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Posts From the Internet Film Discussion Group, a_film_by
This group is dedicated to discussing film as art
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2301
From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 3:31am
Subject: Re: Bunny Lake is Missing
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
I've added a footnote to an old piece of mine on Preminger that will
be reprinted next year in a new collection; it's directly related
to "Bunny Lake is Missing," which I was able to see again in Paris in
a so-so print last year. Anyway, for whatever it's worth, I'm pasting
in this footnote below:
"Belated afterthought: almost 30 years after writing this essay, an
opportunity to see the film again suggested that the stylistic
overkill of the final sequence—-arguably occasioned by an
unsufficiently motivated (or inadequately explained)
denouément--may
indeed mark the decisive turning point towards Preminger's garish
late manner; the next feature after that was Hurry Sundown. [2002]"
For me, the change in Preminger's style starting with "Hurry Sundown"
is profound, although I guess his last film is in some ways a
reversion to his earlier style. Of the late films, my own favorite
is "Such Good Friends".
The difference in tastes regarding Preminger fascinates me. For
me, "Anatomy of a Murder" is the richest of all his films, "In Harm's
Way" one of the least interesting, but I suspect much of this has to
do with the subject matter.
Jonathan
> In a message dated 10/6/2003 0:37:10 Eastern Daylight Time,
> auteurwannabe2000@y... writes:
>
> > But when oh when will my own personal favorite, "Bunny Lake is
Missing" be
> > available in any format? Maybe us Preminger-philes ought to start
a petition.
>
> Peter
2302
From: Robert Keser
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 3:55am
Subject: Help! Auteurist drowning!
Help! Auteurist drowning in films! We're in the midst of the Chicago
International Film Festival and, after much strategizing and precise
calibration, I arrived at a workable schedule to optimize my film
choices. Now, tonight, the festival suddenly announced an additional
film, Haneke's Le Temps du Loup, which I'm very eager to see. However,
the only way to make it fit into my schedule is to bounce either
Téchiné's Les Egarés or Panahi's Crimson Gold. None of these films is
likely to screen anytime soon here, so what to do? Does anyone have
advice about how to prioritize these three choices?
Incidentally, I just came from De Oliveira's marvelous A Talking
Picture, which just brims with cultivated ideas and wit (and
mysterious correspondences of images), but which occasioned a round of
applause from one segment of the audience (applause never happens here
if the director is not present) but also some boos from another (that
also rarely happens). The latter, apparently, could not deal with De
Oliveira withholding dramatic incidents until he crams the last ten
minutes with outrageous plot turns.
--Robert Keser
2303
From: jaketwilson
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 4:09am
Subject: Re: Help! Auteurist drowning!
I think CRIMSON GOLD has an edge over TEMPS DU LOUP, but I like them
both. I haven't seen LES EGARES. It might have to come down to how
highly you value each director.
JTW
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Keser" wrote:
> Help! Auteurist drowning in films! We're in the midst of the
Chicago
> International Film Festival and, after much strategizing and
precise
> calibration, I arrived at a workable schedule to optimize my film
> choices. Now, tonight, the festival suddenly announced an
additional
> film, Haneke's Le Temps du Loup, which I'm very eager to see.
However,
> the only way to make it fit into my schedule is to bounce either
> Téchiné's Les Egarés or Panahi's Crimson Gold. None of these films
is
> likely to screen anytime soon here, so what to do? Does anyone have
> advice about how to prioritize these three choices?
>
> Incidentally, I just came from De Oliveira's marvelous A Talking
> Picture, which just brims with cultivated ideas and wit (and
> mysterious correspondences of images), but which occasioned a round
of
> applause from one segment of the audience (applause never happens
here
> if the director is not present) but also some boos from another
(that
> also rarely happens). The latter, apparently, could not deal with
De
> Oliveira withholding dramatic incidents until he crams the last ten
> minutes with outrageous plot turns.
>
> --Robert Keser
2304
From: Paul Fileri
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 4:18am
Subject: Re: Help! Auteurist drowning!
Robert:
>to bounce either
> Téchiné's Les Egarés or Panahi's Crimson Gold. None of these films is
> likely to screen anytime soon here, so what to do? Does anyone have
> advice about how to prioritize these three choices?
Another consideration might be that CRIMSON GOLD is the only one of these t=
hree
films with a US distribution deal. Wellspring currently plans to release i=
t in NYC early
next year. Most likely it will get to Chicago, though it could take a whil=
e.
- Paul
2305
From: Greg Dunlap
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 4:31am
Subject: Re: Help! Auteurist drowning!
--- Robert Keser wrote:
> Help! Auteurist drowning in films! We're in the midst of the Chicago
> International Film Festival and, after much strategizing and precise
> calibration, I arrived at a workable schedule to optimize my film
> choices. Now, tonight, the festival suddenly announced an additional
> film, Haneke's Le Temps du Loup, which I'm very eager to see.
> However,
> the only way to make it fit into my schedule is to bounce either
> Téchiné's Les Egarés or Panahi's Crimson Gold. None of these films is
Well, both the Panahi and the Téchiné have been picked up by Wellspring
for early to mid 2004 release, so at least you'll get another chance at
those. To the best of my knowledge the Haneke remains in limbo. I also
just found out about this screening tonight, and unfortunately I will
probably get screwed out of seeing it since my weekend is all full
already with other stuff including a wedding. I mean come on, who plans
their wedding in the middle of the local film festival? I mean, Jesus.
Lets prioritize people.
=====
--------------------
Greg Dunlap
heyrocker@y...
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com
2306
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 4:34am
Subject: Re: Otto's oddities, Ford's flotsam, The politics of It's All True
> 2. What if what Dan calls the flotsam were part of what makes
> Ford a great filmmaker?
Then I think we would arrive at what I thought I was already trying
to say - however, while said flotsam may contribute to said
greatness, I think Dan's remark points to situations in which it does
not.
-Jaime
2307
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 4:36am
Subject: Re: Help! Auteurist drowning!
Robert wrote:
> However, the only way to make it fit into my schedule is to bounce
> either
> Téchiné's Les Egarés or Panahi's Crimson Gold.
Wellspring has CRIMSON GOLD, soon-to-be-released, while no distributor
has touched the Téchiné or Haneke (to the best of my knowledge). If
anyone does pick up the Haneke (and it certainly deserves to be
released) I bet it will be an extremely late and curiously limited
release (one-week at Facets, maybe) ...a la CODE UNKNOWN.
> Incidentally, I just came from De Oliveira's marvelous A Talking
> Picture, which just brims with cultivated ideas and wit [...] which
> occasioned a round of applause from one segment of the audience [...]
> but also some boos from another. The latter, apparently, could not
> deal with De Oliveira withholding dramatic incidents until he crams
> the last ten minutes with outrageous plot turns.
It's not even that he is "cramming" anything. One thing happens and
suddenly it's as if you are in another story. At a screening in
Toronto, I saw that most people in the audience were ready to call de
Oliveira out on the ridiculousness of the ending. But if you are not
willing to give a 94-year-old license to do this kind of thing, then
who?
I'm curious on its exclusion from the New York Film Festival,
especially since de Oliveira was one of the few directors who flew in
after September 11, 2001, in support of the festival. That is, since A
TALKING PICTURE is to my mind the greatest film on September 11 that
doesn't explicitly deal with September 11...
2308
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 4:39am
Subject: Preminger again, racism
Michel Mourlet loathed Anatomy; Serge Daney loved it, according to
Sylvie Pierre. Both are brilliant. Maybe that says something about
the film, and about Preminger.
Speaking of Serge, he once distinguished beween "little racism"
and "big racism." "Little racism" is what you see in Walsh's early
talkies, for example - the Chinese in The Bowery, or the Italians in
Me and My Gal and Sailor's Luck. The Irish lived in proximity with
both races when Walsh was growing up, and that's a situation that
breeds "little racisms" the world over. "Big racism" happens,
according to Serge, when you couple stereotypical ideas about a
particular race with (pseudo)-scientific theories, as happened in
Germany.
This was one of his countless improvisations, probably in response to
my expressing puzzlement about things like the "wops" in Sailor's
Luck or Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's, when the Cahiers had
been pounding the anti-racist drums for a decade. He never wrote it
down, as far as I know.
The issue came up recently with Lost in Translation, which contains a
lot of grotesque comic Japanese characters played by friends of the
director, who all apparently had a great time doing it. As my friend
Marvin points out, the critics who condemned the film for that
apparently haven't seen much Japanese cinema, where comic grotesques
abound. I've already commented in a much earlier post on Manny
Farber's statement that the character played by Pedro Gonzalez-
Gonzalez in Rio Bravo is a racist stereotype - when I saw it on Times
Square, he was the favorite character of the guys in the balcony. The
film wouldn't have worked on Times Square without him. Think about
your own reaction to American caricatures in foreign films. Are you
up in arms about them? It depends on whether they're funny or not,
right?
Northrop Frye says we live in an era of satire - in the classical
sense of the word - and there's not much 20th Century art that
doesn't have some satire in it, which implies caricatures and
stereotypes, common tools of the satirist. It doesn't mean that all
satirists - or satirically inflected Romantics - are racists. It's
clear that Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and Robert Clampett thought it was
their prerogative to do absolutely horrendous caricatures of just
about everyone, but to the best of my knowledge they weren't
even "little racists" - they were cartoonists!
One director who seems not to have liked those particular type of
caricature was Hitchcock. He shot a scene on the train in Strangers
where Bruno keeps sending a black porter off to get something and
calling him back before he's gone two steps, but he cut it before
release. (It also wasn't in the non-existent English version, if you
read about that.) When John Michael Hayes wrote in a line
about "baksheesh [a bribe] for the foreigner" in The Man Who Knew Too
Much, he berated the young and rather provincial Hayes and cut it
out - I think you can read his comments in Hitchcock's Notebooks.
This may have to do with the universalist attitude AH adopted when he
hit Hollywood - the idea that these films have to play everywhere. I
believe he even said something about offending Middle Eastern
audiences in his note to Hayes. Whereas Ford or Walsh were often
making films about particular national groups, just as Renoir, who
wasn't interested in universality, always did, and these attitudes
are part of those communities.
It is not trivial that they left them in. That's part of the
specificity of narrative cinema as an art: racism, sexism, booshwah
ideology, conflict, homophobia and jingoism are part of life; they
should be part of cinema, and how a particular artist portrays them
tells you a lot about the kind of artist he/she is. (Biette says
Tourneur portrayed them "as things.") I think these discussions are
very important, and not to be swept away with a "that was then, this
is now" largeness of spirit - although of course these isms are all
historical - or bracketed as having nothing to do with art, which is
above all that. It isn't - it can't be. It would be a poor excuse for
art if it were.
And by the way - a lot of what Ford is supposed to be, Griffith WAS.
That has to be part of how we look at his work, too. The question is,
what do we do with the flotsam, to use Dan's term? How do we make it
part of our evaluation, even in a formal sense? That's not a simple
question, any more than "left" or "right" are all that useful for
talking about Welles or Ford or Hitchcock or Fuller - or American
politics, despite most professional pundits' addiction to childish
simplifications. For me, the flotsam is part of the endless impurity
of cinema (impurity of many kinds: all cinema's little others, and
the big O, the world) that makes me love this particular artform, as
opposed to music, say, which I love but love less, and I measure
critics by their ability to deal with the baby and the bathwater
together, in a way that adds to my appreciation and understanding of
the films.
2309
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 4:41am
Subject: See the Techine.
See the Techine.
2310
From: Robert Keser
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 4:54am
Subject: Re: Help! Auteurist drowning!
Okay, from the evidence thus far, it seems it might be best to let
Panahi wait (there's also the chance it will play again the last
days or two as a festival favorite or award winner).
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Gabe Klinger wrote:
>
> It's not even that he is "cramming" anything. One thing happens and
> suddenly it's as if you are in another story.
Well, one thing happens, and then another thing occurs that prolongs
the tension, until there's a dramatic scene just before that final
thing happens [!] That's a heckuva lot more straightforward plot than
was detectable in the previous 100 minutes.
At a screening in
> Toronto, I saw that most people in the audience were ready to call
de
> Oliveira out on the ridiculousness of the ending. But if you are not
> willing to give a 94-year-old license to do this kind of thing, then
> who?
>
Indeed! It's probably fruitful to puzzle over his choices and try to
fit them into some kind of logical construct that satisfies us, but
there does seem to be a factor of "I'm-old-and-I-don't-give-a-damn
whether-my-film-fits-into-your-need-for-narrative" at work now.
> I'm curious on its exclusion from the New York Film Festival,
> especially since de Oliveira was one of the few directors who flew
in
> after September 11, 2001, in support of the festival. That is, since
A
> TALKING PICTURE is to my mind the greatest film on September 11 that
> doesn't explicitly deal with September 11...
Yes, it unquestionably beats anything in the "11-09-01" film, with the
possible exception of the Imamura.
--Robert Keser
2311
From: Robert Keser
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 5:09am
Subject: Re: Help! Auteurist drowning!
A friend of mine lives by the excellent motto, "Movies come first".
So, unless it's *your* wedding...
--Robert Keser
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Greg Dunlap wrote:
I
also
> just found out about this screening tonight, and unfortunately I
will
> probably get screwed out of seeing since my
weekend is all full
> already with other stuff including a wedding. I mean come on, who
plans
> their wedding in the middle of the local film festival? I mean,
Jesus.
> Lets prioritize people.
2312
From: Damien Bona
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 7:20am
Subject: Re: "I've never considered Ford a racist"
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson" wrote:
> In one of the posts that kicked off this discussion, Damien placed
> Blake Edwards as a leftist, but the racial caricatures in his films
> can be pretty appalling. Though in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S at least,
> my impression is he knows just how offensive he's being and is
> messing with our minds.
It's probably more precise to say that Edwards has progressive
politics rather than that he's a leftist.
My feeling about the Mickey Rooney character in Breakfast At
Tiffany's is that in the film Edwards was positing that love provides
the only safe harbor in a crazy world. And a universe in which a
farcially stereotypical Japanese photographer is played by MICKEY
ROONEY is definitely insane. Mr. Yunioshi is an extreme character,
but so are many of the other people who inhabit Holly Golightly's
world.
2313
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 9:19am
Subject: Re: the blind leading the blind / personality
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Damien Bona"
wrote:
"Disney was strongly anti-union and one could see The Sorceror's
Apprentice segment of Fantasia as a metaphor for what happens when the
Worker (Mickey Mouse) tries to become as powerful as Management...
I also once read somewhere an interpretation of Dumbo as being about
the Republican Party (an elephant is the Republican symbol)."
Add Fantasia
There is one essential flaw in that interpretation. Mickey is not "the
worker", but represent "the management", as dictates and then ignores
"the workers". Further, if The Sorceror's Apprentice should be
anti-union, what is the union? The Wizard? But wouldn't that make
Mickey an union-forman or agitator? The broom? But since its never
revolts, just carries out a task blindly...
Add Dumbo
If Dumbo represents the Republican party, who is Roosevelt? and what
is the function of Dumbo?
To suggest that Dumbo is a equivalent for the Republicans, is as silly
as the suggestion, that the Donkey in "Shrek" represents the
Democrats. What would that make Shrek? Lincoln? Clinton? Does Princess
Fiona smoke a cigar?
PS: David Ehrenstein said I was no fun anymore, I hope I made up for
it :)
---------------------------------
It is not that I dont recognize the reading of "On the Waterfront" as
related to HUAC. I do, it's so obvious it hits you in the head with a
sledgehammer. It just is, that is was not, what I meant with
"personality influence direction."
Many, many years ago I read an interview with John Carpenter, who
said, that all great directors were sadists. Today I know this to be
true. But does Peckinpah's sadistic lack of any social skills
transcent unto his films? Can we see, that Hitchcock "directed" most
of his films in a drunken daze and often sleeping? Does his films
reveal, that Disney spend all morning eating donuts and drinking
himself into a whining frenzy of self pity?
