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Posts From the Internet Film Discussion Group, a_film_by
This group is dedicated to discussing film as art
from an auteurist perspective. The index to these files of posts can be found at http://www.fredcamper.com/afilmby/ The purpose of these files is to make our posts more accessible, for downloading and reading and to search engines.
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6201
From: jaketwilson
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 4:05am
Subject: Re: Silly Great movie
"Maxime" wrote:
> What was the written script before the very first shot should be
the very last of our concern. It has no existence by itself. The long
process of filmmaking digested it, adding, subtracting, giving life
> to this vision, which we believe, most of the time, to be the one
of the filmmaker.
> There can't be any great movie with a poor script, if we call
script what we can read between the images. If the film is a great
one, it means it succeeded in giving life to characters/ideas, which
stand valuable as they are. I can't think to a filmmaker as the one
who may give visual dynamism to silly ideas. Visual dynamism is not
> cinema. There is no Silly Great movie (Capital S, Capital G).
A definitive statement. I have nothing to add.
JTW
6202
From: jaketwilson
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 4:09am
Subject: Re: Silly Great movie
"Maxime" wrote:
> What was the written script before the very first shot should be
the very last of our concern. It has no existence by itself. The long
process of filmmaking digested it, adding, subtracting, giving life
> to this vision, which we believe, most of the time, to be the one
of the filmmaker.
> There can't be any great movie with a poor script, if we call
script what we can read between the images. If the film is a great
one, it means it succeeded in giving life to characters/ideas, which
stand valuable as they are. I can't think to a filmmaker as the one
who may give visual dynamism to silly ideas. Visual dynamism is not
> cinema. There is no Silly Great movie (Capital S, Capital G).
A definitive statement. I have nothing to add.
JTW
6203
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 4:30am
Subject: Re: Re: What's minimalism?
--- MG4273@a... wrote:
Admittedly, this is
> still a lot more plot than such Andy Warhol films as
> "Empire". It might be a
> bad name.
>
Silent Warhol's hvae little in the way of plot, save
for "Tarzan and Jane Regained (Sort of)" -- which
features our own Tosh Berman (!) Sound Warhol has tons
of plot."The Chelsea Girls" has any number of parallel
plots runing right through until the end when Ondine
says he was originally supposed to do a scene with
Brigid -- who was featured in the early part of the
film. With this one remark the entire 3 1/2 hour
panoram achieves cohesion.
Ondine and Brigid worked together in "Imitation of
Christ" in which they play the parents of Patrick
Close, the film's hero. He has a series of pcicaresque
adventures/encounters with Nico, Taylor Mead, Andrea
Feldman and others. In fact the picaresque is the
primary Warhol plot mode.
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6204
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 4:35am
Subject: Re: Minimal Kane
Welles created his own miminmalist "Kane" : the end
credit sequence.
That's why the last line of the film is "I think it
would be fun to run a newspaper."
--- Tag Gallagher wrote:
> How about two hours of Big Charles writing his opera
> review?
>
>
> jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> > Little Charles' parents, over a jug of malt
> liquor, decide that
> > wealth is not for them simple folk, and they sign
> it over to the bank.
> > Charles grows up to be a drunk. One winter they
> burn "Rosebud" to
> > keep themselves warm. The end.
> >
>
>
>
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6205
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 4:38am
Subject: Walters
> And since you're such a huge fan, do you have
> a reading of Walters's style that you could offer? I think Dan
> Sallitt is also a fan so maybe the two of you could make an auteurist
> case here.
Well, here's something I posted back in August:
"Walters tends to accentuate the reflexivity of the musical - admittedly
a pretty reflexive genre in the first place, but Walters pushes the form
toward a cheerful direct interaction with the audience. There's a tiny
bit of Hawks in the way that his players tip off the audience to the
fiction, and he also likes to play up the direct-address aspect of
musical numbers. Even when he's doing drama, he gives the impression of
being a happy, cheery person, keeping a smiling perspective on the
emotional distress of his characters. "
- Dan
6206
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 4:40am
Subject: Good film, bad script
> The only problem is, I can't think of too many great movies with bad
> scripts. One does leap to mind, though:
> Vidor's The Fountainhead, which may be the best movie ever made from the
> worst script imaginable.
The film that leaps to mind for me is REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. I find the
dialogue pretty bad throughout most of the film.
PARTY GIRL is supposed to be the classic example of this sort of thing,
but I confess to having never enjoyed it. - Dan
6207
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 5:11am
Subject: Re: Minimal Kane
"miminmalist" David? have you been drinking, or worse?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> Welles created his own miminmalist "Kane" : the end
> credit sequence.
>
> That's why the last line of the film is "I think it
> would be fun to run a newspaper."
>
> --- Tag Gallagher wrote:
> > How about two hours of Big Charles writing his opera
> > review?
> >
> >
> > jpcoursodon wrote:
> >
> > > Little Charles' parents, over a jug of malt
> > liquor, decide that
> > > wealth is not for them simple folk, and they sign
> > it over to the bank.
> > > Charles grows up to be a drunk. One winter they
> > burn "Rosebud" to
> > > keep themselves warm. The end.
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Find out what made the Top Yahoo! Searches of 2003
> http://search.yahoo.com/top2003
6208
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 5:19am
Subject: Re: Re: Minimal Kane
I haven't had a drink since 1996.
But seriously Welles can be fairly minimalist: "The
Dreamers" and "Filming Othello" being two examples.
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> "miminmalist" David? have you been drinking, or
> worse?
>
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
>
> wrote:
> > Welles created his own miminmalist "Kane" : the
> end
> > credit sequence.
> >
> > That's why the last line of the film is "I think
> it
> > would be fun to run a newspaper."
> >
> > --- Tag Gallagher wrote:
> > > How about two hours of Big Charles writing his
> opera
> > > review?
> > >
> > >
> > > jpcoursodon wrote:
> > >
> > > > Little Charles' parents, over a jug of malt
> > > liquor, decide that
> > > > wealth is not for them simple folk, and they
> sign
> > > it over to the bank.
> > > > Charles grows up to be a drunk. One winter
> they
> > > burn "Rosebud" to
> > > > keep themselves warm. The end.
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Find out what made the Top Yahoo! Searches of 2003
> > http://search.yahoo.com/top2003
>
>
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6209
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 5:21am
Subject: Re: Good film, bad script
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > The only problem is, I can't think of too many great movies with bad
> > scripts. One does leap to mind, though:
> > Vidor's The Fountainhead, which may be the best movie ever made
from the
> > worst script imaginable.
>
> The film that leaps to mind for me is REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. I find the
> dialogue pretty bad throughout most of the film.
I sorta agree, but I also think that the narration to the planetarium
show is one of my better bits of dialogue from the 1950s. (Note to
Peter T.: great use of space!)
PWC
6210
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 5:23am
Subject: Re: Walters
--- Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
> Well, here's something I posted back in August:
>
> "Walters tends to accentuate the reflexivity of the
> musical - admittedly
> a pretty reflexive genre in the first place, but
> Walters pushes the form
> toward a cheerful direct interaction with the
> audience. There's a tiny
> bit of Hawks in the way that his players tip off the
> audience to the
> fiction, and he also likes to play up the
> direct-address aspect of
> musical numbers. Even when he's doing drama, he
> gives the impression of
> being a happy, cheery person, keeping a smiling
> perspective on the
> emotional distress of his characters. "
>
All of this is quite true, but for me the key to
Walters' style is the way he has the actors move
within the frame and in relation to one another. His
first film was a short called "Spreadin' the Jam."It
was about a rent party. It was all staged in one set
and the dialogue was rhymedand half-sung. The result
was quite like the numbers in "Haut/Bas/Fragile." So
much so that I'm convinced that Rivette -- a great
Walters fan -- knows this film. I believe it was made
in 1945.
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6211
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 5:31am
Subject: Re: Re: Good film, bad script
Sorry I can't recollect who wrote this. But I don't see why the script
is so bad. It's just different, and deliberately so. It's Rand's
voice. But that voice happens to match Vidor's, whose dialogue always
often (at the best moments) resembles silent-movie intertitles and who
is often slightly preachy. I actually had an argument with Patricia
Neal trying to convince her of how wonderful she is in this movie. She
wouldn't buy it; Martin Ritt, now there was a good director of actors.
Vidor was a nice man, good at lights and things like that. I have the
suspicion that Hud is a good script. I don't know. My three favorite
lines of dialogue in all cinema are:
Where is he now?
So long, you bastard.
Life is so short.
Great literature, no?
> great movies with bad
> scripts. One does leap to mind, though:
> Vidor's The Fountainhead, which may be the best movie ever made
> from the worst script imaginable.
> >
6212
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 5:32am
Subject: Re: Re: Good film, bad script
I meant to say: I have the suspicion that HUD is what people consider
to be a good script.
Tag Gallagher wrote:
> I have the
> suspicion that Hud is a good script.
6213
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 5:59am
Subject: Re: Good film, bad script
My first thought was Friendly Enemies, which Dwan directed from a
jingoistic stage play that was one war out of date, turning it into a
formal experiment that is as pleasing to the mind as it is to the
eye. Dwan was no stranger to this situation.
Ulmer was often handed crap to direct, but rarely failed to come up
with a pearl. Some of his worst scripts were The Man from Planet X,
Daughter of Dr. Jekyll and Beyond the Time Barrier - all good films.
Many feel that Hitchcock failed to transcend the embarrassing
dialogue in Family Plot, but I feel he did. To see him at odds with
rancid material you'd have to go back to the beginning, The Pleasure
Garden - and by God he managed it, in fits and starts. The opening is
superb.
Jack Arnold came in late on The Space Children, a script that is
right-thinking but undistinguished, and transformed it into poetry.
Raoul Walsh often had to "transcend his material": I suspect we'd be
shocked to read the script of The Man I Love, a cinematic masterpiece.
Of course, narrative filmmakers who succeeded had good scripts - or
at least serviceable ones - most of the time, but the rare cases of
sow's ears becoming silk purses are important to the auteur theory,
because they at least show it can be done.
Reverse the question: Has there ever been a script so good that it
survived bad direction? (I don't just mean commercially - that
probably happens a lot.) Matheson's scripts sometimes made bad
directors look good, but they all contain blueprints for how to
direct them. I'm talking about a really tight screenplay with clever
dialogue which survived inept direction. Not being a connoisseur of
screenwriters, I frankly don't know the answer to that.
6214
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 6:28am
Subject: Bad film, good script
Here's a simple answer to my own question: Joss Whedon's script for
the Buffy the Vampire Slayer feature had me in stitches. It was
directed by the producer's wife, Fran Kazui, who wrecked it,
commercially and esthetically. Years later Whedon turned it into a tv
pilot and produced it himself - the rest is history. (I forget who
the director for the pilot was, but he/she wasn't inept.)
6215
From: J. Mabe
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 6:37am
Subject: Re: Bad film, good script
--- hotlove666 wrote:
> Here's a simple answer to my own question: Joss
> Whedon's script for
> the Buffy the Vampire Slayer feature had me in
> stitches.
Years later Whedon
> turned it into a tv
> pilot and produced it himself - the rest is history.
Along with a second for Henrik’s call for an
explanation of McG’s talents, I’d also like to know
where I could find an explanation of the praise often
heaped on Buffy the TV show. I watched the episode
where Buffy’s mother died (“The Body“, was it?) and
was impressed, but all other attempts to watch the
show have been very disappointing.
-Josh Mabe
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6216
From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 6:57am
Subject: Re: Re: Pro-Plot, Pro-Character, Anti-Minimalism
In reading this thread, I have to once again return to my first
principles, or really my first and only unchangeable principle: that
there are no rules for what makes a great film. If the history of art in
the last century has taught us anything, it's that artists keep
rewriting the rules. By what pre-existent standards would Dada, or
Duchamp, have been interesting? So I have to admit to the theoretical
possibility that a film might be a great work of art entirely based on
Judy Garland's singing and Gene Kelly's dancing. I have not, however,
seen such a film so far, at least not one that seemed a great work of
art to me for those reasons, but I raise this possibility as support for
my by-now-familiar argument against preferences for particular kinds of
cinema, seeing such preferences as narrow-minded and exclusionary. Even
though my gut may prefer melodramas to musicals, I struggle against it,
and thus can see the greatness in at least some musicals.
Thus I can't abide by JTW's " storytelling is about the most important
thing in the world," even though he goes on to qualify that. Some of the
greatest films in the world have no "stories" at all. And there's great
painting, dance, poetry, prose, and theater without "storytelling" in
the sense it's usually meant, so it should come as no surprise that
there are parallel achievements in cinema. Similarly, I don't see that a
lack of plot development or characterization should either doom a movie
or cause one to praise it. I'm curious, Mike, as to whether you've seen
Bresson's "The Trial of Joan of Arc," and what you think of it in terms
of plot and characterization.
Bill asks:
"....what is the special power exercised by narrative cinema? Is it a
regressive taste, or do these films offer something that can't be found
in non-narrative, or (if such a thing exists) in plotless films, where
theoretically you would have nothing to look at but fictional or
documentary characters being themselves and interacting? "
Uh-oh. Bill, you reveal your "regressive" tastes here, by making what I
presume to be a slip (since you must know otherwise) in implying that if
a film doesn't have a plot it must at least have "characters." I suppose
one could argue that even a completely abstract film has at least one
character, the filmmaker, but I don't think that's what you meant by
"characters," and anyway I might try to counter-argue that while some
abstract films express the personality of the filmmaker, others are in
fact more "abstract" and don't really have any "characters."
There is a kind of easy pleasure built into Hollywood and other linear
narrative, a level of storytelling designed to reward even the most
naïve and uneducated viewer. "Rio Bravo" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty
Valance" are sublimely great films that have nothing wrong with them,
but on my tenth viewing they do have a sort of comfortableness that was
even there on the first, they fit nicely like an old shoe, compared to
my tenth viewing of a Brakhage film, in which I am much more challenged
on a variety of levels, much more uncertain about what's going on if
only because such films take more than ten viewings to memorize, and in
which the uncertainty is also on profoundly formal and philosophical
levels too.
However, this doesn't mean I think Brakhage is greater than Ford or
Hawks. There are no formulas for deciding greatness, and there can be as
much profundity on a film that combines comfortableness with aesthetic
greatness as in a less conventional work. But I have to admit that I
think every true lover as film as an art should deeply engage with
avant-garde filmmaking: it redefines cinema, it teaches you how to see,
and it can affect the way you view "Rio Bravo" too. So I think maybe
there is something "regressive" not in the taste for narrative but in a
refusal to seriously engage with other kinds of cinema.
JTW writes,
"The basic problem of filmmaking could be stated as: how do you link one
image, or one moment, with another?"
Already I disagree. That's the basic problem of one kind of filmmaking.
I'm not sure that the editing is all that important in other kinds of
filmmaking, some of it great filmmaking. Joris Ivens's sublime "17th
Parallel" is a documentary whose greatest beauty isn't in the way its
structured or the way the images follow each other; it's really a light
poem.
JTW goes on:
"Plot is one of the easiest and strongest ways to do this, because it
resembles the chains of cause-and-effect we're used to perceiving in
actual life. Making everything cohere using only visual and conceptual
echoes, reversals, and so forth seems like a much harder job,
particularly in longer works: if these connections are basically
achronological, how do you use them to order a work which exists in
time? I'd be curious to know Fred's thoughts on this."
It's because plot is easy that I'm suspicious of it. It seems to me (and
I suppose my own modernist bias or "taste" shows through here) that
linking images on their formal qualities is a more "artistic" way of
proceeding than linking based on plot. A bunch of images that feel
connected mostly because of plot -- how does that differ from, say, the
pictures in a novel with illustrations, or the "Classics Illustrated"
version of a great novel? The great narrative films I love, the Fords
and the Hawkses, contain far profounder, and far more cinematic, formal
organizing principles than just the plot.
I had to smile at Dan's thinking "Rebel Without a Cause" has a bad
script. There are some klunky lines, to be sure, but I think I'm not the
only one to think that on the whole it's a really good script. And it
has one of my top ten favorite movie lines (don't ask for the other
nine), Plato's great and moving "What does he know about [pause] man
alone?" I think if we debated this (please! don't! We'd be flooded in
posts!) we'd discover considerable disagreement on which scripts are
good and which ones are bad.
