Criterion’s new Blu-ray of D.A. Pennebaker’s Original Cast Album: “Company” (1970) is a fascinating glimpse of the intense physical and mental labour which goes into the process of artistic creation, closely observing the recording of the original cast performing the songs from Stephen Sondheim’s breakthough Broadway show Company in one long fourteen-hour session. Tense, exhausting and exhilarating, it depicts dedicated professionals doing their jobs under intense pressure to deliver under a near-impossible deadline.
The late ’50s saw the biggest technology-based shift in movies since the coming of sound (the next big shift would be the arrival of digital technology several decades later). New highly portable equipment not only altered the way movies were made, it also altered creative choices and even content. New lightweight cameras and sync sound […]
