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10801
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2004 5:37pm
Subject: Re: Enlightenment (or Actresses and Actors)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> > Does anyone want to address my claim that film
> > theory - poor, bare,
> > forked thing that it is - by overlooking actors is
> > like a geographer
> > who thinks his work is finished when he has
> > described the northern
> > hemisphere of the globe?
>
> I'll second that. But Raymond Durgnat has already.
> Recall his note that "It's through Marlene that we
> feel," plus he paens to Bardot and others. He never
> neglected actors. And neiother did Parker Tyler -- or
> Gore Vidal, either as himself or Myra.
Again I'm reminded of Budd Boetticher, who said he owed his career to
Randolph Scott, because Budd had been typecast in H'wd as a he-man
who made the equivalent of what we call action films today, whereas,
and I quote, "Randy enabled me to show my sensitive side" in film for
the first time.
10802
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2004 5:39pm
Subject: Re: Enlightenment
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Ruy Gardnier"
wrote:
> > All intellectual movements are against whatever came last, but
German
> > idealism and German Romanticism, like their English counterparts,
are
> > better described as "post-Enlightenment," the continuation of a
> > process that began with the Enlightenment. In a sense, we're
still in
> > that process, according to my resented mentor Harold Bloom.
>
> I agree with your mentor, but think we may be on the verge of
something new
> coming on. Don't really know.
Me neither. I sure don't see much sign of it. Maybe I'm looking in
the wrong places.
10803
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2004 5:40pm
Subject: Actresses and Actors
> Does anyone want to address my claim that film theory - poor, bare,
> forked thing that it is - by overlooking actors is like a geographer
> who thinks his work is finished when he has described the northern
> hemisphere of the globe?
> I'm not even sure those generalizations cover the terrain they set
> out to map
>
> And yet these phrases just get repeated.
I think you're answering your own question. Perhaps the northern
hemisphere was mapped carelessly, and we shouldn't be looking for any
kind of unified-field theory about directors' relationship to the men
and/or women in front of the camera.
I'm interested in how identification is used in conjunction with gender.
Sometimes this provides a sort of sexual fingerprint for a filmmaker,
a genre, or (in a looser way) for a film culture. James Bond films and
"Sex in the City" provide extreme, baseline examples for how
identification patterns in filming can sync up simplistically with
gender to produce subject/object, known/unknown dichotomies. Here the
target audience seems to be the organizing principle. But this approach
can get interesting on the level of directorial style. - Dan
10804
From:
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2004 2:25pm
Subject: Re: Re: Enlightenment
Bill already explained what I meant by making a link between enlightenment
and the Holocaust. But I was thinking more specifically of Dialectic of
Enlightenment by Horkheimer and my man Adorno, published in 1944 as they were exiled
in Los Angeles.
Bill, there's already some fine work out there on the male actor. Check out
Richard Dyer's The Matter of Images and his piece of Bogarde (forgot the name
of the collection in which it appears) or Peter Lehman's Running Scared -
Masculinity and the Representation of the Male Body.
And let's nuance our conception of feminism, shall we? Feminists were
building counterarguments to Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," which I
think is a masterpiece anyway, almost immediately after its publication. Even
Mulvey herself published some afterthoughts on it. My mentor Patrice Petro
has always had immense difficulties with psychoanalytically informed feminist
film theory. I'd check out her brilliant essay "Feminism and Flm History" from
her collection Aftershocks of the New. There's nothing in it about the
fetishization of the female body. Instead, she talks about how theory has been coded
as a feminist if not a female intellectual activity while the supposedly more
objective practice of history is relegated to men. And from there, she tries to
posit what a feminist film history would look like. And as a sort of sequel
to her essay, let me yet again recommend Judith Mayne's Directed by Dorothy
Arzner. Swoon!
And for what it's worth, the best book I've ever read on Hitchcock is
feminist Tania Modleski's The Women Who Knew Too Much (but I've yet to read Hitchcock
at Work).
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10805
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2004 6:26pm
Subject: Re: Actresses and Actors
> I'm interested in how identification is used in conjunction with
gender.
> Sometimes this provides a sort of sexual fingerprint for a
filmmaker,
> a genre, or (in a looser way) for a film culture. James Bond films
and
> "Sex in the City" provide extreme, baseline examples for how
> identification patterns in filming can sync up simplistically with
> gender to produce subject/object, known/unknown dichotomies. Here
the
> target audience seems to be the organizing principle. But this
approach
> can get interesting on the level of directorial style. - Dan
For instance?
Questions about identification, after 30 years of blah-blah, remain
unanswered. Maybe it would help if we stopped automatically using the
words "identification" and "mechanism" together! For example, can
identification with a, not b, be a willed act? This is a question to
be answered by introspection while watching films, not by applying
thories which then make the films say - surprise! - the same thing
the theories already said.
Don't get me wrong - I love good theories. But I think good theories
are produced after close study of the facts, undertaken with
theoretical tools already forged in hand, which may have to be
discarded en route. And my call for some kind of theory of the Actor
shows how hungry I am for theories that at least ATTEMPT to map the
whole terrain they purport to describe. Lacano-feminism may have
hardened into dogma at a certain point, but it got part of the
picture before doing so, and an important part. But, as Belmondo says
about Joyce in Pierrot: "Il faut faire mieux!"
10806
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2004 6:43pm
Subject: Re: Enlightenment
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> Bill already explained what I meant by making a link between
enlightenment
> and the Holocaust. But I was thinking more specifically of
Dialectic of
> Enlightenment by Horkheimer and my man Adorno, published in 1944 as
they were exiled
> in Los Angeles.
Great!
>
> Bill, there's already some fine work out there on the male actor.
Check out
> Richard Dyer's The Matter of Images and his piece of Bogarde
(forgot the name
> of the collection in which it appears) or Peter Lehman's Running
Scared -
> Masculinity and the Representation of the Male Body.
Immediately.
>
> And let's nuance our conception of feminism, shall we?
I already started to do so in my last post, just before this appeared.
Feminists were
> building counterarguments to Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema," which I
> think is a masterpiece anyway,
Totally agree - a masterpiece often misread. I don't think the
phrase "passive object of the male gaze" even appears in it!
almost immediately after its publication. Even
> Mulvey herself published some afterthoughts on it. My mentor
Patrice Petro
> has always had immense difficulties with psychoanalytically
informed feminist
> film theory. I'd check out her brilliant essay "Feminism and Flm
History" from
> her collection Aftershocks of the New. There's nothing in it about
the
> fetishization of the female body. Instead, she talks about how
theory has been coded
> as a feminist if not a female intellectual activity while the
supposedly more
> objective practice of history is relegated to men. And from there,
she tries to
> posit what a feminist film history would look like. And as a sort
of sequel
> to her essay, let me yet again recommend Judith Mayne's Directed by
Dorothy
> Arzner. Swoon!
Sounds great - I will!
>
> And for what it's worth, the best book I've ever read on Hitchcock
is
> feminist Tania Modleski's The Women Who Knew Too Much (but I've yet
to read Hitchcock
> at Work).
I'll be curious what you think of it if you ever do. HAW isn't
theory, although it uses Modleski, Bellour etc. to sort through the
facts. For me at the moment Queer Theory has supplanted feminism as a
critical avant-garde, not only in Hitchcock studies (In the Name of
National Security, Hitchcock's Bi-Textuality), but in other areas as
well. I'm sure the feminists have been doing their own good ongoing
work while I was looking elsewhere, however, and I would expect them
to contribute to the Actor Question when they get around to it, as
some no doubt already have while I was snoozing. I remember a Camera
Obscura issue with Pee Wee Herman on the cover about Male Hysteria
that seemed to have at least gotten hold of an interesting topic --
about 10 years ago.
Another area that begs for this kind of study is the one I tackle
after Bunuel: Serial Killer Movies. Contrrary to commercial formulas,
most of the good ones focus on the killer to the exclusion of the
cops, and he's almost always male. "Habelove" turned me on to two
good examples - Ed Gein and Ted Bundy - although Matthew Bright, who
directed Ed Gein, also directed the amazing Freeway films, where
women - as potential victim and as killers, respectively - are very
much stage center. Steve Railsback, who plays the title role, is the
co-auteur of Ed Gein. What a performance! But I love Bright,
including his written-not-directed Modern Vampires, which I also
discovered thanks to Cinefile. Off on a tangent I go....
10807
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2004 7:59pm
Subject: Re: Re: Actresses and Actors
>>But this
>> approach
>>>can get interesting on the level of directorial style. - Dan
>
> For instance?
Oh, I don't know. Robin Wood once made the observation that Hawks'
reusable dialogue would sometimes cross genders from film to film, which
is intriguing. I was thinking recently about how I associate Wong
Kar-Wei with mobile identification patterns (multiple characters getting
a shot at the voiceover and the story line) and with a somewhat
pre-sexual view of the man-woman thing; and then HAPPY TOGETHER heads
into eroticism for the first time, and deprives the erotic object
(Leslie Cheung) of voiceover rights. Not a worked-out theory, but it'll
do as an example, I guess.
> Questions about identification, after 30 years of blah-blah, remain
> unanswered. Maybe it would help if we stopped automatically using the
> words "identification" and "mechanism" together! For example, can
> identification with a, not b, be a willed act? This is a question to
> be answered by introspection while watching films, not by applying
> thories which then make the films say - surprise! - the same thing
> the theories already said.
Sounds as if you're saying that the term can be ambiguous, which I'd
certainly agree with. I can't remember whether you ever read that
"intrarealism" paper I wrote on Hitchcock, but my idea there was to try
to discredit some ways of thinking about identification that I found
loose, and substitute others that I found more defensible.
But I don't think one should throw out consideration of "mechanisms"
because there's a fuzzy line between their effects and the effects of
audience-generated sympathy. In extreme cases (like, for instance,
Hitch hurling the audience from Leigh-identification to
Perkins-identification in PSYCHO), we can see point-of-view operating
almost without recourse to what we usually think of as sympathy. It
does something. - Dan
10808
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2004 8:20pm
Subject: Re: Re: Actresses and Actors
--- Dan Sallitt wrote:
I was thinking recently about how I
> associate Wong
> Kar-Wei with mobile identification patterns
> (multiple characters getting
> a shot at the voiceover and the story line) and with
> a somewhat
> pre-sexual view of the man-woman thing; and then
> HAPPY TOGETHER heads
> into eroticism for the first time, and deprives the
> erotic object
> (Leslie Cheung) of voiceover rights.
Would a voiceover have mattered? He speaks very
little. His primary entreaty is that they "start
over."
He dominates through pure erotic physicality.
And again you're giving the vocal a sense of power
that I'm not sure Wong feels it has. The sous-chef in
"Happy Together" asks Tony Leung to speak his thoughts
into a tape recorder. He then plays the recording --
breathing -- out onto a remore island.
And in "In the Mood For Love" we NEVER get to hear
what he whispers into the temple walls of Angkor Wat.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/
10809
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2004 8:48pm
Subject: Wong, identification
>>and then
>>HAPPY TOGETHER heads
>>into eroticism for the first time, and deprives the
>>erotic object
>>(Leslie Cheung) of voiceover rights.
>
> Would a voiceover have mattered? He speaks very
> little. His primary entreaty is that they "start
> over."
> He dominates through pure erotic physicality.
Well, there's the question of how much that mobile point of view in Wong
does matter - it's certainly very lighthearted. But it always goes with
story line privileges, so it's not just a matter of a few words on the
soundtrack. Cheung doesn't get much of the story line either, except
when he enters Leung's world.
> The sous-chef in
> "Happy Together" asks Tony Leung to speak his thoughts
> into a tape recorder. He then plays the recording --
> breathing -- out onto a remore island.
Aside from the question of how much power the narration gives the
characters, the sous-chef gets a typical opportunity for a Wong
character: a story-line digression and a voiceover (when he heads off to
that remote place). It's certainly a characteristic of several Wong
films that that privilege wanders around from character to character
quite easily. It's interesting that Cheung doesn't get it. I think it
types him as the Other in a way that I don't often notice happening in
Wong. - Dan
10810
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2004 9:17pm
Subject: Re: Actresses and Actors
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
> Would a voiceover have mattered? He speaks very
> little. His primary entreaty is that they "start
> over."
> He dominates through pure erotic physicality.
>
> And again you're giving the vocal a sense of power
> that I'm not sure Wong feels it has. The sous-chef in
> "Happy Together" asks Tony Leung to speak his thoughts
> into a tape recorder. He then plays the recording --
> breathing -- out onto a remore island.
>
> And in "In the Mood For Love" we NEVER get to hear
> what he whispers into the temple walls of Angkor Wat.
I don't know if what I'm going to say will make sense, but these three
examples seem to validate the power of speech, but in a different way.
Or something. I've been doing data entry all day, my brain is wet toast.
-Jaime
10811
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2004 9:20pm
Subject: Re: Re: Enlightenment
> But I was thinking more specifically of Dialectic of
> Enlightenment by Horkheimer and my man Adorno, published in 1944 as they were exiled
> in Los Angeles.
I don't know this book - would it be easy to synopsize the
Enlightment/Holocaust connection that it discusses? You don't have to
write anything lengthy, but I'm curious. - Dan
10812
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2004 10:05pm
Subject: Re: Enlightenment
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > > You're right, I think, when you say: "But
> > > should we expect enlightenment from a film about the
Holocaust?
> > > Wasn't enlightenment what got us there in the first place?"
Right
> and
> > > very astute.
> >
> > I had been letting this pass, but: How so? Genocide is an old
> pastime
> > of humanity's, no? - Dan
>
> Not genocide organized and operated like a factory and based on
> scientific theories (however specious).
I think Kevin's original comments relied on a much too broad and
amorphous use of the word 'enlightenment.' He first asks if we're
to expect enlightenment from a film about the Holocaust --
enlightenment in this sense meaning, so far as I can tell by any
reasonable means of apprehending intention and connotation,
illumination or edification. Or--to cast in Adorno terminology--a
disenchantment with myth. OK.