I agree with Tag about "The Fountainhead." If you don't know Rand's
writing and ideology, the film may still have a few loopy moments, but
on the whole it seems no better or worse a script than the average
Hollywood film of the time.
[Plus, it has a line espousing Rand's anti-union philosophy, something
about how work should be done as a result of a freely-arrived at
agreement between the two parties, that I have to remember every time
someone asks me to write something or give a lecture but isn't exactly
sure what or when they'll pay me. Leftists think of Rand's ideas as
obnoxiously bad for workers, but freelance writers actually are often in
a worse situation than what she advocates, and that's not even counting
the times I've been told that there's less money for me than was already
agreed on after I'd committed to do the work., or the few times I was
never paid at all despite numerous promises to the contrary. None of
this applies to the "Chicago Reader," by the way.]
About scripts, I agree completely with Maxim's remarks. As he says, you
cannot separate the script from the film as a whole. I suspect that were
"Rebel Without a Cause" directed by George Stevens, the script would
seem more awful than its detractors imagine.
I also agree with much of Bill's most recent post, citing Ulmer's good
films from "bad" scripts.
But no one has mentioned what is to me the primo example of this: "Red
Line 7000." Here is what I think is a really great film with a script
that is, at times, laughable. ("See this eyeball, it's not new, but it's
good enough to see through you...") I think what happens to me is that
the film is great enough that while those moments detract from it, the
film as a whole survives.
As David indicates of silent Warhols, there are Warhol films much more
plotless than Mike Grost's fanciful minimalist remakes -- and that I
think are quite great. As I think I already posted, "Henry Geldzahler"
looks at Henry doing almost nothing for 70 minutes, and it's amazing,
this sense of a dead eye watching someone's eyebrows twitch in
compositions whose hidden severity make them the cinematic equivalent of
a dissecting table.
Finally, I'm bothered by the way the words "minimal" and "minimalism"
are being used here. There are many "minimalist" artists who are quite
great. My experiences of the works of Sol LeWitt, Ellsworth Kelly, and
Richard Tuttle are complex, extremely pleasurable, thought-provoking,
and occur in and across time. I also commend the films of Ernie Gehr to
everyone's attention. He has objected to having his films compared to
"minimal" art, but many of his films are very simple: applying a single
technique to a single location. And no, there are no "characters." In
fact, Gehr would argue against the "manipulations" of mainstream
narrative film. He even found that Brakhage's way of working was too
self-expressive for him. So what he did was once again redefine cinema,
and specifically redefine the relationship between image, film's
materiality, and the viewer, and the results are incredibly complex --
far more so, I might add, than the one film on Mike's positive list that
I have seen, the trite and mannered "Character."
Unfortunately I haven't seen a couple of the key films that bother Mike,
though I have long been wanting to. But I wonder if he isn't just
objecting because he doesn't like them and doesn't know why others
praise them. Is there really any deeper principle at work here?
The problem with attacking a film one doesn't like, at least for me, is
that I can always imagine, at least theoretically, a great film that
fulfills my description of the turkey.
And I've long wanted to see (though maybe this has been done already) an
art historian construct a chart of nineteenth-century attacks on current
painting as not being "art": the accusation that it looks like Cézanne
assaulted his canvas with a knife, or that Turner applied his paints
with a mop. I've never read such an accusation that did not fit the work
of a great artist who came later (Lucio Fontana slashed his canvases,
for instance, and I'm sure there's a great painter somewhere who used a
mop...)
I guess if I have a taste or bias in film criticism it's in favor or
arguments about particular films, or filmmakers, rather than more
inclusive generalizations
- Fred
6217
From: jaketwilson
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 6:58am
Subject: Re: Bad film, good script
"hotlove666" wrote:
> Here's a simple answer to my own question: Joss Whedon's script for
> the Buffy the Vampire Slayer feature had me in stitches. It was
> directed by the producer's wife, Fran Kazui, who wrecked it,
> commercially and esthetically. Years later Whedon turned it into a
tv pilot and produced it himself - the rest is history. (I forget who
> the director for the pilot was, but he/she wasn't inept.)
According to some interview I read, Whedon also felt that his script
for ALIEN:RESURRECTION was wrecked by Jean-Pierre Jeunet's direction.
In that case I'm inclined to take Jeunet's side -- it's surely his
best film.
JTW
6218
From: iangjohnston
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 7:42am
Subject: Re: Tsai
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Gabe Klinger"
wrote:
> Miao Tien was spotted on the street by Tsai, as
> the story goes, and was immediately cast in the role of the father
in REBELS
> OF THE NEON GOD.
Gabe, are you sure about this story about Miao Tien? Because this is
how Hsiao Kang -- Lee Kang-Sheng -- was discovered and cast for
REBELS OF THE NEON GOD. Miao Tien already had a filmacting career
going back to the sixties, with his second screen appearance being
King Hu's DRAGON INN, hence the resonance of Miao Tien and Shi Jun
(also from the original DRAGON INN) sitting in the audience in
Tsai's film while their younger selves are projected onto the
screen. True, Miao Tien is playing a grandfather now (rather than
the father of earlier Tsai films), just as he does in Lee Kang-
Sheng's own film, THE MISSING.
6219
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 8:19am
Subject: Re: Bad film, good script
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "J. Mabe" wrote:
> Along with a second for Henrik's call for an
> explanation of McG's talents, I'd also like to know
> where I could find an explanation of the praise often
> heaped on Buffy the TV show. I watched the episode
> where Buffy's mother died ("The Body", was it?) and
> was impressed, but all other attempts to watch the
> show have been very disappointing.
>
> -Josh Mabe
"The Body" (Ep16/S5) is without a doubt the best directed and scripted
episode of the entire Buffy series. It is also a very special episode
for Josh Wheadon, as he practically had to threaten to leave the
series if he didn't get to make the episode.
"The Body" is unlike any ohter episode for numerous reasons. First of
all it has no "previous" intro, nor does it have any music at all. It
simply is not an episode, it is a short feature within the series.
As a short film it is very well scripted. It has some weaknesses,
which I believe were trade-off (the vampire in the morgue / the
standard buffy fight sequence). It also has some unique touches which
no other episode has. Noticable it he use of sound, or lack of sound.
The entire film lacks not only music, but also sound in general. When
the doctor tells Buffy her mother is dead and explains the cause and
comforts her, we get an out of sync dubbing saying the real thoughts
and feelings of the doctor. Just brilliant. The next is, for a series
as Buffy, daring framecompositions which go against common rules.
"The Body" is one of the few episodes which attack the conventions of
"Buffy". Another extraordinary episode is "Hush" (Ep10/S4), which
again was scripted/directed by Wheadon, and dealt with everyone losing
their voices, hence the entire episode has no dialogue. It also uses
mimes as some of the most creepy monsters ever made and quiet
inventive use of single tracking shots.
Henrik
6220
From:
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 4:21am
Subject: Re: Re: Minimal Kane
David Ehrenstein wrote:
>But seriously Welles can be fairly minimalist: "The
>Dreamers" and "Filming Othello" being two examples.
So you've seen "The Dreamers," David? I always love it when I find someone
else who belongs to this club. I hope that someday in the future it'll be as
widely seen as "Citizen Kane."
It's interesting that this should come up in the midst of a discussion on the
importance of plots. I saw "The Dreamers" >before< I had read either the
Isak Dinesen short stories upon which it is based or the screenplay by Welles and
Oja. I had a vague idea about what the story was, but not much more than
that. And yet I found the garden fragment to be unquestionably among the most
moving bits of film that I'd ever seen. And it wasn't necessarily more moving
once I knew the story and characters very well, as I do now.
Peter
6221
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 0:13pm
Subject: Re: Tsai / What's Minimalism
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "iangjohnston" wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Gabe Klinger"
> wrote:
> > Miao Tien was spotted on the street by Tsai, as
> > the story goes, and was immediately cast in the role of the father
> in REBELS
> > OF THE NEON GOD.
>
> Gabe, are you sure about this story about Miao Tien? Because this is
> how Hsiao Kang -- Lee Kang-Sheng -- was discovered and cast for
> REBELS OF THE NEON GOD.
My bad! (In Brazil, currently -- eating too much red meat is not helping my
sanity.)
The other actress who appears in Tsai's films, Chen Shiang-chyi, can be
spotted for a brief moment in A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY. I know that one for
a fact. (Mike, if there was ever a film that fit your criteria of complex plot, rich
characterization, and brilliant visual style, this is it, in a 13 reel package.)
Mike: Sorry if I sounded condescending in my previous post. I didn't mean to
imply you had no familiarity with art films; of the recent "subtitled" films you
name, I find five out of the eight to be "bombs", and yes, it's true that in
highbrow circles they were not widely admired (note: the two that I like, and
third that I like only marginally, are ALICE AND MARTIN, DR. AKAGI, and
SOLAS). I am not doubting your taste is genuine, but your selection is peculiar
in that it encompasses only a minor fraction of what "world cinema" is offering
these days. My reaction was that if you are only drawing your knowledge from
this small pool of recent foreign films, then you have only these mediocre-at-
best (in my opinion) films to compare. However, add MY SEX LIFE,
FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI, LATE AUGUST, EARLY SEPTEMBER, ROSETTA,
TIME REGAINED, and WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES to the pool and you
might be surprised.
But then maybe you have seen these films and already made up your mind
about them. Erghh... I probably sound condescending again.
I am traveling otherwise I would go back to your Kiarostami posts and
respond.
Gabe
6222
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 1:17pm
Subject: Re: Re: Minimal Kane
I saw it at the memorial service for Welles at the
DGA.I wouldimagine that had he completed the film this
simple style would have prevailed. Welles was always
altering his filmmaking style -- a fact that Jonathan
Rosenbaum has always emphasized, as "mainstream"
critics cling to "Kane" like a cinematic security
blanket.
--- ptonguette@a... wrote:
> David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
> >But seriously Welles can be fairly minimalist: "The
> >Dreamers" and "Filming Othello" being two examples.
>
> So you've seen "The Dreamers," David? I always love
> it when I find someone
> else who belongs to this club. I hope that someday
> in the future it'll be as
> widely seen as "Citizen Kane."
>
> It's interesting that this should come up in the
> midst of a discussion on the
> importance of plots. I saw "The Dreamers" >before<
> I had read either the
> Isak Dinesen short stories upon which it is based or
> the screenplay by Welles and
> Oja. I had a vague idea about what the story was,
> but not much more than
> that. And yet I found the garden fragment to be
> unquestionably among the most
> moving bits of film that I'd ever seen. And it
> wasn't necessarily more moving
> once I knew the story and characters very well, as I
> do now.
>
> Peter
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Find out what made the Top Yahoo! Searches of 2003
http://search.yahoo.com/top2003
6223
From:
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 10:42am
Subject: Re: Far From Heaven
In a message dated 1/4/04 3:17:11 PM, cellar47@y... writes:
> Just because it elicited laughter doens't mean the
> film isn't serious. And laughter alone doesn't make it
> camp either.
>
I made neither of those points, especially the latter.
Kevin
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
6224
From: Craig Keller
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 6:24pm
Subject: What Time Is It There?
Someone on this list made reference a day or two ago to a single
angle-cut in Tsai's film. I rewatched this movie last night
(masterpiece), and noted that there are in fact three angle-cuts (cuts
within the same space, sans any time-ellipses) --
-When Lee Kang-sheng cries in close-up in his bed => angle: He sits up
and turns on 'The 400 Blows' for a second time => angle:
Close-up/Direct-feed image of the videotape of 'The 400 Blows' (with
all of the accompanying cuts from shot-to-shot within the sequences
we're shown).
-When Chen Shang-chyi starts to inch closer to her Hong Kong bedmate,
from angle shot taken from the side of the bed to => cut: overhead
two-shot of the pair.
-When Mien Tiao hoists the suitcase out of the water with his umbrella,
and walks off camera => cut: ...emerging into the frame of a new angle
that contains as its backdrop the giant Ferris wheel mandala/clock.
craig.
6225
From: Craig Keller
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 6:27pm
Subject: Re: What Time Is It There?
> -When Mien Tiao...
Err, Miao Tien. Whoops!
craig.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
6226
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 6:28pm
Subject: Re: Pro-Plot, Pro-Character, Anti-Minimalism
Fred, thanks for your post. I wasn't being regressive when I assumed
that "plotless films" had to have characters - I was hastily
proposing "plotless" as a term opposed to "non-narrative," which is
what we usually use to designate abstract or structural
cinema. "Plotless," in my use of it, would designate the theoretical
possibility of a film without plot but with characters - something
GERRY immediately comes to mind as an example of, although as I point
out, it's not completely plotless.
And just as "plot" - as a metaphor for "structure unfolding in time" -
can be attributed to a Brakhage film, say, I observe that a Brakhage
with no people in it may have characters, but again only if we use
the term "character" metaphorically, to apply to recurring formal
elements. I'm not recommending either usage, though I'm tempted to
hold onto "plotless" at least as a possibility, given the importance
of character in film, which has not been given as much thought as it
deserves.
But clearly you can't have plot without characters, and vice versa,
so maybe another word should be found: "character-driven" and "plot-
driven"? Since those already exist and are well-understood, maybe
they'd be less confusing.
A last thought: We already speak of certain directing styles in the
narrative tradition as actor-centered. I wonder what a plot-centered
style would be - Lang?
6227
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 6:39pm
Subject: plot-centered style
I wonder if Preston Sturges' many ensemble pieces are plot-centered.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
> A last thought: We already speak of certain directing styles in the
> narrative tradition as actor-centered. I wonder what a plot-centered
> style would be - Lang?
6228
From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 6:45pm
Subject: Re: Re: Pro-Plot, Pro-Character, Anti-Minimalism
Bill,
I think "character-driven" and "plot-driven" are better.
But I don't agree that you can't have plot without characters. Brakhage
certainly felt some of his abstract films had "plots." He was quite
disturbed when I suggested that his 70 minute "The Text of Light"
(refraction patterns in an ashtray) was somehow beyond meaning, and said
he saw in it rivers and fields and mountains. And Sitney has an
excellent reading of Brakhage's landscape film "Creation" as a retelling
of the Biblical creation story (in "Chicago Review;" see my site for
info). And in fact Brakhage and Franpton proposed that the mind will, or
can, invent a narrative for any set of images.
I understand that not everyone will share my tastes in avant-garde film.
However I continue to think many general discussions about cinema as a
whole are deeply impoverished, even to the point of absurdity, without a
reference to the whole breadth of cinema. On the other hand, if such
discussions were to restrict themselves to something like "dramatic
narrative film," some of this problem would be avoided, and the writer
or speaker would also make clear that he acknowledges that the dramatic
narrative all singing all dancing half-naked Dewey Martin films are only
one type of cinema.
I similarly get very upset when people use the phrase "American film" to
refer to the commercial narratives of Hollywood and those independent
producers whose main hope is to make mega-hits so they can sell out to
Disney. "American film" is no more just commercial narrative then
"American music" can be defined as solely classical, or jazz, or blues,
or rock. If someone says, "I have seen Brakhage's films and they looked
like incomprehensible garbage," I can easily understand that, as long as
the person doesn't generalize from there about what other people see,
But I cannot understand using "American film" to refer to a certain
kind of lip-sync storytelling.
- Fred
6229
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 6:48pm
Subject: Re: plot-centered style
That's an interesting question, in that Sturges always
pulls away from the superhighway of standard narrative
onto the off-ramps of character and incident. In "The
Palm Beach Story" Claudette Colbert leaves Joel
McCrea, who wants to win her back. He does so after a
fashion, but that's hardly the point of the movie, and
it certainly doesn't describe what goes on in it.
Everything from the shennanigans of the "Ale & Quail
Club" to Rudy Valee singing "Goodnight Sweetheart" to
Mary Astor swanning in with a rip-snorting "What's
buzzin' cousin?" are what the whole thing is "about."
--- Elizabeth Anne Nolan wrote:
> I wonder if Preston Sturges' many ensemble pieces
> are plot-centered.
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
> > A last thought: We already speak of certain
> directing styles in the
> > narrative tradition as actor-centered. I wonder
> what a plot-centered
> > style would be - Lang?