While any involved director (do I dare to use the word "Auteur") adds
a personal vision / statement to his films, how much of that vision
expreses his personality? Thus a film as "High Noon" expresses
personal vision, while a film like "Rio Bravo" is all about Hawk's
personality.
Im sorry if I added to confusion. The greyzone between personality and
personal vision is an area, that will cause misunderstandings and
misinterpretations.
2314
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 0:57pm
Subject: Re: the blind leading the blind / personality
> To suggest that Dumbo is a equivalent for the Republicans, is as
silly
> as the suggestion, that the Donkey in "Shrek" represents the
> Democrats. What would that make Shrek? Lincoln? Clinton? Does
Princess
> Fiona smoke a cigar?
Amusing as this is, for the life of me I can't see why you're
bringing in SHREK, which was made at a different studio entirely from
Disney, well over thirty years after Walt Disney's death. It seems
to me that the donkey in PINOCCHIO - which I pointed out in another
post - is more likely to be a reference to the Democratic party than
anything from the digital age of animation. (Although the donkey in
SHREK may very well be a response to the donkey in PINOCCHIO; such is
the depth of the younger film's fascination with Disney iconography.)
-Jaime
2315
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 1:27pm
Subject: Re: Re: the blind leading the blind / personality
"What
is the function of Dumbo?" is a rather interesting
question whose answer is provided by Spielberg in
"1941' where General Stillwell (Robert Stack) watches
it in a theater on Hollywood Boulevard (sobbing during
the "Baby Mine" number) as all hell breaks loose just
outside the door.
--- Henrik Sylow wrote:
__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
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2316
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 2:28pm
Subject: Re: Re: "I've never considered Ford a racist"
I beg your problem, but Ford deserves signalling out because all through
the 1930s and 40s, he was virtually the only Hollywood director who
dealt with the subject. Ford's entire oeuvre is a protest against
intolerance, including of course racism. It is not coincidental than
the result is that people who don't know his work call him racist.
There are, putting it simply, perhaps two types of "protest" film.
Paths of Glory and Fort Apache. The former puts blacks hats on the
villains and makes you feel good by telling you over and over that evil
is evil, and so you emerge from the movie gloating over your own sublime
righteousness. The latter keeps changing the hats, confusing the
issues, showing that good people can be bad people and bad people can be
good people, and gets you involved and angry and gets you thinking.
jaketwilson wrote:
> However one defines racism, there was/is so much of it around in
> Hollywood that it seems unfair to single Ford out.
>
>
2317
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 2:43pm
Subject: Re: Bunny Lake is Missing
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jonathan Rosenbaum"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
>
> I've added a footnote to an old piece of mine on Preminger that
will
> be reprinted next year in a new collection; it's directly related
> to "Bunny Lake is Missing," which I was able to see again in Paris
in
> a so-so print last year. Anyway, for whatever it's worth, I'm
pasting
> in this footnote below:
>
> "Belated afterthought: almost 30 years after writing this essay, an
> opportunity to see the film again suggested that the stylistic
> overkill of the final sequence—-arguably occasioned by an
> unsufficiently motivated (or inadequately explained)
> denouément--may
> indeed mark the decisive turning point towards Preminger's garish
> late manner; the next feature after that was Hurry Sundown. [2002]"
>
> For me, the change in Preminger's style starting with "Hurry
Sundown"
> is profound, although I guess his last film is in some ways a
> reversion to his earlier style. Of the late films, my own favorite
> is "Such Good Friends".
>
> The difference in tastes regarding Preminger fascinates me. For
> me, "Anatomy of a Murder" is the richest of all his films, "In
Harm's
> Way" one of the least interesting, but I suspect much of this has
to
> do with the subject matter.
>
> Jonathan
>
> Jonathan, I agree one hundred per cent with you on "Anatomy"
and "In Harm's Way" and possibly "Bunny Lake" but I'd have to see it
again. I don't remember a feeling of "overkill", but I agree the film
was a turning point. I have not seen "Such Good Friends" again since
its release because I hated it, or at least some portions of it.
JPC
>
>
> > In a message dated 10/6/2003 0:37:10 Eastern Daylight Time,
> > auteurwannabe2000@y... writes:
> >
> > > But when oh when will my own personal favorite, "Bunny Lake is
> Missing" be
> > > available in any format? Maybe us Preminger-philes ought to
start
> a petition.
> >
> > Peter
2318
From: chris_fujiwara
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 3:04pm
Subject: Re: Preminger again, racism
Daney definitely loved Anatomy of a Murder. In Persévérance, he
mentions it several times, at one point (pp. 116-17) calling it and
North by Northwest "two of the most important films of my life, I saw
both of them in 1959 and I still adore them." (1959 was a crucial
year for him.) He says that both the Stewart character in Anatomy and
the Grant character in NxNW are portraits of "citizens" (something
that the American cinema, but not the French, has specialized in) -
who when we first meet them are "big dopes" ("grand dadais")
and "ahuris" (bewildered people) and who then are asked by their
films to take part, to commit themselves, to assume their
responsibilities as "citizens" (as representatives of the interests
of the audience, also citizens). "In terms of fiction and narration,
it's a character who has a time lag [un temps de retard], and the
film lasts for him as long as it takes to catch up [le film dure pour
lui le temps de le combler]." Sorry my translation is so terrible.
I've had a great time trying to catch up on my own time lag all with
all the brilliant Preminger posts here lately. My own contribution
right now will just be a statement of personal taste. I love all the
films from Anatomy to Bunny Lake, inclusive, even The Cardinal and In
Harm's Way, and consider them all masterpieces, imperfect as they are
(and their imperfection is part of what's wonderful about them).
Anatomy is different in a number of important ways (apart from not
being in Scope) from the other films - the differences must account
for the difference of opinion on this film. Of the late Preminger
films (to me, the films from Junie Moon on; I consider Hurry Sundown
and Skidoo transitional films, and I agree with Jonathan that Bunny
Lake can be seen as part of this transition) my favorite is Such Good
Friends. I have some problems with The Human Factor, but I've never
seen it except on video, which means that I haven't seen it yet, so I
shouldn't say anything about it until I do.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> Michel Mourlet loathed Anatomy; Serge Daney loved it, according to
> Sylvie Pierre. Both are brilliant. Maybe that says something about
> the film, and about Preminger.
>
> Speaking of Serge, he once distinguished beween "little racism"
> and "big racism." "Little racism" is what you see in Walsh's early
> talkies, for example - the Chinese in The Bowery, or the Italians
in
> Me and My Gal and Sailor's Luck. The Irish lived in proximity with
> both races when Walsh was growing up, and that's a situation that
> breeds "little racisms" the world over. "Big racism" happens,
> according to Serge, when you couple stereotypical ideas about a
> particular race with (pseudo)-scientific theories, as happened in
> Germany.
>
> This was one of his countless improvisations, probably in response
to
> my expressing puzzlement about things like the "wops" in Sailor's
> Luck or Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's, when the Cahiers
had
> been pounding the anti-racist drums for a decade. He never wrote it
> down, as far as I know.
>
> The issue came up recently with Lost in Translation, which contains
a
> lot of grotesque comic Japanese characters played by friends of the
> director, who all apparently had a great time doing it. As my
friend
> Marvin points out, the critics who condemned the film for that
> apparently haven't seen much Japanese cinema, where comic
grotesques
> abound. I've already commented in a much earlier post on Manny
> Farber's statement that the character played by Pedro Gonzalez-
> Gonzalez in Rio Bravo is a racist stereotype - when I saw it on
Times
> Square, he was the favorite character of the guys in the balcony.
The
> film wouldn't have worked on Times Square without him. Think about
> your own reaction to American caricatures in foreign films. Are you
> up in arms about them? It depends on whether they're funny or not,
> right?
>
> Northrop Frye says we live in an era of satire - in the classical
> sense of the word - and there's not much 20th Century art that
> doesn't have some satire in it, which implies caricatures and
> stereotypes, common tools of the satirist. It doesn't mean that all
> satirists - or satirically inflected Romantics - are racists. It's
> clear that Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and Robert Clampett thought it
was
> their prerogative to do absolutely horrendous caricatures of just
> about everyone, but to the best of my knowledge they weren't
> even "little racists" - they were cartoonists!
>
> One director who seems not to have liked those particular type of
> caricature was Hitchcock. He shot a scene on the train in Strangers
> where Bruno keeps sending a black porter off to get something and
> calling him back before he's gone two steps, but he cut it before
> release. (It also wasn't in the non-existent English version, if
you
> read about that.) When John Michael Hayes wrote in a line
> about "baksheesh [a bribe] for the foreigner" in The Man Who Knew
Too
> Much, he berated the young and rather provincial Hayes and cut it
> out - I think you can read his comments in Hitchcock's Notebooks.
>
> This may have to do with the universalist attitude AH adopted when
he
> hit Hollywood - the idea that these films have to play everywhere.
I
> believe he even said something about offending Middle Eastern
> audiences in his note to Hayes. Whereas Ford or Walsh were often
> making films about particular national groups, just as Renoir, who
> wasn't interested in universality, always did, and these attitudes
> are part of those communities.
>
> It is not trivial that they left them in. That's part of the
> specificity of narrative cinema as an art: racism, sexism, booshwah
> ideology, conflict, homophobia and jingoism are part of life; they
> should be part of cinema, and how a particular artist portrays them
> tells you a lot about the kind of artist he/she is. (Biette says
> Tourneur portrayed them "as things.") I think these discussions are
> very important, and not to be swept away with a "that was then,
this
> is now" largeness of spirit - although of course these isms are all
> historical - or bracketed as having nothing to do with art, which
is
> above all that. It isn't - it can't be. It would be a poor excuse
for
> art if it were.
>
> And by the way - a lot of what Ford is supposed to be, Griffith
WAS.
> That has to be part of how we look at his work, too. The question
is,
> what do we do with the flotsam, to use Dan's term? How do we make
it
> part of our evaluation, even in a formal sense? That's not a simple
> question, any more than "left" or "right" are all that useful for
> talking about Welles or Ford or Hitchcock or Fuller - or American
> politics, despite most professional pundits' addiction to childish
> simplifications. For me, the flotsam is part of the endless
impurity
> of cinema (impurity of many kinds: all cinema's little others, and
> the big O, the world) that makes me love this particular artform,
as
> opposed to music, say, which I love but love less, and I measure
> critics by their ability to deal with the baby and the bathwater
> together, in a way that adds to my appreciation and understanding
of
> the films.
2319
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 3:04pm
Subject: Re: Re: "I've never considered Ford a racist"
"Paths of Glory" is the last film I wouldimagine
leaving any audience to gloat over anything
-particularly concerning white hat/ black hat
polarities. The enbtire point of the film is that
MacCready's flamboyance makes him (and us) mistake him
for the villain,whereas the real power lies with
Adolph Menjou (in a performance that I would imagine
is a favorite of Karl Rove's)
"Fort Apache" is a film about how genocide really
isn't so bad if it's perpetrators are shown to be
"flawed" in terms of their personal relations,life
goals, etc.
--- Tag Gallagher wrote:
> I beg your problem, but Ford deserves signalling out
> because all through
> the 1930s and 40s, he was virtually the only
> Hollywood director who
> dealt with the subject. Ford's entire oeuvre is a
> protest against
> intolerance, including of course racism. It is not
> coincidental than
> the result is that people who don't know his work
> call him racist.
>
> There are, putting it simply, perhaps two types of
> "protest" film.
> Paths of Glory and Fort Apache. The former puts
> blacks hats on the
> villains and makes you feel good by telling you over
> and over that evil
> is evil, and so you emerge from the movie gloating
> over your own sublime
> righteousness. The latter keeps changing the hats,
> confusing the
> issues, showing that good people can be bad people
> and bad people can be
> good people, and gets you involved and angry and
> gets you thinking.
>
>
>
> jaketwilson wrote:
>
> > However one defines racism, there was/is so much
> of it around in
> > Hollywood that it seems unfair to single Ford out.
> >
> >
>
>
>
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2320
From:
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 3:08pm
Subject: Kazan and Semi-documentaries
Several of Elia Kazan's films are related to the undercover, semi-documentary crime film paradigm. For a chart showing the history of semi-documentary films, please go to my web site at:
http://members.aol.com/MG4273/semigrid.htm
Semidocumentaries tend to have 1) a government hero, who is a member of some governmental institution 2) advanced technology used for crime fighting 3) a finale in some industrial area. All three of these aspects are tracked in the chart.
Boomerang (1947) is a true crime story. It was actually produced by Louis deRochemont, who previously produced Henry Hathaway's semi-documentaries. It is set not in an underworld, however, but in Connecticut suburbs; in my judgment it is very dull. It is shot on the authentic locations, and takes us inside prosecutor's offices. It has little of the look inside great institutions of the other films, however, being very low key and suburban.
Panic in the Streets (1950) is a major work, however. This films tracks down crooks who are unconsciously spreading plague. The hero is a disease control worker, played with his usual tremendous vitality by Richard Widmark. Like the other semi-documentaries, this takes us inside his government institution. This group has a quasi military feel in the film, just like the FBI, the Treasury Department, and other crime fighting units of previous semi-doc movies. Although he is a medical worker, the hero wears a military uniform, carries a gun, and has police enforcement powers. There is a great deal of both action and suspense in the film. It features location photography on the streets of New Orleans. Cinematography is by Joe MacDonald (The Dark Corner, The Street With No Name). The film is oddly anticipatory of the virus hunter melodramas of the 1990's, such as the TV show, The Burning Zone.
One type of location shot in Kazan's crime films shows a frieze like expanse of building. This fills the shot from the left to right hand side of the screen. The building wall is parallel to the frame of the film. There are openings along the top of the wall, such as windows or balconies, that are smaller and more regularly repeated than any opening below. All of these building walls tend to have a "monolithic" look. They appear to be huge rectangular slabs that dominate their environment, and any people in it.
Panic in the Streets emphasizes both long take and deep focus staging. Kazan prefers to avoid cutting wherever possible in a scene. Consider the shot at the apartment house. It opens with an exterior shot, a huge panorama of the apartment building and its occupants, taken from an upper floor. All the people in this shot are very tiny figures, seen from a distance. The camera turns around nearly 180 degrees, to show a series of steps leading up to the second floor. Policemen climb these stairs, eventually getting larger and larger in the frame. Then they start moving along the second floor outdoor passageway, moving toward the foreground. Eventually two performers are right in front of the camera, with their heads in medium close-up, while they have a dialogue scene. All of this is in a single unbroken take. It is typical of many shots in the film that mix close-ups, medium shots and long shots all in a single take, with both the characters and the camera in motion to accomplish this.
Some of the long takes are organized into stages. For example, in the scene at the coroner's office, first we see one room, then the camera and the characters move into another, then into a third room. Each room is a different stage of an intricately choreographed movement. Similarly, the stunning scene at the opening across the rail road tracks moves from right to left through several different areas near the tracks.
Several of Kazan's films show a similar collection of themes and characters. The hero is a highly intelligent and educated man, with progressive ideas based in science and modern thinking, who works for a government agency, or other major institution. He sets out to convert a backward, primitive society to his approach, and he encounters massive resistance from this tradition oriented, ignorant group. Such heroes include the disease control specialist of Panic in the Streets, and the Tennessee Valley Authority representative (played by Montgomery Clift) in Wild River (1960), who has to battle change-resistant locals. In both cases, the people he meets are suspicious of all scientists, and determined to resist cooperating in every way possible. Both films are made on location, and both emphasize the exotic nature of their locale: the dock-side culture of Panic in the Streets, and the river people of Wild River. Both locations are near water, and center on it for their economy and culture. The hero in both films is a man of modest financial means. Although he is highly educated, he is by no means a representative of the upper crust, at least financially. The lead in these films is played by a major movie star type, while everyone else tends to be a more realistic looking character actor. This too gives a contrast to the hero, and underlines how different his background is from the people he meets. The hero of these films keeps reasoning with people. Reason is his main tool, and his main orientation in life. He keeps thinking and thinking, and he keeps challenging other people to think, too. They simply want to follow tradition; the hero wants them to think, and to take an informed, reasoned course of action.
