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This group is dedicated to discussing film as art
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401
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jul 8, 2003 1:47am
Subject: Re: Chantal Akerman
> I just finished washing a bootleg VHS of Jeanne Dielman, and I think
> it is one of the best films I've ever seen. What Akerman films should
> I try next? I think they have a few at the rental store near me.
JEANNE is usually thought of as a peak for her. I'm just starting to
realize that I like Akerman, after years of not getting her - maybe
someone else will recommend one of the classics, but I think LA CAPTIVE,
a relatively recent film, should be your next rental. - Dan
402
From: Tristan
Date: Tue Jul 8, 2003 1:54am
Subject: Re: Chantal Akerman
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > I just finished washing a bootleg VHS of Jeanne Dielman, and I
think
> > it is one of the best films I've ever seen. What Akerman films
should
> > I try next? I think they have a few at the rental store near me.
>
> JEANNE is usually thought of as a peak for her. I'm just starting
to
> realize that I like Akerman, after years of not getting her - maybe
> someone else will recommend one of the classics, but I think LA
CAPTIVE,
> a relatively recent film, should be your next rental. - Dan
I'm not sure if that's one of the one's they have, but I can ask the
owner to get it or I can order the Artificial Eye R2. Also, I noticed
in my original post I accidentally typed washing when I meant
watching. I guess washing dishes got on my mind after watching the
film.
403
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Jul 8, 2003 2:28am
Subject: Re: Chantal Akerman
I'm not a huge Akerman fan, even though I recognize the distinctiveness
of some of her work. I also haven't seen all that much. Perhaps I'm back
where Dan was a few years ago. But I do recommend her early "Je, Tu, Il,
Elle," which has a psychologically obsessed quality that I liked, and
that felt authentic. Speaking of psychologically obsessed feminist
avant-garde films, two that I like very much, more than any Akermans
I've seen, are Yvonne Rainer's "Film About a Woman Who....," a really
moving record of a kind of breakdown, and Su Friedrich's "Sink or Swim"
(my copiously illustrated review is at
http://www.fredcamper.com/Film/Friedrich.html), a moving autobiography.
- Fred
404
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Tue Jul 8, 2003 3:18am
Subject: Re: Chantal Akerman
I've only seen two, and they are different as can be. D'EST--which is
on many critics best of the 90s list--consists mostly of very very
long long tracking shots through the streets and sometime interiors of
Eastern Europe and Russia. The people filmed often stare straight
into the camera and, even if moving, seem frozen in tableaux. For me,
the film is almost entirely devoid of interest--it seems to me to fit
in the category of avant-garde films for people who don't know
avant-garde films. (To be fair, I haven't seen the film straight
through, since I saw it after KUNDUN and on only two hours sleep--so
once I decided I was getting little out of it, I tried to nod off,
unsuccessfully, though my eyes were closed for some time. But I
wasn't the only one--Akerman's friends fell asleep; Akerman walked out
of the screening, taking a very long break, before returning. I know
none of this is evidence for how good or bad the film, is, but...) I
think it's 16mm.
LA CAPTIVE, shot in 35mm, is sumptuous yet ascetic--the actors give
Bressonian line readings with blank faces but the decor is lush and
Akerman really knows how to stage automotive sequences, inside and
outside of cars. This is a film, I should like, with an amazing
opening of the main character watching 8mm footage of his beloved on
the beach, yet it left me cold; imagine VERTIGO directed by a robot.
Patrick
405
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Tue Jul 8, 2003 3:21am
Subject: Re: John M. Stahl
Hey Dan--
Wouldn't a double-bill of LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN and ESTHER KAHN be
perfect? I have no idea what film would go first though--SPOILER!--do
you end on glass-eating or suicide?
Patrick
406
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jul 8, 2003 3:25am
Subject: Re: Cimino, but more Fuller
> That said, my sense was
> that Dan was intuiting MC's personality through the films and I can't fault
> him if he doesn't respond to them.
I'm now sorry that I told the anecdote about my telling Noah Ford that
Cimino wasn't that bright, because I think I got the conversation off on
the wrong foot. Talking about intelligence isn't very illuminating -
naturally, any artist who produces good work has intelligence in one of
the many definitions of the word.
I'm not sure what the right foot would be for this conversation, though.
I have a seriously bad time with Cimino's films.
Let me switch over to Fuller, because this conversation made me think
about him a bit. I have sensibility problems with Fuller too, but I
respond much better to his talent than to Cimino's, and I find one of
his films, RUN OF THE ARROW, a satisfying achievement. At the climax of
ARROW (here comes a spoiler, if you haven't seen it)...
...Rod Steiger, who is trying to renounce his allegiance to white
civilization and become an American Indian, finds that he cannot bear to
watch his tribe torture his enemy Ralph Meeker to death, and ends
Meeker's suffering with a bullet. Afterwards, the leader of the tribe
tells Steiger, with sympathy, that Steiger can clearly never become an
Indian, and that he must remain a white man: that a real Indian wouldn't
have minded seeing a white tortured to death.
At the first level, there is something outrageous, in a typically Fuller
way, about the simplicity of this formulation. When one thinks about it
a bit, simplicity isn't the best word. Fuller's taste for the extreme
is conveyed, here and almost everywhere, through familiar narrative
conventions. There are a million Hollywood movies with this same
structure: the protagonist tries to go against what the movie thinks he
or she should do, but nonetheless returns instinctively to his or her
endorsed role at the climax, after which the film gently sends the
now-wiser protagonist to his or her assigned place in the cosmos.
Fuller's instinct is to use this conventional storytelling mechanism to
deliver a rather unsettling ideological payload. It's possible to laugh
at Fuller's ideology at first exposure, just because it's couched in
this conservative storytelling style. When one teases apart the idea
and the method of delivery, the idea isn't so laughable. Maybe that's
all that it means to belong to a civilization: that civilized people
only feel okay about torturing outsiders, but manage to lay off the
person next door. Fuller is absolutely smart enough to know what the
film seems to be saying, and yet he delivers the idea in a way that
could be called naive, via a delivery system designed to reassert the
status quo.
Alan Sharp's script for Aldrich's excellent ULZANA'S RAID tackles
something very like the same issue. (Sharp is another one of those
screenwriters who worked well for various good directors, and who was
celebrated by auteurists. He directed once (1985's LITTLE TREASURE) and
did a nice job.) Here, however, the unsettling message is delivered in
a fashion that causes no confusion: a sympathetic character, the Indian
employed by the cavalry, played by Jorge Luke, explains to his white
companions the Indian rationale for torturing enemies to death, and his
argument has a frightening calm and internal logic.
Is Sharp smarter than Fuller? Probably not. Does Fuller's unusual
combination of conventionality and unconventionality work? I must say
it doesn't work that well for me: I don't understand what he's up to,
and I do register it as naivete.
Fuller's critics (i.e, just about everyone except auteurists for many
years) would spot only the grotesque aspects of how Fuller delivers his
ideas. This is obviously short-sighted, but I think that auteurists
sometimes go in the opposite direction, and simply celebrate the truths
that Fuller is able to lay hands on by being unafraid to face
frightening contradictions. The whole package is important and needs to
be defended or criticized in all its bizarreness.
Anyway, if anyone can talk about Cimino in a way that acknowledges and
integrates some of his excesses, I'd be interested: I'm not simpatico
enough with him to find the kind of texture that I find in Fuller. - Dan
407
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jul 8, 2003 3:31am
Subject: Re: Re: John M. Stahl
> Wouldn't a double-bill of LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN and ESTHER KAHN be
> perfect?
The Gene Tierney character as an Esther who somehow takes a wrong turn
and joins the forces of evil? An interesting connection: two characters
who can only impersonate personhood. - Dan
408
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jul 8, 2003 3:37am
Subject: Re: Re: Chantal Akerman
> LA CAPTIVE, shot in 35mm, is sumptuous yet ascetic--the actors give
> Bressonian line readings with blank faces but the decor is lush and
> Akerman really knows how to stage automotive sequences, inside and
> outside of cars. This is a film, I should like, with an amazing
> opening of the main character watching 8mm footage of his beloved on
> the beach, yet it left me cold; imagine VERTIGO directed by a robot.
Maybe VERTIGO directed by a serious obsessive-compulsive?
JEANNE DIELMAN is a good way into Akerman: it has perspective and even
humor, and afterwards I had the beginning of an understanding of what
benefit she might obtain from draining the humanity out of the actions
she depicts. Certainly we are meant to feel partly like a robot when we
watch, but maybe we're also partly supposed to feel the contrast between
us and robots. - Dan
409
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jul 8, 2003 6:49am
Subject: Hulk 2
He says he's tired - he'll decide later about doing the sequel. Send
him an e-mail at Good Machine, his production company in Manhattan -
I'm sure he'd like to hear what you thought.
410
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jul 8, 2003 6:56am
Subject: Fuller
Barbara Stanwyck to Gene Barry in 40 Guns (script by Fuller):
"What's happened to us is like war - easy to start, hard to stop."
411
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jul 8, 2003 3:36pm
Subject: Mangolte
I never bought Akerman. Periodically I try, and immediately regret
trying. I was angered by an interview she gave when Coppola was
having his troubles with One from the Heart, where she accused him of
wasting the Las Vegas street and bragged about what she could have
done with it. I hate it when independents do that - Herzog is
another, as I witnessed once at Telluride: The trick is to badmouth
someone with a big name in hopes of getting quoted by association.
That said, I like her camerawoman, Babette Mangolte: she did a modest
structural film called Moi Je that I particularly enjoyed, and a
tougher avant-garde version of What Maisie Knew that I also think is
pretty good. Is she still active?
My favorite Akerman is the one about making The Golden Eighties,
where you see her auditioning actresses, singing along wearing the
headphones and so on. I like that a lot, actually. I'll try Jeanne
Dielman again....
412
From: Kenneth Eisenstein
Date: Tue Jul 8, 2003 4:20pm
Subject: Re: Dissolves
David Lynch makes some great use of dissolves
In the Straight Story a dissolve between (1) a corn field in late
afternoon sun and (2) a house create the effect of a house emerging
from or being consumed by flames (i can't remember which dissolves
into which).
Also in Mullholland Drive there is a dissolve which allows a palm
tree to emerge from the center of Naomi Watts' armpit.
Ken
(Ken Eisenstein, new to the list, lives in Chicago)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
413
From: Kenneth Eisenstein
Date: Tue Jul 8, 2003 4:32pm
Subject: Re: Bill Morrison's "Decasia"
P.S.
I must defend Matthew Barney's Cremaster 2,3, and 5
whenever Fred denounces them.
1 and 4 I admit are poor.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
414
From: Kenneth Eisenstein
Date: Tue Jul 8, 2003 4:29pm
Subject: Re: Bill Morrison's "Decasia"
I've seen Decasia twice now, about 4 months apart, and while i found
a few more interesting segments (with some organization/montage*) the
second time around, overall I can't recommend it.
The sad thing is that it gets so much attention. There was an
article on it in the NY Times Magazine section a couple of months
ago, which i still haven't read and is buried somewhere now,
and I even heard that there is a book being made out of it with
stills and essays or an interview or something.
ken
*There is a group of 3 shots that runs something like this
Kids poking at an automaton corpse
Man examining a "living" tree
Kids jumping on a burnt out car
>Well, I went to two current movies today. (That's not going to impress
>anyone in our group but it's relatively rare for me, unless I'm writing
>on them.) Bill Morrison's "Decasia" I found lovely to look at and almost
>impossible to sit through. It's an essay in decaying emulsion with a
>nice choice of subject matter (human aspirations, such as ladder
>climbing and planes flying, and disasters), all seen through the filter
>of decaying film as a metaphor for impermanence in general and more
>specifically for human failure, though this is not exactly an original
>idea in art. I'd put it, though, in the category of "avant-garde films
>for people who don't like avant-garde film," or, perhaps (wording it
>more carefully here than I did before on another group to be clearer
>about what I mean), "a film best appreciated by people who don't share
>Fred Camper's view of film art." Other films in this category include
>"Koyaanisqatsi, "Baraka," and the two Matthew Barney "Cremaster" films
>I've seen (2 and 3). The problem is that as far as I could tell the
>editing was utterly mindless, a continuous stream with no more "thought"
>than is contained in the mildly listenable trance
>music-industrial-techno sound track. Morrison's main idea of editing
>seems to be to repeat shots, such as that of an (I think) Whirling
>Dervish, now and then. Now there may be some complicated system at work
>here, but as a "plastic" construction I don't think it "worked" at all,
>where for me "works" means that the kinds of spaces in images combine
>with rhythm and subject matter to make a vision. I believe the credits
>listed the production company as "Hypnotic Films," but I don't think of
>a truly "hypnotic" work of art as a good thing.
>
>My other movie was "Capturing the Friedmans," which I was even more
>disappointed by, and I didn't go expect "film art" (see above) but
>rather an interesting social document, and so it is on those terms that
>I was disappointed. Jonathan Rosenbaum makes some good arguments for it
>at <>http://www.chireader.com/movies/archives/2003/0603/030613.html, but
>the film looked a lot less carefully constructed to me than it did to
>him, and I very much disliked the way it chopped up its source material
>-- a few seconds of a home movie, a few minutes of a family argument
>(for those who've not seen it, it's about a disastrously "dysfunctional"
>family and how two of its members go to jail for having sex with young
>boys, which they likely didn't). I used to read case history type books
>about dysfunctional families with some fascination, and this interest of
>mine is one reason I went; my problem with the film is that it seemed a
>lot less authoritative and informative than the product of a decent
>writer-researcher. Home movies and home videos can be fascinating
>documents, either seen whole anthropologically as evidence of how a
>family member saw others, or used artfully in fragments ("Urban
>Peasants" (Jacobs), "Daughter Rite" (Citron), "Sink or Swim"
>(Friedrich)). "Capturing the Friedmans" seemed to me to do neither --
>instead we get the "highlights" from these family movies and videos,
>when it would be a more extended view, everything that happened over
>five or ten minutes, that would be interesting, though I realize that
>could be impractical for a feature intended to appeal to a wide audience.
>
>Anyway, as is often the case with films I don't like, I found in it an
>argument for the superiority of another medium ("Ghost World" seemed to
>me a great argument for the superiority of comics to film), in this case
>prose. A good writer could tell us more about the mother's rather opaque
>psychological make up (we hear that she had problems but never get a
>good sense of her as a whole), about how Jesse fared in prison (likely
>horribly, but we barely hear), about what Jesse's prospects are now
>(very bleak, according to a radio interview I heard with the director).
>We don't even learn enough about the charges against father and Jesse of
>having had sex with numerous boys. Some evidence is presented that one
>supposed victim "remembered" these rapes under hypnosis, obviously an
>unreliable method, but how many of the other accusers also recovered
>their memories this way? The documentation on the infamous McMartin
>preschool case suggests that all the children were coerced into false
>testimony, but these kids were much younger than the accusers here. The
>film as a whole felt like a sensationalistic and undigested accrual of
>disorganized factoids, with key questions remaining unasked. It *did* do
>a good job of suggesting that all of us, even seriously screwed up
>people, have a measure of humanity, but I think I knew that already. I
>also already knew that sometimes it can be heard to know what the truth
>is. I mean, I did see "Rashomon." And, not to start a new thread or
>offend anyone here who may have taken his email address froth Kurosawa
>film, but I much prefer Gerd Oswald's western spin-off, "Valerie."
>
>By the way, I'm not necessarily expecting responses, though responses
>are fine if someone wants to make them. But since these are current
>films I thought my thoughts might be of interest to some who have seen them.
>
>- Fred
>
>
>
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
415
From: programming
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 0:24am
Subject: Re: Vidor
Bill,
Could you email me off list regarding the late Vidors you have?
Best,
Patrick Friel
Chicago Filmmakers
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
416
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 3:25am
Subject: Auteur intersect pop, pop culture
I was browsing around the imdb and discovered that Gerd Oswald
directed two episodes of STAR TREK, "The Conscience of the King" and
"The Alternative Factor." Somehow in my pre-teen devotion to the
show, I never saw these two--for those who've seen them and can
remember, are these episodes any different from the run-of-the-mill
Trek episode? It's an interesting test case--does auteur direction of
television alter the material significantly? I dislike the grammar of
the bits and pieces of 60s dramatic television I've seen, including
STAR TREK, yet talent like Joseph H. Lewis did a lot of work there, so
who knows. (I haven't seen any Oswald films, in fact.)
Tourneur did a TWILIGHT ZONE episode, which I've seen a long time ago
not knowing it was Tourneur, but that kind of format seems more suited
to expression.
Patrick
417
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 3:39am
Subject: Re: Auteur intersect pop, pop culture: Joseph H. Lewis's The Rifleman
I knew about those Oswald "Star Treks" but I don't think I've seen them.
His own films can vary from great to terrific not not so great. By far
the best, I think, is "Brainwashed."
However I have seen most or all of "The Rifleman." Some station was
replaying them daily circa 1970 and since I knew Joseph H. Lewis had
directed a bunch I watched almost all of them.
Perhaps half or a little more than half of those Lewises just seemed to
me not very good, and indistinguishable from the rest of the shows.
Others had Lewis moments, and about a third of them were really good or
great. There was one two-parter that I remember that included some
Mexicans buried up to their necks in the sand -- I think -- whose
intensity of imagery recalled Lewis's great features. The "grammar" was
still that of television, so if you didn't know what to look for from
his features you might miss most of what was good about the good ones.
Within the context of television framing and television cutting he was,
in some of the shows, able to do his usual number with characters lost
in fogs or mazes or swamps -- in fact, there was one with a character
lost in a swamp, which also happens in his features. More importantly,
in the good ones, there was an intensity to the "lostness" of the
people, a sense of figures isolated in many of the scenes, not just the
"lost" ones, that recalled his good films.
