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12801
From: Adam Hart
Date: Tue Jul 20, 2004 8:31pm
Subject: Twilight Samurai
somebody mentioned yoji yamada's twilight samurai the other day in a
post, basically writing it off as your typical middle-of-the-road
import fare. it's actually pretty incredible the film fits that
miramax-model recipe - the ingredients include: cute children, a
chaste and slightly tragic romance, an overall tone of unspecified
nostalgia, an unnecessary framing device explicitly connecting the
story to the (near) present, vaguely liberal sensibilities,
unquestioning admiration for an almost superheroic parent…
but, it does a few things very well. it takes the samurai film out
of its quasi-mythic realm and into a very specific place and time
(like so many of the greatest westerns, this one is set at the very
end of its respective era - which here is supposedly quantifiable).
it concentrates heavily on class and shows how a low-ranking samurai
would have lived his daily life.
and while that's all well and good, the most interesting thing about
the film is that with this story of a samurai who refuses to go out
drinking with his coworkers, who has very little ambition to climb
the social/economic ladder, who prefers to spend time with his
family to advancing his career, and who loves and respects (and has
actual relationships with) women, especially his *daughters* - the
film offers us this narrated story in which the hero is practically
canonized for being the exact opposite of everything japanese
society values in its males, now or then.
i'm normally pretty wary of attempting cultural readings of non-
western films unless i'm very familiar with the country's cultural
and social traditions, but i'm surrounded by japan experts and they
all agree that the idea of a samurai, or a sarariman, having a
meaningful, loving relationship with his daughters is out of the
ordinary, to say the least.
if i'm wrong about this, please let me know. i just bring this up to
make a point about how removing a film from its original context
(that of its own culture, or whatever) and placing it in another
(international art house mediocrities) can obscure the most
interesting reasons to watch it in the first place. the sort of
marketing these films gets tries to make them all seem the same. so
they gloss over all but the most obvious, cliched cultural markers.
12802
From: Craig Keller
Date: Tue Jul 20, 2004 8:33pm
Subject: Widescreen Composition (was: UPPERCASE etc.)
>
> BTW I read somewhere that Spielberg (or maybe another one - maybe
> pure, vain and malicious gossip for my part) shot his movies keeping
> in mind the potential outcome of the pan&scan. Is that a common
> practice?
Yes indeed. Most Hollywood features shot in 1.85 are framed at once
for widescreen, and (via a small 4:3 box in the center of the monitor)
for 4:3 cropped TV playback. You barely ever see actual "pan and
scanning" occur these days, because of this fact. 4:3 framing has
permeated the business to such an extent in fact that, well, here's an
example: I was watching 'Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle' a few nights
ago, and at one point, all three of these "angels" come stepping
dramatically to the fore to show off the disguises they've just donned,
with each girl in a different location -- so the screen is divided into
three segments. Except the dimensions of all three portions were
perfectly equal in the 4:3 presentation -- meaning that if the entirety
of the frame's image were being viewed in the theater or on the 1.85
DVD, you'd see that the segment screen-left and the segment
screen-right were totally disproportionately large, compared to the
relatively narrow middle segment!!
4:3 Academy is such a nicer ratio anyway -- I'd prefer to frame for
that if I "had" to shoot a film in 1.85:1.
craig.
12803
From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Tue Jul 20, 2004 8:57pm
Subject: Re: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> --- jess_l_amortell wrote:
> (The
> > emotional, while obviously not sexual, character of
> > these scenes really seems extraordinary for the
> > time, with Van G.'s self-mutilation actually a
> > response to Gauguin's rejection -- IF I'm recalling
> > correctly.)
>
> Not at all. In fact it's alot less romantic than
> Thomas Mitchell's longing for Cary Grant in "Only
> Angels Have Wings" or the Clark Gable-Spencer Tracy
> menage in "Test Pilot." And leave us not forget
> Wendell Cory and John Hodaik in "Desert Fury."
In fact, on a promotional tour for the film in 1956 Kirk Douglas
upset MGM by telling the press that he felt Van Gogh was a repressed
homosexual. In his book, Minnelli claimed that his approach to
depicting the relationship between Van Gogh and Gaugin was that they
were "the original odd couple," a term that suggests more than
possible way of reading it: Neil Simon or something else, perhaps?
But Minnelli's description of his intentions in the ear cutting
sequence makes it clear that the self-inflected violence (for
Minnelli, at least) was based on Gaugin's rejection of Van Gogh.
Merely a close friendship between the two men? Or something more
intense within the mind of Van Gogh? (Quinn does not seem to be in on
the joke here, I might add, and keeps this element of Douglas's Van
Gogh at arm's length.) And James Naremore does discuss some of these
elements of repressed homosexuality in Lust for Life in his book on
Minnelli. But I would take this all a step further and argue that
Douglas deliberately plays his scenes with James Donald (as Theo) in
such a manner as to suggest that Van Gogh is also attracted to his
brother and that in Van Gogh's mind both Gaugin and Theo are linked
as unconscious love objects. I know this sounds like tired
psychoanalysis but it seems to me that this is the way that Douglas
is playing the role, as his own public comments would suggest. In a
fight with Gaugin, Douglas even makes a carefully telegraphed (to the
spectator) Freudian slip by calling Gaugin Theo instead of Paul and
the quickly corrects himself.
As far as the Communist element in relation to T&S, that David
Gerstner essay on the film I mentioned a couple of days ago goes into
this element extensively.
>
> Obviously, nobody would claim any of
> > this as a forerunner of the gay pride movement or
> > anything, but I wonder if it would be accurate to
> > see the Vincent of this episode as Minnelli's most
> > "out" character.
> >
>
> Uh no. That WOULD have been the case had a very
> important secondary character in "The Bad and the
> Beautiful" been played by a man instead of Elaine
> Stewart. I'm not the first one to mention this but it's fairly
> obvious that the scene in which Turner comes back to
> Douglas' house to celebrate and discovers him with
> somebody else (thereby precipitating that phenomenal
> car scen) only makes sense if it's a man.
Like Jaime, I'm also confused by this.
> __________________________________
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> Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
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12804
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jul 20, 2004 9:13pm
Subject: Re: Re: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
--- joe_mcelhaney wrote:
>
> Like Jaime, I'm also confused by this.
>
>
>
>
>
Really? I don't see why.
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12805
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Tue Jul 20, 2004 9:21pm
Subject: Re: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein wrote:
> (The
> > emotional, while obviously not sexual, character of
> > these scenes really seems extraordinary for the
> > time, with Van G.'s self-mutilation actually a
> > response to Gauguin's rejection -- IF I'm recalling
> > correctly.)
>
> Not at all. In fact it's alot less romantic than
> Thomas Mitchell's longing for Cary Grant in "Only
> Angels Have Wings" or the Clark Gable-Spencer Tracy
> menage in "Test Pilot." And leave us not forget
> Wendell Cory and John Hodaik in "Desert Fury."
>
Sure (I've always been tempted to add Leo Carillo in HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT, even if he doesn't slice off any appendages once his partner Charles Boyer meets Jean Arthur -- but this probably unreasonable reading has been sensibly dismissed before), but I was thinking of the Eisenhower Fifties. (There's also Plato in REBEL, I guess, although an adolescent crush would probably be written off as something else entirely.)
12806
From:
Date: Tue Jul 20, 2004 5:39pm
Subject: Re: Re: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
In a message dated 7/20/04 4:24:54 PM, cellar47@y... writes:
> Really? I don't see why.
>
Well, why do YOU think so? I'm confused person #3 in this matter. Why would
Turner brush off the fact that Douglas was sleeping with another woman? Where
in the film does she say or even suggest that it's okay for him to sleep with
another woman?
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
12807
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Tue Jul 20, 2004 10:15pm
Subject: Re: Twilight Samurai
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Adam Hart" wrote:
"it's actually pretty incredible the film fits that
miramax-model recipe - the ingredients include: cute children, a
chaste and slightly tragic romance, an overall tone of unspecified
nostalgia, an unnecessary framing device explicitly connecting the
story to the (near) present, vaguely liberal sensibilities,
unquestioning admiration for an almost superheroic parent…"
That descritption fits several of Yamada's movies, particularly the
Tora-san series. He worked out of Shochiku's Ofuna Studio (where Ozu
made his later films,) and specialized in "homu dorama" or in
standard English, home drama, a genre that embodies these qualities
par excellence. As for the "superheroic parent," there's a sub-genre
called "haha mono" or mother stories (the examplary film is
HAHA/MOTHER by Kinoshita.) I suppose TWILIGHT SAMURAI would be
a "chichi mono" or father story.
"but, it does a few things very well. it takes the samurai film out
of its quasi-mythic realm and into a very specific place and time
(like so many of the greatest westerns, this one is set at the very
end of its respective era - which here is supposedly quantifiable).
it concentrates heavily on class and shows how a low-ranking samurai
would have lived his daily life."
That was the Bakumatsu era (1852-1868,) the gradual disintegation of
the Bakufu or Shogunate culminating in the Meiji Restoration.
Probably the most well-known Bakumatsu jidai geki in the West is
YOJIMBO. Oshima's GOHATTO/TABOO also takes place during the
Bakamatsu era to name another relatively recent film. There are many
Japnese movies set during that time; stories about the Shinsengumi
are very popular. The current NHK taiga drama is telling the entire
Shinsengumi story from beginning to end. TWILIGHT SAMURAI may seem
exceptional because few Japanese movies are released in Western
countries, but especially since the 1960s bushido, giri and the whole
samurai ethos have been questioned or critcized by various filmmakers
(and recouperated by others.)
"and while that's all well and good, the most interesting thing
about the film is that with this story of a samurai who refuses to
go out drinking with his coworkers, who has very little ambition to
climb the social/economic ladder, who prefers to spend time with his
family to advancing his career, and who loves and respects (and has
actual relationships with) women, especially his *daughters* - the
film offers us this narrated story in which the hero is practically
canonized for being the exact opposite of everything japanese
society values in its males, now or then."
Again, this is a theme readily found in Japanese pop culture, from
manga to tv soap operas to novels and movies. Japanese society is
not as monolithic as it seems, "Nihon Jin Ron" (Japanese uniqueness
theory) not withstanding.
"i'm normally pretty wary of attempting cultural readings of non-
western films unless i'm very familiar with the country's cultural
and social traditions, but i'm surrounded by japan experts and they
all agree that the idea of a samurai, or a sarariman, having a
meaningful, loving relationship with his daughters is out of the
ordinary, to say the least."
It would be hard to research father-daughter relationships among the
samurai (not impossible; one would have to exam many documents such
as letters and diaries as well as popular art and literature and bear
in mind that samuari social strata underwent changes over time,) but
as for salarymen, it may not be as rare as it seems. I knew a few who
doted on their daughters (though that's only anecdotal evidence so
maybe they were exceptional after all.)
"if i'm wrong about this, please let me know. i just bring this up to
make a point about how removing a film from its original context
(that of its own culture, or whatever) and placing it in another
(international art house mediocrities) can obscure the most
interesting reasons to watch it in the first place."
But as a local art house trailer says, "eiga no kotoba wa sekaiteki"
the language of film is international. As far as Japan goes,
culturally determined aesthetic differences are more interesting to
some people than any anthropological distinctions, which seems to be
what you're suggesting here.
"the sort of marketing these films gets tries to make them all seem
the same. so they gloss over all but the most obvious, cliched
cultural markers."
I pretty much agree with you on what you say about marketing.
Unfortunately the golden days of Japanese film distribution in the US
has ended. In places like Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco and
Honolulu or wherever there was a sizeable Japnaese-American
population there were once theatres that showed Japanese movies
exclusively, and one could see Japanese movies at the local Buddhist
temple too. Is the Japan Foundation in NYC still showing
Japanese movies every Friday and Saturday?
Richard
12808
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jul 20, 2004 10:17pm
Subject: Re: Re: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
--- LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> Well, why do YOU think so? I'm confused person #3 in
> this matter. Why would
> Turner brush off the fact that Douglas was sleeping
> with another woman? Where
> in the film does she say or even suggest that it's
> okay for him to sleep with
> another woman?
>
>
>
No reason for her to "brush it off" but his speech
about "take a good look Georgia!" going on about how
much he laothes himself with Turner's eyes as wide as
saucers suggests more than ordinary betrayal. Several
others have commented on this -- I'm searching my
archives for notes.
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12809
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jul 20, 2004 11:12pm
Subject: Re: Re: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
--- jess_l_amortell wrote:
(There's
> also Plato in REBEL, I guess, although an adolescent
> crush would probably be written off as something
> else entirely.)
>
>
Plato in "Rebel" is DEFINITELY gay. Mark Rappaport has
written about this in a "Sense of Cinema" essay.
The give-away is the picture of Alad Ladd in Plato's
locker.
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12810
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Tue Jul 20, 2004 11:29pm
Subject: Re: Bad & Beautiful gay scenario
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
> No reason for her to "brush it off" but his speech
> about "take a good look Georgia!" going on about how
> much he laothes himself with Turner's eyes as wide as
> saucers suggests more than ordinary betrayal. Several
> others have commented on this -- I'm searching my
> archives for notes.
I'm genuinely interested in hearing about this.
Thing is, David, you made it clear that a *woman* in this situation
*did not* make sense. Of course your theory is logical enough and
fits the scenario (even if it's most problematic aspect is: it
doesn't actually *happen*) but I fail to see how it invalidates the
one that's in the film.