Then Kevin says "enlightenment" is what got people to the Holocaust
to begin with. (Though not "the Englightenment," which of course
fueled the revolutionary impulse on the Continent that was met
subsequently by the counterrevolutionary, authoritarian philosophies
and ideologies. In this stricter sense, of course, it was the
reaction to the Enlightenment that marked the rise of Nazism.
Hence, Adorno and Horkheimer's eponymous 'Dialectic.') If indeed
were are speaking of a vaguer, more zeitgesty form of the
word "enlightenment," we would do well to underline this fact. And
yet it would be a big, big stretch to say that any or all forms of
illumination, edification, or disenchantment are somehow moot or
will inevitably lead to myth.
So I still fail see the logical relationship between Kevin's initial
assertion (that cinema cannot illuminate or edify something about
the Holocaust) and his second one (which is basically an appeal to
the authority of A & H; and requires one to agree largely with their
premise to allow any further discussion) in which he says that the
enlightenment--as a sort of zeitgest outlined by A & H--lead to the
Holocaust. *Why* can't cinema illuminate, edify, or disenchant us?
*Why* should or can we not expect it?
(I tried to get Kevin to elaborate on this, because I thought his
initial post was rather good and this final bombshell, quietly
dropped, seemed shaky. But for some reason Kevin has a habit of
completely ignoring any post I make in reply to one of his.
Whatever.)
--Zach
10813
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jun 9, 2004 10:22pm
Subject: Re: Actresses and Actors
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
>
> Questions about identification, after 30 years of blah-blah,
remain
> unanswered. Maybe it would help if we stopped automatically using
the
> words "identification" and "mechanism" together! For example, can
> identification with a, not b, be a willed act? This is a question
to
> be answered by introspection while watching films, not by applying
> thories which then make the films say - surprise! - the same thing
> the theories already said.
>
What do we talk about when we talk about identification?
Des Cigales's definition in Queneau's wonderful novel "Loin de
Rueil":
"Quand je vois un film comme celui que nous venons de voir ,
je me transporte sur la toile par un acte en quelque sorte magique et
en tous cas transcendantal et je me retrouve prenant conscience de
moi-meme en tant que l'un des heros de l'histoire a nous contee au
moyens d'images plates mais mouvantes."
Des Cigales is a poet. He is talking to a couple of boys at a
kiddies matinee and they've just seen a western (the poet identified
with Daisy, the heroine, he explains: "Well, I was Daisy...")
Sorry if I introduced some levity in this thread, but seriously I
have never quite understood the concept of identification. And it is
being discussed here as if it was a self-evident concept whose
definition is known and accepted by all by all. Maybe I'm missing
something, haven't read the right books. Oh well...
JPC
10814
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 0:11am
Subject: Re: Enlightenment
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
"Another area that begs for this kind of study is the one I tackle
after Bunuel: Serial Killer Movies. Contrrary to commercial formulas,
most of the good ones focus on the killer to the exclusion of the
cops, and he's almost always male. "Habelove" turned me on to two
good examples - Ed Gein and Ted Bundy - although Matthew Bright, who
directed Ed Gein, also directed the amazing Freeway films, where
women - as potential victim and as killers, respectively - are very
much stage center. Steve Railsback, who plays the title role, is the
co-auteur of Ed Gein. What a performance! But I love Bright,
including his written-not-directed Modern Vampires, which I also
discovered thanks to Cinefile. Off on a tangent I go...."
Here are some questions you might consider when you get to the serial
killer book; Is there a difference between a serial killer and a
homicidal maniac? Robert Bloch described Norman Bates as a homicidal
maniac and had written several short stories and novels about
homicidal maniacs starting in the 1940s, e.g., "Yours Truly, Jack the
Ripper," "The Scarf," "The Couch," and later his own sequeals
to "Psycho." Would it be anachronistic to describe these earlier
works as being about serial killers? What about other literary
antecedents? The earliest I can think of is of Indian origin and
dates from about 500 BCE. Considering viewing VENGENCE IS MINE by
Imamura Shohei for an alternative cultural take on the serial killer.
It's based on a true story by the way.
Finally, back to feminism. "Of Men, Women and Chainsaws" was quite
good. If you want to get your feminist chops together check out "The
Luce Irigaray Reader" that I mentioned earlier. Even though I'm not
entirely convinced by her arguements she seems to be the feminist
theoretician most frequently alluded to by other feminists these days.
Richard
10815
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 0:12am
Subject: Re: Enlightenment
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Zach Campbell"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
> > --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt
wrote:
> > > > You're right, I think, when you say: "But
> > > > should we expect enlightenment from a film about the
> Holocaust?
> > > > Wasn't enlightenment what got us there in the first place?"
> Right
> > and
> > > > very astute.
> > >
> > > I had been letting this pass, but: How so? Genocide is an old
> > pastime
> > > of humanity's, no? - Dan
> >
> > Not genocide organized and operated like a factory and based on
> > scientific theories (however specious).
>
> I think Kevin's original comments relied on a much too broad and
> amorphous use of the word 'enlightenment.' He first asks if we're
> to expect enlightenment from a film about the Holocaust --
> enlightenment in this sense meaning, so far as I can tell by any
> reasonable means of apprehending intention and connotation,
> illumination or edification. Or--to cast in Adorno terminology--a
> disenchantment with myth. OK.
>
> Then Kevin says "enlightenment" is what got people to the Holocaust
> to begin with. (Though not "the Englightenment," which of course
> fueled the revolutionary impulse on the Continent that was met
> subsequently by the counterrevolutionary, authoritarian
philosophies
> and ideologies. In this stricter sense, of course, it was the
> reaction to the Enlightenment that marked the rise of Nazism.
> Hence, Adorno and Horkheimer's eponymous 'Dialectic.') If indeed
> were are speaking of a vaguer, more zeitgesty form of the
> word "enlightenment," we would do well to underline this fact. And
> yet it would be a big, big stretch to say that any or all forms of
> illumination, edification, or disenchantment are somehow moot or
> will inevitably lead to myth.
>
> So I still fail see the logical relationship between Kevin's
initial
> assertion (that cinema cannot illuminate or edify something about
> the Holocaust) and his second one (which is basically an appeal to
> the authority of A & H; and requires one to agree largely with
their
> premise to allow any further discussion) in which he says that the
> enlightenment--as a sort of zeitgest outlined by A & H--lead to the
> Holocaust. *Why* can't cinema illuminate, edify, or disenchant
us?
> *Why* should or can we not expect it?
>
> (I tried to get Kevin to elaborate on this, because I thought his
> initial post was rather good and this final bombshell, quietly
> dropped, seemed shaky. But for some reason Kevin has a habit of
> completely ignoring any post I make in reply to one of his.
> Whatever.)
>
> --Zach
This isn't what you wanted, Zach, but since I strongly supported
Kevin's pun, I'll just say that it was indeed a pun -- one linking
the unexamined assumption that edification or enlightment is the aim
of cinema with the idea of the Enlightenment, and linking the latter
to the Holocaust, as cause and effect. Puns go fast, and they leave
out connecting links, but they can enlighten -- something I seek
constantly from criticism, and rarely get, but have never sought from
films as far as I can remember. What I want from a film is pleasure.
That idea, however, seems to be a ship that has sailed in this
country, probably the day the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock!
10816
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 0:24am
Subject: More on Serial Killers (A Thread Not For The Squeamish)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
> "Another area that begs for this kind of study is the one I tackle
> after Bunuel: Serial Killer Movies. Contrrary to commercial
formulas,
> most of the good ones focus on the killer to the exclusion of the
> cops, and he's almost always male. "Habelove" turned me on to two
> good examples - Ed Gein and Ted Bundy - although Matthew Bright,
who
> directed Ed Gein, also directed the amazing Freeway films, where
> women - as potential victim and as killers, respectively - are very
> much stage center. Steve Railsback, who plays the title role, is
the
> co-auteur of Ed Gein. What a performance! But I love Bright,
> including his written-not-directed Modern Vampires, which I also
> discovered thanks to Cinefile. Off on a tangent I go...."
>
> Here are some questions you might consider when you get to the
serial
> killer book; Is there a difference between a serial killer and a
> homicidal maniac? Robert Bloch described Norman Bates as a
homicidal
> maniac and had written several short stories and novels about
> homicidal maniacs starting in the 1940s, e.g., "Yours Truly, Jack
the
> Ripper," "The Scarf," "The Couch," and later his own sequeals
> to "Psycho." Would it be anachronistic to describe these earlier
> works as being about serial killers? What about other literary
> antecedents? The earliest I can think of is of Indian origin and
> dates from about 500 BCE. Considering viewing VENGENCE IS MINE by
> Imamura Shohei for an alternative cultural take on the serial
killer.
> It's based on a true story by the way.
> > Richard
I'm a fan of Bloch (and of his heir[s] apparent, Michael Slade), and
I do consider Norman, based on Ed Gein, to be a serial killer, of the
House of Death variety a la H. H. Holmes, about whom Bloch wrote a
novel that is much less boring than Devil in the White City. For what
it's worth, I think Psycho ultimately stems from Lovecraft's The
House in the Woods (hope I got that title right). I haven't watched
it all the way through yet, but Blake Edwards adapted The Couch to
the cinema, for his uncle to direct - the opening is very good.
I think we can go way back before the FBI's typology of psychos for
examples of serial killing, back to before Jack the Ripper even, and
farther afield than the US and England, definitely including the guy
in Vengeance Is Mine, or for that matter the real-life model for
Archibaldo de la Cruz. Iran recently produced its first prototype, a
religious fanatic who killed women who weren't Koranic enough,
profiled on HBO in a documentary called Along Came a Spider (no
relation). They hanged him.
What is this Indian example?
10817
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 0:36am
Subject: Re: More on Serial Killers (A Thread Not For The Squeamish)
> > > Richard
>
> I'm a fan of Bloch (and of his heir[s] apparent, Michael Slade),
and
> I do consider Norman, based on Ed Gein, to be a serial killer,
Norman Bates is a fictional character. How can you on any basis
consider him a serial killer in spite of the fact he doesn't fit
any "serial killer" profile (for one thing there is no "series"). He
doesn't exist outside of what he has actually done on-screen (or in
the diegesis).
10818
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 1:22am
Subject: Re: More on Serial Killers (A Thread Not For The Squeamish)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
"I'm a fan of Bloch (and of his heir[s] apparent, Michael Slade), and
I do consider Norman, based on Ed Gein, to be a serial killer, of the
House of Death variety a la H. H. Holmes, about whom Bloch wrote a
novel that is much less boring than Devil in the White City. For what
it's worth, I think Psycho ultimately stems from Lovecraft's The
House in the Woods (hope I got that title right)."
The story is "The Picture in the House" and the titular picture is a
plate in a 16th century book called "Regnum Congo" by Filippo
Pigafetta depicting a cannibal butcher shop. Norman Bates frequently
looks at his copy at the beginning of Bloch's novel, so I think
you're right about "Psycho's" literary pedigree. I liked "American
Gothic" too. Have there been any movies about H. H. Holmes?
"I think we can go way back before the FBI's typology of psychos for
examples of serial killing,..."
I was thinking of the anthroplogical caveat about using contemporary
concepts to describe similar past phenomena; the purists prefer using
the language of the era.
"...back to before Jack the Ripper even, and farther afield than the
US and England, definitely including the guy in Vengeance Is Mine, or
for that matter the real-life model for Archibaldo de la Cruz. Iran
recently produced its first prototype, a religious fanatic who killed
women who weren't Koranic enough, profiled on HBO in a documentary
called Along Came a Spider (no relation). They hanged him."
The Japanese killer was known as Enokizu (I think he's called by his
real name in Imamura's movie) and his story is told in "Shocking
Crimes of Post-War Japan." Archibaldo de la Cruz had a real life
counterpart? Yikes!
"What is this Indian example?"
The Indian killer was known as Angulimala (mala=necklace;
anguli=thumb bone) and prayed on travelers going from Sarnath to
Benares in northern India. The story is told in the "Digha Nikaya"
written in Pali circa 200 BCE but concerning events 300 years
earlier. Angulimala robbed his victims but then came to believe that
if he killed 1000 people he'd become immortal. There are two
translations into English, one from the late 19th or early 20th
century and one from thw 1980s or'90s. The books are in multi-
volumes and so are best consulted at the library. Young Research
Library at UCLA undoubtedly has both.
I read "Hitchcock at Work" at the library, and since seeing a revival
of FOREIGH CORRESPONDENT as a teenager was my entree into seeing
popular film as art I've always been fond of Hitchcock, and I learned
a lot from your book. I'm going to buy the used copy at the book
store around the corner from Cinefile and I feel bad about depriving
you of royalties. I promise to buy the Bunuel book new.
Richard
10819
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 1:28am
Subject: Re: Enlightenment
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> This isn't what you wanted, Zach, but since I strongly supported
> Kevin's pun, I'll just say that it was indeed a pun -- one linking
> the unexamined assumption that edification or enlightment is the
aim
> of cinema with the idea of the Enlightenment, and linking the
latter
> to the Holocaust, as cause and effect.
Well, that's pretty heavy for a pun. Guess I missed that the
first time around (but puns are lovelier the second time around).
Puns go fast, and they leave
> out connecting links, but they can enlighten -- something I seek
> constantly from criticism, and rarely get, but have never sought
from
> films as far as I can remember. What I want from a film is
pleasure.
> That idea, however, seems to be a ship that has sailed in this
> country, probably the day the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock!
"Times have changed/And we've often rewound the clock/ Since the
Puritans got a shock/ When they landed on Plymouth Rock..." (I'm sure
David will chime in with the rest...)
I'm all for the pleasure principle myself. Aren't we all?