>
>
6230
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 6:50pm
Subject: Re: What Time Is It There?
Craig:
> -When Chen Shang-chyi starts to inch closer to her Hong Kong bedmate,
> from angle shot taken from the side of the bed to => cut: overhead
> two-shot of the pair.
This shot structure is repeated/stolen (take your pick) in LOST IN
TRANSLATION -- replace Chen and her friend with Charlotte and Bob. I want
to say almost exactly but it's been a while since I've seen WHAT TIME IS IT
THERE?
For me the most impressive shot in Tsai's cinema is tracking shot of Miao Tien
walking alongside a river bank in the final ten minutes or so of THE RIVER. If
memory serves, it's the first tracking shot of the film, and it goes back to the
Godardian meaning (/morality): we are following the character, staying with
him, and the camera doesn't leave him (that is, until we cut). I guess you could
say the same for the character who is sobbing at the end of VIVE L'AMOUR
except the camera isn't moving; it's fixed on her until the film cuts to credits.
6231
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 7:15pm
Subject: Re: plot-centered style (STURGES)
Sturges big ensemble films (Christmas in July, Miracle at Morgan's
Creek, The Great McGinty, Hail the Conquering Hero) seem
plot-centered. Perhaps ensemble films are more likely to focus on
plot than be character driven.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein wrote:
> That's an interesting question, in that Sturges always
> pulls away from the superhighway of standard narrative
> onto the off-ramps of character and incident. In "The
> Palm Beach Story" Claudette Colbert leaves Joel
> McCrea, who wants to win her back. He does so after a
> fashion, but that's hardly the point of the movie, and
> it certainly doesn't describe what goes on in it.
> Everything from the shennanigans of the "Ale & Quail
> Club" to Rudy Valee singing "Goodnight Sweetheart" to
> Mary Astor swanning in with a rip-snorting "What's
> buzzin' cousin?" are what the whole thing is "about."
> --- Elizabeth Anne Nolan wrote:
> > I wonder if Preston Sturges' many ensemble pieces
> > are plot-centered.
> >
> > --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> > wrote:
> > > A last thought: We already speak of certain
> > directing styles in the
> > > narrative tradition as actor-centered. I wonder
> > what a plot-centered
> > > style would be - Lang?
> >
> >
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Find out what made the Top Yahoo! Searches of 2003
> http://search.yahoo.com/top2003
6232
From: samfilms2003
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 7:26pm
Subject: Re: What Time Is It There?
Note: I don't THINK my reply contains a so-called "spoiler" but in
the interests of truth-in-labelling.....
> Craig Keller wrote:
>
> Someone on this list made reference a day or two ago to a single
> angle-cut in Tsai's film.
That was me, thanks for correcting my assumption/uncertainty...
> (masterpiece), and noted that there are in fact three angle-cuts (cuts
> within the same space, sans any time-ellipses) --
>
> -When Lee Kang-sheng cries in close-up in his bed => angle: He sits up
> and turns on 'The 400 Blows' for a second time => angle:
> Close-up/Direct-feed image of the videotape of 'The 400 Blows' (with
> all of the accompanying cuts from shot-to-shot within the sequences
> we're shown).
Hmm, I could be strict and disqualify this one, as it cuts to a
"different space&time" of course it is, and is not (man does THAT
metaphorically echo the system of this movie !)
> -When Chen Shang-chyi starts to inch closer to her Hong Kong bedmate,
> from angle shot taken from the side of the bed to => cut: overhead
> two-shot of the pair.
This is the one I refered to. It seemed so neccessary; I'm trying to articulate
the why of it. It has to give HK bedmate equal space. This is a scene where
the other is potentially as real, in flesh & blood as the nominal subject.
It can't just be Chen Shag-yi & ghost/space for the following moments.
Also, I read "HK bedmate" (can't recall the character's name) as actually
the more sexually interested of the two.
In any case, it gives the impression of the idea of cutting binge invented,
to use a Godardism.
> -When Mien Tiao hoists the suitcase out of the water with his umbrella,
> and walks off camera => cut: ...emerging into the frame of a new angle
> that contains as its backdrop the giant Ferris wheel mandala/clock.
This one I recalled as elipsis but was not sure. Aren't we, in some sense,
in a more "unreal" space here ? Maybe, maybe not, but "example #2"
still seems unique.... Or I suppose one might say this cut, this sequence
is transistion to ghost/other representation at a more realised spiritual
level. (Chen / Leaud would be the parody of this possibility).
One thing for certain, this film sure doesn't seem too minimal when I try
and write something about it !
-Sam
6233
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 7:29pm
Subject: Re: Pro-Plot, Pro-Character, Minimalism
Fred, as I said I can certainly see attributing plots and even
characters to Brakhage's films, but clearly the terms are being used
metaphorically. In the only art history class I ever took -
fortunately, the teacher was Robert Herbert - we were surprised to
learn that Kandinsky's early abstract paintings were really of
religious subjects, like the Last Judgement. This is an old
discussion re: painting and, I take it, re: abstract film, where I
would not be tempted to apply the kind of analysis I would apply to
the plot of, say, The Strawberry Blonde. Since I'm one of the few
film critics who likes to analyze plots as non-verbal symbolic
structures, I'm likely to be misunderstood on that point, but I
always stand ready to be instructed where abstract and structural
film is concerned.
For the record, I never say "American films." I always say "Hollywood
films" when that's what I'm talking about. The egregious usage
is "American independent films," referring to low-budget films on the
H'wd model (ie narrative films) that aren't financed by Hollywood
production companies, for which an alternative expression is needed,
but hard to come by, to distinguish it from what I rather onerously
keep referring to as "abstract or structural films," where "non-
narrative" is still probably the best shorthand. Suggestions, anyone?
6234
From: samfilms2003
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 7:30pm
Subject: Re: What Time Is It There? - typo
cutting binge invented
Please read being invented.
This film is not a cutting binge, to say the (minimally) least :)
-sw
6235
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 7:39pm
Subject: Re: plot-centered style
ER, I recommend you do finally get hold of Manny Farber's Negative
Space. A painter who describes films visually, Farber evokes Sturges,
in a co-written essay that is one of his finest, in terms that point
to the relative subordination of plot to character in his films, and
even to the visual delineation of character. Since he is routinely
described as a writer who just happened to direct his own scripts,
Farber's appreciation is a needed corrective, and perhaps a good one
to invoke in the midst of this discussion we've been engaged in since
Mike's post, because of the way Farber's best criticism straddles
precisely the categories that discussion is couched in, finding a
vocabulary for Hollywood or European narrative films that applies
equally well to non-narrative films, which he writes about very well,
too.
6236
From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 7:56pm
Subject: Re: Pro-Plot, Pro-Character, Anti-Minimalism
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> A last thought: We already speak of certain directing styles in the
> narrative tradition as actor-centered. I wonder what a plot-
centered style would be - Lang?
For me, Lang is too idiosyncratic and borderline modernist in his
approach to narrative to qualify here. I would propose Billy Wilder
instead, whose films are very often not only plot-centered in a more
classical manner (in contrast to Lang's, which are often all over the
map and have difficulty in resolving the issues they raise) but are
also about the act of constructing narratives, with the characters
hatching plots of their own, either through writing itself, or as a
form of survival, or as a way of ensnaring others.
6237
From:
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 2:58pm
Subject: Re: Re: Minimal Kane
David Ehrenstein wrote:
>I saw it at the memorial service for Welles at the
>DGA.I wouldimagine that had he completed the film this
>simple style would have prevailed.
I think so too - if for no other reason than Welles was absolutely going to
use the garden scene in the final film, thus we can view it as more than a
"test" or "dry-run." I can only imagine how extraordinary a whole film in this
visual style would have been like.
You might be interested in the article I did on the project last summer:
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/27/welles_dreamers.html
>Welles was always
>altering his filmmaking style -- a fact that Jonathan
>Rosenbaum has always emphasized, as "mainstream"
>critics cling to "Kane" like a cinematic security
>blanket.
The very theme of "The Dreamers" is the allure of becoming other people!
It's not such a jump for me to make to say that this theme resonated with Welles
the director, who never wanted to repeat himself - and in fact Bill did make
this connection when I interviewed him for my piece.
Peter
6238
From:
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 3:02pm
Subject: Re: McGmania
In a message dated 1/4/2004 2:37:46 PM Eastern Standard Time, Henrik Sylow
writes:
> "Can someone be an auteur, if he doesn't direct and McG doesnt direct.
> All he has to do is make sure people doesnt trip and say their lines
> as cool as possible. That is no more direction than a stagehand
> holding a sign during Jerry Springer saying either "APPLAUSE" or
> "BOO".
>
Henrik, I get the feeling you didn't enjoy the film.
I don't feel any desire to make a strong case for it or McG's auteur status.
Me, I really hate most contemporary American action movies, find them among
the most overbearing and oppressive cine-experiences imaginable and worlds away
from anything I would consider fun. So I was surprised to come across one that
swung its bloat in a fair approximation of lightness and spontaneity. I
didn't give a damn about the plot, which worked out well since no one involved in
its making seems to have either. A friend calls it a fine modern example of the
"cinema of attractions," and that seems pretty much on the money to me.
But I see in a later post you say you don't like Chungking Express either, a
much greater film with a few of the same virtues in my eyes.
Brent
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
6239
From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 8:09pm
Subject: Re: Re: Pro-Plot, Pro-Character, Minimalism (naming)
Bill,
I'm glad to hear you on the subject of using "Hollywood films" to refer
to them, rather "American films." There are books called things like
"American cinema" that make almost no mention of avant-garde film.
I was, though, responding, very belatedly (because it didn't seem like
it was worth a separate post at the time) to your 5207; if one takes the
most inclusive view of "American films" to include experimental films,
student films, home movies, and industrial films, clearly the people who
make them live all over Even with a less inclusive definition, I don't
think the majority of American filmmakers live in the Los Angeles area.
None of this affects your point about LA area projection, of course;
indeed, it supports it.. I'm assuming this is just a slip; I've made
many; I don't mean to personalize this; I've certainly learned a lot
from your posts.
I know of no good solutions to the naming problems. Everybody
understands "American independent" has as one of its meanings, probably
its most common meaning, the one you cite. For that other stuff, the out
of focus upside down silent films, I use "experimental" and
"avant-garde" interchangeably, as a way of indicating there is no good name.
- Fred
6241
From:
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 8:42pm
Subject: Plot: McCarey, Bresson, Preminger, Hitchcock, Ford (2nd Try!)
Peter Toungette's mention of Leo McCarey and Fred Camper's of Robert Bresson seem on target. Both are directors who tend to be strong on character, but less interested in plot - although "A Man Escaped" is well plotted. The plots in their films are competent and pleasing, and certainly more elaborate than those in some contemporary filmmakers mentioned. But their plots are usually much less elaborate than Hitchcock's or Preminger's or Ford's. And their films are full of pleasant digressions from the main plot lines, as Andrew Sarris pointed in his McCarey article in The American Cinema.
Look how vast and detailed and perfectly constructed the plots in Preminger's Fallen Angel or Daisy Kenyon are. The dance of interactions between the three leads in Daisy Kenyon is one of the most complex stories in cinema. Daisy Kenyon also sticks to its plot line like glue. Everything in the film is closely based on the ongoing changing positions of the main characters. One would never claim Daisy Kenyon is only plot - the camera work and acting and general mise-en-scene are rich. But all of these elements are closely built around the plot, which forms a strong, immensely well developed core of the movie.
I think a lot of narrative, fictional world cinema made before 1970 is like Daisy Kenyon. They are films in which plot is important, and in which the plot forms a strong structural element supporting other parts of the film.
Bill Krohn's Hitchcock at Work documents the huge care Hitchcock lavished on his plots. As his scripts progressed, Hitchcock was relentless about changing and improving and developing his plots. Even during filming, the book documents several cases in which Hitchcock shot alternate versions of scenes, often in order to experiment with different plot ideas. Reading this book is an eye opening experience. It shows how concerned one major director was with plot in film.
There are three distinct questions here, which can easily get confused.
1) Is there a complex plot in a film?
2) Was the plot important to the director at the time the film was made?
3) Do we viewers today think the plot makes a major artistic contribution to the film?
These are separate issues. We might agree that the answer to 1) is yes, that Rear Window has a very complex plot; 2) is yes, that Hitchcock was deeply interested in the plot of Rear Window, yet we might feel the answer to 3) is no: that the camera work in Rear Window is artistically important, not the plot.
I keep talking about 1) in my posts. I think much of narrative world cinema has complex plots. Other posters keep talking about 3). They do not feel plot is of much artistic worth in cinema.
3) is a very complex question. The importance of narration might vary from director and director, and even in film from film. I believe that narration is artistically very important in most of Ford, such as The Searchers. But it is probably less so in the relaxed Donovan's Reef. In general, my guess is that narration is far more important in fiction film than many posters are here suggesting.
6242
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 10:24pm
Subject: Re: Charles Walters
I love THE TENDER TRAP. I dislike HIGH SOCIETY. I'm on the fence
with GOOD NEWS--it's one of those highly-regarded films that, for
whatever reason, didn't do it for me. I'm just waiting for a future
viewing where I'll hopefully fall in love. I'm trying to pinpoint
Walters' signature. He tends to be a very beautiful, artificial,
plastic director, but he can be absolutely superb at weaving complex
and nuanced emotions out of fluff. Like cotton candy with
nutritional value, or something.
You guys sure picked a helluva weekend to go apeshit with the
posting. I've been offline since Thursday night--those are a lot of
messages to look over, even if you're skipping some to save time.
Wow.
--Zach
6243
From: filipefurtado
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 11:07pm
Subject: Jonathan Mostow
I've seen the three Mostow films, and liked all of them.
Neither U-571 nor T3 are as good as the first half of
Breakdown, but they both are far above average. T3 was the
best craft action film that came from Hollywood this year (I
was counting the ballots from Contracampo's Top 10, and it
seems like this one may make the cut). By now, I believe he
really should try something more ambitious, he already prove
that he can make a well crafted action film, but he will
start to look like a pleasant hack very soon if he don't try
to go beyond that.
I have a personal system that I call the
Frankenheimer/Fleischer system. Both were clearly talented
filmmakers with very uneven careers, but I always felt a
strong difference when I come across one of the many truly
bad films they've done. For example, in 1985 Fleischer did
Amytiville 3-D and Frankenheimer did The Holcroft Colvant.
Both are among the worst films that come out that year, but
Frakenheimer did had a thriller by an above average spy
writer (Robert Lundlum) and some good actors (Michael Cane,
Michel Lonsdale, Mario Adorf) but he still barely try to make
much out of it. Now, Amytville 3-D was part 3 of a lousy
horror series, it's not a good film, but I can feel Fleischer
trying, and he do menage to find a couple of good bits on the
material. It's a bad film, but I think it's a likable bad
film, The Holcroft Colvant is only alwful hack job.
When I see a film like Breakdown where I sense the filmmaker
have potential, I always follow their next films hoping that
if the guy disn't turn out great, he at least menage to be
more Fleischer than FRankenheimer.
Filipe
---
Acabe com aquelas janelinhas que pulam na sua tela.
AntiPop-up UOL - É grátis!
http://antipopup.uol.com.br
6244
From: filipefurtado
Date: Mon Jan 5, 2004 11:20pm
Subject: Re: Re: McG and Auteurism
> McG is not the creator of "Charlies Angels 2". The film made
itself,
> because there was a first and that one made itself because t
here was a
> series.
Not really. The two films have almost nothing in commom with
the TV series. Also, if there was a Charlie's Angels 2, it
was because McG and Drew Barrymoore fought for it, the first
film didn't make any profit until video (it was too expensive
and like most TV series remakes didn't make much money
overseas), so I doubt that Sony was very crazy about doing
another one without someone trying to convince them.
Filipe
---
Acabe com aquelas janelinhas que pulam na sua tela.
AntiPop-up UOL - É grátis!
http://antipopup.uol.com.br
6245
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 0:19am
Subject: what is minimalism?
Fred said
"I think "character-driven" and "plot-driven" are better.
But I don't agree that you can't have plot without characters."
I agree with Fred on the latter. It is quiet possible to have a plot
without characters. Using Barthes, the unity of histoire and discours
is still intact even if there are zero functions. There mere present
of locality and time is enough to argue narration, and as such plot
exists as long as time passes.