Kazan's films can be compared with a number of literary works, that also deal with outsiders who try to change a society's beliefs. Henrik Ibsen's play An Enemy of the People (1882) also deals with a doctor who uncovers unpopular truths that his society does not want to face. However, it deals more with the persecution of the doctor by society, while Kazan's films tend to be about the education of society by the informed outsider. His struggle might be titanic, but he usually succeeds. Ursula K. Le Guin's science fiction novel The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) deals with a single man, literally an alien, who has to try to persuade a whole planet of tradition oriented people to change. Like Kazan's heroes, his entire approach is reasoning with people. The comic book writer Edmond Hamilton also often dealt with social outsiders who had important but non-traditional messages for society.
Kazan's Gentleman's Agreement (1947) is not usually regarded as a member of the semi-documentary police series, and with good reason: it is a fictional tale not about a policeman, but about a magazine writer who does an expose about Anti-Semitism. However, this classic film, which won the Oscar as Best Picture, has many elements in common with the semi-documentaries. It was produced by the same studio, Twentieth Century Fox, as Hathaway's films, The Street With No Name, and Kazan's other semi-documentary works. It features a hero who goes undercover in a new identity to fight a major social evil. Here the undercover work consists of telling everyone he is Jewish. As in Anthony Mann's T-Men, this undercover work exacts a much higher price from the hero than he would ever have guessed at the start of the film. The hero is backed up by a powerful institution: in this case not a government agency, but a major national magazine. There is much location photography, in this case, in New York City and environs, and in all scenes there is an attempt at documentary like realism. Arthur Miller's photography has much more gloss than those of the typical crime film of the era, and is definitely not film noir in style. However, the film is a faithfully realistic look at the lives of the upper middle class WASPs who promoted Anti-Semitism, and a certain amount of gloss was considered appropriate to illuminate their milieu.
Gentleman's Agreement has a similarly highly educated hero as in Kazan's other semi-documentary films. Once again, this man attempts to convert a resistant traditional society to his way of thinking, in this case, the WASP culture of the United States. Although our hero is much better informed than the people he meets, once again, they feel they have all the answers, and fight him every step of the way. Kazan is deeply suspicious of tradition. In his films, it promotes anti-Semitism (Gentleman's Agreement), disease (Panic in the Streets) and poverty (Wild River). He also shows what a struggle it is to change such traditions, and what an effort has to be made.
Kazan gives his hero a personal life, as well as a professional struggle. Both the doctor in Panic in the Streets, and the writer in Gentleman's Agreement, have a small son with whom they have a warm relationship.
Mike Grost
2321
From: Rick Segreda
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 3:43pm
Subject: John Ford & racism
I find myself between the anti-Ford camp and the pro-Ford camp with regard to how enlightened he was with regards to race.
On the negative: Stepin' Feticht in "Judge Priest" and "The Sun Shines Bright." "Fort Apache" is much, much more than a defense of manifest destiny, but that IS very much a part of it. "The Lost Patrol" probably looks more anti-Arab post 9/11 than it did back in the 1930's. Then there the are the raiding Indians of "Stagecoach" and raiding Mongolians of "Seven Women," though the latter doesn't particularly strike me as racist.
On the positive, sort of: "Cheyenne Autumn" and "Seargent Rutledge." I like the latter, but I consider the former one of his weakest, full of noble Indians and even nobler intentions, but very preachy.
On the much, much more positive: "Wagonmaster," with it's sympathetic portrayal of a young Native American sexually assaulted by white trash on the wagon trail, and "The Searchers," with Nathan's reconciliation to his half-breed nephew and his "converted" niece.
Still, as noted above, Ford did not entirely transcend the prejudices of his time, but then neither did William Shakespeare.
FYI: John Ford was made an honorary Navajo Chief for his historically and culturally accurate depiction of their tribe in his films.
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2322
From: tag@s...
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 3:43pm
Subject: Re: Re: I've never considered Ford a racist
You really miss Ford's point, David.
Aside from the fact that the film is not about genocide (and that it's the
whites who get massacred, not the Indians), Ford's point is that good
people like you and me commit genocide. The question is why. Why do
these men, whom we've learned to respect, attack Indians whom they know to
be innocent, in a charge which they know is suicidal, at the orders of a
commander whom they despise?
Paths of Glory poses similar questions.
From: David Ehrenstein cellar47@y...
"Fort Apache" is a film about how genocide really
isn't so bad if it's perpetrators are shown to be
"flawed" in terms of their personal relations,life
goals, etc.
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2323
From: Rick Segreda
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 3:56pm
Subject: Re: John Ford & racism (correction)
John Wayne's protagonist in "The Searchers" is "Ethan," not "Nathan."
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2324
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 3:57pm
Subject: Re: Re: I've never considered Ford a racist
The genocide takes place off-screen and is therefore
what Barthes would call " a structuring-absence of the
text."
"Ford's point is that good
people like you and me commit genocide."
Not ME! Being gay I was considered morally unfit to
slaughter the Vietnamese, and thereby avoided the war.
That gave me plenty of time to protest it -- which I
took full advantage of.
--- "tag@s..." wrote:
>
> You really miss Ford's point, David.
>
> Aside from the fact that the film is not about
> genocide (and that it's the
> whites who get massacred, not the Indians), Ford's
> point is that good
> people like you and me commit genocide. The
> question is why. Why do
> these men, whom we've learned to respect, attack
> Indians whom they know to
> be innocent, in a charge which they know is
> suicidal, at the orders of a
> commander whom they despise?
>
>
> Paths of Glory poses similar questions.
>
>
>
>
> From: David Ehrenstein cellar47@y...
>
>
> "Fort Apache" is a film about how genocide
> really
> isn't so bad if it's perpetrators are shown to
> be
> "flawed" in terms of their personal
> relations,life
> goals, etc.
>
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------
> mail2web - Check your email from the web at
> http://mail2web.com/ .
>
>
>
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2325
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 4:11pm
Subject: The Human Factor
Given the fact that OP started in theatre - Biette says
his "democratic" style developed from watching actors from the wings -
it's interesting, for more than the anecdotal reasons I sighted, that
the last scene of The Human Factor (as I recall) is of an obvious
stage set, filmed frontally, representing a totalitarian country.
Tag's excellent OP piece for Cahiers, I believe, compared the film's
visual style to Mondrian. It was released in France finally in 1999,
and people were delighted to discover it at last.
2326
From: tag@s...
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 5:14pm
Subject: Re: John Ford & racism (correction)
Well, at last you have said something about Ford I can agree with fully --
except one might argue that Wayne is also the antagonist.
-----------------
From: Rick Segreda auteurwannabe2000@y...
John Wayne's protagonist in "The Searchers" is "Ethan," not "Nathan."
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2327
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 5:30pm
Subject: Re: John Ford & racism (correction)
And the fact that the protagonist is also the
antagonist is why the film is so fascinating.
--- "tag@s..." wrote:
>
> Well, at last you have said something about Ford I
> can agree with fully --
> except one might argue that Wayne is also the
> antagonist.
>
>
> -----------------
> From: Rick Segreda auteurwannabe2000@y...
>
> John Wayne's protagonist in "The Searchers" is
> "Ethan," not "Nathan."
>
>
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> http://mail2web.com/ .
>
>
>
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2328
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 5:36pm
Subject: Re: I've never considered Ford a racist
If this had been a courtroom (in a film), David just opend the door to
a line of questions, that would discredit him. I fail to see, why you
being gay affects John Ford and his thoughts behind the "genocide".
But enough about that and sorry for the joke, I just had to (my flu
made me do it).
I have a question, which I came to think of now that David mentioned
the off-screen element. As MPPA forbid the depiction of a gun firing
and the reaction of the person being shot, in the same frame (I
believe it was Leone who broke this rule in "Fistfull of Dollars", but
my memory fails me), did Ford chose the offscreen because of that
rule?
Another question is, are we not judging Ford's approach to, and
depiction of, indians with post Vietnam eyes? Would the american shame
of having commited genocide on the indians ever been there had it not
been for Vietnam and the politisizing of it in the seventies?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> The genocide takes place off-screen and is therefore
> what Barthes would call " a structuring-absence of the
> text."
>
> "Ford's point is that good
> people like you and me commit genocide."
>
> Not ME! Being gay I was considered morally unfit to
> slaughter the Vietnamese, and thereby avoided the war.
> That gave me plenty of time to protest it -- which I
> took full advantage of.
>
> --- "tag@s..." wrote:
> >
> > You really miss Ford's point, David.
> >
> > Aside from the fact that the film is not about
> > genocide (and that it's the
> > whites who get massacred, not the Indians), Ford's
> > point is that good
> > people like you and me commit genocide. The
> > question is why. Why do
> > these men, whom we've learned to respect, attack
> > Indians whom they know to
> > be innocent, in a charge which they know is
> > suicidal, at the orders of a
> > commander whom they despise?
> >
> >
> > Paths of Glory poses similar questions.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > From: David Ehrenstein cellar47@y...
> >
> >
> > "Fort Apache" is a film about how genocide
> > really
> > isn't so bad if it's perpetrators are shown to
> > be
> > "flawed" in terms of their personal
> > relations,life
> > goals, etc.
> >
> >
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> > mail2web - Check your email from the web at
> > http://mail2web.com/ .
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> __________________________________
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2329
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 6:22pm
Subject: Re: Re: I've never considered Ford a racist
"are we not judging Ford's approach to, and
depiction of, indians with post Vietnam eyes? Would
the american shame
of having commited genocide on the indians ever been
there had it not
been for Vietnam and the politisizing of it in the
seventies?"
Well that's actually a very good question Henrik, in
that it relates to both modern contexts for historical
dramas and how aware we are of our actual history.
In its time "The Searchers" might well have some
resonance to the Korean war. The Straubs have said it
speaks for the French in then-occupied Algeria. But
more important is the fact that the history of Native
Americans isn't taught outside of rareified
unitversity courses. They are an all-purpose "other"
whose cinematic significance touchs on everything
from Westerns to musicals like "Annie Get Your Gun" to
Godard's "Weekend" and "Wind From the East."
--- Henrik Sylow wrote:
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2330
From: Damien Bona
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 9:10pm
Subject: Re: Kazan and Semi-documentaries
Mike, the semi-documentary chart on your website is fascinating. The
House on 92nd Street paved the way for a late-40s semi-phenomenon
which I've never seen discussed: the proliferation of on-location
shooting in New York.
Fox was the studio most frequently filming here, and it's interesting
that this wasn't done just for crime dramas (such as Kiss of Death),
but also for warm-hearted comedies (Miracle On 34th Street, Come To
The Stable), social problem pictures (Gentleman's Agreement, The
Snake Pit) and even romantic melodramas (Daisy Kenyon has a few
location shots).
MGM -- particularly once Dore Schary came in and Louis B. Mayer was
no longer omnipotent -- was probably the runner-up to Fox, with the
studio heading east for East Side, West Side, Side Street, the
beginning of Act of Violence, Adam's Rib among others, and, of
course, On The Town.
Warners seemed to concentrate its location work on the west
coast,shooting Dark Passage and Nora Prentiss in San Francisco, The
Unfaithhful and Possessed on the streets of L.A.
2331
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 9:15pm
Subject: Re: Re: Kazan and Semi-documentaries
Speaking of the semi-documentary fad (which was
isnpired by neo-relaism, BTW) the de,marcation line of
the "Zone" in which Gore Vidal's "Myron" takes place
is at a theater palying "Call Northside 777."
--- Damien Bona wrote:
> Mike, the semi-documentary chart on your website is
> fascinating. The
> House on 92nd Street paved the way for a late-40s
> semi-phenomenon
> which I've never seen discussed: the proliferation
> of on-location
> shooting in New York.
>
> Fox was the studio most frequently filming here, and
> it's interesting
> that this wasn't done just for crime dramas (such as
> Kiss of Death),
> but also for warm-hearted comedies (Miracle On 34th
> Street, Come To
> The Stable), social problem pictures (Gentleman's
> Agreement, The
> Snake Pit) and even romantic melodramas (Daisy
> Kenyon has a few
> location shots).
>
> MGM -- particularly once Dore Schary came in and
> Louis B. Mayer was
> no longer omnipotent -- was probably the runner-up
> to Fox, with the
> studio heading east for East Side, West Side, Side
> Street, the
> beginning of Act of Violence, Adam's Rib among
> others, and, of
> course, On The Town.
>
> Warners seemed to concentrate its location work on
> the west
> coast,shooting Dark Passage and Nora Prentiss in San
> Francisco, The
> Unfaithhful and Possessed on the streets of L.A.
>
>
>
>
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2332
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 10:34pm
Subject: Re: "I've never considered Ford a racist"
> There are, putting it simply, perhaps two types of "protest" film.
> Paths of Glory and Fort Apache. The former puts blacks hats on
> the villains and makes you feel good by telling you over and over
> that evil is evil, and so you emerge from the movie gloating over
> your own sublime righteousness.
Wow. Much as I like FORT APACHE, I don't agree with this estimation
of the Kubrick film. I disagree that Kubrick (Cobb, Willingham,
Thompson, etc.) is simply saying, Look here, these people are evil,
these other people are good, but illustrating how the human
attributes we might label as evil - I don't even want to say evil,
because it makes it sound like a Harry Potter film, although Kubrick
detractors will surely approve of that comparison - works on a day-to-
day basis, how (one might argue) we are trapped by the world we
create for ourselves. Almost all Kubrick films are about this trap.
I don't feel righteous after seeing PATHS OF GLORY, I feel really,
really fucking depressed, because I know the behavior of the
generals, I've seen and worked under Mireaus and Broulards, etc. And
the final scene, called mawkish by many, is heartbreaking to me
because it attempts to offset all that we've seen by a brief, casual
suggestion of hope - one that we know will be rendered moot a few
story-hours later.
Jaime
2333
From: George Robinson
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 10:55pm
Subject: Re: John Ford & racism (correction)
I've got to get more sleep. I could have sworn that Tag wrote "that Wayne is
also the agronomist," and I was wracking my brain trying to remember in what
movie he played a farmer.
George (Insomnia? You're soaking in it) Robinson
One night, as he walked past the home of a shoemaker, Rabbi Salanter noticed
that despite the late hour, the man was still working by the light of a
dying candle. "Why are you still working," he asked. "It is very late and
soon that candle will go out." The shoemaker replied, "As long as the candle
is still burning, it is still possible to accomplish and to mend." Salanter
spent that entire night excitedly pacing his room and repeating to himself:
"As long as the candle is still burning, it is still possible to accomplish
and to mend."
2334
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 10:56pm
Subject: Semi-documentaries
Universal shot for four weeks in Santa Rosa on Shadow of a
Doubt in 1943, ostensibly to conserve materials that would
contribute to wartime shortages if sets were built for everything,
but really because Hitchcock wanted to. Many non-professionals
were used as extras and day players; the little girl who plays Ann
was the daughter of a local greengrocer (the profession of
Hitchcock's father). AH was already famous in England for
location shooting (as well as for fancy trick sets) during the silent
period. He was the first to shoot in the London Metro (Downhill),
and photographers were called in to watch - AH was in evening
dress, having come "straight from the theatre" to direct the
scene. For the real fair in The Ring, he and his cameras
mingled with real patrons capturing candid shots - the director
was costumed as a showman with a red silk tophat.
As far as New York is concerned, before production started on
Shadow AH took a train to NY with Thornton Wilder, who was
going into the Army, to finish rewrites on the early version of the
script. While he was there he commandeered a Universal
newsreel crew to shoot the opening scenes in New Jersey, with
real bums posed against the backdrop of the bridge and real
kids playing stickball - the NY Times covered the event and
called it "a return to the days when directors took their cameras
into the streets." Reflectors which would mostly have been used
for westerns and newsreels after the birth of sound were used to
set up the shots, and since Uncle Charlie wasn't cast yet, AH
had three actors - tall, medium and short - filmed from behind. A
shot of the cops looking for Uncle Charlie was reportedly filmed
thru the feet of an sleeping sunbather on the roof of the building
by which he made his escape, but was not used - until Hitchcock
remembered it and made it the opening and closing shot(s) of
The Trouble with Harry.