10820
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 1:39am
Subject: Re: More on Serial Killers (A Thread Not For The Squeamish)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
> > > > Richard
> >
> > I'm a fan of Bloch (and of his heir[s] apparent, Michael Slade),
> and
> > I do consider Norman, based on Ed Gein, to be a serial killer,
>
> Norman Bates is a fictional character. How can you on any basis
> consider him a serial killer in spite of the fact he doesn't fit
> any "serial killer" profile (for one thing there is no "series").
He
> doesn't exist outside of what he has actually done on-screen (or in
> the diegesis).
Well, there are about 10,000 novels (as Mystery Mike can sadly
attest) and maybe 1000 movies that purport to be about serial
killers, even though they portray fictional characters. Really it
just goes back to Freud's discovery that you could psychoanalyze
Hamlet using the same theories - if not the same techniques - that
you would use on a patient. As for the profile fitting - or rather,
the definition, which is something different - you're forgetting the
shrink's question about unsolved murders in the area and the
sheriff's answer.
The FBI definition is two or more murders separated in time with a
cooling off period in between. Time is the key: they can all be
committed in the same place. Vide Gacy, Holmes, Gein..and Bates. If
they're all done at once you're dealing with a mass murderer
(Whitman) or with some slight variations, a spree killer, which is
technically what you get in most slasher films. Michael Myers is a
spree killer, like Charles Speck.
But I don't know how much weight I want to put on a taxonomy
developed by the agency that was positive the Beltway Sniper was a
white man in a van! Ted Bundy, for example, did exactly the same
thing Speck did in a Florida sorority house after he escaped from
jail. And the kid who killed Versace went on a three-month spree,
comparable to that of the originals for Sheen and Spacek in Badlands,
whose names I forget. Was he a spree killer? A serial killer? A
combination of both? Gary Indiana makes excellent fun of those CNN
speculations in his insightful non-fiction book on that case, which
says a lot about directly and by implication about the idiotic
sterotypes employed in most tv treatments (news or docudrama) of SKs.
In any case, there's a massive interface between real-life, fiction
and film in this particular genre. Norman, as I said, was inspired by
a real, and much ghastlier, person, who became a book character
before he became a franchise. (Bloch wrote his own two sequels, not
related to the films. In the second one the murders start up again on
the set of the movie being made about Norman, and in the last one, in
a kind of theme-park built in around the Bates house, inspired by the
Universal City Tour). But the list of interfaces is very long: Did
you know that the wahtchamacallits in M, While the City Sleeps and
probably even Shadow of a Doubt were based on real-life thingamabobs?
In the case of While the City there was a good novel based on the
case, which Lang followed with great interest in the press when it
was happening in the 40s, and when someone offered him the book he
decided to just adapt it.
My big problem on this small book, to be done for miserable pay, is
that I have to deal with the referent and the signified (true crime
and novels) as well as the signifier (the handful of good films) -
otherwise you're operating in a vacuum, as many writers have done
before me. And most of the novels and pop-true-crime books, like most
of the films, are pure junk!
10821
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 1:54am
Subject: Re: More on Serial Killers (A Thread Not For The Squeamish)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
>
> The story is "The Picture in the House" and the titular picture is
a plate in a 16th century book called "Regnum Congo" by Filippo
> Pigafetta depicting a cannibal butcher shop. Norman Bates
frequently
> looks at his copy at the beginning of Bloch's novel, so I think
> you're right about "Psycho's" literary pedigree. I liked "American
> Gothic" too. Have there been any movies about H. H. Holmes?
FYI, Bloch wrote an essay about Gein which was printed in an MWA
anthology of true-crime accounts by fiction writers, and in it he
basically traces the line of descent from the Lovecraft story to
Psycho. I would call The People Under the Stairs a fictionalized H.
H. Holmes movie.
> the purists prefer using
> the language of the era.
Well, I dunno....
>
Archibaldo de la Cruz had a real life
> counterpart? Yikes!
The film started out as an adaptation of a novel inspired by the
deeds of a real-life serial killer in Mexico City, but Ugarte and
Bunuel took it somewhere else, ticking off the novelist.
>
> >
>The Indian killer was known as Angulimala (mala=necklace;
> anguli=thumb bone) and prayed on travelers going from Sarnath to
> Benares in northern India. The story is told in the "Digha Nikaya"
> written in Pali circa 200 BCE but concerning events 300 years
> earlier. Angulimala robbed his victims but then came to believe
that
> if he killed 1000 people he'd become immortal.
Thanks for that! I think that motive lurks in the minds of some SKs
today. Norman in the book believes he has raised Mother from the dead
SPOILER COMING, which is how he can believe that she is comitting the
murders. I think the book Marion opens in his room is about
Necromancy in the novel. Gacy thought he could raise his victims from
the dead as sex zombies. But I think there have been guys who thought
they could achieve immortality, too. That's an interesting thought to
follow up on.
I'm going to buy the used copy at the book
> store around the corner from Cinefile and I feel bad about
depriving
> you of royalties. I promise to buy the Bunuel book new.
I haunt that store myself - I just bought Manley Wade Wellman's Fear
the Devil collection there for $3.50. WELL worth it - much more so
than HAW at its original price!
10822
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 1:56am
Subject: Re: Enlightenment
>
> Puns go fast, and they leave
> > out connecting links, but they can enlighten -- something I seek
> > constantly from criticism, and rarely get, but have never sought
> from
> > films as far as I can remember. What I want from a film is
> pleasure.
> > That idea, however, seems to be a ship that has sailed in this
> > country, probably the day the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock!
>
>
> "Times have changed/And we've often rewound the clock/ Since
the
> Puritans got a shock/ When they landed on Plymouth Rock..." (I'm
sure
> David will chime in with the rest...)
>
> I'm all for the pleasure principle myself. Aren't we all?
That's why I often wish that "Plymouth Rock had landed on them."
10823
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 2:03am
Subject: Re: More on Serial Killers (A Thread Not For The Squeamish)
just goes back to Freud's discovery that you could psychoanalyze
> Hamlet using the same theories - if not the same techniques - that
> you would use on a patient.
You could, of course, but you would be psychoanalyzing the author,
not the character.
. Was he a spree killer? A serial killer? A
> combination of both?
Do we need labels?
> In the case of While the City there was a good novel based on the
> case, which Lang followed with great interest in the press when it
> was happening in the 40s, and when someone offered him the book he
> decided to just adapt it.
>
But what's the difference whether a film character is "inspired"
by a "real" case or not? The reality is the character and everything
else is extraneous.
>
My big problem on this small book, to be done for miserable pay, is
> that I have to deal with the referent and the signified (true crime
> and novels) as well as the signifier (the handful of good films) -
> otherwise you're operating in a vacuum, as many writers have done
> before me. And most of the novels and pop-true-crime books, like
most
> of the films, are pure junk!
Why didn't you ask for a big advance on the basis that Serial
Killers book sell like hot cakes? But then the publisher probably saw
it was going to be this intellectual thing no one would understand
and readers would stay away from in droves. Even if you were wise
enough not to throw around words like referent and signifier and
signified (or perhaps it's the kind of press that publishes that sort
of stuff and of course doesn't pay.) Still it should be fascinating.
I don't understand why you distinguish between signified/novels and
signifier/movies (good ones). That really got me puzzled.
10824
From: George Robinson
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 3:16am
Subject: Bad News at the BFI
Apologies for cross-posting but this is pretty important. I don't know if
this has come up on the list recently -- I don't remember seeing it -- but
there are some bad things going on at the BFI. Rather than give you a
half-assed explanation, I direct your attention to the June 9 posting on the
Masters of Cinema website:
http://www.mastersofcinema.org/
There really is no such thing as an art form that some bureaucratic moron
can't screw up.
George Robinson
Our talk of justice is empty until the
largest battleship has foundered on the
forehead of a drowned man.
--Paul Celan
10825
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 3:21am
Subject: Re: Enlightenment
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> >
> > Puns go fast, and they leave
> > > out connecting links, but they can enlighten -- something I
seek
> > > constantly from criticism, and rarely get, but have never
sought
> > from
> > > films as far as I can remember. What I want from a film is
> > pleasure.
> > > That idea, however, seems to be a ship that has sailed in this
> > > country, probably the day the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock!
> >
> >
> > "Times have changed/And we've often rewound the clock/ Since
> the
> > Puritans got a shock/ When they landed on Plymouth Rock..." (I'm
> sure
> > David will chime in with the rest...)
> >
> > I'm all for the pleasure principle myself. Aren't we all?
>
> That's why I often wish that "Plymouth Rock had landed on them."
Let he who's never sinned land the first rock on them.
10826
From:
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 1:17am
Subject: Zach Attack/Sallitt Answer/Enlightenment
Zach and Dan and Bill and whoever (but definitely Zach!) -
Zach, I thought I had already answered your question by stating that Bill had
already answered it for me when he wrote: "Not genocide organized and
operated like a factory and based on
scientific theories (however specious)." I would have responded with
something very similar. And, again, Bill beat me to the punch with his pun post; I
would have responded (and will) to your second post along the same lines. I
wouldn't exactly call my original enlightenment-Holocaust post a pun but it will
serve (thanx Bill - care to finish my thesis for me???). But lest you suspect
I'm trying to ignore you (again?), I will provide you with an answer of my own
(and hopefully provide Dan with an answer to his question about Dialectic of
Enlightenment along the way).
So Zach, I wasn't using the word "enlightenment" to mean "a disenchantment
with myth" but, rather, its already perverted form as myth. THAT is the
dialectic that Horkheimer and Adorno are getting at - they are trying to expose the
myths of enlightenment. So I think you're wrong when you say:
"Though not "the Englightenment," which of course fueled the
revolutionary impulse on the Continent that was met subsequently by the
counterrevolutionary, authoritarian philosophies
and ideologies. In this stricter sense, of course, it was the reaction to the
Enlightenment that marked the rise of Nazism. Hence, Adorno and Horkheimer's
eponymous 'Dialectic.'"
In the Introduction to the book, they state quite the opposite:
"We show that the prime cause of the retreat from enlightenment into
mythology is not to be sought so much in the nationalist, pagan and other modern
mythologies manufactured precisely in order to contrive such a reversal, but in the
Enlightenment itself when paralyzed by fear of the truth." (xiii-xiv)
Now I suppose my crime was not to capitalize "enlightenment." But in the
paragraph before the one I just quoted, they use "Enlightenment" and
"enlightenment" almost interchangeably. And judging how they go back to the myth of
Odysseus for the seeds of these ideas, one does get the impression that, as you say,
Zach, "any or all forms of illumination, edification, or disenchantment are
somehow moot or will inevitably lead to myth," even though H & A believe "that
social freedom is inspearable from enlightened thought." (xii)
Indeed, this is one of the problems with Adorno's work - there never seems to
be a way out (at least Kracauer posits an escape before shutting it back down
again). After reading the book, you do get the sense that enlightenment
-as-myth is a universal (and here's where we get the seeds of the idea that fascism a
nd capitalism are merely two sides of the same coin). So Dan, H & A examine
enlightened thought for the ways it allows man (sic) to dominate nature, most
definitely including other human beings. There's an entire chapter reading
Odysseus as the story of the triumph of reason over myth and how that triumph has
itself become reinscribed as myth. The last chapter is on anti-semitism and
the "limits of enlightenment." And, of course, there's the notorious "The
Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" which would probably most get
under the skin of list members (as it did mine) in its disparagement of Hollywood
cinema.
So Zach, judging from your post, it sounds like you didn't need any
elaboration at all. You merely don't agree with H & A's premise, as you say. I'm not
100% certain I agree with it myself which is why I asked it as a question rather
than stating decisively that enlightenment got us to Holocaust. So it seems
as if you already know the answers to your questions: *Why* can't cinema
illuminate, edify, or disenchant us? *Why* should or can we not expect it?" But I'll
oblige you and answer them by imagining what Adorno (and yes, yes, me too)
might say. Edification about the Holocaust would allow us to master it as a
piece of information that we could then convert into some sort of cultural and,
even better, financial capital thus completing the circuit of enlightened
rationalism that fuels the apparently inescapable mode of capitalism.
And now that I think back on my original post, this was all a question of
payoff, an extremely apprporiate choice of words in light of the above, more than
I realized at the time. There's not much I can say about The Vanishing or
Cleopatra's Second Husband and The Grey Zone which is another way of saying I
can't convert it into cultural or financial capital. Whereas I could wax
intellectual about the representational strategies of Shoah or, I don't know, Rope or
Crazy in Alabama (which, after all, is about several different kinds of
murder). So maybe we shouldn't expect payoffs, enlightenment, edification, whatnot
if all it's going to do is keep the capitalist fires burning.
Now these are unquestionably arguable points. But at the very least, I have
elaborated on my original point and hopefully answered Dan's question. If I did
neither sufficiently, it certainly wasn't from a lack of trying.
And finally, Zach, you'll have to believe me when I say I have never
consciously ignored any of your posts. Even the few people on this list who I would
have loved to slap at one point or another have gotten replies from me. Either I
assumed I answered you indirectly or I simply missed your post. I don't know.
But if there's anything from a past post of yours that I never responded to,
please feel free to ask me either on list or off and I'll try my best to
address it.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10827
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 5:53am
Subject: Re: Zach Attack/Sallitt Answer/Enlightenment
> But at the very least, I have
> elaborated on my original point and hopefully answered Dan's question.
Yes, you did. Good job.
I'm pretty sympathetic to the idea that the Enlightment became
mythologized, and that the myth is dangerous. I don't think I'd
translate that into "the Enlightenment caused the Holocaust," but maybe
I'd go for something like "the Enlightment did less than you might think
to stop genocides."
I'm less sold on the idea that edification is undesirable because it
results in commodities. From what I read here, I wonder if Adorno and
Horkheimer aren't treating capitalism as some axiomatic evil instead of
as an inevitable byproduct of human activity, which is what it sounds as
if they're really demonstrating. But I defer to those who have actually
read the book. - Dan
10828
From:
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 2:58am
Subject: Feminism; Actors and Actresses
I'm a strong supporter of feminism, and have been for over thirty years. And
I think many feminist-based writings on the cinema are superb. There are many
treatments of women filmmakers (directors, writers, animators) that are based
on a feminist concern for making women's voices count. And Molly Haskel's
"From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies" is a good book.