If you'll pardon my one-upsmanship - what would have made the film
more compelling, instead of your switcheroo - have Dick Powell and
Gloria Graham trade places, so that she's the screenwriter/cuckold
(cuckoldess?) and he's having a fling with Kirk. At least, that way
we wouldn't have to endure so much of Dick's ridiculous mugging. (Oh,
how I hate Dick Powell post-1940.)
-Jaime
12811
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jul 20, 2004 11:58pm
Subject: Re: Re: Bad & Beautiful gay scenario
--- "Jaime N. Christley"
wrote:
>
> Thing is, David, you made it clear that a *woman* in
> this situation
> *did not* make sense. Of course your theory is
> logical enough and
> fits the scenario (even if it's most problematic
> aspect is: it
> doesn't actually *happen*) but I fail to see how it
> invalidates the
> one that's in the film.
>
It doesn't "invalidate" it exactly. It's simply that
what Douglas says about himself and Turner's response
to the scene --driving off into one of the greatest
pieces of husteria in the history of the cinema -- is
far in excess of catching him with somebody else.
Or as Elaine Stewart says elsewhere in the film "There
are no Grea Men. There are just men."
> If you'll pardon my one-upsmanship - what would have
> made the film
> more compelling, instead of your switcheroo - have
> Dick Powell and
> Gloria Graham trade places, so that she's the
> screenwriter/cuckold
> (cuckoldess?) and he's having a fling with Kirk. At
> least, that way
> we wouldn't have to endure so much of Dick's
> ridiculous mugging. (Oh,
> how I hate Dick Powell post-1940.)
>
Only if it were the Dick Powell of "Hollywood Hotel."
And I think post-40's Dick Powell is teriffic. Truly
the greatest iconographic shift in the history of the
cinema.
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12812
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 0:20am
Subject: Re: Freudian slips in H'wd Fillms (Was: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
--- In a
> fight with Gaugin, Douglas even makes a carefully telegraphed (to
the
> spectator) Freudian slip by calling Gaugin Theo instead of Paul and
> the quickly corrects himself.
Thanks for that example! I'm collecting these because, after noticing
El Jaibo's slip in Los Olvidados, I started wondering how many
Freudian slips occur in H'wd films. Ken Mogg reminded me of the one
in Spellbound; this is the 2nd I have for my list.
12813
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 0:21am
Subject: Sal Mineo in "Rebel Without a Cause"
Here's the piece I was talking about:
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/02/21/sd_sal_mineo.html
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12814
From: Adam Hart
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 0:24am
Subject: Re: Twilight Samurai
i'm merely suggesting that, in America, we too often approach films
from other countries as if they were made solely with us in mind.
what i'm saying is that making an effort to understand where the
filmmaker is coming from can make a well-made but not that
interesting film like TWILIGHT SAMURAI worth thinking about. whether
or not that film's glorification of the anti-male (and it seems to
be pretty systematic) is unique or not, something about that film
has struck a chord with japanese audiences. while that might just be
some burp in popular taste, i do think it's better to at least try
to meet the film on its own terms. maybe i should leave that to
those who know japanese culture better than myself, but i couldn't
find any reviews/critiques that did so, or even quoted that sort of
thing. if i'm merely being the ugly american here, i apologize, but
in my defense i did have several long conversations about the film
with people who spend all their time studying japan.
also, i realize that most good samurai movies, like most good
westerns, actually do have a specific setting. the difference for me
is that TS deals with class so thoroughly. it shows how the hero
manages to get enough food for his family, and it shows (well,
implies mostly) how that compares with both his social betters and
the peasants below him. it's more than just the costume and the
political situation that define this film in its particular era.
i would also suggest that, even though i realize japanese society
(and art in particular - look at the sorts of gender ambiguity you
find so often in anime, or the appreciation that teenage girls have
shown for male homosexual culture... or maybe it's just male
homosexuals) is not nearly as monolithic as i may have implied,
there may still exist dominant cultural norms that TS critiques and
rejects very explicitly.
i will admit, however, that maybe i'm just reading so much into the
movie because i was kind of bored with yet another generic m.o.r.
foreign film getting the distributor while the ones that really
excite me (such as, to stay in Japan, Takeshi Kitano's Dolls) or am
anxious to see, remain in limbo, as far as the us is concerned.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Adam Hart"
wrote:
>
> "it's actually pretty incredible the film fits that
> miramax-model recipe - the ingredients include: cute children, a
> chaste and slightly tragic romance, an overall tone of unspecified
> nostalgia, an unnecessary framing device explicitly connecting the
> story to the (near) present, vaguely liberal sensibilities,
> unquestioning admiration for an almost superheroic parent…"
>
> That descritption fits several of Yamada's movies, particularly
the
> Tora-san series. He worked out of Shochiku's Ofuna Studio (where
Ozu
> made his later films,) and specialized in "homu dorama" or in
> standard English, home drama, a genre that embodies these
qualities
> par excellence. As for the "superheroic parent," there's a sub-
genre
> called "haha mono" or mother stories (the examplary film is
> HAHA/MOTHER by Kinoshita.) I suppose TWILIGHT SAMURAI would be
> a "chichi mono" or father story.
>
> "but, it does a few things very well. it takes the samurai film
out
> of its quasi-mythic realm and into a very specific place and time
> (like so many of the greatest westerns, this one is set at the
very
> end of its respective era - which here is supposedly
quantifiable).
> it concentrates heavily on class and shows how a low-ranking
samurai
> would have lived his daily life."
>
> That was the Bakumatsu era (1852-1868,) the gradual disintegation
of
> the Bakufu or Shogunate culminating in the Meiji Restoration.
> Probably the most well-known Bakumatsu jidai geki in the West is
> YOJIMBO. Oshima's GOHATTO/TABOO also takes place during the
> Bakamatsu era to name another relatively recent film. There are
many
> Japnese movies set during that time; stories about the Shinsengumi
> are very popular. The current NHK taiga drama is telling the
entire
> Shinsengumi story from beginning to end. TWILIGHT SAMURAI may
seem
> exceptional because few Japanese movies are released in Western
> countries, but especially since the 1960s bushido, giri and the
whole
> samurai ethos have been questioned or critcized by various
filmmakers
> (and recouperated by others.)
>
> "and while that's all well and good, the most interesting thing
> about the film is that with this story of a samurai who refuses
to
> go out drinking with his coworkers, who has very little ambition
to
> climb the social/economic ladder, who prefers to spend time with
his
> family to advancing his career, and who loves and respects (and
has
> actual relationships with) women, especially his *daughters* - the
> film offers us this narrated story in which the hero is
practically
> canonized for being the exact opposite of everything japanese
> society values in its males, now or then."
>
> Again, this is a theme readily found in Japanese pop culture, from
> manga to tv soap operas to novels and movies. Japanese society is
> not as monolithic as it seems, "Nihon Jin Ron" (Japanese
uniqueness
> theory) not withstanding.
>
> "i'm normally pretty wary of attempting cultural readings of non-
> western films unless i'm very familiar with the country's cultural
> and social traditions, but i'm surrounded by japan experts and
they
> all agree that the idea of a samurai, or a sarariman, having a
> meaningful, loving relationship with his daughters is out of the
> ordinary, to say the least."
>
> It would be hard to research father-daughter relationships among
the
> samurai (not impossible; one would have to exam many documents
such
> as letters and diaries as well as popular art and literature and
bear
> in mind that samuari social strata underwent changes over time,)
but
> as for salarymen, it may not be as rare as it seems. I knew a few
who
> doted on their daughters (though that's only anecdotal evidence so
> maybe they were exceptional after all.)
>
> "if i'm wrong about this, please let me know. i just bring this up
to
> make a point about how removing a film from its original context
> (that of its own culture, or whatever) and placing it in another
> (international art house mediocrities) can obscure the most
> interesting reasons to watch it in the first place."
>
> But as a local art house trailer says, "eiga no kotoba wa
sekaiteki"
> the language of film is international. As far as Japan goes,
> culturally determined aesthetic differences are more interesting
to
> some people than any anthropological distinctions, which seems to
be
> what you're suggesting here.
>
> "the sort of marketing these films gets tries to make them all
seem
> the same. so they gloss over all but the most obvious, cliched
> cultural markers."
>
> I pretty much agree with you on what you say about marketing.
> Unfortunately the golden days of Japanese film distribution in the
US
> has ended. In places like Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco and
> Honolulu or wherever there was a sizeable Japnaese-American
> population there were once theatres that showed Japanese movies
> exclusively, and one could see Japanese movies at the local
Buddhist
> temple too. Is the Japan Foundation in NYC still showing
> Japanese movies every Friday and Saturday?
>
> Richard
12815
From: Nick
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 0:48am
Subject: Re: Re: The Restored "Big Red One"
> A little birdie tells me it will be shown in the New York Film
> Festival this Sept and will open theatrically soon thereafter.
>
> dk
It showed at the Cambridge Film Festival (UK) last week. I missed the
bloody thing, and was in Cambridge a few days earlier too.
-Nick Wrigley>-
12816
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 1:13am
Subject: Re: NEALE: WIDESCREEN COMPOSITION IN THE AGE
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Maxime Renaudin"
wrote:
> Unfortunately, the fact that most of the directors don't even know
> how they have to fill this damned widescreeen doesn't help. Why
> should the audience care of the pan&scan reductions, if it isn't
> even an issue for the filmmaker.
>
This is most unfair! Most directors do care, but they are helpless
about what is done to their films on TV. This is an old story that
goes back, way way back, before wide screens and before TV.
Filmmakers never had any control about what was done to their films
once they were out of their hands. They can be cut, re-edited, dubbed
into dozens of foreign languages, censured to death, what can they
do? So please, don't blame the victim! JPC
> BTW I read somewhere that Spielberg (or maybe another one - maybe
> pure, vain and malicious gossip for my part) shot his movies
keeping
> in mind the potential outcome of the pan&scan. Is that a common
> practice?
>
> Maxime
It's a sensible practice considering that until very recently
close to a hundred per cent of viewers saw wide screen films on TV
in span&scan mode. And millions more see films on TV than see them in
a theatre. JPC
12817
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 1:22am
Subject: Re: Twilight Samurai
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Adam Hart" wrote:
"i'm merely suggesting that, in America, we too often approach films
from other countries as if they were made solely with us in mind.
what i'm saying is that making an effort to understand where the
filmmaker is coming from can make a well-made but not that
interesting film like TWILIGHT SAMURAI worth thinking about."
You're right, ethnocentrism is deeply rooted in America for well-
known historical and political reasons, and TWILIGHT SAMURAI is worth
thinking about in relation to Yamada's other movies and certain genre
conventions.
"whether or not that film's glorification of the anti-male (and it
seems to be pretty systematic) is unique or not, something about that
film has struck a chord with japanese audiences. while that might
just be some burp in popular taste, i do think it's better to at
least try to meet the film on its own terms."
TS has struck a chord with Japanese audiences because it in fact
plays on well-established themes and conventions. Yamada is a very
popular director there, the Tora-san movie that opened the smae week
as ET did better business than Spielberg's movie (and ET was hugely
popular in Japan.) So I don't think it's a burp in public taste. I
agree that we shuld always try to meet any foreign film on its own
terms.
"maybe i should leave that to those who know japanese culture better
than myself, but i couldn't find any reviews/critiques that did so,
or even quoted that sort of thing. if i'm merely being the ugly
american here, i apologize, but in my defense i did have several long
conversations about the film with people who spend all their time
studying japan."
I'm not surprised that you couldn't find any insightful reviews of
TW. The American reviewer at "The Japan Times" wasn't very
illuminating either. I suspect that Yamada as a filmmaker isn't
sufficiently interesting enough for most cinephiles or critcs to talk
about this film in depth or to examine his career (and as far as a
career study goes, there's also the problem of getting access to his
films.) I think he has some high points and a few of his 'scope
movies are definitely worth seeing, but there are other more
interesting Japanese directors past and present who merit careful
study. Still, I wouldn't mind reading a inteligent review of TW.
Please don't be detered from evaluating Japanese films because you're
not an expert on Japanese culture. Cultural knowledge may help with
resolving some points of controversy but overall I don't think it's
absolutely necessary. Donald Richie knows more about Japan and the
Japanese film industry than I do, but I strongly disagree with many
of his evaluations of certain films and particular directors.
Richard
12818
From: samfilms2003
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 1:29am
Subject: Re: NEALE: WIDESCREEN COMPOSITION IN THE AGE
> BTW I read somewhere that Spielberg (or maybe another one - maybe
> pure, vain and malicious gossip for my part) shot his movies keeping
> in mind the potential outcome of the pan&scan. Is that a common
> practice?
>
> Maxime
A Hollywood film is a business enterprise capitalized to the tune of 75 - 150 million
dollars, what do you think ?
-Sam
12819
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 2:14am
Subject: Re: Twilight Samurai
> somebody mentioned yoji yamada's twilight samurai the other day in a
> post, basically writing it off as your typical middle-of-the-road
> import fare.