- Fred
418
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 4:37am
Subject: Auteurs on tv, Gerd Oswald
Patrick,
There's a useful book called The American Vein that lists films by
auteurs who came from tv, auteurs who passed through while picking up
a little money, and auteurs who never went anywhere else. I haven't
seen the Star Trek Oswalds, but much of what he did for Outer Limits
is worth seeing, and some of it is very good; he put his mark on the
show to such an extent that non-Oswald episodes could be by him. High
points - easy to rent - include Don't Open Till Doomsday, Soldier,
The Strange One and the one with David MacCallum as a scientist who
builds a time machine out of string and clocks. The latter is a
parody of Diabolique; Doomsday parodies Whatever Happened to Baby
Jane, and The Strange One parodies Bigger Than Life. Oswald was a
post-modernist before there were any, and he struck gold when he
started getting scripts by Joseph Stephano (Psycho), whose head also
seems to have been full of pieces of old movies. Soldier isn't a
parody; on the contrary, James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd had to pay
damages to the screenwriter, Harlan Ellison, when he successfully
sued them for stealing the idea for The Terminator from that episode.
Oswald's last hurrah, as far as I know, was an adaptation of Arthur
Clarke's little classic The Star for the new Twilight Zone (the one
that aired in the 80s).
Fred is right about Oswald - Brainwashed is the best I've seen by
him, but it's pretty much impossible to re-see. Happily, A Kiss
Before Dying (Rebel Without a Cause meets A Place in the Sun) and
Crime of Passion (screwball comedy morphs into the blackest noir) are
easy to come by, and both are masterpieces. The Screaming Mimi has a
boutique in lower Manhatan named after it, so the film should be
available somewhere. (Tuffaut admired it, but Chabrol was the main
champion of Oswald on the Cahiers.) Even the second units GO directed
on The Longest Day and Niagara are eye-popping: in the former he
directed the Red Buttons sequence, and in the latter, the scene in
the lighthouse or whatever it is at the end. His westerns are hard to
see, but they're all great - I sure wish I could find a tape of Fury
at Showdown. Wow!
While my friend Doug Brodoff was the Four Star librarian, he brought
forth some amazing stuff from the vaults, including a forgotten
30-minute Lloyd Bridges Theatre directed by Cassavaetes, A Pair of
Boots, about a brief truce between two battle-weary units in the
Civil War. It premiered at Locarno, and at one point Godard was
trying to get Gaumont to acquire the rights and release it with
Germany Nine Zero. Four Star screwed up the deal, but I think a copy
was finally given to MOMA for preservation. It's a terrific little
film (no comparison with his Johnny Dollars, which were learning
exercises), one that weirdly confirms an article French novelist
Pierre Rotenberg wrote on A Woman Under the Influence when it came
out, in which he claimed that Rowlands and Falk are re-fighting the
Civil War.
Doug also pulled out some Boettichers to show at the American
Cinematheque, and after all those years Budd Boetticher remembered
which were the good ones. There's one Zane Grey Theatre that's quite
nice - Ransom. Sam Peckinpah produced The Westerner, and there are
several good episodes of that - some of them not directed by
Peckinpah (Line Camp in particular). Day of the Gun, which Peckinpah
did direct, starts off like a tv episode, and by the time its 20-
whatever minutes have elapsed, it has evoked the feelings one
associates with the best classical westerns. (That's a quote from Lee
Sanders.) Doug is down and out in Paris these days and loving it, so
the vaults have shut their doors, but there were some surprises while
they were open.
And there are lots to be had on tv, particularly on TCM, which
periodically shows Tourneur's MGM shorts - Chris Fujiwara has written
at length about those in his Tourneur book. Tourneur's Twilight Zone,
scripted by Richard Matheson, is pretty special.
419
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 4:58am
Subject: messy films, auteurism & personality
Is it possible that we see a film as "more of an auteurist work" than
another because it's a more precise representation of the film
artist's personality, regardless of the material? That what we mean
when we say "it's well-made" in a half-hearted, nigh-derogatory
manner, we're talking about a film that follows a set of conventions
that was once personal but has simply become conventional through
frequency of use - in other words, "personal" for the status quo,
therefore disembodied and impersonal, and certainly not "personal"
for the filmmaker given to such conventionality (of form, of
narrative design, characterizations, etc)? One of the frustrations
of dealing with a non-auteurist opposition is that the person insists
that I'm saying that mistakes are good. But I'm only
using "mistakes" as a point of reference, a bit of common vocabulary,
and that I don't necessarily mean the filmmaker made a mistake. When
I said to Dan Sallitt after the LA ROMAN D'UN TRICHEUR screening
today that Guitry's shot/reverse-shot technique was "too fast," I
made sure to use quotes because a technique isn't used badly if it's
productive towards...whatever end (a gratifying narrative experience,
a thrilling artistic experience, a complete thought on film, etc).
And that's certainly the case with Guitry. That's a major part of
how we auteurists "excuse" (quotes again) our beloved film
artists' "mistakes," and not the only reason, I'm sure.
Isn't the main reason, or one of the main reasons, we treasure
auteurist films is that it provides an instance of human contact?
All of our human relations, with friends and loved ones and people we
despise or are uncomfortable around, they boil down to a series of
signals - visual, aural, tactile, olfactory, etc. A friend writes us
a letter, I ride on the roller-coaster with my girlfriend, people
make love, get into fights, receive a letter saying your services are
no longer required. Messages, signals, transmissions of data in one
or more forms. I don't wish to drain the poetry from human
relations - merely to say that poetry is one of the things we send
and receive, as part of our relations. What I'm getting at,
obviously, is that we grow to become friends with people through and
because of the signals we receive from them - isn't that a pretty
good way of explaining how we grow to "know" the filmmakers for whom
we are auteurists? In a weird way, don't we become "friends" with
these artists, some we've never met, some dead, some outside our
social circle, etc.? Perhaps "friend" isn't quite the right word,
perhaps I mean - what do I mean?
(Part of the subject line is "messy films," because I had wished to
talk about how messy films are not always necessarily,
objectively "bad," but can be used as a way of accessing a
filmmaker's personality. Some of the less tidy films I've seen in
the recent times have been among the most thrilling and gratifying
cinema experiences: TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN (Minnelli); LA ROMAN
D'UN TRICHEUR and REMONTONS LES CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES (Guitry); HEAVEN'S
GATE (Cimino); STREET OF NO RETURN (Fuller); THE BIG MOUTH (Lewis);
etc.)
420
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 5:35am
Subject: Re: messy films, auteurism & personality
While what you've written certainly has some validity, I'd like to
disagree. "Personality" and "human contact" are concepts that don't
quite get what a great film does for me. As I wrote earlier, I wouldn't
want to reduce what a great director achieves to a series of quirks,
gestures, and tics. The concept of "personality" seems to me to be bound
up in the idiosyncratic, and in the affections. But most great works of
art take me *out* of all that, at least to some extent. A director's
work can have all sorts of "personal" characteristics, consistent
themes, even a consistent style, and *still* not be any good. And
another director's work can be cold, even obnoxiously so, as well as
indicative of a "personality" that one wouldn't really want to meet, and
the films could still be great.
When the elements of a film -- lighting, compositions, camera movement,
sound, editing (some of us will doubtless want to add acting) --
combine to make a great work, there's a sense of form there that has an
almost mathematical quality, even if the film is messy and
non-systematic. There's a precision to the imagery, to the way the parts
relate -- even if some scenes don't quite fit in. All the great Minnelli
'Scope and color melodramas, "Two Weeks in Another Town" included, set
up a system of decor that has to do with the way parts of each
composition interrelate and that has an effect on me quite different
from that of spending time with a well-loved friend person.
I'm not saying one kind of experience, seeing a great film or seeing a
friend, is better than the other. They're just different. And I need 'em
both.
- Fred
421
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 6:34am
Subject: Re: messy films, auteurism & personality
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> The concept of "personality" seems to me to be bound
> up in the idiosyncratic, and in the affections.
I don't know if my understanding of the word is the same - the
word "personality," for me, points toward what makes us whole, not
simply what makes us unique.
> But most great works of art take me *out* of all that, at least to
> some extent. A director's work can have all sorts of "personal"
> characteristics, consistent themes, even a consistent style, and
> *still* not be any good.
...And they'll end up being great for another person.
> And another director's work can be cold, even obnoxiously so, as
> well as indicative of a "personality" that one wouldn't really want
> to meet, and the films could still be great.
Cold or obnoxious: these seem to be the primary complaints people
have about films they dislike, and they often attribute it to the
director as much as, if not moreso, to the film. But I agree, a film
that is cold or obnoxious can also be great - a great film may be an
extension of a rotten personality. My understanding of cinema (I
apologize if it was unclear in the above post; sometimes I need a
reply to *really* get my thoughts in order) allows for the idea that,
sometimes, or maybe even a lot of the time, the only desirable
contact I would like to have with a director is through his/her films.
> When the elements of a film -- lighting, compositions, camera
> movement, sound, editing [...] combine to make a great work [...]
> and that has an effect on me quite different from that of spending
> time with a well-loved friend person.
and
> I'm not saying one kind of experience, seeing a great film or
> seeing a friend, is better than the other. They're just different.
> And I need 'em both.
I absolutely agree. If I had to choose between an evening with one
of my dearest friends and a viewing of FLOATING CLOUDS, I would cry
foul. First of all, they're both invaluable life experiences, and
second of all (less germane to the discussion we're having) I can
postpone either for another day.*
I didn't wish to define *THE* reason why great films are great, or
set down rules like "great films are made by people who are awesome
in person" or anything like that. But for me, when all the elements
of a film come together, they come together to meet the following
ends (not an exhaustive list, and not in order): [1] to put me in
touch with a fascinating, or beautiful, or compelling human
personality (even if their personalities are such only for the
duration of the film!); [2] to provide a deeply gratifying aesthetic
experience that is like great music (ineffable, seems to "speak to
me," to create a harmony with some part of me, something far more
complex and inexplicable than the simple activation of emotions with
simple, idiotic cues); [3] to help me grow as a person, to challenge
me, educate me, provide me with new ways of seeing the world, blah
blah blah.
Part of what interests me about the cinema (and not just the cinema,
but everything, everything that interests me) is what brings *us*
together, any of us, walking the earth. Anyway, that's sort of kept
me alive, all these short years.
* I'm really glad we're not on a discussion board where someone pops
in to ask something useless like, "What if you had a choice between
your friend dying, and the last print of [great film] being burned to
ashes?"
422
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 6:50am
Subject: Re: Re: messy films, auteurism & personality
Jaime N. Christley wrote:
>
>Part of what interests me about the cinema (and not just the cinema,
>but everything, everything that interests me) is what brings *us*
>together, any of us, walking the earth.
>
Again, not to totally disagree, but I often argue that while Hollywood
films, at least in their mass-entertainment function, seek to unite the
audience -- we're all supposed to laugh, be scared, cry, smile -- most
avant-garde films divide the audience, individuating each viewer from
every other. A great avant-garde film can often make me feel utterly
alone. This is because their forms tend to occasion very different
responses from different viewers. This is tautologically true to some
extent of every film, just as it is of every experience in life, but a-g
film does it to a more extreme degree. Viewing Brakhage's "The Text of
Light," Baillie's "Tung," Gehr's "Table," Breer's "TZ," I'm sensitized
to my own particular perceptual apparatus, nervous system, and
idiosyncratic thoughts. And the resulting awareness of my own uniqueness
is one reason I feel so utterly alone.
Now, of course, I *do* know that some other viewers as brilliantly
insightful as I will feel similarly alone in their own unique way, and
later we can talk about how cosmic it all was....
- Fred
423
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 7:26am
Subject: Re: messy films, auteurism & personality
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Again, not to totally disagree
I must reiterate the "part" stuff from my previous post. If you
don't totally disagree, then there must be part of you that partly
agrees, so there must be some common ground between us, as you're
aware.
> Re: the alienating effect of some a-g works
Hmmm - I wanted to avoid talking about the cliches of Hollywood films
that are supposed to (or purport to) bring people together, since
when they split us apart, it's often accidental, unintentional, and,
sad to say, "a bad thing." I still have a lot of learning ahead of
me re: avant-garde and experimental works, so I couldn't possibly go
toe/toe with you in that regard. You seem to have anticipated my
response that a lot of great narrative films, Hollywood or otherwise,
may make us feel alone, or may make us aware of our alone-ness, etc.
Lord knows, I don't feel "one with" any-damned-thing after seeing
VERTIGO, or LOST HIGHWAY, or GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, or (Spielberg
alert) SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. Many of my most treasured film
experiences make me want to sit in a darkened room with a glass of
scotch and a loaded thirty-eight.
I think I've forgotten my point.
Like, one thing that interests me is something Godard said (or merely
suggested) in that one-on-one talk with Pauline Kael, years ago, and
it basically went like this: when to people have just seen a
picture, and they disagree about it, one person likes it and the
other doesn't, or they have different interpretations, or different
emotional responses, etc., wouldn't it be more interesting to find
out how they saw the same picture, to see how they're both "telling
the truth," rather than...what's the alternative? One person is
right and the other is wrong?
Tired, must sleep.
Jaime
424
From:
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 9:07am
Subject: Auteur intersect pop, pop culture
Mike Grost in Michigan here.
Read with great interest the postings of Fred Camper and Bill Krohn on
auteurs and TV.
Since the mid-1970’s, I’ve made lists of the best episodes of TV shows. For
each episode I liked, these lists note the show’s title, its writer, director,
and date of first broadcast. The lists are available at my web page
(http://members.aol.com/MG4273/film.htm). Please scroll towards the bottom of the home
page, and you will find the five pages of lists. The one dealing with pre-1980
film, which includes the Outer Limits picks, is
(http://members.aol.com/MG4273/c70.htm).
In general, I think TV is at least as much as a writer’s medium as it is a
director’s. Many of these shows are pleasingly written works of entertainment.
They do not tend to show the brilliant visual style of the great auteur
classics. People looking for personal visual artistry here along the lines of
Sternberg, Mizoguchi or Ophuls will often be sorely disappointed.
These lists were largely made at the times of the shows’ initial broadcasts.
The data was hastily scribbled down from the TV show on pads of yellow paper.
Only occasionally could it be verified later against print sources. So
accuracy of the lists here is probably lower than what it should be.
The book mentioned by Bill Krohn is The American Vein (1979), by Christopher
Wicking and Tise Vahimagi.
It is the richest single source of information on TV directors.
Gerd Oswald
I strongly second Bill Krohn’s comments recommending Gerd Oswald’s Outer
Limits episodes. The masterpiece is the “one with clocks”, whose title is The
Forms of Things Unknown. (The title comes from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, the great speech about “The lunatic, the lover and the poet”.) Bill
Krohn mentions Joseph Stephano, the frequent writer and producer of the Outer
Limits. Stephano is one of the great screen writers, a man whose work is poetic,
imaginative and richly emotional. Stephano is an auteur, too, as much as any
director is. His personal feelings can be seen in such theatrical films as The
Black Orchid (1959) and Eye of the Cat (1969), and in such 1970’s made-for-TV
films as A Death of Innocence, Revenge!, Home for the Holidays, Snowbeast. Such
Oswald-Stephano Outer Limits collaborations as The Forms of Things Unknown
and It Crawled Out of the Woodwork are now available at many video stores.
To answer Patrick's original query, the scene in which the doomed protagonist
of Star Trek: The Conscience of the King pleads for his life in court has a
personal, Oswald like quality.
Curtis Harrington
Some of Harrington’s best work was made for television. These include the
TV-movies How Awful About Allan (1970), The Cat Creature (1973), The Dead Don’t
Die (1975), and the haunting Vegas episode Kill Dan Tanna (1979).
Joseph H. Lewis
Much of Lewis’ TV work is listed in the recent monograph on Lewis written by
Francis M. Nevins.
I would be enormously interested and grateful, if Fred Camper would identify
the exact episodes of The Rifleman by Lewis he thinks are outstanding, and
post them on his web site. A history of TV as film art will only be written when
film scholars start identifying and writing about TV works.
425
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 1:52pm
Subject: Re: Auteurs on tv
> Sam Peckinpah produced The Westerner, and there are
> several good episodes of that - some of them not directed by
> Peckinpah (Line Camp in particular). Day of the Gun, which Peckinpah
> did direct, starts off like a tv episode, and by the time its 20-
> whatever minutes have elapsed, it has evoked the feelings one
> associates with the best classical westerns. (That's a quote from Lee
> Sanders.)
My feeling is that "The Westerner" stands out among the episodic TV
shows that I have seen. The best episodes (for my money "Jeff" and
"Brown") are truly excellent, and don't seem handicapped at all by the
episodic format.
> And there are lots to be had on tv, particularly on TCM, which
> periodically shows Tourneur's MGM shorts - Chris Fujiwara has written
> at length about those in his Tourneur book.
We saw a number of these in NYC last fall at the Walter Reade's Tourneur
fest. I tended to think that Fujiwara was pretty far off the mark in
calling these masterpieces, but some of them were interesting in a
career context. - Dan
426
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 2:32pm
Subject: Re: messy films, auteurism & personality
> That what we mean
> when we say "it's well-made" in a half-hearted, nigh-derogatory
> manner, we're talking about a film that follows a set of conventions
> that was once personal but has simply become conventional through
> frequency of use - in other words, "personal" for the status quo,
> therefore disembodied and impersonal, and certainly not "personal"
> for the filmmaker given to such conventionality (of form, of
> narrative design, characterizations, etc)?
This is an interesting and troubling point. One would like to think
that it's not just historical context that makes the difference between
good art and hackwork. Sometimes I watch a routine film and think,
"Would I think this was daring and innovative if it were made 10/20/30
years before?"
I think this is where personality comes in. I would hope that, if form
conveys feeling and a way of experiencing things, then it wouldn't age
into conventionality.
> Isn't the main reason, or one of the main reasons, we treasure
> auteurist films is that it provides an instance of human contact?
This is certainly one of the poles of auteurism. I mean, I think it's
true, as some of us argued endlessly on That Other Group, that
auteurists are interested good films just like non-auteurists, but that
their aesthetics make them like different films that tend to group by
director. But admittedly this is a bit too reductive, even if that's
basically where it starts. If one feels a connection between good art
and the personality of a director, how can that personality not become
of interest for its own sake? So auteurism usually takes one to a
different place than where one started.
This was much debated in the early days of the politique: Truffaut made
the famous statement that the worst film by Renoir was better than the
best film by Delannoy, and Bazin felt obliged to warn his young
colleagues that the politique ran the risk of becoming an aesthetic cult
of personality.