But I don't understand the notion of "plot driven" - plot drive what?
plot? narrative? Neither do I understand what part any of them play in
minimalism.
JPC said
"Little Charles' parents, over a jug of malt liquor, decide that
wealth is not for them simple folk, and they sign it over to the bank.
Charles grows up to be a drunk. One winter they burn "Rosebud" to
keep themselves warm. The end."
OK, so nothing much is going on, but is this minimalism? Is it the
story driven by characters or by the plot?
I said it in a previous post and Ill say it again. As much as you can
overflesh maximalism story, as much can you underdo minimalism. While
it is theoreticly possible to have a narration as long as just time
passes, a sunset isnt much of a story, so do films where only time
passes really constitute a narrative? If so, why do we call them art
film or non narrative film or by any other name?
I even wonder if it is possible to define minimalism by Barthe's
narrative levels.
So what is minimalism? Is it even on narrative level or isn't it about
using space and time?
Henrik
6246
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 1:30am
Subject: Re: plot-centered style STURGES
After a quick read (a re-read required), I agree with the character
emphasis in both SULLIVAN'S TRAVEL and THE LADY EVE, both of which
have major star pairings, but still wonder if the others I mentioned
are, if not plot, at least "story" movements.
However, I wonder of the sensitivity and sensibility of commentary
about Sturges who must have engendered a tremendous jealousy,
having been born rich and talented, and assuming a certain freedom
and independence, notwithstanding his failures. His 'stories' suggest
that the rich, they are different; especially in their perception of the
lower and working classes, who are only preesent to serve their
purposes.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
> ER, I recommend you do finally get hold of Manny Farber's Negative
> Space. A painter who describes films visually, Farber evokes Sturges,
> in a co-written essay that is one of his finest, in terms that point
> to the relative subordination of plot to character in his films, and
> even to the visual delineation of character. Since he is routinely
> described as a writer who just happened to direct his own scripts,
> Farber's appreciation is a needed corrective, and perhaps a good one
> to invoke in the midst of this discussion we've been engaged in since
> Mike's post, because of the way Farber's best criticism straddles
> precisely the categories that discussion is couched in, finding a
> vocabulary for Hollywood or European narrative films that applies
> equally well to non-narrative films, which he writes about very well,
> too.
6247
From: jaketwilson
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 1:31am
Subject: Re: Plot: McCarey, Bresson, Preminger, Hitchcock, Ford (2nd Try!)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> Peter Toungette's mention of Leo McCarey and Fred Camper's of
Robert Bresson seem on target. Both are directors who tend to be
strong on character, but less interested in plot - although "A Man >
> Escaped" is well plotted.
I think Bresson's style, like Lang's, could be described as "plot-
centred" in a certain sense, particularly in the later films. In
L'ARGENT up till the end everything is subordinated to the
elaborately bifurcating plot, and the narrative momentum is just
relentless -- miss the import of one scene, and you're lost.
JTW
6248
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 1:55am
Subject: Narrative/avant-garde/theory
Fred, I wrote: "I live in Los Angeles, where most of the people who
make American films live." It would have sounded vaguely weird to
write: "I live in Los Angeles, where most people who make Hollywood
films live," and I wasn't being careful to avoid equating America and
H'wd because we were talking about the projection of H'wd films in
theatres and on video. I'm from Texas; I lived for years in NY; I
just got back from Kentucky, and I would never dream of equating
Tinseltown with America. It's a very specific slice of the pie,
mostly full of types I don't care for the closer you get to the
studios, and the kinds of films made here and projected commercially
elsewhere, which I like more than most of the the people who decide
what gets made, are very specific, too.
But I won't conceal that we're in different places esthetically, if
not in different camps. My recent post said: "I wonder what it is
about narrative that is so compelling in film. Is it a regression?
etc." As someone who specifically enjoys dissecting plots and finding
unsuspected things in them, I'm pretty far gone in that direction -
it may be one reason I like melodrama. But I'm at least aware that
that's not all that exists (hence my gestures toward a discussion of
character), and I completely agree with you that one type of cinema
theoretically could throw light on another, or vice versa. It just
hasn't been happening much here with the avant-garde and narrative
cinema, and I perfectly understand your frustration at that.
Here's mine: I love theory, but as a group we are not 100% but 95%
oriented toward concrete examples. Still, I have noticed a definite
pick-up in the tempo of theory-oriented talk, and perhaps this
discussion will lead to more of the specific kind of theory you want
to hear more of: theory of the "avant-garde" (quotes are yours),
theory of how the avant-garde illuminates/shows up narrative cinema,
theory of how narrative cinema illuminates/shows up the avant-garde.
But theory of any kind - except freeze-dried academic dogmas - is
hard for all of us. That's why I'm very happy with the recent thread
started by Mike's bold statement re Daredevil and the other two
films, although having only seen one of the three examples, I'm
disinclined to read posts that aren't dealing with Mike's issues on a
certain level of abstraction.
The same goes for your issues. You believe that cross-fertilization
can happen at this site between the avant-garde and narrative cinema
criticism. I sense and sympathize with your dismay at hearing endless
discussions of one kind of film, and often of unworthy examples of
THAT. When I asked you about how your brand of formalism would apply
to rating Minnelli's melos above his musicals, I was begging for more
of what the group needs, something which you and a few others are in
the best position to supply. Ditto when I suggested that Elizabeth
should read Farber if she thinks Sturges is about plot - I look to
Farber for help in this area and feel inadequate to supply it most of
the time myself.
As for me, when I do venture timid remarks about Anger or video
distribution of Brakhage - subjects I almost blush to raise, given my
lack of background - no one picks up on them. But David, you, Peter
and some others know a lot and shouldn't blush to raise these issues.
It's one of the main things I click on to a_film_by to read. And
theory supplies the only ground on which such discussion is possible,
unless I'm being self-serving to think so.
6249
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 2:01am
Subject: Re: Re: Plot: McCarey, Bresson, Preminger, Hitchcock, Ford (2nd Try!)
jaketwilson wrote:
>---
>
>I think Bresson's style, like Lang's, could be described as "plot-
>centred"
>
Well, since I introduced Bresson into this thread (unless I'm forgetting
someone earlier), let me point out that I named a specific film, The
Trial of Joan of Arc, and I chose that film and not others for a reason.
The interrogations are relentless and repetitive; the style is austere
in the extreme; it's not clear to me that the characters have "inner
complexity" other than what the viewer projects; for most of us, there
isn't a lot of tension about how it's going to end, because even if we
don't know anything about history we've probably seen the Preminger.
Contrary to what those darned auteurists may think, not all a director's
films are the same!
- Fred
6250
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 2:22am
Subject: Re: Narrative/avant-garde/theory
Bill, I don't mean to exaggerate my "dismay." The people who post here
seem to be having a fine time doing so, and I'm glad our group has made
a place for them. The lack of attention paid to avant-garde film by
narrative-film-oriented auteurists is a very old story, anyway, so I'm
pretty used to it. I'll just go on injecting my occasional insistence
where it seems relevant.
About your Anger reaction, I was pleased to see it, though I don't
recall that it required a reply. And in general, our group has gone way
past the point where I'm able to read every post, let alone reply to all
the ones I'd like to. Keeping up reading posts and replying can take
several hours a day, and I know I'm not alone!
I'd like to think that my "brand of formalism" is genre-blind, that is,
that it wouldn't favor a musical over a melodrama or vice versa, just as
it wouldn't favor a two minute 8mm silent handpainted Brakhage film
over Mankiewicz's "Cleopatra" (which I like a lot), or vice versa. My
reaction to many Minnelli musicals might make people suspect that my
brand of formalism prefers the melodramas, but in fact I think "The
Pirate" is his greatest film up to that time and for some years after as
well. As I've said a few times I'm *very* suspicious of synoptic
theories of film, because they either seem to be wrong if applied to all
film (too many exceptions), or, if they do seem to be generally
applicable, overly bland for anyone who knows the basics, as we do
("each shot is modified by our memory of the shot that preceded it").
One way I think avant-garde film can illuminate a great Hollywood
narrative is by sensitizing the viewer toward its "abstract" dimensions.
Part of what's great about Anger for me is the way that he uses light.
His fetishism seems to apply not only to objects but to light itself:
the variegated light patterns in "Eaux d'Artifice" that climax in the
hand-colored fan; the different reflections and textures of "Scorpio
Rising." For me, viewing such films have helped me to see the
light-poetry in, say, John Ford as well.
Another way is by difference. For example, many filmmakers specifically
abjure the kind of expectation, the pattern of tension and release, that
a conventional narrative feeds off of. Brakhage, Breer and Gehr come to
mind here. Their films are structured around the instant, and each
instant seems to "consume" the previous one.
Also, I don't want to make too strong a point of this. I mean, yes, I
think people should understand avant-garde film if they're interested in
cinema. I also think people should be fluent in French if they're
interested in cinema, since that's the language besides English in which
the majority of things worth reading have been written. And I'm
certainly not able to read French, except if it's simple and then only
very very slowly. We all have limitations and we all bring strengths to
viewing film. I certainly learned a lot from Roger McNiven, and this was
in the period when he had little or no knowledge of or interest in
avant-garde film.
There's a lot more that can be said, but this has been another day of
which a couple of hours have been devoted to a_film_by day, and now it's
time for other stuff.
- Fred
6251
From: samfilms2003
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 4:25am
Subject: Re: Narrative/avant-garde/theory
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
> My recent post said: "I wonder what it is
> about narrative that is so compelling in film. Is it a regression?
> etc."
OK, but I think to really answer that question, one does have to open
the door to theory;
> But theory of any kind - except freeze-dried academic dogmas - is
> hard for all of us.
Right but again, how do you do it with concrete examples, except to
say, in some form or another, "such and such a film is compelling, and
it's a narrative, therefore it's compelling"
-sam
6252
From: cellar47
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 5:13am
Subject: Robert Altman Says
Here's an excerpt from an interview with Robert Altman in "Salon"
that deals with precisely what we've been discussing about narrative
over the past few days:
Q: Do you worry about your audiences? This film has a lot of your
trademarks -- the big ensemble cast, the overlapping dialogue, the
emphasis on character over plot. Do you feel like audiences are
always up to the challenge?
A: No, but that's their problem, not mine. And the fact that you
could even form a sentence that says that the films are not so
interested in story. Well, who said there was going to be a story in
the first place? You did, because that's the conventional wisdom that
comes down to us. "Oh, it's a great story." Well, I could tell you
the story about the guy [in "The Company"] who didn't have a place to
sleep. You know his story. You know as much about him as I could tell
you in the film. I don't have to end that. Or the guy who gets fired
from the company, the guy who has the mentor, you could make his
story up and be absolutely dead-on with it. I don't have to tell you
any more about it. And I don't have to tell you about Harriet, the
woman who we first see dancing, kind of working out, and when the
other dancers, the real dancers, come in, she quits. Then she's in
her mufti, her uniform, all day and -- you know her story, I don't
have to tell you any more about that. The little love story is just
sort of a concession to a film audience, because they come in,
they've gotta see something.
6253
From:
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 0:28am
Subject: Re: Jonathan Mostow
Filipe Furtado wrote:
>I've seen the three Mostow films, and liked all of them.
Has anyone seen the two pictures he made before "Breakdown"?
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0096917/combined
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0101897/combined
>Neither U-571 nor T3 are as good as the first half of
>Breakdown, but they both are far above average. T3 was the
>best craft action film that came from Hollywood this year (I
>was counting the ballots from Contracampo's Top 10, and it
>seems like this one may make the cut).
Wow! See, I knew that someone just might make a case for T3, which is why I
emphasized the word "assuming" when I said "assuming that it's bad/awful."
I'll definitely have to check it out now. I'd love to see what Contracampo's
Top 10 is when all the ballots are counted.
>I have a personal system that I call the
>Frankenheimer/Fleischer system.
I think this is a great system. I like Frankenheimer (so much so that I'd
say that I even prefer his sequel to "The French Connection" to Friedkin's or
iginal), but he never seemed to possess an ability to overcome his scripts; as
you say, his bad films tended to be unreedambly bad. But Fleischer's a whole
different ball game. I was saying to Dan the other day that even on his worst,
least interesting, most compromised projects, the guy gave it his all in terms
of visualizing the story. I've yet to see a Fleischer film with a poor or
lazy sense of space, of blocking and movement.
I actually like "Amityville 3D" a good deal; I think it pretty much comes
together, despite some silly sections. But look at this thing he made in the
early '80s called "Tough Enough." It stars Dennis Quaid as a failed country
singer who tries to make it as an amateur boxer. It's not very good, and I
started looking at my watch literally during the opening credits, but I'll be damned
if Fleischer's visual sense doesn't kick in one scene later. Quaid and his
wife have an argument and Fleischer frames and blocks the scene in such a way
that we know we're in the hands of a gifted old pro - albeit sporadically
throughout the rest of the movie.
But his talent makes these minor films more than tolerable. "The New
Centurions" contains one of the greatest long takes I've ever seen!
>When I see a film like Breakdown where I sense the filmmaker
>have potential, I always follow their next films hoping that
>if the guy disn't turn out great, he at least menage to be
>more Fleischer than FRankenheimer.
Amen to that.
Peter
6254
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 5:34am
Subject: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
Paul Schrader carries a copy of Scorpio Rising with him when he's
working so he can pop it in and be stimulated to think out of the
box, and Olivier Assayas says his approach to filmmaking was
revolutionized by seeing the Anger retrospective in Paris and writing
his essay on Anger for CdC's book arm. Although I don't like
Irreversible, it sure looks to me like Noe saw The Central Region.
And I'm currently writing about a narrative filmmaker, Bunuel, whose
first two films were avant-garde works, the principles of which
continued to inform his work as a commercial filmmaker - Breton, for
one, saw no break from surrealism in Los Olvidados. Maybe writing
about LB will enable me to at least raise a couple questions about
this kind of synergy between schools of cinema - something I also
hope members of this group will continue to do, either by making
connections or by instructing the narrative majority in the
appreciation of specific avant-garde works. Avant-garde fans (of
which Mike is one, I believe), don't be shy!
6255
From:
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 0:37am
Subject: Re: Re: Re: McG and Auteurism
Filipe Furtado wrote:
>Also, if there was a Charlie's Angels 2, it
>was because McG and Drew Barrymoore fought for it
And "Charlie's Angels 2" was such a "disappointment" in the States that I
doubt that anyone will be able to persuade Sony to do a third one.
It is probably true that the films were inevitably going to be made, as the
studios are always looking for "the sure thing," but that doesn't seem to me to
have a bearing one way or the other on quality or attitude of the final
"product." The fact is that the presiding artistic spirit of CA 1 and 2 is the
total opposite of a corporate mentality; the films themselves are so infected
with a sense of fun that I think McG and the Angels made them essentially for
their own pleasure. Now that isn't precisely true; I think McG wanted the
audience to enjoy the pictures, but the presiding attitude seems more like Hawks
(seriously) than some pre-packaged-by-committee vision.
I'd defend the films aesthetically; they are, as Filipe has noted, positively
wild in their sense of space. And I'd defend them as really cool feminist
tracts too.
Peter
6256
From:
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 0:39am
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
Bill, since Anger's "Rabbit Moon" impressed you so much recently, perhaps you
could offer a few extended comments on it as a way to kick-start some
discussions of avant-garde cinema here. Me, I've just re-seen "Cat's Cradle" on the
Brakhage DVD and it's become one of my very favorites of his.
Peter
6257
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 5:51am
Subject: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
My recent post said: "I wonder what it is
> about narrative that is so compelling in film. Is it a regression?
> etc."
OK, but I think to really answer that question, one does have to open
the door to theory;
> But theory of any kind - except freeze-dried academic dogmas - is
> hard for all of us.
Right but again, how do you do it with concrete examples, except to
say, in some form or another, "such and such a film is compelling, and
it's a narrative, therefore it's compelling"
-sam
Serge Daney never wrote about a film without emitting a little bit of
theory (what MacLuhan jokingly referred to as space probes) at the
same time, and that is largely true for Biette, Narboni, Ranciere,
Comolli, Bellour, Bonitzer and innumerable French writers on film,
including, I assume, many of the ones I don't know. Having learned
from the writers I mentioned and their New Wave predecessors, that's
the only way I know to talk about films, even if I'm writing for The
Economist. Otherwise I get bored.
