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22801
From: iangjohnston
Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 6:51pm
Subject: Re: Not gay, British! (Colin Firth) (was Mankiewicz/Rivette)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Zach Campbell"
wrote:
>
> Mike:
> > This archetype survives to this day. Colin Firth and Hugh Grant
> > have built careers around such roles.
>
> Hugh Grant might apply but I don't think Firth fits this
stereotype--
> just last night I listened at length to what my girlfriend and
> another female friend, both swooning, had to say about Colin
Firth's
> appeal! For him the exemplified British register is "reserve"
more
> than suavity or elegance or "metrosexuality."
>
> --Zach
Absolutely. My wife demands an annual screening of Pride and
Prejudice on her birthday. Six hours of female swooning.
22802
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 7:02pm
Subject: Re: Not gay, British! (Colin Firth) (a little OT)
Ian:
> Absolutely. My wife demands an annual screening of Pride and
> Prejudice on her birthday. Six hours of female swooning.
Yeah, that miniseries (I've seen it once with my better half) seems
to be the pinnacle for Colin Firth fans. It's really not a bad
production, either. (And why didn't Jennifer Ehle become a star?--
"luminous" is a word that applies to her.)
I get the feeling that Firth is more appreciated by straight women
than gay men. (Whereas, say, Colin Farrell or George Clooney rate
pretty high in both groups as far as I'm aware.) Is this the case?
Gay male list members, how does he rate?
--Zach
22803
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 7:23pm
Subject: Re: Re: Melville (was: male-male bonding)
>> Melville was gay.
>
> Is that a fact? Didn't know it. Not very surprising.
I think he was talking about Herman, not J-P. - Dan
22804
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 7:31pm
Subject: Re: Re: Melville (was: male-male bonding)
I was speaking of Herman, not Jean-Pierre.
He was metrosexual.
--- Maxime Renaudin wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
>
> > Melville was gay.
>
> Is that a fact? Didn't know it. Not very surprising.
> Just seen Un Flic again. The Delon/Crenna relation
> is actually
> unambiguous. And the trans informer seems to make
> Delon doubt of
> what he is.
> I love that crazy scene in the nightclub, when
> Delon, Deneuve and
> Crenna have a drink at the bar. The sound is turned
> down, and
> Melville offers the most incredible minute of his
> whole work, with
> those (almost) silent close-up where the three faces
> are snatched
> from the world and call to each other trough a
> language without
> equal. A very last film.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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22805
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 7:35pm
Subject: Re: Re: Not gay, British! (Colin Firth) (a little OT)
--- Zach Campbell wrote:
>
> I get the feeling that Firth is more appreciated by
> straight women
> than gay men. (Whereas, say, Colin Farrell or
> George Clooney rate
> pretty high in both groups as far as I'm aware.) Is
> this the case?
> Gay male list members, how does he rate?
>
Not very swoon-worthy as far as this 'Mo sees it --
unlike Peter Firth in hus "Equus" days.
Clooney does nothing for me whatsoever -- unlike Colin
Farrell who I want so bad I can taste it.
>
>
>
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22806
From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 9:09pm
Subject: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
David wrote:
> Not quite in the same way. Eve, who was born Mildred
> Plotka, created herself before she got Addison's help.
Eve was originally Gertrude Slescynski.
> He also has a line -- can't rememebr it exactly --
where he says "That I desire you at all" is absurd or
words to that effect.
"That I should want you at all suddenly strikes me as
the height of improbability. But that in itself is
probably the reason. You're an improbable person
Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also,
a contempt for humanity, an inability to love or be
loved, insatiable ambition and talent. We deserve
each other."
Queer Addison finding it improbable that he should
want queer Eve. Cleary now it is for more than just
attracting rough trade, though it is not sexual desire,
since Addison has just rebuffed Eve's attempt to be
dominant toward him.
> I wouldn't go that far. Havig sex with Addison and
then rushing right out to seduce Lloyd feeds Addison's
masochism -- which hasn't been discussed as yet.
I did comment on Addison using Miss Caswell/Eve as
bait for the rough trade he likes. Also, Eve recognizes
Addison's masochism, but overplays her hand when she
thinks she can too can dominate Addison: "I don't think
I would take you for anything." Addison then looms
over her and we get a shot of Eve on the floor from his
pov. We then get Addison slapping Eve and warning her
never to laugh at him again.