I don't really think it's *typical* middle-of-the-road fare: there are
various things about the conception that are interesting. But the
direction by and large did seem middle-of-the-road to me, despite the
project's good points. (Though I actually did like the direction of the
action scenes.) - Dan
> but, it does a few things very well. it takes the samurai film out
> of its quasi-mythic realm and into a very specific place and time
I do feel that a fair number of other samurai pictures show some
interest in the periods they are set in. Perhaps Kurosawa, with his
Shakespearean, larger-than-life quality, might be the creator of the
mythic realm you mention? - Dan
12820
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 2:23am
Subject: Re: Re: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
> Sure (I've always been tempted to add Leo Carillo in HISTORY IS MADE
> AT NIGHT, even if he doesn't slice off any appendages once his
> partner Charles Boyer meets Jean Arthur -- but this probably
> unreasonable reading has been sensibly dismissed before)
You can't call the reading unreasonable. The trouble is that it's
clouded by the fictional tradition of the best friend whose story
function must be kept strictly non-romantic, in an attempt to bolster
the pleasant mythology of monogamy. There are so many outrageously
sexless best friends in entertainment films that their well-established
narrative function tends to trump characterization.
Note how, once it became acceptable to have gay characters in mainstream
films, the cliche of the sexless best friend was reconceived as the
cliche of the gay best friend. The point seems to be to keep the best
friend out of the romantic running and avoid complicating the audience's
familiar experience. - Dan
12821
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 2:24am
Subject: Re: Re: Twilight Samurai
> Is the Japan Foundation in NYC still showing
> Japanese movies every Friday and Saturday?
Japan Society doesn't show films all the time, but it has several series
a year, some of which are excellent. - Dan
12822
From: Andy Rector
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 3:21am
Subject: Re: Freudian slips in H'wd Fillms (Was: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
wrote:
> Thanks for that example! I'm collecting these because, after noticing
> El Jaibo's slip in Los Olvidados, I started wondering how many
> Freudian slips occur in H'wd films. Ken Mogg reminded me of the one
> in Spellbound; this is the 2nd I have for my list.
Tom Garret's folly in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Would that be
considered a Freudian slip?
-andy
12823
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 3:21am
Subject: Re: Twilight Samurai
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
Donald Richie knows more about Japan and the
> Japanese film industry than I do, but I strongly disagree with many
> of his evaluations of certain films and particular directors.
Mr. Richie is too old to bother with some directors and certain films.
But what he writes is different from if you talk about film with him.
In that manner, he reminds me more and more of Leslie Halliwell, a
grumpy old man, who devoted his entire life to one brand of cinema and
its values.
Films like "Twillight Samurai", and the even better "When the last
sword is drawn", are not really samurai film in a traditional sense.
As Richard said earlier, they take place during Bakumatsu, just prior
to the Meiji, and as such note on the end of the Samurai, where the
traditional samurai film, where basically all good ones were written
by Hishimoto, take place 1640-1720, where the Samurai and his code,
lost its value. So where the traditional samurai film attacks the
code, these moderns seem more interested with the human aspect than
the samurai.
In any way, it is curious why these new samurai film chose this
period. I still have no answer to it.
Henrik
12824
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 4:19am
Subject: Gayness Conquers All
After reading so many posts by David (and I must have missed dozens)
proving beyond a reasonable doubt that most male characters in movies
are gay, I have at last seen the light. I have just watched again,
after many years, Aldrich's wonderful EMPEROR OF THE NORTH POLE, and
it is obvious that Borgnine is in love with Marvin (cute Carradine is
the third side of the triangle) and perhaps vice versa, but they know
no other way to express their love except by beating each other to
death. Actually Borgnine reminds me of Officer Pup in "Krazy Kat",
who of course was in love with Ignatz, whom he kept trying to arrest
and punish, the way Borgnine does with Marvin in EMPEROR...
(the film is also reminiscent of Keaton's THE GENERAL, which was also
filmed on single tracks in Oregon).
JPC
12825
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 4:45am
Subject: Re: Gayness Conquers All
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
Aldrich's wonderful EMPEROR OF THE NORTH POLE, and it is obvious that
Borgnine is in love with Marvin.
Exactly !!!
It is further evident,that Borgnine is impotent (symbolised by the
ball and chain - unerrected fallos).
Marvin is not "out of the closet" gay yet. This is demonstrated by his
positioning either below or on top of the wagon (symbolising
Borgnine's word = gay world), which symbolises him exploring
homosexuality.
Where the train represents sexuality (intercause), where the wagon
represents Borgnine's homosexuality, there are numerous vaginal
objects present (the can of beans for instance). Here we see, that the
vaginal objects nurture, while the penile objects destroy.
Even the title is suggestive. North (as in UP) and Pole as in an
errected fallos.
12826
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 4:48am
Subject: Re: Shinoda's Last & Final movie (was Twilight Samurai)
Henryk, I gather from some of your previous posts that you keep up
with current Japanese cinema, and I was wondering if SPY SORGE got a
European release. It screened once in Los Angeles and luckily I was
able to see it. It's of considerable interest because, among other
things, it's Shinoda's final movie. He says he's now retired from
filmmaking, and it certainly deserves a Western release. It seems
like it would be bankable at least in English-speaking countries
since about 50% of the dialog is in English.
Richard
12827
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 8:38am
Subject: Re: Freudian slips in H'wd Fillms (Was: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Andy Rector"
wrote:
> wrote:
>
> > Thanks for that example! I'm collecting these because, after
noticing
> > El Jaibo's slip in Los Olvidados, I started wondering how many
> > Freudian slips occur in H'wd films. Ken Mogg reminded me of the
one
> > in Spellbound; this is the 2nd I have for my list.
>
> Tom Garret's folly in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Would that be
> considered a Freudian slip?
>
> -andy
Absolutely! Great!
12828
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 8:40am
Subject: Re: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > Sure (I've always been tempted to add Leo Carillo in HISTORY IS
MADE
> > AT NIGHT, even if he doesn't slice off any appendages once his
> > partner Charles Boyer meets Jean Arthur -- but this probably
> > unreasonable reading has been sensibly dismissed before)
>
> You can't call the reading unreasonable. The trouble is that it's
> clouded by the fictional tradition of the best friend whose story
> function must be kept strictly non-romantic, in an attempt to
bolster
> the pleasant mythology of monogamy. There are so many outrageously
> sexless best friends in entertainment films that their well-
established
> narrative function tends to trump characterization.
>
> Note how, once it became acceptable to have gay characters in
mainstream
> films, the cliche of the sexless best friend was reconceived as the
> cliche of the gay best friend.
Didn't Reagan play a lot of those?
12829
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 8:45am
Subject: Re: Gayness Conquers All
Actually Borgnine reminds me of Officer Pup in "Krazy Kat",
> who of course was in love with Ignatz, whom he kept trying to
arrest
> and punish, the way Borgnine does with Marvin in EMPEROR...
> JPC
'
Oh man, talk about a Freudian SLIP! JP, I hate to tell you, but
Offissa Pup was in love with Krazy, a creature of indeterminate sex
whom Ignatz was always beaning with bricks. (Krazy believed this was
a sign of love.) Hence Pupp's repeated incarcerations of Ignatz. Your
fantasizing of a sexual bond between these two unmistakably straight
male characters frankly troubles me.
12830
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 8:47am
Subject: Re: Gayness Conquers All
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Henrik Sylow"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> Aldrich's wonderful EMPEROR OF THE NORTH POLE, and it is obvious
that
> Borgnine is in love with Marvin.
>
> Exactly !!!
>
> It is further evident,that Borgnine is impotent (symbolised by the
> ball and chain - unerrected fallos).
>
> Marvin is not "out of the closet" gay yet. This is demonstrated by
his
> positioning either below or on top of the wagon (symbolising
> Borgnine's word = gay world), which symbolises him exploring
> homosexuality.
All unarguable. But Henrik, what do you make of JP's interpretation
of Krazy Kat?
>
> Where the train represents sexuality (intercause), where the wagon
> represents Borgnine's homosexuality, there are numerous vaginal
> objects present (the can of beans for instance). Here we see, that
the
> vaginal objects nurture, while the penile objects destroy.
>
> Even the title is suggestive. North (as in UP) and Pole as in an
> errected fallos.
12831
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 9:50am
Subject: Re: Gayness Conquers All
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Henrik Sylow"
> wrote:
> > --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
> wrote:
> >
> > Aldrich's wonderful EMPEROR OF THE NORTH POLE, and it is obvious
> that
> > Borgnine is in love with Marvin.
> >
> > Exactly !!!
> >
> > It is further evident,that Borgnine is impotent (symbolised by the
> > ball and chain - unerrected fallos).
> >
> > Marvin is not "out of the closet" gay yet. This is demonstrated by
> his
> > positioning either below or on top of the wagon (symbolising
> > Borgnine's word = gay world), which symbolises him exploring
> > homosexuality.
>
> All unarguable. But Henrik, what do you make of JP's interpretation
> of Krazy Kat?
I agree with him and will go even further to suggest a love triangle.
The entire comic is full of fallos: Pup's constantly errected baton,
Katz constantly errected ears (which has more in common with fallos
than round ears of Ignatz). In fact, the entire strip is obsessed with
fallos (trees, poles...).
The bricks represent being love, in several strips the "being hit by a
brick" is attached to a "heart" (of thought). Perhaps all the violence
is nothing but repressed homosexual love trying to get out.
I think JP really opend our eyes and made us think... Well, only for a
while. I have go do some flower decorations now.
12832
From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 0:10pm
Subject: Re: Freudian slips in H'wd Fillms (Was: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> --- In a
> > fight with Gaugin, Douglas even makes a carefully telegraphed (to
> the
> > spectator) Freudian slip by calling Gaugin Theo instead of Paul
and
> > the quickly corrects himself.
>
> Thanks for that example! I'm collecting these because, after
noticing
> El Jaibo's slip in Los Olvidados, I started wondering how many
> Freudian slips occur in H'wd films. Ken Mogg reminded me of the one
> in Spellbound; this is the 2nd I have for my list.
In The Chapman Report, Jane Fonda is playing tennis with her
possessive father and we see (although the father doesn't) that Fonda
deliberately loses the game to him. Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. arrives and
tells Fonda, after the father leaves, that she shouldn't let him win
but Fonda replies with, "Oh, but I'm a...he's a much better player
than I am." I was never certain if this was a scripted slip or a
slip that Fonda herself made and which they left it since it fit the
character.
Also, in The Bad and the Beautiful, after the death of James Lee
Bartlow's wife in the plane crash with her lover Gaucho, Jonathan
Shields suddenly begins unconsciously blurting out to Bartlow the
fact that he (Jonathan) arranged the entire affair and plane ride. Is
this too long to qualify as a slip? It may be more like an extended,
unconscious confession of guilt.
Annie Hall has a parody of one, the "Will it change my wife?/Will it
change my life?" exhange between Keaton and Allen.
12833
From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 0:40pm
Subject: Re: Bad & Beautiful scenario
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>> Or as Elaine Stewart says elsewhere in the film "There
> are no Grea Men. There are just men."
The exact line here is: "There ARE no great men, buster. There's
only men." (Still lacks a certain snap without E. Stewart
contemptuously spitting it out.)
__________________________________
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> New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
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12834
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 1:03pm
Subject: Re: Gayness Conquers All
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> After reading so many posts by David (and I must
> have missed dozens)
> proving beyond a reasonable doubt that most male
> characters in movies
> are gay, I have at last seen the light. I have just
> watched again,
> after many years, Aldrich's wonderful EMPEROR OF THE
> NORTH POLE, and
> it is obvious that Borgnine is in love with Marvin
> (cute Carradine is
> the third side of the triangle) and perhaps vice
> versa, but they know
> no other way to express their love except by beating
> each other to
> death.
This is of course derived from "From Here to Eternity"
where Borgnine DOES in fact beat Frank Sinatra to
death. But that's probably bcause he heard that
Sinatra and Dagmar duet.
Haven't seen "Emperor" since it was released. Quite a
marvelous late Aldrich as I recall.
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12835
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 1:05pm
Subject: Re: Re: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
--- hotlove666 wrote:
> >
> > Note how, once it became acceptable to have gay
> characters in
> mainstream
> > films, the cliche of the sexless best friend was
> reconceived as the
> > cliche of the gay best friend.
>
> Didn't Reagan play a lot of those?
>
YES! Most memorably in "Dark Victory."
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12836
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 1:08pm
Subject: Re: Re: Freudian slips in H'wd Fillms (Was: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
--- joe_mcelhaney wrote:
>
> In The Chapman Report, Jane Fonda is playing tennis
> with her
> possessive father and we see (although the father
> doesn't) that Fonda
> deliberately loses the game to him. Efrem
> Zimbalist, Jr. arrives and
> tells Fonda, after the father leaves, that she
> shouldn't let him win
> but Fonda replies with, "Oh, but I'm a...he's a much
> better player
> than I am." I was never certain if this was a
> scripted slip or a
> slip that Fonda herself made and which they left it
> since it fit the
> character.
>
That's a very clear Freudian slip, enturely in keeping
with her character and her problems.
> Also, in The Bad and the Beautiful, after the death
> of James Lee
> Bartlow's wife in the plane crash with her lover
> Gaucho, Jonathan
> Shields suddenly begins unconsciously blurting out
> to Bartlow the
> fact that he (Jonathan) arranged the entire affair
> and plane ride. Is
> this too long to qualify as a slip? It may be more
> like an extended,
> unconscious confession of guilt.
>
Yes. Shields is wracked by all sorts of guilt. it's
the thing that keeps his running.
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12837
From: Robert Keser
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 1:45pm
Subject: Re: Freudian slips in H'wd Fillms (Was: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
, I started wondering how many
> > Freudian slips occur in H'wd films.
In The Third Man, the Alida Valli character repeatedly (three or four
times) calls Joseph Cotten ("Holly") by her lover's name ("Harry").
