The Furniture: Reframing the Legend of King Arthur

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

King Arthur, the character, is listed by IMDb as appearing in 149 films and TV shows. That’s more than Dracula. I’m not going to go through all of them, obviously. But circumstance has given me a good excuse to compare two examples: Knights of the Round Table (1953) and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017). The latter just came out on Blu-ray. The former will serve as a bit of a tribute to Mel Ferrer, whose centennial was this past Friday.

The most obvious difference is between Ferrer’s version of Arthur, noble and even a bit meek, and the ever-hulking Charlie Hunnam. But this isn’t a physique column. Instead, I want to take a brief look at how Hollywood’s presentation of the loosely defined Arthurian Age has changed...

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The Furniture: Who Should Win the Emmys for Production Design

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Last year, I made a pitch to the Academy of Television Arts and Science on the subject of production design. Hopefully you also remember that amazing table tennis parlor from Penny Dreadful. But what you might not remember is that not a single one of the nominees I recommended actually won. Not even Lemonade, about which I am still annoyed.

But here I am, one year later, trying again. Here’s who should win each of the five production design Emmys. (At least Game of Thrones isn’t eligible this year, or they’d be winning for the fourth year in a row.)

Outstanding Production Design for a Narrative Contemporary or Fantasy Program (One Hour or More)
The Young Pope is almost dizzyingly lush. It’s here as a “contemporary” program, but much of it feels just as fantastical as the other nominees. It revives the gilded extravagance of the old Catholic Church, back when the Pope presented himself as more of an emperor than a priest. One is reminded of the clerical fashion show from Fellini’s Roma, but with a much darker undercurrent.

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The Furniture: Breaking House in Colossal

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Colossal is a movie built upon one very, very big metaphor. Gloria (Anne Hathaway) and Oscar (Jason Sudeikis) are highly destructive people, each at a different stage of addiction and personal crisis. They also have kaiju-sized avatars that tromp across Seoul every time they drunkenly stumble through a playground at 8:05am, the result of a bizarre electro-magical accident. It’s quite the premise.

But it works because director Nacho Vigalondo doesn’t rely exclusively on CGI monsters to get his point across. After all, they are only exaggerated versions of Gloria and Oscar, stomping through their lives. It matters not whether their feet land on a playground or through the first floor of an office building.

  

Or, as the case may be, their homes...

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The Furniture: The Night of the Hunter's American Expressionism

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter is an American classic. But it is also a clear descendant of a movement from across the Atlantic: German Expressionism. This comes through most clearly in the breathtaking work of cinematographer Stanley Cortez (The Magnificent Ambersons).

Yet while The Night of the Hunter’s visual language is clearly indebted to the German films of the 1920s, its sets are far cry from the angular nightmares of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and its siblings. Instead, the work of art director Hilyard M. Brown and set decorator Alfred E. Spencer is grounded in iconic American architecture. Through the intimate collaboration of production design and cinematographer, an Expressionist battle between good and evil unfolds through the aesthetic material of American life...

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The Furniture Index

Can we have a break for applause for Daniel Walber's The Furniture column. His incredible series has been filled with sharp insights, a keen eye, and rich Hollywood anecdotes. Here's everything he's covered in the first three seasons, all 103 episodes stretching from a musical in 1935 to an erotic thriller from 2018. Please show your love in the comments if you look forward to these each week.

Early Cinema
• Top Hat (1935) Dancing sets

The Forties
• For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) moons and mountains
• Hold Back the Dawn (1941) Bored at the border
• How Green Was My Valley (1941) Designing dignity
• Ladies in Retirement (1941) Into the marshes with Ida Lupino
• That Hamilton Woman (1941) High ceilings
• Captain of the Clouds (1942) A Canadian air show
• The Magnificent Andersons (1942) Victorian Palace / Manifest Destiny
• My Gal Sal (1942) Nonsense Gay Nineties
• The Shanghai Gesture (1942) Appropriating Chinese design
• Gaslight (1944) Lighting of and in the set
• Black Narcissus (1947) Mad for matte paintings

The Fifties
• David and Bathsheba (1951) A humble palace of moral struggle
• A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) Decorative madness
• My Cousin Rachel (1952) Ghosts of property
• Knights of the Round Table (1953) Reframing King Arthur
• The Night of the Hunter (1955) American expressionism
• Lust for Life (1956) Van Gogh's inspiration