However, I have never been convinced by theories about "the male gaze", "male
concern over women's power" and other psychoanalytic theories. I'm deeply
skeptical about all psychoanalysis. I like feminism; it's Freud who seems like a
pseudo-scientist to me. Can't see the point of extending such dubious theories
to actors.
Also, think that most directors work with both actresses and actors as
collaborators. This is true even when they are the romantic partners of directors:
Griffith and Dempster, Ingram and Terry, Sternberg and Dietrich, Rossellini and
Bergman, Zhang and Gong Li, Cocteau and Marais.
Most narrative filmmakers strongly eroticize both their male and female
performers. Most films are stories of love and romance, whatever other subjects
they also depict. How a director sees Eros will have a strong effect on their
film.
This includes, but is not limited to, the director's gender (male or female)
and sexual orientation (straight or gay). It also is influenced by their views
on love - everything from Hawks' intense physicality, to Borzage's
romanticism.
This view of Eros is far more important in shaping a film, than any
off-screen relationship of a director and star.
Mike Grost
10829
From:
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 3:03am
Subject: Re: Re: Actressess
In "The Killing of the Unicorn," Bogdanovich argues that the gradual
demythification of actresses on screen has been a negative. As I recall (I don't have
the book in front of me), Bogdanovich quotes Molly Haskell - whose work I've
not yet read, I'm embarrassed to say - to support his argument. The paradox
is that as more and more women have become producers and are no longer contract
players at a studio, their roles - as we hear all the time - have arguably
become less interesting and certainly less rooted in the whole 'goddess'
concept. What have the effects of this been? Well, we definitely don't have any
Garbos in Hollywood right now.
And Grace Kelly in "Rear Window" (and "Dial M" and "To Catch") is definitely
not a 'frigid' blonde! She's my dream gal in that film, although this has
absolutely nothing to do with auteurism until the day when I become an auteur
myself!
Peter
10830
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 8:31am
Subject: Re: Bad News at the BFI
>
> There really is no such thing as an art form that some bureaucratic
moron
> can't screw up.
>
> George Robinson
How about the Lascaux cave paintings?
10831
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 8:37am
Subject: Re: Actressess
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> In "The Killing of the Unicorn," Bogdanovich argues that the
gradual
> demythification of actresses on screen has been a negative
Wghen I interviewed him about I Was a Male War Bride as a neglected
masterpiece, he argued that women have lost out big time since the
40s, particularly beginning in the 60s.
10832
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 8:44am
Subject: Re: Zach Attack/Sallitt Answer/Enlightenment
> I'm less sold on the idea that edification is undesirable because
it
> results in commodities.
Dan, my argument is much simpler than Kevin's, and considerably less
general than your paraphrase. Edification is great - I wish more of
it went on in school - and it is certainly part of what we as critics
should be doing, and too rarely do. But except for special cases like
Fahrenheit 9/11, I don't see edification as the purpose of cinema --
at least not of good cinema, as I said before. Propaganda,
educational films (I love Hemo the Magnificent!), political exposes,
but not cinema as an artform, or any other artform. As Wallace
Stevens said, "It Must Give Pleasure." Look at my review of All the
Ships on your web site!
10833
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 8:57am
Subject: Re: More on Serial Killers (A Thread Not For The Squeamish)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
> just goes back to Freud's discovery that you could psychoanalyze
> > Hamlet using the same theories - if not the same techniques -
that
> > you would use on a patient.
>
> You could, of course, but you would be psychoanalyzing the author,
> not the character.
Freud said he was psychoanalyzing Hamlet. He really did say that.
>
> . Was he a spree killer? A serial killer? A
> > combination of both?
>
> Do we need labels?
Well, the FBI does. And so does CNN.
>
>
> But what's the difference whether a film character is "inspired"
> by a "real" case or not? The reality is the character and
everything
> else is extraneous.
See my reiteration of what Freud said about Hamlet.
> My big problem on this small book, to be done for miserable pay, is
> > that I have to deal with the referent and the signified (true
crime
> > and novels) as well as the signifier (the handful of good films) -
> > otherwise you're operating in a vacuum, as many writers have done
> > before me. And most of the novels and pop-true-crime books, like
> most
> > of the films, are pure junk!
>
>
> I don't understand why you distinguish between signified/novels and
> signifier/movies (good ones). That really got me puzzled.
Bad shorthand. There's a book by an intelligent writer on Jack the
Ripper films where he attempts to talk about the films ONLY in
relation to the facts of the murders and gets into all sorts of
trouble. More has been written on the Whitechapel murders -
speculation, fact-based history and fiction - than on any other non-
State murders in history, and he simply chooses to ignore this. But
you can't talk about the films without talking about that textual
mass that has been interposed between us and the murders, when all
features of the cinematic Ripper corpus are derived from the Ripper
writings (starting with "his" letters).
Regretably, because I find much of it junk, I think the same is true
for the mammoth pile of writings about thingamabobbies, if I don't
want my slim elegant volume on Whatchamadoodles in the Cinema to fall
into the same trap. Norman Bates in the movie is an interpretation of
Norman Bates in the book, who is an interpretation of Ed Gein. That
would be a better way of putting it.
>Still it should be fascinating.
It better be!
10834
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 1:51pm
Subject: Re: Re: Zach Attack/Sallitt Answer/Enlightenment
> But except for special cases like
> Fahrenheit 9/11, I don't see edification as the purpose of cinema
Nor I, but I had the sense that Adorno and Horkheimer weren't
particularly talking about cinema, or art. If one sees edification as
the purpose of anything at all, then their argument is a bit of a jolt.
- Dan
10835
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 3:24pm
Subject: Re: More on Serial Killers (A Thread Not For The Squeamish)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
> wrote:
> > just goes back to Freud's discovery that you could psychoanalyze
> > > Hamlet using the same theories - if not the same techniques -
> that
> > > you would use on a patient.
> >
> > You could, of course, but you would be psychoanalyzing the
author,
> > not the character.
>
> Freud said he was psychoanalyzing Hamlet. He really did say that.
> >
I assume he was speaking metaphorically. You can't
psychoanalyse a fictional character. You can 'describe" him in
psychoanalytical terms, which everybody has been doing all the time
since Freud, but that's not the same thing as conducting an analysis.
You need a warm body, an actual human being for that.
10836
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 3:33pm
Subject: Re: Actressess
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> And Grace Kelly in "Rear Window" (and "Dial M" and "To Catch") is
definitely
> not a 'frigid' blonde!
>
> Peter
We could call her a cool blonde and leave it at that. Cool and
frigid are not the same, they can even be the opposite.
10837
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 5:22pm
Subject: Re: Bad News at the BFI
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
>
> >
> > There really is no such thing as an art form that some bureaucratic
> moron
> > can't screw up.
> >
> > George Robinson
>
> How about the Lascaux cave paintings?
Well, that's what the BFI has in store for us... they're reproducing (cheaply) everything
in the National Film collection and relocating it to a fake archive in the middle of the
U.K. They call it the BFI II, and tourists are able to wander freely inside.
Gabe
10838
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 5:27pm
Subject: Re: Actressess
Cool and
> frigid are not the same, they can even be the opposite.
Which was why Hitchcock liked "cool," but certainly didn't do badly
with "warm." Of course, having read his own reviews, perhaps, he was
planning to use Catherine Deneuve in The Short Night. That would've
been "cool."
10839
From:
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 1:44pm
Subject: Horkheimer/Adorno on movies, pleasure, edification
Horkheimer and Adorno talk a great deal about movies and art in general
(although Adorno is best known for his attacks on popular music and jazz). They
never use the word "edification" as far as could tell. But their thesis in "The
Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" can be summed up in this
line about movies: "The sound film, far surpassing the theater of illusion,
leaves no room for imagination and reflection on the part of the audience." (126)
Along the way, they disparage Orson Welles, Chaplin (and The Great Dictator
in particular), the Marx Bros., Greer Garson, Bette Davis, etc. They make
sweeping generalizations about early cinema, preferences for Mickey Rooney and
Donald Duck (over Garbo and Betty Boop), housewives, etc. But they see an eensy
weensy glimmer of hope in the revue film (King of Jazz fans rejoice!).
Most instructive in light of the pleasure vs. edification disucssion is the
following nugget:
"Pleasure always means not to think about anything, to forget suffering even
where it is shown. Basically it is helplessness. It is flight; not, as is
asserted, flight from a wretched reality, but from the last remaining thought of
resistance. The liberation which amusement promises is freedom from thought and
from negation. The effrontery of the rhetorical question, 'What do people
want?' lies in the fact that it is addressed - as if to reflective individuals -
to those very people who are deliberately to be deprived of this
individuality." (144-5)
So H & A do see edification as the purpose of cinema (or that it should be).
But Dan and Bill, if you don't see edification as the purpose of cinema, where
do you stand on Shoah vs. The Grey Zone, assuming you've seen them both? Or
where do you stand on Rosenbaum's review of the latter, his (and I imagine
Zach's as well) expectation of edification in cinema?
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10840
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 7:08pm
Subject: Re: Horkheimer/Adorno on movies, pleasure, edification
Dan and Bill, if you don't see edification as the purpose of cinema,
where
> do you stand on Shoah vs. The Grey Zone, assuming you've seen them
both? Or
> where do you stand on Rosenbaum's review of the latter, his (and I
imagine
> Zach's as well) expectation of edification in cinema?
>
> Kevin John
Haven't seen Grey Zone, unfortunately. I like Shoah, and obviously
wouldn't deny that it's enlightening or edifying - documentaries
usually are. But I would say that the embracing of Shoah by smart
critics - when there are a lot of very edifying documentaries on this
subject that they probably wouldn't particularly want to see - has to
do with the fact that it is a pleasurable esthetic experience.
There's a new DVD out from Spielberg's Foundation, for example, and I
would be surprised if it got the kind of attention Shoah has gotten,
at least from the same critics. And that is perfectly appropriate.
To go back to the film we started with, obviously Cleopatra's Second
Husband enlightened me, but that's because I'm a critic. I seriously
doubt that anyone else who saw it thought about the actor-director
metaphor playing out in it, or if they did, took it as far as I have,
because that's MY job as a critic. I also enjoyed the film, although
it's always a puzzle how one can enjoy something like that. You hated
it, although by now I have successfully done my job by making you see
it as some kind of paradigm - evil or otherwise. And there is no
disputing about taste.
I don't know that I would characterize Jonathan as a critic who
demands that films enlighten or edify the audience. I think, like
many, he will attack a film for not doing that if he doesn't like it,
and as a rule Jonathan has very good taste. We all fall into the
shorthand at times of attacking films we don't like this way.
But for purposes of answering your question, I would put it this way
in terms of my own work as a critic interested in structures and
significance: I am always interested in what a film means, but the
pleasure or displeasure I feel watching it, and what I say about it
afterward, isn't pleasure or displeasure at the meaning, although I'm
not immune to feeling that, too, when some cherished cause is
embraced by a scene or a line in a film. My pleasure or displeasure
watching a film -- and the pleasure or displeasure of spectators like
me -- is in HOW the film means.
And I think that is why most of us like Shoah. The message isn't
exactly new, although some of the information is, but we like --
enjoy -- the way it is delivered, which meshes with larger esthetic
preferences we all share and would bring to many kinds of film. And I
share with Fred, as a matter of principle, the position that a film
whose meaning I don't particularly care for could still give me
pleasure. But in my case, only if I liked HOW it meant it --
beautiful visuals divorced from meaning don't do it for me.
You have brought up, with respect to music, another kind of
relationship art can have to meaning, which is "not meaning to mean."
I'd like to hear more about that idea, which doesn't negate my
general position at all. Films that succeed in NOT "meaning" -- which
takes work! -- also belong in my canon. It definitely includes
abstract films: The Central Region, for example. And "films that
don't mean to mean" might make an interesting new category.
I haven't read as much Adorno as you have, although I think I posted
an article on Adorno and Aldrich at screeningthepast a while back,
but I sometimes have problems with him -- I think his friend Walter
Benjamin had a much finer mind, and so did, to a lesser degree,
Kracauer. But Adorno certainly helped launch lot of things that are
still with us.
In general, not referring to Adorno or to anyone in particular (the
examples are everywhere, impossible to avoid), I have grown weary of
cant, dogma, ideology, preaching, pontificating, Puritanism and
moralizing -- and not just in film criticism! But that's after having
gone through a period of doing all those things when I was younger.
10841
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 9:58pm
Subject: Re: Enlightenment
Bill:
> Puns go fast, and they leave out connecting links, but they can
> enlighten -- something I seek constantly from criticism, and
> rarely get, but have never sought from films as far as I can
> remember.
Certainly a pun might enlighten: what I wanted to know was how it
enlightened, even after I was given the context for the pun's
creation and couldn't discern a logically sound foundation for it.
--Zach
10842
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 10:02pm
Subject: Re: Zach Attack/Sallitt Answer/Enlightenment
Kevin John:
> So Zach, I wasn't using the word "enlightenment" to mean "a
> disenchantment with myth" but, rather, its already perverted form
> as myth. THAT is the dialectic that Horkheimer and Adorno are
> getting at - they are trying to expose the myths of enlightenment.
> So I think you're wrong when you say: [etc.]
I don't think we're disagreeing all that much on this point,
actually. In this case it seems to me that A&H are referring to a
broad zeitgest which they term 'the Enlightenment/enlightenment'
which is a synthesis coming out of a thesis (the much more specific
historical period and ideological terrain ) and its antithesis (the
ideologies "manufactured" contra Enlightenment). Historically
speaking, the Enlightenment, such as it was, refers to something
relatively distinct and finite: A&H are using it in a much broader
sense, and I don't see how their argument could hold water
otherwise.
