main once more (to mixed reviews, unfortunately), now is perhaps a suitable moment to note the genesis of our popular conception of buccaneers. The famous characters of the Wild West were being mythologised while many of them were still alive and some survived long enough to be consulted by filmmakers such as John Ford when the first of the silent Westerns were being made. Pirates had their exploits recounted in tabloid fashion via books like The Newgate Calendar but our romantic image of the pirate comes primarily from Robert Louis Stevenson and artist/writer Howard Pyle (1853–1911).

Keith Richards by Paul Karslake (1998).

Pyle’s articles for Harper’s Monthly Magazine in the early 1900s were later collected as the very popular Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates, “Fiction, Fact & Fancy concerning the Buccaneers & Marooners of the Spanish Main”. The considerable gulf between fact and fiction can be see in early pirate portraits, most of which are crude woodcut renderings. Pyle ignored these for the most part, relying on imagination to exaggerate details of worn-out 18th century clothing in much the same way that Sergio Leone and others exaggerated certain qualities of 19th century garb for their Westerns, turning what would have been a rather sorry reality into something more visually thrilling. Hollywood costume designers have used Pyle’s paintings as source material for pirate characters ever since so it’s perhaps fitting that Johnny Depp’s conception of Jack Sparrow’s character also came from a painting, Paul Karslake’s portrait of Keith Richards posing as a pirate. And now Richards is in the latest film playing Sparrow’s father…

• Howard Pyle at 100 Years of Illustration
• A Pyle pirate gallery

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Coming soon: Sea Monsters and Cannibals!
• Seamen in great distress eat one another
• Druillet meets Hodgson
• Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys
• Davy Jones