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801
From: Peter Tonguette
Date: Wed Jul 30, 2003 11:54pm
Subject: Re: Full Metal Jacket and Lola Montes
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" <
hotlove666@y...> wrote:
> K saw the old sets for LM in the studio where he was shooting
> Paths of Glory, and Ophuls and Welles are his masters - the
> explicit Ophuls parody being Lolita, right?
Vinny LoBrutto, the estimable Kubrick biographer, confirms in
his bio that Kubrick worshipped Welles. There's a story about
Kubrick clipping out a lousy review of "Kane" for Welles, telling a
mutual friend, "Show this to Orson." I believe this was around
the time that SK was smarting over poor reviews for another
harshly dismissed (in some quarters) masterpiece - "2001." I'm
trying to get Vinny to join us here, so maybe he has some other
stories to share.
Jonathan Rosenbaum once made a list of some really striking
similarities between SK and OW - each released 12 features,
passed away at 70, had 3 marriages and 3 daughters. These
commonalities, I think, would have equally pleased the
superstitious Welles and the game and number oriented
Kubrick.
> It's interesting (particularly in light of the info about b&w) to
> compare FMJ with Fear and Desire, which emerged from the
> stripey hole after SK's death and is now rentable.
I'm hoping that "Killer's Kiss" gets reconsidered one of these
days. For my money, this tough litle jewel - less a "thriller" or
"crime movie" than an atmospheric evocation of early '50s New
York - is as good as any of his early B&W films and I frankly
prefer it to the slightly more schematic "The Killing."
Peter
802
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 0:11am
Subject: Re: Full Metal Jacket and Lola Montes
> By the way, the news about Brainwashed is mindblowing!
Do you mean, that it's on video and available to New Yorkers (at
least)? I didn't know it was so rare. Still, I can picture this
movie becoming much more of an experience with a 35-millimeter print.
I liked it a lot! Most obviously impressive is Oswald's em-
/deployment of the chess metaphor, both the structure of chess
maneuvering, the psychological interaction of opponents, and the
visual motif of the board (carried over to such similar images as the
hotel lobby, von Basil's bedspread, cages, screens, Berger's suit,
etc); also the beauty of the editing, that melting wipe effect,
Oswald's method of illustrating the passage of time; the use of sound
effects; that amazing scene in which von Basil accosts the various
prisoners and Nazis in the lobby and tries to position them as chess
pieces; beautiful!
Jaime
803
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 0:21am
Subject: also re Gerd Oswald; Ophuls & Kubrick
Could the Gerd Oswald fans share their general thoughts/theses on
that director?
---
After several weeks of shooting battle and trenches scenes for PATHS
OF GLORY, Kubrick spent a day filming one of the opulent
Broulard/Mireau scenes, and afterwards told a crew member that it was
in honor of Max Ophuls, who had died that day.
I think a comparison between LOLITA and, say, LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN
WOMAN reveals some of the key differences between one filmmaker, the
student, and the other, the master: Lolita is hardly given a role in
that film, except as an object of pursuit/obsession/lust, whereas
Stefan seems to live and breathe, he occupies the earth and he lives
his own life apart from the way Lisa sees him. Also Humbert's love
is sick and engenders sickness, Lisa's is tragic and engenders
tragedy, etc.
Jaime
804
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 0:24am
Subject: also (Gerd again)
Is BUNNY O'HARE worth seeing? Good?
Jaime
805
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 1:44am
Subject: Re: also (Gerd again), mostly on Brainwashed
Jaime N. Christley wrote:
>Is BUNNY O'HARE worth seeing? Good?
>
>
>
Haven't seen it. If you see it let us know. I liked "Agent for H.A.R.M."
a lot, even though it's partly ridiculous, but hated "80 Steps to
Jonah," which at least on my one viewing I would not have guessed was an
Oswald.
I think you got a lot of what I love about "Brainwahsed." The image of
people as chess pieces on that geometrical floor, an image of the
protagonist's madness, is also a metaphor for (a) the whole film and (b)
for Oswald's style in general.
The whole film is about people being reduced to objects by
totalitarianism, and Oswald's framing at its best offers images that
have an almost painfully brutal physicality, a kind of frontal, almost
assaultive effect. Even in his cheapo westerns, the way he will frame
the action through a hitching post or whatever creates constrained,
confined, almost harsh images. Watching an Oswald image is a little bit
like looking at the concrete of the sidewalk as you're falling toward it.
I actually put "Brainwashed" into a class I was teaching at NYU Cinema
Studies circa 1974. I thought I could get away with it in a class called
"Contemporary Cinema" back then. And I made a big point of "that" floor
shot, applying it directly to the campus we were on by suggesting that
it could help students understand the architecture of the Elmer Holmes
Bobst Library, a then newly-openend (and much protested) monstrosity
that was a product of Philip Johnson's Nazi period (later learned that
in addition to have a Nazi period in his architecture he actually was a
*real* Nazi back in Hitler's time). The patterned floor observed from
the atrium renders individuals as nullities, or so my argument went, and
"Brainwashed" can help one understand the tendency to devalue the
individual in both architecture and the larger society.
- Fred
806
From: Damien Bona
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 1:59am
Subject: Re: also (Gerd again)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley"
wrote:
> Is BUNNY O'HARE worth seeing? Good?
>
> Jaime
I haven't seen it either, but I seem to recall that back in '71 AIP
recut the film and Oswald disassociated himself from it.
807
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 3:19am
Subject: Oswald, Ophuls, Kubrick, Fellini, Mazursky
Oswald actually directed Brainwashed as a play in 1944 - I came
across it as an item in Hollywood Reporter while researching
Suspicion. So it was a long-cherished project. I'll see if I can dig
out that quote.
Somewhere back near the start of this site is a long post I did on
Oswald, and another by Fred in response. Most of my viewing tips -
including the all-important tv work - were given there. I wasn't
wildly impressed by Bunny O'Hare, but it's worth seeing; I'm still
trying to get through 80 Steps - and past the lead actor. I recall
enjoying H.A.R.M., too. But the best work was earlier.
The differences between Letter and Lolita (the way the hero's
subjectivity devours the world, for example) are interesting and
important, but they also have to do with the evolution of film -
which, as in all arts, is not necessarily progress - or at least
the "progress" is not without its costs. Ophuls is a tough act to
follow, and one way to make it new is to make it more internal.
That's true of the history of poetry, the novel - lots of things.
That said, a filmmaker can sometimes do the reverse, when his
predecessor is a champion of internalization to begin with. If
Enemies, a Love Story is Paul Mazursky's best film, it's because he
finally whipped his Fellini fixation by remaking 8 1/2 so that the
women exist independent of the man (in the last scene with the baby,
for example, or when Masha commits suicide), which they emphatically
do not in the Fellini film. That's quite an achievment!
808
From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 3:23am
Subject: Re: Color, DiCaprio
Bill K. wrote:
>Hitchcock was interested in Red Desert, but primarily, I believe,
>because it contained shots that proved you could light a white
>wall without having shadows. He wanted everyone on his Torn
>Curtain crew to see it.
The degree Antonioni was able to manipulate the color of both real
environments and sets to create a psychological reality (the famous
painted grass, for instance) must have resonated with Hitchcock. All
of this is more evident in the original prints of RED DESERT. I find
the current video version of RED DESERT (didn't see the recent film
print) to be rather far from the original, but then that's also true
of VERTIGO.
--
- Joe Kaufman
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
809
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 3:35am
Subject: Gerd and Bobst
So, great, I probably won't be able to look at that library the same
way again - as you recall, you can observe increasing ant-ification
of librarygoers as you go from floor to floor and look down from the
walkways. For a_film_byites who are feeling discriminated against
because they have never been to this building but are curious, you
can take a "virtual tour" that gives you at least some idea of what
Fred and I are referring to:
http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/info/instruct/tour/flrindx.htm
You can actually see the library from the Empire State Building
observation deck: just face south, and look for the huge red cube at
the lower end of Washington Square.
Bill and Fred, thanks for your thoughts on Oswald. I forgot to read
your old posts on him, but I will now. I'm looking forward to seeing
more of his work.
Jaime
810
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 3:47am
Subject: Re: Oswald, Ophuls, Kubrick, Fellini, Mazursky
> The differences between Letter and Lolita (the way the hero's
> subjectivity devours the world, for example) are interesting and
> important, but they also have to do with the evolution of film -
> which, as in all arts, is not necessarily progress - or at least
> the "progress" is not without its costs. Ophuls is a tough act to
> follow, and one way to make it new is to make it more internal.
> That's true of the history of poetry, the novel - lots of things.
In some ways I actually prefer Kubrick, but I'm not sure how much I
would chalk their differences up to inexorable evolution of an art.
I mean, a director minutely alters the course of film history
whenever he makes a movie, and when he "looks back" on his
inspirations and expresses his looking back through the art he's
creating, then he's forging links that will help build a vague
timeline of...something (good or bad). But these observations are
kind of tautological, I feel.
Jaime
811
From:
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 2:08am
Subject: Cronenberg's Spider
I wonder if anyone better versed in music than I can identify the classical
piece used at the opening of David Cronenberg's "Spider"? On the commentary
track on the DVD, Cronenberg identifies it as being from the 16th century, but
doesn't name it.
This also gives me the chance to wonder aloud if anyone else agrees that this
is one of Cronenberg's very finest, most emotionally devastating films. I
saw it once during its theatrical run earlier this year, but a re-viewing last
night has me approaching Amy Taubin-level enthusiasm for this wonderful film.
(Taubin placed it on her recent BFI Top 10 submission.)
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
812
From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 6:40am
Subject: Re: Cronenberg's Spider
>This also gives me the chance to wonder aloud if anyone else agrees that this
>is one of Cronenberg's very finest, most emotionally devastating films. I
>saw it once during its theatrical run earlier this year, but a re-viewing last
>night has me approaching Amy Taubin-level enthusiasm for this wonderful film.
>(Taubin placed it on her recent BFI Top 10 submission.)
>
>Peter
It didn't seem to go over all that well either with audiences or
critics, but I felt that it had the strongest and purest level of
compassion that I'd ever seen in a Cronenberg film. He (David
Cronenberg) told me that he and Ralph Fiennes felt an intense
commitment to bringing that character to life.
--
- Joe Kaufman
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
813
From: George Robinson
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 6:45am
Subject: Re: Cronenberg's Spider
First, a warning -- if you haven't seen Spider, there is a spoiler to follow, but if I don't discuss the single most important plot twist in the film, what I'm going to say here will be meaningless.
I am in full agreement with the praise being heaped on the film here, although I'm not sure compassion is a quality I would ascribe to it. It is also one of the most fascinating ruminations on the nature of narrative and storytelling and the paradox of the false narrator. Of course, in fiction it is not that difficult to create a work based around an unreliable narrator, but in film, because an audience has to accept what it sees -- recall Hitchcock's dilemma in Stage Fright with a "lying" flashback -- this device is harder to pull off. One of the beauties of Spider is that he does it, and brilliantly.
George Robinson
Alas, where is human nature so
weak as in a bookstore?
-Henry Ward Beecher
----- Original Message -----
From: Joseph Kaufman
To: a_film_by@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 2:40 AM
Subject: Re: [a_film_by] Cronenberg's Spider
>This also gives me the chance to wonder aloud if anyone else agrees that this
>is one of Cronenberg's very finest, most emotionally devastating films. I
>saw it once during its theatrical run earlier this year, but a re-viewing last
>night has me approaching Amy Taubin-level enthusiasm for this wonderful film.
>(Taubin placed it on her recent BFI Top 10 submission.)
>
>Peter
It didn't seem to go over all that well either with audiences or
critics, but I felt that it had the strongest and purest level of
compassion that I'd ever seen in a Cronenberg film. He (David
Cronenberg) told me that he and Ralph Fiennes felt an intense
commitment to bringing that character to life.
--
- Joe Kaufman
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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814
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 6:56am
Subject: Spider
It's one of the films I've seen in recent years that reminded me "why
I got into this thing" (John Wayne, Rio Lobo). In a much lesser vein,
Mark Peploe pulled off a similar trick in Afraid of the Dark - a
nasty but not negligible "slasher" told from a child's viewpoint.
Cronenberg has been off his game lately, and I wonder if it wasn't
Ralph Fiennes' commitment to this project, which he developed and
brought to DC, that enabled him to be a player again. Emotion is just
the half of it - the uncanniness of some of the hallucinations (you
know the ones) is spine chilling. The film is also quite beautiful in
the stripped-down way that Dead Ringers was. I'm sorry to hear Amy
Taubin liked it.
815
From:
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 4:12am
Subject: Re: Cronenberg's Spider
In a message dated 7/31/03 2:39:18 AM, joka@e... writes:
>It didn't seem to go over all that well either with audiences or
>critics, but I felt that it had the strongest and purest level of
>compassion that I'd ever seen in a Cronenberg film. He (David
>Cronenberg) told me that he and Ralph Fiennes felt an intense
>commitment to bringing that character to life.
That certainly comes through in the finished film. There's just an
incredible sense of sympathy in the way this damaged life is portrayed. And it's
incredible not only in the context of Cronenberg's career, but I'd argue in the
context of modern cinema as a whole. I think this level of compassion is in no
small part achieved by Cronenberg's formal adherence to Spider's point-of-view
throughout the film. On the DVD, he talks about how a potentially more
naturalistic film gradually became increasingly expressionistic - expressive, that
is, of Spider's mind. The way Cronenberg utilizes space to isolate Spider in
the world is stunning, particularly that very first shot of the train pulling
in.
It's really heartening to see that the film has some admirers here. It seems
amazing that such a major film could be so relatively overlooked.
Bill's point about how Fiennes' enthusiasm for the material may have
stimulated Cronenberg after several projects of iffy quality is well taken. I was
actually just thinking about how several of the most distinctive auteur films
from 2002 did not originate with their directors. The other example I was
thinking of besides "Spider" was Lee's "25th Hour"; it's as if, upon reading
Benioff's screenplay and novel, Lee sprung into action and came up with one of his
best films.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
816
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 11:54am
Subject: Re: Cronenberg's Spider
> This also gives me the chance to wonder aloud if anyone else agrees that this
> is one of Cronenberg's very finest, most emotionally devastating films. I
> saw it once during its theatrical run earlier this year, but a re-viewing last
> night has me approaching Amy Taubin-level enthusiasm for this wonderful film.
> (Taubin placed it on her recent BFI Top 10 submission.)
I guess I have mixed feelings about the film, though I'd really like to
see it again sometime. I guess my biggest reservation has something to
do with the fact that our psychological fantasies of childhood bear a
great resemblance to storytelling cliches. By identifying the film so
much with Spider's family romance, Cronenberg and McGrath run the risk
of immersing us in an uncomplicated drama. And they were unwilling to
tip their hand by providing other perspectives - an understandable
decision on paper, but it didn't work out for me. - Dan
817
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 2:45pm
Subject: Spider ending (spoilers)
I really liked SPIDER, for reasons that have already been discussed
so far (here and elsewhere), but the ending of the movie is a
disappointment. As a friend of mine wrote, "It did with a
sledgehammer what the rest of the film did with a screwdriver."
Jaime
818
From: Yoel Meranda
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 3:13pm
Subject: Re: Cronenberg's Spider
ptonguette@a... wrote:
I think this level of compassion is in no
> small part achieved by Cronenberg's formal adherence to Spider's
point-of-view
> throughout the film. On the DVD, he talks about how a potentially
more
> naturalistic film gradually became increasingly expressionistic -
expressive, that
> is, of Spider's mind. The way Cronenberg utilizes space to isolate
Spider in
> the world is stunning, particularly that very first shot of the
train pulling
> in.