Selznick would never have stood for any of this, but AH was on
loan to Universal and Jack Skirball, one of the producers of the
highly successful Saboteur (which also contains location shots
done in NY with doubles at the start of the Statue of Liberty
scene), and was beginning to feel like himself again. As far as I
know, he was pioneering the return to location shooting when he
did Shadow, which actually included scenes filmed inside the
Santa Rosa bank and telegraph office. Later he would take it to
the max using the new Garnerlights (sp?) to shoot in apartments
etc. for The Wrong Man, the ultimate in semi-documentary
realism - and of course, its total opposite: the Kafkaesque
fanastic.
2335
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 11:09pm
Subject: Re: Semi-documentaries
It's been mentioned before on a_film_by, but (to my mind) Kubrick's
NYC location shooting in KILLER'S KISS resulted in a set of visuals
that ranks among the most striking in his career.
Jaime
2336
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 11:13pm
Subject: Petition Central
Anyone who wants to petition for more Premingers in new prints,
Michael Schlesinger of Sony Repertory can be reached at
Michael_Schlesinger@s.... I'm sure he'll appreciate
your support. Three years ago he was looking desperately for
someone to write about his new print of Bonjour Tristesse - I
don't think anyone did, though with Film Comment PR'ing Film
Society activities and staying away from old films, I'm not sure
where one would send such a piece now anyway. Tim Lucas's
comment when I told him the new policy: "A film magazine
without articles on old films is like a library without old books!" I
was happy to see they ran JR on Masamura - maybe that bodes
a loosening of the structures they have been forced to opearte
under the last few years.
2337
From: George Robinson
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 11:16pm
Subject: Re: Petition Central
CinemaScope now has a regular column on DVDs by the same Mr. Rosenbaum, so
that's one place for a start.
George Robinson
One night, as he walked past the home of a shoemaker, Rabbi Salanter noticed
that despite the late hour, the man was still working by the light of a
dying candle. "Why are you still working," he asked. "It is very late and
soon that candle will go out." The shoemaker replied, "As long as the candle
is still burning, it is still possible to accomplish and to mend." Salanter
spent that entire night excitedly pacing his room and repeating to himself:
"As long as the candle is still burning, it is still possible to accomplish
and to mend."
----- Original Message -----
From: "hotlove666"
To:
Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2003 7:13 PM
Subject: [a_film_by] Petition Central
> Anyone who wants to petition for more Premingers in new prints,
> Michael Schlesinger of Sony Repertory can be reached at
> Michael_Schlesinger@s.... I'm sure he'll appreciate
> your support. Three years ago he was looking desperately for
> someone to write about his new print of Bonjour Tristesse - I
> don't think anyone did, though with Film Comment PR'ing Film
> Society activities and staying away from old films, I'm not sure
> where one would send such a piece now anyway. Tim Lucas's
> comment when I told him the new policy: "A film magazine
> without articles on old films is like a library without old books!" I
> was happy to see they ran JR on Masamura - maybe that bodes
> a loosening of the structures they have been forced to opearte
> under the last few years.
>
>
>
> 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/
>
>
>
>
2338
From: Damien Bona
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 11:30pm
Subject: Re: Kazan and Semi-documentaries
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> Speaking of the semi-documentary fad (which was
> isnpired by neo-relaism, BTW) . . .
Actually, The House on 92nd Street was released before Open City was
seen in the States. I do agree though, David, that neo-realism --
as well as British post-war "realism" -- was undoubtedly the catalyst
for the widespread use of location shooting in the late 40s.
In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, wrote:
>Universal shot for four weeks in Santa Rosa on Shadow of a
>Doubt in 1943, ostensibly to conserve materials that would
>contribute to wartime shortages if sets were built for everything,
>but really because Hitchcock wanted to. Many non-professionals
>were used as extras and day players; the little girl who plays Ann
>was the daughter of a local greengrocer (the profession of
>Hitchcock's father).
Edna May Wonacott, who is wonderful as Ann, went on to make a few
other films, most notably portraying Delphine in Bells of St.
Mary's. Interestingly, shortly after the Shadow Of A Doubt company
left Santa Rosa, Irving Pichel's Happy Land was shot there. Natalie
Wood's family (the Gurdins) lived in Santa Rosa and her mother took
her to a casting call where she was cast in the film.
Of course, a few years later Selznick would get on the location
bandwagon with Portrait of Jennie, which is one of the most evocative
cinematic portrayals of New York ever.
2339
From: programming
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 11:33pm
Subject: Re: Petition Central
> Fred Camper wrote a terrific review of the film in 1999 when it screened at
> the Film Center here in Chicago in the new print. (Most of you probably have
> already read this and also know about Fred's website, which contains much of
> his recent writing, but for those of you who have not read it or don't know
> the website, it's www.fredcamper.com )
>
> Patrick Friel (who MAY finally offer a substantive post after my unfortunately
> limited Chicago Int'l Film Festival viewings are over)
>
>
>
> Anyone who wants to petition for more Premingers in new prints,
> Michael Schlesinger of Sony Repertory can be reached at
> Michael_Schlesinger@s.... I'm sure he'll appreciate
> your support. Three years ago he was looking desperately for
> someone to write about his new print of Bonjour Tristesse - I
> don't think anyone did, though with Film Comment PR'ing Film
> Society activities and staying away from old films, I'm not sure
> where one would send such a piece now anyway. Tim Lucas's
> comment when I told him the new policy: "A film magazine
> without articles on old films is like a library without old books!" I
> was happy to see they ran JR on Masamura - maybe that bodes
> a loosening of the structures they have been forced to opearte
> under the last few years.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
2340
From: George Robinson
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 11:59pm
Subject: Re: Re: Kazan and Semi-documentaries
To what extent was the sudden rush to location shooting a product of
1)wartime materiel shortages affecting the building of sets; and 2) new
lighter-weight equipment?
George Robinson
2341
From: Damien Bona
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 0:00am
Subject: Re: Semi-documentaries
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley"
wrote:
> It's been mentioned before on a_film_by, but (to my mind) Kubrick's
> NYC location shooting in KILLER'S KISS resulted in a set of visuals
> that ranks among the most striking in his career.
They're so striking that TCM employs some of them in one of the lead-
ins to their movies. Having seen the intro many times, I did a
double-take when I saw The Killing a couple years back and recognized
such images as the sleazy dance-hall from Turner.
2342
From:
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 8:04pm
Subject: Re: Re: Semi-documentaries
In a message dated 10/7/2003 19:11:29 Eastern Daylight Time,
j_christley@y... writes:
> It's been mentioned before on a_film_by, but (to my mind) Kubrick's
> NYC location shooting in KILLER'S KISS resulted in a set of visuals
> that ranks among the most striking in his career.
God yes. I firmly believe that the Kubrick skeptics (which many auteurists I
hold a great deal of respect for are) will someday re-discover "Killer's
Kiss" as a forgotten gem. In fact, the film has a pretty poor rep even among the
Kubrick fans; they tend to group it, as Kubrick himself did, along with "Fear
and Desire" as an inept apprentice exercise. But to my thinking, the film's
wonderfully evocative visual sense, playful use of time, and brilliant location
shooting mark it as his best film until perhaps "2001."
On "Paths of Glory": I like the film and confess to being invariably moved by
the ending, but to my mind "Full Metal Jacket" is a corrective to all of the
earlier film's faults in good guy/bad guy simplifications. Kubrick regarded
"Paths" as an "anti-war movie"; he regarded "Metal" as a war movie without
overtly expressed ideological stances.
Peter
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
2343
From:
Date: Tue Oct 7, 2003 8:06pm
Subject: Re: Re: Semi-documentaries
In a message dated 10/7/2003 20:03:47 Eastern Daylight Time,
damienbona@y... writes:
> They're so striking that TCM employs some of them in one of the lead-
> ins to their movies.
Yes! Specifically, I believe TCM uses shots from "Killer's Kiss" for their
lead-ins to after-midnight programming - perfect timing.
Peter
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
2344
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 0:34am
Subject: Breer
Dear comrades -
There's a special night of Robert Breer films here in Melbourne this week.
I've read Fred's terrific piece from the CHICAGO READER, but I'm wondering
if there's any essay that in particular studies the sound in his films, or
their image-sound relations? I saw a good Ch 4 doco (by Keith Griffiths,
David Curtis and Simon Field) from 1992 that goes a lot into his hand-made
image practices, but there was scarcely a word about the sound collages -
which I'm presuming Breer also creates completely.
thanks, Adrian Martin
2345
From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 0:37am
Subject: transcend the prejudices of his {our} time
Given the importance of costume in film and the societal meaning of all
variety of "uniforms," it seems relevant to mention the transvestite in
this discussion of prejudices. For purposes of this discussion, I am
addressing the heterosexual male who prefers to dress as a female, and
does so 'in the closet' because of societal prejudice.
People who will not make a politically incorrect statement reference
any particular group still cross the line where transvestites are
concerned.
I suspect the universal acceptance of one's dress preference (which is
apparently more integral than fashionable for some) will be one of the
last taboos released from societal holds.
I know there are many movies with actors dressing in drag for different
motivations (TOOTSIE and SOME LIKE IT HOT come to mind), but how has
transvestism (as defined above) been treated in the movies, ala racial,
religious, sexual prejudices?
Perhaps understanding cinematic portrayals of transvestism will shed
some light on how others in earlier times dealt with prejudices more
apparent to their times.
2346
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 1:39am
Subject: Mark Rappaport
I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Mark Rappaport's CASUAL
RELATIONS earlier today and thought it was fascinating--the sort of
opaque, forbidding-seductive film that tends to grasp at the mundane
and monumental at the same time.
Rappaport glides over images, having his actors repeat actions with
slight variations, or holding a take for long periods of time,
lulling us into rhythms before jerking us out of them. A zoom into
waves recalls the end of WAVELENGTH before Rappaport literalizes a
character's narration, "I felt like I was the picture, that I was in
the picture," and superimposes an elliptical portrait of the
character right in the middle of the frame. The playfully literal
nature of the narration and title cards gesture towards a focus
attention away from what happens in a shot, and into the images of
bodies (exploited, vampirized, objectified, loved, ignored), of space
(the empty rooms and flat walls suggest an emptiness that becomes
filled with weird emotions), of sound (overbearing electronic music
in pulses; Mick Jagger singing "Under My Thumb" with the camera
fixated on the car radio).
Lots of references to painting -- almost unmistakable ones to
Modigliani and perhaps Manet (reclining nudes in familiar poses),
perhaps to Vermeer (the guy who's tripping, looking out the window),
almost definitely to Michelangelo with what I think might be God's
hand from the Sistine chapel, except it'd be reversed (pointing
right) if it was ...
The only other film of Rappaport's I've seen so far is CHAIN LETTERS,
a few years ago, which I loved and still would call one of the best
films of the 80s despite a now-sketchy memory of it. I have a DVD of
FROM THE JOURNALS OF JEAN SEBERG that I'll get around to when I get a
working DVD player again, and I'll have to check out his other films
my video store has over the next few months.
I also read through some of Rappaport's film criticism on Senses of
Cinema -- he's, little surprise, also an excellent critic! Is anyone
here a big fan of his work, or perhaps not a big fan but familiar
with it?
Must run ...
--Zach
2347
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 2:12am
Subject: Re: Mark Rappaport
I've seen at least three of the pre-1990 ones, including "The Scenic
Route" and "Local Color," but a very long time ago. The first two I saw
were in color, low-budget melodramas that seemed to me to owe a certain
debt to Sirk, in their color sense and in the way the color related to
the story. Then I saw a third in black and white in which two characters
watched "Written on the Wind" on television, and saw that I had
understood at least one aspect of them. They were very self-aware, and
the references you're seeing comes from his self-consciousness. I wasn't
sure how great I thought they were, though I liked them. Then I saw the
Seberg video and completely hated it; it made me very angry, actually. I
know Jonathan Rosenbaum is a big fan. It seemed to me to reduce her
"story" to a lot of tabloid superficialities, and to do the same with
Otto Preminger.
- Fred
2348
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 2:39am
Subject: Re: Breer
Adrian,
Breer does make the sound collages himself; they are a key part of his
work; you're right to inquire. There was a book on him a few years ago
that I can't give you the reference to as I'm traveling; I sent out a
few queries and if I learn anything I'll let you know.
The great texts on Breer that I do know are his articles and interviews
in FILM CULTURE, starting as early as number 25 I believe; best is issue
with long interviews with Mekas and Sitney and Charles Levine, FILM
CULTURE 56/57. I don't remember him talking much about sound though. But
these interviews, and/or the body of all his writings, constitutes
arguably another example of my favorite kind of film theory: film theory
written by filmmakers. Breer discusses the nature of the medium, and
defines how he uses it in modernist terms.
There's a partial bibliography (sans the recent book that I'm inquiring
about) at http://vax.wcsu.edu/~MCCARNEY/fva/RBreer_bib.html Something
else not in that bibliography: A good section on Breer in Jonathan
Rosenbaum's "Film: The Front Line."
Since you get our group by email, you may not have noticed the strips
from the most recent Breer film gracing our group's home page,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/
One other little-noted fact about Breer: a former painter, as a
filmmaker he also made wonderful sculptures (the ones I've seen move
just at the limit of perceptibility: if you look hard you can see them
move) and various pre-cinema devices as well.
When I provided my own top ten films of all time list to "Senses of
Cinema," what I actually did was choose my top ten directors of all time
and then choose one film of each, and the film choice for most was
necessarily somewhat arbitrary. But the director choice wasn't
arbitrary, I didn't hesitate to include Breer as one of the ten greatest
filmmakers ever.
- Fred
- Fred
- Fred
2349
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 2:49am
Subject: Re: Mark Rappaport
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> The first two I saw
> were in color, low-budget melodramas that seemed to me to owe a
> certain debt to Sirk, in their color sense and in the way the color
> related to the story. Then I saw a third in black and white in
> which two characters watched "Written on the Wind" on television,
> and saw that I had understood at least one aspect of them.
As is confirmed from looking at his film criticism, Rappaport is
clearly a cinephile. In CASUAL RELATIONS, Rappaport has a woman
watching TV in a long series of shots (unchanged in composition save
for the actress' poses), and we hear dialogue from the movies she's
watching (SUNSET BOULEVARD, JOHNNY GUITAR, and I believe DOUBLE
INDEMNITY).
> Then I saw the Seberg video and completely hated it; it made me
> very angry, actually.
Sorry to hear this -- I hope I don't have the same reaction, that'd
be a big letdown.
--Zach
2350
From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 2:54am
Subject: Chinese Underground Film Festival
UC San Diego is having a 3 day showing of Chinese Underground films.
Anybody have any comments on any of the following films?
My Camera Doesn't Lie (Documentary) / Solveig Klassen and Katharina
Schneider-Roos
A film about Chinese underground filmakers who were first to express
their truthful and realistic views on China from 1989 to the present.
It is also the first film that deals with the Chinese homosexual film
scene.
Shanghai Dreams or Shanhai Nights (Documentary)/ Michelle Chen Miao
Documentary film about a private club owner, an American actor, a
migrant worker, and a taxi driver trying to pursue their dreams in
today's Shanghai.
Unknown Pleasures (Fiction) / Jia Zhangke
This film focuses on two 19-year-old boys, children of laid-off
government mine workers. They end up robbing a bank.
Old Testament (Fiction) / Cui Zi'en
This film has three parts: Poem 1991, Proverb 2001, and Chant 2011. It
describes the lives of homosexuals in China from the past, present and
future.
Box (Documentary) / Ying Weiwei
This documentary film describes two lesbians' simple and fragile lives.