Theory doesn't have to be massive, all-encompassing and absolute - it
can be playful and occasional if the writer loves ideas. The other
kind of theory - call it imperial theory - is the province of people
who don't really love ideas, IMO, or they wouldn't be so eager to
embrace a priori's that relieve them of the need for thought. Nor
would I advocate theory divorced from concrete examples - I'm too
much of an unreconstructed Maoist to want to see theory handed down
from the clouds and then applied to the grungy world of facts. By my
definition, I would argue that lots of the members of a_film_by are
doing theory all the time right now without realizing it.
6258
From: jaketwilson
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 10:25am
Subject: Re: Narrative/avant-garde/theory
Being fascinated by the issues raised in this recent thread, I'm
posting some more stumbling thoughts, in a spirit of questioning
discussion rather than polemic.
The theoretical or quasi-theoretical discussions that happen around
here often seem to founder on problems of definition. I'm a bit
confused by some of the ways people have used "plot", and
particularly the opposition between "plot" and "character", as if you
could have one without the other. I'd be more inclined to endorse the
principle beloved of screenwriting manuals, that "action is
character": people can only reveal themselves through what they say
and do in specific situations. Or what they don't do, as often in
Rohmer.
Going back a bit, Fred wrote:
> But I don't agree that you can't have plot without characters.
Brakhage certainly felt some of his abstract films had "plots." He
was quite disturbed when I suggested that his 70 minute "The Text of
Light" (refraction patterns in an ashtray) was somehow beyond >
> meaning, and said he saw in it rivers and fields and mountains. And
Sitney has an excellent reading of Brakhage's landscape
film "Creation" as a retelling of the Biblical creation story
(in "Chicago Review;" see my site for info). And in fact Brakhage and
Franpton proposed that the mind will, or can, invent a narrative
> for any set of images.
Like Mel Brooks does in THE CRITIC, I guess... This is sort of what I
was trying to get at when I claimed that storytelling was "about the
most important thing in the world". Certainly when I'm presented with
pieces of information in sequence, my instinct is to try and link
them causally, producing a story of sorts (featuring entities that
could be called "characters"). But as our discussions have amply
demonstrated, it's literally true that our brains don't all work in
the same ways, or at least that we don't all have the same habits
when processing information.
Then Henrik in response to Fred:
> While it is theoreticly possible to have a narration as long as
just time
> passes, a sunset isnt much of a story, so do films where only time
> passes really constitute a narrative? If so, why do we call them
art film or non narrative film or by any other name?
If Brakhage's films have "plots", can we say that any film has
a "plot" in which a determinate entity evolves from one state of
being to another? But how much change can this entity undergo before
it stops being recognisable as "itself" from moment to moment?
Or would a simpler definition be that a plot is a "represented series
of events"? In that case, a film which has a plot is one that invites
us to take its images as representations of a fictional (or real)
world, rather than accepting them at face value as shifting (non-
anthropomorphicised) patterns of coloured light.
I'm wondering, from this angle, whether the modernist suspicion of
narrative isn't equally a suspicion of representation. The ethical
basis for this, I guess, is that treating non-human objects as
representations means investing them with emotions that really belong
to us and not "them". But I'm not sure how we're meant to escape from
this anthropomorphising perspective. It seems "natural" for humans to
view objects symbolically, as metaphors for ourselves – for most of
us even the sight of a particular colour, say red, automatically
triggers all kinds of symbolic associations.
Fred again:
> It seems to me (and I suppose my own modernist bias or "taste"
shows through here) that
> linking images on their formal qualities is a more "artistic" way of
> proceeding than linking based on plot. A bunch of images that feel
> connected mostly because of plot -- how does that differ from, say,
the
> pictures in a novel with illustrations, or the "Classics
Illustrated"
> version of a great novel? The great narrative films I love, the
Fords
> and the Hawkses, contain far profounder, and far more cinematic,
formal
> organizing principles than just the plot.
But can the plot of, say, RIO BRAVO -- built largely around the
possibilities and restrictions of specific physical spaces – really
be separated from its formal qualities? I'm certainly not
championing films with good "novelistic" plots where the plot points
aren't compellingly dramatised using the resources of cinema. On the
other hand, as I've said before, the fact that a film IS compelling
serves for me as sufficient proof that it's "cinematic".
> For example, many filmmakers specifically
abjure the kind of expectation, the pattern of tension and release,
that a conventional narrative feeds off of. Brakhage, Breer and Gehr
come to mind here. Their films are structured around the instant, and
> each instant seems to "consume" the previous one."
This really intrigues me. I'd be way out of my depth trying to
discuss any of the filmmakers mentioned, but I guess the question I'd
ask is -– if each instant seems to exist for itself alone, how do you
attempt to grasp the film as a whole, and how do you know whether
that whole is "good"? Or rather, how would you persuade someone who
claimed to feel otherwise?
JTW
6259
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 5:09pm
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/avant-garde/theory
As I indicated earlier, I'm not comfortable with using "minimalism" to
simply denote films without much of a plot. At the same time I want to
argue against the undercurrent of bias I detect here in favor of a good
or interesting plot, or good or interesting characters, both of which
don't seem all that different from each other, as JTW points out. I say,
in an intended tone of gentle joking or tweaking rather than real
complaining, that I assumed this group's aesthetic was more advanced
than that of the Everly Brothers, who a half century ago equated
cinematic quality with plot in their amusing ditty "Wake Up Little
Suzie" ("The movie wasn't so hot / It didn't have much of a plot" --
see, for example, http://my.execpc.com/~suden/wakeup_susie.html)
Perhaps central to my own aesthetic was my experience reading John Cage
as a teenager. Somewhere he suggested that with the proper focus one
could have a great experience listening to the sounds around you. I
tried that many times and it worked, even though I didn't think daily
sounds were "aesthetically" organized in the same way that conventional
art was, but the fact that they weren't was part of what made the
experience so profound. At the same time, Brakhage's films constituted
eye training for me for a more creative seeing of my daily environment.
So I think of movies with plot, or characters, as a very narrow subset
of the possibilities of cinema.
I don't think we should get too hung up on terms, such as worrying about
what we mean by "plot," since such terms are themselves human inventions
anyway. I think a truly unbiased view of the possibilities of cinema
would not a priori favor a Gene Kelly-Judy Garland all singing all
dancing movie over a continuous static camera view of a sunset, or vice
versa, and I would suggest that reaching such a perspective should be a
goal of anyone who wants to be open to cinema in all its possibilities.
Whether we call the sun setting a plot or not is of no great concern to
me, though I could certainly argue that it represents a profounder and
more universal plot than whether the cast and crew can turn that
lay-an-egg musical into a hit.
Face it: the mechanism of narrative as realized in the commercial
narrative film has no particular artistry attached to it. I can get
hooked too, though full of discontents over bad imagery, by the
mechanisms of Hollywood manipulation, wondering with some anxiety
whether the bad guy is or is not going to get blown up by the end. The
avant-garde filmmaker argument against such a mechanism is that it's
stupidly manipulative and locks the viewer into particular emotions
rather than frees him to find his or her own. I don't accept that
argument completely because I think "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"
is liberating too, but the argument does have a point. It's an argument
that works pretty well for bad films, actually. A bad Brakhage imitation
is just a bore, but a bad narrative film is, I think, a negative, or can
be, in that it lowers the level of your eyesight and thinking rather
than raises it. Well, except that there are some really bad Brakhage
imitations that do that too.
Great avant-garde film can constitute a kind of eye training, as it
seems Paul Schrader has realized. I don't think great Hollywood films do
so in quite the same way, though there is certainly an element of eye
training in almost any great film. But there is a Cagean-liberating
aspect to avant-garde film. San Francisco may reverberate with echoes of
"Vertigo," but it *is* Vertigo that is echoing, as in wondering if that
blonde in the distance might not in fact be Madeline. Two other great
San Francisco films, Brakhage's "Song 7" and Ernie Gehr's
"Side/Walk/Shuttle," also deal with the city's verticality, but when I
see them they don't really tell me how to see San Francisco with the
same degree of specificity as does "Vertigo," they don't send me into
the city with emotionalized memories attached, they free me. I'm *not*
saying this makes them better films than Vertigo (searching for Madeline
can be pretty profound too), but it does make them different.
By the time I saw "The Critic" I already loved avant-garde film and
found this "short subject" amusing but also offensive. Try to imagine a
similar parody of auteurist tastes and you might see what I mean: a
voiceover to, say, "Rio Bravo," making John Wayne jokes and dumb
comments about the alleged cinematic profundity of gunfights. It could
be pretty funny, the more I think about it, especially if seeded with
the right pretentious quotes from critics (I can imagine it now, with
some of the quotes in the original French), but I think I would also
find it annoying. "The Critic" suggests that all abstract filmmaking is
absurd; at least, that's the way I read it. Another way of reading it,
perhaps a worse one, is that one must find a story in film abstraction
to make sense of it, story in the sense of "two things in love" or
whatever the line was. Blobs can also just be blobs, as the history of
abstract painting should have taught us by now. It would be profoundly
reductive of the great geometrical abstractions of Malevich and Mondrian
to try to anthropomorphize their shapes. And indeed, for those
interested in avant-garde film, looking at the great abstract painters
of the last century, Kandinsky and Malevich and Mondrian and Miro and
Pollock and Rothko and Newman and Still and Reinhardt might help --
certainly many of the filmmakers were looking at them.
I appreciated Bill's comments on "theory." If that's what we're doing,
then it's fine with me. But as I'm sure Bill knows no self-respecting
academic theory-head would consider what we write "theory." For one
thing, there are no footnotes to Lacan or Derrida (or whoever the latest
faves are). For another, most of what we write is actually comprehensible.
JTW wonders...
"...whether the modernist suspicion of narrative isn't equally a
suspicion of representation. The ethical basis for this, I guess, is
that treating non-human objects as representations means investing them
with emotions that really belong to us and not 'them.'"
Yes! Though it should be added that a lot of the suspicion is directed
at the conventional narrative in which manipulative techniques seek to
tell you what emotions to feel about the characters or story, rather
than allowing you to make those decisions for yourself. Which doesn't
mean that there isn't lots of use of representation in avant-garde film.
Ernie Gehr's films constitute a particularly eloquent counter-argument
to the way commercial narrative films work. Restricting himself to a
single setting and a small group of cinematic techniques, he creates
profound investigations of perception that throw the questions of
emotion and meaning back upon the viewer. The "ethic" here is against
the authoritarian relationship that conventional narrative seeks to
establish vis-à-vis the viewer. Of course it's more complicated than
that, but still, we are supposed to feel at least a bit sad at the end
of "Vertigo," right?
JTW asks if a plot can be separated from a film's formal qualities, and
then adds, "On the other hand, as I've said before, the fact that a film
IS compelling serves for me as sufficient proof that it's 'cinematic.'"
There was a PBS documentary a decade or so ago about a theory of autism,
that it was the result of inadequate motor control and that autistic
kids' brains functioned just like the rest of us. A theory of how to
communicate with these kids propounded by a professor in Albany who
trained "facilitators" without doing the most basic of scientific tests
to determine whether his method worked resulted in the arrests of
numerous parents on the terrible charge of sexually abusing or raping
their kids, until much later a simple test revealed that the kids were
not communicating at all, and that their accusations were the results of
the biases of the facilitators who were supposedly channeling their
thoughts. I thought it was great. It was certainly compelling. And it
was totally uncinematic. Nor do I fault it for that. Chris Marker might
have fucked up its important message by poeticizing it or
"problematizing" it.
As my writing on narrative film demonstrates, I'm almost always trying
to connect plot to style. If anything I think I do so too much. But in a
great narrative film style usually is in fact connected to some aspect
of the film's plot or theme. I think what I'm claiming is that in most
great Hollywood films, for me, there is a level of abstract beauty there
too that would survive a severing of that connection. "Rio Bravo" would
be great as a silent film, in the same way that I've loved some operas
that I knew nothing while completely ignoring the words in those days
before supertitles. That doesn't mean that the music isn't connected to
the story, but it means that there is more to the music than just a
translation of or illustration of the story. A great narrative film is
not a children's picture book.
JTW asks,
"...if each instant seems to exist for itself alone, how do you attempt
to grasp the film as a whole, and how do you know whether that whole is
'good'? Or rather, how would you persuade someone who claimed to feel
otherwise?"
I'm not sure that the most radical version of this exists in cinema,
except perhaps in a totally random (and possibly not very interesting)
film. Curiously, most bad films are much worse than random: the problem
is the filmmaker's intentionality is all over the place, infecting
images that would be better if they were random.
What happens in Brakhage, for me, is that the films ultimately do hang
together, but they are stretching the limits of conventional coherence.
So there's no obvious structure, the instants are pulling apart from
each other, but the whole in the end is unified, largely through
subtleties of film space and rhythm. Persuading someone else of that can
only be done through gentle suggestion and multiple viewings. but I
would claim that it is if anything harder for me to persuade anyone of
the particular kind of greatness I see in "Rio Bravo," which goes way
beyond the sensitive and gentle characterizations, the relaxed rhythms,
the amusing jokes.
- Fred
6260
From: samfilms2003
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 5:17pm
Subject: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
"hotlove666" wrote:
>By my
> definition, I would argue that lots of the members of a_film_by are
> doing theory all the time right now without realizing it.
I would say this is probably true, I think my point, in a sense.
-Sam
6261
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 6:03pm
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/avant-garde/theory
--- Fred Camper wrote:
>
> Face it: the mechanism of narrative as realized in
> the commercial
> narrative film has no particular artistry attached
> to it.
WHAT?!?!!!!????!!!! "No particular artistry" to (some
random choices) "Lawrence of Arabia"? "Force of Evil"?
"The Red Shoes"? "The Palm Beach Story"? "Love Me
Tonight"? "The Servangt"?
I can get
> hooked too, though full of discontents over bad
> imagery, by the
> mechanisms of Hollywood manipulation, wondering with
> some anxiety
> whether the bad guy is or is not going to get blown
> up by the end. The
> avant-garde filmmaker argument against such a
> mechanism is that it's
> stupidly manipulative and locks the viewer into
> particular emotions
> rather than frees him to find his or her own.
I'm sorry Fred, but that's extremely presumptuous.
Avant-garde film is founded on the highly manipulative
declaration that certain filmmakers are artists and
must be approached with awe and respect right off the
bat. And as I'm sure you know I don;t go aong with
this at all. Much of this has resulted in the complete
elimination of the critic from discourse about the
avant-garde. P. Adams Sitney is an enthusiast and a
historian, but he is NOT a critic.
I
> don't accept that
> argument completely because I think "The Man Who
> Shot Liberty Valance"
> is liberating too, but the argument does have a
> point. It's an argument
> that works pretty well for bad films, actually. A
> bad Brakhage imitation
> is just a bore, but a bad narrative film is, I
> think, a negative, or can
> be, in that it lowers the level of your eyesight and
> thinking rather
> than raises it. Well, except that there are some
> really bad Brakhage
> imitations that do that too.
And what about bad Brakhage?
Is that concievable?
As I'm sure you know I'm a great admirer of jean-Luc
Godard, but "In Praise of Love" is a REALLY bad film.
Simplistically concieved, poorly performed,
uninteresting to look at -- the lot.
"L'Amour par Terre" is below-par Rivette.
And there's really nothing to say about "Topaz" or
"Torn Curtain."
>
> Great avant-garde film can constitute a kind of eye
> training, as it
> seems Paul Schrader has realized.
Frankly I think Schrader's interest in Anger is
entirely literary.
>
> By the time I saw "The Critic" I already loved
> avant-garde film and
> found this "short subject" amusing but also
> offensive. Try to imagine a
> similar parody of auteurist tastes and you might see
> what I mean: a
> voiceover to, say, "Rio Bravo," making John Wayne
> jokes and dumb
> comments about the alleged cinematic profundity of
> gunfights. It could
> be pretty funny, the more I think about it,
> especially if seeded with
> the right pretentious quotes from critics (I can
> imagine it now, with
> some of the quotes in the original French), but I
> think I would also
> find it annoying.