I can't count the number of times I've come home from a film, and
someone asked me how it was, and I said something like, "It wasn't that
good, but I like the director, and this was an interesting piece of the
puzzle from a career point of view." It would be a bad thing not to
care if the film is good or not, but it's also impossible not to value
the experience more when one has a connection to the filmmaker. - Dan
427
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 3:10pm
Subject: Mike Grost's list
You da man, Mike! A Moxey-Stefano and two Harrington-Blochs I never
heard of? My day's made already. Incidentally, if you don't know him,
you should meet, electronically at least, a guy in Arizon who is a
major collector/cataloguer of tv work, Mark Haggard. I believe Joseph
K. would have his e-address.
Briefly, in 1979 Godard praised Holocaust in an interview with the
Cahiers,so when Danielle Dubroux and Serge Le Peron came to LA at the
star of my tenure as local correspondent, we did interviews with 4
tele-auteurs: William A. Graham, Joseph Sargent, Lamont Johnson and
Abby Mann. A fascinating experience. I still keep an eye peeled for
their work. I think Graham is the most interesting - I have one
friend who totally swears by him, although I would be inclined to put
him in Expressive Esoterica. Mann is a radical - his film King and
his pilot for Skag. the failed Karl Malden series, are the only
things he's directed, and they give you an idea of just how troubling
scripts like Judgement at Nuremberg or A Child Is Waiting must have
been before Stanley Kramer "fixed" them. (Mann totally sides with
Cassavetes on the latter.) Sargent and Johnson are definitely
auteurs, if not fomal innovators - I recommend The Night That
Panicked America and Paul's Case (filmed right off the pages of the
short story) for skeptics. There's something really moving about
people who managed to get so much good work done in such a tough
system.
428
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 3:36pm
Subject: Re: Mike Grost's list
> Briefly, in 1979 Godard praised Holocaust in an interview with the
> Cahiers,so when Danielle Dubroux and Serge Le Peron came to LA at the
> star of my tenure as local correspondent, we did interviews with 4
> tele-auteurs: William A. Graham, Joseph Sargent, Lamont Johnson and
> Abby Mann. A fascinating experience. I still keep an eye peeled for
> their work. I think Graham is the most interesting - I have one
> friend who totally swears by him, although I would be inclined to put
> him in Expressive Esoterica. Mann is a radical - his film King and
> his pilot for Skag. the failed Karl Malden series, are the only
> things he's directed, and they give you an idea of just how troubling
> scripts like Judgement at Nuremberg or A Child Is Waiting must have
> been before Stanley Kramer "fixed" them. (Mann totally sides with
> Cassavetes on the latter.) Sargent and Johnson are definitely
> auteurs, if not fomal innovators - I recommend The Night That
> Panicked America and Paul's Case (filmed right off the pages of the
> short story) for skeptics. There's something really moving about
> people who managed to get so much good work done in such a tough
> system.
Now we're talking 60s, 70s and 80s TV movies instead of episodic TV, and
that's a much easier place to find good work.
I'm a big fan of both Joseph Sargent and Lamont Johnson, though I've
lost track of them both in the 90s. AMBER WAVES and the long version of
GOLDENGIRL are probably my favorite TV movies of Sargent's, though he
also did some fine theatrical films, especially THE TAKING OF PELHAM
1-2-3 and COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT. Johnson, too, has done
excellent work both on TV (DANGEROUS COMPANY, MY SWEET CHARLIE,
DEADLOCK) and in theatrical (THE LAST AMERICAN HERO, THE GROUNDSTAR
CONSPIRACY, A GUNFIGHT, THE MACKENZIE BREAK, A COVENANT WITH DEATH).
I know at least one big Graham fan (maybe that fan is Bill's source too
- Gary Drucker), but I never went crazy for him. However, I've never
seen the films that were recommended to me most vigorously, THE AMAZING
HOWARD HUGHES and CONTRACT ON CHERRY STREET.
There are other TV directors in this league:
1) John Korty, who did GO ASK ALICE, CLASS OF '63, THE MUSIC SCHOOL (a
very nice art film made for PBS from a work by Updike), FAREWELL TO
MANZANAR, and A DEADLY BUSINESS.
2) Daniel Petrie, believe it or not. I can't think of a director who
started out so mediocre and then suddenly got good: the turning point
seems to be the 1969 TV movie SILENT NIGHT, LONELY NIGHT. He went on to
do another nice TV movie called A HOWLING IN THE WOODS, as well as the
wonderful theatrical LIFEGUARD.
3) William Hale, sometimes known as Billy Hale. Wicking and Vahimagi
sent me in a lot of directions that didn't pay off, but this is one of
their recommendations that stuck. The two-part MURDER IN TEXAS is
excellent, and RED ALERT is also good.
4) John Badham. Before his theatrical career (which started strong, at
least), he made some notable TV films, including the excellent THE LAW.
And then there are a lot of oddities, one-shots, and slumming theatrical
directors. For instance, I've never had a chance to explore Richard A.
Colla's TV work completely, but his excellent telefilm THE OTHER MAN
makes it hard to believe he didn't have other good films in him. - Dan
429
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 5:36pm
Subject: Graham
Dan,
Gary was my Graham guy - he still keeps up. Hughes is pretty
fabulous, and so's the companion piece, The Jim Jones Story.
I've seen a couple of features - Apache and Harry Tracy - that
show what he would have liked to do more on tv. The characters
in Apache are nude throughout most of the film.
Graham is a Yale guy, very waspy, who took an aptitude test
when he graduated that told him to become a director, so he did,
starting in episodic. (He and Johnson and Irving Kershner all did
important work on Naked City.) His unconscious mind rules his
best work, but in a disruptive way.
Like all our tv "Four Aces," he's into outsiders. (Sargent's
outsiders bond with insiders; Johnson's are actually amaladpted
and sometimes dumb.) In Graham's case, that meant focusing
on the psychos and crooks in City (which was the structure of the
show anyway), and afterward on psychos and terrorists. 41
Hours at Munich, about the Black September massacre, is not
his best film, but it was his most successful - in Beirut, where
they lined up to see it because they thought Franco Nero, the
head terrorist, was the hero. That resulted from a) the whole tv
idea of taking a "balanced" approach; b) the casting of Nero, and
Graham's unconscious investment in the character; and c) how
that played out visually in shots from Nero's pov of the German
cops, framed against Metropolis-style architectural backgrounds
to create a paranoid vision. Graham reportedly was working on a
film of the Iran hostage crisis which was shooting while the
crisis happened, but it was never finished.
His episode of Batman - the only one featuring Two Face - is
highly revealing: It's about a villain who scatters clues (signs)
whose meaning he himself doesn't understand, without
intending to.
430
From:
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 8:17pm
Subject: Auteurs on TV
I’ll be watching for Dan Sallitt’s and Bill Krohn’s recommendations!
Throughout the 1980’s much of the best TV work was made for summer replacement series. These were 4 or 6 episode series, floated as trial balloons with the public. A few, such as Moonlighting, became big hits, but most sunk into obscurity and were canceled. Because they were so short lived, they are never rebroadcast – TV syndicators want series that ran endlessly, like Seinfeld or Miami Vice. But these short-lived series often had tremendous care put into their episodes by their creators.
On some of the directors praised by Dan Sallitt and Bill Krohn:
Choices of the Heart (Joseph Sargent, 1983). Unforgettable look at Roman Catholic missionary Jean Donovan and her martyrdom in El Salvador.
Man on a String (Sargent, 1972) I liked this thriller with Christopher George when it first came out, but hardly remember any more.
Terrrible Joe Moran (Sargent, 1984) A wheel chair bound Jimmy Cagney is still gutsy in this, his final movie. But the script and movie could have been better. Give em hell, Jimmy!
The Questor Tapes (Richard A. Colla, 1974). Terrific script by Star Trek veterans Gene L. Coon and Gene Roddenberry about an android who goes off in search of his creator. This has a strong reputation among science fiction fans, but film people seem never to have heard of it or seen it. I thought it was one of the best TV-movies ever made when I saw it in the 70’s.
Crossfire (William Hale, 1975) A cop goes undercover in the mob, in this pre-Wiseguy thriller. Once again, I liked it when I saw it, but can’t remember much about it now. Writer Philip Saltzman used to write for the Rifleman, including scripts for Joseph H. Lewis.
Daniel Petrie: The only TV work of his I’ve seen is Sybil (Sally Field plays a woman with 16 multiple personalities). Thought this was awfully darn grim.
(Comedian Rip Taylor once flipped through an enormous notebook, then announced: “I’ve got Sybil’s autograph!”)
431
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 8:44pm
Subject: TV Movies
Another great thing about those old tv movies was their politics.
Jud Taylor's Tail Gunner Joe, starring Peter Boyle as Joe
McCarthy, should be rerun TODAY, since Anne Coulter has tried
to paint McCarthy as a persecuted hero in her new book. Lamont
Johnson's The Execution of Private Slovick, about the only US
soldier executed during WWII (played by Martin Sheen), and Fear
on Trial, about the blacklisting of John Henry Faulk, played by
William Devane, are great docudramas. Being by Johnson, Fear
on Trial did not glamorize Faulk, who comes off as a bit dim; the
King miniseries written and directed by Abby Mann is
excepetional for its refusal to make martin Luther King
superhuman, too.
Mann only wrote The Marcus-Nelson Murders, the film that
spawned Kojack, but Sargent did a great job directing it. It's a
thinly-disguised retelling of a miscarriage of justice involving a
couple of black teenagers in New York. At the end, Kojack gets
the kids a new trial, but this time there's no press coverage, and
they get railroaded. And at the very end Savalas does a weary
monologue about how he went on with the meaningless
business of being a cop, over a montage of shootouts and
car-chases that prophesies - and critiques! - the series-to-come.
Mann tried to get justice for Wayne Williams in The Atlanta Child
Murders, the most political portrayals of a serial killer hunt since
M. Skag not only focused on a steelworker and his family - an
anti-Archie Bunker played by Karl Malden - it started off with the
most harrowing portrayal ever of a cerebral hemorrhage that
sidelines him as a goo-goo talking invalid, a form of medical
horror-show naturalism that Mann also used memorably in the
tv version of Nuremberg.
Hollywood skipped Vietnam, but Sargent's insider-outsider
theme played well in Tribes, about a hippy drafted into the
Marines and his drill instructor, and Hustling, from a Fay Kanin
script, about a social worker (Lee Remick) and a prostitute (Jill
Clayburgh). Etc.
432
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 9:00pm
Subject: Re: Auteurs on TV
> The Questor Tapes (Richard A. Colla, 1974). Terrific script by Star
> Trek veterans Gene L. Coon and Gene Roddenberry about an android who
> goes off in search of his creator. This has a strong reputation among
> science fiction fans, but film people seem never to have heard of it
> or seen it. I thought it was one of the best TV-movies ever made when
> I saw it in the 70’s.
I'm glad to get a recommendation on a Richard A. Colla film for the
first time in my life! I've seen Colla's features FUZZ and BATTLESTAR
GALACTICA - the former is amiable, but neither is as good as THE OTHER
MAN. I'll keep an eye out for THE QUESTOR TAPES. - Dan
433
From:
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 5:22pm
Subject: Cimino
In a message dated 7/7/03 11:26:02 PM, sallitt@p... writes:
>Anyway, if anyone can talk about Cimino in a way that acknowledges and
>integrates some of his excesses, I'd be interested: I'm not simpatico
>enough with him to find the kind of texture that I find in Fuller.
You know, Cimino's excesses don't bother me any more than, say, Friedkin's
do. If the former is sometimes guilty of needlessly filling his frames with
swirling black smoke, the latter is just as guilty of indulging in shocks or
extreme character behavior for their own sake. But because each of these 'tics'
seems very tied to the director's overall sensibility, I can forgive them.
Heck, I even think they add an extra bit of personality and flavor to the films.
(This is undoubtedly related to Jaime's post about messy auteur films, but I
want to respond to that a bit later.)
I think Cimino is very operatically inclined, though not at all unable to
produce harmonies in sotto - the endings of TDH and HG are stunningly simple, qu
iet, heartbreaking in their directness and lack of 'stuff' going on. My memory
is that some of the later Ciminos are even more operatic (despite the fact
that he was generally working on smaller canvases), though I want to re-see them
before committing to this.
Since you've just re-watched HG, Jaime, what do you think?
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
434
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 9:36pm
Subject: Cimino
Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate are operas; Year of the Dragon
is an aria. The film was boycotted by the Chinese community
during its release, but my contacts told me it was a 35mm mirror
held up to what was going on in the community at the time. It's
also something of a self-portrait by the guy who just
self-destructed with Heaven's Gate - the no one can stop me,
screw anyone who tries, and incidentally to hell with my marriage
attititude of the main character. An apologia, but with rough
edges. On the other hand, I think Desperate Hours is a
self-critique about the making of The Sicilian.
435
From:
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 5:39pm
Subject: Re: Auteurs on TV
A terrific thread, everyone. I'm running out of printer ink printing out all
of these recommendations.
In terms of great film directors working extensively in television, Welles
stands high. There's his pilot "The Fountain of Youth" (unseen by me, Jonathan
Rosenbaum argues that it's a major Welles film); his entertaining travelogue
"Around the World with Orson Welles"; the unreleased "Portrait of Gina"; "The
Orson Welles Sketchbook"; among others.
His theatrical features "The Immortal Story" and "Filming 'Othello" were
produced by French and German television, respectively.
He was also to do a big special for CBS in the late '60s before they pulled
the plug; he continued filming anyway and would have later integrated the
material - which has some real gems in it - into a big autobiographical project
tentatively titled "Orson's Bag." I also believe that he was thinking of selling
his years-in-the-shooting magic special, "The Magic Show," to cable in the
'80s.
Cukor made a pair of terrific TV films in the '70s: "Love Among the Ruins"
and "The Corn Is Green." I think Altman's TV work is among his very best: I
love his mini-series "Tanner '88" and his outstanding adaptation of "The Caine
Mutiny Court Martial." I believe both were done for HBO. Friedkin has worked
sporadically for the tube since the '80s; I know that Dan is a big supporter of
his "CAT Squad: Python Wolf." I also think Stanley Donen did something for
television a few years back.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
436
From:
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 5:41pm
Subject: Re: Cimino
In a message dated 7/9/03 5:37:20 PM, hotlove666@y... writes:
>On the other hand, I think Desperate Hours is a
>self-critique about the making of The Sicilian.
Ah, very interesting... would you mind elaborating at all? You may just
force me to go down to the store right now and pick up the DVD!
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
437
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 9:58pm
Subject: Auteurs on tv (concluded)
The Fountain of Youth is sheer genius. I also like Altman's
Countdown and Nightmare in Chicago, and I wholeheartedly
agree about the two Cukors - they should be re-airing in the
wake of Hepburn's passing.
Today, of course, Showtime and HBO are where established
directors go when they have something that isn't for teenage
boys. (My apologies to our resident teen, but you know what I
mean.) Jim McBride's The Informer (Showtime) is splendid, and
so is Joe Dante's The Second Civil War, with a highly satirical
script by (uncredited) Barry Levinson, who turned the project over
to Joe when he decided to do Wag the Dog instead. Both are
rentable. (And by the way, Jim's "Once and Future King" epsiode
of Twilight Zone - the second series - is one of his best, as is
Friedkin's "Nightcrawlers" episode of same, about dead Vietnam
vets invading an all-night diner.)
Gus van Sant's "Elephant," which Todd McCarthy "todd and
feathered" in Variety before it copped the Palm d'Or at Cannes, is
an HBO movie. Some Cahiers editors who saw it in Portland in
December were amazed about that.
438
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 10:26pm
Subject: Re: Auteurs on tv (concluded)
> Jim McBride's The Informer (Showtime) is splendid, and
> so is Joe Dante's The Second Civil War, with a highly satirical
> script by (uncredited) Barry Levinson, who turned the project over
> to Joe when he decided to do Wag the Dog instead. Both are
> rentable. (And by the way, Jim's "Once and Future King" epsiode
> of Twilight Zone - the second series - is one of his best, as is
> Friedkin's "Nightcrawlers" episode of same, about dead Vietnam
> vets invading an all-night diner.)
I haven't kept up with all his TV work, but I think McBride has
acquitted himself very well in TV. He's one of those guys who seems to
have the kind of delicate talent that Hollywood enjoys breaking, but who
surprises us by managing to do very creditable work for hire. I
actually prefer both THE WRONG MAN (which showed on Showtime, I think)
and BLOOD TIES (for Fox) to THE INFORMANT. - Dan
439
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 10:49pm
Subject: McBride
I love Wrong man, which is rentable. This is the first I've heard of
Blood Ties - thanks!
Jim is workling on a sequel to David Holzman's Diary for the
digital age - an indie production.
440
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 9, 2003 11:08pm
Subject: One last tip
One last tip for tube-a-holics - an Oliver Stone-produced
Showtime movie that tops all the great old docudramas: The Day
Reagan was Shot. The funniest political movie since Dr.
Strangelove. Now available on VHS and DVD.
441
From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Thu Jul 10, 2003 0:16am
Subject: Re: Mike Grost's list
Bill wrote:
>Incidentally, if you don't know him,
>you should meet, electronically at least, a guy in Arizon who is a
>major collector/cataloguer of tv work, Mark Haggard. I believe Joseph
>K. would have his e-address.
Actually I don't, just a phone number from a while back.
Mark Haggard has indeed made a specialty of collecting 16mm prints of
TV work by auteurs, and when he's come into town every couple of
years with enough film for a marathon or two, it's been a terrific
experience. Fuller, Lupino, Peckinpah, Tourneur and many others.
--
- Joe Kaufman
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
442
From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Thu Jul 10, 2003 0:29am
Subject: Re: TV Movies
John Frankenheimer honed his distinctive visual style on live TV
drama. The kinescopes that one can see at the Museum of Television &
Radio of his shows look for all the world like his 1960s features,
even though it involved orchestrating live TV cameras and actors and
getting all right as it went out over the air. Several other
directors, Arthur Penn for instance, also started there, but
Frankenheimer really stands out of the master of the form.