So I would agree with you and A&H (or, at the very least, consider
the premises acceptable and reasonable ones) insofar as we would
agree that Enlightenment in this hypothesis is understood as a
synthetic concept with broader, more amorphous meanings than the
Enlightenment that is taught and studied as a chapter in the history
(genealogy?) of thought. I don't think one definition has to be
right and the other wrong; what I seek is clarity in distinguishing
between the two concepts in cases where distinction is necessary to
communication and comprehension.
> And judging how they go back to the myth of Odysseus for the seeds
> of these ideas, one does get the impression that, as you say,
> Zach, "any or all forms of illumination, edification, or
> disenchantment are somehow moot or will inevitably lead to myth,"
> even though H & A believe "that social freedom is inspearable from
> enlightened thought." (xii)
This is a problem I'd like to think more about, if indeed it is the
case. (I am somewhat familiar with DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT, but
have never made a close study of it.) How might one justify writing
on anything if its edification in some way leads to mythologizing?
> So Zach, judging from your post, it sounds like you didn't need
> any elaboration at all. You merely don't agree with H & A's
> premise, as you say. I'm not 100% certain I agree with it myself
> which is why I asked it as a question rather than stating
> decisively that enlightenment got us to Holocaust.
Well, I did want some elaboration, because I wasn't sure what kind
of statement or framework was being made. Remember that I asked for
elaboration before any members of the Frankfurt School were brought
to my attention. (And when Bill said he read the comment as a pun,
for instance, I thought in earnest and not rhetorically - 'Then
that's a provocative pun. What purpose does it serve?')
> So it seems as if you already know the answers to your questions:
> *Why* can't > cinema illuminate, edify, or disenchant us? *Why*
> should or can we not expect it?"
But I don't know the answers at all! I was asking them both as
honest questioner and devil's advocate -- if you were indeed
expressing this viewpoint, I wanted to see the reasoning behind it
because I was having a hard time seeing it on my own.
> Edification about the Holocaust would allow us to master it as a
> piece of information that we could then convert into some sort of
> cultural and, even better, financial capital thus completing the
> circuit of enlightened rationalism that fuels the apparently
> inescapable mode of capitalism.
It could very well be that this statement is true: but like the
possibility of a supreme being, I don't see a way to ultimately
prove or disprove it ...
> So maybe we shouldn't expect payoffs, enlightenment, edification,
> whatnot if all it's going to do is keep the capitalist fires
> burning.
You know, perhaps I have more problems with Adorno and Horkheimer
than I would have thought before entering this discussion. I'd say:
Capitalism, too, answers to history, and will crumble into something
else eventually. (Or it will kill us all in a few more
generations.) I have no reason to believe that capitalism is larger
than history, that it won't fade: therefore the system I'm
ultimately caught in is one of history rather than capitalism. Now
that I'm giving it some thought, I suppose I remain unconvinced that
we cannot "escape" in certain ways, because I am unconvinced that
capitalism is the all-encompassing force in our world. It's a
machine that will one day break down and, though we might, hopefully
we won't break down with it ...
--Zach
10843
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 10:12pm
Subject: Re: Horkheimer/Adorno on movies, pleasure, edification
Kevin:
> So H & A do see edification as the purpose of cinema (or that it
> should be). But Dan and Bill, if you don't see edification as the
> purpose of cinema, where do you stand on Shoah vs. The Grey Zone,
> assuming you've seen them both? Or where do you stand on
> Rosenbaum's review of the latter, his (and I imagine Zach's as
> well) expectation of edification in cinema?
Well ... I don't think I'd say that I expect edification. I don't
expect anything from cinema because I don't see much of anything
essential to it or art. I suppose I go to movies to accumulate a
certain kind of knowledge (then again that's vague enough to
encompass most movie-watching anyway), but I wouldn't say it's
edification. Perhaps we need to agree on specific definitions (and
implications) of what we mean in expecting 'edification'
or 'pleasure' in cinema.
--Zach
10844
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 10:55pm
Subject: Re: Zach Attack/Sallitt Answer/Enlightenment
William Blake saw Voltaire and Locke, two prominent
Enlightenment figures, as Druids, and he more or less
prophesied that their Natural Religion, as he called it, would
produce things like concentration camps -- i.e. human sacrifice.
On another topic, capitalism won't just break down, because
whenever it's really in danger of doing that it either compensates
with a dose of socialism (FDR) or becomes fascist. It can't
surmount its problems by becoming something else because
the people who profit and their goons won't let it . They have to
be removed from power and replaced with a communist
government, or maybe anarchy, or things will just keep going as
they are, in all their infinite variety of sameness. Which could be
fine, too.
Sometimes I just wish we hadn't eliminated Marxist thought from
our part of the planet, because at least we wouldn't have
dingbats phoning in to Ian Masterson saying that we invaded
Iraq to keep Sadaam from substituting petroEuros for
petrodollars, or whatever. They know money is the root of all evil,
but they have no concepts for thinking about that, so they come
up with these homegrown cracker-barrel Free Silverist-style
"analyses" that just take up air time. At least if people read Marx -
or any interesting economist! - there'd be some more systematic
way of thinking about this stuff, to come to whatever conclusions
they wish. And the call-ins would be better.
I do, by the way, still have yearnings toward political film criticism,
quite apart from the esthetic I've expounded, but I think if you're
doing it, you do it balls-out. Call yourself a communist or
whatever ideology you're pushing, form groups with wonky
names like The Raymond Sapene Group for Ideological
Intervention, and go kick some ass! Hopefully with a few fresh
ideas...
That is probably why I've accepted this dreadful job of writing
about serial killer films. The films are crap, the books are crap,
the killers are crap, but at least you can score some points
writing about the ideological implications of all this crap. You
sure aren't going to be devoting much time to esthetics!
"I always contradict myself."
10845
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 11:00pm
Subject: Re: Horkheimer/Adorno on movies, pleasure, edification
> "Pleasure always means not to think about anything, to forget suffering even
> where it is shown.
I wonder where these dudes are really, secretly coming from. I think
the part about pleasure and suffering is undoubtedly true, and I'd
accept the part about pleasure and thinking if they'd substitute "some
things" for "anything." (The act of thinking can be cathected with
pleasure, even if pleasure is destroyed when thinking is uninhibited and
wanders into certain areas.) But do they denounce pleasure on this
basis? It seems unthinkable to me to fly in the face of the deepest
desires of any animal; one must instead adopt the horrible alternative -
that it is necessary to forget suffering a lot of the time.
> So H & A do see edification as the purpose of cinema (or that it should be).
Sounds as if they aren't making a distinction between art and other
kinds of intellectual experience. I wonder if they grant art any
conceptual, functional independence.
> But Dan and Bill, if you don't see edification as the purpose of cinema, where
> do you stand on Shoah vs. The Grey Zone, assuming you've seen them both?
Haven't seen SHOAH.... I dislike THE GREY ZONE outright. The
application of horror-movie style elements to the Holocaust seemed to me
a super-bad idea: horror tropes are designed to give pleasure. I found
the dissonance very unpleasant. (And I did like the director's THE EYE
OF GOD.) On a much smaller scale, this is the problem I have with THE
SERVANT as well.
Unlike a lot of auteurists - and I actually think I'm departing from the
mainstream of auteurist thought on this point - I observe a functional
distinction between documentary and fiction filmmaking. It's not that I
don't think there's a vast gray area between documentary and fiction,
and not that I don't follow Bazin's central idea that the film image is
intrinsically a document. But I believe that the ends of documentary
and fiction are necessarily different, and I therefore find myself
wanting their means to be different also. I'd go along with the idea
that the documentary, in its pure form (and I know that pure forms don't
exist, but I still need the concept), is meant to edify.
As for seeking pleasure from fiction, I certainly have erected in my
mind a complicated system to qualify that pleasure so that it meets my
approval. By the time I vet a movie's pleasure for my own use, that
pleasure generally comes out fairly refined (if you want to take a
positive view of the process) or involute (if you don't). But it
ultimately boils down to a kind of emotional experience I want to have,
not a kind of enlightenment I seek.
- Dan
10846
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 11:05pm
Subject: Re: Re: Zach Attack/Sallitt Answer/Enlightenment
> William Blake saw Voltaire and Locke, two prominent
> Enlightenment figures, as Druids, and he more or less
> prophesied that their Natural Religion, as he called it, would
> produce things like concentration camps -- i.e. human sacrifice.
Just to be clear about my position: I'm not offended by Blake's insight,
but I don't think human sacrifice began with the Enlightenment any more
than I think it ended with it. And so I question the Enlightenment ->
Holocaust causal connection. - Dan
10847
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 0:13am
Subject: Re: Zach Attack/Sallitt Answer/Enlightenment
I'm not offended by Blake's insight,
> but I don't think human sacrifice began with the Enlightenment
any more
> than I think it ended with it. And so I question the
Enlightenment ->
> Holocaust causal connection. - Dan
But human sacrifices had gone out of fashion for a while, hadn't
they?
Connecting the Age of Enlightenment to primitive ritual doesn't
mean that rituals never existed -- it's saying: These people, who
think themselves enlightened, are Druids: primitives. And that
strange combination of scientism (pseudo, of course) and
primitivism is what we see in Nazism, and in the camps.
The point about documentary being opposeed to fiction is an
interestingly contrarian notion (in our context), and a fruitful one. I
think it's why we currently make much better documentaries than
the French.
10848
From: Fred Camper
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 0:15am
Subject: Anniversary chat
So far only two of us (Fred and Peter) have signed up for our
"anniversary chat" on June 13. Fred has reduced the hours he promised to
be there from 7 to 11 Eastern Daylight time to 8 to 10:30 Eastern
Daylight time. Peter's hours remain from 7 to 11 Eastern Daylight time.
Please sign up (See the "June 13 Anniversary Chat Schedule" in the files
section which is linked to from the left side of our group's main page,
which is at http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/) if you
plan to participate, or drop by even if you haven't signed up in
advance. If nothing else, the chat could be a way for you to discuss
with your friendly co-moderators any concerns you have about or group,
or, or course, praises you wish to offer we two.
Fred and Peter
10849
From:
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 10:20pm
Subject: Re: Re: Zach Attack/Sallitt Answer/Enlightenment
In a message dated 6/10/04 5:04:56 PM, rashomon82@y... writes:
> How might one justify writing on anything if its edification in some way
> leads to mythologizing?
>
Excellent question, Zach. I ask myself the same sort of thing every time I
read Adorno. And I'm afraid I don't have an answer. All I can say is that Adorno
frequently puts himself in a "supreme being" position which then, um,
qualifies him to make the kind of difficult or impossible to prove statements on
capitalism or whatever.
"I wonder where these dudes are really, secretly coming from."
Well, Dan, at the very least, I can tell you that Adorno was a German Jew who
got out of Nazi Germany early (1934). His exile was, at best, bewildering for
him (as it was for countless others, e.g. Kracauer most definitely). Plus,
not long before co-writing Dialectic of Enlightenment, he had lost his friend
Walter Benjamin in 1940 to the Nazi scourge (and god know who else). So this is
where the extreme pessimism comes from.
"Sounds as if they aren't making a distinction between art and other kinds
of intellectual experience. I wonder if they grant art any conceptual,
functional independence."
I'm not clear on whether they consider the myth of Odysseus or De Sade's Jul
iette (which gets a chapter of its own) functionally independent beyond their
roles as allegories about enlightenement. But it's true that Adorno granted
precious little art any conceptual, functional independence. He adored Beethoven
but not on record. And not in most live contexts either. Forget jazz and all
popular music. He was a big supporter of Schoenberg and the twelve tone system.
But he was prickly about some individual Schoenberg works as well. I'm not
sure he ever prasied a film, certainly no Hollywood product at the time of his
exile. He's most famous for his "no poetry after Auschwitz" bit but wound up
pumping at least one post-Auschwitz poet (I forget who exactly but I have the
name written down somewhere if you want to know). I mean, after all, this is a
guy who ripped on slippers!
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10850
From:
Date: Thu Jun 10, 2004 11:18pm
Subject: Not meaning to mean
In using the phrase "not meaning to mean," I meant (ah! the contradictions!)
a work that does not primarily lend itself to interpretation. In music, it
would be a song (or, perhaps more accurately, a track) that is meant (but is it a
contradiction, after all?) to be danced to. Since that doesn't exactly apply
to film (although Warhol films in the Exploding Plastic Inevitable might
count), I would focus on the so-called body genres for films that don't mean to
mean, films that elicit a bodily response. So that would be melodrama (crying),
pornography (fucking, masturbating), horror (covering the eyes, jumping out of
the seat), musicals (singing, maybe dancing, certainly toe tapping). I suppose
we could fit the dreaded action film in here but, as I stated in a previous
post, it seems as if they do the moving for us. And no doubt, some
avant-garde/experimental films work as body genres for the ways they reorganize our
perception. The Flicker, of course. Warhol again, most definitely. And, right Bill,
La Region Centrale - your eyes make those Xs mimic the camera movement you've
just seen.
But palming off the avant-garde angle and wanting to get away from a
mind/body dualism, I would say that another way a film can not mean to mean is how it
reassures (thanx Simon Frith) the viewer more than it upholds the director as
a genius or even the author. No matter how tactile or perception-screwing,
say, La Region Centrale is, it upholds the mastery of Michael Snow at the end of
the day. By contrast, Romy and Michele's High School Reunion reassures me of
my worthiness despite the fact that I couldn't even afford to go to my high
school reunion and still barely have a pot to piss in several years after that.
But even after seeing the film 30 or 40 times, I still don't know who the
director is (although it may uphold the mastery of Mira Sorvino and, especially,
Lisa Kudrow).
And just to be 100% clear, because the musical, for instance, is a body genre
or Romy and Michele reassures me, that doesn't mean (!) that these films mean
nothing. They just mean in a different way than films that beg to be
interereted and/or uphold the director as the genius author.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10851
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 4:31am
Subject: Re: Re: Zach Attack/Sallitt Answer/Enlightenment
> "I wonder where these dudes are really, secretly coming from."
