I know…I always claim this…but really…these are some of my favorites. And what absolutely wonderful videos. In love with the part inTemptation where the colors change and the girl dances in the room, because secretely, not so secretely I am guilty of doing so.
I can never get enough of New Order. Seeing them at Radio City Music Hall was a highlight of my time in New York.
“Filmmaker Michael Shamberg, who directed a number of seminal music videos for New Order during their heyday, here revisits a classic New Order song with the help of singer Victoria Bergsman of Swedish band The Concretes. The story is elegantly simple: A woman goes record shopping, comes home, puts her new purchase on the turntable, and starts dancing to it. Titled The Temptation of Victoria, Shamberg’s video did not make it on to New Order’s official video retrospective DVD, making it a true rarity.”
The opening sequence showing two men slapping each other, is a reference to Marina Abramović and Ulay‘s video performance Light/ Dark shot in 1977.[7] Costumed dancers then leap about, fight and slap each other in time to the music, while a person in dark green makeup emerges from an upside-down boxer’s speed bag and hand signs the lyrics (in LSF) . The video has often been voted amongst the best music videos of its year. Sky Television‘s channel The Amp, for instance, has it rated as the best video of 1987, and it won the British Video of the Year in 1988. The video was inspired by Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer‘s Triadisches Ballett.[4]”
The overall tonality, themes and various elements from the video re-occurred in Decouflé’s scenography and choreography for the inauguration ceremonies of the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville.