Holly even comments, "You might get my name right!". One could argue
that these are just unintentional slip-ups, but they do reveal her
obsessive love for Harry and indicate that she is sleepwalking
through life after his ostensible death.
(As long as I'm here, I can add to the women's picture data that my
father's favorite star was Joan Crawford--because she was "peppy"--
and he did see many of her films. However, he also loved Krazy Kat
and Ignatz, so now I have to reevaluate my entire childhood).
--Robert Keser
12838
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 2:09pm
Subject: Re: Gayness Conquers All
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> Actually Borgnine reminds me of Officer Pup in "Krazy Kat",
> > who of course was in love with Ignatz, whom he kept trying to
> arrest
> > and punish, the way Borgnine does with Marvin in EMPEROR...
> > JPC
> '
> Oh man, talk about a Freudian SLIP! JP, I hate to tell you, but
> Offissa Pup was in love with Krazy, a creature of indeterminate sex
> whom Ignatz was always beaning with bricks. (Krazy believed this
was
> a sign of love.) Hence Pupp's repeated incarcerations of Ignatz.
Your
> fantasizing of a sexual bond between these two unmistakably
straight
> male characters frankly troubles me.
This has to be the most troubling Freudian slip I have ever
been guilty of (as a Herriman fan I should know better!) I'm calling
my shrink this minute.
JPC
12839
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 2:24pm
Subject: Re: Gayness Conquers All
.
> >
> > All unarguable. But Henrik, what do you make of JP's
interpretation
> > of Krazy Kat?
>
> I agree with him and will go even further to suggest a love
triangle.
> The entire comic is full of fallos: Pup's constantly errected baton,
> Katz constantly errected ears (which has more in common with fallos
> than round ears of Ignatz). In fact, the entire strip is obsessed
with
> fallos (trees, poles...).
>
> The bricks represent being love, in several strips the "being hit
by a
> brick" is attached to a "heart" (of thought). Perhaps all the
violence
> is nothing but repressed homosexual love trying to get out.
>
> I think JP really opend our eyes and made us think... Well, only
for a
> while. I have go do some flower decorations now.
There is a Krazy Kat strip where Pup uses a 'divining rod' (his
word; he paid 30 cents for it) to find a "brick" = phallus finds
love. "That stick?" Krazy asks, incredulous...
JPC
12840
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 2:34pm
Subject: Re: Re: Gayness Conquers All
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> There is a Krazy Kat strip where Pup uses a
> 'divining rod' (his
> word; he paid 30 cents for it) to find a "brick" =
> phallus finds
> love. "That stick?" Krazy asks, incredulous...
>
Next we'll have a seance to summon Lacan back from the
beyond to figure this out for us. Krazy Kat's love for
Ignatz has always been for me the purest evocation of
"le petit objet a."
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12841
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 2:55pm
Subject: Re: Gayness Conquers All
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> >
> > There is a Krazy Kat strip where Pup uses a
> > 'divining rod' (his
> > word; he paid 30 cents for it) to find a "brick" =
> > phallus finds
> > love. "That stick?" Krazy asks, incredulous...
> >
> Next we'll have a seance to summon Lacan back from the
> beyond to figure this out for us. Krazy Kat's love for
> Ignatz has always been for me the purest evocation of
> "le petit objet a."
I wish you guys would stop dicking around. Really, I don't know
what's come over this board.
-Jaime
12842
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 3:08pm
Subject: Re: Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence
> > I agree with pretty much everything Rosenbaum argues, but
> still think
> > the public is culpable to a degree. The information on who
> writes and
> > directs a film is readily available, so why are people still
paying
> > to see films written by Akiva Goldsman?
>
> Readily available to who and in what way? Does everyone have
> a computer with, for an example in the United States, with the
> Chicago
> Reader and Village Voice websites in their favorites menu?
Growing up in a relative backwater of the UK I had no access to any
of those things, but took an interest and paid attention to what
there was. Everybody has some kind of access to the media, and while
I agree that the mainstream media and the state encourage a kind of
laziness in the consumer, I still believe in individual
responsibility for whether you succumb.
> And to reference one of your
> arguments, maybe people find the subjects/themes of Akiva
> Goldsman "interesting" rather than "uninteresting". Again, you
> are writing with this sense of absolute certainty.
I'm pretty certain Goldsman sucks, but recognise this is my own
judgement and there may be others who disagree, and that's fine. But
A LOT OF PEOPLE found BATMAN AND ROBIN a disspiriting experience and
if it were suggested to them that his other films were likely to have
the same flaws, they might choose to avoid them. The fact that they
don't bother to a) find out who wrote the thing and b) realise what
means, indicates the kind of laziness encouraged by the socity we
live in, but for which I still hold them culpable. Of course, i don't
expect everybody to take films as seriously as we do here, but if
people realised they could make more intelligent choices about what
film to see, they'd probably try to do it.
>
> > Maybe the filmmaker? Ie, if you sentence Nick Ray to direct
> KNOCK ON
> > ANY DOOR, you're not going to get IN A LONELY PLACE. In that
> case,
> > the theme is worthwhile, but the development in story terms
> certainly
> > lacklustre.
>
> How do you define "worthwhile"?
Proviso the theme of KNOCK is njot that far from a central plank of
REBEL, and it's the treatment by the script that makes the
difference, one inspiring Ray to produce some of his best work, the
other not inspiring him at all. That sounds like another of my
absolutist statements, but I doubt you disagree with it personally,
and it was also Ray's view. The degree to which the scripts inspired
him is on record.
> A theme that is socially
> responsible? (Which would make Stanley Kramer a great
> filmmaker!)
No, because I've never argued that a great theme = a great film. Just
that a script needs to be about something to work, and a filmmaker
needs to believe that the script works (and I'll now add) OR BE MADE
TO WORK in the filming.
Oscars are regularly handed out to dull films with worthy themes, as
we know.
> Sirk said: "trash by virtue of it's craziness is that
> much nearer to art" (Am I getting the quote correct, Fred?) I
> would argue that more great films in the history of cinema have
> been made out of trashy or "worthless" material than austere
> sources. Godard dedicated "Breathless" to Monogram studios
> and wanted to sub-title "Alphaville" as "Tarzan vs. IBM"
But pulp fiction sources provide some of the most solid spines of
all - the one thing the average pulp reader demands is satifying
plotting and climaxes. Which depend on something being at stake, so a
theme is immediately involved.
Totally agree that trashy fiction often works better onscreen than
high lit, partly because the immediately achievable virtues of the
two are close together - both work well with the dynamic, with strong
visual images (evoked in text or depicted onscreen), with violent
conflict and operatic emotions. Which is not to say that cinema can't
do more than this. Transcending the medium's supposed limits can
produce great work.
> I've already commented on PB being "empty entertainment" and
> the idea that a film's style must be at the service of the script
in
> other posts, but again, I am rather put off by your use of the word
> "greatness". Your usage to me implies some type of value
> judgement on a film's subject or intentions rather than
> considering the use of the medium by the filmmaker.
It's a personal value judgement based on how much I, personally,
enjoyed the film, as indicated by use of phrases like "I feel"
and "to me".
> I am not talking about technical flourishes, I am talking about
> how an auteur rises above the material by the use of his/her
> cinematic language:
OK, but INVIS GHOST is at least as inventive as GUN CRAZY, but it
makes no sense and the whole thing is silly. same filmmaker, and he's
working at least as hard in the earlier film, and his technique is
masterful - I really do recommend the film. It's not just set-pieces
and showing off, but a consistently inventive and playful and
effective treatment of the whole scenario. Which is a piece of
nonsense which can't compare to GUN CRAZY.
> a filmmaker can
> find very organic and subtle ways to enrich the body of a dead
> script, making the film become his or her own. This act alone,
> and how it fits into the oeuvre of an auteur's work is enough, to
> me, for a solid justification of "existing". (Another word that
> implies a value judgement.)
well, I'm not advocating a big bonfire of stuff that doesn't come up
to my standards, just saying I value work that has a confidence in
it's own value as something more than an aesthetically pleasing
object.
There are undoubtably filmmakers who can enliven unworthy material,
however few of them succeed for long. If we agree that we find
Bigelow's recent work a bit disappointing we might wonder why -
having failed to get promoted to better scripts, is she running out
of puff trying to drag useless projects into the light of aesthetic
value?
Soderbergh has said he found OCEAN'S 11 very hard work because "It
wasn't about anything. There was no reason for it."
Can't think of any filmmakers who dismiss the worth of a good script,
except maybe Altman. And I think he's wrong - his approach is fairly
consistent and his films vary tremendously in terms of how
interesting most people find them, and I think it's down to the
quality of the material.
Feel free to disagree, this isn't a universal theory of everything,
just my observations and speculations.
> And that it is harder and that the filmmaker succeeds is one
> aspect of what makes a great director. David, it's REGARDLESS
> of the perceived quality or importance of the theme or script, but
> how the tools of the medium of film are used that makes a film
> great to me.
But since these films all deploy screenplays, wouldn't you at least
admit the screenplay as part of the medium, however small? So that if
two films were interesting to you, equally, but one had superior
dialogue or plotting, that might give it the edge?
> > Disagree repsectfully. If "theme" includes "techniques" it starts
> to
> > get a bit too woolly for usefulness, imho.
>
> How?! I mean lets look at Max Ophuls for example, where his
> moving camera is part, and I would say a significant part, of his
> "theme(s)".
Ophuls is one filmmaker whose use of certain techniques DOES get
close to being thematic, and it's partly becasue the marriage of form
and content in his films is so close and subtle. But I still would
find it useful to linguistically separate recurring techniques
developed over a filmmakers' career, from narrative elements.
Are you arguing that the concept of the suffering woman, the
situation of the duel, the oppression of society and the family, are
really of no interest in Ophuls' work? They're obviously of interest
to Ophuls, so shouldn't we at least try to share that interest if
we're to appreciate what he's doing?
I suspect we agree that what's really interesting is what Max MAKES
of these themes, cinematically (with the tracks and cranes, the sets
and costumes, etc). But for Ophuls surely these story elements have
to be there first to excite him?
I refer you to THE EXILE, which is technically accomplished but not
very personal. It doesn't feel much like Ophuls. But the ending of
the director's cut turns the film into a woman's story and then the
director DOES take possession of the film. But purely in a thematic
way - both endings were shot by ophuls and both have as much of his
camera style about them.
> I would venture to argue that you place too much an emphasis
> on content:
It's a vice I share with most of the filmmakers I know. What really
thrills me in film is masterful technique employed at the service of
something the artist believes in, a belief they communicate to me
with the work. I don't have to intellectually agree that the subject
is interesting or important, just to feel that the artist does.
DON'T enjoy much the feeling that the artist is polishing a turd.
Might be interesting to discuss why i love Von sternberg, since his
work might seem to contradict my preferences...
> script, plot, dialogue, spine, etc..etc.. and I have to
> say that these elements should only be of certain use and
> consideration on a board dedicated to auteurism. But it seems
> a lot of posts get bogged down in the reduction of cinema into
> scripts and their sub-text rather than the director and his/her's
> cinematic language and contributions.
Whether this is "bogged down" or in fact an interesting exploration
of something essential to auteurism is a value judgement on your
part, surely? Since many auteurs chose to write their own scripts and
this is part of their filmmaking authorship, it seems relevant enough
to me.
To look at the whole issue another way, I'd always cut a filmmaker
some slack if he made an ineffective film from a script which was
shallow, illogical, crude and undramatic, but i'd find it harder to
sympathise with a director making a turkey from a script filled with
drama, emotions, sensitivity and strong plotting. Why? Both have made
films that don't please me...
> : "So long as the
> cinema continues to kowtow to the standards of 19th century
> drama --a vampire far more stubborn than Dracula-- it will
> remain a stillborn art, reduced to thumb's approval or
> semiotic-psychoanalytic chart."
I don't disagree with that. But I do think the values of ancient
Greek drama can be productively applied to some cinema, while of
course film is a different medium from theatre and can and should
achieve things not possible on the stage (and I don't just mean
bigger explosions).
> > I have seen directors speak in public who are very clumsy.
Who? Not that I'm doubting you, just interested. It may be they're
filmmakers I don't think much of, of course. But it'd certainly be
interesting to know.
> "there are sometimes they
> should not be allowed to speak." I do not think that one needs to
> be articulate to be able to direct, not all directors have to start
> speaking with their actors about a character's motivation and
> history. Fritz Lang was known just to bark orders.
- but you need the orders to be very CLEAR. So some articulacy is
important. Explaining to an ctor that they must drink after THIS line
may be basic, but directing a cameraman will involve more compex
questions.
> What is this "academic standard" you are talking about? What
> area of academia? What standards? Again, who decides
> these? And "each group is paid to do what they do best?" I know
> a lot of intelligent and well spoken blue collar workers and some
> ignorant, vulgar and moronic professionals. I find a bit of
> classism and elitism in your writing, biases that I think are very
> dangerous when talking about art.
Since I'm working class, it may be that I have less sympathy with my
comrades who take less interest in the world around them.
I guess the standard of articulacy in academics I'm talking about
would maybe be "the average standard."
I myself was slightly offended by my perception (maybe wrong) that
you argue that most (or many) artists are inarticulate and create art
as a substitute for verbal expression. As a filmmaker I'm aiming to
express things that couldn't be put into words even by the most
skilled poet. Not that I ever necessarily succeed, but that should be
the aim, I feel.
This would seem to be something you agree with, and yet you seem to
be saying that film directors are often inarticulate souls driven to
their craft by the need to express themselves, and that if they could
talk proper they wouldn't need to make films.