I think Cronenberg's Crash has its moments of beauty and the whole
film in general is visually interesting. I liked how he used cold and
metallic reds, blues and grays to create a texture that is both
intriguing and distancing at same time.
Unfortunately, I cannot say I found anything that was visually
interesting in his Spider. To me it seemed like the film was not
expressionistic at all and his only achievement was creating the
right atmosphere for the story to unfold.
It is possible that I missed something so, Peter, it would be great
if you can elaborate on what you mean by "the way Cronenberg
utilizes
space to isolate Spider in the world" because to me it seemed
like
Cronenberg didn't even know what "use of space" was. I
agree that the
first shot was interesting but the next shot he cut to
(unfortunately, i don't remember what it was) made me think he
had no
idea about what he was doing. And that happened a lot throughout the
film.
I should add that I liked the story a lot and was even moved by it. I
really identified with the character, so much so that I really wanted
to smoke cigarettes the way he does after the film (and I don't
even
smoke cigarettes). The whole "psychological game" the film
plays with
its audience is also interesting. However, these are all narrative
achievements, they have nothing expressive about them and they are
not enough to make me think it is a good film.
Yoel
819
From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 4:02pm
Subject: FAR FROM HEAVEN The women in 50s melodramas may have faced societal barriers
>
> I also think that Haynes terribly miscalculated the lead character.
> The women in 50s melodramas may have faced societal barriers, but
> they were nevertheless strong-willed and possessed an independent
> streak (look no farther than Jane Wyman in All That Heaven Allows).
> Haynes and Julianne Moore so overplay the ineffectual naiveté of the
> character that she comes across as a bit of a mental deficient and
> bears little relation to a real person. The impression I was left
> with is that Haynes does not have a very clear understanding of life
> in the Eisenhower era nor of popular culture from the period.
>
> -- Damien
>
One needs to remember something not apparent in FFH set up. Many of
the people of the fifties were experiencing a life style of convenience
and consumption beyond the imaginations of their childhood.
If you were 30-40 years old in 1950, means you were born 1910-1920, 10
yo between 1920-30, teenager 1930-1940, 20 yo between 1940-1950. You
experienced a lot of walking or bus riding (no cars), community
bathrooms or outdoor plumbing for some, no modern conveniences as well
as the background of the depression, war, nuclear bomb, etc. Many
people living the good life of the '50's must have thought they were in
a fantasy land! Who would want to burst the bubble?
Elizabeth
820
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 5:00pm
Subject: Actors and directors
I agree with Joseph K about 25th Day. Although I like the
Spikemeister's recent work better than anything of Cronenberg's
since Naked Lunch, films like He Got Game and Get on the Bus
are kind of schematic, whereas 25th Day was very rich
emotionally and made me start thinking about comparisons with
John Ford. God knows Ford didn't need smart actors bringing
him ideas for films, but I'll take films like 25th Day and Spider
anywhere I can find them.
821
From:
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 2:15pm
Subject: Re: Re: Cronenberg's Spider
In a message dated 7/31/03 11:16:59 AM, y-meranda@n... writes:
>It is possible that I missed something so, Peter, it would be great
>if you can elaborate on what you mean by "the way Cronenberg
>utilizes
>space to isolate Spider in the world" because to me it seemed
>like
>Cronenberg didn't even know what "use of space" was. I
>agree that the
>first shot was interesting but the next shot he cut to
>(unfortunately, i don't remember what it was) made me think he
>had no
>idea about what he was doing. And that happened a lot throughout the
>film.
Ask and ye shall receive...
Seriously, I think I had a slightly similar reaction when I first saw the
film. I loved it, but I don't know that Cronenberg's formal sophistication quite
hit home with me until a second viewing. In a lot of ways, what Cronenberg
does is quite simple: he literally has Spider standing alone in many
compositions. In all of the non-flashback sequences, almost anytime Spider is outside
in the streets of London, they're completely deserted. As basic as this might
seem, Cronenberg reports that it was a gradual development during the
shooting. Costumed extras would be on set and slowly he'd take one out, another out,
another out, and pretty soon the street or sidewalk would be empty. It is an
expressionistic move, I think, and very effective.
Another thing I loved in terms of the way Cronenberg used space was the way
he handled the flashback sequences, with Spider literally cowering in the
background of the action of the flashback. Sometimes Cronenberg does a
conventional cut to Spider looking on, but other times he simply allows him to hover, in
shallow focus, in the background. I think this has a gradual psychological
effect on the viewer which informs how we regard the "truthfulness" of the
flashbacks.
These are just a few examples of what impressed me on a mise en scene level
in "Spider." And I do love that opening shot and the balance of camera
choreography and blocking: the train rushing to camera, the camera rushing to the
train, the people exiting the train rushing past camera, and we are finally left
with Spider, completely alone.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
822
From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 6:44pm
Subject: Re: Actors and directors
For the record, 'twas Peter on the subject of THE 25TH DAY.
--
- Joe Kaufman
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
823
From:
Date: Thu Jul 31, 2003 8:48pm
Subject: Hello!/FFH question
All -
I just joined A Film By this week and I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Kevin
John (Bozelka). Sadly, I live in Milwaukee during summer. I've done film and
popular music criticism for various rags for almost ten years. I have a film
column called Continuity Error at http://neumu.net/continuity_error/. My top
ten list is at
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/top_tens/archive01.html#kevinjohn. I am finishing up my MA in Communications at McGill University in
Montréal and hope to start my PhD in film next year in the States. I'm sure my
tastes, obsessions and biases will come out in my posts so rather than list them
here, I'll just jump right in with a question.
I first saw Far From Heaven at a film festival last Sept. in Montréal and not
since until a screening on DVD a few days ago. I could have sworn that the
Miami vacation sequence started out much campier than it does on the DVD. I seem
to recall a quick cut from the New Haven home to Moore and Quaid turning
towards the camera with big, cheesy smiles in Miami. Does anyone recall a shot
like this when they saw it in the theatre? Or is the DVD that I saw somehow
deficient? Or is it my memory that's deficient?
Kevin
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
824
From: Fred Camper
Date: Fri Aug 1, 2003 1:23am
Subject: Member bios
A few have suggested that it might be nice to read member bios. I
certainly want to know what branch of mathematics our Ph. D. member
wrote his dissertation in. I've created a bios page in the "Files"
section. At the moment it has no bios. My formatting idea is to list all
the names of members who have bios at the top and set it up so that when
you click on a name you get to a bio future down the page. That does
seem to work on this test page.
I've been working on mine. It's over 1,000 words. Presumably no one will
be so logorrheic, but I think there should be no strict length limits,
nor should you feel like you have to spend a lot of time on it; 100
words or less is just fine. The page will support links. I've linked the
two test names I've put on the page to their own Web sites, but you can
also have links within the body of your bio.
You can also do italics and boldface. I think, though, that otherwise
the bios should all be in the same standard font size and color.
This is strictly optional, and if you haven't revealed your real name
here you can do a bio without using your full name. I don't imagine
everyone will want to do one. If you know html, send me your bio as an
html text with links and italic and boldface commands. If you don't,
just email me the bio with the links you want next to the words you want
to serve as the links, and learn the commands for italics and boldface
and put them in your text if you want any italics or boldface: to turn
words to italics use in front of the first one, and to end the
italic string; boldface is, not surprisingly, and .
If you have a Web site, you can put the bio there too, in flashing
colors and with some cosmic "2001" music if you like.
I'm accepting bios now, and will put mine up as soon as I get at least
one other one.
- Fred
825
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Aug 1, 2003 3:27am
Subject: Re: Hello!/FFH question
> I first saw Far From Heaven at a film festival last Sept. in Montréal and not
> since until a screening on DVD a few days ago. I could have sworn that the
> Miami vacation sequence started out much campier than it does on the DVD. I seem
> to recall a quick cut from the New Haven home to Moore and Quaid turning
> towards the camera with big, cheesy smiles in Miami. Does anyone recall a shot
> like this when they saw it in the theatre? Or is the DVD that I saw somehow
> deficient? Or is it my memory that's deficient?
Here's what I remember, from every time I've seen the film: when Quaid
and Moore are discussing the Miami trip in their living room, Quaid
makes a joke about the color pink, which is the only time in the film he
cracks wise about his sexual identity dilemma. Both he and Moore laugh,
and each of them is turned halfway toward the camera: we were looking
over their shoulders, but they turn to each other so that they laugh in
profile. Then, I believe, we go to Miami. But I think the early shots
of Miami are scenery shots of the resort and/or the pool, and I don't
think the cheesy-smile shot occurs in Miami. It sounds as if you're
fusing the pink-joke smile with the Miami sequence that it bridges to. - Dan
826
From: Yoel Meranda
Date: Fri Aug 1, 2003 0:24pm
Subject: Re: Cronenberg's Spider
Peter,
Thanks for your comments on Spider.
I saw some of what you mentioned while I was watching the film. I
personally feel that your comments still confirm that Cronenberg
really knows how to tell a story visually. The fact that Spider is
alone on the streets or the fact that he is out of focus on some of
the flashbacks are observations more about "the content" of the
images.
What I usually look for in films is a formal expression that has some
kind of relation to the content of the image. An example in North by
Northwest can tell more about what I mean than hundreds of pages of
theory:
The film starts in the city with strong verticals all over the place
(skyscrapers, humans, etc.), Cary Grant character being one of them,
so you feel he is a vertical line just like any other (as opposed to
being an individual). Of course the other verticals also serve to
protect him (the scene in the terminal is a good example) because
thanks to the crowd he is "lost" both for the cops and the
audience.
This goes on for the first half of the film. When he is left alone
defenseless in the fields, it's the first time in the film there are
no verticals. There is a very dominant horizontal line and only one
vertical line, that is Cary Grant. This change in the visual rhythm
makes you "feel" the loneliness of the character.
Obviously, I'm not saying this is the only way you can express
loneliness. But it is just a great example of what I look for in
films. The compositions in Spider make me "understand" that
he is
alone. Something like North by Northwest makes me feel it.
I saw his Crash three times and in all of them I found new things
about it. In the last viewing, I realized that the green grass he
uses at the last shot is the first time in the film that he uses a
non-metallic, "non-distancing" color, which was some kind of
redemption for my eyes. The story reflected that too, in the sense
that the characters were being true to themselves and each other for
the first time.
What do you think about his other films, about Existenz (that I
hated) for example?
Yoel
828
From: Jess Amortell
Date: Fri Aug 1, 2003 11:27pm
Subject: SAINT JOAN aspect ratio (revisited) (reposted)
There was a query a while back about the aspect ratio of Preminger's SAINT JOAN. We know it wasn't Scope, but what exactly was it? I was just looking at an old videotape of the film, and it's interesting that at the end of the featurette, we see Preminger and associates in a screening room (in England, not in Hollywood, presumably, for whatever that's worth). We see an actor looping a scene, and it looks like the film is being projected at good old Academy ratio. A bit later there's a shot of the film being screened -- now, this could have been shot anywhere, and I suppose the shooting angle could also have distorted the screen shape a bit, so it really proves nothing by itself; but for what it's worth, it seems like somewhere between 1:1.37 and 1.65. I measured it on my screen and calculated a ratio of approximately 1:1.45. What's certain is that it's much narrower than 1:1.85 (the ratio at which Criterion printed WRITTEN ON THE WIND from the same year, for example, if I
'm not mistaken), and it seems to be less than 1.65 as well.
I don't know if this offers any kind of clue to Preminger's preference, or just the facilities of the screening room they were using, or whatever, but it does seem like some sort of evidence, which could conceivably be usefully interpreted by someone better informed than I. (I realize that the ratio would have differed from theater to theater; for example there's a George Sidney interview about having to shoot KISS ME KATE -- in '53 -- with three different aspect ratios in mind. I'm only wondering if Preminger & co. would have conceived of a "correct" version, in this case and others.)
Near the beginning of the film, in the intricate 60-second shot of Widmark awakening, which Preminger weaves with characteristically sinuous camera movements throughout the royal chamber, Preminger actually seems to play with the frameline, "inscribing" an awareness of it into the film: As the camera pulls up and away from the bed, a kind of canopy slides down into the frame, and it looks at first like the frameline itself lowering. (At least it does on my TV, where it appears as a sort of dark oblong shape; the image on film might have more texture.) Then it seems to glide up out of sight again as the camera dollies back in. And I wonder how much of this business at the top would have been visible in a (masked) widescreen version such as was evidently shown at the Alliance Francaise -- although actually, from the amount of material missing at the sides of this videotape, I suspect it may itself be a masked print, but cropped at the sides, rather than a full-frame transfer.
If that makes any sense.
Anyway, my next question (to myself) is whether I want to watch the rest of the film (which I haven't seen in ages) in this form -- it'll probably be difficult to resist.
Need a new email address that people can remember
Check out the new EudoraMail at
http://www.eudoramail.com
831
From:
Date: Fri Aug 1, 2003 8:13pm
Subject: Re: Re: Cronenberg's Spider
Yoel,
Your example of the sort of formal expression Hitchcock utilizes in "North by
Northwest" is a great one. What's going on in "Spider" is surely less
subtle, though I still think quite sophisticated in that Cronenberg actually
utilizes space to tell his story; he doesn't set the camera down and let the
screenplay do it for him. The shots and editing are engaged in an interplay with the
writing which creates a very particular context in which the story is told.
Admittedly, it's not Hitchcock, but I did love it.
I like the early Cronenberg's very much, especially "Shivers" and
"Videodrome." "Dead Ringers" is perhaps his best film, pace "Spider." I think Zach
makes a case for some of the more recent stuff, including "eXistenZ," so perhaps I
should give the floor to him.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
832
From:
Date: Fri Aug 1, 2003 8:16pm
Subject: The Film Journal
Hello all,
I wanted to invite everyone to have a look at the latest issue of the
publication I write for, The Film Journal.
Among other things, it features an interview I did with one of Orson Welles'
closest friends during the last years of his life, Jim Steinmeyer, as well as
a whole assortment of provocative and insightful writing.
http://thefilmjournal.com/issue6/issue6current.html
(And - putting on my co-moderator hat here - if anyone ever has a piece
they've written which they want to bring to the group's attention, please feel free
to do so. Fred and I both encourage this.)
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
833
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 0:46am
Subject: Bios: all about us!
The first three bios are up in the "Bios" file in the files section.
I hope others will send me theirs; they are in no way required and I'd
expect not everyone will.
I just learned that after August 7 Yahoo! will no longer let us make the
files section public. Thus I have once again posted our "Statement of
Purpose" on my own Web site. But as for the bios, maybe it's a good
thing that they won't be publicly accessible after that date; perhaps
this will encourage some of us to write them who wouldn't otherwise do so.
Mine is very long. I'm kind of embarrassed by this but I wanted to tell
my story, or make my excuses, without cutting anything that seemed
essential. I hope no one feels obligated to read it!
The way the pages is constructed you can get to anyone's bio without
scrolling: All the bios are on one page but if you click on a name at
the top you'll get to that person's bio, and there are links at the end
of each that will take you back to the top of the page. If anyone has
comments on or objections to the format, let me know off-list.
I've been adding the italics tags to movie and book and in some cases
journal titles, so that these will appear in italics on the Web page,
and so it would be nice if bio writers would do it to save me time: just
type just before the text you want to have in italics and right
after. Thus you would type a movie title as Dog Star Man.
To signal that you want an em-dash -- those dashes that offset phrases,
rather than a hyphen, like the one I am using here -- please type space,
two small dashes, and space again, just as I have done.