One of them, Fang, is a printer who was harassed and beaten by her
father since she was a child. She hopes to have a cozy home with a
loving partner. The other, Liang, was hurt and disappointed by men.
Fish and Elephant (Fiction) / Li Yu
Elephant trainer, Xiao Qun, has fallen in love with a new woman. Her
mother can't understand her relationship and, meanwhile, introduces
some new men to her. We learn about Xiao Qun's past in which her
previous girlfriend was wanted for the murder of her father who had
been raped by her father when she was very young. She solicits Xiao
Qun's help to avoid the police only to be killed by policemen, in the
end.
Snake Boy (Documentary) / Michelle Chen Miao
A biographical documentary about Coco, a Chinese jazz singer in today's
Shanghai. He's also gay.
Between City and Countryside (Documentary) / Zhang Zhanqing
In today's China, many poor peasants have to leave their hometowns for
the big cities to sustain their families, only to find low-wage jobs
waiting for them. This documentary film shows us the life of Guan
Chunqi, a struggling migrant, and his family, in Beijing.
Leave Me Alone (Documentary) / Hu Shu
The true story of three girls who migrate to the big city to seek their
fortunes. The girls take jobs at a night club, beauty salon, and
massage parlor rendering their "services" on the side while one of
their boyfriends holds forth in their apartment. Note: The term for
"call girl" in China is referred to as "Miss Sitting Stage".
Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers (Documentary) / Wu Wenguang
A documentary based on five young artist's experiences in Beijing
during the 1980s. After graduating college, they leave their officially
assigned jobs and arrive in Beijing in search of their dreams.
At Home in the World (Documentary)/ Wu Wenguang
A documentary based on five young artist's experiences in China,
France, Italy,the U.S., and Austrialia: a five year follow-up to the
documentary film, "Bumming in Beijing".
Crying Woman (Fiction) / Liu Bingjian
Wang Guixiang became a famous professional mourner for local funerals.
She managed to save enough money to bribe the local prison director to
have her emprisoned husband released. However, before she could
initiate the bribe, her husband was killed during an attempted escape.
Although she could not shed tears upon hearing this news, the very next
day she cries profusely during a funeral for a businessman.
Celestial Burial (Documentary)/ WengPulin
Documentation of the Tibetan celestial burial in Damu Monastery.
(2001, 150 minutes)
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
2351
From:
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 0:14am
Subject: Kill Bill and Femme Fatale
In a message dated 10/6/2003 22:23:45 Eastern Daylight Time,
upworld1@h... writes:
> Conclusion: a beautiful woman can have anything she
> wants, including absolute power over time, space, fate and narrative.
Incidentally, this is a pretty good description of Tarantino's "Kill Bill,
Vol. 1." The director's reverence for Thurman in this film rivals his reverence
of Pam Grier in the sublime "Jackie Brown" - and that's saying something.
While "Vol. 1" has nothing even remotely as ballsy narrative-wise as the second
appearance of "Seven Years Later" in "Femme Fatale," the world of the film
nevertheless permits its heroine to accomplish feats of energy and strength
heretofore not humanly possible.
I just read a review of the film describing it as "clearly Tarantino's worst"
- don't trust the skeptics. This is a major work and, to my thinking,
possibly (if not clearly) Tarantino's best.
Peter
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
2352
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 4:57am
Subject: Transvestites transcending
Elizabeth,
If you haven't seen Ed Wood, Jr.'s GLEN OR GLENDA, forget all that
you have heard about how bad he was and rent it - I think it's a
masterpiece, and it is an apologia for transvestism, by a
transvestite director.
Eddy Izzard (sp?), to judge by stories running here recently, is a
straight comic who is a transvestite and performs in drag. But Wood's
magnum opus was made and released in 1953!
It's funny about the isms I listed this morning: racism, homophobia,
sexism... They don't really go away. I have recently become
interested in the survival of homophobia, and more generally in the
maddening incoherence of our society's definitions of gender and the
effects these phenomena still have in many domains. A book about all
this called The Epistemology of the Closet (Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, UC
Press) has given me a lot to think about, and I recommend it to
anyone who is ready for some homegrown deconstruction that is a
little difficult to read, but earns its difficulty, as one of my
teachers used to say. Despite a lot of progress - real and apparent -
we are just beginning to sort out what it means to be human and how
much we are in thrall to ideas inherited from the 19th Century -
Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, which is widely
available, is also good on this.
I think it's a very important subject - one of the most important.
But so are racism, genocide, sexism and a lot of other topics that we
are too quick to treat as empty names for problems long resolved -
most of them, supposedly, in my lifetime. I don't believe it for a
minute. That's why the question of how an artist deals with these
vast realities is anything but irrelevant to how I view her/his work.
In fact, limiting myself to narrative cinema, as I seem to have
decided to do long ago, I can say that these unsolved problems are
the staff of life where this art form is concerned, and will be for
some time to come.
Wood is one of the rare examples of someone who really transcended
his time, and I don't consider that the fact that one transvestite
character in the film commits suicide to mean that the filmmaker was
still blindered by negative stereotypes (!) - the other transvestite,
played by Wood, asks his fiancee to give him the right to be himself
and gets it. My personal theory about Wood is that, while firmly
imbedded in the 50s (and the boom in horror and sci-fi films that
started in 1953, when two similarly mindblowing films called Invaders
from Mars and Robot Monster appeared) was out of time, in the sense
that the practices that form the core of his work and/or life -
transvestism, necromancy, drunkenness - make him a throwback to
primitive times, a shaman living and making art in the 50s, with
results that inevitably appear incongruous or funny much of the time
(but not always).
So I would suggest that the film artists who are truly able to be in
their time and not of it, like Wood, are part of something older, not
beacons of the future - or maybe both, who knows? And I suspect that
you will find more of them making films (of all kinds) than just
about anything else. But there are many other ways to make good films
that contain, to use a phrase I'm becoming fond of, "a little more
world than cinema." I'm just not sure I'd say that they
all "transcend their time" - that may take special kind of madness.
2353
From: Damien Bona
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 5:30am
Subject: Re: transcend the prejudices of his {our} time
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Elizabeth Nolan wrote:
> Given the importance of costume in film and the societal meaning of
all
> variety of "uniforms," it seems relevant to mention the
transvestite in
> this discussion of prejudices. For purposes of this discussion, I
am
> addressing the heterosexual male who prefers to dress as a female,
and
> does so 'in the closet' because of societal prejudice.
Elizabeth, most of the friendly portrayals of transvestism (eg, La
Cage Aux Folles, Outrageous! -- both lousey films in my opinion) tend
to have gay men in drag, not hets. As Bill pointed out, the
marvelous Ed Wood is a striking exception. I haven't seen Huston's
The Kremlin Letter, so although I know George Sanders famously
appeared in drag in the picture, I don't know if his character was
queer or straight.
There is I Was A Male War Bride, where Cary Grant is the most
unconvincing drag queen in history -- but that's the point.
Victor/Victoria is a particularly interesting use of transvestism
because the gay characters don't cross-dress (exceept for Robert
Preston in a comic parody at the very end). It is heterosexual
Julie Andrews who is the cross-dresser, which eventually she must
give up because in true Blake Edwards fashion, this is a film about
being your own true self.
I had a (straight) uncle who was a transvestite, and my grandmother's
reaction when he showed up for Sunday Mass dressed in women's
clothing is family legend.
As for Hollywood, Dan Dailey was supposedly a drag queen, and his
frequent co-star Betty Grable apparently would help him select
ensembles. There was a potential scandal that was kept hush-hush
when he showed up at a Hollywood premiere in drag. And Esther
Williams claims that the star of Merrill's Maurauders, Jeff Chandler,
was also a cross-dresser.
>
> People who will not make a politically incorrect statement
reference
> any particular group still cross the line where transvestites are
> concerned.
Actually, everyone I knows does tread the line with draq queens.
It's fat people who are the kast acceptable objects of non-p.c.
speech.
2354
From: Damien Bona
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 5:38am
Subject: Re: the blind leading the blind / personality
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Henrik Sylow"
wrote:
>
> Add Fantasia
> There is one essential flaw in that interpretation. Mickey is
not "the
> worker", but represent "the management", as dictates and then
ignores
> "the workers". Further, if The Sorceror's Apprentice should be
> anti-union, what is the union? The Wizard? But wouldn't that make
> Mickey an union-forman or agitator? The broom? But since its never
> revolts, just carries out a task blindly...
I haven't seen Fantasia since 1977 or '78 (and back in the day you
weren't really seeing it if you weren't stoned -- for a while Disney
even sold it as a "head film" complete with midnight screenings -- so
my memory is a bit vague). But I don't see Mickey as Management at
all -- he is akin to the animators, drawing artists, etc. laboring on
Disney's lot and presumambly hoping to learn from the "Master."
2355
From: Jason Guthartz
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 6:40am
Subject: Markopoulos, "Sorrows"
Wow.
Yesterday I had my first experience of films by Gregory J. Markopoulos:
"Psyche" (1947), "Sorrows" (1969) & "Twice a Man" (1963). The two later
films were particularly astounding, but all were symphonies of light, color,
texture, movement, shapes, spaces, places, objects (and bodies & body parts
in "Psyche" & "Twice a Man"). Similarities to Brakhage & Anger came to
mind, in terms of Brakhage's frame-to-frame editing strategies and use of
fades & zooms, and Anger's compositions of luminous images of objects &
bodies. This was one of those rare, completely overwhelming art encounters,
where I left the cinema thinking, "Damn... back to square one -- the
possibilities are endless."
Wow.
Fred, in your article:
http://www.chireader.com/movies/archives/2003/1003/031003.html
you state that "Sorrows" was edited entirely in camera. Is that a misprint?
I simply can't believe that. Or maybe I don't know the meaning of
"in-camera editing", which I take to mean that nothing is done to the film
in terms of splicing/dicing & optical tricks after it is removed from the
camera and developed, i.e., the film that comes out of the camera is the
film we see projected. Markopoulos' remarks about the film to Jonas Mekas:
"It's a film in which all of the editing is done in camera. It was very cold
that day, there was a little bit of fog, but as I filmed, starting at the
main entrance along the road, the fog sort of lifted. The first roll was the
outside, the second the inside. By the time I got inside, the sun kept
coming out - so it's like a piece of crystal, it comes to light. I just used
a motif from Beethoven's Leonore overture, which Wagner liked very much."
http://www.arts4all.com/newsletter/breakingnews/breakingnews.asp?bb=2318&aid
=10
If those overlaps, fades and flash-frames were done in-camera with no
"post-production" manipulation, this film has to be one of the most
impressive cinematographic achievements in the history of cinema. In any
case, it's found a place among the handful of beyond-great films I've ever
seen. Markopolous is cinema.
-Jason
-----------------------------------------
Go Cubs!
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
2356
From: jaketwilson
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 7:41am
Subject: Re: Transvestites transcending
> I think it's a very important subject - one of the most important.
> But so are racism, genocide, sexism and a lot of other topics that
we
> are too quick to treat as empty names for problems long resolved -
> most of them, supposedly, in my lifetime. I don't believe it for a
> minute. That's why the question of how an artist deals with these
> vast realities is anything but irrelevant to how I view her/his
work.
> In fact, limiting myself to narrative cinema, as I seem to have
> decided to do long ago, I can say that these unsolved problems are
> the staff of life where this art form is concerned, and will be for
> some time to come.
Yes, yes, yes!
Wood was a genius, obviously. Despite all the distortions, I love Tim
Burton's film as well, because while it mythologises Wood it also
pays due tribute to him as a hero, and acknowledges that his
absurdity was part of his heroism.
Re stereotypes in Warner Bros cartoons: years ago, I remember being
shocked by a Western spoof where Daffy takes on a band of marauding
Apache or similar. As they pop their heads up from behind a rock and
he blows them away, he's counting and singing: "One little, two
little, three little Indians…"
That's racism, in my book: while it doesn't make me love Daffy any
the less, it does make me queasy. I agree that when these kinds of
things turn up in films, there's little point in either dismissing
the film or dismissing the queasy feelings – they constitute part of
an experience which has to be dealt with.
Not all racial caricatures are offensive. (And "offensive" does not
mean "bad": you can't have good satire without offending someone or
other.) But racism is situational: the same joke can be innocuous or
poisonous in different contexts, and whether you're in a position to
be hurt depends on how much power you have. I don't exactly think of
THE SEARCHERS as racist, but I wouldn't want to spend too long
arguing the point with a Native American viewer who felt differently.
According to the biography of Peter Sellers by Roger Lewis -- a
crazed but fascinating book, by the way -- Satyajit Ray was horrified
when he saw Sellers doing his Indian number in THE PARTY (Ray had
previously written a script for Sellers to star in which fell
through). Watching the film now, I think Ray had a point. On the
other hand, I find it hard to imagine the French getting similarly
hot under the collar about Inspector Clouseau, though I could be
wrong.
But as I've suggested, I think in Blake Edwards movies what looks
like "bad taste" is often a deliberate way of complicating the
emotional tone. On a grander scale, something similar is true of
Ford, and his films are powerful partly because they disturb our
complacency about our own politically correct virtue. So yes, these
questions do matter, and yes, they aren't simple.
JTW
PS: Re the survival of homophobia: to state the obvious, gayness and
anal sex are presently Topic A in US comedies aimed at male
teenagers – ROAD TRIP, DUDE WHERE'S MY CAR, the AMERICAN PIE series,
SOUTH PARK, the Kevin Smith oeuvre, and on and on. Not all of this is
straightforwardly "homophobic", but it does make you wonder what's up.
PPS: The Sellers bio is now being adapted as a telemovie – according
to the IMDB, it stars Geoffrey Rush as Sellers, Charlize Theron as
Britt Eklund, Stanley Tucci as Stanley Kubrick and John Lithgow as
Blake Edwards! Thoughts?
2357
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 7:42am
Subject: Degrees of transvestites in films
Note: I have not seen several of the films I will mention here for
years, and its only mentioned as a note upon this interesting theme.
As Elizabeth briefly notes upon, there is a clear distinction between
"Cross Dressing" (CD), "Tranvestites" (T) and finally "Transsexuals"
(TS). The CD will wear women's clothing because it adds to their
sexuality as man, and feels good. The CD is not homosexual, but very
heterosexual. Ed Wood was CD and not transvestite; his sexuality was
linked with the sensation he got from wearing women's clothes,
especially the angora sweater. The T wears the clothes of the opposite
sex to become that sex mentally, while being comfortable with his/hers
own gender. T are either homosexuals or bisexuals. Finally TS alter
their gender to become the opposite sex.
The Crossdresser
From the first depiction of CD (I was a Male War Bride) to the most
recently (Mrs Doubtfire), the approach was and still is comedy. Apart
from the sheer motif, the problems of men to "become" woman (shaving,
make up, fake breasts) are exploited for laughs. While the protagonist
becomes more attentive to the opposite sex, we, the audience, are not
affected.
Apart from "Glen or Glenda?", the only, as far as I can recall,
serious use of CD is Streisand's "Yentl", where she explores the
injustice of genderpolitics.
The Transvestite
Generalising, the T film is a road movie, both internally and actual.
The transsexual becomes a guide for us to reflect our own sexuality
and how we treat the other, as they are have a leg in both camps
(being female of mind and male of body). The goal of the journey is
acceptence and liberation.
The Transsexual
This is a topic rarely adressed, except in pornography, where shemales
are becoming more and more popular. I have yet to see anything except
documentry touch the subject. It is briefly used as motif (and shock
value) in "Dressed to Kill" by de Palma.
Henrik
--------------------
CD films
"I Was a Male War Bride" (1949), Howard Hawks
"Glen or Glenda?" (1953), Ed Wood *
"Some Like it Hot" (1959), Billy Wilder
"Tootsie" (1982), Sydney Pollack
"Yentl" (1983), Barbra Streisand *
"Mrs Doubtfire" (1993), Chris Columbus
Transvestite films
"The Adventures of Priscilla" (1994), Stephan Elliott
"To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar" (1995), Beeban
Kidron
Transsexual films
"The Christine Jorgensen Story" (1970), Irving Rapper
"You Don't Know Dick" (1996), Bestor Cram
2358
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 8:33am
Subject: Sellers telemovie, Villa telemovie, "tv" movies
PPS: The Sellers bio is now being adapted as a telemovie – according
to the IMDB, it stars Geoffrey Rush as Sellers, Charlize Theron as
Britt Eklund, Stanley Tucci as Stanley Kubrick and John Lithgow as
Blake Edwards! Thoughts?