Tell me I'm wrong!
12843
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 3:26pm
Subject: Re: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > (I've always been tempted to add Leo Carillo in HISTORY IS MADE
> > AT NIGHT, even if he doesn't slice off any appendages once his
> > partner Charles Boyer meets Jean Arthur -- but this probably
> > unreasonable reading has been sensibly dismissed before)
>
> You can't call the reading unreasonable. The trouble is that it's
> clouded by the fictional tradition of the best friend whose story
> function must be kept strictly non-romantic, in an attempt to bolster
> the pleasant mythology of monogamy. There are so many outrageously
> sexless best friends in entertainment films that their well-established
> narrative function tends to trump characterization.
>
> Note how, once it became acceptable to have gay characters in mainstream
> films, the cliche of the sexless best friend was reconceived as the
> cliche of the gay best friend. The point seems to be to keep the best
> friend out of the romantic running and avoid complicating the audience's
> familiar experience. - Dan
The cliche of the "sexless" best friend (of either sex) probably needed some reconceiving. The aforementioned Mark Rappaport's THE SILVER SCREEN/COLOR ME LAVENDER, while it's not completely convincing (and probably doesn't mean to be), had me looking at Walter Brennan's grizzled persona, for example, in an unexpected way.
In the case of HISTORY, I think what struck me was the film's apparent counterpointing of a vengeful "ex" for Jean Arthur with a selfless, hence authentically loving one (after all, this is Borzage) for Boyer. And Boyer, unlike Arthur (assuming memory doesn't fail me here, anyway), notably seems to have no other prior romantic attachment. (Of course, much of this may also be part of the cliche.)
12844
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 3:31pm
Subject: Re: Re: Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence
--- cairnsdavid1967 wrote:
>
> Totally agree that trashy fiction often works better
> onscreen than
> high lit, partly because the immediately achievable
> virtues of the
> two are close together - both work well with the
> dynamic, with strong
> visual images (evoked in text or depicted onscreen),
> with violent
> conflict and operatic emotions. Which is not to say
> that cinema can't
> do more than this. Transcending the medium's
> supposed limits can
> produce great work.
>
True but what's also involved here is the almost
tactile intimacy of film. To move completely away fom
pulp consider Eric Rohmer. "Ma Nuit Chez Maud" could
very easily have been done as a play. But watching two
people on a stahe is quite different than watching
them on screen. And in this I'm thinking of the film's
central scene with Francoise Fabian and jean-Louis
Trintignant talking together late at night in her
bedroom. There's a lot of very subtle physical
interplay going on here. A kind of
flirtation/seduction that stops short. To mind mind
there's nothing more cinematic.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
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12845
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 3:53pm
Subject: History Is Made at Night and sexless sidekicks (Was: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life))
> The cliche of the "sexless" best friend (of either sex) probably
> needed some reconceiving.
God, yes. Unfortunately, to reconceive it in real terms means to
introduce some complexity into a movie.
> In the case of HISTORY, I think what struck me was the film's
> apparent counterpointing of a vengeful "ex" for Jean Arthur with a
> selfless, hence authentically loving one (after all, this is Borzage)
> for Boyer. And Boyer, unlike Arthur (assuming memory doesn't fail me
> here, anyway), notably seems to have no other prior romantic
> attachment. (Of course, much of this may also be part of the
> cliche.)
To the extent the movie's decisions are motivated by characterization,
this position seems highly plausible. But, to my mind, Carrillo's role
slots into a convention that obscures characterization.
Mind you, this is one of my favorite movies of all time, from a favorite
director and a favorite screenwriter. But the system is powerful. - Dan
12846
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 4:13pm
Subject: Re: Gayness Conquers All
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> >
> > There is a Krazy Kat strip where Pup uses a
> > 'divining rod' (his
> > word; he paid 30 cents for it) to find a "brick" =
> > phallus finds
> > love. "That stick?" Krazy asks, incredulous...
> >
> Next we'll have a seance to summon Lacan back from the
> beyond to figure this out for us. Krazy Kat's love for
> Ignatz has always been for me the purest evocation of
> "le petit objet a."
>
>
> Actually, it's "l'objet petit a." Your slip is at least as
Freudian as mine... (why do you want the "object" to be "small"?)
I attended the now infamous Lacan seminar about Krazy Kat
where that very question was hotly debated. So hotly, in fact, that
Deleuze and Barthes (EVERYBODY was there)started throwing bricks at
each other (they had come well prepared). Lacan ducked under his desk
and emerged wielding his walking stick (which was rumored to be a
swordstick, like Mundson's in GILDA). Barthes's boy friend was
slightly hurt. I heard Barthes muttering, as he walked out, "Talk
about the pleasure of the text." Foucault called the cops, although
Kristeva and Sollers tried to dissuade him. In the excitement no one
had been able to take decent notes, so the Seminar was never
published.
JPC
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
12847
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 4:16pm
Subject: Re: History Is Made at Night and sexless sidekicks (Was: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life))
--- Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > The cliche of the "sexless" best friend (of
> either sex) probably
> > needed some reconceiving.
>
> God, yes. Unfortunately, to reconceive it in real
> terms means to
> introduce some complexity into a movie.
>
I would argue that it got some reconceiving in
Lindsay Anderson's "If. . ." I'm thinking of that
character played by Richard Wood -- the best pal of
malcolm McDowell's Mick. He hangs about with him in
classic best friend style -- most memorably in their
motorcycle jaunt where they meet the girl in the
coffee bar. One of the wittiest things in this very
witty film is the way the best pal places the saucer
over Mick's cup to keep it warm when he sees that
Mick's about to make his play for the girl. There's
another pal to Mick who actually IS gay (played by the
late Richard Warwick) but this doesn't complicate the
friendship at all
__________________________________
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12848
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 4:24pm
Subject: Positive eroticism
The July-August issue of POSITIF has a big fat "dossier" on "Sexe &
Erotisme." Although there is a great variety of articles, everybody
makes the same observation: the vanishing of censorship and taboos in
the past twenty years or so has killed eroticism in films.
For the Breillat fans in this group, she has a fascinating (although
not always coherent) interview. By the way she claims to hate
eroticism.
JPC
12849
From: George Robinson
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 4:34pm
Subject: LE PROCES DE JEANNE D'ARC on TCM
My friend Ira Hozinsky just pulled my coat to this exciting news on TCM.
I can't recall the last time someone showed this Bresson.
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: HOZEE@a...
To: grcomm@g...
Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 6:54 AM
Subject: LE PROCES DE JEANNE D'ARC
Somebody here must own the rights to it, because TCM is showing it on October 16 at 2 am (followed by the Dreyer).
Also: JUDEX (presumably the Flicker Alley edition) in three segments.
As well as...THE FORMULA! And the month kicks off with a day of Dick Foran westerns.
http://www.tcm.turner.com/Schedule/Print/0,,10-2004|0|,00.html
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
12850
From: Kevin Lee
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 5:29pm
Subject: Re: Twilight Samurai
Can you say more about your appreciaton of DOLLS? I found the film
fascinating but puzzling, a bit treacly even, moreso than TWILIGHT
SAMURAI (though if John Ford can get away with sentimentality, why
can't Yamada? As with Ford, I think an appreciation of sentimental
devices is gained upon understanding the cultural and emotional
issues he's employing that sentimentality towards illuminating). I
think TWILIGHT SAMURAI was more successful in achieving its aesthetic
objectives, though those objectives may be discernibly less ambitious
than Kitano's. I often think of TWILIGHT SAMURAI in the same light
as Tian Zhuangzhuang's remake of SPRINGTIME IN A SMALL TOWN, both
films using a limpid classical style to revisit historic social
settings and juxtapose them against the contemporary context of their
respective cultures.
I agree with Dan that TWILIGHT SAMURAI has a couple of amazing action
sequences -- on both a dramatic and thematic level, I find them to be
more tautly crafted and meaningful than the bloodlettings in KILL
BILL or Kitano's ZATOICHI. (I prefer DOLLS over ZATOICHI as well.)
In all fairness, although TWILIGHT SAMURAI was distributed and DOLLS
was not, I wouldn't say it got a particularly noticeable push. The
ikely reasons it stayed in the theaters as long as it did (extended
for 3 weeks in NY, 2 in Boston) was its uniformly high reviews and
word of mouth.
Kevin
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Adam Hart" wrote:
> >
> i will admit, however, that maybe i'm just reading so much into the
> movie because i was kind of bored with yet another generic m.o.r.
> foreign film getting the distributor while the ones that really
> excite me (such as, to stay in Japan, Takeshi Kitano's Dolls) or am
> anxious to see, remain in limbo, as far as the us is concerned.
>
12851
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 5:38pm
Subject: The Exile (was: Re: Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence)
> I refer you to THE EXILE, which is technically accomplished but not
> very personal. It doesn't feel much like Ophuls. But the ending of
> the director's cut turns the film into a woman's story and then the
> director DOES take possession of the film. But purely in a thematic
> way - both endings were shot by ophuls and both have as much of his
> camera style about them.
>
> Tell me I'm wrong!
THE EXILE is great! What's this about a director's cut? (Who "directed" it?) I shouldn't be doing my homework here but I couldn't find anything immediately on the Web -- didn't realize it was generally available in any form (is it on DVD? is it tinted?)
12852
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 5:39pm
Subject: Re: Dolls
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee" wrote:
> Can you say more about your appreciaton of DOLLS? I found the film
> fascinating but puzzling
I have spend the last months preparing a catalogue on "Dolls". Atm,
its about 25 pages and I have only just begun describing the
complexity of the narrative layers. I agree with you that its
puzzling, but its not of such complexity, that those not familiar with
Chikamatsu and his motifs fail to understand it.
But it is as conceptional as they come; but Kitano's next film may be
even more complex, as he is working on an idea to imcorperate the
ideas of cubism into both film and narrative.
Henrik
12853
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 5:39pm
Subject: Re: Re: Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence
> Since many auteurs chose to write their own scripts and
> this is part of their filmmaking authorship, it seems relevant enough
> to me.
The earliest use I've found of the word "auteur" to refer to film
directors is in Truffaut's "Certain Tendency" article - does anyone know
of earlier uses? Anyway, in Truffaut's article, it sure looks to me as
if he is referring to directors who write their own scripts.
> To look at the whole issue another way, I'd always cut a filmmaker
> some slack if he made an ineffective film from a script which was
> shallow, illogical, crude and undramatic, but i'd find it harder to
> sympathise with a director making a turkey from a script filled with
> drama, emotions, sensitivity and strong plotting. Why? Both have made
> films that don't please me...
I agree, but I'll cut the director a lot more slack if they're trying to
do something interesting in the bad-script scenario. And it's really
cool when a director takes a meaningless script and turns it into a good
movie somehow. (Farrow's THE BIG CLOCK and McBride's THE BIG EASY come
to mind.)
Admittedly, you can't judge a director too harshly for lying down on an
uncongenial project. And, of course, even in the good-script scenario,
a good director might not be inspired by the script's particular
qualities. - Dan
12854
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 5:41pm
Subject: Re: Twilight Samurai
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Kevin Lee"
> I agree with Dan that TWILIGHT SAMURAI has a couple of amazing
action
> sequences -- on both a dramatic and thematic level, I find them to
be
> more tautly crafted and meaningful than the bloodlettings in KILL
> BILL or Kitano's ZATOICHI. (I prefer DOLLS over ZATOICHI as
well.)
I prefer the magpies.
-Jaime
12855
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 5:45pm
Subject: My Night at Maud's, theatre (Was: Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence)
> "Ma Nuit Chez Maud" could
> very easily have been done as a play. But watching two
> people on a stahe is quite different than watching
> them on screen. And in this I'm thinking of the film's
> central scene with Francoise Fabian and jean-Louis
> Trintignant talking together late at night in her
> bedroom. There's a lot of very subtle physical
> interplay going on here. A kind of
> flirtation/seduction that stops short. To mind mind
> there's nothing more cinematic.
I agree with your conclusion, but there's not much play-like about MAUD
except that there's a lot of talk while people are staying in one place.
The dialogue isn't written in a conventionally theatrical way. It
certainly doesn't bear the weight of the film's emotional climaxes,
which happen between or around the dialogue.
And Rohmer wouldn't be Rohmer without the way he photographs the world.
- Dan
12856
From: Samuel Bréan
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 7:00pm
Subject: OT: Krazy Kat (was Gayness Conquers All)
> I attended the now infamous Lacan seminar about Krazy Kat
> where that very question was hotly debated. So hotly, in fact, that
> Deleuze and Barthes (EVERYBODY was there)started throwing bricks at
> each other (they had come well prepared). Lacan ducked under his
I did NOT attend that seminar, since I was not born at that time, but
I have (or almost have!) another piece of information concerning
Kat's gender. "Charlie," a French magazine from the 60's-70's which
used to run reprints of comic strips such as "Krazy Kat," "Popeye,"
as well as recent "Peanuts" ("Charlie" stands for Charlie Brown) or
work by new artists, once ran a letter by Chris Marker, "Le sexe de
Krazy Kat." It was a reply to a remark by the editor of the magazine,
French artist Wolinski. C.M. brought proof that Krazy Kat was a
female, by showing a full-page script. Now I hope I'm not completely
wrong and it's not the other way around, because I haven't seen a
copy of this issue in a long time and I'm quoting by (not too good)
memory. I wish I could be more detailed about this, because I do have
this specific issue, but not at home.