Obviously please proofread and spell check. For paragraph breaks just
use the email standard of a double-space, unless you want to send me an
html page. Similarly, include any links alongside the words you want
them linked to
To one bio that referenced a post of mine, I turned that reference into
link to the post. If you refer to posts in our group, try to include the
url or at least the post number, which will make it easier for me to
link to those posts.
-- Fred
834
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 4:41am
Subject: Re: Cronenberg's Spider
Peter:
> I think Zach
> makes a case for some of the more recent stuff,
including "eXistenZ," so perhaps I
> should give the floor to him.
EXISTENZ is actually the only post-DEAD RINGERS Cronenberg I've seen,
unless parts of CRASH on cable (before I became interested in the
director) count. And I'd be happy to defend EXISTENZ if I could see
it again, but my memory of it is just shaky enough to discourage me
from trying (I saw it twice about three and a half years ago). I've
found an old review I wrote for my own pleasure on my hard drive, but
it's awful enough for me to roll my eyes and not even finish reading
it. So there's no way I'd post or rephrase it here. Suffice it to
say that I think EXISTENZ is a very strong film and have no reason to
think I wouldn't be positive toward it on another viewing.
--Zach
835
From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 5:58am
Subject: Re: SAINT JOAN aspect ratio (revisited)
Jess writes:
>There was a query a while back about the aspect ratio of Preminger's SAINT =
>JOAN. We know it wasn't Scope, but what exactly was it?
Looking at the question historically, it was shot (or at least
released) in '57 and made with a British crew. At that time, the UK
was in the midst of changing over from 1.37 to 1.66. However, it was
to be expected that in America the ratio would be 1.85. One has to
assume that Preminger and Périnal would have had that somewhere in
mind.
My personal opinion is that 1.85 often looks tight on '50s American
films, but is technically correct for almost all non-scope films.
As for the shortcomings of the tape in question, if it were me I'd
probably watch it, as who knows when a better option will appear?
--
- Joe Kaufman
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
836
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 7:01am
Subject: Re: Re: Cronenberg's Spider
> I like the early Cronenberg's very much, especially "Shivers" and
> "Videodrome." "Dead Ringers" is perhaps his best film, pace "Spider." I think Zach
> makes a case for some of the more recent stuff, including "eXistenZ," so perhaps I
> should give the floor to him.
I actually prefer early Cronenberg (SCANNERS and before) to later. I
must confess that I do not understand what everyone else in the world
sees in DEAD RINGERS, which I recently revisited - it seems to me very
flawed indeed. I do love NAKED LUNCH, though, which followed.
My take on Cronenberg is that he is not particularly inspired either
with visuals or with actors, but that he has a gift for telling stories
that fuse theme and plot in the most interesting ways, and an
intelligence about when to deploy naturalism to counterpoint fantasy.
SHIVERS, which is still something like the ultimate Cronenberg film, is
quite clumsy in almost every way but is nonetheless completely in
command of its bizarre narrative and where the audience is positioned
relative to it. THE BROOD was a high-water mark for me; after SCANNERS,
his craft improved (probably due to money), but he starts to lose me.
VIDEODROME is a very smart film in some ways (Cronenberg is his own best
dialogue writer), but the connect between plotting and subject matter
starts to slacken here.
- Dan
837
From: jaketwilson
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 7:29am
Subject: Intro/Oz directors
Hi all
Having just joined this group, I thought I'd introduce myself. My
name's Jake Wilson and I live in Melbourne, Australia. Since the
start of the year I've been one of the editors of a web journal which
a number of group members have contributed to, Senses of Cinema. Most
of my longer critical writings to date have been on Australian film,
and can be found at the site.
As an Australian and an auteurist, I'm constantly frustrated that
there seem to be so few real Australian auteurs (most candidates have
either disappeared after one or two films, or erased their
personalities in Hollywood). So I thought I'd ask the question: are
there any Australian born or based directors whose work strikes
others as consistently valuable/interesting? I'll fully understand if
the answer is 'no.'
JTW
838
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 3:01pm
Subject: Re: Intro/Oz directors
Welcome, Jake.
> So I thought I'd ask the question: are
> there any Australian born or based directors whose work strikes
> others as consistently valuable/interesting?
John Duigan - maybe not so consistent (WIDE SARGASSO SEA is awful)
but the handful of films I've seen by him evince a distinct
sensibility. He's decidedly unpuritanical, respectful of divergent
subjectivities, and yet can be critical toward even his most
sympathetic characters' behavior.
What a coincidence about your connection to Senses, Jake - I was
considering writing about LAWN DOGS (to me, one of the very best
American films of the Nineties) in particular for the upcoming
perversion issue.
--Zach
839
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 3:17pm
Subject: Re: Intro/Oz directors
> As an Australian and an auteurist, I'm constantly frustrated that
> there seem to be so few real Australian auteurs (most candidates have
> either disappeared after one or two films, or erased their
> personalities in Hollywood). So I thought I'd ask the question: are
> there any Australian born or based directors whose work strikes
> others as consistently valuable/interesting? I'll fully understand if
> the answer is 'no.'
Hi, Jake. Hope I don't accidentally name a New Zealand director....
There's George Miller, of course. I think his best film might be his
first (MAD MAX), but he's always done strong work. Wonder why he
doesn't shoot more often.
I think John Duigan is an underrated guy. Not all his films feel
distinctive, but he's got a long list of worthy films under his belt
now: of what I've seen, I like MOUTH TO MOUTH, WINTER OF OUR DREAMS,
FLIRTING, SIRENS, and LAWN DOGS.
There have been some incredibly good Australian films in recent years -
Andrew Dominik's CHOPPER and John Curran's PRAISE - that give me the
highest hopes for these directors. There are other directors whose work
I've liked but whom I've never been able to pursue: Richard Lowenstein
(DOGS IN SPACE), Gil Brealey (A TEST OF LOVE), Bob Ellis (WARM NIGHTS ON
A SLOW MOVING TRAIN), Rolf de Heer (THE QUIET ROOM). Of these,
Lowenstein intrigues me the most; I know his FELAFEL film is around, but
I haven't seen it. Elsie McCredie's recent STRANGE FITS OF PASSION
definitely showed promise. And what about that guy Noonan who directed
BABE? Was that all George Miller?
Richard Franklin had a checkered commercial career, but I thought that
his early film PATRICK was pretty solid. I've followed Carl Schultz a
little and haven't always been wowed, but I still think that CAREFUL, HE
MIGHT HEAR YOU is an excellent film - sort of what I wish Spielberg
films were like. I haven't given up on Ray Lawrence: BLISS is a good
film, and, unlike most critics, I thought LANTANA showed signs of good
direction. I'm not sure at all about Jim Sharman, but I remember
watching SHOCK TREATMENT and thinking that he might do a good film
someday. Has he done anything since?
Of the "erased their personalities in Hollywood" crew, I've always felt
that Bruce Beresford had a little something interesting going on. I
like TENDER MERCIES, DRIVING MISS DAISY, and MISTER JOHNSON.
Does Jane Campion count as Australian or New Zealander? I really don't
know what I think of her these days, but those early shorts are quite
powerful.
- Dan
840
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 3:57pm
Subject: Aussi auteurs
Addition to Dan's list - Paul Cox.
841
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 4:01pm
Subject: Re: Re: Intro/Oz Filmmakers
Well, I guess I want to first assert a preference for "filmmaker" over
"director" -- "filmmaker" can include both Hitchcock and Brakhage.
Though I'm pretty sure that neither would want to be included in any
group that also included the other, I do want to do so.
Thus I have rephrased this into a question that you didn't ask, about
Austrailian experimental or avant-garde film.
I have seen the late 60s or early 70s films of Albie Thoms, which I
didn't much like.
The Cantrills, publishers of the useful periodical "Cantrills
Filmnotes," are also filmmakers. I haven't seen that much of their work,
but the whole program I saw in the 70s was not very interesting --
"experimental" films in the narrow sense of the word, as experiments
rather than completed works, or so it seemed to me.
Recently I saw a program of new Australian digital video. My capsule
review is at
http://onfilm.chicagoreader.com/movies/capsules/23240_ANOTHER_PLANET_RECENT_AUSTRALIAN_DIGITAL_VIDEO_ECTOPLASMIC_BABY_FAT_PROVIDER_MARTINE_COROMPT
The works seemed for the most part disappointingly derivative of past
European and American avant-garde traditions, and looked as if the
makers hadn't even seen anything new in the last few decades. However
there was one very short piece that I liked very much.
There have been, in American architecture and music and literature,
moments at which a distinctive break with European traditions occurred
and a style uniquely suited to North America emerged: I think of Whitman
in poetry, Ives in music, Pollock in painting, and Brakhage in film,
though there are oodles of other, different examples. Australia has a
unique history and landscape, I'm sure, and there may well be great
filmmakers who are making use of that; I've just not seen their work.
As for Australian features, I've not seen that many but haven't found
any that seemed like works of real expression, and that includes one
that Dan likes, "Mad Max." Yuck.(And to someone who once accused me of a
one-line dismissal, I hope I've done myself one better with a one-word
dismissal here.) Cool hairdos, though I also wonder, with the dominance
of Hollywood, how easy it will be for an Australian commercial feature
to achieve something original, though I would imagine that might be more
possible on a much lower than average budget..
- Fred
842
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 4:52pm
Subject: Auteurism via THE EMBALMER, OHARU
Just saw an Italian feature last night, Garrone's THE EMBALMER, which
was beautifully directed and altogether successful. Garrone has a great
eye and uses the camera to create daring point-of-view shifts that can
be quite startling.
One thing that struck me is the contrast between this and the other new
film I've seen lately that I thought was well directed, Klapitch's
L'AUBERGE ESPAGNOLE. Especially in the first half-hour, Klapitch shows
great sensitivity to the subjective aspects of the lead character's
life, so that the film is transformed into an essay on how things are
experienced. It's pure direction and very impressive, and yet I don't
think of Klapitch's gift as primarily visual, where Garrone is
definitely a visual creature. The beauties of THE EMBALMER are
predominantly expressed through visual perspective and composition,
whereas Klapitch's flashier mise-en-scene is actually much more about
the distribution of emphasis, and about confidence in using whatever
means are available for self-expression. It's not an un-visual cinema,
yet you'd lose so much by describing it purely in visual terms.
The other thing that THE EMBALMER makes me think about is the
relationship of material to direction. I read the plot of THE EMBALMER
in more than one festival catalog and passed on it every time: it really
didn't look promising to me. If Hoberman hadn't made it sound good in
his recent review, I never would have given it a shot. When I saw the
film, the plot turned out to be not as lurid as it sounded from the
description in the ND/NF catalog. But it is pretty much unremarkable
and standard issue, the kind of plot that Chabrol sent up so wickedly in
his famous "Little Themes" Cahiers essay. Nothing about the film's
virtues can be perceived from a plot summary, and yet the film itself is
incisive and alert, and not at all familiar - if you're tuning into the
direction.
I don't think auteurists are the only filmgoers who go to movies and
come away with an experience that isn't at all suggested by the plot and
theme. But I think you probably aren't much of a director-oriented
viewer if films do not generally take on a life that has little to do
with what the films sound like in advance. In other words, I consider
it one of the tenets of auteurism that the viewer simply can't tell from
a plot description whether or not he or she will like the film, or what
kind of experience the film is going to offer. When I hear people
proclaim with confidence that they will or won't like a film just from
hearing the story, I suspect that they are not good auteurist material.
This is not to say, of course, that the story doesn't give clues
sometimes to the ambition of the project, or that most of us can afford
to ignore story when we decide what to go to.
I also revisited Mizoguchi's OHARU, my favorite of his films, the other
night. I find Mizoguchi's artistic personality a real riddle: I just
don't understand him. Like most other people, I'm just staggered by
those camera moves, by both their amazing delicacy and their equally
awe-inspiring scope. And there's extraordinary intelligence in where
the camera leaves us, in where the scene stops. It's not just where the
camera is, but how Mizoguchi orchestrates the universe in front of it,
where in the background he puts a small motion or a great far-away misty
object.
And then there's Mizoguchi the dramaturg and director of actors, and I
find this Mizoguchi generally to be blunt, manipulative, heavy-handed,
preachy, enamored of caricature, and more or less insensitive to human
complexity. I know this is a minority opinion, but the evidence seems
overwhelming to me.
The reason this is a riddle to me is that I do in fact consider visual
expression to be something in the service of a director's overall
sensibility, a subordinate rather than a dominant element. I guess I
can never be one of those auteurists who values form for its own sake -
even though form is how everything is expressed, I stubbornly cling to
the idea that the sensibility it expresses is not irrelevant. So, to
me, Mizoguchi is a weird contradiction: the visuals express a person, an
incredibly intricate and sensitive person, but the dramaturgy expresses
a different person that doesn't seem to fit with the first one.
I don't pretend to get this amazing artist, whom I can't dismiss despite
my huge problems with him. I tell the story primarily because recent
discussions here make me think that we might differ among ourselves
about whether form is subordinate to sensibility, or whether directorial
sensibility is created by form. I'd be in the former camp. - Dan
843
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 5:08pm
Subject: Mike's list
MMike,
Very interesting choices and self-analysis - it would be great if
others doing this included some kind of overview like you did.
Here are notes on two of your more off-beat "repeat listees":
1) I was aware that Edward L. Cahn had done very interesting 50s
horror and scifi films, but the titles you cite are new to me. You
should see Law and Order, his first feature, if you haven't - it's a
masterpiece! That's the mystery of Edward L. Cahn: What happened?
Researching him at the Academy, where there wasn't much in his file,
I learned that he trained as an editor at Nazimova's production
company and then literally bummed around Europe with John Huston -
there are interesting passages about Cahn in a biography of JH. Many
of the Rebel Highway remakers remade Cahns, although Joe Dante
(Runaway Daughters) asserts that that was just a coincidence. I'm
pasting in the part of our career interview that focused on Cahn's
Creature with the Atom Brain, which also inspired a song - I do most
of the talking in this part because I was trying to pin down the
mystery of some people's fascination with cheap 50s scifi/horror
films with Joe D, whose work is influenced by them.
2) On Lew Landers: a) His name is on the script of Detour as
director. He originally acquired the property with Ulmer and was set
to direct. b) I wish I could resee his last film, Terrified. It was
really good, I thought: both ahead of its time and outside of time.
Addendum re: Edward L. Cahn -
Creature with the Atom Brain
BK: Something I learned from talking to Orson Welles is that what
last is what matters, and this stuff seems to have lasted.
JD: That's a remarkable thing when you think about it. You see these
actors doing public appearances who are astounded that the movie they
are being asked about is the one where the guy had three heads. And
it really does have very little to do with quality; it has to do
ultimately with interest -- what people still find interesting vs.
what they don't find interesting. The major topical films of the day
where the topics are now passee or forgotten, which may have been
pioneering in their day, don't have the interest of a movie about a
guy coming out of a flying saucer in some kid's backyard: INVADERS
FROM MARS, which is certainly one of the most memorable movies I've
ever seen. I saw it in a theatre, and even though kids were
saying, "Look, there are balloons up there" or "Look, they've got
zippers up their backs," there was still something so psychologically
compelling about the dreamlike production design that it was really
quite remarkable how completely the remake failed, even though it
wasn't poorly made. But there was no way that that simple elemental
truth was going to come through in a big-budget version made so many
years later.
BK: Let me show you a scene from CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN. I bet
it's a scene you don't remember.
JD: A scene I don't remember? [On the wall of Joe Dante's office is
a poster for CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN with a copy-line that is re-
used verbatim in MATINEE: "Based on facts published in national
magazines."]