Are you familiar wiht "Mystery Science Theater"?
"The Critic" suggests that all
> abstract filmmaking is
> absurd; at least, that's the way I read it.
And I read it as a spoof of middle-aged, middle-class
Jewish male impatience with anything smacking of the
intellectual.
> a lot of the
> suspicion is directed
> at the conventional narrative in which manipulative
> techniques seek to
> tell you what emotions to feel about the characters
> or story, rather
> than allowing you to make those decisions for
> yourself. Which doesn't
> mean that there isn't lots of use of representation
> in avant-garde film.
Or a lot of manipulation either.
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6262
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 6:47pm
Subject: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
And I'm currently writing about a narrative filmmaker, Bunuel, whose
> first two films were avant-garde works, the principles of which
> continued to inform his work as a commercial filmmaker - Breton,
for
> one, saw no break from surrealism in Los Olvidados. Maybe writing
> about LB will enable me to at least raise a couple questions about
> this kind of synergy between schools of cinema - something I also
> hope members of this group will continue to do, either by making
> connections or by instructing the narrative majority in the
> appreciation of specific avant-garde works. Avant-garde fans (of
> which Mike is one, I believe), don't be shy!
"L'Age d'or" is avant-garde alright (and as innovative and daring
now as it was 70 years ago) but it is a strongly narrative film,
unlike most of the avant-garde films of the time. perhaps it accounts
for the furor it created at the time. It would be interesting to
study the avan-garde-narrative relationship in that film.
JPC
6263
From: samfilms2003
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 6:51pm
Subject: Re: Narrative/avant-garde/theory
> David Ehrenstein wrote:
> WHAT?!?!!!!????!!!! "
> Avant-garde film is founded on the highly manipulative
> declaration that certain filmmakers are artists and
> must be approached with awe and respect right off the
> bat.
My turn, WHAAATT !!???***???
Isn't this more-or-less the premise of Auteurism as articulated
here also ????
>. P. Adams Sitney is an enthusiast and a
> historian, but he is NOT a critic.
Well if he is bringing critical faculties to his writing,
he's doing criticism (and on a deep level IMO)..
Although for all I know he might agree with you
-sam
6264
From: Sam Wells
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 8:11pm
Subject: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
> >Bill, since Anger's "Rabbit Moon" impressed you so much recently,
perhaps you could offer a few extended comments on it as a way to
kick-start some discussions of avant-garde cinema here. Me, I've just
re-seen "Cat's Cradle" on the Brakhage DVD and it's become one of my
very favorites of his. >Peter <<
I'm not Bill. But.....
This is, and the questions/challenges others raised are a huge subject,
it would take more time than I have to share even a fraction of my
thoughts on it.
A suggestion, however. "Cat's Cradle" is an interesting, and very
revealing film, "accessibile" to anyone approaching it openly. It is I
think you could say montage-constructed, and the system of its montage
really just personalises the thematics of so-called classical montage
It is, however, what I would call metronymic (if that's a real word :)
in structure: it's rhythms are at the base level of the materials, the
24
intermittent images per second, the obvious splice points as seen at
the editing table..... and so I think, given the thrust of history in
narrative/ dramatic film, from montage to a differently-realized
mise-en-scene, a film like "Cat's Cradle" may seem engaging yet
"primitive" ---
*However* -- now leap ahead a couple of years and look at "Dog Star
Man Part I and if you see it like I do (maybe not !) I think you may
see the start of something that is transcending the base mechanics of
what is called by academics the apparatus, and, while still very much
what I'd call montage, it is a montage that engages the subject through
the physiology of its maker, *and* in the - conflicts/resolutions of
the filmmaker's efforts to reconcile his physiology with the machines
and their dictates.
(Indeed, the issue of apparatus itself was later to become one of the
most contested areas of Experimental film debate, the "Structual Film
wars !)
To make a point of comparison then, with the tradition of "narrative
film" let's go back to Eisenstein (or Griffith) and ask if there was
not a similar evolution of process; (indeed the very limitation of
available negative roll lengths apparently informed Eisenstein's sense
of montage), and we could say that although the self imposed mandates
of Griffith or Eisenstein were different in the social sense from what
Brakhage would attempt later, the source in the most material sense,
and the evolution of *the work* from there move in similar process even
if the ends are different - respectively dramatic narrative,
politicized epic, poetic/personal cinema.
So I think it is fair to say that for Brakhage and his contemporaries
(roughly) out of artistic necessity they naturally looked to the
physical materials and hand, and since for the most part these
materials did not include studios, stars, extras, dollies & cranes....
they made a cinema based on the tools that could be wielded as it were
by a single person, and began to explore those available fields.
If you now make more time-leaps on the Brakhage DVD, I think you will
begin to see the continuing evolution of a language from these
premises; and that although we will see a vast surface difference
between where he "goes" and where conventional narrative goes, in fact
I would argue that he, and others in the AG/Exp tradition were/are to
some extent making an end run around the
"evolving-along-different-lines" dramatic film tradition. A film like
"I Dreaming", "Crack Glass Eulogy" and/or some of the handpainted
films, like "Untitled Film For Marily" let's say, can do something very
few cast crewed etc dramatic films can easily do * - they can get
"inside" the optical world they depict, they can blur the distinction
between the thinking and the thought so to speak. And, because the
instrument is typically small & precise (e,g. 16mm camera, paints, etc
v. Panaflex, Technocrane, a few trucks and a corporate entity approving
every other move), I would suggest that in fact - these films can
engage the basic givens of cinema as art every bit as well as films on
the large-scale dramatic tradition,
and perhaps more so in that the path to interiority is more direct, yet
the experience can be every bit as collective (the problem of
collecting an audience for sceenings notwithstanding).
*I'm very drawn I think, to narrative/dramatic work that does this
well, hence my interest in Tsai, etc. Sorry for the manirantifesto, I
got carried away.
-sam wells
6265
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 7:40pm
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
I have never quite understood what "narrative" is and have long
suspected it as being almost as much a pseudo concept as "genre."
"Character" has always seemed to me more relevant and concrete; in
movies it's akin to a character in a painting: there is a form and there
is a lot of feeling there. I once defined character as a locus of
feelings. Anyhow, at least it is something which actually exists as a
picture on a frame, whereas story is elusive. To me a character
personifies a world, especially when he comes along with clothing,
manners, rooms and streets and all the rest of it.
I like very much what Jean Mitry wrote about narrative:
Le roman est un récit qui s'organise en monde,
le film un monde qui s'organise en récit.
Which can be translated lots of ways: The novel is a narrative
organized into a world; the film is a world organized into a narrative.
In otherwords, literature is basically action; its worlds are defined
by happenings. But with a movie, like a picture, the world is there to
begin with; we clip together various slices of the world to form a story.
Now, if anyone objects to this, I cite Henry James, speaking of course
of novels, not of movies: "Character, in any sense in which we can get
at it, is action, and action is plot."
Ergo. Characters are plots in novels; but in movies they are worlds.
Now, Fred, I feel that your epic of the sun rising is a character first
of all, and the plot is merely an extension of character. And I agree
with you: I've never seen a movie that didn't seem to me to be a
narrative. I've never understood the distinction between narrative and
non-narrative. I'm not saying one couldn't devise a distinction.
6266
From:
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 2:57pm
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
Sam Wells wrote:
>"Cat's Cradle" is an interesting, and very
>revealing film, "accessibile" to anyone approaching it openly. It is I
>think you could say montage-constructed, and the system of its montage
>really just personalises the thematics of so-called classical montage
I think that's right on the money. In fact, I believe Fred invoked the
montage of "Cat's Cradle" in a discussion of the final, extraordinary,
Soviet-influenced ditch-digging sequence in King Vidor's great narrative film "Our Daily
Bread."
You make some very perceptive points about the evolution to be witnessed if
one goes through the Brakhage DVD in sequence. I also think it's useful to do
so for "newcomers" to Brakhage because each film sort of "prepares" you for
the next; Fred may have even said this somewhere in the liner notes, I can't
recall. Anyway, after seeing "Cat's Cradle" again, I think I'm finally ready to
dig in and try "Dog Star Man" again; I've seen it on the DVD, and think it's
great, but I haven't quite had a "breakthrough" viewing of it yet. This is
quite common for me; I can imagine seeing "Our Daily Bread" four or five years
ago and not really getting how great it is.
I feel like avant-garde films helps me appreciate narrative films in much the
same way that silent films help me appreciate sound films; I have the sense
the both a-g and silent movies are dealing with the visual aspects of cinema in
very pure, direct, unencumbered terms. So they train you what to look for
when you are watching a film "burdened" (though I really don't mean "burdened"!)
with sound and narrative. I'm being terribly inelegant here, but hopefully
you have some idea of what I mean.
Peter
6267
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 8:01pm
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/avant-garde/theory
To David, the "no particular artistry" is apparently being
misunderstood. There can be great artistry to the plot construction of
individual films. What I mean is that I don't think that constructing an
entertaining or engaging plot itself involves any great degree of
artistry, though it may in particular films. For me the artistry comes
when there's an aesthetic effect, and one connected to some kind of
meaning. Oh, and by the way, I loathe "The Red Shoes."
I think I have posted here to the effect that I think there are some
very bad Brakhage films, even from his mature period. "Confession" is
pretty embarrassing, to name only one. Of the ones on the DVD, I have
never liked "The Stars are Beautiful." There are others. I have written
negatively on a number of avant-garde filmmakers too, most notoriously
in 1987 article in Millennium Film Journal called "The End of
Avant-Garde Film." And I don't think anyone should automatically respect
a filmmaker. But, following Sam, when a filmmaker has made what I
already see as a number of great films, I do respect him or her for
that, and I will pay more careful attention than I would otherwise to a
film by that filmmaker that doesn't seem successful to me at first.
That's my "auteurist" response to this issue.
I've heard of "Mystery Science Theater" but not seen it. I just about
never watch TV, and I missed the movie. I love "L'Amour Par Terre" but
certainly "Merry-Go-Round" is not such a great Rivette. There is a
different kind of manipulation in a-g film, but sure, it's there. And
your reading of "The Critic" is interesting, and it sounds at least
partly true, but I can't believe that most people didn't see it first as
a parody of abstract filmmaking. There's an old argument (I think Joe
McBride was a co-author?) to the effect that Stepin Fetchit was
parodying white stereotypes of blacks. That may have been his intention,
but I doubt that most white audience in Mississippi -- or New York --
saw him that way.
- Fred
6268
From: Frederick M. Veith
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 8:41pm
Subject: Charlie's Angels, Kill Bill, Feminism
On Tue, 6 Jan 2004 ptonguette@a... wrote [re: Charlie's Angels]:
> I'd defend the films aesthetically; they are, as Filipe has noted, positively
> wild in their sense of space. And I'd defend them as really cool feminist
> tracts too.
On Wed, 31 Dec 2003 ptonguette@a... wrote [re: Kill Bill]:
> It seems that the popular consensus on this film is that it's an
> "exercise in style," but a potentially more fruitful avenue may be found
> in exploring its decidedly feminist bent.
Peter,
I'd be interested in seeing you (or anyone else who agrees with you)
elaborate on these claims. At the moment what it looks like to me is an
instance of an idea which has been advanced by numbers of other writers
throughout the popular media, which takes something like the form of 'hot
girls kicking ass=feminism'. This equation is often accompanied by an
adjacent claim that 'obectification is okay so long as it's
self-objectification (in which case it's empowerment)'. This latter idea
has had currency at least since the second phase of Madonna's career.
As with other such contested ideas, there are functionally as many
definitions of feminism as there are people who care to lay claim to the
term. This version (which coincides all too nicely with dominant ideas
about the commodity character of the female body and so poses no threat
to, er, capitalism, if I can be so vulgar) has achieved a certain degree
of respectability.
But it seems to me to be entirely inadequate. Effaced by these claims,
among other things, is the all too clear suggestion that such
'empowerment', even in its fantastical 'we can do this in high-heels and
not break a sweat' version, is the exclusive province of the
rich/thin/beautiful/young/compliant/&c. All of this seems profoundly
unfeminist, if not exactly anti-feminist. At best these films seem to be
'incoherent texts'.
I've sketched my concern rather hastily here. Perhaps you have something
else in mind? [Obviously, rather than anything specific that *you* wrote,
part of what I'm responding to here is (what seem to be) similar claims in
the media. One specific item I have in mind is an article which ran in the
New York Times lauding Jennifer Garner as a feminist icon, an idea which
seems only slightly less ridiculous than the nomination of Lara Croft for
same.]
This aside, I enjoyed at least the first Charlie's Angels movie (though,
as a side note, I'm somewhat more inclined to view Drew Barrymore as the
auteur than McG); I'm just not sure it's possible to consider it feminist
without rendering the term insensible. (However marginal the grounds for
doing so with Charlie's Angels, Kill Bill seems even more problematic.)
I'm not questioning your enjoyment of these films or condemning them per
se; they're under no obligation to be pro-feminist. I just think the
notion of liberation they espouse is exactly identical to the 'freedom' on
offer from Madison Avenue.
Fred.
6269
From:
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 8:43pm
Subject: Re: Narrative/avant-garde/theory
Bill Krohn had a good point earlier. He said that in mystery fiction, plot in and of itself was considered an art form.
It is perhaps easier to learn about plot in a "pure" or narrowly focussed art form like the mystery, rather than starting with a gloriously "mixed" art form like film, which can encompass story, photography, acting, music, dance and just about anything else.
Here is Ellery Queen, perhaps the greatest mystery story writer who ever lived - so considered because he is perhaps the best plotter in mystery history. And long time editor of the major mystery short story magazine, "Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine". EQ summed him his editorial principles in 1967:
"Every story [we publish] must meet the twin standards of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine" so conscientiously upheld these past 26 years - high quality or high professionalism of writing; and superior craftsmanship or superior originality of plotting."
- EQ, introduction to "Ellery Queen's 1967 Anthology".
There are thousands of mystery stories published whose whole point is the originality, imagination and ingenuity their authors lavished on their plots. People read and admire these tales for their plot. We are talking about a vast cultural tradition stretching back to the 1830's.
Plot in mystery fiction is considered a form of "abstract art". It is not intended to stir up reader's emotions. It is supposed to be contemplated, and admired for its beauty of pure form, the way one admires a painting by Mondrian or Kandinsky for its beauty.
This discussion is not so far off cinema as one might think. Vast numbers of the most plot oriented filmmakers work in mystery modes: Feuillade, Lang, Hitchcock, Preminger, Tourneur, Oswald, Mann, and so many others.
Please try to read some well plotted mystery short stories to learn more.
See Conan Doyle - "Silver Blaze" in the "Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes"
or Jacques Futrelle - "The Problem of Cell 13" in "The Best Thinking Machine Detective Stories". These tales are also in many anthologies.
Mike Grost
6270
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 8:53pm
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/avant-garde/theory
--- Fred Camper wrote:
There's an old
> argument (I think Joe
> McBride was a co-author?) to the effect that Stepin
> Fetchit was
> parodying white stereotypes of blacks. That may have
> been his intention,
> but I doubt that most white audience in Mississippi
> -- or New York --
> saw him that way.
>
Actually it was Taylor mead who declared that Steppin
Fetchit was a Black Revolutionary.
It was in a review of "Harlow" that he wrote for "Film
Culture."
And I can't imagine why you loather "The Red Shoes."
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6271
From:
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 9:58pm
Subject: Education and Popular Culture
Throughout the 20th Century, most literary academics denounced all forms of popular culture. They hated film, mystery, and comics. They regarded plot as worthless.
Academics were fond of quoting a 1933 esay by F. R. Leavis. In it, Leavis said that all movies were "obviously worthless". When I was in college in the 1960's, the department head of the American studies group told us all that this essay was a definitive statement about modern culture (it deals with literature far more intensively).
Academics also liked to quote E. M. Forster's "Aspects of the Novel". This book contains a famous dismissal of plot as of no value in fiction. Once again, Forster's treatment was considered definitive by most academics.
Forster and Leavis were cultural authorites at famous British Universities.
In his pioneering history of Popular Culture, "The Unembarrass'd Muse", Russell B. Nye begins with a definition of Popular Culture. He defines it as "cultural activities not under the control of educated elites" (I do not have his exact words in front of me).