None. Did anyone see the Beresford film about Villa and Griffith? The
true story, as told by Walsh, is great; sounds like they ruined it.
Bestor Cram?
2359
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 8:37am
Subject: Bunny Lake 2004
From today's Variety:
3. COL HOPS TO 'BUNNY'
Witherspoon, Gordon to produce Preminger redo
Reese Witherspoon's Type A Films is developing a remake of Otto
Preminger's 1965 pic "Bunny Lake Is Missing" for Columbia Pictures,
with Witherspoon attached to star.
If you subscribe to Variety you can read the whole story here:
http://email.variety.com/cgi-bin7/DM/y/eVgD0Da2VO0IwA0gEs0A7
Gabe
2360
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 8:42am
Subject: Re: Markopoulos, "Sorrows"
> Or maybe I don't know the meaning of
> "in-camera editing", which I take to mean that nothing is done to
the film
> in terms of splicing/dicing & optical tricks after it is removed
from the
> camera and developed, i.e., the film that comes out of the camera
is the
> film we see projected.
"In-camera editing" means that most of the decision-making that takes
place in the editing room actually takes place on-set. Shots are
about the length that they'll eventually turn out to be, give or
take, and frequently they're shot in the order in which they'll
eventually get put. This is often done in an effort to conserve
time, and production resources like film, electricity, and to get the
project moving, without much in the way of delays. Take a film like
THE THIN RED LINE. It's safe to assume that Malick didn't have the
final release version in mind when he was on location. He probably
didn't even know exactly how this or that combat scene was going to
play out.
So, without having seen SORROWS, but listening to what you've said
about it, I would say that Markopoulos probably *did* take his
footage and actually splice it together, put it under the knife,
etc. One way to tell for certain: did each shot begin and end with
fogging? Because the beginning and ending of a shot represents the
moment when the camera "gets up to speed," and because it's moving
slower than "normal," there's more light hitting it, thus it's
gradually moving from completely exposed (clear) to normal exposure
(a photographic representation of whatever you're shooting). And
between these two points there is fogging - what looks like a picture
emerging from complete whiteness. And then going back to it.
Jaime
2361
From:
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 7:26am
Subject: Re: transcend the prejudices
Other films that come to mind:
Queen Christina (Rouben Mamoulian) about the historical queen of Sweden
Impromptu (James Lapine) about George Sand, the 19th Century French novelist
(Judy Davis)
Little Big Man (Arthur Penn) Native American traditions
It's Pat (Adam Bernstein) about androgyny
Soap (The TV series) Billy Crystal
Boys Don't Cry (Kimberley Pierce)
Mike Grost
2362
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 1:03pm
Subject: Re: Markopoulos, "Sorrows"
Jason,
Of course I'm delighted to read your response to Markopoulos.
I agree that a film like "Sorrows" is one of those that defines cinema,
which is, or should be, for me, defined by its greatest films. This is
in itself a polemical position, of course, and a more reasonable one is
that "cinema" in the more usual sense of the term is definied by the sum
total of all films. But the second more engaged meaning is that waht I
most care about cinema is how great it can get.
It's also interesting that in his later works such as "Sorrows"
Markopoulos moves away from the character-based psychological "dramas"
of his earlier films, which, to one bred on Hollywood film, will hardly
look either chacter-based or like dramas. But his films become even less
"narrative" and less based on the affections. He was seeking something
more eternal.
Jamie's point about fogging I'm not sure is a sure-fire test, and in any
case, in "Sorrows" most (or all?) of the shots are introduced by
fade-ins, so no fogging is visible. But a filmmaker could have
rearranged shots leaving the fogged frames in, so a brighter first frame
doesn't mean the film wasn't edited. Not having been part of the
production process I of course can't say for sure, but I have no reason
to doubt that the film was made entirely in camera, that is, as you
understand it, with no further editing. While writing the article I
confirmed with Beavers that it was made that way -- I didn't even know
the Mekas interview you cite, but from Marekopoulos's other work of the
period I had guessed it was made in camera. His long set of film
portraits, "Galaxie," was also made that way.
To those who haven't seen the film, presumably most everyone in our
group, one reason Jason is so amazed is that the film consists of
multiple superimpositions, introduced by fade-ins, and it looks
incredibly controlled, as precise as a great piece of architecture.
Markopoulos almost certainly shot it with a Bolex, whose variable
shutter allows for in-camera fade-ins and fade-outs. The Bolex also has
a frame counter, so that you can back wind to a precise frame to get the
exact superimposition you want. But either Markopoulos has a phenomenal
memory and internal camera eye to get the film so controlled, or,
there's something about his "style" that can make things look like the
product of perfrect intentionality even though he didn't necessarily
know exactly what they would look like while making them. I suspect it's
a little of both.
Fred
2363
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 2:42pm
Subject: Re: Markopoulos, "Sorrows"
> Jamie's point about fogging I'm not sure is a sure-fire test
Neither am I.
-Jaime
2364
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 3:05pm
Subject: Re: Re: Markopoulos, "Sorrows"
Who screened the Markopoulos films? Was there a good
crowd watch them? What was the reaction?
Last week I had the great pleasure of speaking with
Olympia Dukakis about her most recent work. I brought
up "Twice A Man."it was her veryfirstfilm and she
remembered it, and Gregory, with enormous affection.
--- "Jaime N. Christley"
wrote:
>
> > Jamie's point about fogging I'm not sure is a
> sure-fire test
>
> Neither am I.
>
> -Jaime
>
>
__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com
2365
From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 3:38pm
Subject: limiting transvestism to heterosexuals
For the purposes of discussion, I was limiting transvestism to
heterosexuals (your straight uncle). I think these people are still
the most 'closetted,' even more than obese people who get out and about
for the most part, prejudice notwithstanding. But if dress preference
were entirely free of prejudice, I think we'd see more straight
transvestites. In fact, I think I have seen a short or documentary
about married heterosexual males who come with their mates to a
convention and certainly one of the highlights is the fashion show.
I have seen GLEN or GLENDA and the more recent Depp movie about WOODS.
On Wednesday, October 8, 2003, at 12:21 AM, a_film_by@yahoogroups.com
wrote:
> Actually, everyone I knows does tread the line with draq queens.
> It's fat people who are the kast acceptable objects of non-p.c.
> speech.
2366
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 3:47pm
Subject: Re: Degrees of transvestites in films
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Henrik Sylow"
wrote:
> Note: I have not seen several of the films I will mention here for
> years, and its only mentioned as a note upon this interesting theme.
>
> As Elizabeth briefly notes upon, there is a clear distinction
between
> "Cross Dressing" (CD), "Tranvestites" (T) and
finally "Transsexuals"
> (TS). The CD will wear women's clothing because it adds to their
> sexuality as man, and feels good. The CD is not homosexual, but
very
> heterosexual. Ed Wood was CD and not transvestite; his sexuality
was
> linked with the sensation he got from wearing women's clothes,
> especially the angora sweater. The T wears the clothes of the
opposite
> sex to become that sex mentally, while being comfortable with
his/hers
> own gender. T are either homosexuals or bisexuals. Finally TS alter
> their gender to become the opposite sex.
>
> The Crossdresser
> From the first depiction of CD (I was a Male War Bride) to the most
> recently (Mrs Doubtfire), the approach was and still is comedy.
Apart
> from the sheer motif, the problems of men to "become" woman
(shaving,
> make up, fake breasts) are exploited for laughs. While the
protagonist
> becomes more attentive to the opposite sex, we, the audience, are
not
> affected.
>
> Apart from "Glen or Glenda?", the only, as far as I can recall,
> serious use of CD is Streisand's "Yentl", where she explores the
> injustice of genderpolitics.
>
> The Transvestite
> Generalising, the T film is a road movie, both internally and
actual.
> The transsexual becomes a guide for us to reflect our own sexuality
> and how we treat the other, as they are have a leg in both camps
> (being female of mind and male of body). The goal of the journey is
> acceptence and liberation.
>
> The Transsexual
> This is a topic rarely adressed, except in pornography, where
shemales
> are becoming more and more popular. I have yet to see anything
except
> documentry touch the subject. It is briefly used as motif (and
shock
> value) in "Dressed to Kill" by de Palma.
>
> Henrik
>
> --------------------
> CD films
> "I Was a Male War Bride" (1949), Howard Hawks
> "Glen or Glenda?" (1953), Ed Wood *
> "Some Like it Hot" (1959), Billy Wilder
> "Tootsie" (1982), Sydney Pollack
> "Yentl" (1983), Barbra Streisand *
> "Mrs Doubtfire" (1993), Chris Columbus
>
> Transvestite films
> "The Adventures of Priscilla" (1994), Stephan Elliott
> "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar" (1995), Beeban
> Kidron
>
> Transsexual films
> "The Christine Jorgensen Story" (1970), Irving Rapper
> "You Don't Know Dick" (1996), Bestor Cram
It is interesting to note that in all the CD films you listed,
except the extraordinary (in all senses of the word) "Glen or
Glenda", the reason for the cross-dressing is not the male's
enjoyment of wearing female attire but an outward necessity: the men
(or woman in Streisand's case)dress up because they have to in order
to achieve what they want to do (or, in the case of Some Like It Hot,
to save their own life, a pretty strong, non-sexual motivation). In
other words, none of those characters correspond to your definition
of the cross-dresser. Has cross-dressing as a turn-on for the cross-
dresser (which is what it practically always is in real life) ever
been portrayed on film? Cross-dressing seems to be the last taboo.
One might say the same of transvestism. Which you didn't really
define as distinct from cross-dressing. I don't quite see the
difference, except that the transvestite may be seen as an extreme
form of cross-dresser (being in drag all or most of the time, and in
public if possible, as opposed to occasionally and in the closet?)
Unless one defines transvestism narrowly as a professional use of
cross-dressing (male comedian in drag).
The "transsexual" -- the preferred term has become "transgendered," I
think -- has always been a cross-dresser before the sex-change
operation. He (it's a He more often than not) is not and doesn't
feel "heterosexual" (or "homosexual"), he feels, to use the prevalent
cliche, "like a woman trapped in a man's body". Wearing women's
clothes to him is not "cross-dressing" but doing what comes naturally.
By the way I don't recall the Caine character in "Dressed to Kill"
being a transsexual, just a transvestite, but I haven't seen the film
in a long time. What happens is that he "invents" a twin who "feels
like a woman in a man's body" (the phrase is used in the film) in
order to rid himself of the "guilt" of being a transvestite (some
shrink!)
2367
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 3:54pm
Subject: Re: Re: Degrees of transvestites in films
Has anybody mentioned "In a Year with 13 Moons" yet?
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com
2368
From: programming
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 4:01pm
Subject: Re: Re: Markopoulos, "Sorrows"
>
> Who screened the Markopoulos films? Was there a good
> crowd watch them? What was the reaction?
>
> Last week I had the great pleasure of speaking with
> Olympia Dukakis about her most recent work. I brought
> up "Twice A Man."it was her veryfirstfilm and she
> remembered it, and Gregory, with enormous affection.
>
>
> The films were shown at DOC Films, the student-run film society at the
> University of Chicago. No crowd reaction - either good or bad (aside from
> most people staying to the end). I forgot to check the attendance at the start
> (but it wouldn't have been accurate as a lot of people seemed to come late),
> but in a quick approximation after the screening it seemed like 70 or 80.
>
> And Jason's WOW is entirely correct. I've now had the chance to see Psyche and
> Twice a Man three times each (in NY a few years ago, Milwaukee earlier this
> year, and the DOC show) and I like and admire Psyche and think Twice a Man is
> great. But Sorrows was a revelation and absolutely merits Jason's raves - it
> is a stunning film.
>
> Patrick Friel
>
>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
2369
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 4:45pm
Subject: Re: limiting transvestism to heterosexuals
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Elizabeth Nolan wrote:
> For the purposes of discussion, I was limiting transvestism to
> heterosexuals (your straight uncle). I think these people are still
> the most 'closetted,' even more than obese people who get out and about
> for the most part, prejudice notwithstanding.
I thought of "Morocco," but Dietrich is on stage, and the emphasis
is as much on lesbianism as cross-dressing.
One question I've wondered about: in Porter's "The Gay Shoe
Clerk," is the customer that the clerk kisses a man in a dress?
I've watched it a few times and can't tell. If he is man, was the
audience supposed to notice? And is the title a pun? I don't know
whether "gay" meant homosexual back in 1903.
Paul
2370
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 4:49pm
Subject: Re: Degrees of transvestites in films
I find that this discussion is being sadly limited by its focus on (a)
heterosexual cross-dressing and (b) mainstream narrative films.
I have seen many, many documentaries on transexuals as a result of my
"job" writing capsule reviews for the Reader of film festivals --
including women's and gay festivals. Perhaps I've seen one too many, in
fact -- I really didn't *need* those closeups of the still-scarred new
vagina on a "new" woman.
The great film of men in women's clothing is Jack Smith's "Flaming
Creatures," though I suppose most would term it a gay film, and Smith
himself was gay. But calling it a gay film really limits it. As Smith
himself wrote, with sarcasm and bitterness, he thought he was making a
comedy and was surprised to learn he had instead made a sex film. And
Smith was right: what the film is is a paean to childlike play, not
really to sex. And the cross-dressing has none of the uncomfortable edge
it has in mainstream films, even great ones such as "I Was a Male War
Bride." Instead, "Creatures" is in part about a kind of freedom, a
freedom to be whoever you want to be. (In Aldrich's terrific
"Choirboys," which most people hate, a ridiculously effeminate man comes
acorss one of the police-protagonists chained to a tree in a park with
his pants down, and says, "I'll be anyone you want me to be" -- but the
attitude the film takes toward that line is the exact opposite of
Smith's.) I'm not a great Susan Sontag fan but her old essay on
"Creatures" in her first book of essays, "Against Interpretation" (at
least I think it's there), gets it partly right. Social norms are not a
subject to be played off against in "Creatures," which creates its own
enchanted world.
"Glenn or Glenda" is, of course, wonderful, but it too treats the
subject as a "problem."
- Fred (and no, I don't personally wear women's clothes, not since I
tried on my mom's high heels at age six and found them difficult to walk
in...)
2371
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 5:06pm
Subject: Re: limiting transvestism to heterosexuals
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Elizabeth Nolan wrote:
> For the purposes of discussion, I was limiting transvestism to
> heterosexuals (your straight uncle). I think these people are
still
> the most 'closetted,' even more than obese people who get out and
about
> for the most part, prejudice notwithstanding. But if dress
preference
> were entirely free of prejudice, I think we'd see more straight
> transvestites.
>
>
>
>
> .
I agree. As I wrote in my previous post this morning, cross-
dressing seems to be the last taboo in movies, and that must be a
reflection of the taboo in real life. In films it is always used for
comedy purposes, and as I pointed out, never for the reason(s) people
cross-dress in real life. Even in "M. Butterfly" whose hero/heroine
remains a cypher as far as his motivations are concerned, we are led
to believe that maybe the female impersonation is motivated (at
least in part) by non-sexual reasons (Butterfly is a spy). This very
disappointing Cronenberg misfire (the play was much more impressive)
is nevertheless just about the only film that takes cross-
dressing/female impersonation seriously.
Are we what we wear? Thomas Carlyle in "Sartor Resartus" wrote
wonderful things about the meaning of clothes and the tyranny of what
were not yet called "dress codes." What constitues "male"
and "female" attire is purely the result of habit, convention, and to
a certain extent fashion (which interacts with the former). There is
not a single piece of female clothing (with the obvious exception of
the bra) that is truly gender-specific. Yet the idea of a man in a
dress is unbearable to most people except as comedy (conversely no
piece of male attire is gender-specific either, and women have proved
it by wearing men's clothes, or clothes inspired by them, without
ever raising an eyebrow).