BK: (watching) This is presumably what people's homes looked like at
the time....
JD: It's the Columbia ranch. I've shot on that set many times.
[The scene begins outside the home of the hero, a forensic scientist
played by Richard Denny. The paperboy throws a paper on the porch of
Denny's house, and his wife -- played by a platinum blonde Angela
Stevens -- bends to pick it up, while the camera focuses on her
buttocks. Denny gets out of the car with a big grin on his face,
bounds up the steps and administers a whack. After some by-play
about her response ("I didn't know it was you!") they laughingly
embrace.
Inside the house, Stevens shows Denny a newspaper headline about the
murder case he's investigating -- DEAD MEN WALK THE CITY STREETS --
and asks him about it. He replies that he doesn't think there is any
immediate danger to their home. He tells his wife -- who resists the
idea at first -- not to let their daughter Jenny know what is going
on. As Denny is settling on the couch to sip a martini, Penny
appears and says she's going to watch tv; Mother replies that the tv
is broken. A knowing look appears on her husband's face.
Enter Uncle Dave, a fellow cop and family friend. After a remark
about how the only time his wife talks is when he wants to get some
sleep, Denny orders both wife and daughter out of the room. Dave
explains that the man who is directing the zombies is a deported
criminal who swore vengeance on the two men who have been killed.
Overhearing as she mixes a second martini, Stevens ventures: "But I
thought he was deported." Everything stops as the two men fix her
with a withering stare until she slinks away. After they leave to
check out the new lead, she shrugs, takes a sip of the untasted
martini, and chokes on it.]
JD: It's definitely indicative.
BK: I don't think it's critical....
JD: Critical of the society? Definitely not. Tom Weaver was at
Robert Clarke's house when Clarke was throwing out a lot of things
before moving -- he was about eighty. And one of the things Tom
found was a reel of 16mm film, a pilot for an unsold television
series called "Underground USA," starring Coleen Grey and Robert
Clarke. She plays a housewife who decides to become a counterspy.
It's not a comedy. It's a serious anti-communist show, and it's from
1959 -- it's late. And it is the most hilarious depiction of
suburban life -- it's like Lucy had decided to be a counterspy for
the FBI. When she's typing out her report on the kitchen table, a
communist comes to the door and she has to hide it. It's hilarious
in a way that things really aren't funny that much anymore. .
BK: So did part of the impact of CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN derive
from the fact that that sequence we just looked at was in the film,
regardless of whether one knew it was sexist at the time?
JD: Politics aside, just viscerally, seeing his home-life: He has a
wife, he has a kid, we can relate to them... There's a scary scene
with Uncle Dave who becomes one of those zombie guys and tears up
Penny's doll, and there's the juxtaposition of the dead and the
living. People who are living are in houses having drinks; dead
people are dead and they belong in graveyards. The two are oil and
water, but the dead are going to come and be in this house with this
little girl: That's really creepy. But if all it was was shots of
dead people breaking people's necks... Even though DAWN OF THE DEAD
is a repetitious movie, at least it has an interesting idea: "They
come here because this is where they came before."
BK: There's also something that relates to your use of the
word "surreal" to describe movies like CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN.
There is a bad school of Bunuel criticism that makes a fetish of the
dream sequence in LOS OLVIDADOS or the weird stuff in EL, while
staying away from long scenes at cocktail parties where distinguished
people make small talk, for example. I think that what they call
surreal, and what you were calling surreal -- unconscious material --
can't really have any impact if it isn't part of a larger whole that
includes our everyday conscious life.
JD: It's a touchstone. You can't go far afield unless you have a
place to come from.
BK: And where you come from is the conventions of everyday life, even
if they're shown in the ridiculous form we just saw.
JD: In that scene they're overly-conventional....
BK: But that means that when the guys with the stitches erupt, they
have something to erupt against -- and maybe they are in some way
symbolically connected to the fact that the little girl isn't allowed
to know about them, and that at the end she thinks Uncle Dave is
still alive somewhere sending her a new doll for her birthday. It's
another aspect of the film that wouldn't work if all you had was
really great zombies every four minutes.
JD: That simple connection that this picture makes in that way with
that little girl is beyond the ken of the kind of movies that are
made today, and this is the fucking CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN
we're talking about!
844
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 5:37pm
Subject: Aussies
Isn't Alex Proyas Australian? I liked Dark City - haven't seen Garage
Days yet.
Although I haven't seen the avant-garde work Fred is reviewing, I
agree with his overall remarks about one society being culturally in
thrall to another at the beginning. The first Australian films I saw
were deeply in thrall to England and America, particularly England,
and even a film like Fred Scheipsi's Chant of Jimmy Balcksmith was a
failure in the self-conscious way it tried to break out of that by
focusing on the aborigines as a symbol of "Australia-ness," when the
truth is that they have no relation to Australian society - I'm told,
at any rate, that they exist in their own world. (By the way, I kind
of liked Roxanne and Six Degrees of Separation.) The construction by
ex-Aussi Rupert Murdoch of big studios there will no doubt stimulate
more production and maybe a second New Wave that won't be as
derivative as the first. But Campion, Cox, Miller and Proyas - to
name the ones I've seen - are not negligible talents.
Fred, Miller has been uneven, possibly because Hollywood screwed with
him, but I do like the first Mad Max, Lorenzo's Oil and Babe in the
City, and there's always something interesting to look at - like the
costumes in Road Warrior. He's a social satirist who expresses
himself a lot through setting and costumes, and one of the few
filmmakers (with Edward L. Cahn) who makes films about clashes
between groups rather than between individuals.
Dan, I believe Miller is in production with a cartoon feature and a
live-action feature simultaneously. I think Mel Gibson is in the
feature.
845
From: Damien Bona
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 5:37pm
Subject: Re: Intro/Oz directors
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson" wrote:
So I thought I'd ask the question: are
> there any Australian born or based directors whose work strikes
> others as consistently valuable/interesting?
Although her output is a bit uneven (Charlotte Gray was a particular
disappointment), I greatly admire Gillian Armstrong. I think she's
masterful at conveying a great deal through small moments and
gestures, and she possesses a clear-eyed humanism and compassion that
are all too rare these days. For me, The Last Days of Chez Nous and
Little Women are two of the best films of the 90s.
846
From:
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 1:47pm
Subject: Re: Re: Intro/Oz directors
I don't think I have any new names to add to the mix here, but I will offer
big seconds to George Miller and Gillian Armstrong. I think Miller's best is
"Lorenzo's Oil"; it's as visually distinctive as any of his films, though
rooted in the real world. It's also a good case for why a filmmaker should >not<
study filmmaking; Miller is an MD. I don't know that "Lorenzo's" would have
been quite as powerful and immediate an experience had Miller not been able to
bring his experience and knowledge as a physician to the table.
I've not seen a whole lot of Armstrong's work, but I think "Little Women" is
very fine. Suffice it to say that I found Jonathan Rosenbaum's invocation of
"Ambersons" in his review completely appropriate.
I used to be a big Peter Weir fan, though my enthusiasm has been on the wane
for a few years. I like the early Aussie films, "Witness" and "Mosquito
Coast." I'm curious to see what he does to Patrick O'Brian this November.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
847
From: vincent lobrutto
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 6:50pm
Subject: By Way of Introduction
Hi everyone,
I want to thank Peter Tonguette for inviting me to join the group. My name is Vincent LoBrutto, but please call me Vinny. I am the author of Stanley Kubrick: A Biography, The Encylopedia of American Independent Filmmaking, Selected Takes: Film Editors on Editing, By Design: Interviews with Film Production Designers, Sound-On-Film: Interviews with Creators of Film Sound, Principal Photography: Interviews with Feature Film Cinematographers, and The Filmmaker's Guide to Production Design.
I teach editing, production design, and cinema studies in the Department of Film, Video, and Animation at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. where I am also a thesis advisor. I have written for Moviemaker, American Cinematographer and am the Associate Editor of CinemaEditor magazine..
Looking forward to good conversations.
Vinny
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
848
From:
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 7:13pm
Subject: B Movies
Lew Landers and Detour
>Lew Landers name is on the script for Detour as its original director.
Wow! Never had any idea of such a connection. Detour is much more noir like than Landers earlier work. Landers' characters often do wind up dropping through the cracks in society, just like the hero of Detour. They often emerge in strange places at the bottom of the social order. Landers' Twelve Crowded Hours (1939) was co-scripted by famous hard-boiled pulp writer Paul Cain / Peter Ruric, who also wrote Ulmer’s The Black Cat.
Edward L. Cahn
TCM had a brief tribute to Cahn from Robert Blake, who Cahn directed when Cahn worked on the Little Rascals. Blake described Cahn as being full of a tremendous gusto and love of life. The interview with Joe Dante is great. I’ve only seen Cahn's mystery work, never Law and Order, or any of his sf films. Any film with a newspaper headline reading DEAD MEN WALK THE CITY STREETS is probably one with a real sense of humor.
B Movies
In the early 1990's, American Movie Classics showed B movies from the RKO vaults by the bucketful. These included lots of George Archainbaud, Benjamin Stoloff, Ben Holmes, Lew Landers and early Richard Fleischer. TCM now has the rights to these, and re-shows some of them periodically. These movies are not Lang or Sternberg. But many are pleasant fun. Around two years ago, Edward L. Cahn was Director of the Month on TCM. He made an endless number of little B movies. Some are terrible, but some are quite nice. The Mystery Channel has been showing B mystery films by William Castle and George Sherman.
I do not really know much about B movies, because most are never shown. Arthur Lyons recent book about B movie film noir is full of over 100 titles, which are completely new to me. Most are not listed in other reference books on film noir. The handful of B movies listed on my web site are only the tip of the iceberg of a vast quantity of almost unknown films.
It is very hard to tell if these men are auteurs or not. It seemed better to record the good ones, and pass the info on to other cinephiles. These movies seemed great fun at the time to watch. IMHO, one is more likely to find an auteur in a movie that is entertaining, rather than one which is depressing.
In college took a classical music appreciation class. The distinguished professor who did the lectures told all of us, "Remember, few things in life will give you more pleasure than classical music." This is typical of the point of view in music and painting. They want works that give the viewer pleasure, deep aesthetic pleasure, delight in every way.
So if we can find movies that are fun, that give enjoyment, it is right to put them on the list!
849
From:
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 7:14pm
Subject: Australian Films
Peter Weir’s early films are very good, especially Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Year of Living Dangerously. Also really liked The Sum of Us (Kevin Dowling, Geoff Burton)
850
From: Joshua Rothkopf
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 8:37pm
Subject: Re: Intro/Oz directors
Dan, by way of response to Jake (and welcome, Jake!):
> Of the "erased their personalities in Hollywood" crew, I've always felt
> that Bruce Beresford had a little something interesting going on. I
> like TENDER MERCIES, DRIVING MISS DAISY, and MISTER JOHNSON.
Indeed. What that "little something" is would be hard for me to pin down, and the
mawkishness of some of his more recent work (esp. EVELYN) doesn't help his case.
But he does seem to be a politically engaged director, choosing overtly social projects
throughout much of his career, and "BREAKER" MORANT is much beloved --
justifiably, I'd say. In many ways, it strikes me as a tougher PATHS OF GLORY, in that
it works not only on the level of absurdity (finding "justice" under the pretext of
gentlemanly warfare) but the culpability of following orders a la Nuremberg.
Fred:
> As for Australian features, I've not seen that many but haven't found
> any that seemed like works of real expression, and that includes one
> that Dan likes, "Mad Max." Yuck.(And to someone who once accused me of a
> one-line dismissal, I hope I've done myself one better with a one-word
> dismissal here.)
You have! [Though before it goes to your head any further, let me clarify that I was
really referring to Damien's post (#683), which I purposefully echoed in terms of
language. Not yours. Anyway, you may want to re-read paragraph 4 of the Statement
of Purpose (heh). And Damien, thanks for taking the time to clarify your position.]
As is probably obvious, I second Dan and "hotlove666" on Miller, who is worthier than
one-word -- or one-sentence -- dismissals. To add to the arguments in his favor, I
see a intellectual's clarity of narrative and visual line (he went to medical school
before starting as a filmmaker), a capacity that translated even to Hollywood
assignments like WITCHES OF EASTWICK and his segment in the TWILIGHT ZONE film.
Along these lines, Miller's core theme could be argued to be relentless drive:
Sarandon's tireless pursuit of the cure in LORENZO'S OIL, Babe's determination to be a
sheepdog (against logic and species). Not for nothing, the next MAD MAX film is
called FURY ROAD.
Finally, a hearty welcome to Vinny. I read your Kubrick bio breathlessly and admire
the research that much have gone into it. Good show.
-joshua
851
From:
Date: Sat Aug 2, 2003 9:03pm
Subject: Down Under
Welcome, Jake and Vinny!
Does anyone know who directed the music video Down Under, based on the Men at Work song? It is one of my all-time favorite videos. It has a strange procession at the end which is poetic.
So far no one has mentioned the terrific Baz Luhrmann. The filming of his stage production of La Boheme (1993) has just been released on DVD. It was first shown here ten years ago on PBS - it is a wonderful version of the opera.
There is a lot about Jim Sharman in Patrick White's autobiography, Flaws in the Glass. I have never had a chance to see their collaboration, The Night the Prowler, but have read White's original short story.
Mike Grost
(in Michigan)
852
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 0:34am
Subject: Re: Re: Intro/Oz directors
Joshua Rothkopf wrote:
>Anyway, you may want to re-read paragraph 4 of the Statement
>of Purpose (heh).
>
I don't have to reread it; I wrote it. And it says right there in
paragraph 4, along with the stuff encouraging the giving of reasons,
that "Opinions without backup are fine, and can be useful...."
Anyway, your argument for "Mad Max" doesn't seem a whole lot my
substantial than my dismissal, screwed up by my sloppy typing, and which
I meant to read, "Yuck! Cool hairdos, though." I mean, I look for more
in a film than "clarity of narrative and visual line" -- I want a
"constructive" sense, a sense that the images are coming together to
make an expressive space. This is something that Sarris talks about, if
only briefly, in "The American Cinema" capsules, but that few other
critics address at all. "Mad Max" had mood and a nice story told with
"clarity" and "clear" images and great weirdos -- I mean, I did enjoy
it, mildly -- but seemed a cinematic zero. As did the other film you
mention that I've seen, "Breaker Morant." Yuck yuck. Of this I remember
mostly just green walls and boring static imagery. I remember thinking
it would have been better as a play -- and a play that one reads, not
that one sees. Admittedly, I saw it once, maybe I missed something,
maybe it's really Bressonian, and it sometimes takes me a while to "get"
a director -- though I did love my first Bresson.
I don't want to get into a big thing over films I've seen decades ago,
once only, and I have little more to offer about them anyway. Maybe I
was so pleased to see how polite our group has been that I wanted to at
least have a little bit of disagreement occasionally, especially after
Peter and Yoel seem to have resolved their differences so amicably. In
insisting on the "no-flame" provision for our group, was I trying to
protect myself from myself?
- Fred
853
From: Damien Bona
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 1:54am
Subject: Re: Auteurism via THE EMBALMER, OHARU
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> Just saw an Italian feature last night, Garrone's THE EMBALMER,
which
> was beautifully directed and altogether successful. Garrone has a
great
> eye and uses the camera to create daring point-of-view shifts that
can
> be quite startling.
Dan, I saw The Embalmer last week and, unfortunately, I'm nowhere
near as favorably disposed towards it as you.