--
- Joe Kaufman
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
443
From: Tristan
Date: Thu Jul 10, 2003 2:14am
Subject: Re: Auteurs on TV
Elephant is an HBO movie, but it won't be shown on TV right away,
correct? I thought it was part of their theatrical funding branch or
something like that. I would think a Palme d'Or winner would make it
to theaters. Correct me if I'm wrong.
444
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Thu Jul 10, 2003 2:01pm
Subject: Re: TV Movies
This enlightening thread had me wondering which auteurs, if any, *didn't* work in TV. At any rate, I guess I hadn't realized how much television work is still uncatalogued and, apparently, unknown. In Fujiwara's book on Tourneur, for ex., it's startling to see in his filmography, at the end of the extensive listing of TV episodes, such unusually circumspect sentences as, "Tourneur probably also directed other episodes for [five series named]. He may have also directed other episodes for [two series]."
Also, as regards the Museum of Television and Radio, how would you characterize their holdings in this department -- considering that much remains locked in vaults, does this mean their collection only represents the tip of the iceberg? Is it at least searchable by director? Concurrently with MoMA's Hitchcock retro, they screened his television work; needless to say, almost all of it was interesting, and in particular I found the hour-long INCIDENT AT A CORNER, in color with Vera Miles, so striking I couldn't believe it wasn't better known (although I realize the Hitchcock shows in general are too familiar to have been mentioned here). I've been meaning ever since to devise a free afternoon to go see it again (I assume it's not in video release -- at least, it wasn't at the time); now I'm curious as to what else one might find there -- or not.
P.S. The Nick Ray retro included the half-hour "High Green Wall," with Joseph Cotten imprisoned by Thomas Gomez in a jungle, which I suppose could vaguely be said to foreshadow the Plummer-Ives duel of wits in EVERGLADES...
446
From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Thu Jul 10, 2003 5:23pm
Subject: Re: TV Movies
>Also, as regards the Museum of Television and Radio, how would you
>characterize their holdings in this department -- considering that
>much remains locked in vaults, does this mean their collection only
>represents the tip of the iceberg?
Probably so.
>Is it at least searchable by director?
At least for big names like Peckinpah, as I recall.
>Concurrently with MoMA's Hitchcock retro, they screened his
>television work; needless to say, almost all of it was interesting,
>and in particular I found the hour-long INCIDENT AT A CORNER, in
>color with Vera Miles, so striking I couldn't believe it wasn't
>better known (although I realize the Hitchcock shows in general are
>too familiar to have been mentioned here).
"Incident at a Corner" came from a series called (IIRC) FORD STARTIME
THEATER, not ALFRED HITCKCOCK PRESENTS. It was unavailable for many
years, then reappeared with some fanfare on the TV Land cable network
a few years ago.
--
- Joe Kaufman
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
447
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jul 10, 2003 5:27pm
Subject: "Real" auteurs and tv
Lists are spotty. There's apparently a huge book set that Mark
Haggard and my friend Karl Thiede have that lists all episodic
shows with directors, but I've never seen it. And as I mentioned,
Haggard has Jerry Lewis-directed episodic shows that no one
has ever heard of.
A collector showed three of us two half-hour McCareys that were
eventually shown at Amiens as part of a McCarey retrospective:
two very interesting comedies of remarriage, Tom and Jerry and
another whose title I forget. They contained transgressive
elements that would have attracted notice even in a 50s FILM: in
the former, a priest complete with collar comes on to a married
woman over drinks (for plot reasons, played for laughs), and in
the latter a man and a woman are shown in the same frame
with a bed. The collector said he had a Walsh and a couple of
Dwans from the same series.
Quality is always going to be up and down. Ford's Flashing
Spikes is mainly of thematic interest, as a belated parable of
McCarthyism, but his Wagon Train episode, the Coulter Craven
Story, is major Ford. I neglected to mention Oswald's FIRST
paranoid western, a tv remake of The Ox-Bow Incident which
TCM has been airing as part of a Fox Televison Theatre revival,
presented by the star of that episode, Robert Wagner. (No
mention of Oswald in the intro, of course.) Don't even get me
started on Jack Arnold.
Even today, with HBO and Showtime functioning as extensions
of Sundance, the directors of tv movies barely get a mention. The
fact that Joe Dante directed Second Civil War was buried in the
last paragraph of the LA Times review, with no mention of who
he was. I flagged it for the director of Locarno, who planned to
kick off the festival with a flashy European premier. Then HBO
decided to give it to Venice, where it was shown in a bad slot and
overlooked - maybe the marketing director's wife wanted to do
some shopping.
Locarno was also set to show the first five Rebel Highways (AIP
remakes for Showtime), the guilds had signed off...and a creep
at Spelling International pulled them because he feared that
reviews could hurt his European tv sales. In the end, he didn't
even get them sold. So far the only two that are rentable are
Robert Rodriguez's Roadracers and Allan Arkush's Shake, Rattle
and Rock, because it starred Renee Zellwegger. I don't think you
can rent Joe Dante's Runaway daughters, which is quite nice.
I don't know what HBO's plans for Elephant were, but now that it
has won at Cannes they certainly know they have a potential
theatrical relaese on their hands. If Van sant weren't friends with
Matt Damon, they night not even have let it be show!
(Speculation)
Errata from yesterday: Lee Remick played a reporter in Hustling,
and Graham's doomed one-shot Batman villain was named
False Face (appropriately enough).
448
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Jul 10, 2003 5:35pm
Subject: Re: "Real" auteurs and tv
> Quality is always going to be up and down. Ford's Flashing
> Spikes is mainly of thematic interest, as a belated parable of
> McCarthyism, but his Wagon Train episode, the Coulter Craven
> Story, is major Ford.
I haven't seen "Flashing Spikes" in years, but I must say that I enjoyed
it quite a bit. Never caught up with "The Colter Craven Story."
My favorite Hitchcock TV show was always "Revenge" with Ralph Meeker -
it seemed to me to have the cleanest lines. - Dan
449
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jul 10, 2003 6:12pm
Subject: Hitchcock on tv
Revenge is a film (the editing is very interesting), and so are
Breakdown (the one with all the stills), Poison and Bang, You're
Dead, which is pretty amazing; most of the other AH tvers are
just filmed short stories. My favorites in the latter group are The
Crystal Trench, a wild Stirling Silliphant original for AH, and Wet
Saturday, which might as well have been shot off the pages of
the John Collier short story, although there was a script -
perfection. Four O'Clock , done for Suspense, is quite nice, and
I'm dying to see Incident on a Corner again. I loved it as a kid.
Hey, I like Flashing Spikes, too - I'm just making distinctions
here.
450
From:
Date: Thu Jul 10, 2003 3:48pm
Subject: Re: "Real" auteurs and tv
In a message dated 7/10/03 1:31:44 PM, hotlove666@y... writes:
>So far the only two that are rentable are
>Robert Rodriguez's Roadracers and Allan Arkush's Shake, Rattle
>and Rock, because it starred Renee Zellwegger.
I think Friedkin's "Jailbreakers" has just been released on DVD. I've never
seen it, but I believe it was part of this AIP re-make series.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
451
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Thu Jul 10, 2003 10:27pm
Subject: Re: TV Movies
Has anyone seen the TV work done by Hal Needham, who seems to be an
amiable (if minor) figure to some auteurists. The director of HOOPER
(the only Needham I've seen) seems to have a lot of talent that might
translate very well to the small-screen.
A few other opinion solicitations: John Milius' MOTORCYCLE GANG or
ROUGH RIDERS or the more recent Sargent titles (e.g. OUT OF THE
ASHES, FOR LOVE OR COUNTRY, A LESSON BEFORE DYING).
Everyone keep an eye out for Paul Mazursky's newest too, a Showtime
film called COAST TO COAST.
--Zach
452
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jul 10, 2003 10:41pm
Subject: Coincidence? Irony?
Zach,
I wonder if Coast to Coast (Mazursky-Showtime) is a remake of
the Dyan Cannon-Robert Blake feature of that name directed by...
Joseph Sargent! (Crazy lady and trucker travel across country
together after she crashes out of an institution.)Thanks for the
heads-up - I like some of Mazursky's recent films (Enemies,
Faithful), and have no trouble imagining him doing good work on
Showtime.
Motorcycle Gang is another one of those AIP remakes - it's
good.
453
From:
Date: Thu Jul 10, 2003 6:55pm
Subject: Mazursky's "Coast to Coast"
In a message dated 7/10/03 6:43:09 PM, hotlove666@y... writes:
>I wonder if Coast to Coast (Mazursky-Showtime) is a remake of
>the Dyan Cannon-Robert Blake feature of that name directed by...
>Joseph Sargent!
Actually, I believe Mazursky's film is taken from a Frederic Raphael novel of
the same title. It may be of interest to Kubrick fans: Raphael, of course,
co-wrote "Eyes Wide Shut" and Mazursky starred in "Fear and Desire."
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
454
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 0:09am
Subject: Re: Re: TV Movies
Zach Campbell wrote:
> Has anyone seen the TV work done by Hal Needham, who seems to be an
> amiable (if minor) figure to some auteurists. The director of HOOPER
> (the only Needham I've seen) seems to have a lot of talent that might
> translate very well to the small-screen.
I've seen Needham's TV film DEATH CAR ON THE FREEWAY, which isn't that
good but has some nice action sequences. My take on Needham is that
SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT seemed like the work of a major dude, and that
HOOPER shows some signs of that talent. The four or five films after
DEATH CAR were all really really bad.
hotlove666 wrote:
> I wonder if Coast to Coast (Mazursky-Showtime) is a remake of
> the Dyan Cannon-Robert Blake feature of that name directed by...
> Joseph Sargent! (Crazy lady and trucker travel across country
> together after she crashes out of an institution.)
Which, sadly, was not Sargent's best work. - Dan
455
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 3:13am
Subject: Re: TV Movies
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Joseph Kaufman wrote:
> >Also, as regards the Museum of Television and Radio, how would you
> >characterize their holdings in this department -- considering that
> >much remains locked in vaults, does this mean their collection only
> >represents the tip of the iceberg?
>
> Probably so.
Do you know if this stuff is preserved (add quotes if necessary) on
film or video? I saw the Ray short at MoMA in a print (which is quite
good--film print and film) but the tape of the Boetticher episode that
hotlove666/Bill K. mentioned that showed at AMMI a couple years back
didn't look too good, like watching a weather pattern through a
cataract. I worry that this stuff will just become more lost than it
already is--even the video from the late 80s/early 90s that's showing
on those horrible horrible VH1 specials is looking in precarious shape
at the moment--
PWC
456
From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 7:14am
Subject: Re: TV Movies
>Do you know if this stuff is preserved (add quotes if necessary) on
>film or video? I saw the Ray short at MoMA in a print (which is quite
>good--film print and film) but the tape of the Boetticher episode that
>hotlove666/Bill K. mentioned that showed at AMMI a couple years back
>didn't look too good, like watching a weather pattern through a
>cataract. I worry that this stuff will just become more lost than it
>already is--even the video from the late 80s/early 90s that's showing
>on those horrible horrible VH1 specials is looking in precarious shape
>at the moment--
>
>PWC
That's a good question, and I don't think there's only one answer to
it. Who can say whether any attempt has been made to preserve
episodic TV from years past if it isn't TWILIGHT ZONE or one of the
other series that people want to buy on DVD. So many items in Mark
Haggard's collection comes from shows that barely are remembered.
Yet they may be directed by Dwan or Lupino.
Mark has 16mm prints of shows mostly shot in 35mm, so right there
we're dealing with a loss of almost 75% of the original resolution.
With material on video, there's the problem of once widespread
formats becoming archaic. When I was in college every TV station
must have had at minimum a half dozen 2" VTR machines, yet now I
believe there's only one operational in the entire country.
In the last ten years we've gone from D-1 to D-5 in the commonly-used
digital formats, and it's reasonable to assume that playback of those
will become an issue before you know it. At least film is film, and
unless it's one of those odd 55mm or 63mm formats and assuming the
print is okay, playback is possible.
--
- Joe Kaufman
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
457
From: Damien Bona
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 9:56am
Subject: Directors In TV
Paul Wendkos directed the best episode of what I consider to be the
greatest dramatic series ever, "Harry O," starring the best
television actor ever, David Janssen.
458
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 0:27pm
Subject: High Noon (don't worry)
Can anyone point me to a definitive article on why this is a bad film?
I feel like I should have read one (besides Hawks' comments) a long
time ago. Not urgent, but I came across this panegyric from the
world's blandest film reviewer--soon to be in print, in fact!:
http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/top100/27.html
It worries me that this movie still has so much pop cred--though maybe
not--isn't it Bill Clinton's favorite movie? Or is it TERROR IN A
TEXAS TOWN?
Patrick
459
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 2:09pm
Subject: Re: High Noon (don't worry)
> Can anyone point me to a definitive article on why this is a bad film?
> I feel like I should have read one (besides Hawks' comments) a long
> time ago.
Robin Wood's section on RIO BRAVO in his book HOWARD HAWKS starts out
with several pages of analysis of HIGH NOON. (These pages were edited
out when the essay was reprinted in FOCUS ON HOWARD HAWKS.) That's the
only instance I recall of an auteurist taking the time to trash the film
in any detail.
Hawks reacted against not only HIGH NOON but also 3:10 TO YUMA, which
enjoys a somewhat better rep among auteurists. Hawks seemed to be
offended by both films' presenting the Western hero as afraid and in
need of help. I imagine that few auteurists are bothered much by this
aspect. - Dan
460
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 2:37pm
Subject: Re: Directors In TV
> Paul Wendkos directed the best episode of what I consider to be the
> greatest dramatic series ever, "Harry O," starring the best
> television actor ever, David Janssen.
Very interesting. I guess it would be hard to check this series out now.
I've always been amused at how my reactions to episodic TV over the
years have been much more at variance with my friends' reactions than is
true of recent commercial features. In a way, that area needs an
auteurist movement much more than today's features. But it's so
punishing to watch much of that stuff, and the rewards aren't great.
I remember flipping channels once and running across an episode of "Baa
Baa Black Sheep," starring Robert Conrad, that was unmistakably well
directed. Never found out the name of the artist in question. I felt
the same thing, to a lesser extent, about an episode of "Dallas" that I
saw part of once. I sort of enjoyed this sampling, because it was
turning up good work in the same disreputable genres that auteurists
once specialized in. Whereas I found most of the prestige TV shows of
that time to be unwatchable. To this day, I usually have a bad time
with the TV shows that my friends like, and the gap in sensibility feels
a lot like the old auteurist/non-auteurist gap.
The big exception of recent years was "Seinfeld," for me. There seemed
to be a sensibility there that wasn't just by-the-numbers.
The two episodes of "The Sopranos" that I saw lent themselves well to
auteurist analysis: the first, directed by the very fine David Chase
(whom I've had my eye on ever since the Alfred Hitchcock episode "Enough
Rope for Two" back in the late 80s), is wonderful, and the second,
written but not directed by Chase, isn't in the same league.
I remember seeing an episode of "Family Ties" once and thinking, "Wow,
what an amazingly good script." And the direction didn't kill it. Mind
you, I am not usually a sucker for sitcom sensibility, but there was
something cool going on there.
I think there was probably more good episodic TV back in the 60s. I
remember seeing episodes of "The Untouchables" and "Ben Casey" that
looked pretty creditable, many years after their original broadcast. I
think Wendkos worked on the former series.
I am primarily grateful to TV for giving me "Beavis and Butt-Head,"
which I consider one of the great artistic achievements of the 90s. But
there we're talking about a whole other kind of TV, one where the
creator is much more out in front. - Dan
461
From: Fred Camper
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 3:27pm
Subject: Re: Directors In TV
I'll have more to say about the auteurist-directors-on-TV thread in a
day or two, but for now, in response to Dan: I watched almost no
broadcast TV since I "quit" nine years ago. I found it a depressant. I
like to joke that I've watched seven hours in the last nine years, one
hour of which was when I was on (local public TV), and that would be a
true joke if I exclude September 11-15, 2001. One full hour I did watch
was the opening of "Big Brother," since I wanted to get some sense of
the new "reality" shows, in which the arrival of the participants in the
"Big Brother House" was treated as a major live news event; I was
sufficiently revolted to renew my vows.
But, in the 70s and 80s I did watch some. I watched "Dallas" every week
for years, for example, but aside from the escapist interest for me of
the plot (with its vague "Written on the Wind" echoes), some nice lines
of dialog, perhaps borrowed from finer sources (I especially remember
"You say I gave you the power to run Ewing Oil. Well, if I gave you the
power then you have nothing. Nobody gives you real power. Real power is
something that you TAKE."), and Larry Hagman's acting, I never saw much
of interest, and certainly no episodes with striking mise en scene. The
same was true of almost every other show I saw. I did watch "Miami
Vice," produced by Michael Mann before he became a director, for a while
too and kind of liked its po-mo stylishness, but again, found almost
nothing in the mise en scene department.
There are several possibilities vis-ŕ-vis Dan's "Dallas" episode,
including: we just disagree; if I saw it out of context of the rest of
the episodes I would have seen its distinctiveness; if Dan had seen it
in context he would have seen its blandness. While I think the advocates
of total relativism are full of bull -- there *is* a reason so many now
agree about "Vertigo," and they're on the screen, so to speak -- it
should also be noted that there were reasons why so many otherwise
visually intelligent 1950s viewers in the U.S. (say, all the art
historians who went to Hollywood films for recreation) didn't discover
Sirk, Minnelli, Ray, and Hitchcock. And I think part of it is context
and expectations.
What I'm getting to is that the way to decide whether a TV director is
an auteur is the time-tested method of seeing a bunch of his episodes
together, and trying to see if there's an interesting use of visual
language there. It's going to be hard to discover same, especially if
its subtle, given the expectations one typically brings to watching
prime time. Thus there may well have been a "Dallas" auteur that I missed.
I did watch "Family Ties" too for a while. Sitcom scripts can be clever,
occasionally moving, but I never saw one sitcom in which I thought the
direction was interesting. I watched "Married With Children" for a long
time, and enjoyed its brutal, almost surreal negativity, but again, the
space was that of a boring set photographed in a boring way.