Most Film and Mystery and Comics existed because academics could not destroy them. They were commercial enterprises, largely paid for by uneducated members of the public. Academics could not control them or influence them or destroy them. Academics really wanted to destroy all three, and they would have - they had a deep hatred of "mass culture", as they put it.
Film only exists today because uneducated people loved it and paid for it. The same with mysteries and comics. The same with plot - it is something that was only admired by determinedly non-academic people, such as Ellery Queen, or mystery writer John Dickson Carr, or Alfred Hitchcock.
Mike Grost
6272
From:
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 5:00pm
Subject: Re: Charlie's Angels, Kill Bill, Feminism
Frederick M. Veith wrote:
>Effaced by these claims,
>among other things, is the all too clear suggestion that such
>'empowerment', even in its fantastical 'we can do this in high-heels and
>not break a sweat' version, is the exclusive province of the
>rich/thin/beautiful/young/compliant/&c. All of this seems profoundly
>unfeminist, if not exactly anti-feminist. At best these films seem to be
>'incoherent texts'.
Well, I don't know that I'd disagree that they're incoherent texts. And it
could very well be that "feminist" isn't the appropriate word for what the
films do. Maybe I should just describe my take on them without trying to
categorize.
In my review of the film, I wrote that McG "conforms cinematic space to the
Angels, allowing improbable--even ridiculous--feats of physical dexterity
(shoot-outs on motorbikes, Dylan clinging to the wing of a diving plane, etc.) to
occur simply because it's the Angels performing these acts." I felt that the
Angels were essentially in control of this universe; even the "Charlie" of the
title is pretty marginalized. "Feminist"? I don't know, but it's an attitude
I appreciated in this age of macho action movies.
"Kill Bill" is perhaps even more incoherent than "Charlie's Angels."
Tarantino was not of much interest to me before "Jackie Brown." With that film, he
not only marshaled in his worst traits, but grew enormously as a filmmaker.
Part of that growth was the astonishing way he portrayed Pam Grier's character
in the film; as Kent Jones commented at the time, he seemed positively in awe
at her strength, beauty, and intelligence. He able to convey this through his
mise-en-scene with those numerous tracking shots of Grier simply >walking<,
his camera following her empowering stride. I think he's been influenced by
Bogdanovich. This attitude is carried over into "Kill Bill," but it's a more
confused film that "Jackie" because it's hard to tell how serious he is about
what he's doing; in "Jackie," there was no doubt.
I hope this explains some of my comments on these films. Maybe Filipe or
Bill - who I know both liked the "Charlie's Angels" films - could jump in.
>This aside, I enjoyed at least the first Charlie's Angels movie (though,
>as a side note, I'm somewhat more inclined to view Drew Barrymore as the
>auteur than McG)
That's an idea I've considered and, believe me, I'm not one who usually calls
anyone but the filmmaker the auteur. I'd say that Barrymore probably has a
lot to do with the spirit of the films, but the style is 100% McG's.
Peter
6273
From: samfilms2003
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 10:16pm
Subject: Re: Education and Popular Culture
Gee if you're gonna make the case for pulp fiction can't
you bring David Goodis, W.R. Burnett, Cornell Woolrich
in here ? Their spirits emailed me from the Eternal Dark
City Hotel (which apparently has internet access now - strictly
dial-up of course ) and asked "What about us ??"
-sam
6274
From:
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 10:21pm
Subject: Re: Charlie's Angels, Kill Bill, Feminism
Daredevil has a beautiful spunky heroine who is also a karate whiz, in the Charlie's Angels mode. But it also has plot elements that go far beyond this, to cope (admittedly in a pulpy, lowbrow and too violent way) with some serious issues much addressed by feminists.
Both seemed "feminist" to me while watching the film.
Mike Grost
6275
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 10:25pm
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/avant-garde/theory
David Ehrenstein wrote:
>---
>
> it was Taylor mead who declared that Steppin
>Fetchit was a Black Revolutionary.
>
>
Well, there was definitely also an academic article, almost certainly in
"Film Quarterly," likely authored or co-authored by McBride. I wouldn't
be surprised if Taylor was first, though.
- Fred
6276
From: programming
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 10:26pm
Subject: Best Films SEEN in 2003
Hi All,
Spurred by the others lists, I compiled my own "Best" list. It needs a
little explanation, though. Unlike Bill, I see very few new releases of
Hollywood and American Independent films. I also tend to miss most of the
new foreign titles (even those I very much want to see). I DO see a lot of
experimental film - many at screenings in Chicago (or occasional trips to
experimental festivals like Media City in Windsor, Ontario or the Views from
the Avant-Garde in NY) but mostly preview tapes at home. In 2003 I saw more
than 1100 different exp. films. So there is a lot of experimental work on
my list.
With one short film exception, all of the titles on my list were shown
publicly in Chicago in 2003. And most of them were first time viewings for
me (I cheated on a couple that I'd previewed or seen elsewhere previously).
As you will note, they were not all made or first released in 2003 (lots of
old stuff).
Given the recent discussions about experimental film, take all the makers on
my list as strong recommendations should you have a chance to see their
work. Was very glad to see that some of them were on other people's lists.
Best,
Patrick Friel
****************************
Best Films SEEN in 2003
01.
Stan Brakhage Films:
I had the chance to see 45 different Brakhage films (on 16mm) in 2003, 33 of
them first time screenings (most in Chicago, but some in Milwaukee and New
York). Here is a list of my ten best of them (all shown in Chicago):
The Process (1972)
Aquarien (1974)
Sol (1974)
Chartres Series (1994)
Last Hymn to the Night - Novalis (1994)
I... (1995)
Divertimento (1997)
Stately Mansions Did Decree (1999)
Panels for the Walls of Heaven (2002)
Chinese Series (2003)
[experimental 16mm shorts]
02.
Anatahan (Josef von Sternberg, 1953)
03. (tie)
Gregory Markopoulos Films:
Sorrows (1969)
Ming Green (1966) [in Milwaukee]
Twice a Man (1963)
Psyche (1947)
[experimental 16mm shorts (first two) and short features (last two)]
Ernie Gehr Films:
Morning (1968)
Field [short version] (1970)
Table (1976)
Untitled: Part One (1981/86)
[experimental 16mm shorts]
The rest in no particular order:
Platform (Jia Zhangke, 2000)
An Injury to One (Travis Wilkerson, 2002)
Luis Recoder Works:
Liminal Lumen (a series of films, multiple projector films, and projector
performance pieces; this screening comprised of Available Light: Light
Green, Available Light: Blue-Violet, Available Light: Shift, Available
Light: Backlight, Linea, and Glass: Liquid Light)
Interlace (2002) [experimental digital video short]
Splinters (2003) [experimental digital video short]
Hy Hirsh Films:
Eneri (1953)
Autumn Spectrum (1957)
Scratch Pad (1961)
Defense d'Afficher (1958)
La Couleur de la Forme (1961)
[experimental 16mm shorts]
Observations at Gettysburg, 6 July 2002 (Brian Frye, 2003) [experimental
16mm short]
Paradise Crushed (Leslie Thornton, 2002) [experimental digital video short]
What Goes Up (Robert Breer, 2002) [experimental 16mm short]
WVLNT (Wavelength for Those Who Don't Have the Time) (Michael Snow, 2003)
[experimental digital video short]
Julie Murray Films:
Untitled (Blood) (2002)
FL. Oz (2003)
I Began to Wish (2003)
[experimental 16mm shorts]
Worst Case Scenario (John Smith, 2003) [experimental digital video short]
Thunderbolt (Josef von Sternberg, 1929) and Blonde Venus (Josef von
Sternberg, 1932)
Benilde, or the Virgin Mother (Manoel de Oliveira, 1975) and Oporto of My
Childhood (Manoel de Oliveira, 2001)
Stefan and Franciszka Themerson Films:
The Adventures of a Good Citizen (1937) and Calling Mr. Smith (1943)
[experimental 35mm shorts]
Bright Future (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2003)
6277
From: J. Mabe
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 10:31pm
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/avant-garde/theory
--- Fred Camper wrote:
> Well, there was definitely also an academic article,
> almost certainly in
> "Film Quarterly," likely authored or co-authored by
> McBride. I wouldn't
> be surprised if Taylor was first, though.
just read this one... "Stepin Fetchit Talks Back" by
Joseph McBride. I just came across a Film Quarterly
Anthology two days ago at a used book store.
Josh Mabe
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6278
From: Michael Worrall
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 10:39pm
Subject: Re: Charlie's Angels, Kill Bill, Feminism
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> In my review of the film, I wrote that McG "conforms cinematic
space to the
> Angels, allowing improbable--even ridiculous--feats of physical
dexterity
> (shoot-outs on motorbikes, Dylan clinging to the wing of a diving
plane, etc.) to
> occur simply because it's the Angels performing these acts."
How much does this have to do more with Hong Kong action cinema and
Hollywood's attempt to co-opt it for the past 5 or more years? What
action performer doesn't have cinematic space assigned to him/her
during an action sequence? Or a comedian for that matter? What is so
special about what McG is doing? Have you seen "The Heroic Trio"? Or
any King Hu or Tsui Hark? And I have to say, the HK stars don't rely
on CGI for their sequences.
Goodbye Anita, I'll miss you.
6279
From: Maxime
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 10:46pm
Subject: The actor & the aquarium (Bergala/Mourlet)
In 2001, Alain Bergala made a conference called "Sur un art ignore,
côté face" (published in "Le Septième Art", 2003), which precisely
addresses the issue of the character/actor (the identity between
both terms not going without saying) in the centre of the film
process. As a starting point, Bergala comments on the article by
Mourlet "Sur un art ignore" (Cahiers, 59), particularly on its most
famous sentence: "Since cinema is a gaze which is substituted for
our own in order to give us a world more in harmony with our
desires, it falls on faces, on radiant or bruised but always
beautiful bodies, with this glory or this heartbreak which show the
same primordial nobility, an elected race that, exhilarated, we
recognize as our own, the ultimate progress in life towards the god."
Bergala assumes that Godard deliberately falsely attributes to Bazin
this sentence in "Contempt", maybe a bit embarrassed by the
reference to an "elected race". Anyway, embarrassment or not,
Godard, filming those Greek deities whose arms and gazes slice
through the air organizing/creating the world, makes an explicit
reference to the cinema according to Mourlet, where the actor shall
be a god, whose actions and reactions within the set are the key of
the mise-en-scène.
A few years ago, I guess I was mainly intrigued by mise-en-scene as
a sort of struggle against the elements, where the art of the
director lies in his capacity to master, to control every inch of
the material given to him and to create his own world, "each stone
at the right place". Where actors were objects among other objects.
I can't analyse my change in view, but, now, I know I like to feel
their breath. (It may be that the company of Vecchiali's work helped
me so).
Back to Bergala. He tries to introduce another "figurative matrix"
(?), which he presents as in opposition to the theory by Mourlet:
the "aquarium-shot", where the actors' bodies are plunged into a
glass parallelepiped. The main properties of this aquarium are the
negation of gravity, the refusal of perspective and the
undifferentiation of bodies, with a view to represent the humanity
as a community.
All those properties assumed to be in opposition to the mourletian
hero, god himself, free to exert his sovereignty over an open space.
And the glass wall may introduce a distance between the actor and
the spectator that violates the theory of fascination by Mourlet.
I shall admit I'm not sure to follow Bergala in his theory...
Anyway, aquarium or not, as Bergala admits himself, what is
primordial in cinema is its capacity to reproduce human gestures and
movements, through the actors. And that's where I stand. It's
difficult for me to consider a film where the heart do not lie
within the bodies of the actors. The miracle being that, within the
space/the instant of one shot, in the smile on a woman face, may
arise all the heartbreaks and all the bliss of the world. I need to
feel the celluloid trembling under her breath.
Maxime
6280
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 10:51pm
Subject: Re: Narrative/avant-garde/theory
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Face it: the mechanism of narrative as realized in the commercial
> narrative film has no particular artistry attached to it. I can get
> hooked too, though full of discontents over bad imagery, by the
> mechanisms of Hollywood manipulation, wondering with some anxiety
> whether the bad guy is or is not going to get blown up by the end. The
> avant-garde filmmaker argument against such a mechanism is that it's
> stupidly manipulative and locks the viewer into particular emotions
> rather than frees him to find his or her own. I don't accept that
> argument completely because I think "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"
> is liberating too, but the argument does have a point. It's an argument
> that works pretty well for bad films, actually.
One point I'd ask to have clarified, even though it's tangential to our concerns. You seem to reduce all Hollywood narrative to this lowest, most manipulative level -- "whether the bad guy is or is not going to get blown up," etc. In fact, are you saying that all (Hollywood?) narrative is inherently manipulative? Or can there be a "conventional" narrative that works at a higher, non-manipulative level? That is, can there be a narrative film which, while it may be a bad film -- badly, or simply routinely, directed -- still contains an honorable narrative? And if not, why not?
(And that's about as "theoretical" as I get...)
6281
From: Michael Worrall
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 10:56pm
Subject: Temptress Moon
While on the subject of Asian cinema, I was wondering if anyone could
tell me of the changes made to Chen Kaige's "Temptress Moon" after
its premiere at Cannes? I know Miramax made some "special touches"
for the film's release in America, but I recently watched an import
version from China that was almost identical to the US version, minus
the scroll explaining the historical background for US audiences.
Jonathon Rosenbaum writes in his capsule of the film that after the
showing at Cannes the film was trimmed by 10 minutes then subject to
Harvey's magic touch. I also read an interview with Kaige where he
comments that Miramax cut a scene with Gong Li's character walking
through the estate with a map, which strikes me as a key sequence in
the way the steadicam is used to explore and map out space and the
film's cyclical construction
6282
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 10:57pm
Subject: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Tag Gallagher wrote:
.
>
> Now, Fred, I feel that your epic of the sun rising is a character
first
> of all, and the plot is merely an extension of character. And I
agree
> with you: I've never seen a movie that didn't seem to me to be a
> narrative. I've never understood the distinction between narrative
and
> non-narrative. I'm not saying one couldn't devise a distinction.
The difficulty of making that distinction may lie in the fact
that cinema is perhaps by nature narrative. Not only because film is
movement (motion picture)therefore action therefore narrative, but,
perhaps more importantly, because it takes place in time (like
theatre, although it's not -- usually -- the same kind of time; is it
possible to think of a "non-narrative" play?, of "non-narrative"
theater? Even Beckett at his most minimal is still narrative).
Because the film "unreels" in time it necessarily tells some kind
of "story". This is the case from the very beginning of film. The
train comes into the station at La Ciotat, people get off, get in,
they live, they have a past and future, they have a story. We wait
for "what happens next" (even if we know that the film has made its
statement and will end in a few seconds). The workers come out of the
Usines Lumiere, and we wonder about each girl's life...
The fascinating paradox of early Warhol is that the rejection of
any kind of narrative cannot cancel the fact that the film unreels in
time and as such still tells a story of sorts. By the end of the film
time has passed, and that in itself is narrative.
When we watch even the most abstract avant-garde film, our mind
can't help making up a story, anthropomorphising the non-
representational objects on the screen. Norman McLaren was very good
at using (with great humor) this tendency of the human
mind. "Blinkity Blank", his masterpiece, is both abstract and
concrete and very narrative. The vertical lines in the slow movement
of "Begone Dull Care" tell a story. There's always a story to be
told, or at the very least to be imagined.
JPC
6283
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 11:11pm
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/avant-garde/theory
jess_l_amortell wrote:
>--
>
>That is, can there be a narrative film which, while it may be a bad film -- badly, or simply routinely, directed -- still contains an honorable narrative?
>
Yes. Other will think it's better directed than I do, but I would cite
"The Wind and the Lion" as one example. Other such films (and again,
others find them greater than I do) would be a number of Billy Wilder
films. Another: Huston's "The Man Who Would Be King." Another:
Frankenheimer's "Seconds." Examples that really moved me: Donen's "Two
For the Road" and Losey's "The Go-Between," both of which do interesting
things with storytelling. An even greater example, "Once Upon a Time in
America," which moved me so much that I went to it a second time in the
same week it opened. These are all films I've "liked" in some way even
though their directors are not on my lists. They're using the
manipulative mechanisms in some ways but to reasonably interesting and
intelligent ends.