I think the sexual tension that permeates the film is quite
intriguing for a while but it eventually becomes repetitious and a
dead end. I found that this is one of those movies that blurs the
line between ambiguity and murkiness, and while aiming for the former
ends up, instead, meandering into obfuscation. I guess what you saw
as point-of-view shifts, I saw as a lack of point-of-view.
I also saw Garrone's employment of his camera as rather haphazard. I
don't think he developed a cohesive visual scheme as a correlative to
his narrative and themes.
>In other words, I consider
> it one of the tenets of auteurism that the viewer simply can't tell
from
> a plot description whether or not he or she will like the film, or
what
> kind of experience the film is going to offer. When I hear people
> proclaim with confidence that they will or won't like a film just
from
> hearing the story, I suspect that they are not good auteurist
material.
I completely agree. Plot is the least interesting aspect of a film
(or novel or play) to me. That's not to say that some genres are not
more intrinsicly intriguing to me than others. But as a case in
point, I have no inherent interest in hospitals or the travails of
doctors and the people who assist them, yet The Disorderly Orderly is
one of my favorite pictures.
854
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 3:11am
Subject: Re: Intro/Oz directors
Fred Camper:
> I mean, I look for more in a film than "clarity of narrative and
> visual line" -- I want a "constructive" sense, a sense that the
> images are coming together to make an expressive space.
I think most people are like that - in circles such as these, at
least. Otherwise we would praise screen-savers and things. I would
like to hear Dan's thoughts on MAD MAX (as well as THE DUELLISTS -
that movie is class!), I am sure his attraction to that film, and
Josh's as well, is greater than: a story well-told with clear lines.
> This is something that Sarris talks about, if
> only briefly, in "The American Cinema" capsules, but that few other
> critics address at all.
I've found that, too. I don't want to sound like a Jonathan
Rosenbaum clone (although that wouldn't be so bad), but the work of
most critics, at least in the weeklies and the dailies, is
essentially marketing: evaluating a movie based on its performance
as a commodity. As if it was a video game, the critic writes about
how well it plays, etc. (And I have a strong belief that a bad
review is as much an advertisement for the movie as a good one.)
Aesthetics rarely enters into it.
Jaime
855
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 3:23am
Subject: Fantômas help?
So, I've had this Columbia Tristar/Gaumont box set of Feuillade's
FANTÔMAS for almost half a year, and I'm hesitant to watch the discs,
because I don't read French and running the intertitles through
Babelfish would interrupt the rhythm of the film (DVD) viewing.
Could someone give post some very brief plot synopses for the
episodes of FANTÔMAS? I have tried a Google search (first hit: Mr.
Grost's fine Feuillade page), and the results are mostly discussions
of the director and analyses of the work - themes, motifs, etc.
I suppose someone will say, "It's easy enough to follow the action,"
but I'm afraid I'm not that clever. A little helping hand (sil vous
plais)? The listed episodes are as follows:
"Fantômas, a l'ombre de la guillotine"
"Juve contre Fantômas"
"Le mort qui tue"
"Fantômas contre Fantômas"
"Le faux magistrat"
Thanks!
Jaime
856
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 4:17am
Subject: Vinny and Mike and George and Baz... and Rocky
Vinny,
Welcome. I'm writing a short piece on In Cold Blood this weekend, and
I'll be quoting Principal Photography because most of what's great
about the film is a result of the Hall-Brooks collaboration. The
anecdote about how they came up with the "teardrops" is a knockout!
Mike,
Wallace Stevens' long poem Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction is in three
parts - the third is called "It Must Give Pleasure."
I don't have tv, but Joseph K. told me about the Cahns on TCM. One of
these days...
B movies are hard to see - the real ones. I like an article by
Charles Tesson, the just-departed editor-in-chief of Cahiers, about
the economy and esthetics of Bs, where he deals with the rhetorical
figures we know and love, like the static all-in-one of a hotel room
with one character lying on the bed and another standing in the door.
One thinks of George Miller as a montage director, but the cruelest
two-shot in film history is the interminable one at the start of
Lorenzo's Oil where Sarandon and Nolte get the bad news. That film
stands apart from the other Millers in my mind - it's different in so
many ways from anything else he has done.
I second Baz Luhrman, our era's answer to George Sidney (but what was
the question?), and I'm happy to be reminded that the man who
directed The Rocky Horror Picture Show was Australian. Although in
that case Richard O'Brien is clearly the author, Sharman did a hell
of a job turning it into a movie. Anyone for a musical version of The
Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith?
857
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 4:22am
Subject: ...and Fantomas
I wish I had Jamie's problem - I've never seen Fantomas. I'll look to
see if Sadoul's book on Feuillade has a summary, but I can tell you
the people who saw Les Vampires at Lincoln Center in the 60s and fell
in love with it had to make do with no intertitles at all. Of course
we had better drugs then.
858
From: Tosh
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 4:57am
Subject: Re: ...and Fantomas
You are all lucky that you have a Louis Feuillade/Fantomas fantatic
on this list (Yours truly). Check out the website:
http://www.fantomas-lives.com/
Click on films and it will give out a synopsis of the films. Read it
first, and then watch the films. You'll have no problem following the
action and narrative. Like Les Vampires, it's a great film!
--
Tosh Berman
TamTam Books
http://www.tamtambooks.com
859
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 5:10am
Subject: Re: ...and Fantomas
Thank you Tosh, that's just what I'm looking for. A fine site!
Jaime
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Tosh wrote:
> You are all lucky that you have a Louis Feuillade/Fantomas fantatic
> on this list (Yours truly). Check out the website:
> http://www.fantomas-lives.com/
>
> Click on films and it will give out a synopsis of the films. Read
it
> first, and then watch the films. You'll have no problem following
the
> action and narrative. Like Les Vampires, it's a great film!
> --
> Tosh Berman
> TamTam Books
> http://www.tamtambooks.com
860
From: Tosh
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 5:20am
Subject: Re: ...and Fantomas
Among other things I am a publisher and I am hoping that one day I
can publish the Fantomas series. For the past couple of years I have
been collecting the original first editions in English - which took
awhile and great expense to me (although not that expensive).
Are there any plans to release Feuillade's Fantomas on DVD in the
U.S.? I am not sure how Les Vampires did on the market - but it's a
remarkable DVD.
You are very lucky to get a copy in DVD. One day I will get a
regional free machine.
--
Tosh Berman
TamTam Books
http://www.tamtambooks.com
861
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 5:45am
Subject: more re: Fantomas
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Tosh wrote:
> Are there any plans to release Feuillade's Fantomas on DVD in the
> U.S.?
Not that I know of, but "Juve contre Fantômas" is one of the Critics
Choice entries in this week's "Chicago Reader" movie section:
http://spacefinder.chicagoreader.com/movies/critic.html#24100
Rosenbaum seems to be tracking Feuillade's reputation in US
cinephilia, he's a big fan of FANTÔMAS, TIH-MINH, LES VAMPIRES and
the director in general. But news of any DVD releases of Feuillade's
work would circulate quickly among the sites I visit regularly.
To me, Feuillade is accessible in a way that helps me become more
interested in pre-1920 films, which has been a stumbling block for me
for some time. With Assayas's IRMA VEP and the LES VAMPIRES DVD, I
think general interest in Feuillade has enjoyed at least a small
advance in this country.
Jaime
862
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 5:57am
Subject: Re: Re: Intro/Oz directors
> I would
> like to hear Dan's thoughts on MAD MAX (as well as THE DUELLISTS -
> that movie is class!)
It's been a while, but here's something I wrote in 1983: "MAX's script
is so indirect that one is hard pressed to find a single familiar line
of dialogue...Director GM's unique visual style is characterized by
violent compositional oppositions that he arrives at by slow, deliberate
movement of camera and actors. By giving a small dramatic buildup to
nearly every shot and event, he has miraculously found a solution to the
problem of how to sustain stylistic overemphasis through an entire
film." Looking at this now, I feel as if the last sentence doesn't
really communicate very well. But I find this film highly contemplative
despite its Leone-like extremity of drama and composition.
And, since you asked, here's a somewhat vague appraisal of THE DUELLISTS
from 1984: "Though RS's visual talent is evident in ALIEN and BLADE
RUNNER, this 1978 film is the only project that has given free play to
his thoughtful, detached sensibility...THE DUELLISTS has an undeniable
pictorial beauty that has obscured not only the subtler assurance of
Scott's camera placement and framing but also the film's remarkable tone
of ironic introspection and its unpretentious gravity. Carradine and
Keitel's American speech patterns have bothered some viewers, but both
performances make up in universals what they give away in particulars."
These excerpts are from 150-word blurbs and are necessarily inadequate
as defenses. I ended the MAD MAX piece by saying, rather grandly,
"Someday MAD MAX should get the book-length study that its formal
complexity deserves." I was obviously a long way from Fred's thinking
that the film is a cinematic zero, though I'm not prepared to produce
that book on the spot. It alarms me sometimes how easy it is for all of
us to conceal our subjectivity behind imprecise proclamations of a
film's formal complexity or poverty. Perhaps it would be a good idea
for some of us to go into detail on particular scenes that we disagree
on: we might not convince each other, but maybe we could clarify our
differences.
I think MAD MAX helped me get a job once. When it came out in Los
Angeles in 1980, it was panned by the L.A. Times and left town very
quickly. I had just started writing as a stringer for the L.A. Reader,
and put MAX #1 on my 1980 ten-best list, which drew some good-natured
joshing from the paper's editors - I might be misremembering, but I
don't think any other L.A. critic was so generous to it. Myron Meisel,
the Reader's main critic, put it on his honorable mention list, I think.
Anyway, come 1982, THE ROAD WARRIOR became a big hit and drew a lot of
critical respect. The head editor complemented me on my having gotten
on the Miller bandwagon early - I think this helped establish my
credibility with them, and later that year I got the head critic job
when it opened up.
My #2 film for 1980 was Timothy Galfas' amazing B film SUNNYSIDE, and
I'm still waiting for the Galfas bandwagon to get rolling. - Dan
863
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 6:16am
Subject: Re: more re: Fantomas
> To me, Feuillade is accessible in a way that helps me become more
> interested in pre-1920 films, which has been a stumbling block for me
> for some time. With Assayas's IRMA VEP and the LES VAMPIRES DVD, I
> think general interest in Feuillade has enjoyed at least a small
> advance in this country.
It would be interesting to read (or write) something about the way that
the Bazin-Cahiers aesthetic hooks up with pre-Griffith cinema.
Feuillade is a good example of a director whose rep profited from the
Bazinian emphasis on the continuity of the visual field - which was
almost a necessity in some ways before Griffith's codification of
editing syntax took hold. (Note how Feuillade never goes in for a
closeup in FANTOMAS unless one of the characters takes a close look at
something - he didn't feel he had the option of getting close purely for
dramatic reasons.) Some Cahiers critics were pleased by the visual
integrity of pre-1915 cinema - I've sometimes wondered whether Rohmer
was thinking of the old style when he made films like L'AMI DE MON AMIE.
In some ways Griffith's work had to be undone in order for the next
wave of cinema to move forward from what Bazin called the "classical
perfection" of the late thirties. - Dan
864
From: Damien Bona
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 6:16am
Subject: Meisel/Galfas
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> Myron Meisel,
> the Reader's main critic, put it on his honorable mention list, I
think.
Dan, do you know what Meisel is up to these days? I've always
treasured him, as he has long been a serious voice extolling the
greatness of Blake Edwards (and he wrote the program notes for the
Edwards retro at the Museum of Modern Art in 1981).
>
> My #2 film for 1980 was Timothy Galfas' amazing B film SUNNYSIDE,
and
> I'm still waiting for the Galfas bandwagon to get rolling.<<
Sunnyside -- isn't that the Joey Travolta vehicle? Gee, I haven't
thought of that movie since laughing at the subway ads back in '79.
It's really that good?
865
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 6:24am
Subject: Re: Meisel/Galfas
> Dan, do you know what Meisel is up to these days?
I don't know, but maybe Bill or Joe does. I haven't seen Myron since I
left L.A. in 1992.
> Sunnyside -- isn't that the Joey Travolta vehicle? Gee, I haven't
> thought of that movie since laughing at the subway ads back in '79.
> It's really that good?
Well, no one but me thinks so. It starts a little shaky, for some
reason, but after 15 minutes or so it develops into this eerily
beautiful drama in the Preminger-Fleischer widescreen tradition. If you
ever see a video of it for sale or rental, please let me know! - Dan
866
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 6:52am
Subject: Query
I don't know, but maybe Bill or Joe does. I haven't seen Myron since
I
left L.A. in 1992.>
He's one of the people I was avoiding at that Dwan screening last
week.
867
From:
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 2:54am
Subject: Sunnyside
In a message dated 8/2/03 11:24:56 PM, sallitt@p... writes:
>Well, no one but me thinks so. It starts a little shaky, for some
>reason, but after 15 minutes or so it develops into this eerily
>beautiful drama in the Preminger-Fleischer widescreen tradition.
Wow! And I note from the IMDB that none other than Gary Graver was
cinematographer.
>If you
>ever see a video of it for sale or rental, please let me know!
Same here. The only Galfas that looks to be available on video is "Black
Fist." I've not seen it or, needless to say, any other film on his brief resume.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
868
From:
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 3:12am
Subject: Re: Re: Auteurism via THE EMBALMER, OHARU
In a message dated 8/2/03 6:54:53 PM, damienbona@y... writes:
>I completely agree. Plot is the least interesting aspect of a film
>(or novel or play) to me.
You know, I've thought about this a lot over the years and have recently
started to come to some tentative conclusions that at least work for me. What
interests and matters to me in film isn't the "what" as much as the "how." And
the "how" can be located in many different things. For me, as with Fred,
they're often visual: the space a director's images create. That isn't as
exclusionary as it sounds either, since a director's visual choices inform how we view
just about everything, as I detailed a bit in post 292.
I could never dismiss a film as not worth viewing based on reading about the
story line, particularly if it's by a director whose form I've responded to in
the past. Rick Curnutte coined the term "story reviewers" for critics who
seemingly review plot treatments and log lines instead of cinema. I think he's
absolutely right in that characterization.
That isn't to say that "story" isn't important in narrative cinema, but
rather that what's most important are, I might say, the way the stories are told
through sound, image, and so on: in what ways the filmmaker imprints his or her
personality. These ideas have led to a great deal of stereotyping of
auteurists - i.e., "Oh, you like anything by Hawks or Preminger!" Well, I think there
is some truth in that stereotype, at least as far as I'm concerned; I respond
to Hawks and Preminger and am highly likely to find interesting anything
where to which they have applied their vision of the world - regardless of whether
or not the plots they chose sound interesting on paper.
About Mizoguchi: coincidentally, Dan, I was thinking of having another look
at "Ugetsu" - one of my "official" favorite films - this weekend, so I'll be
much better equipped to respond to your post then.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
869
From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 8:22am
Subject: Re: Meisel/Galfas
> > Dan, do you know what Meisel is up to these days?
>
>I don't know, but maybe Bill or Joe does. I haven't seen Myron since I
>left L.A. in 1992.
I see him around quite a bit, but don't know what he's doing
professionally. Bill?
--
- Joe Kaufman
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
870
From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 8:25am
Subject: Re: Query
Bill:
>He's one of the people I was avoiding at that Dwan screening last
>week.
Who are the others? Are you at all friendly with Michael Wilson, or
is he on the list?
--
- Joe Kaufman
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
871
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 9:12am
Subject: Michael Wilson, Scorsese
Michael Wilson is an old film friend - for those who don't know him,
we're correspondents for long-standing rival French film magazines,
Cahiers and Positif. He has a couple of articles in the 50 Years of
Positif collection that was published recently here. I understand
that Michael has just finished a book on Tourneur that's being
published by the French Cinematheque - I lent him some tapes for it.