- Fred
462
From: Fred Camper
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 3:38pm
Subject: Re: High Noon (don't worry)
I don't know of a definitive article, but here's my view:
"High Noon" has the sort of self-proclaimed self-importance that
endeared it to mainstream critics who didn't take westerns seriously,
and thus made it a natural target for auteurists, perhaps unfairly, for
any type of film can be great. What makes "High Noon" a bad film is that
there's nothing visually interesting there, just some random imagery
that doesn't add up to much. I much prefer the great early MAD! comics
parody, "HA! NOON," in which "Killer Diller Miller" arrives not on the
"high noon train" but the "low noon train," and the marshal carts him
away immobilized as he goes into a mental lockup trying to figure out a
train schedule.
"High Noon" does have "important" written all over it, and is
mechanically manipulative too (could the heavy hand of producer Stanley
Kramer be showing here?), including via Tiomkin's repeated ballad. This
is presumably what made it entertaining, and a hit. I wonder too if
Kubrick's "The Killing" wasn't influenced by its mechanical use of time,
though I know there are earlier examples of this.
- Fred
463
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 3:40pm
Subject: Re: Directors In TV
Dan:
> I remember seeing an episode of "Family Ties" once and thinking, "Wow,
> what an amazingly good script." And the direction didn't kill it.
Mind
> you, I am not usually a sucker for sitcom sensibility, but there was
> something cool going on there.
But remember, Marc Lawrence (TWO WEEKS NOTICE, writer of MISS
CONGENIALTY, FORCES OF NATURE) came from there. Danger.
>BEN CASEY
Didn't Spielberg start out on this? Uh oh.
PWC
464
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 3:54pm
Subject: Re: Directors In TV
> There are several possibilities vis-ŕ-vis Dan's "Dallas" episode,
> including: we just disagree; if I saw it out of context of the rest of
> the episodes I would have seen its distinctiveness; if Dan had seen it
> in context he would have seen its blandness.
I'm in no position to take a stand: I saw part of one episode in
passing, and have no idea which one it was or even which season. It
wouldn't have taken a lot to pique my interest in this context - just a
tiny bit of filmmaking sensibility would have set off my radar.
> I watched "Married With Children" for a long
> time, and enjoyed its brutal, almost surreal negativity, but again, the
> space was that of a boring set photographed in a boring way.
Yeah, I sort of enjoyed one of those that I saw in passing in the show's
early days. Then I saw one from the show's later years, and it wasn't
good at all.
I've never pursued a TV show with much critical seriousness (except for
"Beavis and Butt-Head," which deserves a monograph, and I'm the person
to write it), so my comments here can't be taken too much to heart. - Dan
465
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 4:54pm
Subject: NYC: Frears
I posted this to That Other List already, but for those of us who don't
have access: I highly recommend Stephen Frears 1979 telefilm BLOODY
KIDS, which is showing at New York's American Museum of the Moving Image
on Sunday at 2 pm. It's quite rare and quite good.
Frears is such a perplexing case to me. I think there's a period (maybe
1978 to 1986) where he's one of the best directors in the world: a
really distinctive, contemplative sensibility, mapping out a fluid
visual space with total confidence and great intelligence. Then he had
his international breakthrough with the very fine MY BEAUTIFUL
LAUNDRETTE, and after that he somehow turned into the director he always
claimed to be in interviews: someone who handles well-written scripts
without really stamping them with his sensibility. Not that his films
are all bad after LAUNDRETTE, but they seem so ordinary compared with
that film or with ONE FINE DAY, BLOODY KIDS, THE HIT, or SONG OF EXPERIENCE.
Anyway, if you haven't seen one of Frears' really good films, give him a
try. - Dan
466
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 6:46pm
Subject: TV
Like Fred, I haven't watched tv in many years, and that includes
9/11: Someone from France woke me up and told me what
happened, I connected the rabbit-ears, waited till I heard the first
official lie (2 hrs in, an Admiral named Stufflebeam[!]) and
disconnected the rabbit ears again. I consider tv, in general, to
be one of the major forces for evil on the planet, if not THE major
force. I fervently hope the Internet destroys it. If not, I'd settle for a
nuclear war.
That said, I certainly watched it growing up, when it was still
good (Playhouse 90, Lucy, Ernie Kovacks); I spent a year
watching only tv movies and researching their roots in live drama
and series; and I do not rule out Mark Haggard's claim to me that
the real Golden Age of tv was the 80s. But I don't watch anymore.
If there's something I need to see, like Spielberg's TAKEN (loved
it), or Ali G, or the Nation-Economist debate on C-SPAN (Katrina
van den Heuvel is kind of cute!), my friend Marvin Usevich kindly
tapes it for me.
I also have a friend who is a bona fide tv auteur, and I
occasionally see his episodes on tapes his agent sends me.
Ken Kwapis is a Godard-mad USC grad whose best feature is
DUNSTON CHECKS IN, although I also quite like FOLLOW
THAT BIRD and THE BEAUTICIAN AND THE BEAST. But Ken
has never been allowed to do the projects HE wants in features.
So his most creative moments (apart from DUNSTON) have
been doing pilots for Larry Sanders (he cast Rip Torn because
he loved him in Godard's ONE AM), Bernie Mack and the
real-time series starring Seinfeld's girlfriend. He has also
regularly directed/directs those series and MALCOLM IN THE
MIDDLE, to which he is able to impart Tashlinesque visual
qualities. He feels he has more freedom in tv comedy, where he
observes that competition from cable has forced the networks to
add visual style (deep focus gags, etc.) to a genre not known for
it. Probably the series he's proudest of were FREAKS AND
GEEKS and another - some weird cop show - that tanked. I pass
all this on for what it's worth to those of you who are still
connected to the box.
Phil Karlson directed the pilot and set the style for THE
UNTOUCHABLES. Able Ferrara directed the pilot of CRIME
STORY, which is rentable.
THAT'S MY BUSH was fabulous while it lasted.
We're getting a lot of tv-to-feature migrations these days, but
that's part of a larger phenomenon having to do with the
attempted crushing of the auteur revolution in filmmaking. When
it happened in the 50s-60s, we got Lumet, Penn and
Frankenheimer, perceived by cahiers at the time as a veritable
New Wave. Not chopped liver, but not John Ford, either. I would
make the same remark abou them that I would about
Sargent-Johnson-Graham: Having met them, I can tell you that
their personalities and gifts were in proportion to the little box
from which they sprang: totally incommensurate with the truly
bigger than life personalities of the Men Who Made the Movies
and their successors - at least the ones I've met.
Some of the young Cahiers editors has been championing
Friends, Oz, 24, the French version of Real World et al. But
they've been championing pornography, too.
467
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 6:59pm
Subject: Re: TV
> That said, I certainly watched it growing up, when it was still
> good (Playhouse 90, Lucy, Ernie Kovacks)
Somehow I could never connect to "Lucy."
> my friend Marvin Usevich kindly
> tapes it for me.
I'd love to see Marvin show up here. Hope he's well.
> Phil Karlson directed the pilot and set the style for THE
> UNTOUCHABLES. Able Ferrara directed the pilot of CRIME
> STORY, which is rentable.
Two very good pilots!
> Some of the young Cahiers editors has been championing
> Friends, Oz, 24, the French version of Real World et al. But
> they've been championing pornography, too.
I've been force-fed "Friends" and I do not think it's that good, even
when the jokes are funny. Lisa Kudrow is clearly an excellent actress,
but that's about the end of it for me.
The one episode of "Buffy" that I saw part of, however, was rather
interesting.
- Dan
468
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 7:22pm
Subject: TV
Dan,
Marvin's fit as a fiddle, and occasionally eavesdrops on this site.
I'm proud to say that Graham directed the worst episode ever of
X-FILES. Like Mizoguchi, when he's inspired, he's terrific; when
he's not, he's worse than a hack would be.
I can't judge SOPRANOS or BUFFY because I consider
gangsters the most boring characters ever created, but only
slightly more so than vampires. To say you always know what
they're going to do would be understating the case.
469
From: Damien Bona
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 8:00pm
Subject: Re: TV
I'm another who rarely watches television.
While I only saw Dallas twice, I was addicted to Dynasty. (Dallas is
to Dynasty what Giant is to Written On The Wind). A number of
Dynasty episodes were directed by Curtis Harrington, who's a friend
of a friend. At dinner one night during that time, he told me that
he made sure that he included at least one "Harrington sequence" in
each episode. A Harrington sequence I recall is a funeral sequence
shot looking up from inside the grave.
Phil Karlson won the DGA award for the 1959-60 season for The
Untouchables, and was also nominated for an Emmy but lost to Robert
Mulligan (for The Moon and Sixpence).
(The previous year Hitchcock and Blake Edwards were both nominated
for Emmys, but lost to . . . Jack Smight.)
470
From:
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 8:19pm
Subject: TV Genres; Theater on TV
Mike Grost here.
Starting around 1991, I completely lost interest in American TV – and most Hollywood feature films. I've enjoyed a few TV shows since then, especially Timecop and Pacific Blue, but mainly now much prefer seeing foreign films, such as Russian Ark or The Man on the Train or The Gleaners and I. But during the 80's, I loved both American TV and Hollywood feature films. The industry has changed, or I have changed – or both!
Fred Camper is right: much current TV is depressing! Much of it seems pathetically poorly crafted.
Nor am I trying to urge everyone to stop everything and watch TV shows at random. There is way too much garbage out there to do this!
Genres
Over the years, have most enjoyed TV cop shows (the funny ones) and science fiction shows (the non-horror ones). These tend to be the most cinematic works on TV. They have production values, costumes, elaborate plots, and look like low budget movies. I much prefer the comic cop shows of the 80’s, like Moonlighting, Riptide, Remington Steele, Wildside, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Matt Houston, etc, to serious cop dramas like Hill Street Blues, which most newspaper TV reviewers always cite as TV Worth Watching. Also liked such science fiction dramas as Voyagers!, Misfits of Science, Knight Rider, Streethawk, Automan, Timecop, light hearted, good natured little sf comedy-dramas all.
The Man! The Machine! Streethawk!
(Cue the theme music by Tangerine Dream.)
I enjoy seeing escapist fare, in which likeable and colorful people who are deft with a wisecrack have an exciting little adventure. Hold the violence – hold the gore – but add a little liberal social satire in the plot. All of these shows provided such G-rated escapism. At best, they tended to do it with gracefully constructed plots and amusing dialogue. They were unpretentious, but well crafted from a script standpoint. Only occasionally did their direction achieve much in the way of mise-en-scene.
This sort of entertainment has nearly vanished from American film and TV. Instead we have nightmarish horror and war shows. This stuff is not beautiful. It is ugly. Deliberately so. I’m a beauty-worshipping aesthete, and I want no part of the cult of ugliness. I will go see films like Russian Ark, which celebrate beauty instead.
I did like some of the old, pre-1972 horror films, made by masters like Tourneur, Harrington, Corman, Oswald and Polanski. But as Vincent Price pointed out in one of his last interviews, these fine films were not really horror movies by today's standards. Price suggested that they should be classified instead as Gothic Tales.
By the way, I was one of the original Trekkies, discovering the show in the middle of its first season, and watching every week thereafter. The book The Making of Star Trek is still one of the best inside looks at TV.
Theater on TV
One of the things I liked best about TV as a teenager in the 60's: all the filmed plays that showed up on both PBS and the commercial networks. I have not been able to re-see any of these since. And have no knowledge of whether they have survived and been preserved. These included:
Bluebeard’s Castle. A version of the Bela Bartok opera – one of my favorite composers.
Annie Get Your Gun (Clark Jones, Jack Sydow, 1967). The Irving Berlin musical. The play was revived on-stage at Lincoln Center circa 1966, and a TV version recorded this revival. It preserves Ethel Merman's famous performance – she also created the original Broadway version. I still remember the enormous thrill I felt when Ethel Merman and the cast launched into There's No Business Like Show Business. This is a bit of upbeat Broadway history that people would love today.
The Andersonville Trial (1970). Courtroom drama in which the commandant of the infamous Civil War POW Camp / death camp was put on military trial after the war's end in 1865. This play was a thinly veiled allegory about the concentration camps of World War II. The hero of the play, the US Army prosecutor, is under tremendous pressure from his Army superiors not to prosecute the commandant too hard. The commandant's defense, that he was only following orders from his Confederate Army superiors, is considered the backbone on the military system by the Northern victors, too. Our hero faces a difficult, Antigone-like choice between principle and worldly expediency here. This was directed by George C. Scott. It had Richard Basehart as the monstrous commandant, and William Shatner giving the performance of his career as the idealistic prosecutor. Riveting and inspiring.
(Shatner was also excellent in an episode of the short-lived cop show Amy Prentiss (1974), called Baptism of Fire. Cop Shatner is sure well-to-do suspect Peter Haskell has committed a murder, despite a lack of concrete evidence, and keeps hounding him and hounding him during an investigation. Is Shatner a nut case? Is Haskell really guilty? You have to watch the whole show to find out the truth.)
Uncle Vanya (1970). The Chekhov play, with Sir John Gielgud and Anthony Hopkins, if memory serves. (Gielgud was also really good as John of Gaunt in the BBC version of King Richard the Second (1978).)
10 Victorian Dramas. British TV had a series (shown on PBS) of 10 19th Century plays. They were condensed to an hour’s length, a performed by a repertory company of actors, who would show up in different roles week after week. Fascinating glance at bread-and-butter Victorian theater. Some, like The Rent Day, were campy. But others, like the comedy London Assurance or the crime thriller The Ticket-Of-Leave Man, still gripped and fascinated.
Infancy & Childhood. Two one-act comedies by Thornton Wilder, with Fred Gwynne.
An Enemy of the People. The Ibsen play. This might be the 1966 Paul Bogart directed version listed in the Internet Movie Database. (Yes, I am the Ibsen-loving member of a_film_by!)
471
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 8:20pm
Subject: Smight
> (The previous year Hitchcock and Blake Edwards were both nominated
> for Emmys, but lost to . . . Jack Smight.)
I notice a pattern on this board, which is that someone pops up to
defend every filmmaker who is mentioned. I guess there are worse patterns.
I think Jack Smight is a very talented guy. Any other fans out there of
his wonderful basketball film FAST BREAK? There's a film that had no
right to be as good as it was. HARPER and NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY also
score high with me.
I've got a tape of THE TRAVELING EXECUTIONER here that I have to get
around to watching someday. - Dan
472
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 8:48pm
Subject: Smight, TV
Always liked him. I'll get back to you when I've reseen LADY for
my Serial Killer book. I think James L. Brooks has done some
good films - notably Broadcast News, which is ABOUT tv.
I can certainly relate to Mike's post, and I suspect Mark Haggard
would, too - specifically re: all those 80s series. My beloved
ex-wife cut her teeth on American tv of the 70s and 80s while
growing up in France. She can sing all the theme-songs - in
French. When I met her she only knew Ernest Borgnine (aka
"Borgeen") from that motorcycle series or whatever it was he
was in. This was indeed good, clean entertainment. And my
younger stepson - now 19 - learned American culture from the
Cartoon Channel, which he watched 24 hours a day as soon as
we got it hooked up. My ex- now watches American Idol, which
would be hard on me if we still lived together. TV seems to be
something people watch at certain times of their life in
concentrated doses. I would not rule out my going back to it one
day.
I find the recent Cahiers defense of tv idiotic - I'd rather be in Hell
with my back broken than watch one episode of Friends, which
is witless, mechanical mirth passing for sophistication - but
have always considered the magazine's willingness to think
about the specificity of film in relation to all its Others a plus,
something Positif, for example, is less capable of doing.
Rohmer wrote very interesting things about tv; so did Bazin.
Serge Daney published a book of his columns from the
newspaper Liberation about watching tv. Sylvie Pierre has done
interesting pieces for trafic on tv news. The Tube is a fascinating
theoretical object, no doubt about it. (Has anyone in the group
read George W. S. Trow's "In the Context of No Context"?) Maybe
we'll end up doing a little theorizing here, when we've hashed out
our respective preferences. The search for auteurs on tv certainly
raises interesting issues, as does the whole question of what
films and tv have done to each other throughout their long lover's
quarrel.
473
From:
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 5:01pm
Subject: Re: Re: TV
I'll continue the trend here and say that I, too, watch very little TV. What
I do watch skews heavily towards older films on things like TCM or some of
the digital cable channels. Because TCM's programming is generally excellent, I
usually find myself watching a film there every few days.
In terms of stuff actually produced for the tube, I tend to be a lot more
sporadic. If there's a TV movie done by an auteur I like - say, Bogdanovich or
Dante - I make a point to watch. I think "The Simpsons" is great.
I get my news from the Internet and international papers on the 'Net, but
occasionally - for fun - I watch a few minutes of one of the cable news channels.
Completely divorced from content, they are fascinating, often headache
inducing spectacles. The news crawl is a new form of hypnosis, I think. The
acting (and we must call it that) of the news anchors on an MSNBC or FOX is a few
levels below soap opera quality.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
474
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 9:15pm
Subject: Re: Re: TV
> I get my news from the Internet and international papers on the 'Net, but
> occasionally - for fun - I watch a few minutes of one of the cable news channels.
> Completely divorced from content, they are fascinating, often headache
> inducing spectacles.
TV news inevitably borrows the devices of fictional visual storytelling:
each piece builds tension, has a dramatic development, etc. Maybe I'm
too much of a purist in this regard, but I do not like to get news this
way. - Dan
475
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 9:36pm
Subject: TV
I take on the role of (relatively) impartial observer when it comes
to TV - I watch it: not much, but enough to keep on top of various
trends. I don't always mind trudging through things for sociological
interest rather than aesthetic merit - it's how I remain intrigued by
AMERICAN IDOL, which is fascinating. (THE ANNA NICOLE SHOW too, of
which I've only seen about three or four episodes.) Of course I
can't do any sort of definitive statements on television without
qualifying them. The list of "major" TV series I've never even tried
to watch is pretty long.
I saw an episode of THE WONDER YEARS (a childhood favorite) about two
months ago, directed by the talented Michael Dinner. It was quite
good, if a bit diffuse in the way that even top-rate and expressive
episodic TV can be.