This is a complicated issue full of grays. I'm being somewhat polemical
in advocating for the "avant-garde" view that Hollywood narrative is
questionable because it's manipulative partly because of the nature of
this list, and the blurring that occurs in some posters' statements
between childhood movie loves and current tastes, or between aesthetics
and entertainment. I don't really believe in the anti-Hollywood position
when applied to great films; I just think it's a position worth
considering, at least as much worth considering than the "even if the
direction is bad a Hollywood film can be good if it's entertaining and
the performances are moving" position. I do think simply identifying
with the actors and "feeling" along with them is not necessarily a good
thing. But a great film can also be made out of that
lowest-common-denominator narrative, and if it is a great film, the
narrative will be affected and infected by the style, and it's impact
and meaning will then be changed. And when I typed that thing about the
bad guys getting blown up I was thinking of "Rio Bravo."
I'm also arguing this way because of the dominant taste in this group.
If I were on a list in which the main position was that all Hollywood
films are evil and manipulative and that only Brakhage and Gehr can set
you free, I would be pointing out the ways in which Brakhage films are
manipulative too, as David would argue, even though they manipulative in
different ways. It often seems most efficient to argue for one form of
cinema by arguing against another, because many of cinema's diverse
forms are mutually exclusive, and sometimes a form has actually evolved
in opposition to another. Think of the way Bresson argues against all
films with trained actors, for example.
- Fred
6284
From: Michael Worrall
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 11:31pm
Subject: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
> The workers come out of the
> Usines Lumiere, and we wonder about each girl's life...
If I remember correctly, the shot begins with the factory doors shut,
they open and all the workers exit and the doors begin to close.
There is a beginning and end and the shot is organized around an
event, not an arbitrary action or place to put the camera. So as you
point out JPC, is this non-narrative or narrative? I find a lot of
Lumiere films to be filmed along a straight line of action and
therefore possible "story".
6285
From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 11:49pm
Subject: Re: The actor & the aquarium (Bergala/Mourlet)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Maxime" wrote:
> Back to Bergala. He tries to introduce another "figurative matrix"
> (?), which he presents as in opposition to the theory by Mourlet:
> the "aquarium-shot", where the actors' bodies are plunged into a
> glass parallelepiped. The main properties of this aquarium are the
> negation of gravity, the refusal of perspective and the
> undifferentiation of bodies, with a view to represent the humanity
> as a community. All those properties assumed to be in opposition to
>the mourletian hero, god himself, free to exert his sovereignty
>over an open space. And the glass wall may introduce a distance
>between the actor and the spectator that violates the theory of
>fascination by Mourlet. I shall admit I'm not sure to follow Bergala
>in his theory... Anyway, aquarium or not, as Bergala admits
>himself, what is > primordial in cinema is its capacity to reproduce
>human gestures and movements, through the actors.
Interesting. But does Bergala provide specific examples of what he
means by this aquarium idea?
6286
From:
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 6:58pm
Subject: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
There are two kinds of plot: a series of events, versus a chain of logically
caused events.
"A man ate some blueberries, then went to bed" is a series of unrelated
events.
"A man ate poison mushrooms, which made him sick" is a chain of events which
are logically related.
Some people want to call the first kind of work a "story", and the logical
chain of events a "plot" (I think E. M. Forster used the terms in this way.)
In Bordwell and Thompson's "The Classical Hollywood Cinema", they place great
emphasis on the assertion that 1915-1970 Hollywood films are traditionally
built around plots, chains of LOGICALLY CONNECTED EVENTS. First Scotty is hired
by his old friend, which causes him to trail Madeline around San Francisco,
which causes him to be present and rescue her from the ocean... (Vertigo!)
Most narrative-comnmercial-fictional world cinema traditionally was, too.
Such early classics as "Les Vampires" (Feuillade, 1915-1916) and "The Outlaw and
His Wife" (Sjostrom, 1917) feature strongly causal chain of event plots.
In this sense, many avant-garde films have "stories", but not "plots". In a
masterpiece like "Wonder Ring" (Brakhage, 1955), we see a succession of views
from an elevated train. There is a story of sorts, one view follows another,
and a fine artistic progression, which views varying each other and becoming
more complex. But I do not see LOGICAL CAUSALITY here.
By the way, one of the things that makes "What Time Is It There?" seem so
different from a classical commercial-film narrative, is that many of the events
lack the logical causality of traditional story-lines. The events form a
"story", but often not a "plot". The people the heroine encounters are random and
disconnected from each other, for example. When I described the film as
"different from traditional narrative", this is a big part. It is in deep violation
of standard paradigms demanding causality in narrative films.
By the way, in mystery fiction, the artistic quality of a plot is judged by
the "logical interconnections" of its parts. There is a huge literature on
this, not by academics, but by mystery writers and reviewers themselves (often the
same people). An early landmark here advocating such ideas is Israel
Zangwill's preface to the 1895 edition of his great "The Big Bow Mystery". (Yes 1895 -
this is not a misprint.) Since then, a sizable fraction of mystery reviews
have included discussions of logical causality in mystery plotting. The
literature now numbers in 10's of thousands of articles on this subject. Even today,
Jon L. Breen, the mystery reviewer for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
regularly bases his 1 to 4 star assessment of a book's quality on the logical
interconnectedness of plot achieved by the author.
Mike Grost
6287
From:
Date: Tue Jan 6, 2004 7:04pm
Subject: Re: Re: Charlie's Angels, Kill Bill, Feminism
Michael Worrall wrote:
>How much does this have to do more with Hong Kong action cinema and
>Hollywood's attempt to co-opt it for the past 5 or more years?
I'm probably not as up on HK action cinema as a lot of posters here, but
certainly I've seen enough to know that McG was undoubtedly influenced by those
films. I don't think this is too big a deal myself. As Fred pointed out in one
of the group's first posts, on the director Paul Wendkos, Wendkos' best films
probably wouldn't have been possible without Orson Welles. But if Wendkos'
films are good, I don't see what the problem is.
>What
>action performer doesn't have cinematic space assigned to him/her
>during an action sequence?
Well, in "Charlie's Angels 2," the action performers who aren't Charlie's
Angels! Or at least not to the degree that the Angels have cinematic space
assigned to them. I would maintain that there is something unique - and perhaps
feminist-based - in the way the film mythologizes them.
Peter
6288
From: Maxime
Date: Wed Jan 7, 2004 0:15am
Subject: Re: The actor & the aquarium (Bergala/Mourlet)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "joe_mcelhaney"
wrote:
> But does Bergala provide specific examples of what he
> means by this aquarium idea?
Bergala illustrates his view with scenes by Vigo, Cassavetes,
Rossellini, Sautet, Garrel and Carax.
For example Vigo with "l'Atalante" where the compression of bodies
and the negation of perspective are recurrent figures, especially
(naturally) in the barge.
Cassavetes with Shadows, where "heads float everywhere in the
screen".
Bergala claims that "la Concentration" (Garrel) is the only movie he
knows that is "100% aquarium".
I do not have any clue on what he means by that..
6289
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jan 7, 2004 0:35am
Subject: Re: Re: The actor & the aquarium (Bergala/Mourlet)
"La Concentration" takes place entirely within a room
built especially for the film.
--- Maxime wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "joe_mcelhaney"
> wrote:
> > But does Bergala provide specific examples of what
> he
> > means by this aquarium idea?
>
> Bergala illustrates his view with scenes by Vigo,
> Cassavetes,
> Rossellini, Sautet, Garrel and Carax.
> For example Vigo with "l'Atalante" where the
> compression of bodies
> and the negation of perspective are recurrent
> figures, especially
> (naturally) in the barge.
> Cassavetes with Shadows, where "heads float
> everywhere in the
> screen".
> Bergala claims that "la Concentration" (Garrel) is
> the only movie he
> knows that is "100% aquarium".
> I do not have any clue on what he means by that..
>
>
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6290
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Wed Jan 7, 2004 0:38am
Subject: Re: Charlie's Angels, Kill Bill, Feminism
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Michael Worrall"
wrote:
"How much does this have to do more with Hong Kong action cinema and
Hollywood's attempt to co-opt it for the past 5 or more years? What
action performer doesn't have cinematic space assigned to him/her
during an action sequence? Or a comedian for that matter? What is so
special about what McG is doing? Have you seen "The Heroic Trio"? Or
any King Hu or Tsui Hark? And I have to say, the HK stars don't rely
on CGI for their sequences."
And, I would add, Japanese swordswomen films of the late 1960s and
into the 1970s like the Crimson Bat seies and the Lady Snowblood
series(incidentally,in KILL BILL VOL.I Lucy Liu is costumed to look
like Kaji Meiko in LADY SNOWBLOOD (1973.)
In the context of these movies McG dosen't seem to be doing anything
extraordinary save adding the gloss of CGI like Michael says. As for
the feminist angle, in the Japanese movies it's more radical for
having the stories take place in the Edo period which was
dominated by the male supremeist neo-Confucian ideology of the
ruling Tokugawa regime.
As far as cinema is concerned, it seems that the woman action hero
has her origins in Hong Kong and Japanese low budget programmers.
Richard
6291
From: samfilms2003
Date: Wed Jan 7, 2004 0:45am
Subject: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
> There are two kinds of plot: a series of events, versus a chain of logically
> caused events.
I prefer John LeCarre's distinction, very roughly paraphrased would read:
"The cat sat on the mat" may be reporting [an event] but "the cat sat on
the dog's mat" is the beginning of storytelling.
But by my sense of this, "Anticipation of the Night" "Dog Star Man"
"What Time Is It There" all qualify for me to yield cats on dog's mats,
not to mention "Cat's Cradle"........
-Sam
6292
From: Maxime
Date: Wed Jan 7, 2004 0:47am
Subject: Re: The actor & the aquarium (Bergala/Mourlet)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> "La Concentration" takes place entirely within a room
> built especially for the film.
I believe it confirms the slighly artificial nature of Bergala's
theory (at least according to the examples he provides). I mean the
materialization of the aquarium trough the set seems to me ouside
the mise-en-scène.
6293
From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Wed Jan 7, 2004 0:48am
Subject: Re: The actor & the aquarium (Bergala/Mourlet)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Maxime" wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "joe_mcelhaney"
> wrote:
> > But does Bergala provide specific examples of what he
> > means by this aquarium idea?
>
> Bergala illustrates his view with scenes by Vigo, Cassavetes,
> Rossellini, Sautet, Garrel and Carax.
> For example Vigo with "l'Atalante" where the compression of bodies
> and the negation of perspective are recurrent figures, especially
> (naturally) in the barge.
> Cassavetes with Shadows, where "heads float everywhere in the
> screen".
> Bergala claims that "la Concentration" (Garrel) is the only movie
he
> knows that is "100% aquarium".
> I do not have any clue on what he means by that..
In their review of FACES, Sylvie Pierre and Jean-Louis Comolli
approached Cassavetes in ways which were, if not similar, at least
complimentary to Bergala. They didn't use the aquarium metaphor
but they emphasize how it is a film of surfaces, of fluidity and
speed, of faces intensely scanned by the camera but faces which
ultimately reveal very little in traditional psychological terms.
Comolli writes that FACES does not "use the cinema as a way of
reproducing actions,gestures, faces or ideas, but as a way of
PRODUCING them."
I take it Bergala loosely bases his aquarium metaphor on the bodies
and faces of these actors sometimes being submerged in water,
literally floating? This does happen to the actors in L'ATALANTE as
well as in LES AMANTS DU PONT NEUF. Sure hope he talks about Esther
Williams in MILLION DOLLAR MERMAID too.
6294
From: samfilms2003
Date: Wed Jan 7, 2004 1:00am
Subject: Re: The actor & the aquarium (Bergala/Mourlet)
> David Ehrenstein wrote:
> "La Concentration" takes place entirely within a room
> built especially for the film.
Howzabout "Coming Apart" (Milton Moses Ginsburgh)
>> I take it Bergala loosely bases his aquarium metaphor on the bodies
>> and faces of these actors sometimes being submerged in water,
He'd have to add "Taris"
-Sam
6295
From: samfilms2003
Date: Wed Jan 7, 2004 1:04am
Subject: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory, Refined
> "What Time Is It There" all qualify for me to yield cats on dog's mats,
Husband in the fish's tank, even better ;-)
-Sam
In The Age of Aquarium
6296
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Wed Jan 7, 2004 1:08am
Subject: Re: The actor & the aquarium (Bergala/Mourlet)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Maxime" wrote:
> Bergala claims that "la Concentration" (Garrel) is the only movie he
> knows that is "100% aquarium".
This is an extraordinary description of a movie that I've never
seen--we already have the Rohmer/Bazin "God's window" view of the
rectangle; this one may be better!
Also, Tag, great Mitry quote. This may be the most profound I've read
in awhile.
Patrick
6297
From: Maxime
Date: Wed Jan 7, 2004 1:08am
Subject: Re: The actor & the aquarium (Bergala/Mourlet)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "joe_mcelhaney" <>
> I take it Bergala loosely bases his aquarium metaphor on the
> bodies and faces of these actors sometimes being submerged in
> water, literally floating? This does happen to the actors in
> L'ATALANTE
Bergala uses several aquatic metaphors indeed. The bodies as taken
in a liquid solution, the aleatoric nature of the floating
movement... This floating/suspension is essential to his theory, as
the bodies/faces crashing against the "the glass wall".
One aquatic scene of l'Atalante is mentionned, and also Taris.
6298
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Wed Jan 7, 2004 1:09am
Subject: OUR DAILY BREAD
You can download OUR DAILY BREAD at www.movieflix.com; free.
The ditch-digging scenes are remarkable and the ending is much like
the Soviet farm collectives, though no Soviet digs with quite the vigor of
Vidor's human freight train. It is a remarkable scene of tremendous
movement within a frame which is barely moving.
Sometimes when I watch films, I just watch the light movement across
the screen.
Reviewing the ditch-digging scene perhaps will help me with Brakhage.
I've not seen any Brakhage but look forward to the criterion dvd I have.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> Sam Wells wrote:
>
> >"Cat's Cradle" is an interesting, and very
> >revealing film, "accessibile" to anyone approaching it openly. It is I
> >think you could say montage-constructed, and the system of its montage
> >really just personalises the thematics of so-called classical montage
>
> I think that's right on the money. In fact, I believe Fred invoked the
> montage of "Cat's Cradle" in a discussion of the final, extraordinary,
> Soviet-influenced ditch-digging sequence in King Vidor's great narrative film
> Our Daily Bread."
>
6299
From: Michael Worrall
Date: Wed Jan 7, 2004 1:17am
Subject: Re: Charlie's Angels, Kill Bill, Feminism
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>
> And, I would add, Japanese swordswomen films of the late 1960s and
> into the 1970s like the Crimson Bat seies and the Lady Snowblood
> series(incidentally,in KILL BILL VOL.I Lucy Liu is costumed to look
> like Kaji Meiko in LADY SNOWBLOOD (1973.)
Yes, and that's a genre I would like to seem more films. I know that
both Zang Che and Chor Yuen said they watched these films while
working at Shaw Brothers- I hear NYC is going to have a Shaw Brothers
retro, I hope it comes here to SF in complete form- so I would like
to know which ones you would recommend.
As for McG and Mark Steven Johnson: they are, I belive, what Amy
Taubin used in her review to describe ex- music video director
Stephen Hopkins and "his" Predator II; the latest piece of
programmable software for a studio. You can add Paul Hunter
also; "Bulletproof Monk" was pretty indistinguishable
from "Daredevil." They must have paid Chow-yun Fat a lot to
say "Coco-Puffs"- possibly the lowest point in film going in my life.
And Peter, I am saying what action star- being the lead- doesn't have
space assigned or centered around them? What makes it special?
Because their women? That makes McG an auteur? Isn't he supposed
to "give close-up" to the leads?
6300
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jan 7, 2004 1:22am
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory, Refined
I'm surprised that neither "Lady From Shaghai" nor
"Duelle" has been mentioned.
Both include Aquarium scenes.
--- samfilms2003 wrote:
>
>
> > "What Time Is It There" all qualify for me to
> yield cats on dog's mats,
>
> Husband in the fish's tank, even better ;-)
>
> -Sam
> In The Age of Aquarium
>
>
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