>
> Well, Dan, at the very least, I can tell you that Adorno was a German Jew who
> got out of Nazi Germany early (1934). His exile was, at best, bewildering for
> him (as it was for countless others, e.g. Kracauer most definitely). Plus,
> not long before co-writing Dialectic of Enlightenment, he had lost his friend
> Walter Benjamin in 1940 to the Nazi scourge (and god know who else). So this is
> where the extreme pessimism comes from.
Pessimism wasn't the aspect of these ideas that I find baffling. I
guess I was wondering whether Adorno and Horkheimer were some kind of
extreme idealists. In other words: having (accurately, I think)
identified pleasure as being incompatible with an awareness of
suffering, did they then denounce pleasure? Having identified
edification as leading to acts of figurative or literal capitalism, did
they then denounce edification? Or were they not quite so hard-ass?
Like, maybe they contented themselves with pointing out these lose-lose
situations (pleasurelessness or lack of social awareness;
unenlightenment or capitalism) with some awareness of the difficulties
of moving in either direction? - Dan
10852
From:
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 0:52am
Subject: Sinyard's Jack Clayton
I wanted to put a quick plug in for a book from 2000, "Jack Clayton," by Neil
Sinyard, published by Manchester University Press as part of their British
Film Makers series. Bilge Ebiri, a fellow Clayton fan, first recommended it to
me. It is unquestionably the finest and most thorough work yet written on
this neglected filmmaker. Even if Sinyard undersells Clayton's mise-en-scene at
times (he's more apt to talk about thematic continuity throughout Clayton's
body of work), this is still a huge step forward in terms of an auteurist
reappraisal of this director. That reappraisal seems to be tentatively underway,
incidentally. The sympathetic entry on Clayton in the most recent St. James
Film Directors Encyclopedia is by none other than Raymond Durgnat.
Peter
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10853
From:
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 1:08am
Subject: Re: Re: Welles and Conrad (Peter)...+ Dreyer and Drums
Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote:
>I enjoyed the way he grouped his chapters around motifs in Welles'
>work like Quixote--a good idea that no one else to my knowledge has
>explored.
I liked this device a lot too. I missed Naremore's review of the book - I'd
be fascinated by what he has to say on it, so I'll have to track down that
issue of Film Quarterly.
On the subject of Welles, I have just read this afternoon the two staggering,
beautifully written autobiographical fragments he published in Paris Vogue in
1982: "My Father Wore Black Spats" and "A Brief Career as a Musical Prodigy."
Although Simon Callow casts doubt on the factual basis of a number of things
Welles writes about in these pieces, they are so evocative, personal, and,
I'd wager, based in a larger 'truth' (if not precise 'facts') that they seem
crucial, even indispensable Wellesian texts. (And, as Callow suggests, they have
the uncanny ability of evoking scenes from a lost Welles movie - I can
envision in my mind how he would shoot the episodes described in "A Brief
Career...") Do we know how much further work Welles did on his memoirs? And (the big
question) will any other chapters or fragments ever see the light of day?
Welles had his priorities as far as his career went and, given what an
astounding legacy of finished and unfinished films he left us, I'm not going to
argue with them - but I find him to be such a gifted writer that I wish he would
have been able to complete a memoir or novel(s).
Peter
10854
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 6:12am
Subject: Re: Horkheimer/Adorno on movies, pleasure, edification
I dislike THE GREY ZONE outright. The
> application of horror-movie style elements to the Holocaust seemed
to me
> a super-bad idea: horror tropes are designed to give pleasure.
A horror movie set in a concentration camp? Be still my beating heart!
10855
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 6:22am
Subject: Re: Not meaning to mean
By contrast, Romy and Michele's High School Reunion reassures me of
> my worthiness despite the fact that I couldn't even afford to go to
my high
> school reunion and still barely have a pot to piss in several years
after that.
> But even after seeing the film 30 or 40 times, I still don't know
who the
> director is (although it may uphold the mastery of Mira Sorvino
and, especially,
> Lisa Kudrow).
David Mirkin is a tv hotshot who lives not far from the Sam
Fuller "shack" on Woodrow Wilson. So there goes your Film By Nobody.
I love it too, by the way.
I'll think about those two possible definitions. Thanks!
10856
From: Noel Vera
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 6:26am
Subject: Re: Digest Number 607
>And the kid who killed Versace went on a three-month
spree
Andrew Cunanan, a, I'm embarrassed to say, Filipino
American. I know a Filipino filmmaker who wanted to do
his life, but was beaten to the punch by Menahem
Golan.
I remember it was implied that Norman Bates was a
serial killer--the psychiatrist towards the end of the
film suggested that the bodies of other women can be
found in the surrounding swamp.
__________________________________
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10857
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 6:27am
Subject: Re: Welles and Conrad (Peter)...+ Dreyer and Drums
>
> Welles had his priorities as far as his career went and, given what
an
> astounding legacy of finished and unfinished films he left us, I'm
not going to
> argue with them - but I find him to be such a gifted writer that I
wish he would
> have been able to complete a memoir or novel(s).
>
> Peter
As told to me by Oja, he was going to make Lear and retire to the
house they built in then-Yougoslavia to write his memoirs. But Lear
didn't happen, the retirement didn't happen, Welles died and Oja now
lives there without him, doing her sculpture.
10858
From:
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 2:28am
Subject: Re: Re: Zach Attack/Sallitt Answer/Enlightenment
Yes, extreme, hard-ass, all that. Despite very occasional bouts of
chirpiness, that totalizing rhetoric is their legacy. Again, they say that "social
freedom is inspearable from enlightened thought." But there's little in their work
that upholds edification much less pleasure. So while they don't denounce
edification outright, they posit edification as something impossible to attain in
a capitalist society. As for pleasure, well, they're hardly alone in
denouncing it. The second point of Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" is
called "Destruction of Pleasure as a Radical Weapon" under which she writes:
"It is said that analysing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it. That is the
intention of this article."
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10859
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 6:37am
Subject: Re: Zach Attack/Sallitt Answer/Enlightenment
> "It is said that analysing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it. That
is the
> intention of this article."
Cold!
10860
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 6:35am
Subject: Re: Digest Number 607
> Andrew Cunanan, a, I'm embarrassed to say, Filipino
> American.
He was embarrassed to say it too - he told everyone he was Jewish.
Gary Indiana's portrayal is incredibly sensitive and empathetic.
10861
From: George Robinson
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 9:21am
Subject: Re: Re: Bad News at the BFI
Don't you know about those?
They were painted in the wrong aspect ratio; the contract called for
SuperCineramaScope-o-Vision,
which is a 10:1 process (looks like a ticker tape) and the Public Works and
Caves Commission
of Lascaux township got the damned thing whittled down.
g
Our talk of justice is empty until the
largest battleship has foundered on the
forehead of a drowned man.
--Paul Celan
----- Original Message -----
From: "hotlove666"
To:
Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2004 4:31 AM
Subject: [a_film_by] Re: Bad News at the BFI
>
> >
> > There really is no such thing as an art form that some bureaucratic
> moron
> > can't screw up.
> >
> > George Robinson
>
> How about the Lascaux cave paintings?
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
10862
From: Craig Keller
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 4:09pm
Subject: the temple walls at Angkor Wat
On Wednesday, June 9, 2004, at 04:20 PM, David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
> And in "In the Mood For Love" we NEVER get to hear
> what he whispers into the temple walls of Angkor Wat.
Am I correct in taking this final sequence to suggest that, following
the intertitle which tells us '63 Hong Kong was an era that's over and
gone forever, Tony Leung's time spent abroad on behalf of his newspaper
has clued him in to the oncoming socio-political turmoils vis-à-vis the
formation and soon-to-be uprisings of the Khmer Rouge -- and that what
we once would have taken as the whispering of his "secrets" about his
time with Maggie Cheung, are now very possibly/probably "secrets" of a
different nature entirely? Pre-Khmer Cambodia, and most definitely
Maggie (now single with child) relegated to the past?
Also, what role precisely did De Gaulle and his government play in the
Khmer Rouge insurgencies? Especially with regard to the "Marxist
guerrillas" being "French educated/indoctrinated"?
craig.
10863
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 4:29pm
Subject: Re: the temple walls at Angkor Wat
--- Craig Keller wrote:
>
> Am I correct in taking this final sequence to
> suggest that, following
> the intertitle which tells us '63 Hong Kong was an
> era that's over and
> gone forever, Tony Leung's time spent abroad on
> behalf of his newspaper
> has clued him in to the oncoming socio-political
> turmoils vis-à-vis the
> formation and soon-to-be uprisings of the Khmer
> Rouge -- and that what
> we once would have taken as the whispering of his
> "secrets" about his
> time with Maggie Cheung, are now very
> possibly/probably "secrets" of a
> different nature entirely? Pre-Khmer Cambodia, and
> most definitely
> Maggie (now single with child) relegated to the
> past?
>
I think that's stretching things a bit.
__________________________________
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10864
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 4:52pm
Subject: Yvonne Rainer
> Hal Hartley, Yvonne
>>Rainer, and
>>Alfred Guzetti were visiting lecturers in 2003/04
>>teaching
>>film/video production.
>
> Yvonne's a teriffic filmmaker.
Would you care to recommend any individual films? (There's a Rainer
retro underway at Anthology Film Archives.) I see that Peter Wollen
ten-bested JOURNEYS FROM BERLIN in the last Sight & Sound poll; and that
Harvard list that Paul recently posted opts for THE MAN WHO ENVIED
WOMEN. - Dan
10865
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 4:58pm
Subject: The Grey Zone
> I dislike THE GREY ZONE outright. The
>>application of horror-movie style elements to the Holocaust seemed
> to me
>>a super-bad idea: horror tropes are designed to give pleasure.
>
> A horror movie set in a concentration camp? Be still my beating heart!
Well, you can't really call it a horror movie. Maybe I should have
talked about German Expressionism instead of horror. - Dan
10866
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 5:01pm
Subject: Re: Re: Zach Attack/Sallitt Answer/Enlightenment
> As for pleasure, well, they're hardly alone in
> denouncing it. The second point of Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" is
> called "Destruction of Pleasure as a Radical Weapon" under which she writes:
> "It is said that analysing pleasure, or beauty, destroys it. That is the
> intention of this article."
Nothing about this discussion of pleasure restricts it to the realm of
art. When the Adornos/Horkheimers/Mulveys go home in the evening, do
they skritch their cats and give backrubs to their significant others?
Or do they refrain in order to keep everyone focused? Rhetorical
questions, I guess - I think I get the general thrust of the argument.
Thanks for the edification/enlightenment! - Dan
10867
From: Fred Camper
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 5:10pm
Subject: Re: Yvonne Rainer
Dan Sallitt wrote:
>>.
>>
>>
>>Yvonne's a teriffic filmmaker.
>>
>>
>
>Would you care to recommend any individual films?
>
The KEY one, and I think this is especially true for auteurists who love
melodrama as opposed to deconstructivists for whom Godard is a bit
old-fashioned, is "Film About a Woman Who...." A deeply personal film
about rejection and a suicide attempt (inspired, I believe, by an
incident in her own life), it's both incredibly emotional and a film
that uses titles and spoken texts to decenter the autobiographical self
in a way that points the way to the "theory" underpinning her later work
but also illuminates the pathos of a self that defines herself in terms
of others, that is, men.
The floating titles and text and fragmented images all create something
quite moving, I think, and "getting" this film is a key to seeing the
deeply emotional subtexts of films like "The Man Who Loved Women." The
emotional subtext is clearer in "Journeys From Berlin/1971," my other
favorite.
If there are defenders of "MURDER & murder" I'd like to hear from them.
A suggestion, especially for those of us who have been left in the dust
by the number of posts here: please, when you change the subject line,
indicate the previous one: "Yvonne Rainer (was: Guzetti)" etc. Using the
search function to read prior posts, I can confirm that Petric is
retired; he still lives in Cambridge, though.
- Fred C.
10868
From:
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 1:36pm
Subject: Re: Re: Zach Attack/Sallitt Answer/Enlightenment
In a message dated 6/11/04 12:21:06 PM, sallitt@p... writes:
> When the Adornos/Horkheimers/Mulveys go home in the evening, do
> they skritch their cats and give backrubs to their significant others?
> Or do they refrain in order to keep everyone focused?
>
Well, as I said earlier, Adorno did rip on slippers in Minima Moralia. But I
know Mulvey has longed to distance herself from "Visual Pleasure" for some
time now. She definitely has a sense of humor about it as B Ruby Rich's Chick
Flicks can attest to.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
10869
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 5:42pm
Subject: Re: Zach Attack/Sallitt Answer/Enlightenment
I know Mulvey has longed to distance herself from "Visual
Pleasure" for some
> time now. She definitely has a sense of humor about it as B
Ruby Rich's Chick
> Flicks can attest to.
>
> Kevin John
She was pretty young when she wrote it, and a lot of us were like
that then. I still think it's great - particularly the opening two-liner.
The old anti-intellectual saw about analysis killing pleasure was
very much alive, and she disposes of it elegantly. I've never seen
any of her film work - is it good? Does it give pleasure?
10870
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 5:45pm
Subject: Re: Re: Zach Attack/Sallitt Answer/Enlightenment
--- hotlove666 wrote:
> I've never seen
> any of her film work - is it good? Does it give
> pleasure?
>
>
No and no.
__________________________________
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10871
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 7:00pm
Subject: Son of "Product Placement"
Saw "The Terminal" last night. I'd rank it as
Spielberg's second-worst film -- "Alway" being the
champ on that score.