Anyway, more on this someday... Thought it might interest some of you
to know (albeit imperfectly) that Marker had contributed to such a
publication!
-Samuel.
12857
From:
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 3:14pm
Subject: OT: Krazy Kat (was Gayness Conquers All)
In a message dated 7/21/2004 3:07:32 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
a_film_by@yahoogroups.com writes:
> "Charlie," a French magazine from the 60's-70's which
> used to run reprints of comic strips such as "Krazy Kat," "Popeye,"
> as well as recent "Peanuts" ("Charlie" stands for Charlie Brown) or
> work by new artists, once ran a letter by Chris Marker, "Le sexe de
> Krazy Kat." It was a reply to a remark by the editor of the magazine,
> French artist Wolinski. C.M. brought proof that Krazy Kat was a
> female, by showing a full-page script.
CM was obviously repressing his own homosexual panic here -- Herriman is
nothing if not deliberate in his linguistic gender-blurring.
I liked Gilbert Seldes' (I think) remark that KK was sometimes referred to as
male, sometimes as female, but "was willing to be either."
Brent
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
12858
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 7:55pm
Subject: Re: Freudian slips in H'wd Fillms (Was: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "joe_mcelhaney"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
> > --- In a
> > > fight with Gaugin, Douglas even makes a carefully telegraphed
(to
> > the
> > > spectator) Freudian slip by calling Gaugin Theo instead of Paul
> and
> > > the quickly corrects himself.
> >
> > Thanks for that example! I'm collecting these because, after
> noticing
> > El Jaibo's slip in Los Olvidados, I started wondering how many
> > Freudian slips occur in H'wd films. Ken Mogg reminded me of the
one
> > in Spellbound; this is the 2nd I have for my list.
>
> In The Chapman Report, Jane Fonda is playing tennis with her
> possessive father and we see (although the father doesn't) that
Fonda
> deliberately loses the game to him. Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. arrives
and
> tells Fonda, after the father leaves, that she shouldn't let him
win
> but Fonda replies with, "Oh, but I'm a...he's a much better player
> than I am." I was never certain if this was a scripted slip or a
> slip that Fonda herself made and which they left it since it fit
the
> character.
>
> Also, in The Bad and the Beautiful, after the death of James Lee
> Bartlow's wife in the plane crash with her lover Gaucho, Jonathan
> Shields suddenly begins unconsciously blurting out to Bartlow the
> fact that he (Jonathan) arranged the entire affair and plane ride.
Is
> this too long to qualify as a slip? It may be more like an
extended,
> unconscious confession of guilt.
>
> Annie Hall has a parody of one, the "Will it change my wife?/Will
it
> change my life?" exhange between Keaton and Allen.
Wow! Great examples! I was just reminded of a funny one: "Pornograph"
in The Trial.
12859
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 8:00pm
Subject: Re: OT: Krazy Kat (was Gayness Conquers All)
--- kitebw@a... wrote:
>
> CM was obviously repressing his own homosexual panic
> here -- Herriman is
> nothing if not deliberate in his linguistic
> gender-blurring.
Perhaps. But this subject brings together two things
the "Left bank group" loves the most -- comics and
cats.
Marker is notorious for sending a picture of a cat
whenever a personal photo request is made.
>
> I liked Gilbert Seldes' (I think) remark that KK was
> sometimes referred to as
> male, sometimes as female, but "was willing to be
> either."
>
Krazy is definitely polymorphous-perverse
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12860
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 8:13pm
Subject: Re: OT: Krazy Kat (was Gayness Conquers All)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> Perhaps. But this subject brings together two things
> the "Left bank group" loves the most -- comics and
> cats.
> Marker is notorious for sending a picture of a cat
> whenever a personal photo request is made.
And as recently as 1996 he was still using an Apple IIGS, cursing
Apple for abandoning the design.
In a recent interview that appeared in Film Comment he claimed to be
a big fan of American TV dramas, like "The Practice."
-Jaime
12861
From:
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 4:23pm
Subject: If you have time to waste...
Here's a terrific site of movie title screen jpgs:
http://www.shillpages.com/movies/index.htm
Reminds me of John Waters' even more terrific coffee table book of
photography (the name escapes me).
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
12862
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 8:30pm
Subject: Re: Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence
I never met a director who didn't think the script was extremely
important, and as previously noted, I never met a great director who
wasn't highly intelligent and articulate, even if some of the
examples in my list struck some members of the group as dumb-bells
when they heard them doing Q and A's.
I've always found slightly perverse -- coming from a very
sophisticated critic/filmmaker writing about the ultimate mise-en-
scene director -- this part of J.-C. Biette's article on Tourneur's
Wichita: "It is hard not to see that the scenario constitutes the
foundation of the mise en scene, insofar as the latter proposes
nothing but to go as deeply as possible into the social, ideological,
moral and semantic content of the scenario (And I don't see what
other function the mise en scene of a film could have)." Perverse,
because it runs counter to many commonplaces of auteurism,
particularly with respect to Tourneur, but stimulating, and
perhaps "true"?
12863
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 8:41pm
Subject: Dead Like Me, Carnivale (Was: OT Karzy Kat)
> In a recent interview that appeared in Film Comment he claimed to
be
> a big fan of American TV dramas, like "The Practice."
>
> -Jaime
I don't have cable, but Marvin taped all of the first season of
Carnivale for me, and I bought a screener of Dead Like Me at Amoeba
for a buck. Not bad. For tv.
12864
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 8:48pm
Subject: Television that we like
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> I don't have cable, but Marvin taped all of the first season of
> Carnivale for me, and I bought a screener of Dead Like Me at
Amoeba
> for a buck. Not bad. For tv.
Saw about twenty minutes of the "Dead Like Me" pilot and found it
intolerable. A friend of mine told me it gets quite a bit better.
Love:
CHAPPELLE'S SHOW
SIMPSONS reruns
COSBY SHOW reruns
THE OFFICE
Dislike:
ALIAS (first episode)
CSI (first two episodes)
BUFFY THE VAMPIRES SLAYER (first three episodes - I'll stick with it)
-Jaime
12865
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 8:57pm
Subject: Re: Television that we like
>
> Saw about twenty minutes of the "Dead Like Me" pilot and found it
> intolerable. A friend of mine told me it gets quite a bit better.
Tv is intolerable, by definition. It's what you do next that can be
kind of interesting. Corny as it was, I found the ending of the pilot
rather affecting.
12866
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 9:03pm
Subject: Re: OT: Krazy Kat (was Gayness Conquers All)
C.M. brought proof that Krazy Kat was a
> > female, by showing a full-page script.
>
> CM was obviously repressing his own homosexual panic here --
Herriman is
> nothing if not deliberate in his linguistic gender-blurring.
>
> I liked Gilbert Seldes' (I think) remark that KK was sometimes
referred to as
> male, sometimes as female, but "was willing to be either."
>
> Brent
>
>
>
A female cat in French is "une chatte". "Chatte" is also a slang
term for a woman's sexual parts.
Jay Kanter in his brilliant novel "Krazy Kat" also made the
character female (and a masochist). Ignatz becomes her shrink...
I agree with Seldes. So did Deleuze and his sidekick Guattari,
who intended to read his paper "Devenir-femme" at the Krazy Kat
Seminar. The piece much later appeared in the "Polysexuality" issue
of "Semiotext(e)" (1981) as "BECOMING-WOMAN".
JPC
12867
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 9:20pm
Subject: Re: Re: OT: Krazy Kat (was Gayness Conquers All)
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> A female cat in French is "une chatte".
> "Chatte" is also a slang
> term for a woman's sexual parts.
>
And thus the title of one of my favorite films of
recent years:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0287364/
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12868
From:
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 5:20pm
Subject: (slightly less) OT: Krazy Kat (was Gayness Conquers All)
">
>
A female cat in French is "une chatte". "Chatte" is also a slang
term for a woman's sexual parts. "
There's an English equivalent for this, but it's slipping my mind.
I was kidding about Marker and homosexual panic, but, bringing things back to
movies a bit, I learned in the introduction to one of the recent, lovely
Fantagraphics KK reprints that the issue really did upset Frank Capra. Apparently
on meeting Geo. H. he demanded a straightforward answer to the s/he conundrum
and was not at all satisfied by GH's determined ambivilance.
Brent
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
12869
From:
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 5:28pm
Subject: Re: Television that we like
Well, of course, I like a lot of TV movies, tele-auteurs being a favorite
topic on the group over the past 12 months (Lamont Johnson, John Korty, Joseph
Sargent, Paul Wendkos, and so on.)
I don't watch current episodic TV on any sort of regular basis. Most of the
shows being discussed I've barely even heard of. Because he directed it, I
saw the Bogdanovich-directed episode of "The Sopranos" and I thought it was good
- something I attribute to his skills, as the handful of other episodes I've
seen have not impressed me on an formal level. The same is true of most TV
shows: it all depends on the director. The Tourneur "Twilight Zone," "Night
Call," is much better than any other "Twilight Zone" episode I've seen, though
there are a few other really good ones (Jack Smight's and Lamont Johnson's, in
particular) and the show is a lot of "fun" in general. Same goes for my
all-time favorite series, "Peter Gunn"; the atmosphere is always there, always
enjoyable to watch, but if you get Edwards or Johnson behind the camera, it can be
positively masterful.
I've heard the Joe Dante-produced "Erie, Indiana" is good; Bill? I also
notice that Curtis Harrington has done some episodic television; I seem to recall
one of our group members (Mike?) knowing them.
What are the Gerd Oswald "Star Treks" like?
Peter
12870
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 9:32pm
Subject: Re: Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> I've always found slightly perverse -- coming from a very
> sophisticated critic/filmmaker writing about the ultimate mise-en-
> scene director -- this part of J.-C. Biette's article on Tourneur's
> Wichita: "It is hard not to see that the scenario constitutes the
> foundation of the mise en scene, insofar as the latter proposes
> nothing but to go as deeply as possible into the social,
ideological,
> moral and semantic content of the scenario (And I don't see what
> other function the mise en scene of a film could have)." Perverse,
> because it runs counter to many commonplaces of auteurism,
> particularly with respect to Tourneur, but stimulating, and
> perhaps "true"?
He seemed to be saying that mise en scene cannot operate against
the scenario, or if it does, it is a suicidal act. I tend to agree,
although the auteurist discourse has often suggested the opposite,
asserting that mise en scene doesn't "express" anything but itself
and creates its own content.
JPC
12871
From: Michael Worrall
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 9:37pm
Subject: What is an auteur? (Was: Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt
wrote:
>
> The earliest use I've found of the word "auteur" to refer to film
> directors is in Truffaut's "Certain Tendency" article - does
anyone know
> of earlier uses? Anyway, in Truffaut's article, it sure looks to
me as
> if he is referring to directors who write their own scripts.
From what I have always understood is that the Cahier critics
were talking about filmmakers like Ford, Hitchcock and Ray who
did not write their own scripts -- but that one could trace a
consistency through a filmmaker who had worked with various
screenwriters, projects and studios.
This is not to say that Ford, Hitchcock or Ray did not have a hand
in the script at some point, but they made the film "their own"
during the shooting process therefore becoming the true
"author" of the film. The attachment/definition of an auteur who
both writes and directs his/her own films came later, I believe.
I would argue with David that there are several auteurs who did
or do not write their own scripts. And I find that some of the
members of this group are implying that I am being reactionary
to the presence of a script --saying that I am dismissing it--
whereas I am trying to argue that it has a place in within
filmmaking but not the paramount importance that some critics
and audiences give to it. Either something is getting lost in the
transition or I am not explaining myself clearly. But is it really that
extreme or radical to want to focus on something more than the
script or text in a board dedicated to talking about auteurs? Right
now I feel Minnelli's work is only being discussed in the subject
of "is he/she or isn't he/she"
12872
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 9:56pm
Subject: Re: Storytelling
Dan wrote:
"it's really
cool when a director takes a meaningless script and turns it into a good
movie somehow. (Farrow's THE BIG CLOCK and McBride's THE BIG EASY come
to mind.)"
But Dan - McBride and his his writing collaborator completely transformed -
ie re-wrote - the script they were handed for THE BIG EASY! (As McBride has
often done - even to a script by Terrence Malick!!) I read the original, and
it was a completely banal and formulaic crime/courtroom thriller.
The subject of directors rewriting scripts - with or usually without credit
- is something much auteurist criticism avoids researching, for the sake of
(and I am not saying this of your work, Dan) upholding the almost magical
and certainly mystified theme of directors 'turning dross into gold' via the
uncanny alchemy of their mise en scene!!!
Adrian
12873
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 10:06pm
Subject: Re: What is an auteur? (Was: Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Michael Worrall"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt
> wrote:
>
> >
> > The earliest use I've found of the word "auteur" to refer to film
> > directors is in Truffaut's "Certain Tendency" article - does
> anyone know
> > of earlier uses? Anyway, in Truffaut's article, it sure looks to
> me as
> > if he is referring to directors who write their own scripts.
>
He definitely was not. Actually Truffaut and the Cahiers
auteurists looked with suspicion upon such writer-directors as Huston
and Wilder and refused to consider them "auteurs".
12874
From: Dave Garrett
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 10:13pm
Subject: Re: (slightly less) OT: Krazy Kat (was Gayness Conquers All)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, kitebw@a... wrote:
> I was kidding about Marker and homosexual panic, but, bringing things back to
> movies a bit, I learned in the introduction to one of the recent, lovely
> Fantagraphics KK reprints that the issue really did upset Frank Capra. Apparently
> on meeting Geo. H. he demanded a straightforward answer to the s/he conundrum
> and was not at all satisfied by GH's determined ambivilance.