JPC
2372
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 6:47pm
Subject: Re: Degrees of transvestites in films
Fred: You're right and to my shame I have never seen "Flaming
Creatures" although Mekas used to show it all the time in New York.
Sontag wrote that the film's subject is "the poetry of
transvestitism "(her spelling)and called it "a triumphant example of
an aesthetic vision of the world.". How many other films
(documentaries, shorts, underground...) have you seen that deal with
the subject at that level... or any serious level? Documentaries
about transexuals are about something else altogether. And a
discussion has to base itself on films that a reasonable number of
people are likely to have seen.
As to trying on your mother's shoes, all cross-dressers have done
that sort of thing around age six, so my guess is that you are a
latent/repressed cross-dresser.
Now I must run. I have to put on my skirt and heels and go shopping
for eyeliner.
JPC
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> I find that this discussion is being sadly limited by its focus on
(a)
> heterosexual cross-dressing and (b) mainstream narrative films.
>
> I have seen many, many documentaries on transexuals as a result of
my
> "job" writing capsule reviews for the Reader of film festivals --
> including women's and gay festivals. Perhaps I've seen one too
many, in
> fact -- I really didn't *need* those closeups of the still-scarred
new
> vagina on a "new" woman.
>
> The great film of men in women's clothing is Jack Smith's "Flaming
> Creatures," though I suppose most would term it a gay film, and
Smith
> himself was gay. But calling it a gay film really limits it. As
Smith
> himself wrote, with sarcasm and bitterness, he thought he was
making a
> comedy and was surprised to learn he had instead made a sex film.
And
> Smith was right: what the film is is a paean to childlike play, not
> really to sex. And the cross-dressing has none of the uncomfortable
edge
> it has in mainstream films, even great ones such as "I Was a Male
War
> Bride." Instead, "Creatures" is in part about a kind of freedom, a
> freedom to be whoever you want to be. (In Aldrich's terrific
> "Choirboys," which most people hate, a ridiculously effeminate man
comes
> acorss one of the police-protagonists chained to a tree in a park
with
> his pants down, and says, "I'll be anyone you want me to be" -- but
the
> attitude the film takes toward that line is the exact opposite of
> Smith's.) I'm not a great Susan Sontag fan but her old essay on
> "Creatures" in her first book of essays, "Against Interpretation"
(at
> least I think it's there), gets it partly right. Social norms are
not a
> subject to be played off against in "Creatures," which creates its
own
> enchanted world.
>
> "Glenn or Glenda" is, of course, wonderful, but it too treats the
> subject as a "problem."
>
> - Fred (and no, I don't personally wear women's clothes, not since
I
> tried on my mom's high heels at age six and found them difficult to
walk
> in...)
2373
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 6:48pm
Subject: Re: Degrees of transvestites in films
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
> By the way I don't recall the Caine character in "Dressed to Kill"
> being a transsexual, just a transvestite, but I haven't seen the
film
> in a long time. What happens is that he "invents" a twin who "feels
> like a woman in a man's body" (the phrase is used in the film) in
> order to rid himself of the "guilt" of being a transvestite (some
> shrink!)
At the very end Nancy Allen has invited Keith Gordon on a date and
there she explains the surgical procedure of changing a penis into a
vagina in details, to the disgust an elderly couple sitting near by.
Caine kills, because the erection reminds his female mind that "she"
still is caught in a man's body.
2374
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 7:55pm
Subject: Re: limiting transvestism to heterosexuals
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Elizabeth Nolan wrote:
> For the purposes of discussion, I was limiting transvestism to
> heterosexuals (your straight uncle). I think these people are still
> the most 'closetted,'
There's always AN ACTOR'S REVENGE (the Ichikawa version, since I've never seen the Kinugasa) in which the protagonist is a transvestite off-stage as well as on (apparently in keeping with ancient tradition) and is, as I recall, heterosexual. The "closeted" condition doesn't apply here, admittedly. But Asian film probably offers much more along these lines.
2375
From:
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 4:17pm
Subject: Krohn and Gallagher articles
Bill Krohn and Tag Gallagher have two new articles in the latest issue of the
on-line journal Senses of Cinema. Both are very interesting!
Tag Gallager's is about the influence of Joseph L. Mankiewicz as a producer.
Bill Krohn's is about the use of space and maps in the films of Allan Dwan.
Members of a_film_by will find these very mentally stimulating.
Mike Grost
PS - "The Poisoned Flume" (Allan Dwan, 1911) was excerpted in one of Kevin
Brownlow's documentaries on silent cinema. The flume (a term completely
unfamiliar to me) was a sort of wooden aqueduct carrying water over cattle country out
West. It is really visually striking, and one could see why Dwan fell in love
with it and made a picture out of it. Until Bill Krohn's article, never
understood how it linked up with the Suez Canal in "Suez" (Dwan, 1938) and other
major subjects of Dwan's work. Right on!
2376
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 8:34pm
Subject: Re: Breer
There's more info on the Breer book I mentioned at
http://www.paris-experimental.asso.fr/publications/breer.html
I'll admit to having glanced at it; it looked good; I don't know if it
discusses sound but I can't imagine that it doesn't.
- Fred
2377
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 8:55pm
Subject: Re: Re: Degrees of transvestites in films
Dear JPC,
First, thanks for cracking me up. Perhaps in another 20 years when I
turn 75 I will in fact discover that I prefer dresses. But for now, no
thanks, I just haven't found my "inner woman" yet. I do remember as a
teenager hearing a great Jack Smith story. At the 1964 New York World's
Fair, Revlon, the cosmetics company, had a pavilion that was restricted
to women only Supposedly Jack Smith was bragging that he had gotten in.
On the other hand, I remember seeing him at a number of screenings
around then, and as a male.
He has other films dealing with cross dressing, "The Death of P-Town"
among them. And of course it comes up in Warhol -- Mario Montez was not
a woman -- but it has different meanings in Warhol. And there's Anger's
"Eaux d'Artifice" -- what *is* that creature? Ken Jacob's "Blonde
Cobra," a collaboration with Fleishner and Jack Smith, has it. And it
can be found in many films on the periphery of the avant-garde, though
these aren't necessarily films that I'm interested in.
I'd question just how "transgressive" the whole subject really is. I
mean, the Kinks' song "Lola" was a big hit quite a long time ago, and
it's pretty clear what that song was about "I know I'm a man and so is
Lola." I remember reading a magazine story five or ten years ago about
cross-dressers in New York. One described how he used to get harassed by
street thugs, but post RuPaul, he would go out and they would cheer him on.
While it's true that it's hard to have a discussion about films that
only one person in the group (or a few) have seen, it's convenient for
me to do so because no one will argue with me.
But seriously, I think the difference is important. The characters in
Jack Smith dress up as they do because it is a key part of who they are,
and of who the director is; they are being authentic. The same is true
in a way of Warhol's characters, in that part of their "authenticity" is
the hollowness of their show. But in numerous narrative films mentioned
there is some kind of plot hook that requires the cross-dressing, as in
"I Was a Male War Bride" or "Victor/Victoria" or the great
not-yet-mentioned "I've just gone gay all of a sudden" scene with the
Cary Grant character in a frilly robe in "Bringing Up Baby." Think about
it: it would not have been possible to make a film in which Cary Grant
*wants* to wear that frilly robe, any more than Tom Cruise would play a
cross-dresser today (and there's a hilarious letter from his lawyers to
David Ehrenstein on David's Web site, or at least it used to be there).
These Hollywood types are not dressing this way out of personal passion.
If these two Hawks films weren't great for a million other reasons, I
could argue that, like much of commercial narrative cinema, they are
cogs in manipulative machines that use plot twists just for laughs. This
is why it seems important to me not to limit ourselves to mainstream
narratives. An avant-garde film is not made by a committee; there is no
market research; there is no producer; filmmakers make them out of love,
and because they "have to" make them.
- Fred
2378
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 9:44pm
Subject: Re: Re: Degrees of transvestites in films
The letters are still there, Fred!
There's a rather large question as to how
"transgressive" transvestism might be. "The Rocky
Horror Picture Show" still has edge after all these
years. By contrast "Mrs. Doubtfire" is arguably the
most mainstream "family movie" ever made.
I'm in the process of reviewing a rather listless drag
comedy called "Girls Will Be Girls." that toys with
doing something daring but never really does. One of
its stars, Miss Coco Peru (aka. Clinton Leupp) was
quite effective in "Trick," however.
And speaing of Markopoulos there's "Himself As
Herself" starring Silver factory heartthrob Gordon
Baldwin -- who is alive and well and working in a
rather high position at the Getty Center here in L.A.
--- Fred Camper wrote:
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com
2379
From: garymmorris
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 9:49pm
Subject: ebay tons of french-language auteur books on sale
Hey folks,
Given the amount of discussion of book reviews here lately, I
thought you might be interested in what looks like a treasure trove
of French-language monographs on just about every auteur imaginable.
(Well, I didn't see Ford Beebe or Charles Marquis Warren there,
but...) The auction has 6 days left. Bill, aka Hotlove666, you may
be interested in these. No personal stake here, just an FYI:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?
ViewItem&item=3557594722&category=11098
Ciao, Gary Morris, Bright Lights
2380
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 10:02pm
Subject: Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye
In the midst of all this High Transgressive chat, what should
come in the mail but my long-awaited copy of the
above-referenced film, the third feature by Philadelphia-based
Andrew Repasky McElhinney, whose Jukebox/Peepshow
juxtaposition of Alban Berg with Lucio Fulci and Joseph Zito is
kicking off Halloween early tonight from 10 to 2 at Club 700, for
anyone reading this who is also Philadelphia-based and
"die-curious."
Andy's second feature, a slasher in the style of 70s Oliveira
called A Chronicle of Corpses, premiered at Rotterdam and
made Dave Kehr's 10 Best list. (Dave called it "a true UFO"). I
saw it at the SF Festival and became a fan.
The new film is non-narrative: Whereas Bataille in his book spun
a yarn around lewd scenes that formed like pearls around the
grit of certain childhood memories which are unveiled at the end,
Andy just lays out his own fantasy scenes after a pre-credit
essay about Bataille's life. The film ends with Bataille's
statement that "The need to arrange things in a narrative is a
bourgeois mania." There is, however, a vestigial narrative thread
(what the French would call an "embrayeur") - a hero who is
inside/outside the scenes. He goes through a kind of
progression while the film is putting the viewer through his/her
own progression.
I'm describing the form very generally and the content not at all
so as not to give too much away. It's a film some will love and
many will hate, not unlike some of the early undergound films
referenced in recent posts by various hands. (For some reason, I
am reminded of Anger.) It's an X, for those who don't (or do) like
that kind of film. I assume it will be at Rotterdam and other
discriminating venues in the coming months.
2381
From: Kenneth Eisenstein
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 10:07pm
Subject: Re: Markopoulos, "Sorrows"
I also attended the Markopoulos screening and enjoyed it very much.
If you can find it, an old magazine called Filmwise has an issue on
Markopoulos (3&4 Spring 1963)
that includes some stuff on Psyche (reviews and a lecture GJM gave
before screening it)
as well as GJM's journal entries while shooting Twice a Man.
Fred Camper wrote:
>I agree that a film like "Sorrows" is one of those that defines cinema,
>which is, or should be, for me, defined by its greatest films. This is
>in itself a polemical position, of course, and a more reasonable one is
>that "cinema" in the more usual sense of the term is definied by the sum
>total of all films. But the second more engaged meaning is that waht I
>most care about cinema is how great it can get.
"The historian of cinema faces an appalling problem. Seeking
in his subject some principle of intelligibility, he is obliged to
make himself responsible for every frame of film in existence. For
the history of cinema consists precisely of every film that has ever
been made, for any purpose whatever.
Of the whole corpus the likes of Potemkin make up a numbingly
small fraction. The balance includes instructional films,
sing-alongs, endoscopic cinematorgraphy, and much, much more. The
historian dares neither select nor ignore, for if he does, the
treasure will surely escape him.
The metahistorian of cinema, on the other hand, is occupied
with inventing a tradition, that is, a coherent wieldy set of
discrete monuments, meant to inseminate resonant consistency into the
growing body of his art."
-Hollis Frampton, "For A Metahistory of Film: Commonplace
Notes and Hypotheses"
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
2382
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 10:09pm
Subject: Hi Gary!
Welcome to a_film_by ! That link doesn't work - I'm molto
curious. What did you think of Attack of the Bat Monsters?
2383
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 10:20pm
Subject: Auteurism, and Brakhage, in Belo Horizonte
This is a non-urgent post about the response to Brakhage films in Brazil
and my discovery of a little coven of old-line auteurists in Brazil.
A festival of short films in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, the nation's third
largest city with a population of 2 million, invited me to curate and
speak on four Brakhage programs. I've used that as an excuse to see more
of Brazil, which I'm doing now, when I get done with all this email!
Anyway, there's a page listing the shows, to which I've just added an
account of the Brazilians' response, at
http://www.fredcamper.com/Brakhage/Brazil.html
The account of the response might be of interest because of one young
man who was so deeply moved that he reminded me of the life-changing
urgency that film at its greatest has had for me. More on this is on
that page.
While in Belo Horizonte I met several people around my age who
discovered auteurism in the 1960s. One of them estimated for me that
about ten or fifteen people in Belo Horizonte were subscribing to
"Cahiers du Cinema" by the late 1960s. One film fan would tell another,
and so on. They tend to speak and read English and French as well as
Portuguese, and are also admirers of Robin Wood. So the dinner table
discussions with me would be full of warm fellowship around the mention
of those film titles we mutually considered great -- "The Man Who Shot
Liberty Valance," "Some Came Running" -- and would hit the occasional
snag over my mixed reaction to people such as Billy Wilder. I am also
returning with some DVDs of work by Humberto Mauro, for which I am
promised an email translation of the titles of the two silents.
One of these people, connected to the festival, had told me when I
arrived that cinema had only three great innovators, Griffith, Welles,
and Godard. Of course I don't agree; I don't see, for example, how
Ivens's first two films, "Rain" and "The Bridge" (which are great), can
be said to come from Griffith. But of course those are major innovators
of narrative cinema. Then he saw "Window Water Baby Moving" and tried to
argue that its parallel editing came from Griffith. Then he saw the four
Brakhage programs, loved them, and said that yes, that list of
innovators applies only to narrative cinema. I decided not to bring up
Chuck Jones or Tex Avery, or Hiroshi Shimzu's superb "Mr. Thank You," a
1930s Japanese film whose almost Buddhist plotlessness has none of the
narrative tension that can be found in Griffith and the rest of the
mainstream narrative filmmakers.
They ran, and are still running, a Cine-Club, and they still show films
in prints. But I talked to one film professor who says that in schools
prints are just about never shown, which made me rather sad.
None of them knew of Contracampo, the journal with which our three
Brazilians are involved, so I sent the ones I met the url, and I know at
least one of them looked at it and said it was very good.
Even though our group is much more age diverse than it sometimes seems,
I think it is true that the passion of the original auteurists in the
U.S. of the 1960s was not matched among younger people until recent
years, and I was struck by the age of these film buffs in Belo Horizonte
-- and by what I gather is the relative youth of our Brazilian members,
some of whom I will meet soon.
- Fred
2384
From: Rick Segreda
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 10:49pm
Subject: "I Enjoy Being a Girl"
I haven't gone through all these posts, but as of yet it doesn't look like anyone has mentioned "Farewell My Concubine" or "The Crying Game." Other, random associations that come to my mind are "Paris is Burning" and 1967's "The Queens," about a drag show in New York. Andrew Sarris' review of the latter, reprinted in "Confessions of a Cultist," is worth a look...Then there is Stan Laurel in drag...There is also Greta Garbo in "Queen Christina," flirting with a barmaid no less.