Tom Hanks as Adorable Foreign Guy with Funny Accent
(think of Robin Williams on Quaaludes) stuck in JFK
airport because war has broken out in his country and
it no longer exists as an internationally recognized
entity. He can't leae the place, and he can't fly back
home. Smart and resouceful he learns english by
reading at "Booksmart" and "Borders," eats at "Burger
King" and swans anound any number of strategically
placed product tie-ins -- a simple matter as an
ariport terminal is one big eat-o-rama.
Naturally he becomes the airport's all-purpose
Mr.Fixit and Everybody's Friend.
Liberal Guilt Alert: In one shot a book with Noam
Chomsky's picture on the cover is clearly visible
screen left.
Hanks is OK as might be expected, but the character is
abou as deep as a bidbath. Catherine Zeta-Jones (as
the stewardess he woos) is adorableness itself.
Stanley Tucci is annoying as the sort-of-villain
airport security chief.
Diego Luna of "Y Tu Mama Tambien" fame pops up as a
airport employee given to waylaying foodstuffs and
setting up card games. But Spielberg being Spielberg
he has this beauty fully clothed at all times.
Look forward to Jonathan Rosenbaum detailing what a
masterpiece Tati could have made out of this material.
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10872
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 7:16pm
Subject: Re: Son of "Product Placement"
It's a true story, by the way. Phil and Hadrian of Cinefile were
going to Paris to film the guy - I guess he's still there, or was at
the time. Oh well, the Black September Massacre will give him
his edge back.
10873
From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 9:47pm
Subject: Re: Son of "Product Placement"
Actually, a curious, quasiexperimental film about the real guy at
Charles de Gaulle WAS made. I can't recall the title or director, but
I saw it at the Rotterdam Film Festival and found it interesting at
the time (at least five or six years ago, probably more).
I saw the Spielberg myself last night, and while I disn't care for it
either--and it evaporates alongside the two masterpieces I saw today
(Linklater's BEFORE SUNSET, which I like even more than BEFORE
SUNRISE, and Ray's BITTER VICTORY, which I'm writing about the Reader
next week)--I thought it had its moments as a curiosity (a curiosity,
I should add, that gets progressively phonier as it continues). A
couple of friends thought it would be in Tati territory, but I'd say
it starts out as a lame entry in Chaplinesque pathos (made
interesting only by Spielberg's effort to make an almost silent film
for long stretches) that eventually devolves into fake populism of
the 40s and 50s--an unholy mixture of Capracorn and MR. ROBERTS (with
Stanley Tucci in the Cagney role and Hanks, natch, in the Fonda
part). Hanks himself I found positively repugnant in a way he's never
been before. The whole thing is conceived as a fairy tale because
Spielberg clearly isn't interested in imagining what a real person in
a real airport would have to cope with....I must confess that I was
charmed by the guest star appearance of Benny Golson at the end, but
then SS had to spoil it all by not giving us a chance to hear the man
play more than about three bars.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> It's a true story, by the way. Phil and Hadrian of Cinefile were
> going to Paris to film the guy - I guess he's still there, or was
at
> the time. Oh well, the Black September Massacre will give him
> his edge back.
10874
From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 10:01pm
Subject: Re: Welles and Conrad (Peter)...+ Dreyer and Drums
Do we know how much further work Welles did on his memoirs? And (the
big
> question) will any other chapters or fragments ever see the light
of day?
>
> Welles had his priorities as far as his career went and, given what
an
> astounding legacy of finished and unfinished films he left us, I'm
not going to
> argue with them - but I find him to be such a gifted writer that I
wish he would
> have been able to complete a memoir or novel(s).
>
> Peter
Some responses: I'm pretty sure that these two fragments are all that
Welles wrote of his memoirs--or at least all that he saw fit to keep
and publish. And Higham's second Welles bio goes into even greater
detail about how almost everything in these fragments is untrue. But
you should know that (a) an excellent collection of Welles' writing
was put together years ago for University of California Press by Sid
Gottleib, editor of HITCHCOCK ON HITCHCOCK, with the idea of it being
a WELLES ON WELLES: all his major articles, newspaper columns, and, I
believe, even the short story he once wrote for ELLERY QUEEN'S
MYSTERY MAGAZINE. But Beatrice via Thomas White insisted not only on
most of the proceeds but full editorial control, which tabled the
whole project. However, (b) a few months ago Sid, whom I haven't
heard from in years, left me a voicemail message when I was out of
town, saying that we had to get caught up, that in fact the problems
with Beatrice have gone away and the only reason why the book hadn't
come out was his own inertia (or something along those lines). I
would have called him back right away but he said he'd call back
again soon and didn't leave me his current phone number (OR call back
again). Anyone in this group (Bill maybe?) in touch with him these
days, or who might know anything more about this?
BTW, I was disappointed by Bogdanovich's version of ONE MAN BAND when
I belatedly managed to catch up with it a few nights ago. (I hadn't
even realized it had aired!) Typically, he referred to the TOUCH OF
EVIL re-edit as a "director's cut"--I guess because he figures the
mass public couldn't care less about these fine distinctions. (So why
not muddy the waters all over again?...)
Jonathan
10875
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 10:01pm
Subject: Re: Re: Son of "Product Placement"
--- Jonathan Rosenbaum and
Ray's BITTER VICTORY, which I'm writing
> about the Reader
> next week)
I eagerly await you piece on that one. It was the Ray
that most intrigued me when I began to seriously
consider Ray as an auteur. Godard was crazy about it.
But my feelings about Ray have changed over time, and
very recently quite a lot as I've gotten to know Gavin
Lambert (who wrote the screenplay o "Bitter Victory"
and was involved with Ray VERY personally) rather
well.
--I thought it had its moments as a
> curiosity (a curiosity,
> I should add, that gets progressively phonier as it
> continues).
Well one doesn't go to Spielberg with expectations of
stark realism -- even in "Schindler's List" He
stylizes everything, all the time.
A
> couple of friends thought it would be in Tati
> territory, but I'd say
> it starts out as a lame entry in Chaplinesque pathos
> (made
> interesting only by Spielberg's effort to make an
> almost silent film
> for long stretches) that eventually devolves into
> fake populism of
> the 40s and 50s--an unholy mixture of Capracorn and
> MR. ROBERTS (with
> Stanley Tucci in the Cagney role and Hanks, natch,
> in the Fonda
> part).
That's where it really fell down for me. Speilberg's a
popular entertainer but he's got a wildly destructive
streak that bursts through every so often. Quite
clearly in "1941" (his "Party Girl") and the opening
musical number of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of
Doom" (but not, goodness knows, the rest of the film)
and certainly in "A.I." which is his masterpiece.
I do wish he'd direct a musical. From what I hear
"Bounce" might be right up his alley in this regard.
But the Sondheim I long to see somebody tackle on
screen is "Merrily We Roll Along."
I wish Alain Resnais were up to it.
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10876
From: Travis Miles
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 10:38pm
Subject: Re: Mulvey's Films (was: Zach Attack/Sallitt)
On the contrary, there's much to enjoy in Riddles of the Sphinx, Amy and
Crystal Gazing. Riddles of the Sphinx is a crazy melange of Le Gai Savoir,
Sirk by way of Sander, and Peter Gidal.
Crystal Gazing is one of the most interesting tangential documents of the
London postpunk scene, and would most likely be enormously popular if it had
a chance of being screened in Brooklyn.
On 6/11/04 1:45 PM, "David Ehrenstein" wrote:
>
> --- hotlove666 wrote:
>
>> I've never seen
>> any of her film work - is it good? Does it give
>> pleasure?
>>
>>
> No and no.
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
> http://messenger.yahoo.com/
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
10877
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 10:54pm
Subject: Subject lines (was: Yvonne Rainer)
> A suggestion, especially for those of us who have been left in the dust
> by the number of posts here: please, when you change the subject line,
> indicate the previous one: "Yvonne Rainer (was: Guzetti)" etc.
Would you prefer fewer changes? I've been changing the subject lines
when the subject changes because I thought that was the group's
preference. - Dan
10878
From: Fred Camper
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 10:59pm
Subject: Re: Mulvey's Films (was: Zach Attack/Sallitt)
I agree more with David than with Travis here, but shouldn't we be clear
that all the titles so far mentioned are co-directed by Mulvey and Peter
Wollen? We don't want to have the male erased from film history, now, do we?
- Fred C.
10879
From: Fred Camper
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 11:02pm
Subject: Re: Subject lines (was: Yvonne Rainer)
Dan, I think changing the subject lines is good, and people should do it
when the subject changes. I've only read some of the
Adrono/Enlightenment posts, and might not have opened yours if you
hadn't changed the subject. I'm just saying to include in parentheses
the previous subject, so that someone who wants to see the post(s)
you're replying to and maybe even quoting won't have to use the "search"
feature of Yahoo groups.
- Fred C.
Dan Sallitt wrote:
>Would you prefer fewer changes? I've been changing the subject lines
>when the subject changes because I thought that was the group's
>preference. - Dan
>
>
>
10880
From:
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 7:55pm
Subject: Re: Re: Actressess
Bill Krohn wrote:
>Wghen I interviewed him about I Was a Male War Bride as a neglected
>masterpiece, he argued that women have lost out big time since the
>40s, particularly beginning in the 60s.
I'd love to know what he said to you about this. When I interviewed him, we
touched on the presentation of women in his own work (and how it's been
influenced by his study of Robert Graves' works), though not specifically the
decline of women's roles since the 40s. But he's struggled against this trend: he
regularly gives actresses wonderful roles and directs them to wonderful
performances. And, in general, even as far back as "Daisy Miller" (which, as he
pointed out to me, he made prior to getting into Graves) there is a great sympathy
towards women in his work.
Peter
10881
From:
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 7:55pm
Subject: Re: Re: Welles and Conrad (Peter)...+ Dreyer and Drums
Bill Krohn wrote:
>As told to me by Oja, he was going to make Lear and retire to the
>house they built in then-Yougoslavia to write his memoirs. But Lear
>didn't happen, the retirement didn't happen, Welles died and Oja now
>lives there without him, doing her sculpture.
Somehow I never knew until just now that the house Oja lives in today is the
one she and Welles built for his retirement. A tragedy that this dream never
happened.
Jonathan, thanks for the information about Welles' memoirs. I can't really
complain that there isn't more of his autobiography because I find the two
published fragments to be so brilliant (even if portions of them are, in Callow's
words, "almost entirely imaginary.") I certainly hope that the Gottleib
collection comes out soon. As I wrote to you recently, I hope that he includes the
brief but very evocative article Welles wrote about his friend Abb Dickson,
published in Genii Magazine. The piece is a tribute to Dickson's gifts as a
magician, but predictably Welles manages to fit in all sorts of general insights
into magic and why he loves the form. I quote two excerpts from it in my
upcoming interview with Abb Dickson, actually.
Peter
10882
From:
Date: Fri Jun 11, 2004 8:05pm
Subject: Re: Re: Son of "Product Placement"
David Ehrenstein wrote:
>I wish Alain Resnais were up to it.
David, I noticed that "Pas sur la bouche" was on your new Top 10 of All-Time
at Senses of Cinema. Will this film ever have a commercial release in the
U.S.?!?
frustrated,
Peter
10883
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 0:10am
Subject: Re: Re: Son of "Product Placement"
I have no idea.
The state of foreign-language film distribution in
this country is Beyond Dire.
I'm still waiting for someone to pick up Rivette's
"The Story of Marie and Julien."
--- ptonguette@a... wrote:
> David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
> >I wish Alain Resnais were up to it.
>
> David, I noticed that "Pas sur la bouche" was on
> your new Top 10 of All-Time
> at Senses of Cinema. Will this film ever have a
> commercial release in the
> U.S.?!?
>
> frustrated,
> Peter
>
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10884
From: Robert Keser
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 2:31am
Subject: Resnais/No Resnais (was: Son of "Product Placement")
I would much, much, much rather see it on the big screen, but
impatient Resnaisphiles should note that Amazon.fr is touting the
Region 2 release of Pas sur la bouche (as well as Smoking/No Smoking)
on June 23rd. The subtitle situation is described as "partiel" which
could mean (I suppose) no subtitles on the extra material or maybe no
subtitles on the songs (!) Of course, they also neglect to specify
which language is used in the subtitles.
--Robert Keser
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
> >I wish Alain Resnais were up to it.
>
> David, I noticed that "Pas sur la bouche" was on your new Top 10 of
All-Time
> at Senses of Cinema. Will this film ever have a commercial release
in the
> U.S.?!?
>
> frustrated,
> Peter
10885
From: Robert Keser
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 2:50am
Subject: Better Bitter Victory
Here's a textual question: some of us saw Bitter Victory today in an
archival version intégrale that featured twenty minutes of
material not in the usual copies. Somehow Bitter Victory had eluded
me in the past, so it was my first viewing, but I wonder if anyone
could describe which scenes comprise these added twenty minutes?
Or to put it another way, which scenes are cut from traditional
prints? I'm guessing that some of the extended skulking and
lurking in the shadows before the attack on the Nazi headquarters
got trimmed, and maybe one of Curt Jurgens' visits to the commander.
--Robert Keser
10886
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 4:13am
Subject: Re: Better Bitter Victory
> Here's a textual question: some of us saw Bitter Victory today in an
> archival version intégrale that featured twenty minutes of
> material not in the usual copies. Somehow Bitter Victory had eluded
> me in the past, so it was my first viewing, but I wonder if anyone
> could describe which scenes comprise these added twenty minutes?
> Or to put it another way, which scenes are cut from traditional
> prints? I'm guessing that some of the extended skulking and
> lurking in the shadows before the attack on the Nazi headquarters
> got trimmed, and maybe one of Curt Jurgens' visits to the commander.
I can't give you a rundown, but one of the important scenes that is
missing from the 82-minute American version is the one where Burton is
looking over the 10th-century structure: "Too modern for me." But
there's quite a lot of the skulking in the shadows before the attack -
that section may not have been cut much.