I thought he did a really good job on the Tourneur section in A
Filmmaker's Journey, which is entirely by him. In fact, between that
section of A Filmmaker's Journey and Kent Jones' article on Canyon
Passage, reprinted as the forward to Chris Fujiwara's Tourneur book,
which was ghost-written as Scorsese's contribution to a book Michael
and I did together composed of short essays by filmmakers, Scorsese
is becoming a major Tourneur critic! (So is John Carpenter, but he
does his interpretations on film: In the Mouth of Madness...)
Charles Tesson had an interesting comment on Gangs of New York. It's
one of those "films-about-film" interpretations: He says that
Amsterdam is Scorsese, and that Gangs is the story of a remake that
couldn't be made - Amsterdam's desire to remake the "film" he
witnessed as a child by regrouping the Rabbits, leading them in
battle against the other guys, and killing Butcher Bill the way
Butcher Bill killed his father. But his "mise en scene" is
interrupted by the ships firing on the draft rioters. It's not a bad
interpretation - I'm just throwing it out there for fans or near-fans
of that film.
872
From: Tosh
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 1:18pm
Subject: Re: more re: Fantomas
>Thanks Jamie for the link! I like Rosenbaum's commentary on 'Juve
>contre Fantomas.'
If anyone is interested, some years ago I wrote a brief essay on
Feuillade's 'Juve contre Fantomas' at
http://www.altx.com/interzones/kino2/fantomas.html
Cheers,
Tosh
>Not that I know of, but "Juve contre Fantômas" is one of the Critics
>Choice entries in this week's "Chicago Reader" movie section:
>
>http://spacefinder.chicagoreader.com/movies/critic.html#24100
>
>Rosenbaum seems to be tracking Feuillade's reputation in US
>cinephilia, he's a big fan of FANTÔMAS, TIH-MINH, LES VAMPIRES and
>the director in general. But news of any DVD releases of Feuillade's
>work would circulate quickly among the sites I visit regularly.
>
>To me, Feuillade is accessible in a way that helps me become more
>interested in pre-1920 films, which has been a stumbling block for me
>for some time. With Assayas's IRMA VEP and the LES VAMPIRES DVD, I
>think general interest in Feuillade has enjoyed at least a small
>advance in this country.
>
>Jaime
>
>
>
>To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
>a_film_by-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
--
Tosh Berman
TamTam Books
http://www.tamtambooks.com
873
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 2:07pm
Subject: Re: Sunnyside
> Same here. The only Galfas that looks to be available on video is "Black
> Fist." I've not seen it or, needless to say, any other film on his brief resume.
I wouldn't start with BLACK FIST. It's got some nice visual moments,
but they're stranded in a very messy film. Apparently it was supposed
to be part of a trilogy, and footage for the never-released last film in
the trilogy was used liberally to pad BLACK FIST out. I get the feeling
that there was a lot of producer interference, to put it mildly; one of
the producers is credited as co-director in the IMDb.
Not that anyone else in the world cares, but: I once got a letter from
the screenwriter of these films, telling me that the first part of this
trilogy (called either BOGARD or THE BLACK STREETFIGHTER), which was
altered significantly to get an R rating, apparently somehow survived in
its original form - he stumbled upon it in a dive theater in New
Orleans, with no publicity materials, but containing all the excised
footage. So there we have a Holy Grail for Galfas fans, if there were
any. I see from the IMDb that my screenwriter source died a few years
ago. Galfas, I believe, works as a still photographer; he was a
cinematographer on some big Hollywood productions, mostly after his
directing career ended.
To be honest, though, I've seen several Galfas films, including a few
TV-movies - some were interesting, but none came anywhere near SUNNYSIDE
for me. - Dan
874
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 4:48pm
Subject: Re: Down Under
> There is a lot about
> Jim Sharman in Patrick White's autobiography, Flaws in the Glass. I
> have never had a chance to see their collaboration, The Night the
> Prowler, but have read White's original short story. Mike Grost (in
> Michigan)
I've seen THE NIGHT, THE PROWLER, which one hears good things about from
time to time. It's not without interest, but I didn't love it.
Just to geek out, here are my ten favorite Australian films!
1. Mad Max (Miller)
2. Chopper (Dominik)
3. Praise (Curran)
4. Mouth to Mouth (Duigan)
5. Age of Consent (Powell)
6. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (Miller)
7. Sirens (Duigan)
8. Careful, He Might Hear You (Schultz)
9. Flirting (Duigan)
10. Dogs in Space (Lowenstein)
Maybe I missed some. Paul Cox is definitely a consensus favorite, but
he's never been my cup of tea. - Dan
875
From: Paul Fileri
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 5:51pm
Subject: Re: Intro/Oz directors
Dan wrote:
>I ended the MAD MAX piece by saying, rather grandly,
> "Someday MAD MAX should get the book-length study that its formal
> complexity deserves."
Then you might be interested in the fact that the newest book from
Adrian Martin, surely among the best film critics today, is on the
Mad Max movies. No American publisher (yet?), since it's one of the
first volumes in the Australian Screen Classics series. Truthfully,
I haven't looked at the book yet and I haven't seen any of the Mad
Max movies.
- Paul
876
From: Damien Bona
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 6:42pm
Subject: Re: Auteurism via THE EMBALMER, OHARU
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
>
> I could never dismiss a film as not worth viewing based on reading
about the
> story line, particularly if it's by a director whose form I've
responded to in
> the past.
I think the converse is true, as well. No matter how I may be
interested in a movie's subject matter, if the film is made by a
director who I know from past experience holds no currency for me, I
won't go near it. I love the O.K Corral legend, but I drew the line
when Lawrence Kasdan get ahold of it with "Wyatt Earp." And I'm
fascinated by the Spanish Civil War, but if Joel Schumacher should
ever decide to weave his particular magic on the subject, I'm not
about to witness the results.
877
From:
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 5:05pm
Subject: Re: Re: Auteurism via THE EMBALMER, OHARU
In a message dated 8/3/03 2:43:09 PM, damienbona@y... writes:
>No matter how I may be
>interested in a movie's subject matter, if the film is made by a
>director who I know from past experience holds no currency for me, I
>won't go near it.
Absolutely. Apart from some documentaries (like the recent Noam Chomsky
film, which is essentially a series of lectures strung together C-SPAN style), I
can't think of a fiction film that I've seen purely on the basis of its subject
matter, without thinking of the director or even not liking the director
based on past performance.
Of course, as Dan will remind us, there are instances when a fairly
uninteresting director suddenly - and often briefly - becomes engaging and expressive,
so it's probably important to occasionally see things - maybe even at random -
by directors we've marked as uninteresting. I believe Dan has used Daniel
Petrie as an example and, having just viewed on tape Petrie's film "Lifeguard,"
I can attest that he was definitely a worthwhile dude for a while; I haven't
seen any of his pre-"renaissance" work to compare it with though. That said, I
like to think I'm fairly good at pegging a sensibility which seems promising;
though I think he's still a ways away from being an auteurist fave, I stuck
with P.T. Anderson through a few - to my mind - pretty rocky and unstable films
which nonetheless were clearly the product of a distinctive filmmaker and he
did finally deliver a flat-out success with "Punch-Drunk Love."
But plots... when I hear a film's plot description, I usually think, "Yeah,
that could be interesting if made by a good filmmaker." I'm just pretty
neutral towards them on their own terms. When I was seeing films by Elaine May for
the first time, people would warn me off of "Ishtar" because it "sounds so
stupid" - presumably referring to the story (though probably mostly referring to
its "turkey" status). That may well be, but I'd respond by saying that I
doubt it is in the hands of Elaine May (and it wasn't).
What matters is what a filmmaker brings to the material in terms of form; and
form, as Dan often says, can be located in a million things - composition,
editing, sound, acting style - which have nothing to do with plot.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
878
From:
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 5:22pm
Subject: Year of the Dragon
Continuing my new look of Cimino's cinema, I recently re-watched my tape of
"Year of the Dragon." I'm not sure why I tended to dismiss this film in the
past; on this viewing, I found it an amazing film, full of insight into Cimino's
character and stunning from a visual standpoint.
I think Dave Kehr's Chicago Reader capsule (1) provides a generally useful
lens for looking at the film in that he acknowledges and values - as few critics
do - Cimino's masterly control of the frame. On those grounds alone, "Year
of the Dragon" deserves more recognition than it's ever been accorded. Cimino
is capable of compositions as fine as any in contemporary American cinema -
that silhouette of the Asian reporter against the NYC skyline after the love
scene is one of many images which stick in my mind. But there's also something
slightly unstable about Cimino's visual universe: an overpacked,
ready-to-spill-over quality - the dollies and crane shots are often a little shaky; a fly
on-the-wall zoom occasionally pops up, etc. It's an interesting dynamic.
But a lot of what Kehr (and other critics I respect) find problematic about
the film, I must say I have a lot of tolerance for because (as with so many
filmmakers) Cimino's excesses seem part and parcel with his virtues. For
example, Cimino's inclusion of no less than three funeral sequences. Excessive,
maybe, but so exquisitely realized and so totally related to his tragic/operatic
view of life that I can't bring myself to criticize him for it.
What's also interesting is the way that Cimino seems - for the first time -
fully aware of his own excesses and insatiable drive. I believe Bill mentioned
earlier that he views the film as Cimino's self-critique of the making of
"Heaven's Gate"; I think that interpretation makes complete sense. What's
Rourke's line midway through the picture - "I think I may be chasing ghosts"? I
think Cimino's talking about himself here and his relentless pursuit of his
concept of artistic perfection, at the cost of friendship, marriage, career, etc.
But there are many beautiful things in this film, from David Mansfield's
superb score (evocative of both "The Deer Hunter" and "Heaven's Gate") to what I
might call the optimistically unresolved nature of the ending which echoes that
of TDH - the sense that honor and integrity have a chance - and are virtues
in and of themselves - even when they exist in chaotic universes. I did not
find the Asian characters stereotyped (and I'm very sensitive about this sort of
thing) and the 'negativity' of their portrayals balanced by the presence of
the (sympathetic) reporter character.
So I'm curious about what other Cimino partisans think of this film. Having
viewed his Top 10 lists for my project, I know that Filipe has it on his 1985
list. I'd be very curious for his thoughts. And, of course, if anyone out
there hates this film, don't be shy about refuting everything I've just typed!
Peter
(1) http://onfilm.chicagoreader.com/movies/capsules/9586_YEAR_OF_THE_DRAGON
879
From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Aug 4, 2003 1:04am
Subject: Join us in chat if you like, August 5 at 9 PM
Due to an overwhelming torrent of popular requests (namely two of the
other people who requested chat the last time) we're going to try
another chat two days from now, Tuesday, August 5, at 9 PM Central Time,
or 10 PM Eastern, 8 PM Mountain, 7 PM Pacific, 6 PM Alaska, 5 PM Hawaii.
At a minimum Peter and I will be there. Since Peter claims to like some
films I don't maybe I'll try to give him a hard time. The message board
itself is no-flame but our statement of purpose doesn't say anything
about "chat."
- Fred
880
From: jaketwilson
Date: Mon Aug 4, 2003 2:10am
Subject: Re: Aussies
Fascinating to read everyone's Australian film picks. I do like
Campion and George Miller, and Proyas is interesting. I think
Campion's best films are her `Australian' ones (Sweetie and Holy
Smoke) though neither is unproblematic. Adrian Martin's book on the
Mad Max series is excellent, and includes some persuasive shot-by-
shot analysis of particular scenes. Bruce Beresford I'll have to look
at more closely (one of his early thrillers, Money Movers, is
marvellously economical, though I don't know if I'd call
it `Bressonian'). Weir is very `Spielbergian,' not totally a bad
thing in my book; his big theme seems to be the ambiguity of idealism
(the do-or-die spirit leading to slaughter in Gallipoli, Harrison
Ford cracking up in The Mosquito Coast, the pristine communities of
Witness and The Truman Show). I don't know enough about the
Australian avant-garde to play favorites overall but I like some of
the Cantrills' work. Powell's They're A Weird Mob is sensational
(haven't seen Age of Consent). Some quick recommendations of mine in
a low-key, semi-realist vein are Ray Argall (his Return Home is a
masterpiece), Ian Pringle, Leo Berkeley, Brian McKenzie and Bill
Mousoulis.
I don't think that the kind of 'break from tradition' that Fred talks
about has occurred in Australian cinema, but I think it has happened
in literature, above all in Patrick White (whose direct or indirect
influence is visible in Campion and many other Australian
filmmakers).
While I agree with hotlove666's overall point about Australian cinema
remaining dependent on Britain and America, in response to his
comments on The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith I'd say that
1) While indigenous groups are a tiny minority (1 to 2 percent) in
Australia, the past and present relationship between them and the
rest of the society is a major, unresolved issue which remains
central to any attempt to define or project a national identity.
Debates over massacres carried out by colonists, whether the
term `genocide' can appropriately be used, etc, are still being
fought very bitterly in the Australian media as well as dramatised in
films (e.g. De Heer's remarkable The Tracker).
2) Schepisi's film seems to be less about Aboriginal culture as such
than about white notions of Aboriginality, and the way that Jimmy
internalises these fantasy projections (acting out the role of the
subservient `good black,' then the inhuman killer). Given the double-
edged irony of this and its unsettling implications for a white
Australian audience, I'm not sure how far the Aboriginal characters
in the film can be said to serve as `symbols of Australianness'
(though it's true that the white characters are presented as failing
to become Australian in their attachment to British traditions and
ideals). Possibly this is a case where a film conveys one set of
meanings to its local audience, and another to international viewers,
who (understandably) take the film as `standing in' for its country
of origin.
I might try posting my list of top ten Australian films if I get
around to compiling one. In the meantime I'd love to see a longer
defense of Baz Luhrmann (or Paul Cox).
JTW
881
From: jaketwilson
Date: Mon Aug 4, 2003 2:25am
Subject: 'Content' in ISHTAR (was: Auteurism via THE EMBALMER)
> What matters is what a filmmaker brings to the material in terms of
form; and
> form, as Dan often says, can be located in a million things -
composition,
> editing, sound, acting style - which have nothing to do with plot.
Without arguing for the primacy of form over content or vice versa,
can form be said to exist aside from its purpose of presenting
the `content' of a movie in a compelling way? (Cf Ford Madox Ford's
dictum while collaborating with Joseph Conrad: `The first purpose of
style is to make work interesting. The second purpose of style is to
make work interesting…') Most of what I like about Ishtar has to do
with the exploitation/undercutting of Beatty and Hoffman's
personalities, a particular mixture of intimacy and cartoonishness
that reminds me somewhat of what Dan has said about the relation
between foreground and background in Hawks, the ambiguities around
role-playing and performance that recur in all May's films, the
moving treatment of friendship, betrayal, success and failure, and
the absurdist poignancy of tackling such themes in a film that
(deliberately?) pisses away most of its opportunities as a would-
be `spectacular' adventure comedy. All of this happens through and in
relation to the `plot,' rather than apart from or in spite of it.
I think it's vital to remember that form includes narrative form, and
that the art of cinema is, among other things, an art of storytelling
(one that shares many traditions and techniques with other narrative
arts like theatre, comic books and the novel). Obviously, this
doesn't mean that you can tell whether a film will be good or not
from a synopsis.
JTW
882
From:
Date: Sun Aug 3, 2003 11:58pm
Subject: Re: 'Content' in ISHTAR (was: Auteurism via THE EMBALMER)
In a message dated 8/3/03 7:26:39 PM, upworld1@h... writes:
>All of this happens through and in
>relation to the `plot,' rather than apart from or in spite of it.
