Intermezzo 2013
For a few years I’ve been putting together something called Santa-dote—something that provides a bromide to overdosing on the holidays. But finding myself on Boxing Day with New Year's yet to come, I'm retitling this intermezzo, the sorbet served at a many-course meal to cleanse the palate. This year, I thought I’d share some of my favorite musical clips tied to film and television, from the Serpentine Dance (1902) filmed by pioneering woman filmmaker Alice Guy Blaché, one of the first directors of narrative fiction in film, to the soundtrack of the growing love and admiration between the main characters in Medicine for Melancholy (2008) Although Serpentine Dance is not a narrative, and there are other Serpentine dances by other women, attributed to other filmmakers, I chose this one because it’s a Blache. It is quite wonderful. Cab Calloway provides the awesome soundtrack to Max Fleischer’s brilliant animation in this clip “St. James Infirmary” from the 1933 S...