Generally, at least in the 90s, the most inventive and well-realized
episodic TV tended to be in animation - I'm a big Simpsons fan and
will even defend these last few seasons though admittedly I watch new
episodes rarely and generally get my fill from syndication. (The
last season had at least high point in exploring the grim, lonely
barkeeper Moe as a loving caretaker of Maggie Simpson.) KING OF THE
HILL and even FUTURAMA and SOUTH PARK offer plenty of merits, if
mostly in editorial terms: they're often sharp social critiques
churned out in sometimes-creative narrative arcs. I have smart
friends who swear by the cult-favorite FAMILY GUY, which I tried to
watch a few episodes of but could never get into. BEAVIS & BUTTHEAD
is of course a milestone of some kind - I think I hear Dan typing his
monograph now.
There is plenty of television scholarship out there, slowly trying to
differentiate itself from the more purely cinema-based studies that
eclipse it. Jaime and I were in an NYU course last spring where our
prof showed (almost?) exclusively television shows and excerpts. But
TV theory and scholarship did emerge alongside or after the rise of
the various theoretical frameworks that pushed aside classical
auteurism in the 1970s, and television theories of authorship are
sorely lacking, especially in terms of a director - writers and
producers get a decent amount of credit.
The trend that I don't like in fictional TV is the obvious reach for
sophistication (aesthetic and cultural) of "cinematic" proportion -
the obsession with objectionable language and nudity (esp. in cable
shows) that buzzes off its own naughtiness (a commodity) rather than,
one would hope, signalling a loosening of moralistic constrictions;
the letterboxing; the combination of clean visual professionalism
meeting hyped-up MTV tricks (like Ron Howard directing a hip-hop
video). These strike me more often than not as pretenses, and I'd be
more interested in a made-for-TV movie or series that exploited
medium-specific issues.
--Zach
476
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 10:35pm
Subject: Theory
Zach,
There's theory and there's theory. I've always liked the kind done
by people who know and love film and come from a strong
auteurist background, like the people in this group. And I've
always hated the other kind.
477
From:
Date: Fri Jul 11, 2003 7:32pm
Subject: Brooks, Rose, Burnett
In a message dated 7/11/03 4:49:41 PM, hotlove666@y... writes:
>I think James L. Brooks has done some
>good films - notably Broadcast News, which is ABOUT tv.
I like "Broadcast News," but the Brooks I'm really enthusiastic about these
days is "I'll Do Anything." I've never seen the musical version, but the
theatrical cut was my favorite contemporary movie about Hollywood until Bernard
Rose's "ivansxtc." (And there's an underrated dude. I just re-saw "Candyman"
last night. Very good stuff.) Nolte has rarely been better and in terms of
portraying the compromises entailed by working in the industry, Brooks has it all
over "The Player" (one of the few Altmans I'm not crazy about; I think he was
biding his time until he could make "Short Cuts.")
The television conversation has shifted to episodic TV, but I just remembered
another formidable talent who has been working increasingly for the tube in
recent years: Charles Burnett. "Nightjohn" - made for Disney - is one of his
best films, plain and simple. I haven't seen "America Becoming" or "The
Wedding," but "Finding Buck McHenry" and "Selma, Lord, Selma" are also rather good.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
478
From: Damien Bona
Date: Sat Jul 12, 2003 5:00am
Subject: Re: High Noon (don't worry)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Patrick Ciccone" wrote:
> Can anyone point me to a definitive article on why this is a bad
film?
> I feel like I should have read one (besides Hawks' comments) a long
> time ago. Not urgent, but I came across this panegyric from the
> world's blandest film reviewer--soon to be in print, in fact!:
>
> http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/top100/27.html
>
> It worries me that this movie still has so much pop cred--though
maybe
> not--isn't it Bill Clinton's favorite movie? Or is it TERROR IN A
> TEXAS TOWN?
>
>
> Patrick
A couple years ago, Zach posted a critique of High Noon which I've
saved because it was the best analysis of this dreary little film
that I've ever seen:
=======================================
I just got through watching this movie, and I have to say that I
really disliked it. I'll try to explain why . . .
First of all, this really is a Western for those who don't respect
real Western movies--or, perhaps more accurately (to me), the movie
itself has about zero respect for its genre. It doesn't even touch
upon the fields in which the Western holds its beauty:
1) There is no use of geography to say something about the mental,
emotional, or spiritual states of the characters. There are very few
shots in the film that convey the mood that is being aimed for;
usually, it's the rather boring formula of establishing shot, close-
up, medium shot, close-up, medium-close, etc. (Yawn.) It's as if Fred
Zinneman is afraid of the landscape, so he decides not to even
utilize it. Where is this town? What's it like? I couldn't tell,
really, although a big part of the movie's "theme" is that this town
is somehow important enough to be saved from corruption.
2) Stemming from the first problem is the fact that the movie says
absolutely nothing about the West. It could have taken place in
Raleigh, North Carolina, or Brooklyn, New York. It's a simple revenge
story--the law-abiding (or -enforcing) man must face his past fears
amid the ambiguity of the citizens. (Having seen Winchester '73 just
the other day, and seeing how brilliant it is in all these respects,
probably makes the deficiencies of High Noon even more glaring.) If
all Westerns were this pointless, this un-rooted in the physical
landscape and actual history in which they exist, then the Western
really would be a pointless genre.
Now, my points above don't point to High Noon being a bad movie in
general . . . it just shows that it's a bad Western. However, I still
think the film, as it is, remains a failure. From the hokey theme
song in the beginning to the socially allegorical shoot-out scenes at
the end, I just never bought this movie in any way. Obviously, it
tackles big "themes," but I prefer it when movies don't tell me how
I'm supposed to feel. Nothing that the movie says it is about stems
from the aesthetic: it's all very pointlessly abstract, and literary
(and I mean that in the worst sense, not in a good way). The emotions
in the movie are noble in spirit, true, but they're imposed, not
earned . . . borrowed, not created.
And for this being a Message Movie, I felt it was also rather
ideologically unsound. Wasn't it convenient that the sole person in
the movie who takes a moral stand against violence ends up plugging a
guy in the back? And this leads to the awful resolution of the plot--
so, everything is happy, the town becomes a whitebread, churchgoin'
place without that awful dark-skinned Mexican Ms. Ramirez around, and
presumably Gary Cooper and his new, blonde, traditional wife live
happily ever after? Really, if nothing is lost, where is the tragedy
in the film? And, if the movie is not a tragedy--if it doesn't exude
any sense of loss--then not only does it go back to what I said about
the movie being an awful Western, but the film doesn't put very much
up at stake. Where is the dramatic weight that makes this movie as
deep as it tells us it is? If Cooper ends up losing nothing at all,
and only the criminals die, how black-and-white a depiction of the
world is that? *Sigh* . . .
The movie is not without some merit . . . although I found Gary
Cooper's performance to be risibly stiff, most of the supporting cast
is competent. And, to Zinneman's credit (who woulda thunk he could do
anything right?), there is a nicely-conveyed, fairly even sense of
suspense throughout the movie. But overall, I found the movie to be
dull, trite, and one-dimensional.
479
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Sat Jul 12, 2003 5:16am
Subject: Re: Theory and akademia
A great attack on the latter school is Noel Carroll's MYSTIFYING
MOVIES, published in the 80s, I think, and apparently not widely
enough read. Bill mentioned his dislike for most film akademics, but
I do like Carroll and Bordwell, as well as Gunning, Naremore and
Gilberto Perez. There may be no one else though...
In fact, the intro to Gunning's Lang book is a useful primer to anyone
confused about what is at stake in film authorship--
Patrick
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
> Zach,
>
> There's theory and there's theory. I've always liked the kind done
> by people who know and love film and come from a strong
> auteurist background, like the people in this group. And I've
> always hated the other kind.
480
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Jul 12, 2003 5:23am
Subject: Re: Re: Theory and akademia
> A great attack on the latter school is Noel Carroll's MYSTIFYING
> MOVIES, published in the 80s, I think, and apparently not widely
> enough read. Bill mentioned his dislike for most film akademics, but
> I do like Carroll and Bordwell, as well as Gunning, Naremore and
> Gilberto Perez. There may be no one else though...
I always thought that Thomas Elsaesser was rather good.
I really like what I've read of Barthes, actually, although people
typically put his ideas to uses that I don't care for.
Is Noel Burch an academic? He's crazy but brilliant.
- Dan
481
From:
Date: Sat Jul 12, 2003 1:48am
Subject: Dark Waters
Having just recently seen De Toth's masterful "Day of the Outlaw" (which I
consider simply one of the five or six greatest films I've seen; more on that
later), would anyone care to post some comments about his earlier "Dark Waters"?
It's one of a precious few De Toths easily available on video. Given how
much I've responded to his work so far, I'll probably pick it up regardless, but
I'm curious if anyone here makes a great case for it.
Thanks,
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
482
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Sat Jul 12, 2003 6:47am
Subject: Re: Theory and akademia
Patrick:
> > A great attack on the latter school is Noel Carroll's MYSTIFYING
> > MOVIES, published in the 80s, I think, and apparently not widely
> > enough read. Bill mentioned his dislike for most film akademics,
but
> > I do like Carroll and Bordwell, as well as Gunning, Naremore and
> > Gilberto Perez. There may be no one else though...
Would anyone care to elaborate on the distaste for "akademics" - it's
easy to generalize but I sometimes feel as though people (auteurists
or not) are too quick to dismiss entirely when they should more
often, in my view, salvage what is valuable from what is not.
Clearly I'm more sympathetic to newer theories than some here, so
doing anything evaluative on a scale greater than a close, nuanced
reading of a writer's work gets me uncomfortable and a bit indignant.
Dan wrote:
> I always thought that Thomas Elsaesser was rather good.
Elsaesser is very good: often, he's clearly writing from a detached
viewpont that sounds like a more traditional academic tradition than
one of a cinephile-critic, but I've always gotten a vibe that he
really loves his work and his objects of study. I think he's
generous but exacting, the mark of a good critic even if that's not
the role he plays.
--Zach
483
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat Jul 12, 2003 7:44am
Subject: Rohmer help?
Could someone recommend some good online articles on Rohmer
(especially "appreciating" Rohmer, help with, etc).
Jaime
484
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sat Jul 12, 2003 2:59pm
Subject: Re: Dark Waters
Hmmm, our group is proving such a success that I can't keep up; I'd like
to reply on academia, and have more to say about TV and autuers, but for
now:
This is quite great. It's not one of the three or so greatest ("Day of
the Outlaw" and "Play Dirty" being the obvious ones; next would be the
under-appreciated "Last of the Commanches"). But it's definitely in the
next group. As with a lot of auteurist classics, it's been decades since
I've seen it, so don't ask me about the camera movement at 335 feet of
reel 4. But I remember it as amazing, especially the long scenes in a
swamp, with the rising steam forming one of those exclusionary
environments that freeze out "humanity," kins to the snow at the end of
"Day of the Outlaw" or the desert in "Play Dirty."
If you see it, or, rather, if you view a video reproduction, heh heh,
let us know what you think.
- Fred
485
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Jul 12, 2003 3:13pm
Subject: Re: Dark Waters
> Having just recently seen De Toth's masterful "Day of the Outlaw" (which I
> consider simply one of the five or six greatest films I've seen; more on that
> later), would anyone care to post some comments about his earlier "Dark Waters"?
> It's one of a precious few De Toths easily available on video. Given how
> much I've responded to his work so far, I'll probably pick it up regardless, but
> I'm curious if anyone here makes a great case for it.
I must say that I didn't enjoy it when I saw it long ago, but I can't
make a good case one way or another.
After DAY OF THE OUTLAW, my favorite De Toth is PITFALL, which has a
very nice balance between conceptual unity and behavioral nuance. It
used to be available on video, so I imagine a good rental place would
still have it. - Dan
486
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Jul 12, 2003 3:36pm
Subject: Re: Rohmer help?
> Could someone recommend some good online articles on Rohmer
> (especially "appreciating" Rohmer, help with, etc).
For some reason I've never read anything on Rohmer that I thought was on
the money. If you want to read some of my thoughts on him, you can go
to the archives of That Other List and look up messages #9709, #9729,
and #9769. - Dan
487
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sat Jul 12, 2003 4:59pm
Subject: Re: Re: Theory and akademia
I'm pretty suspicious on any attack on a whole group of people,
particularly a group -- film academics -- that, as a group, subscribes
to no particular ideology or methodology, even if there may be dominant
ones at particular times.
To Patrick's list of "film professors who have written things that I
like" (not his words) I would add Annette Michelson, P. Adams Sitney,
David James, Paul Arthur, and John Belton. I know there are others. And
let's remember that Andrew Sarrris and Robin Wood are film professors,
as were the late Stan Brakhage, Hollis Frampton, and Paul Sharits, and
the recently retired Ken Jacobs and Robert Breer, and as Ernie Gehr is
still.
I think what's really at issue here is what has come to be called
"theory," and so now I'll try to answer Zach's query.
One caveat: I've read shockingly little of the stuff I'm about to
condemn, so my comments should be taken as not particularly
well-informed. And I'm sure there are exceptions, though I've not found
them.
And yes, pieces of writing known as "theory" can be good, or marginally
illuminating even while not so good as a whole. And Dan is right about
Roalnd Barthes, a writer often misused by film academics, whose books
can be wonderful, allusive, poetic.
I have two main problems with "theory." The first is that much of it
pretends to a kind of scientific objectivity, discussing relationships
and making inferences between abstract concepts which are themselves an
invention of the writer, or of other writers, and have no real existence
in the world. A whole edifice of abstractions is erected that purports
to explain "reality," both films and our culture as a whole, but which
is actually a house of cards that is more about manipulating its own
symbols than testing itself against the rough stones of the actual
world. When a great writer such as Freud invents or uses such
abstractions, the result can be terrific, even if the points being made
sometimes bear little relationship to any reality outside of Freud's
own. But when film academics do it, the result is often a tangled
thicket of manipulated concepts that seems more about demonstrating the
writer's own cleverness than actually illuminating anything.
I also dislike the leftist bias behind a lot of it. When "theory" first
emerged in English in the pages of "Screen" in the early 70s, I was
observing it, as a subscriber and former contributor, in real time. It
sometimes seemed as if the "Screen" writers, Burch included, believed
that a consortium of international bankers assembled circa 1913 (with a
later meeting necessary after the advent of sound) to determine what
repressive codes to impose upon bourgeois cinema to keep the Workers in
a hypnotic haze that would prevent them from rising up and making the
Revolution.
One central point underlying much "theory" seemed to be an attack on the
idea of individual subjectivity. Our autonomy as individuals is a myth;
we are all products of our culture. In the hands of a real philosopher,
such a claim can be interesting. In the hands of others, well. Brian
Henderson, a professor at SUNY-Buffalo, attacked my defense of my own
method as being based on my own subjective viewing experience in 1975 by
stating, "That's what Descartes tried to do, but he was proven wrong by
Freud and Marx." This is the comic-book version of what such theorists
think, but often if you rub away their obfuscatory prose something
equally simple-minded lies beneath.
What's needed is a branch of Cinema Studies known as "Cinema Studies
Studies," which will question why it was that, at the same time a large
number of film teaching jobs started opening up in the academy in the
1970s, so many aspiring American academics suddenly turn to importing
European thinkers' work. Could it be that they thought a paper with
footnotes to numerous French thinkers would impress a Dean much more
than something more, well, readily comprehensible? Few have the time,
energy, or intellectual ability of a Carroll to actually track down the
"logic" behind the claims being made and, pricking the thin balloon that
they're written on, reveal the hot air underneath.
I still remember when the issue of "Screen" arrived at my apartment that
contained Laura Mulvey's now-legendary "Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema," just published and of which I had therefore heard nothing. I
looked through the contents as usual, expecting to read only one or two
things at most because of what "Screen" had already become, and her
title leapt out at me: "Me for this! At least, something about what *I*
like." Ha! It was just the opposite. Visual pleasure is wrong, bad,
oppressive to women. Well, that grossly oversimplifies her argument, but
that was certainly an undercurrent.
But I've reread the essay since, and it's not total bull either. Like a
lot of such writing, there are some useful ideas there, if only useful
in the sense of setting up a framework to argue against.
The other point about "theory" as a whole is that along with its flight
from viewer subjectivity, it also flees from the very idea of an
aesthetic experience. And now I can trot out my
Preminger-at-an-autuerism-seminar story that I was threatening to tell
earlier.
There's a group that meets monthly here under the title of the "Chicago
Film Seminar." Typically a professor or a graduate student gives a
paper, another responds, and there are questions and discussions. I go
when I can; even when the papers aren't so good, I usually enjoy
thinking about them or arguing with them, especially since I don't keep
up that much with the "literature" any more. And there have been some
great ones, such as Bill Paul's (another academic!) research into the
presentation of early films: it turns out that at some theaters sets
were built around the screen to echo the movie, a southern mansion's
pillars around the screen for a film set there, for example.
Anyway, a year or so ago there was a panel discussion on auteurism. The
panelists were Tom Gunning, Marty Rubin, myself, and a Northwestern
professor whose name I can't remember but who wrote a book on Spielberg.
It was pretty interesting. We heard an amazing story about a writer who
had to revise his introduction to a book on a director to be published
by a university press to include a renunciation of auteurism (they
wouldn't publish a book on a single director otherwise) -- talk about
the party line! Anyway, I gave my defense: "Auteurism works for me as a
way of discovering a director's language, and thus helping me see and
appreciate the films more deeply. For example, I see Preminger's camera
movements in "Fallen Angel" and his somewhat different kinds of camera
movements in "Such Good Friends," and seeing the similarities and
differences helps my viewing of the films." (Of course all quotes are
approximate here.) A woman who was then teaching at the University of
Illinois seemed very troubled by this. First she misunderstood me as
having said that I was only looking for commonalties. But when
differences got put back in, she still couldn't understand what the
point was in doing this. "What use could you put this to," she wondered.
She went on to speculate that perhaps it could be used to construct a
psycho-biography, but then allowed how that was a very troubled
enterprise, citing Freud's famous essay on Leonardo. I was kind of
stunned, and didn't really understand at the time what she wasn't
getting. I do now. She didn't understand that my goal was to produce a
deeper, more meaningful, and, well, more ecstatic viewing of the films,
for myself and for others.