Yes, absolutely: any great narrative film is going to involve a real
interplay between plot/story and form. I'd define form, really broadly, as the way
the director tells the story: this includes composition, camera movements,
editing, use of sound, but also acting style, choices about which things in the
story to emphasize or de-emphasize - all of which Dan has written about pretty
interestingly before. I'd actually put stuff like Hawks' stock characters in
the 'form' category because I always walk away from his films with the sense
that they've been overlaid onto the story rather than inherent in it. Anyway,
these things are meaningless unless they relate to 'content' of some kind (if
not plot, then characters and 'situations,' as we have to take into account some
of the more narratively ambling auteurs out there, i.e., Hawks, Altman, Tati,
etc.)
So I have no argument that form and content work in tandem. But I have to
say, though, that this stuff is hard for me to talk about >without< putting
primacy on form. To pull an example from my favorite film "Chimes at Midnight":
the basic situation of Hal betraying Falstaff is itself incredibly moving, but
what makes the moment in the film shatteringly great (in my opinion) has to do
with a hundred things that Welles did in realizing it: the choices of shots,
the volleying in the editing between high and low angles, the reading of the
lines, even in the choice to shoot in B&W. For me, that's the stuff that makes
the scene come alive.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
883
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Aug 4, 2003 5:36am
Subject: Re: Re: Aussies
> Powell's They're A Weird Mob is sensational
> (haven't seen Age of Consent).
And I haven't seen THEY'RE A WEIRD MOB - something to look forward to!
Good comments on the function of form, Jake - I'll try to pitch in when
I have more time. - Dan
884
From: filipefurtado
Date: Mon Aug 4, 2003 6:09am
Subject: Re: Year of the Dragon, form, content and storytelling
Hi,
Year of the dragon was the film that
converted me to Cimino’s cause after
the bad impression that Deer Hunter
left me a few years before (haven’t
seen it since). Peter, I agree with
most of your mail. Cimino’s excess is
essential to his filmmaking, he can be
restrained when he wants (and YOD has
some wonderful subtle moments), but is
through his excess that some of the
more important aspects of his
personality do find room in his films
(I guess no fan of Heaven’s Gate
thinks it would be improved if it was
a more controled, right?).
Year of the Dragon is a great case for
this, specially because nothing in the
material seems to ask for the sort of
big operatic and messy treatment that
Cimino brings to it, it’s actually
very easy to dismiss the film on the
basis that it would be better with a
more simpler clean and functional
direction. But it’s what is excessive
about it that I find very moving, it’s
as if Cimino (like Rourke’s character,
BTW) keep saying to us that he need to
do his things by his own way. Of
course like all Cimino’s film the
delicate play between Cimino’s
operatic side and his small more
private one is key to how the film
works, but in YOD, I’d say that his
excessive side interests me the most.
Also , I’d say it’s an
autobiographical portrait about him
making Heaven’s Gate, but I´m not sure
about it being a self-critique.
Jake, I’d say that form is never an
end in itself, it always will be tied
to the director’s personality and his
attitude toward what he show. I think
that’s important to make a difference
between content and plot, and I think
when we here discuss form and
aesthetic we aren’t excluding content.
I usually say that form includes
everything the director’s use to
create his film’s world and to put his
personality into it. I think we must
go back to the differences between
content and plot, I’d say that good
filmmakers always relate to their
material. Cinema is full of
technicians that have all the skills
but never manage to be more than
limited filmmakers, they may manage to
fool us for a while but at some moment
they will do something in a shot that
denounce them. So there’s must be some
relationship, but I think what’s being
argued is that this is not always
established in the more obvious ways
(a few months ago a friend wrote a
very good article on De Palma’s
Scarface about how in De Palma’s
bigger budget films the script tells
one story and the architecture tells
another that’s far more interesting).
I think cinema includes storytelling,
but storytelling does not include
cinema. Actually, one of my favorite
films, John Flynn’s Best Seller is one
I value mostly by how good it is as
storytelling, still I always suspect
that among more plot-obsessed
cinephiles this film would never be
very popular, because as smart as
Larry Cohen script often is and as
clean and functional as Flynn’s
direction is, Best Seller has a very
ordinary plot, so it wouyld be writing
off is a mundane genre film (by the
way, Flynn is a very underrated guy).
Now, I must make a utopian commentary,
based probably in my large amount of
free time, I do think we should try to
see almost everything. There’s many
filmmakers I truly dislike whose new
works I won’t miss. I do believe that
as someone with interest in
contemporary cinema, I can’t afford to
avoid certain films, that I should try
to seen both the good and the bad (but
I’m still far from one of my editors
who seem to be able to see 100% of the
commercially released films in São
Paulo, from bad German comedies to
Kangaroo Jack). I think the same goes
to old movies, obviously a Phil
Karlson retrospective is far more
interesting than let’s say a Henry
King one, but I’d still try to see
something in the King’s. Plot usually
didn’t mean anything to me when
choosing which films I’m going to see.
Actually when it comes to old films, I
usually go see them without the
knowledge of its plot.
Filipe
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885
From: Damien Bona
Date: Mon Aug 4, 2003 6:26am
Subject: Mad Max
I haven't seen them since they were first released, but the Mad Max
bored me into stupefication. And Mel Gibson's stubby little legs
should have negated him as an action hero.
886
From:
Date: Mon Aug 4, 2003 3:43am
Subject: Re: Re: Year of the Dragon, form, content and storytelling
In a message dated 8/3/03 11:09:55 PM, filipefurtado@u... writes:
>Year of the dragon was the film that
>converted me to Cimino’s cause after
>the bad impression that Deer Hunter
>left me a few years before (haven’t
>seen it since).
Very interesting, Filipe. TDH and HG were, for a long time, the only two
Ciminos I really cared for. But now that I'm making a systematic effort at
having a fresh look at his work, I imagine their status will change. I already
think YOTD is the equal of TDH, if not quite on the same sublime level as HG.
Have you seen any of Cimino's subsequent three films?
>(and YOD has
>some wonderful subtle moments)
The scenes between Rourke and his wife really impressed me along these lines.
And I continually point to De Niro's return home from Vietnam in "Deer
Hunter" as an example of how subtle and simple Cimino can be when the scene calls
for it. We talk a lot about how integral his excesses are to his vision, but
it's not as though that's >all< his films are, as you note.
>, but is
>through his excess that some of the
>more important aspects of his
>personality do find room in his films
>(I guess no fan of Heaven’s Gate
>thinks it would be improved if it was
>a more controled, right?).
I'm not even sure if a more controlled version is possible. I guess the
subsequent re-edits of the film (including a rumored 90 minute [?] version titled
"The Johnson County War") were attempts at this, but everything I've heard
leads me to believed they are more, not less, convoluted and incomprehensible
than anything Cimino's ever signed him name to. His excesses seems so completely
related to his personality - and, thus, his strengths as a filmmaker - that
it seems you can't really separate the two. That's a long way of saying that I
think the very excessiveness of HG is responsible for some of its most
sublime moments: Kristofferson and Huppert dancing in the hall may go on forever and
ever and why not?
>Year of the Dragon is a great case for
>this, specially because nothing in the
>material seems to ask for the sort of
>big operatic and messy treatment that
>Cimino brings to it, it’s actually
>very easy to dismiss the film on the
>basis that it would be better with a
>more simpler clean and functional
>direction.
Amusingly, Ebert writes somewhere that he doesn't understand why Cimino
doesn't make more "lean, controlled" (paraphrase) films like TDH and YOTD! I have
no idea what he's talking about, as I can think of a hundred ways in which
this film could be leaner and more controlled (and a lot less interesting, natch.)
>Also , I’d say it’s an
>autobiographical portrait about him
>making Heaven’s Gate, but I´m not sure
>about it being a self-critique.
Good point. With all his excesses and faults, I think Cimino >is< Rourke's
character here in so many ways and that YOTD is not an apology as much as a
kind of self-aware mission statement.
>I think
>that’s important to make a difference
>between content and plot, and I think
>when we here discuss form and
>aesthetic we aren’t excluding content.
Yes, I totally agree. I need to be more careful with my terms. The
"content" I refer to in my earlier post relates to things - stories,
characterizations, themes - inherent in a screenplay. But filmmaking "form" creates as much
content as any script, unquestionably, and it's usually the content which
interests me the most when I go to see a film by a director I like.
What Flynns would you recommend apart from "Best Seller." I'm sorry to say
that I've not seen any of his films.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
887
From: filipefurtado
Date: Mon Aug 4, 2003 3:26pm
Subject: Re: Re: Year of the Dragon, John Flynn
> Have you seen any of Cimino's subsequent three films?
Only The Desperate Hours, which a
think is very good, but it does suffer
from studio interference, I'd love to
see Cimino's cut.
>
>
> What Flynns would you recommend apart from "Best Seller." I'm sorry to say
> that I've not seen any of his films.
The two best are Best Seller and
Rolling Thunder (77). The Outfit (74)
inspired in the same Donald Westlake
novel of Boorman's Point Blank is
almost as good as that one (also it
has a really wonderful cast Robert
Duvall, Robert Ryan, Timothy Carey,
Joe Don Baker, Elisha Cook Jr, Jane
Greer...). Defiance (80) is also very
worth seeing. I know his first The
Seargent has its defenders. Avoid his
last theatrical feauture Out of
Justice, a by-the-numbers Steven
Seagal vehicle without much interest.
I unfortunately haven't see none of
his work in the last ten years all of
which went straight to cable. All
Flynn's best films are action films
dealing with violent alienated man set
against a confuse, trapping and even
more violent world, his framing is
precise and he's use of time usually
impressive (as is his playing with the
film's tone), also he is a first rate
director of actors, both Willian
Davane in Rolling Thunder and James
Woods in Best Seller never being better.
>
> Peter
>
> http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> a_film_by-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>
---
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888
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Aug 4, 2003 3:33pm
Subject: John Flynn
>>What Flynns would you recommend apart from "Best Seller." I'm sorry to say
>>that I've not seen any of his films.
> All
> Flynn's best films are action films
> dealing with violent alienated man set
> against a confuse, trapping and even
> more violent world, his framing is
> precise and he's use of time usually
> impressive (as is his playing with the
> film's tone), also he is a first rate
> director of actors, both Willian
> Davane in Rolling Thunder and James
> Woods in Best Seller never being better.
I've seen only two Flynn films, but they were both worthy. I'd actually
put in a good word for TOUCHED, a potentially maudlin love story
(between two mentally disabled adults) that was surprisingly intelligent
and effective. Robert Hays and Kathleen Beller were both quite good,
and one cannot always say this of Beller.
BEST SELLER is also good, though Cohen is such a powerful screenwriter
that I was never sure how to categorize Flynn's contribution. - Dan
889
From: George Robinson
Date: Mon Aug 4, 2003 3:52pm
Subject: Re: John Flynn
Interesting to see Flynn discussed. I thought I was the only Flynn fan on the planet; I should have known better. As my friend Ira always says, for every movie there's an audience somewhere, however small.
I first discovered him with The Jerusalem File which looked to me like a rare intelligent American film about the Middle East way back in the 1970s; I have no idea how it would hold up. On the other hand, The Outfit, based on the second (or third) Richard Stark novel in the series that gave us Point Blank (and the execrable remake with the odious Mel Gibson), is a little gem. It's also a lovely homage to the classic films noir, with bit parts by everyone from Jane Greer to Emile Meyer. Very crisp narrative with a nice attention to detail. Rolling Thunder is okay, too, if rather over the top. I haven't gotten around to seeing Best Seller and don't know Touched.
George Robinson
Alas, where is human nature so
weak as in a bookstore?
-Henry Ward Beecher
----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Sallitt
To: a_film_by@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 11:33 AM
Subject: [a_film_by] John Flynn
>>What Flynns would you recommend apart from "Best Seller." I'm sorry to say
>>that I've not seen any of his films.
> All
> Flynn's best films are action films
> dealing with violent alienated man set
> against a confuse, trapping and even
> more violent world, his framing is
> precise and he's use of time usually
> impressive (as is his playing with the
> film's tone), also he is a first rate
> director of actors, both Willian
> Davane in Rolling Thunder and James
> Woods in Best Seller never being better.
I've seen only two Flynn films, but they were both worthy. I'd actually
put in a good word for TOUCHED, a potentially maudlin love story
(between two mentally disabled adults) that was surprisingly intelligent
and effective. Robert Hays and Kathleen Beller were both quite good,
and one cannot always say this of Beller.
BEST SELLER is also good, though Cohen is such a powerful screenwriter
that I was never sure how to categorize Flynn's contribution. - Dan
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890
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Mon Aug 4, 2003 4:26pm
Subject: Re: Auteurism via THE EMBALMER, OHARU
Dan:
> The other thing that THE EMBALMER makes me think about is the
> relationship of material to direction. I read the plot of THE
> EMBALMER in more than one festival catalog and passed on it every
> time: it really didn't look promising to me. If Hoberman hadn't
> made it sound good in his recent review, I never would have given
> it a shot. ... Nothing about the film's virtues can be perceived
> from a plot summary, and yet the film itself is incisive and alert,
> and not at all familiar - if you're tuning into the direction.
And it's precisely this quality of direction, this communication of
sensibility, that gives auteurism its role of categorization and
classification. Genre discourse has its merits, and star theory too,
but those are rarely able to adequately describe the nature of a work
in question. "A Western" or "a John Wayne Western" will give one a
few ideas about what a film is probably like, but "a John Ford
Western" will be much more definite.
> The reason this is a riddle to me is that I do in fact consider
> visual expression to be something in the service of a director's
> overall sensibility, a subordinate rather than a dominant element.
> I guess I can never be one of those auteurists who values form for
> its own sake - even though form is how everything is expressed, I
> stubbornly cling to the idea that the sensibility it expresses is
> not irrelevant.
Maybe we need a more nuanced vocabulary, because depending on the
ways in which we couch the question, I'm falling on different sides.
In one way, sensibility dictates form: it's the thing (probably
rarely conscious) that drives an artist to make the choices that make
his or her work distinctive. And we can see form as the way the
viewer can find his or her way "back" into the artist's overall
sensibility. So form is the means of communication between artistic
sensibility (I hesitate to say "the artist") and the viewer.
But form can offer an impersonal experience, a new method of
perception, to a viewer that takes him or her outside into otherness:
the sensibility providing this is irrelevant in this optic, and what
is important about art becomes the very fact that form allows us to
leave ourselves and enter the void with other people.
It seems as if both of these methods are primarily about
communication and even communion (icy grip of Catholicism still
present on auteurism!), except we can call the first one "personal"
and the second one "impersonal." If these premises are agreeable,
where do we go from there?
***
For your case with Mizoguchi, Dan, the best explanation I can think
of would be simply that he's got a complex artistic personality (a
good thing) and has much talent, but something in his construction as
an expressive being can keep him from presenting and unifying the
contradictory aspects of his persona meaningfully. All you have to
do is cite similarly contradictory directors who more consistently
channel their complexities into coherent visions in your opinion.
--Zach
891
From:
Date: Mon Aug 4, 2003 6:45pm
Subject: Trees of Filmmakers
Just posted a little article dealing with Trees of Filmmakers.
It needed HTML, as you will see if you visit the article at:
(http://members.aol.com/MG4273/zclad.htm).
Any feedback or discussion from members of a_film_by would be greatly
appreciated.
This article is a DRAFT, intended to stimulate discussion.
