Bad Boy Made Good: The Revival of the Ballet Mecanique
by Ron Frank
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Narrated by Tony Kahn; Featuring CharlesDirector: Ron Frank
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown)
Format: NTSC
Running Time: 183 minutes
Published: 2006
DVD Release Date: 2006-04-06
Model: EMF DVD 060
Studio: Electronic Music Foundation/Ballet mécanique Proj.
Product features:
- Deluxe 2-DVD set
- Complete concert performance of teh Ballet mécanique
- Interviews with friends and students of George Antheil
Movie Reviews of Bad Boy Made Good: The Revival of the Ballet Mecanique
Movie Review: Two Thumbs Up!
Summary: 5 Stars
Last weekend I had the honor to view the final cut of a film at the Doc Kountze Film Festival called Bad Boy Made Good. This film brought to life a piece of music that, when it was created in the 1920's, was ahead of its time. What the composer, George Antheil, had in mind when he created Ballet Mecanique, was not possible to deliver to audiences until the 1990s. The work is a composition which includes the following instruments: two grand pianos, three xylophones, four bass drums, and a tam-tam, 16 synchronized player pianos, sirens, bells and 3 airplane propellers. I sh** you not. It is truly a spectacle, er, spectacular piece.
This documentary includes the evolution of the project as well as the evolution of the life of George Antheil. I don't think that I can describe this with any justice, but because this topic was so far outside of my circle of knowledge, I was completely riveted by this film. I was surprised at what an important part of contemporary musical history (something that we don't hear much about in mainstream channels save for Aaron Copeland) that I felt genuinely enlightened. George's life (I feel so connected that I can call him by his first name) held a lot of the same struggles musicians have today and maybe even on a grander scale because of his ingeniousness. Every musician should see this film for obvious reasons and everyone else should catch a glimpse just to be inspired.
Two thumbs up!
Summary of Bad Boy Made Good: The Revival of the Ballet Mecanique
In 1924, a young American composer in Paris wrote the world's most outrageous piece of music. It was scored for 7 Percussionists, 2 Pianists, 7 Electric Bells, 3 Airplane Propellors, and a Siren. Not to mention 18 Synchronized Player Pianos. It's been called "The most important work of the 20th century," and "The Acme of demented Modermism!" It took 75 years for this piece to be heard...This is its story...This award-winning film about futurist composer George Antheil and his notorious masterpiece, "Ballet mécanique" has been seen on PBS. This 2-DVD set contains the feature-length version, and also includes a concert performance of Ballet mécanique, Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy's film "Ballet mécanique" with Antheil's original score in a new recording, and interviews with friends of Antheil's.
George Antheil was a brash young pianist and composer from New Jersey, whose concerts caused fistfights and riots in the 1920s. He was, as he titled his best-selling 1945 autobiography, the "Bad Boy of Music." In 1923 he wrote "Ballet mécanique" as a score for an abstract film by the same name, produced by Dadaist artist Fernand Léger and cinematographer Dudley Murphy
. But the technology to make all those machines work together didn't exist. Antheil reduced the number of player pianos to one, finished the piece without the film, and had a triumphant premiere. The American premiere the following year at Carnegie Hall, however, was a colossal failure. Antheil died having never heard his original conception for the Ballet mécanique.
In the mid-1990s, music publisher G. Schirmer realized that, thanks to modern computer-music technology, it was now possible to perform Ballet mécanique the way Antheil had envisioned it. Ballet mécanique had its world premiere in Lowell, Massachusetts, in November, 1999. Since then it has been performed over two dozen more times in the US, Canada, and Europe.
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