I was wondering if all the KK fans who've come out of the woodwork
here were aware of the Fantagraphics reprints. For those who may
not be, they're beautifully-designed oversize volumes reprinting
all of the full-page Sunday strips starting in 1925. More info at:
http://www.fantagraphics.com/classic/krazykat/krazy.html
Highly recommended!
Dave
12875
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 10:25pm
Subject: Re: Re: What is an auteur? (Was: Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence
>>>The earliest use I've found of the word "auteur" to refer to film
>>>directors is in Truffaut's "Certain Tendency" article - does
>>anyone know
>>>of earlier uses? Anyway, in Truffaut's article, it sure looks to
>>me as
>>>if he is referring to directors who write their own scripts.
>
> He definitely was not. Actually Truffaut and the Cahiers
> auteurists looked with suspicion upon such writer-directors as Huston
> and Wilder and refused to consider them "auteurs".
Here's the passage I'm referring to, translated in Cahiers du Cinema in
English #1, and reprinted in Bill Nichols' MOVIES AND METHODS.
"Well, as for these abject characters, who deliver these abject lines -
I know a handful of men in France who would be INCAPABLE of conceiving
them, several cineastes whose world-view is at least as valuable as that
of Aurenche and Bost, Sigurd and Jeanson. I mean Jean Renoir, Robert
Bresson, Jean Cocteau, Jacques Becker, Abel Gance, Max Ophuls, Jacques
Tati, Roger Leenhardt; these are, nevertheless, French cineastes and it
happens - curious coincidence - that they are auteurs (this word is
italicized by the translator, and is presumably the same in the English
and French versions - DS) who often write their dialogue and some of
them themselves invent the stories they direct."
My inference from this passage is that Truffaut would not have used the
word "auteurs," in a sense so close to its usual, civilian meaning, if
it had already been current as a reference to film directors. And this
piece is from Jan. 1954, early in the evolution of the politique. - Dan
12876
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 10:31pm
Subject: Re: Re: Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> He seemed to be saying that mise en scene cannot
> operate against
> the scenario, or if it does, it is a suicidal act. I
> tend to agree,
> although the auteurist discourse has often suggested
> the opposite,
> asserting that mise en scene doesn't "express"
> anything but itself
> and creates its own content.
>
True. I think particularly of Fereydoun Hoveyda's
delerious ananlysis of "Party Girl" -- a film its
director Nick Ray believed suffered from
"Old-fashioned script-writing."
>
>
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12877
From: Aaron Graham
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 10:34pm
Subject: Re: Television that we like
> I've heard the Joe Dante-produced "Erie, Indiana" is good;
> Peter
I can't recall "Erie, Indiana" all that well, having only seen it
when I was a child. But Dante's two episodes for Spielberg's "Amazing
Stories" anthology series were quite good and make nice companion
pieces to his work in "Twilight Zone - The Movie".
The first one, "Boo!", had Dante regulars Robert Picardo and Wendy
Schaal as pesky porn industry-types moving in to a rather suburban
neighborhood and disrupting the ghosts of the former residents
(Eddie Bracken and Evelyn Keyes). The setting was clean-cut, "small
town" USA like most of Dante's films.
The second, "The Greibble", was less enjoyable than the first and
featured a giant, friendly monster wreaking messy havoc on housewife
Hayley Mills. Dick Miller co-starred as the mailman, I believe.
I think Dante also directed an episode of "Police Squad" with Leslie
Neilson (forerunner for "The Naked Gun" films), which is fairly easy
to obtain on vhs.
-Aaron
12878
From:
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 6:43pm
Subject: Re: OT: Krazy Kat
Krazy Kat is often considered the greatest of all American newspaper comic
strips.
Some thoughts on the characters:
Krazy Kat is BOTH male and female, at the same time. Herriman made this very
explicit. So Krazy is like the original humans, according to Plato, before we
split apart into two sexes. Or like the inhabitants of the planet Gethen in
Ursula K. LeGuin's prose science fiction novel, "The Left Hand of Darkness"
(1969). Or a bit like poet Octavio Paz' call that we should all try to be more
andogynous.
The narration in the strip sometimes refers to Krazy as a he, sometimes as a
she. Krazy can do things that are part of both genders. She once marched for
woman's suffrage (giving women the right to vote) in a famous poltical strip.
Krazy is regulalry pummeled with bricks by Ignatz Mouse, an obnoxious mouse.
Ignatz claims to do this out of hating Krazy, and out of general meanness.
Krazy interprets each brick as a love missive from Ignatz. IMHO, Krazy is deluded
about this. Ignatz just seems mean. Ignatz is married, and has a long
suffering mouse wife and children.
There is definitely a racial allegory here. Herriman was a light skinned
African-American who spent his whole life "passing" for white. Had he not done
this, it is unlikely he could have been employed as a cartoonist and drawn Krazy
Kat. The constant abuse of the black cat Krazy by the pink skinned mouse
Ignatz reflects on the horrendous treament of blacks by whites in the US.
Herriman earlier drew a short-lived strip called "Musical Mose". Mose is a
human musician, and black. The strips start out with white people hearing Mose
playing behind a wall. They express enthusiasm for his music. Then they see
Mose, realise he is black, and beat him up. A truly painful look at black & white
in the US.
The dog policeman, Offissa B. Pup, constantly arrests Ignatz after he
assaults Krazy with bricks. B. Pup tries to protect Krazy. One might read a love
relationship here, but one can doubt this again. All of the dog characters in
Krazy Kat are deeply bourgeois. They are businessmen, tradsmen, etc. Offissa Pup
is dedicated to middle class ideals of law and order.
By contrast, the bird characters in the strip, such as Mock Duck, are almost
as one-of-a-kind and magical as Krazy.
The whole strip takes place in Arizona locations, that later would be famous
in the movies of John Ford
Mike Grost
12879
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 10:46pm
Subject: The Big Easy (Was: Storytelling)
> But Dan - McBride and his his writing collaborator completely transformed -
> ie re-wrote - the script they were handed for THE BIG EASY! (As McBride has
> often done - even to a script by Terrence Malick!!) I read the original, and
> it was a completely banal and formulaic crime/courtroom thriller.
I'm not shocked that McBride did a rewrite - the film turned out pretty
strong. But (and I'm working from memory here, having not seen the film
in years) the plot itself is intrinsically empty, one of those routine
light thrillers where there is no synergy between the actions and the
characters who perform them. Tell me if I'm wrong, but my assumption is
that he didn't have the power to transform the basic story conception.
(If he did, he could have done better!) - Dan
12880
From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 10:47pm
Subject: Re: Freudian slips in H'wd Fillms (Was: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> > >
> > > Thanks for that example! I'm collecting these because, after
> > noticing
> > > El Jaibo's slip in Los Olvidados, I started wondering how many
> > > Freudian slips occur in H'wd films. Ken Mogg reminded me of the
> one
> > > in Spellbound; this is the 2nd I have for my list.
Stop me when you've had enough but...
In The Woman in the Window, after Wanley murders Mazard, he makes
several slips to the District Attorney, such as referring to Mazard
as being dead even though the DA has yet to confirm this, and also
referring to traces of Mazard's blood being on a barbed wire fence
before the DA has even referred to the presence of this fence. Lang's
characters are frequently slipping up or unwittingly revealing
themselves through their faulty command of language, as in Spencer
Tracy's "anonymous" note in Fury in which his incorrect use of the
word momentum for memento unwittingly reveals his identity to Sylvia
Sidney, since she has corrected him on this incorrect usage earlier
in the film.
A dumber example: In Pal Joey, when one of the showgirls is standing
in the wings watching Frank Sinatra onstage, she tells a skeptical
Barbara Nichols how much she likes Sinatra. "You like anyone with
pants on," Nichols tells her. "That's not true," the girl says, "I
like a lot of people without pants on.....I mean...." Nichols: "Let
it lay, honey."
I've forgotten: What is the difference between an "ordinary" failure
in terms of using language and an actual Freudian slip? Throughout
Adam's Rib, whenever Spencer Tracy gets nervous or agitated, he
stumbles over language, saying things like "Don't get pinky, Cranky,"
to Hepburn when he means to say, "Don't get cranky, Pinky." We tend
to think of Freudian slips as revealing something about our
unconscious thoughts but in the case of Adam's Rib it seems to more
generally refer to Tracy's occasional out-of-control state.
12881
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 10:52pm
Subject: Re: Television that we like
The same is true of most TV
> shows: it all depends on the director. The Tourneur "Twilight
Zone," "Night
> Call," is much better than any other "Twilight Zone" episode I've
seen, though
> there are a few other really good ones (Jack Smight's and Lamont
Johnson's, in
> particular) and the show is a lot of "fun" in general.
And the script. Matheson's script about the penny fortune telling
machine made for a masterpiece by an unrenowned director.
Same goes for my
> all-time favorite series, "Peter Gunn"; the atmosphere is always
there, always
> enjoyable to watch, but if you get Edwards or Johnson behind the
camera, it can be
> positively masterful.
You can add Jack Arnold to the outstanding directors of Peter Gunn,
and particularly of Mr. Lucky, a series he produced for Edwards,
which I loved -- the Mancini scores were especially brilliant, but I
suspect that revisiting episodes would show Arnold's hand weighing
heavily on the scale.
>
> I've heard the Joe Dante-produced "Erie, Indiana" is good; Bill? \
A very good series, whoever was directing. This is the rule with
episodic: the producer-writer (it's usually both, though not in Joe's
case) is the auteur, although there are gratifying transcendences by
guest directors, like Night Call (in a series that avoided one style
anyway) or William Graham's episodes of Batman and X-Files -- the
latter a fascinating disaster. Joe was a smart producer. He handed
off the last Eerie episode -- in which he appears -- to Ken Kwapis,
one of the foremost tv auteurs today (Larry Sanders, Malcolm in the
Middle, Bernie Mac, Freaks and Geeks), whose features aren't bad
either -- I love Dunston Checks In, and I'm looking forward to Sexual
Relations, which premiered at the LA Fest while I was tied up writing.
But I see no shift of sensibility or style between episodes of
Carnivale, even though Tim Hunter directed an early one; ditto Taken,
and ditto, I'm sure, Dead Like Me, Deadwood, 24 (although didn't
Hopkins direct all of these as well as producing?), et al.
The "created by" credit tells you who...well, created it.
12882
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 10:53pm
Subject: Re: What is an auteur? (Was: Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence
Right
> now I feel Minnelli's work is only being discussed in the subject
> of "is he/she or isn't he/she"
Largely true, and that happens a lot, even here. I did bring up the
issue of caricature, twice, and Fred the issue of space.
12883
From:
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 7:02pm
Subject: Re: What is an auteur? (Was: Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence
My Minnelli web site article has a lot about Minnelli's visual style. As well
as gender politics in Minnelli. It is at:
http://members.aol.com/MG4273/minn.htm
It is a work in progress.
Mike Grost
12884
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 11:09pm
Subject: Re: Storytelling
Let me add that, without looking at the script file at the Herrick, I
would call communist poet Kenneth Frearing's book The Big Clock a
major pulp literary property, although I believe Farrow, a Catholic,
transformed it into an indictment of the clockwork God of the
Englightenment -- really, into a Gnostic indictment of the demiurge,
although I'm sure Farrow (probably the only H'wd director who knew
the heresies by heart!) would be horrified at that interpretation.
I don't know what all happened in the script process to make this
possible, but I don't see this as a programmer that Farrow upgraded
by his undoubtedly brilliant direction -- the flashy elevator shot,
for example, would have to have been in the script. Also, for what
it's worth, Farrow's wife co-starred in the picture. Admittedly, that
was a step up from Tarzan, but Milland had won an Oscar in 1945 for
The Lost Weekend, so The Big Clock (1948) must have been a fairly
high-profile project. It would be interesting to look at what did go
on.
12885
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 11:11pm
Subject: Re: Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> >
> > He seemed to be saying that mise en scene cannot
> > operate against
> > the scenario, or if it does, it is a suicidal act. I
> > tend to agree,
> > although the auteurist discourse has often suggested
> > the opposite,
> > asserting that mise en scene doesn't "express"
> > anything but itself
> > and creates its own content.
> >
>
> True. I think particularly of Fereydoun Hoveyda's
> delerious ananlysis of "Party Girl" -- a film its
> director Nick Ray believed suffered from
> "Old-fashioned script-writing."
An article that I have loved madly for almost 40 years. "While we're
at it, why not take into account the influence of the heavenly
bodies!"
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
12886
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 11:16pm
Subject: Re: Television that we like
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Graham"
wrote:
> > I've heard the Joe Dante-produced "Erie, Indiana" is good;
> > Peter
>
> I can't recall "Erie, Indiana" all that well, having only seen it
> when I was a child. But Dante's two episodes for
Spielberg's "Amazing
> Stories" anthology series were quite good and make nice companion
> pieces to his work in "Twilight Zone - The Movie".
>
> The first one, "Boo!", had Dante regulars Robert Picardo and Wendy
> Schaal as pesky porn industry-types moving in to a rather suburban
> neighborhood and disrupting the ghosts of the former residents
> (Eddie Bracken and Evelyn Keyes). The setting was clean-cut, "small
> town" USA like most of Dante's films.