Just saw They Rode West (Phil Karlson, 1954). This is a fine Western. It has
strong thematic ties with Hell to Eternity (Karlson, 1960).
Mike Grost
892
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Aug 4, 2003 10:53pm
Subject: Re: Trees of Filmmakers
> Just saw They Rode West (Phil Karlson, 1954). This is a fine Western.
Yes, I like this film too. Ever seen GUNMAN'S WALK? It's even more
striking, I'd say. - Dan
893
From: David Westling
Date: Mon Aug 4, 2003 11:49pm
Subject: Re: Trees of filmmakers
> (http://members.aol.com/MG4273/zclad.htm).
Dear Mike,
From my machine it looks like the rejection I experienced that I spoke of a
week or so ago is occurring because of your inclusion of the last ).
within the linkmaker. It tried typing it in manually ending with "htm" and
it worked, which it didn't when I clicked on the link.
David Westling
894
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Aug 5, 2003 3:24am
Subject: Tree amendment
How does Tourneur-Hawks sound? JT greatly admired HH.
Harold Bloom's last book is a tree of Genius (the title). No
filmmakers, but I'm happy to say that there's a good review of Chimes
at Midnight buried in his last short book, Hamlet: The Poem
Unlimited, where he notes that Welles entertained the happy fantasy
that Hamlet didn't die, but returned to England and aged into
Falstaff.
If we're going to pursue a cult of cinematic personality, which in
Bloom's case turned into a theory of influence and eventually trees
like Mike's, we need to leave room for Bloom's new personality cult:
characters. Like Falstaff...
895
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Tue Aug 5, 2003 4:36am
Subject: Re: Auteurism via THE EMBALMER, OHARU
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
> I also revisited Mizoguchi's OHARU, my favorite of his films, the other
> night. I find Mizoguchi's artistic personality a real riddle: I just
> don't understand him. Like most other people, I'm just staggered by
> those camera moves, by both their amazing delicacy and their equally
> awe-inspiring scope. And there's extraordinary intelligence in where
> the camera leaves us, in where the scene stops. It's not just where the
> camera is, but how Mizoguchi orchestrates the universe in front of it,
> where in the background he puts a small motion or a great far-away misty
> object.
>
> And then there's Mizoguchi the dramaturg and director of actors, and I
> find this Mizoguchi generally to be blunt, manipulative, heavy-handed,
> preachy, enamored of caricature, and more or less insensitive to human
> complexity. I know this is a minority opinion, but the evidence seems
> overwhelming to me.
I'd seen it once or twice before, but felt I really only began to see it yesterday. The mise en scene and dramaturgy seemed inseparable! (the action is as if choreographed for the space of the film frame) -- I almost don't know if I could tell them apart.
The film is surely Brecht-like to a degree, and glancing at Tag Gallagher's Mizoguchi article at
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr1201/tgfr13b.htm
I see he picks up on this:
(for example) "... Mizoguchi's actors usually have a commedia dell'arte side to them, a Pirandellian awareness of playing, and of playing within a stock role. Thus the theme of artifice. ... Evil is systemic in Mizoguchi, not individual: we have not 'awakened' yet. Thus the actors seem to be speaking to us, not just to each other, and are not afraid to be hammy ... playing to us, telling us - like commedia, Brecht and Chaplin - that social constructs are persecutive rather than preserving. ... It seems like a Brechtian joke, in The life of Oharu, when someone is arrested for counterfeiting in this geisha-like world where every relationship is counterfeited and the only authentic emotion is fear. ... Villains are as extravagant as the heroes, seeming far beyond redemption, creatures of melodrama and commedia, if not Punch and Judy. And yet only a few days before liberating the slaves, Zushio was such a brutish cog himself, branding an old man with hot irons, pitilessly. ...
Performance styles that are more self-doubting, more 'Brechtian', better signal the artifice of social repression, and the primacy of deed over personality. Mizoguchi's interest is less in the individual than in the design containing the individual, the design which both defines and restrains, from which there is always the danger that the individual will burst out, and do cosmic violence to the design. ..."
Speaking of filmmakers' trees, has a link between the circular flashback structures of OHARU and LOLA MONTES been established? Maybe I'm overlooking a common source in Sternberg.
896
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Aug 5, 2003 7:25pm
Subject: Earth to Damien (and others might want to read)
Yahoo! has apparently temporarily deactivated your account because
your emails have bounced back. Apparently your Yahoo! mailbox has
reached its limit. This happened to me once, due to my hosting
companuy's over-aggressive spam filtering, and it took me a liittle
while to figure it out. More info is below, and this is an alert to
other members to, to be aware that this could happen.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender
Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2003 12:15:54 -0700
From: Mail Delivery System
To: f@f...
Dear Damien,
You seem to have disappeared from our members' list. That happened to me
once, after a few emails to me bounced back to Yahoo! probably because
of my host company's anti-spam filtering.
Somewhere in Yahoo! help there's a way for your to fix this, but I can't
remember exactly what it is. The page at
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/groups/members/members-17.html. This gives
me a way to reactivate you but only if your email is working., You may
need to give Yahoo! a different email address to be safe.
When you figure out how to reactivate yourself, please let me know, as
I'm sure this will come up again.....
Fred
897
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Aug 5, 2003 7:53pm
Subject: The Forest and the Trees
Mike,
I think your tree article is very exciting - it will provoke a lot of
fruitful debates. I see a day when auteurists will be as interested
in tracing trees as in making best lists!
Your point about national cinemas concealing affiliations is very
well taken. Ozu admired Wyler and Hawks, for example.
One of the things I learned from Bloom, who was teaching
Romanticism thru "ancestor poems" when I took my first of many
courses from him, is that parents and siblings in the arts are as
conflictual as in life. In other words, a filmmaker may be so
overwhelmed by another's influence that he reacts against it,
doing something that looks very different. In crude terms, he has
to kill the father to become himself.
So I believe that your trees based on similarities will also yield
surprises when you start looking at the Oedipal dimensions of
all this. I'm doing a piece on Horror of Dracula, which has
brought me to posit a dialectic in Terence Fisher's best work
between a director he obviously loved and one he never talked
about - for good reason:
Fisher/Borzage (oft-stated admiration), Fisher/Welles (never
mentioned)
Fisher's use of space is a brilliant extension of Welles'
deep-space experiments, but he wanted to make films like
Borzage, and I think it all came together for him when he realized
that Lee's Dracula was a Borzage hero (telepathic contact with
the love object, ambiguous like Farrell at the end of Street Angel,
where he is stopped from killing Janet Gaynor by the intervention
of sacred symbols, etc.), but seen from the outside. The
Wellesian side of Fisher could then begin to find full expression
(cf. the first dolly/dissolve to the crypt, the owl screech, the ashes
blowing away at the end), which really happened in the
post-Horror of Dracula Frankenstein films.
Here's another one:
Ford/Griffith, Ford/Murnau - Which one was such a powerful
father that his influence risked crippling Ford, and which one
enabled him to "make it new" and escape that plight? Douchet
said that after Ford discovered Murnau, he gave Griffith's cinema
an unconscious.
898
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Aug 5, 2003 7:54pm
Subject: Re: How to do urls (was: Trees)
In our group, and on some other message boards, a character typed right
after the final character in the url will for some reason get included
in the link, at least in some cases, causing the link to not work. For
example, this perfectly good link
http://www.gwbush.com/
will not function if you write,
I like this link: http://www.gwbush.com/.
So, keep that in mind, all!
David Westling wrote:
>>(http://members.aol.com/MG4273/zclad.htm).
>>
>>
>
>Dear Mike,
>>From my machine it looks like the rejection I experienced that I spoke of a
>week or so ago is occurring because of your inclusion of the last ).
>within the linkmaker.
>
899
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Aug 5, 2003 8:00pm
Subject: Re: How to do urls (was: Trees)
Well, at least for me both versions of gwbush.com did work on the Web
site. They will also work in most email programs. But I know final
characters have caused links not to work here in the past, so my
suggestion is to leave a speace after the last charcter in a link, and
if a link doesn't work, look for a bogus final characters.
- Fred
900
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Aug 5, 2003 9:25pm
Subject: Re: Re: Auteurism via THE EMBALMER, OHARU
Getting caught up with posts of the last few days:
Peter (Post 868):
'"Oh, you like anything by Hawks or Preminger!" Well, I think there is
some truth in that stereotype, at least as far as I'm concerned..."
Well, not as far as I'm concerned. I've already cited "Trent's Last
Case" as a virtually worthless Hawks, and to that someone else suggested
a few of his silents, which brought back my not particularly happy
memories of "Fazil." Of Preminger, while I think most everything is
great, I didn't get much out of "Rosebud" on my one viewing. Minnelli
fans are advised to seek out "Kismet" (or not, if you only like good
films). And I've seen Ford's "When Willie Comes Marching Home" twice,
though once on TV and once in 16mm, and thought it worthless; the same
with Sirk's "Thunder on the Hill." And this can't just be a case of
assignments of from the evil studio bosses, because there are Brakhage
films from his mature period that I don't like at all: "The Women," "The
Stars Are Beautiful" (which is actually on the DVD), and "Confession,"
to name three.
Bill Krohn (871):
"Charles Tesson had an interesting comment on Gangs of New York. It's
one of those "films-about-film" interpretations: He says that Amsterdam
is Scorsese, and that Gangs is the story of a remake that couldn't be
made - Amsterdam's desire to remake the "film" he witnessed as a child
by regrouping the Rabbits, leading them in battle against the other
guys, and killing Butcher Bill the way Butcher Bill killed his father.
But his "mise en scene" is interrupted by the ships firing on the draft
rioters. It's not a bad interpretation - I'm just throwing it out there
for fans or near-fans of that film."
I quote this here because it is in a way relevant. I should perhaps
mention a certain bias: I really disliked this film. But my real point
is that while Tesson may be right, and his insight may be useful, and
I'm glad Bill posted it, and it could even be that someone who didn't
like the film could get some sort of "in" to it on a subsequent viewing
from this insight, still, what Tesson actually says is in no way an
argument for what I would label the film succeeding as cinema, which
others might call "succeeding on a formal level." You can call it an
interpretation, or just an interpretive plot synopsis, but if you agree
that a good film proceeds from form and is not merely an evocative
expression of a director's "sensibility," then Tesson has not presented
an argument for the film being any good.
JTW (881):
"...the art of cinema is, among other things, an art of storytelling..."
Well, some examples of cinema depend in part on the art of storytelling.
Other examples of cinema art tell stories but their artfulness doesn't
have all that much to do with the way the stories are told (if one just
talks about script and acting and pacing as examples of that, not
composition and camera movement). Other examples of cinema art tell no
stories. These are often called "experimental" or "avant-garde" films,
though some of such films *do* tell stories. But in the way it's being
used here, I don't think Kubelka's "Arnulf Rainer," or Brakhage's
"Arabics," or Breer's "69," or Frampton's "Summer Equinox," or Gehr's
"Table," are storytelling films.
It has pleased me to see that in recent years, even on discussion groups
dedicated to "filmed entertainment" rather than "film art," there is not
the near-universal degree of hostility to such works that there once
was. But I would also contend that accounting for such works is
absolutely fundamental to understanding what film art is, and that
appreciating such works can be a great help in seeing the more
"abstract" level of great narrative films -- helping one see past the
mix of effective mood evocation, expressive acting, good storytelling,
and evocative subject that can be found in films that don't really
succeed as works of art but that many would actually defend (and a few
of which I quite like). Really "getting" Brakhage helps me see Hawks
better, much more than really "getting" Hawks helps me see Brakhage better.
One reason for this, I believe, is that a lot of auteurists get "fooled"
by what I'd call the superficial elements: a good story told well, but
without any distinctive visual form. It's a lot harder to like an
abstract Brakhage film for superficial reason, though I suppose some
*do" treat them as trippy light shows.
Any theory of what makes film an art for me would have to be able to
account for both Brakhage and Hawks, and not simply do so by saying
what's different about them. I'm not ready to write this, even after
close to four decades of thinking about it, but one would need to
complete the sentence that begins, "The films of Stan Brakhage and
Howard Hawks both use imagery to create an aesthetic effect by...."
I mostly agree with Peter (882) that moving plot situations -- Hal and
Falstaff -- are made "great" mostly by things the director does, and
with Zach (890) that form can be "impersonal," that it doesn't have to
simply be the expression of a director's sensibility," and with Jess
(895) that in Mizoguchi's "The Life of O'Haru" "the mise en scene and
dramaturgy seemed inseparable!"
And actually, in Dan's original post (842), just as I have trouble
seeing why the interpretation of "The Gangs of New York" quoted above is
an argument for the film, I have trouble seeing how Dan's objections are
in any way an argument against O'Haru, at least by my standards.
Dan finds aspects of the film that are "blunt, manipulative,
heavy-handed, preachy, enamored of caricature, and more or less
insensitive to human complexity." Well, I'm in sympathy with Dan's
sensibility, in that I tend to prefer nuanced views of "human
complexity" to "blunt" and "preachy" "caricature," all of which sound
rather, well, _Republican_, but, as a consequence of my notion that
anything can be great, I would insist that a work that is describable in
Dan's terms can be great. And one doesn't have to search all that far
for examples, actually, or stoop to my limit case of "The Triumph of the
Will": how about all those wonderful early pre-1912 Griffiths with
oleaginous villains taking advantage of sweetly innocent women -- you
know, the ones where a scene of the two together is followed by a title
announcing "Nine months later" followed by the sweet innocent alone with
child? Is this not "caricature"? These films are full of ethnic
caricatures too. Note the use of the word "greaser," for example.
I'm no Japan scholar, but along with Jess's "Brechtian" comment I'd
suggest there are traditions in Japanese theater and cinema that predate
Mizoguchi and specifically involve highly "caricatured" acting styles
rather than the more "naturalistic" ones we are familiar with.
I was earlier arguing something to the effect that all tastes are
"topologically" equivalent to "I don't like the color green." I fail to
see how Dan's critique is not just an expression of taste, of a
preference for films that take a particular attitude toward the human
condition, and thus his critique seems to me the equivalent of, say, "I
don't like moralistic westerns," or even, "I don't like westerns," a
statement that would surely amount to sacrilege among auteurists. A film
can adhere to Dan's description and be incredibly complex and very great
anyway. With Mizoguchi, what haunts me most is a mystical feeling that
the objects on screen, and the spaces between them, somehow evoke a
thousand years of history. In the face of that "aura," that individual
characters are going to seem crudely-drawn, and treated judgmentally
seems to me like a tiny, and not uninteresting, hiccup in the fabric of
the cosmos.
Distinctions made between form and content are often too simple. In most
great films, the two cannot be separated so easily. It's not quite
accurate to the viewing experience to say that a great director takes a
story and makes it meaningful (which maybe *is* how it happens at the
time the film was made), because the story and the camera movements
("camera movement" can of course include camera not moving -- as in the
really great very long take card game in Cukor's "Born Yesterday")
cannot be easily separated. Since "Lola Montes" has come up lately,
consider the final camera movement (which was, by the way, according to
an old "Cahiers," was originally one take not two, so a lot of footage
is missing at the point of the dissolve). This could be summarized by a
single line of "story." ("Lola is in the cage," or whatever). So is that
final camera movement part of the "style," of the way the story is told,
rather than of the story itself. Of course it is for a critic; that's
how we usually have to talk to make sense of things: "Ophuls didn't need
such a long camera movement to make whatever it is his point was, he
could have had a narrator say it, but the fact that he chose to do so
means blah blah blah & etc." But that doesn't mean that a viewer who is
really "getting" the film experiences anywhere near this degree of
separation.
- Fred
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