As I think I've said before here, the aesthetic pleasure of a great film
can't be fully translated. The viewing experience has ecstatic,
ineffable, chaotic, even orgasmic aspects. But it's also not true that
it has no themes, no implications; things can be said. One proof of that
is that many filmmakers have said them. I want both. But I would like
that the latter illuminate and deepen the former. Most "theory" oriented
academics, and many others too, seem to be interested in constructing an
autonomous body of thought, a kind of pseudo-philosophy, that has its
own internal interest and need not really illuminate the films at all.
Perhaps they think the writing will stand on its own; perhaps they hope
to illuminate the larger culture. That isn't necessarily bad, if their
work is good. But many can't even understand the concept of trying to
deepen the aesthetic experience. The aesthetic is itself no longer an
operative category for most film academics. And, as I understand it, the
same is true in many other disciplines.
Here's an assignment for Zach or Jaime, if you're willing and if it's
kosher to do so: Post a list of the currently approved and in-progress
Ph. D. dissertation topics at N.Y.U. Cinema Studies. I'm guessing they
are mostly one or another kind of "theory" or sociology.
As long as we're on the topic of that department, which I enrolled in in
1971, and left in 1976 when I moved to Chicago, never completing my
Ph.D., let me offer a few memories. In the period from 1971-76, it was
inhabited by genuine film enthusiasts. You could overhear discussions
about movies in the halls. You could go to Anthology and see film
students. Students recommended films and, yes, directors, to other
students. One argument against giving a certain professor tenure was
that he had never even heard of Anthology, and thus wasn't a part of the
ongoing process of living cinema. My fellow students included Noel
Carroll, Bill Simon, Tom Gunning, Paul Arthur. Once when Tom posted a
kind of complicated note about his office hours on his door (we were
teaching assistants and instructors, and had little open cubbyholes),
someone added, "Janet Leigh can drop by anytime she wants to." I saw
that, chuckled, and added, "Dear Tom, Meet me at the Mirador. Love,
Janet." And someone else added to that, "I tried, but I only found the
night man." In other words, the reference to a great but still somewhat
obscure film was appreciated.
I gave a talk there in the late 1980s, at the atmosphere couldn't have
been more different. Everything was quiet, sedate. Even the discussions
seemed toned down. There were no raised voices, no passions. A young
woman who had never seen one great film I showed complete, Christopher
Maclaine's "The End," before, came up afterwards and told me how much
she liked my talk. It turned out she liked it not because of the film
but because my ideas related to her dissertation topic.
It was, well, very academic.
I'd like to hear Zach and Jaime's thoughts on this. Of course, it may
also be that things are different for undergraduates.
- Fred
488
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Jul 12, 2003 5:48pm
Subject: Re: Re: Theory and akademia
> I was kind of
> stunned, and didn't really understand at the time what she wasn't
> getting. I do now. She didn't understand that my goal was to produce a
> deeper, more meaningful, and, well, more ecstatic viewing of the films,
> for myself and for others.
>
> Most "theory" oriented
> academics, and many others too, seem to be interested in constructing an
> autonomous body of thought, a kind of pseudo-philosophy, that has its
> own internal interest and need not really illuminate the films at all.
> Perhaps they think the writing will stand on its own; perhaps they hope
> to illuminate the larger culture. That isn't necessarily bad, if their
> work is good. But many can't even understand the concept of trying to
> deepen the aesthetic experience. The aesthetic is itself no longer an
> operative category for most film academics. And, as I understand it, the
> same is true in many other disciplines.
This is probably the heart of the matter. I sometimes used to ask
lit-crit people, "Well, what do you think the purpose of art is? What
can you say about art that you can't say about any cultural artifact?"
It's a question that I suppose I'd be less confident about answering now
than I was then. But it was certainly true that lit-crit thinking
seemed to have no place at all for aesthetics, for thinking about art as
a particular kind of experience different from others. Sometimes people
would openly tell you that there was no difference between art and other
cultural artifacts, that what I was calling aesthetics was an
indefensible concept. Other people weren't willing to go so far, and I
noticed that they sometimes had a lot of trouble with my loaded little
question.
My sense is that more people have started blending lit-crit ideas with
more traditional aesthetic ideas in the last 20 years or so, which I
think is a good thing. I myself am very attached to the issue of how a
film defines and communicates to an imagined audience - this can be said
to be a lit-crit idea, but it's invaluable to my aesthetic approach. - Dan
489
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sat Jul 12, 2003 6:19pm
Subject: Re: Re: Theory and akademia
Dan Sallitt wrote:
> What
>can you say about art that you can't say about any cultural artifact?"
>
>
That's a great way to put it, and I'd perhaps "refine" it further to
suit my own ends. While I wouldn't go around saying "Spielberg is not
art," as from a point of view of communicating with others it's better
to use terms we can all agree on, I get no aesthetic effect at all from
his work. Thus what I might say is, "What is difference from an
aesthetic experience than from other forms of received communication?"
The point being, most academics treat film as if it were just another
form of communication. I think I could argue that the aesthetic
experience is far more complex than that.
Who was the mogul who said of the idea of a "message picture," out of
what I'll grant was likely a not very sophisticated understanding of the
issues, "When I want to send a message, I call Western Union."
- Fred
490
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat Jul 12, 2003 9:21pm
Subject: Re: Theory and akademia
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> One caveat: I've read shockingly little of the stuff I'm about to
> condemn, so my comments should be taken as not particularly
> well-informed. And I'm sure there are exceptions, though I've not
> found them.
Well, I imagine you've read more than me, and that Zach can do a
better "whole body" evaluation of both the pluses and the minuses of
theory, film theory, and cultural studies, than I, but I have a few
responses to your post.
> I have two main problems with "theory." The first is that much of
> it pretends to a kind of scientific objectivity, discussing
> relationships and making inferences between abstract concepts which
> are themselves an invention of the writer, or of other writers, and
> have no real existence in the world.
I think the theorists I've enountered would insist that theirs was
not an objective POV, and that any claim to objectivity when speaking
about these matters can be shut down almost immediately. In fact, to
counter your experience of theory seeming to be an "anti-
subjectivity" playground (viz. your anecdote, "Marx proved you
couldn't do that," etc), it seems to me that most folks would say
that we're bound by our subjectivity (Plato & the cave allegory, for
starters). That doesn't stop professors and PhD candidates from
getting cocky, of course.
But...speaking on a plane of abstract vs. concrete, I would ask two
questions: [1] how could these "abstract concepts" have a "real
existence in the world"? And [2] how could these concepts
exist...anywhere!...*except* as an invention of one, or two, or two
hundred writers? Let us say that 'a theory,' as we are using the
term here, is a scientific-ish construct, a method for seeing the
world or part of the world. But who is going to do this "seeing"
except those who have developed these constructs, and those who
accept them?
> A whole edifice of abstractions is erected that purports
> to explain "reality," both films and our culture as a whole, but
> which is actually a house of cards that is more about manipulating
> its own symbols than testing itself against the rough stones of the
> actual world.
As a writer who talks a great deal about physicality and the
relationships between visible, audible, tactile, and psychological
sensations in films and in film viewing, what you say here has a
great deal of, er, weight. But if a theory engages with rough
stones, metaphorically or literally, of the actual (what do you mean
by this?) world, it seems like it would stop being theory and start
being something quite different. I've read a lot of essays that
touch upon real experiences, recent experiences, and personal
experiences - for example, one writer talks about how she overheard
some white college students talking about how they essentially wanted
to "collect" sexual encounters with girls of different minority
groups, and she deftly interweaves this anecdote with a discussion of
(American) colonial attitudes around the world, particularly with
regards to the role of sexual dominance, the omnimobility of the
American white male in American media, etc. (I may be mixing this
essay up with others, but that's only because they were from the same
week, or close to it.) This is an extremely "real world"-ish
example, but I've found a number of the more dense, colder, more
obscure writers just as rewarding, if not more so.
Sometimes I get the sensation that all of contemporary cultural
theory can be gathered together to form the words: white American
males can do nothing that isn't problematic. But I would counter my
own suspiction with the idea that: someone ought to say something
like that. After all, it looks to me as if the rest of the media is
saying exactly the opposite - white American males (in particular)
should handle everything and can take on anything, including their
own autocritique. And a good chunk of this kind of theory is useful
for finding out how such thinking can lead us down the wrong roads.
> But when film academics do it, the result is often a tangled
> thicket of manipulated concepts that seems more about demonstrating
> the writer's own cleverness than actually illuminating anything.
On the one hand, I agree - sometimes. Theory, from what I've dealt
with, has zero point zero zero interest in *the pleasure of the film
experience*, except as a loaded concept called Pleasure that awaits
dissection and a proper scolding. It has no interest at all in:
great film, the ecstasy of, etc. But I don't think it would be
theory if it was "tainted" by such slippery concepts. Such slippery
concepts must be frozen, on a slab, cut open: in essence, killed.
This makes the loved ones upset. But that's the price to pay -
theory can know the position of the particle, but not the velocity.
Or it can know the velocity, but not the position.
> Who was the mogul who said of the idea of a "message picture," out
> of what I'll grant was likely a not very sophisticated
> understanding of the issues, "When I want to send a message, I call
> Western Union."
Sam Goldwyn.
Fred, would you call yourself, in whole or in part, a materialist?
In terms of how you deal with art, film, etc.?
Jaime
491
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Jul 12, 2003 9:45pm
Subject: Re: Re: Theory and akademia
> I think the theorists I've enountered would insist that theirs was
> not an objective POV, and that any claim to objectivity when speaking
> about these matters can be shut down almost immediately. In fact, to
> counter your experience of theory seeming to be an "anti-
> subjectivity" playground (viz. your anecdote, "Marx proved you
> couldn't do that," etc), it seems to me that most folks would say
> that we're bound by our subjectivity (Plato & the cave allegory, for
> starters). That doesn't stop professors and PhD candidates from
> getting cocky, of course.
I don't want to preempt Fred's response, but I just want to mention
that, back in my day at least, the lit-crit people used to criticize
aesthetically oriented writers, including auteurists, as
"impressionistic" and too mired in subjectivity to be taken seriously in
an academic context. The lit-crit people were, by contrast, scientific
and concrete, at least from their point of view. They were not big at
all on acknowledging their own subjectivity, in my experience. - Dan
492
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat Jul 12, 2003 11:22pm
Subject: new ways of experience, 2003 (HULK)
SPOILERS FOR 'HULK'
A friend of mine (Brent Kite of the internationally
renowned 'lancelotdulac' Yahoo! group) spoke about how he has
something called the "sidewalk test" for movies: that is, does a
movie alter the way I experience the sidewalk as I walk on it after I
emerge from the theater. (Paraphrased.) For home viewing, this is,
necessarily, "the bathroom test." (No jokes please.) In his
words: "I can think of films I disliked that met the requirements,
though not of any I care for that failed it. That's only the
beginning, though, the more interesting part comes when one comes to
consider *how* the perception has been altered."
And why, and what do you do next, and why, and how, etc., etc.
One of the most gratifying "changes in ways of seeing" effects that a
film can have on me is the one where I'm persuaded to think
differently about the director and to go back and re-watch one or
more of his/her films. This has happened three times in 2003. In
the case of each of the three directors, I'd already seen a
significant number of their other films, and all three experiences
have been related, to one degree or another, to concepts of movement
(on the film plane and in the diegesis) and phsyicality.
The films and directors: HULK (Ang Lee), THE HUNTED (William
Friedkin), and TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN (Vincente Minnelli).
By far, HULK is the messiest of the three - I have already
characterized TWO WEEKS as a messy masterpiece, but I agree with
Fred's remarks in a previous post:
> There's a precision to the imagery, to the way the parts relate --
> even if some scenes don't quite fit in. All the great Minnelli
> 'Scope and color melodramas, "Two Weeks in Another Town" included,
> set up a system of decor that has to do with the way parts of each
> composition interrelate [...]
And I share some of Dan's remarks in his review of THE HUNTED when he
discusses that film's "problems"; to me, there are elements in THE
HUNTED that might work against the film as a whole, given another
filmmaker, but that are rendered inert by Friedkin's aesthetic
choices.
But I think HULK succeeds more than it fails, and, more
interestingly, it succeeds where it looks like it *has* failed. I
had anticipated the film to be an out-and-out failure - the most
significant pan of the film on my radar was Mike D'Angelo's, and the
steady buzz would have you believe (truthfully, but misleadingly)
that the movie is slow and there isn't much action for your action
dollar. I expected to find the film, therefore, to be a slog.
Parts of the film do drag on a bit, and there's one part corny
dialogue for every three parts smart dialogue, one part hackneyed
mush for every two parts genuine emotion. (I imagine some readers
will want to alter the ratio, but I'm not discussing their HULK
experience, I'm discussing mine.) But what makes the film
fascinating for me has a lot to do with some of the things Zach and
Dan have been discussing in their reviews of Friedkin, Eastwood, and
De Palma films: the deconstruction of an entertainment, often at the
cost of what might make the film entertaining, in order to serve an
alternative agenda. I define "entertainment" in this context as
gratification of our senses in exchange for some kind of investment
(time, money, emotion), and its purest embodiment can be found in
PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE, when Barry (Adam Sandler) single-handedly takes
apart three or four armed thugs after he and his girl (Emily Watson)
have been in an auto collision. It's "art" (truthfully, I like the
film quite a bit), we "care," we spent "money," and we know that
these thugs "had it coming." So Barry's attack occurs almost as a
sexual release.*
Some of the most fascinating parts of HULK occur when ordinary
pleasure/gratification moments are - as in THE HUNTED - stymied,
stylized, or (cock)blocked in one way or another. This is not to say
that HULK is not, in some ways, a very successful as a comic book
thrill ride (or that THE HUNTED does not "work," on one level, as a
tense action movie), but when the film "fails" on this level, well,
that's often when it becomes really interesting. For example, the
editing which [1] completely fucks up the death of Talbot (Josh
Lucas), whose demise we've all been salivating for, by hitting freeze-
frame and tracing a Josh-Lucas-shaped split-screen around his body as
it flies through the air. This is one strange moment, and I'm still
not entirely sure that if it sucks or not, but it seems to speak for
the film as a whole as a work that goes to great lengths to deny
audience pleasures as they relate to death, even of the enemy**.
What does this stuff mean? What could it mean except this: that Ang
Lee is developing an understanding, throught spectacle and action
cinema, of the ways in which mankind comes/has come to do violence to
itself.*** How it divides itself in order to commit violence. Which
brings me to [2] how the almost absurd overuse of editing tricks
works for the film as a whole, and what these tricks "say". There
seems to be two different editing gimmicks in HULK; there's split-
screen, which divides up scenes and sequences, sometimes to emphasize
disparity, sometimes to set up a collapse or a collision of spaces.
And then there's the morph-style editing, which is much more
intricate, and much more flamboyant (the split-screen stuff reminded
me less of THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR and more AIRPORT, less REQUIEM FOR A
DREAM and more RULES OF ATTRACTION; the morph-editing stuff seems
more innovative and less traditional), and which primarily emphasizes
the malleability of spaces, objects, and surfaces, as well as the
permeability of borders, divisions, and so forth. Pretty good for a
movie about us vs. them, inheriting hatred for the "other," hating
what is different, and setting up containers for that which is not
desired.
I think I'll return to this later. I guess what got to me the most
was how I ended up doing a one-eighty from Mike D'Angelo's review,
and *how* I disagreed with such assertions as "Nothing drains the
life from pop culture more speedily than a self-conscious attempt to
invest it with Meaning" and, in referring to the action scenes, "he
smashes things up real good, AND THAT'S WHAT'S IMPORTANT" [emphasis
mine]. No enemy of meaning, he counters his HULK pan with a reminder
of last year's superhero epic, SPIDER-MAN: "One of the things that
made last summer's Spider-Man such a pleasant surprise was its
unapologetic exuberance...[the filmmakers]...embraced the material's
earnest goofiness, thereby allowing heady puberty-related metaphors
to emerge naturally and gracefully, without fuss." But it was the
fuss that did it for me, where HULK was concerned. I also enjoyed
it, if I need to say it again, on the level of "comic book thrill
ride," but in a different fashion: I liked the way the big
spectacle/action scenes were as much about Hulk against the
landscapes as they were about Hulk him-/itself. So that two of the
most striking shots in the film are: [a] Hulk in long shot, very
tiny, tumbling down a large set of sand dunes, and [b] Hulk (or his
spirit, or something) racing through storm clouds, appearing only in
strobe-like instants.
And I've never seen a ready-for-the-sequel conclusion so thoughtfully
written. Take that, you MATRIX fucks.
* "That's Entertainment!" as they might say in another Vincente
Minnelli movie.
** More moments like this: Hulk's battle with the Army. These
scenes seem to have just as many close-ups and medium shots of
frightened, *human* soldiers, individuals rather than faceless
enemies, as it has f/x shots of Hulk. Also notice the major early
action sequence has Hulk fighting doggies - mutant doggies, sure, but
wittew puppies (awww) nevertheless (and I'm 99% certain that the
filmmakers gave the mutant poodle "poignant anime eyes" before it
gets yanked out of Jennifer Connelly's windshield) - in a forest
landscape obscured by darkness and berzerk camera angles. Also
notice the way I say "Hulk" instead of "The Hulk," as in "Pickpocket"
instead of "The Pickpocket" or "A Pickpocket." The steel cube has a
marvelous kind of negative capability, etc.
*** I'm taking a cue from a line from Kent Jones' review of MYSTIC
RIVER, where he observes Clint Eastwood's exploration of violence
(the nature of, etc) and says something along those lines. This is
from the "Film Comment" issue with...HULK on the cover.
493
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat Jul 12, 2003 11:32pm
Subject: Re: Theory and akademia
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> I don't want to preempt Fred's response, but I just want to mention
> that, back in my day at least, the lit-crit people used to
criticize
> aesthetically oriented writers, including auteurists, as
> "impressionistic" and too mired in subjectivity to be taken
seriously in
> an academic context.