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
2385
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 10:57pm
Subject: Re: Degrees of transvestites in films
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Dear JPC,
>
> First, thanks for cracking me up. Perhaps in another 20 years when
I
> turn 75 I will in fact discover that I prefer dresses. But for now,
no
> thanks, I just haven't found my "inner woman" yet.
>
Glad I made you chuckle! I was afraid you might be offended.
People get very defensive about this topic. That's one reason i think
it's the last taboo. Today you wouldn't think of closing an article
or a post about homosexuality by saying, "Oh, by the way I'm not gay
myself." But talking about cross-dressing makes people uncomfortable
("If I talk about it they'll think I'm one myself...")
> I'd question just how "transgressive" the whole subject really is.
I
> mean, the Kinks' song "Lola" was a big hit quite a long time ago,
and
> it's pretty clear what that song was about "I know I'm a man and so
is
> Lola." I remember reading a magazine story five or ten years ago
about
> cross-dressers in New York. One described how he used to get
harassed by
> street thugs, but post RuPaul, he would go out and they would cheer
him on.
>
Yes, of course, but the examples you cite are from the realm of
show business -- in which there has always been a tradition of
(comic) cross-dressing, by the way --. In rock music anything goes,
and RuPaul is seen as a great performer. Outside of show biz,
however, I think cross-dressing remains very transgressive. We have
gay pride all over the place but where is cross-dresser pride (not
that I yearn for it, mind you...)?
>
While it's true that it's hard to have a discussion about films that
> only one person in the group (or a few) have seen, it's convenient
for
> me to do so because no one will argue with me.
>
> But seriously, I think the difference is important. The characters
in
> Jack Smith dress up as they do because it is a key part of who they
are,
> and of who the director is; they are being authentic. The same is
true
> in a way of Warhol's characters, in that part of
their "authenticity" is
> the hollowness of their show. But in numerous narrative films
mentioned
> there is some kind of plot hook that requires the cross-dressing,
as in
> "I Was a Male War Bride" or "Victor/Victoria" or the great
> not-yet-mentioned "I've just gone gay all of a sudden" scene with
the
> Cary Grant character in a frilly robe in "Bringing Up Baby." Think
about
> it: it would not have been possible to make a film in which Cary
Grant
> *wants* to wear that frilly robe, any more than Tom Cruise would
play a
> cross-dresser today
But you're just saying what I'm saying: you couldn't do it then
and you cannot (or won't) do it now.
(and there's a hilarious letter from his lawyers to
> David Ehrenstein on David's Web site, or at least it used to be
there).
> These Hollywood types are not dressing this way out of personal
passion.
> If these two Hawks films weren't great for a million other reasons,
I
> could argue that, like much of commercial narrative cinema, they
are
> cogs in manipulative machines that use plot twists just for laughs.
This
> is why it seems important to me not to limit ourselves to
mainstream
> narratives. An avant-garde film is not made by a committee; there
is no
> market research; there is no producer; filmmakers make them out of
love,
> and because they "have to" make them.
>
In other words you're saying that mainstream narratives today can
tackle any kind of sexual kink (we've had SM, BDSM and what not) but
NOT cross-dressing except in a comedy context, where the cross-
dressing is imposed upon the character by the plot, for laughs. Which
is exactly the point I've been making all day.
By the way, the famous "I've just gone gay" line in "Baby" is a real
puzzle to the extent that you wonder how it was supposed to be
understood at the time. "Gay" meaning homosexual was so underground a
term that even the vigilant Production Code didn't realize what it
meant. And they hardly ever missed a thing, even imagining salacious
undertones where there were none. So it was really a very private
joke, meaningless for most spectators (and certainly the dignified
old lady it is addressed to). Incidentally, for those few who
understood, it perpetrated the confusion between cross-dressing and
homosexuality.
> - Fred
2386
From: garymmorris
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 11:09pm
Subject: Re: Hi Gary!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> Welcome to a_film_by ! That link doesn't work - I'm molto
> curious. What did you think of Attack of the Bat Monsters?
Hey Bill!
Try cutting and pasting the two pieces together and it should work.
I found it by accident looking on ebay for Mizoguchi stuff...
BTW, your screen name is hilarious.
If you can believe I never made it ti Bat Monsters. I do plan to
watch it soon, however...
Gary
2387
From: garymmorris
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 11:13pm
Subject: Re: Hi Gary!
Here's the ebay item number: 3557594722. You can search for it that
way by going to the main "Search" icon on the ebay screen.
And here's the subject line for it: Huge lot of Biography Book ' s
in french FR
Ciao, Gary
2388
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 11:19pm
Subject: Trafic
To George Robinson and interested parties:
Raymond Bellour has just confirmed to me that they have no
distributor in the US, or in any foreign countries for that matter.
They tried but found it too complicated to arrange. So your best bet
(aside from going to Paris to pick up copies)is to subscribe (51
Euros for 4 issues).
JPC
2389
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 11:22pm
Subject: Re: Hi Gary!
BTW, your screen name is hilarious.
I plan to sell it on e-Bay if the bottom ever falls out of my
beefsteak mine stock.
2390
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 11:46pm
Subject: more Preminger
I would like to invite our Preminger fans to check out Zach Campbell,
Dan Sallitt and Damien Bona's exchange on DAISY KENYON for 24FPS.
http://www.24fpsmagazine.com/Daisy1.html
Please bookmark our home page, too, as there will be further updates in
the future.
A big thank you goes out to Zach for his diligence.
2391
From:
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 7:49pm
Subject: Re: Re: Hi Gary!
Welcome, Gary. For those who don't know, Gary gave me my break in the biz
when he didn't flinch at my auteurist reading of Richard Lester's Superman 2 & 3
and published it in the Spring 2002 Bright Lights Film Journal.
Peter
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
2392
From:
Date: Wed Oct 8, 2003 7:57pm
Subject: Re: more Preminger
Thanks, Gabe. Truly great insights by Zach, Dan, and Damien and a terrific
job of bringing these three estimable cinephiles together on this amazing film.
Re: the "Bunny Lake" remake. About the best thing I can imagine coming of
this is that we might get the Preminger "Bunny Lake" on DVD without having to go
the petition route. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't go that route for
"Advise and Consent," "Skidoo," "Such Good Friends"... and "Daisy Kenyon"!
Peter
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
2393
From: George Robinson
Date: Thu Oct 9, 2003 3:09am
Subject: Re: "I Enjoy Being a Girl"
Did anyone mention the dozens of times that Bugs Bunny does drag to entire
Elmer Fudd?
I'm being serious here.
No, really.
g
One night, as he walked past the home of a shoemaker, Rabbi Salanter noticed
that despite the late hour, the man was still working by the light of a
dying candle. "Why are you still working," he asked. "It is very late and
soon that candle will go out." The shoemaker replied, "As long as the candle
is still burning, it is still possible to accomplish and to mend." Salanter
spent that entire night excitedly pacing his room and repeating to himself:
"As long as the candle is still burning, it is still possible to accomplish
and to mend."
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick Segreda"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 6:49 PM
Subject: [a_film_by] "I Enjoy Being a Girl"
>
> I haven't gone through all these posts, but as of yet it doesn't look like
anyone has mentioned "Farewell My Concubine" or "The Crying Game." Other,
random associations that come to my mind are "Paris is Burning" and 1967's
"The Queens," about a drag show in New York. Andrew Sarris' review of the
latter, reprinted in "Confessions of a Cultist," is worth a look...Then
there is Stan Laurel in drag...There is also Greta Garbo in "Queen
Christina," flirting with a barmaid no less.
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> 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/
>
>
>
>
2394
From: garymmorris
Date: Thu Oct 9, 2003 3:25am
Subject: Re: Hi Gary!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> BTW, your screen name is hilarious.
>
> I plan to sell it on e-Bay if the bottom ever falls out of my
> beefsteak mine stock.
I insist you give me first crack at it.
2395
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Thu Oct 9, 2003 4:07am
Subject: Breer, Dukakis, Rappaport, ROUGE
Fred - thanks for all the Breer info, it is much appreciated. he really is a
great filmmaker.
David - You made my day with the news that Olympia Dukakis made her film
debut in a Markopoulos movie! Maybe, for fun, the a-film-by-ers should
compile a list of big film stars who have appeared in avant-garde works:
Jean Seberg, Willem Dafoe ... getting beyond America there's Tilda Swinton;
and in Australia Hugo Weaving just participated in an experimental
installation art piece that critiques his role in the MATRIX films! How cool
is that?
Zach - thanks for raising Mark Rapport on this list; I am another big fan of
his films, videos and writings. SCENIC ROUTE is my favourite of his films;
it has the greatest disco dancing scene in all cinema. Speaking of his
writings, let me say that from now on his pieces will be appearing
exclusively - at least in terms of Australian websites - in ROUGE, co-edited
by myself, Helen Bandis and Grant McDonald (www.rouge.com.au). The first,
long-awaited issue goes up any day now; it has a tremendous piece by Mark
called "Marcel in Marienbad". And for issue 2 I have promises from luminary
a-film-by members including Bill Krohn and Chris Fujiwara!! Some of our
other ROUGE regulars will include Jonathan Rosenbaum, Nicole Brenez, Fergus
Daly, Yvette Biro and Donald Phelps. We are also planning to run
translations, such as in issue 1 Serge Daney on Garrel. Also big plans for a
'ROUGE Press' line of exquisite film books !!!
Adrian Martin
2396
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Oct 9, 2003 4:17am
Subject: Re: Breer, Dukakis, Rappaport, ROUGE
Maybe, for fun, the
> a-film-by-ers should
> compile a list of big film stars who have appeared
> in avant-garde works
Well there's Julie Christie (my favorite movie
actress) in "The Gold Diggers."
--- Adrian Martin wrote:
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2397
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Oct 9, 2003 4:44am
Subject: Re: Breer, Dukakis
Not a film, really, but my boss for a year when I worked at Fox was
Susan Pile, who was in Chelsea Girls. Later she was my unit publicist
on It's All True.
2398
From: jaketwilson
Date: Thu Oct 9, 2003 5:49am
Subject: Re: Degrees of transvestites in films
Fred Camper wrote:
> Think about it: it would not have been possible to make a film in
which Cary Grant *wants* to wear that frilly robe, any more than Tom
Cruise would play a cross-dresser today (and there's a hilarious
> letter from his lawyers to David Ehrenstein on David's Web site, or
at least it used to be there).
> These Hollywood types are not dressing this way out of personal
passion.
Given the eccentricity of many of Cruise's recent film choices, and
his running fascination with masks and disguises, I'm not so sure
transvestism would be off-limits.
Anyway, Johnny Depp didn't seem to lose his audience appeal by
starring in ED WOOD, in which Wood's cross-dressing is not ridiculed,
and which also has a sympathetic transsexual in the Bill Murray
character.
I don't think anyone's yet mentioned VELVET GOLDMINE, which is
crammed with references to transvestite history from Jack Smith to
British pantomime, and where the (bisexual) David Bowie character
played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers makes his first appearance as a
willowy folk singer in a dress. Eddie Izzard's in there too, though
in a relatively butch part. It's my favorite Haynes film, even if
Meyers doesn't quite have the needed charisma (it's also thematically
continuous with FAR FROM HEAVEN -- both are about the paradoxical
relation between emotion and artifice).
JTW
2399
From: George Robinson
Date: Thu Oct 9, 2003 6:11am
Subject: Re: Re: Breer, Dukakis
Speaking of "Chelsea Girls," Mary Woronov could be on the list. Hey, she's a
star in my heart.
g
One night, as he walked past the home of a shoemaker, Rabbi Salanter noticed
that despite the late hour, the man was still working by the light of a
dying candle. "Why are you still working," he asked. "It is very late and
soon that candle will go out." The shoemaker replied, "As long as the candle
is still burning, it is still possible to accomplish and to mend." Salanter
spent that entire night excitedly pacing his room and repeating to himself:
"As long as the candle is still burning, it is still possible to accomplish
and to mend."
----- Original Message -----
From: "hotlove666"
To:
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2003 12:44 AM
Subject: [a_film_by] Re: Breer, Dukakis
> Not a film, really, but my boss for a year when I worked at Fox was
> Susan Pile, who was in Chelsea Girls. Later she was my unit publicist
> on It's All True.
>
>
>
> 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/
>
>
>
>
2400
From: filipefurtado
Date: Thu Oct 9, 2003 9:20am
Subject: Re: Auteurism, and Brakhage, in Belo Horizonte
>
> While in Belo Horizonte I met several people around my age
who
> discovered auteurism in the 1960s. One of them estimated
for me that
> about ten or fifteen people in Belo Horizonte were
subscribing to
> "Cahiers du Cinema" by the late 1960s.
I guess that happened everywhere at the time. My friend
Carlos Reinchenbach (a great auteurist that also happens to
be a great auteur) usually tells how he and some friends
usually trade Cahiers at the time (and he wa very proud of
being one of the few brazilians who had a copy of the Film
Culture number that Sarris did that later became The American
Cinema.
I am also
> returning with some DVDs of work by Humberto Mauro, for
which I am
> promised an email translation of the titles of the two
silents.
Which ones? I'm a big Mauro fan. Almost everything he did is
very good with exception of the first Tesouro Perdido which
is interesting but to amateur-like (clearly the work by
people who loved film but who didn't know much about how to
make them) and O Descobrimento do Brasil, an official epic
that's pretty dull, but it has a couple of moving scenes
where Mauro's hand is clearly there. By the way, I like
Arthur Omar, not as much as some people (I think his a little
bit uneven, some shorts are really good, others are the best
interesting failures). Which ones where in the program? He
has one feature film, If memory servers there's a capsule in
Reader home page.
>But I talked to one film professor who says that in schools
> prints are just about never shown, which made me rather sad.
Very rare, which makes me very angry. The worst is that my
University does has a good number of prints in its archive,
still, unless the film isn't available on video they never
show the prints. I'm not against video since my home town had
less than ten screens and I would never had a chance to see
many films that were important to me in my early cinephile
days (thing are a lot better here in São Paulo, but good old
American films almost never show up in retrospectives).
Still, it's terrible to know although he had a good 16mm
print of The Last Laugh, a professor prefer to show a video
copy so awful, it's easy to see why most of my classmates
didn’t understand what was so important about that guy
Murnau...
>
> None of them knew of Contracampo, the journal with which
our three
> Brazilians are involved, so I sent the ones I met the url,
and I know at
> least one of them looked at it and said it was very good.
>
Well, thanks for giving our url for them.
> Even though our group is much more age diverse than it
sometimes seems,
> I think it is true that the passion of the original
auteurists in the
> U.S. of the 1960s was not matched among younger people
until recent
> years, and I was struck by the age of these film buffs in
Belo Horizonte
> -- and by what I gather is the relative youth of our
Brazilian members,
> some of whom I will meet soon.
>
Maybe it's not as much a matter of passion as of the same
sort of passion. Reichenbach once said something to me more
or less like this "most cinephiles on the generation after
mine end up in film school and left there with their tastes
programmed" (which according to him was why during the time
he give classes he always fight to be in the first period, so
he could get the students when they were still green). Which
does has some truth, I usually can easily spot when someone
went to São Paulo University the moment he starts to talk
about film (which is not a problem itself, there's some
people who does this sort of thing wonderfully, but most are
terrible). I guess we had better access to good writing on
film today (both contemporary and old) and (in Brazil's case)
there were cable TV (a 90's phenomenon here) which helped a
lot to see certain stuff, specially old American films (which
were always hard to find in repertory screens). A few weeks
ago someone did a piece for indiewire on Madame Sata's
director Karim Ainouz and he mention us saying something
like "it's very 60's like, but they're very intelligent". I'm
not sure exactly what is a 60's like magazine to him, but it
does suggest that he didn't think our approach was very easy
to find on 70's or 80's.
Fred, I hope you are enjoying Brazil. Try to contact me, if
you come to São Paulo.
Filipe
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