The Sixties
• How the West Was Won (1962) Saloon kitsch
• Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962) weird wonders
• Come Blow Your Horn (1963) Comedy by design
• Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) Your house is listening
• A Shot in the Dark (1964) Charmingly ridiculous
• What a Way To Go! (1964) Death by excess
• Fantastic Voyage (1966) Absurd anatomy
• The Oscar (1966) Celebrate the tackiness!
• Camelot! (1967) A silly and furry place
• Guess Who's Coming To Dinner and Doctor Dolittle (1967) matte paintings
• Is Paris Burning? (1967) Is patriotism subtle? Not very
• The Taming of the Shrew (1967) A scenery buffet for the Battling Burtons
• Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) Extravagant concentrated nostalgia

The Seventies
• The Exorcist (1973) A possessed bedroom
• Tom Sawyer (1973) Stovepipe and steamboat nostalgia
• Fellini's Casanova (1976) Grotesque extravagance
• The Molly Maguires (1970)  Demolition and preservation
• The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) Supertanker
• All that Jazz (1979) The creative erotics of scaffolding

The Eighties
• Querelle (1982) explicit architecture
• Amadeus (1984) Paper opulence
• Brazil (1985) Duct soup
• Beaches (1988) Color schemes
• Batman (1989) Nightmare at the museum
• Fanny & Alexander (1982/1983) theatrical magic
• Querelle (1982) explicit architecture

The Nineties
• The Age of Innocence (1993) a living museum
• Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) Dracula's astounding castle
• Orlando (1992) Otherworldy pageantry
• Toys (1992) Surreal spaces
• Addam's Family Values (1993) Setting fire to Thanksgiving
• The Madness of King George (1994) Cluttered musty madness
• Sleepy Hollow (1999) Historical realism meets nightmarish fantasy
• Topsy Turvy (1999) Imperial fantasy in Gilbert & Sullivan's London

Sidebars to TV and Oscars
• Best of Absolutely Fabulous - Special Report
• Emmy Production Design 2016 - Should win? Penny Dreadful, Veep, etc
• Emmy Production Design 2017 - Should win? The Young Pope, Feud, etc
• Oscar Set Design 2016 - Art Deco Again
• Oscar Set Design 2017 - Swarovski Crystal Diamond Mine
• The Furniture's Personal Oscar Ballot 2017 The Beguiled and more... 

2000-2015
• Dreamgirls (2006) Fame flattens your dream(girls), boys
• Pan's Labyrinth (2006) Feasts of flesh
• The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) Chicanery and posterity
• The Skin I Live In (2011) Decorating obsession
• Brooklyn (2015) and Carol (2015) Dramatically different department stores
• Joy (2015) Emerald city of home shopping
• Lady in the Van (2015) Crime scene home
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) The Forest

Recent Cinema
• 20th Century Women (2016) Unfinished house, collaborative kitchen
• Arrival (2016) and Passengers (2016) Lost in space and time

• Atomic Blonde (2017) Neon nihilism
• The Beguiled (2017) A plaster haze
• Beatriz at Dinner (2017) Tacky muted mansion
• Blade Runner 2049 (2017) Canadian brutalism in LA
• Childhood of a Leader (2016) Cruel curtained childhood
• The Conjuring 2 (2016) Malevolent secret codes
• Colossal (2017) Hoarding and emptiness
• Deadpool (2016) Junkyard
• Double Lover (2017/2018) cracked mirrors 

• Embrace of the Serpent (2015/2016) The venomous and fanatical
• The Eyes of My Mother (2016) Stark contrasts and devotional objects
• Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) 70's sitcom styles
• Fantastic Beasts (2016) and La La Land (2016) Magic unreality
• Florence Foster Jenkins (2016) Exuberant fandom
• Frantz (2017) Decorating for a lost generation
• Get Out (2017) Beige house of colonial horrors
• Ghostbusters (2016) Shrieking color scheme
• Hail Caesar (2016) Merrily We Dance
• Hell or High Water (2016) Old West descendants
• Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) A warm welcome

• Jackie (2016) and Paterson (2016) Home décor
• King Arthur Legend of the Sword (2017) Reframing King Arthur
• The Lobster (2016) Phony flowers
• The Lost City of Z (2017) deranged ambitions and indulgent fantasies
• Love and Friendship (2016) Country charm
• The Love Witch (2016) A tarot reading
• Mudbound (2017) architectural metaphors

• Personal Shopper (2017) Framing the unseen
• A Quiet Passion (2017) floral punctuations
• The Salesman (2016/2017) Crafting his own stage

• The Shape of Water (2017) A neon green future
• Slack Bay (2017) Giddy grotesqueries
• Star Trek Beyond (2016) Terrestrial fun
• Toni Erdmann (2016) The dangers of corporate upholstery
• Wiener-Dog (2016) Sickly green cages
• The Witch (2016) Design heralds doom