I think that may still be the case, perhaps unspoken these days - I
have yet to have a cold academic call me "impressionistic," or
anything. But again, as I said, there seems to be zero "love for
film" around NYU, at least inside the classroom. (Certainly not
outside - the woman who runs our study center has lobby cards from
about a half dozen Sam Fuller movies around her office.)
Maybe the Plato/cave concept, or the attitude it engenders, which
seems to inform the skepticism for "absoluteness" and "objectivity,"
etc. in a lot of the essays I've read, is an a priori defensive
posture against the "impressionistic" auteurists and aesthetes from
calling the academics on the carpet for claiming a scientific
objectivity that just isn't possible. Because the cockiness of The
Academic seems to begin and end in Plato's cave. If so, that's a
pretty good a priori defensive posture, in my opinion, even if I
resent the cockiness.
Maybe there's no room for the cinephile in the lecture hall. But it
sounds as if barriers are being erected by both camps, you know?
Jaime
494
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Jul 13, 2003 0:19am
Subject: Re: Re: Theory and akademia
> Maybe there's no room for the cinephile in the lecture hall. But it
> sounds as if barriers are being erected by both camps, you know?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I'm actually ready for a truce if it comes with
negotiations, and I think those negotiations have been going on for a
number of years now. - Dan
495
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Jul 13, 2003 0:53am
Subject: Re: Re: Theory and akademia
In response to Jaime, there's subjectivity and there's subjectivity.
There's a difference between celebrating -- while also trying to
understand -- one's subjective ecstasy at the camera movements in
"Fallen Angel," and trying to understand how late capitalism has
constructed our subjectivity as an example of some kind of regressive
tendency that needs to be overcome.
If there are "theory" essays that you find valuable and that don't deny
some kind of subjectivity, name names please.
It seems to me that there's a difference between talking about one's
experience of a work, and positing social structures which have
supposedly implanted themselves in our brains and then talking about the
relationship between those different structures. When a good critic
talks about the structure in a Fritz Lang film, I can see the film, and
see what the critic is talking about, at least in many cases, even while
partly disagreeing. When a "theorist" starts babbling on about Lacanian
ideas that have supposedly realized themselves in a film, either I'm
just too stupid (or too ignorant of Lacan) to get what they're talking
about, or, they're making stuff up, pushing around ideas that are hard
to root in actual experience.
I guess I'm talking about the earlier, pre-identity politics theorists
that Dan is referring to. One example, though hardly the most
"objective" and pseudo-scientific one (some of Metz would do for that)
would be the two Baudry essays that compare the film viewing experience
to Plato's cave (since you mention that allegory, though I didn't really
understand your reference). They're well written and interestingly
argued and from the point of view of someone thinking about film not
unworthy of reading. I still found them troubling, and asked Sitney what
he thought of them, and he had a great response: "This type of discourse
is only interesting on the level of not discussing actual things." And
then he said, "I don't want to know what 'Ordet' has in common with a
travelogue," which returns us to Dan's point, that the real mystery of
cinema is not what "Ordet" has in common with a travelogue, but in
what's unique about "Ordet" (and, just possibly, to disagree a little
bit with Sitney, the travelogue).
The anti-white-male identity politics stuff is, well, racist. The
Weathermen said it best back in the 1960s: "All white babies are pigs."
But most of them would retract that today.
So, my objection to theory that doesn't touch on "rough stones" (ideas
identifiable with the physical world) is not universal: it works fine if
you're a great philosopher. I mean, I loved Descartes when I read him,
and I also love Freud, and it didn't occur to me that I couldn't love
both of them. It doesn't work so well if you're a mediocre, or pretty
good, film professor. To apply this to another field, writing, a lot of
people can become at least pretty good journalists, and do some useful
work. Perhaps a lot can also become "pretty good" poets, but I don't
have a whole lot of use for pretty good poets. Some fields are a lot
more demanding than others, and I think in that respect philosophy is
more like poetry.
Jaime: "But I don't think it would be theory if it was "tainted" by such
slippery concepts....theory can know the position of the particle, but
not the velocity. Or it can know the velocity, but not the position."
Well, but the problem is that theorists, and writers such as myself too,
don't acknowledge the Heisenbergian equivalents in their fields, or at
least, don't acknowledge them all that often enough. I'm not sure that
writers can't get closer to the aesthetic experience I have of a film
while acknowledging the difficulties and limits. I know I'm going to
keep trying.
"Fred, would you call yourself, in whole or in part, a materialist? In
terms of how you deal with art, film, etc.?"
I've been called an Idealist, early on, by the "Screen" people. The
problem with that is that I'm an atheist, and I also don't believe in
the spirit world, the invisible elsewhere, or any universal essence that
unites us all. I think we're bundles of nerves and cells that are
capable of having experiences. Or, half-jokingly, that the whole
universe is really just a super-powerful computer simulation game being
run on the super-powerful computer of a gigantic teenager in some
uber-cosmos. But the point is, some of the experiences we humans can
have are ecstatic, transcendent, and make you feel that "heavens had
opened" (Yeats on Quattrocento painting in "Under Ben Bulben"). And
those are experiences I value tremendously. I just locate them in human
psychology, not in some Great Spirit. (Though after having one of the
most shattering experiences of my entire life visiting Chartres four
years ago for four hours -- for my first hour outside and my first hour
inside, I was close to shaking -- I wrote to more than one friend, "I
emerged with my atheism intact, but just barely.") The real point is
that I don't think these experiences are going to get properly
"unpacked," any time in our lifetimes, through any kind of scientific or
pseudo-scientific analysis. It is in their very nature that they
confound reason, and that's something most theorists want to deny. And
in doing so, they are denying, a priori, the most important and most
essential aspect of the object they purport to be studying.
Another aspect of recent film study that we haven't mentioned is the way
it has become sociology, with the endless studies of "fan culture," for
example. It seems that what dozens of ordinary people write on the 'Net
about "Star Trek" is of great interest to hopeful assistant professors
all across the land. Well, maybe. Anything can be interesting. But the
things I value in films are *not* things that most people see in them.
And I know the difference. I got interested in TV soaps briefly a long
while ago, and for one or two summers I followed a couple of shows,
watching them almost every day. There are a lot of things that
interested me about them, but I make no aesthetic claims for any. In
fact, it was kind of important to me to understand that what I liked
about them (and I didn't like them all *that* much) was likely what
ordinary viewers liked about them. On the other hand, I don't' think my
viewings of "Vertigo," "Kiss Me Deadly," "The Searchers," and "Written
on the Wind" have much to do with the way ordinary viewers experience
them. Certainly American critics of them at the time didn't seem to have
a clue. Also, analyzing what ordinary viewers think strikes me as a
rather conservative enterprise. What I've always wanted to do was change
the way people see films, helping them deepen their experiences of
cinema, and of the world.
I'm sorry to infer that NYU Cinema Studies is as I expected it to be.
How about those Ph.D. dissertations? (Feel free to ignore that request...)
Fred
496
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sun Jul 13, 2003 4:23am
Subject: Re: Theory and akademia
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> I'm sorry to infer that NYU Cinema Studies is as I expected it to
> be. How about those Ph.D. dissertations? (Feel free to ignore that
> request...)
Hi Fred - not ignoring the request, just wondering to myself how to
go about getting it done. I'll try calling the department on Monday.
I don't think the Cinema Studies department is as bad as you're
inferring - if I'm interpreting your interpretation correctly. I
really like our department head, Chris Straayer, she's a tough lady
with cowboy boots and she's extremely well-read and very open to the
different interests people have in cinema (and media) studies. Her
course on Film Theory has been one of the high points of my time here
at NYU (the TA for that class, Lauren Steimer, was also really
terrific, really the ideal TA). Some of the other instructors,
tenure or not, are good, too - Bill Simon's Kub**ck class gave me the
impression that he had been teaching it for far too long, but it was
a very worthwhile experience and our class discussions were
productive and fun. I've had some kooky people for teachers - I
didn't like my Media & Cultural Studies instructor (I don't think
Zach did, either), but on the other hand, a lot of the readings were
really interesting to me.
I'll try to respond to the rest, later. Must sleep, must...sleep.
Jaime
497
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sun Jul 13, 2003 4:48am
Subject: Re: new ways of experience, 2003 (HULK)
I've been not-so-carefully avoiding reading too much about HULK, so I
just now checked out the posts on the other a_film_by pages, and
enjoyed them very much. (Didn't want y'all to think I was ignoring
you.) The "human element" of HULK was very appealing to me, not just
the fact of its presence but Lee's presentation, his low-key way of
giving us dramatic scenes without "you're watching the dramatic
scenes" road signs and arrows, etc.
I think, in fact, that the character relationships in the movie
define the political (sub)text: examining the connections/divisions
between Bruce and his father, Bruce's father versus General Ross,
General Ross and Betty, Betty and Bruce, and you've got the history
of human turf wars in a bottle. Israel vs. Palestine, the FRY, just
for starters. Blood guilt (literally!), inherited hatred, grudges
held for generations and generations, etc.
Jaime
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley"
498
From:
Date: Sun Jul 13, 2003 0:54am
Subject: Re: Dark Waters
In a message dated 7/12/03 11:00:16 AM, f@f... writes:
>But I remember it as amazing, especially the long scenes in a
>swamp, with the rising steam forming one of those exclusionary
>environments that freeze out "humanity," kins to the snow at the end of
>"Day of the Outlaw" or the desert in "Play Dirty."
Yes! I haven't seen "Play Dirty" yet, but one of the things I was most
amazed by in "Day of the Outlaw" was the way De Toth used the landscape: to envelop
the characters as though they were in a prison. De Toth's approach here
seems to embody the polar opposite of Zinneman's blandness and lack of attention
to landscape in "High Noon," as detailed by Zach.
>If you see it, or, rather, if you view a video reproduction, heh heh,
>let us know what you think.
I don't feel quite so guilty about seeing "Day of the Outlaw" on television
as I believe Fred's said before that his first viewing of the film was not
theatrical either - and he was still bowled over by it. Needless to say, though,
if a De Toth retrospective ever happens within two or three (or ten or twelve)
states of me, I'm on the first plane there.
Anyway, thanks for the recommendation, Fred. And thanks to Dan for his
thoughts. I'll try to obtain a copy of "Pitfall" as well.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
499
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Jul 13, 2003 5:12am
Subject: Re: Dark Waters
Peter,
Yes, "Day of the Outlaw" was cosmic on TV, and while it was better in
prints, what I loved about it in prints was mostly what I first loved on
TV. I think the black and white de Toths will survive TV pretty well;
he's not a creator of compositions with complex spatial and lighting
detail, like Welles. But the noir lighting in "Pitfall" is going to
suffer more than "Day of the Outlaw," I think. I do agree with Dan about
"Pitfall," but then also look for the much-neglected "Other Love," a
terrific film from about the same time with a great de Tothian plot.
I don't think people should apologize for seeing things on video on my
account, but I do think, from the point of view of film criticism, that
it's bad form to post comments on a film seen only on video without
acknowledging that that's how you've seen it. Probably no one in the
world agrees with me, and I'm not going to try to "enforce" this; it's
just a suggestion. And I'm sure I've violated it myself once or twice
over the years.
In "Pitfall," the greatest moment is an amazing long take at night
inside a house, the camera moving around while a prowler is outside.
"Ramrod" is a key early de Toth, if you've not seen it. "Day of the
Outlaw" is to Ramrod as "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" is to the
Cavalry Trilogy. "Day of the Outlaw" begins like another "Rmarod," with
the scene in the bar liming a network of disputes, and then at the
moment the "Outlaw" catches the bottle and stops the warfare it goes to
a whole other level.
- Fred
500
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Sun Jul 13, 2003 11:08am
Subject: Film theory in the paper
Here is an article in today's LA Times about USC's film dept.:
http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-filmschool28jul=
13,1,5382396.story?coll=la-headlines-magazine
I am not that sympathetic to the specificities of the author's
argument, but yet... How many film theorists have ever seen a de Toth
film?
For amusement's sake, I post the Farber exam that Paul Fileri
unearthed from Film Comment--pardon to the folks on the "other list"
who already seen it...
Patrick
Match wits with Manny Farber's students by taking this excerpted
version of the final exam for his Visual Arts 188 course a few years
ago at the University of California, Sand Diego. The students'
advantage: seeing and discussing the films cited in the exam. Your
advantage: reading this interview.
OBJECTIVE QUESTIONS
1. How many characters does Herr R. bludgeon when he runs amok?
2. Who are the characters Herr R. bludgeons when he runs amok?
3. Rank the following films in terms of the amount of objects likely
to be found in a scene from their movies: a Resnais' MURIEL or any of
his film; b Jancso's RED PSALM; c Duras' DESTROY, SHE SAID.
4. How much (much, some, little, or none) camera movement is in the
following films? a DESTROY, SHE SAID; b Godard & Gorin's LETTER TO
JANE; c Fassbinder's WHY DOES HERR R., d Snow's LA REGION CENTRALE; e
RED PSALM; f MURIEL; g Gehr's SERENE VELOCITY.
5. In what film does a camera run amok in a college classroom?
6. Every director in this course uses a long, continuous take in one
form or another. One definition of the long take: a single piece of
unedited film, which may or may not constitute an entire sequence.
Identify the director who uses the long take to:
a Suggest impersonal, all-over-the-body sexuality;
b Create a ritual effect of religious mortification in a grassy land
or hellscape;
c Build a comic-strip essay about consumerism and housewife
prostitutes in a combination nursery-brothel;
d Build a picture of the stupefying daily rituals experienced by a
family's breadwinner
7. A truly radical formalist makes a deep cut into film practice with
at least one inventive maneuver, a way of assembling the elements of
film that deeply affects his or her contemporaries. Identify the director.
a He's adamantly against applied soundtracks. He did one film against
the murmur of traffic, which supplies the tonal variations given to
other films by a musical score. His is a purist's argument: if you can
add a juke box in the background, why not add ten other layers of sound?
b Still light years more emancipated than the erotic revelations of
LAST TANGO IN PARIS. But that's not all he dared to do. By dispensing
with tension and development, and using real time, he created an
alternative to traditional movie language.
c He's changed the image from fronted to engulfing. Compared to his
movie, where the spectator is in a planetarium situation, engulfed by
the dynamics of a very controlled camera, the spectator in other films
is in a theatrical situation, removed at some distance from an event
that is played toward him, billboard-fashion.
d The director is exploring how far you can take a movie into becalmed
quiescent territory. By emphasizing sensuous tactility (with tempered
movements, mannered voices), this anti-aggression director questions
the amounts of noise, zap, excitement that a movie needs.
8 A five-part question on the role of women: assign the correct
director's name to the following treatments of women in these films:
a They're usually romantic, anxiety-ridden, and fluttery; for
instance, the glimpses of a darting woman in short intense moments, as
though seen through a prism. They have an incandescent, luminous,
feverish quality. The director emphasizes the plasticity of bodily and
facial movements and is very sharp on the woman's precise position
within a situation that smacks of soap opera.
b He stereotypes his peasants. Their arms often crossed demurely over
their breasts, his women move within a divorced and simplistic
treatment that sexually humiliates them. They're always pretty and
virginal, moving lyrically and silently through the cruel landscape.
c Woman is the brainier, testier, wittier, and more active gender. She
expresses herself in an incessant nasal drawl, taunting any males in
the vicinity.
d She is always stoical, right-minded, even the buxom-blonde in a
lemonade stall in the railroad station – always a pure luminous
person. There is never any sense of great contact, emotion, or
conflict in her low-key, cooled-off effect. The stoicism comes partly
from the sense of a figure pushed to the back of the shot by an
angular feeling in the composition.
e The Woman often seems sentimental, woebegone: a neutralized
inexpressive face is supposed to keep your attention dispersed over
the image of her environment. The dumb expression, the lacrymosity
inherent in the tepid handling of a dish, a dress, or a word suggests
a woman trivialized by her director.
9 Identify the movies which provide posterity with the following great
lines:
a "This is the face that says it knows a lot about something."
b "How many breakfasts in the Cafe Kroner?"
c "I have nothing to say and my students sleep in class."
d "We'll be leaving the neighborhood soon. My husband's getting a
promotion."
e "He's going to come toward me, he's going to take me by the
shoulders, he's going to kiss me…he'll kiss me…and I'll be lost!"
f "You were made to the measure of my body."
g "No one's ever crossed our family before."
10 Draw the room in WAVELENGTH, the way it looks from the camera's
original setting; include (and label for clarity) all the important
objects.
ESSAY QUESTIONS
1 There are there premises of this Radical Film course: (1) each movie
is an example of a sustained austere form, (2) each director has
discovered an image that evokes philosophical thought about the
categories of being, and (3) each director has pushed at least one
stylistic concern that has influenced or changed the working style of
his contemporaries. How does Warhol, the most masked and cunningly
defensive director in covering his tracks, answer all the requisites
of this course? Fifty words more or less, and cover each premise.
2 Fassbinder and Warhol both use groups of people, long takes, and
blatant color; yet in one the tensions within a group are emphasized,
while the other exploits the freedom and anarchy within a group. What
in their films shows this difference?
3 Michael Snow and Ernie Gehr are often called structuralists and
minimalists because the restrict themselves to a barren empty space
and build their films out of the raw material of this space. One way
or another they try for a fresh perception. Show how by discussing in
depth at least one film of each director. Keep in mind that this is a
question about the development or manipulation of a perception.
4 This is a question about the philosophic meaning behind the movies
in this course. WAVELENGTH (Mike Snow's movie about a forty-five
minute zoom from one end of a room to another) is a confrontation of
real fact and movie fact, facing a spectator with an actual chair and
the illusion of one, a real girl making a phone call and the "ghost"
or filmic image of a girl transparently making a phone call. The
verbal jousting in Warhol's MY HUSTLER, the totally random life
enclosed within the single frame of a small bathroom, makes you think
of the difference between the most mundane, ordinary reality and the
aesthetic reality of an abstracted single-frame movie. Using one or
two or three sentences for each director, what is the metaphysical
meaning behind Resnais' MURIEL, any of the Straub films shown here,
and Godard's TWO OR THREE THINGS. (If you don't know the answer to any
part of this question, substitute another director studied in this
course.)
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