Wish I could love this film, but I've never managed to. - Dan
10887
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 4:52am
Subject: Re: Yvonne Rainer
> The KEY one, and I think this is especially true for auteurists who love
> melodrama as opposed to deconstructivists for whom Godard is a bit
> old-fashioned, is "Film About a Woman Who...." A deeply personal film
> about rejection and a suicide attempt (inspired, I believe, by an
> incident in her own life), it's both incredibly emotional and a film
> that uses titles and spoken texts to decenter the autobiographical self
> in a way that points the way to the "theory" underpinning her later work
> but also illuminates the pathos of a self that defines herself in terms
> of others, that is, men.
I enjoyed this film. Is there any source that gives the cast members?
I can't find one on the net. - Dan
10888
From: Robert Keser
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 5:30am
Subject: Re: Better Bitter Victory
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > Here's a textual question: some of us saw Bitter Victory today in
an
> > archival version intégrale that featured twenty minutes of
> > material not in the usual copies. Somehow Bitter Victory had
eluded
> > me in the past, so it was my first viewing, but I wonder if
anyone
> > could describe which scenes comprise these added twenty minutes?
> > Or to put it another way, which scenes are cut from traditional
> > prints? I'm guessing that some of the extended skulking and
> > lurking in the shadows before the attack on the Nazi headquarters
> > got trimmed, and maybe one of Curt Jurgens' visits to the
commander.
>
> I can't give you a rundown, but one of the important scenes that is
> missing from the 82-minute American version is the one where Burton
>is looking over the 10th-century structure: "Too modern for me."
That's a shame: I enjoyed that moment, though it's predictable (I
guess) that brushstrokes of character like that would be considered
expendable. (There's a matching earlier bit too where Burton's
character explains his previous trips to Libya as an archeologist,
which might also have been cut).
But
> there's quite a lot of the skulking in the shadows before the
>attack - that section may not have been cut much.
Then there's the business about sacrificing the camel to save Burton.
This sequence struck me as underdeveloped, tentative somehow, not
capitalizing fully on the dramatic gesture involved.
> Wish I could love this film, but I've never managed to.
It's seriously bleak, and they talk rather too much and too
explicitly about cowardice, but it has a hundred times the conviction
of Hot Blood!
--Robert Keser
10889
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 5:51am
Subject: Re: Welles and Conrad (Peter)...+ Dreyer and Drums
Anyone in this group (Bill maybe?) in touch with him these
> days, or who might know anything more about this?
Spgottlieb@a....
10890
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 6:02am
Subject: Bitter Victor (Was:Son of "Product Placement")
It was the Ray
> that most intrigued me when I began to seriously
> consider Ray as an auteur. Godard was crazy about it.
> But my feelings about Ray have changed over time, and
> very recently quite a lot as I've gotten to know Gavin
> Lambert (who wrote the screenplay o "Bitter Victory"
> and was involved with Ray VERY personally) rather
> well.
I heard Lambert speak before a screening Of Bitter Victory at
Melnitz, and it's the first time I have ever downgraded a film after
hearing production stories. Basically, Ray lost control when he went
over schedule in the desert and had to come back one or two weeks
earlier than he wanted. The film was finished on sets, including all
the indoor stuff at the beginning, and it's clear that he had lost
heart -- those parts are wooden, and so are Roman (who previously
sank every scene she was in in Strangers on a Train) and Jurgens, who
was not Ray's choice, for several reasons (wrong nationality, obvious
villain, bad actor).
So the film is half a loaf: the location scenes shot first
(including, I believe, the mysterious doings in the village where
they carry out their mission) live up to Godard's hyperbolic non-
description (I quoted Burton's last line myself two days ago on this
very site!), and the rest is dead weight.
The first time I saw Bitter Victory was in a church in Greenwich
Village. While John Hughes and I went out to get stoned, Susan Ray
took our seats. Nick was there at the beginning just to "check the
print" -- he didn't stay to talk about it. I guess the drug got me
through the early indoor stuff, and what follows IS a drug all by
itself.
10891
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 6:08am
Subject: Re: Resnais/No Resnais (was: Son of "Product Placement")
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Keser" wrote:
The subtitle situation is described as "partiel" which
> could mean (I suppose) no subtitles on the extra material or maybe
no
> subtitles on the songs (!) Of course, they also neglect to specify
> which language is used in the subtitles.
Well if it's English, you're better shutting them off. Someone
decided to do rhyming Englsih subtitles which only approximate,
naturally, the original content, and they are maddeningly distracting.
10892
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 6:10am
Subject: Re: Resnais/No Resnais or PAL sur la Bouche (was: Son of "Product Placement")
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Keser" wrote:
> I would much, much, much rather see it on the big screen, but
> impatient Resnaisphiles should note that Amazon.fr is touting the
> Region 2 release of Pas sur la bouche (as well as Smoking/No Smoking)
> on June 23rd.
This offers me a perhaps unfair opportunity to inquire about something I've only recently realized I'd been in partial denial about.
In reading mastersofcinema/robert-bresson.com's reviews of New Yorker's apparently flawed DVDs of A Man Escaped and Lancelot du Lac (they are transfers from
PAL video, not film sources), I was reminded anew of the startling likelihood that *ALL* PAL DVDs (because of the discrepancy between 24fps and PAL's 25fps
frame-rate) run 4 percent fast -- not just when converted to NTSC (as I'd been letting myself believe), but when played on PAL systems in PAL regions, also.
I guess I'd read about this before, but lately I'd been content to imagine that my Apex multiregion player was causing the speed-up (as it seems to cause an
intermittent jerkiness of motion -- a separate issue, apparently -- which I've been assured would be absent from better multiregion players).
Here is the article: http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/robert-bresson.com/Words/On_PALspeedup.html
It provides side-by-side aural clips in which the Mozart C Minor Mass on the soundtrack of A Man Escaped becomes, on the DVD, the C Sharp Minor Mass. And it
points out that Bresson's visual rhythms are, of course, particularly compromised by the speed-up. Even if the semitone-higher pitch of voices (which I've
certainly noticed, and been irritated by, on imported DVDs) is lowered electronically (either in the transfer, or by a player with pitch control), the
visuals will remain speeded-up.
If this truly is the case (can anyone point to evidence that it's not?), why would anyone, anywhere, want to buy PAL DVDs? And what, if anything, have
filmmakers had to say about this? (Pas sur la bouche is after all a musical...)
Then again, perhaps it's unfair to chide Dan Talbot for transferring Bresson films (leaving aside the discs' other problems for the moment) at the same speed
at which French video audiences, after all, would see them.
At the very least, I'm wondering if this might mean I can safely stop salivating over all those PAL DVDs I can't afford to order...
10893
From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 6:17am
Subject: Re: Bitter Victor (Was:Son of "Product Placement")
> So the film is half a loaf: the location scenes shot first
> (including, I believe, the mysterious doings in the village where
> they carry out their mission) live up to Godard's hyperbolic non-
> description (I quoted Burton's last line myself two days ago on
this
> very site!), and the rest is dead weight.
Needless to say, I disagree--and so does or did Godard (who singled
out the editing of the scene with Jurgens, Roman, and Burton at the
beginning for praise). For whatever it's worth, Bernard E. explains
the reasons for Lambert's own disaffection with the interiors in his
biography....It's a uniquely troubled film, for sure, but that only
adds to all the multiple ambiguities. I'm also trying to argue that
it's been misread--or read too simply--because of the crazy casting,
which yields an overdetermined hero and overdetermined villain. In
fact--to cite Lambert again--both express different sides of Ray's
personality and both are skewered by the film. Try reading Jurgens
as the hero and Burton as the villain and you may start to see what
I mean. I think this is the Ray film that best dissects macho vanity
because it's ultimately an autocritique--and because I also think it
winds up morally equating bravery and cowardice on some level.
10894
From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 6:21am
Subject: Re: Resnais/No Resnais or PAL sur la Bouche (was: Son of "Product Placement")
>
> In reading mastersofcinema/robert-bresson.com's reviews of New
Yorker's apparently flawed DVDs of A Man Escaped and Lancelot du Lac
(they are transfers from PAL video, not film sources), I was
reminded anew of the startling likelihood that *ALL* PAL DVDs
(because of the discrepancy between 24fps and PAL's 25fps frame-
rate) run 4 percent fast -- not just when converted to NTSC (as I'd
been letting myself believe), but when played on PAL systems in PAL
regions, also.
to order...
I swear, Mehrnaz and I watched bits of both the Bressons on my
tristandard monitor with my multistandard DVD player and we could
see no ghosting whatsoever--and we looked very hard. And I haven't
see ghosting on the American Chaplin DVDs either...
10895
From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 7:31am
Subject: Re: Resnais/No Resnais or PAL sur la Bouche (was: Son of "Product Placement")
Jess wrote:
>If this truly is the case (can anyone point to evidence that it's
>not?), why would anyone, anywhere, want to buy PAL DVDs?
The speed-up (which is also the case when watching PAL in a
PAL-native country) can have a serious impact. Four percent, after
all, is significant. Any Hitchcock film, for instance, where the
exact pacing is precisely considered, is bound to be affected. Also
just about anyone of a contemplative cast, such as Tarkovsky, S. Ray,
etc.
So what does one do when the European DVD provides a notably better
visual in other respects than the American, as in the Apu trilogy?
The better mastering allows more resonance (Eisenstein's cinematic
fourth dimension, perhaps) to come through, while the speed-up throws
it off in another way.
--
- Joe Kaufman
10896
From: iangjohnston
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 0:02pm
Subject: Re: Resnais/No Resnais or PAL sur la Bouche (was: Son of "Product Placement")
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Joseph Kaufman wrote:
> Jess wrote:
>
> >If this truly is the case (can anyone point to evidence that it's
> >not?), why would anyone, anywhere, want to buy PAL DVDs?
>
> The speed-up (which is also the case when watching PAL in a
> PAL-native country) can have a serious impact. Four percent,
after
> all, is significant. Any Hitchcock film, for instance, where the
> exact pacing is precisely considered, is bound to be affected.
Also
> just about anyone of a contemplative cast, such as Tarkovsky, S.
Ray,
> etc.
>
> So what does one do when the European DVD provides a notably
better
> visual in other respects than the American, as in the Apu trilogy?
> The better mastering allows more resonance (Eisenstein's cinematic
> fourth dimension, perhaps) to come through, while the speed-up
throws
> it off in another way.
> --
>
> - Joe Kaufman
I've watched plenty of PAL DVDs and, to be honest, I've never been
conscious of any speed-up. (That includes films by Hitchcock,
Tarkovsky, and S. Ray.) I think that unless you're an amazingly
sensitive and perceptive viewer, it's a bit of a non-issue. After
all, video viewing in any form is a diminution of the original
cinema experience.
Ian
10897
From: iangjohnston
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 0:11pm
Subject: Re: Resnais/No Resnais (was: Son of "Product Placement")
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Keser"
wrote:
> I would much, much, much rather see it on the big screen, but
> impatient Resnaisphiles should note that Amazon.fr is touting the
> Region 2 release of Pas sur la bouche (as well as Smoking/No
Smoking)
> on June 23rd. The subtitle situation is described as "partiel"
which
> could mean (I suppose) no subtitles on the extra material or maybe
no
> subtitles on the songs (!) Of course, they also neglect to specify
> which language is used in the subtitles.
>
> --Robert Keser
Don't know about Pas sur la Bouche, but I understand that
the "partiel" subtitle situation with Smoking/No Smoking refers to
one of the extras, an hour programme with Alan Ayckbourn, presumably
speaking in English, subtitled in French.
Ian
10898
From: iangjohnston
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 0:34pm
Subject: Re: the temple walls at Angkor Wat
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- Craig Keller wrote:
>
> >
> > Am I correct in taking this final sequence to
> > suggest that, following
> > the intertitle which tells us '63 Hong Kong was an
> > era that's over and
> > gone forever, Tony Leung's time spent abroad on
> > behalf of his newspaper
> > has clued him in to the oncoming socio-political
> > turmoils vis-?vis the
> > formation and soon-to-be uprisings of the Khmer
> > Rouge -- and that what
> > we once would have taken as the whispering of his
> > "secrets" about his
> > time with Maggie Cheung, are now very
> > possibly/probably "secrets" of a
> > different nature entirely? Pre-Khmer Cambodia, and
> > most definitely
> > Maggie (now single with child) relegated to the
> > past?
> >
> I think that's stretching things a bit.
Particularly as Wong shot scenes of Tony Leung coincidentally
running into Maggie Cheung at Angkor Wat. The focus is definitely on
the "couple", rather than taking in a new political/historical
perspective.
Ian
10899
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 1:15pm
Subject: Re: Yvonne Rainer
Dan Sallitt wrote:
"I enjoyed this film. Is there any source that gives the cast members?
I can't find one on the net"
From "The Films of Yvonne Rainer," by Yvonne Rainer (Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989):
"With Dempster Leech, Shirley Soffer, John Erdman, Renfreu Neff
and James Barth, Epp Kotkas, Sarah Soffer, Yvonne Rainer, Tannis
Hugill,, Valda Setterfield"
The cinematographer is of course the superb Babette Mangolte.
This is a useful book with a couple of good essays, an interview, and
(the bulk of the book) scripts of her first five films.
- Fred C.
10900
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Jun 12, 2004 2:01pm
Subject: Bitter Victory (Was: Bitter Victor)
> those parts are wooden, and so are Roman (who previously
> sank every scene she was in in Strangers on a Train) and Jurgens, who
> was not Ray's choice, for several reasons (wrong nationality, obvious
> villain, bad actor).
I think Roman's acting is indeed too blatant, but what I like best about
the film is the actually the Jurgens character. Ray manages to convey a
childlike, uncertain quality in the man, which I find moving: he seems
so pitiable pretending even to be an adult, much less a military
commander. And his eyes show awareness: they're a child's eyes.
Burton's character is much more of a problem for me, both as written and
acted - there's some contrivance to the concept of the character, and
then a rather harsh judgmental quality, and then a swagger which I don't
think should be part of that character at all. - Dan
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