>
> The second, "The Greibble", was less enjoyable than the first and
> featured a giant, friendly monster wreaking messy havoc on
housewife
> Hayley Mills. Dick Miller co-starred as the mailman, I believe.
>
> I think Dante also directed an episode of "Police Squad" with
Leslie
> Neilson (forerunner for "The Naked Gun" films), which is fairly
easy
> to obtain on vhs.
>
> -Aaron
The Amazing Stories are pretty weak, because of the scripts, but
Shadow Man, which he directed for the new Twilight Zone, and
Lightnin', a Zane Grey short with Brian Keith that he adapted for
Showtime, are 30-minute masterpieces. Then of course there are
Rynaway Daughetrs and The Second Civil War. A recent Dante 30-minute
piece, done for an anthology series that died fast, starred Bridget
Fonda as a divcorced woman who's convinced that there's a Secret
Sharer living in her house. He has never watched it because the
producers didn't want his cut, but it looked to me like they went
back to it -- I can't recall the title.
The new Twilight Zone was pretty good -- I wish they'd put it out on
DVD. Jim McBride's The Once and Future Kind is wonderful, as is
Milius's duck-hunting episode, and Friedkin's 1-hr. Nightcrawlers is
dazzling.
12887
From: Maxime Renaudin
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 11:20pm
Subject: Re: Tourneur (Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence)
Incidentally, the article is unusually and clearly divided into two
parts: The Story and The Film.
However, I don't read this article as defending the predominance of
the scenario over the illustrating mise-en-scene (and I know it was
not your point, Bill). In the same article, Biette wrote:" Themes
and meanings are the outcome of the mise-en-scene : the scenario
contents itself with suggesting the first ones as absolute
truths..." [I'm sorry but, at this late hour, I can't find my
english words to translate the end...]
Biette points out Tourneur's constant fidelity to the scripts he had
to deal with: "Jacques Tourneur doesn't correct anything, he doesn't
call anything into question".
About "Stars in My Crown", Biette wrote: "Jacques Tourneur always
knew, in the worst story, how to emphasize, objectively and without
disturbing anything, his point of view". That's where stands
auteurism, no? Is that perverse?
By the way, in the same article, Biette uses the english
word "director", and not cinéaste or any other word..
Maxime
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> I never met a director who didn't think the script was extremely
> important, and as previously noted, I never met a great director
who
> wasn't highly intelligent and articulate, even if some of the
> examples in my list struck some members of the group as dumb-bells
> when they heard them doing Q and A's.
>
> I've always found slightly perverse -- coming from a very
> sophisticated critic/filmmaker writing about the ultimate mise-en-
> scene director -- this part of J.-C. Biette's article on
Tourneur's
> Wichita: "It is hard not to see that the scenario constitutes the
> foundation of the mise en scene, insofar as the latter proposes
> nothing but to go as deeply as possible into the social,
ideological,
> moral and semantic content of the scenario (And I don't see what
> other function the mise en scene of a film could have)." Perverse,
> because it runs counter to many commonplaces of auteurism,
> particularly with respect to Tourneur, but stimulating, and
> perhaps "true"?
12888
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 11:21pm
Subject: Re: OT: Krazy Kat
Thanks for the best commentary I've read on my favorite comic strip.
(And yes, I've read Cummings and Seldes.) Dick Wilson told me that he
and Welles were both big fans.
12889
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 11:21pm
Subject: Re: OT: Krazy Kat
The thank you was for Mike.
12890
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 11:25pm
Subject: Re: Freudian slips in H'wd Fillms (Was: Tea and Sympathy (& Lust for Life)
>
> Stop me when you've had enough but...
> I've forgotten: What is the difference between an "ordinary"
failure
> in terms of using language and an actual Freudian slip? Throughout
> Adam's Rib, whenever Spencer Tracy gets nervous or agitated, he
> stumbles over language, saying things like "Don't get pinky,
Cranky,"
> to Hepburn when he means to say, "Don't get cranky, Pinky." We
tend
> to think of Freudian slips as revealing something about our
> unconscious thoughts but in the case of Adam's Rib it seems to more
> generally refer to Tracy's occasional out-of-control state.
Keep 'em coming. There must be one in Secret Beyond the Door too.
I don't think Freud acknowledged the existence of meaningless slips,
slthough I could be wrong. Tracy's slip is very funny, but (because?)
it is pretty overdetermined. I'll check Cavell and get back to you.
12891
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 11:31pm
Subject: Re: Television that we like
Let me add this about Night Call. The ending is not the one in the
story, which ends with "I'll be right over. (Click!)" Matheson seems
to have come up with a new ending that is like a caricature of
Serling's moralizing endings: "She's made her bed and she'll have to
lie in it" -- particularly insensitive applied to a paralytic. The
subversion is an example of what Jean-Louis Comolli and Serge Daney
have described as the formal basis for JT's subversion of Hawks,
which has to do with the writing of cause and effect: In this case,
the cause (her imperiousness 25 years ago) and the effect (her
present situation) are too far apart to underwrite the moralizing,
which just sounds sadistic. How this happened, I'm not too sure. I'll
ask RM if I ever talk to him again.
12892
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 11:32pm
Subject: Re: Re: Storytelling
> I don't know what all happened in the script process to make this
> possible, but I don't see this as a programmer that Farrow upgraded
> by his undoubtedly brilliant direction -- the flashy elevator shot,
> for example, would have to have been in the script. Also, for what
> it's worth, Farrow's wife co-starred in the picture. Admittedly, that
> was a step up from Tarzan, but Milland had won an Oscar in 1945 for
> The Lost Weekend, so The Big Clock (1948) must have been a fairly
> high-profile project. It would be interesting to look at what did go
> on.
My take isn't that the film was fated to be a programmer - as with THE
BIG EASY, I think that the script, as seen and heard in the finished
film, is short on intrinsic meaning. In both cases the killings
function as an excuse for action which the script presents as light
entertainment.
I'm not making an argument for the supremacy of mise-en-scene over the
script - just the opposite. If the director could have taken these
scripts and made a perfect work of art from them, then the scripts too
would have to be called perfect, because they served the purpose of the
perfect finished film. As it is, I feel that the films in finished form
are hampered by script problems. But both films show signs of a
director trying to harmonize disparate moods and lay out a smooth
emotional development. It's of course entirely possible that the
directors who created the tone and emphases that I admire also created
the bad script elements. I tend to doubt it, but I'm open to
persuasion. I'd be even more open to the idea that the directors simply
didn't mind the script problems that I mind. But in both cases I still
lean toward the theory that the directors tried to minimize the
importance of certain script elements that they were working against. I
think this because the script as filmed occasionally suggests a
different and worse movie. I feel two creative impulses fighting each
other on the same project. - Dan
12893
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 11:36pm
Subject: Re: Tourneur (Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence)
> By the way, in the same article, Biette uses the english
> word "director", and not cinéaste or any other word..
>
All true. And the hell of it is I don't know WHAT he would've called
Tourneur -- the classifications came much later. One could say that
the definition of the loaded word mise en scene proposed here is
almost tailor-made for Tourneur, but it's interesting to apply to
other types of filmmaker -- say JCB himself, who wrote all his own
scripts.
12894
From: Maxime Renaudin
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 11:37pm
Subject: Re: Sorry for them (was : WIDESCREEN COMPOSITION IN THE AGE)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" >
> This is most unfair! Most directors do care, but they are
helpless about what is done to their films on TV.
Unfair ideed. My intention was not to blame all the Fullers, past
present and future, who have to fight against the scissors (and
loose..) But there is not any chance that the wide audience feels
concerned some day about this widescreen issue, since the vast
majority of films made around the world don't even call that issue,
and could be shown on a mobile phone, since there is nothing to
see...
Maxime
12895
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 11:41pm
Subject: Re: Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> >
>
> True. I think particularly of Fereydoun Hoveyda's
> delerious ananlysis of "Party Girl" -- a film its
> director Nick Ray believed suffered from
> "Old-fashioned script-writing."
> >
> >
> The interesting thing about that "delirious" article was that
most of it was devoted to describing the faults and flaws of the
film, which F.H. then somehow turned around and presented as evidence
of Ray's genius.
The film is indeed old-fashioned script-writing, and the mise en
scene is somehow great, but it doesn't make the script any the less
cliched. At best it makes its cliched nature irrelevant.
Then take another step and watch "Hot Blood".
JPC
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
12896
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 11:47pm
Subject: Re: What is an auteur? (Was: Storytelling/Remakes/Intelligence
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> Right
> > now I feel Minnelli's work is only being discussed in the subject
> > of "is he/she or isn't he/she"
>
> Largely true, and that happens a lot, even here. I did bring up the
> issue of caricature, twice, and Fred the issue of space.
All of Minnelli's melodramas rely heavily on caricature. You may
laugh at it, or with it, or try to ignore it, or find it sublime
(=auteurism).
JPC
12897
From: Damien Bona
Date: Thu Jul 22, 2004 0:33am
Subject: Re: OT: Krazy Kat (was Gayness Conquers All)
When I was a kid in the mid-60s, there was a very cheap Krazy Kat
cartoon series on TV in which Krazy was very clearly female.
On the other hand, Columbia put out a series of Krazy Kat cartooms in
the 30s in which Krazy looked nothing like Herriman's character,
resembling instead a big-eyed Fleischer creature. In these 'toons,
Krazy was made into a guy cat and he had a girlfriend.
-- Damien
12898
From: Damien Bona
Date: Thu Jul 22, 2004 0:46am
Subject: Re: Television that we like
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
I also
> notice that Curtis Harrington has done some episodic television
Harrington did extensive television work in the 70s and 80s,
including Charlie's Angels, Baretta and Womder Woman. He was also
hired by Aaron Spelling to direct a number of episodes of Dynasty
when that night time soap was a Reagan-era pop culture phenomenon (my
memory is that he directed even more episodes of the wonderful but
much less popular Dynasty spin-off, The Colbys). His mise-en-scene
in Dynasty and The Colbys was strikingly baroque for television and
amidst the blandness that is visual "style" on TV his work really
stood out, with his STernberg influences in full view.
-- Damien
12899
From: Filipe Furtado
Date: Wed Jul 21, 2004 10:22pm
Subject: Re: Television that we like
Jaime, a small tip: when it comes to TV it's hard to judge anything by the
early episodes. Usually a show takes most of it's first season to get really
shaped. (which is one of the more interesting aspects of TV, the fact that
we watch something while it's being made; it's a far less closed process of
filmmaking than movies).
I think that we relate in a diferent way to TV images and film images (and
it's not only a matter of seeing a film in a theatre or TV) so it doesn't
feel very fair to judge then by the same criteria. They aren't the same
thing, this mistake made many people look at TV with the same sort of
superiority that some literature people look at movies.
That said I was always very fond of Buffy and it's spin-off Angel (as well
as Joss Whedon other TV show the very good sci-fi western Firefly which he
is turning into a film next year), 24, Simpsons and Crossing Jordan (which
is produced and very often directed by Allan Arkush, one of the best
directors that statart with Corman at New World).
Filipe
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jaime N. Christley"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2004 5:48 PM
Subject: [a_film_by] Television that we like
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
>
> > I don't have cable, but Marvin taped all of the first season of
> > Carnivale for me, and I bought a screener of Dead Like Me at
> Amoeba
> > for a buck. Not bad. For tv.
>
> Saw about twenty minutes of the "Dead Like Me" pilot and found it
> intolerable. A friend of mine told me it gets quite a bit better.
>
> Love:
> CHAPPELLE'S SHOW
> SIMPSONS reruns
> COSBY SHOW reruns
> THE OFFICE
>
> Dislike:
> ALIAS (first episode)
> CSI (first two episodes)
> BUFFY THE VAMPIRES SLAYER (first three episodes - I'll stick with it)
>
> -Jaime
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
12900
From: Aaron Graham
Date: Thu Jul 22, 2004 1:06am
Subject: Re: Television that we like
> A recent Dante 30-minute
> piece, done for an anthology series that died fast, starred Bridget
> Fonda as a divcorced woman who's convinced that there's a Secret
> Sharer living in her house. He has never watched it because the
> producers didn't want his cut, but it looked to me like they went
> back to it -- I can't recall the title.
Was this the Henry Rollins-hosted Fox show "Night Visions"?
I recall having high hopes for it because Keith Gordon and Tobe
Hooper had also contributed episodes along with Dante, but could
never find when it aired (briefly) in 2001. I managed to catch and
record the other episode Dante did for it entitled "Quiet, Please"
with Cary Elwes. It was a wilderness horror story concerning a serial
killer.
> The new Twilight Zone was pretty good -- I wish they'd put it out
on
> DVD.
You're in luck. New Line is putting it out on September 7th, 2004.
In fact, this fall, EVERY Twilight Zone series (the Serling original,
the 80s version and the recent incarnation hosted by Forest Whitaker)
are all being either released or re-released with commentaries, etc.
Anthology shows seem to be the best route for tv auteurs given that
they can stylize their own little shorts without having to worry
about what came before and what will come after.
Other memorable anthology wonders:
The 1980s "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" episode "Enough Rope for Two",
which marked David Chase's directorial debut.
The very first "Tales from the Crypt", "the Man Who Was Death"
directed by Walter Hill, is very memorable in my mind for its tight
editing. Considering it was for HBO and he was also executive
producer, I'm sure he had free reins to direct it as he pleased.
His second episode, "Cutting Cards", is also worth mentioning. I
haven't seen his third (and final), "Deadline".
-Aaron
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