By the end of the film Addison has tired of her -- she is
going to Hollywood: "From the trunks you're packing,
you must be going to stay a long time." Maybe his
improbable nature caused him to want to be dominant
with Eve, to own her as it were. But eventually he goes
to back to being masochistic with rough trade.
Brian
22807
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 9:09pm
Subject: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
"2) I've argued in previous posts that many of Robert Bresson's
heroes and Ozu's heroines were gay. In both cases, there are explict
indicators of gayness...the heroine of "Late Spring" is horrified
over her forced marriage, the heroine of "Early Summer" is mainly
interested in a relationship with the mother-in-law of her arranged
marriage."
Mike, you might find this suggestion of interest since I recall that
you like Mizoguchi's GION BAYASHI/A GEISHA. Kogure Michiyo's
dressers are gay though there's nothing explicit about their sexual
orientation other than their occupation. In the geisha world gay men
were employed as dressers/handlers by independent geisha. Mizoguchi
was an habitue of the geisha quarters for most of his adult life so
there's no doubt that he was quite familar with the entire milieu,
but the important point is that the two dressers are the only
sympathetic men in the picture (the father is more pathetic than
sympathetic.) If you have the chance to see the movie again please
consider this hypothesis about the dressers.
Richard
22808
From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 9:19pm
Subject: Re: Humbert Balsan
Balsan (who suicided at 50) was an actor in
> Bresson's LANCELOT, and as a producer he had a hand in bringing to
the
> screen films by Sandrine Veysset (Y aura t'il de la neige à noêl?
and her
> subsequent films), Philippe Faucon (L'Amour, Muriel fait le
désespoir de ses
> parents, Samia), Jean-Louis Trintignant (Le Maître nageur), René
Allio
> (Transit), Niko Papatakis (Les Equilibristes), Elia Suleiman
(Divine
> Intervention), Hervé Le Roux (Grand Bonheur), James Ivory (Quartet
& several
> others) Yousry Nasrallah (Mercedes, La Ville, La Porte du soleil).
Recently
> he produced Claire Denis (L'intrus) et Béla Tarr (The Man from
London).
> Above all he was Youssef Chahine's French producer, from Adieu
Bonaparte up
> to Alexandrie New York via Silence on tourne, Alexandrie pourquoi?
and
> Destiny. An amazing career, and a tragic loss.
He also produced, if I'm not mistaken, at least one of Eduardo de
Gregorio's features, and wrote for Positif. I knew him somewhat. A
shocking and sad bit of news.
Jonathan
22809
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 9:35pm
Subject: Re: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- Brian Charles Dauth
wrote:
>
> Eve was originally Gertrude Slescynski.
>
Thanks for clearing that one up. 500 points on "Gay
Jeopardy"
>
> "That I should want you at all suddenly strikes me
> as
> the height of improbability. But that in itself is
> probably the reason. You're an improbable person
> Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also,
> a contempt for humanity, an inability to love or be
> loved, insatiable ambition and talent. We deserve
> each other."
>
> Queer Addison finding it improbable that he should
> want queer Eve. Cleary now it is for more than just
> attracting rough trade, though it is not sexual
> desire,
> since Addison has just rebuffed Eve's attempt to be
> dominant toward him.
>
Can we back upa bit on this? "All About Eve" was made
under the production coed. And under said code NO gay
characters existed. While it'sperfectly possible to
"read" Addison as gay in the sense that had Mankiewicz
been given a freer hand he would have made him so
works only up to a point.
And that point is the hotel room scene.
>
> I did comment on Addison using Miss Caswell/Eve as
> bait for the rough trade he likes.
And just wherre is said rough trade in "All About
Eve"?
Nowhere.
You're talking about a logical impossibility in terms
of 1950's Hollywood.
Also, Eve
> recognizes
> Addison's masochism, but overplays her hand when she
> thinks she can too can dominate Addison: "I don't
> think
> I would take you for anything." Addison then looms
> over her and we get a shot of Eve on the floor from
> his
> pov. We then get Addison slapping Eve and warning
> her
> never to laugh at him again.
>
True.
> By the end of the film Addison has tired of her --
> she is
> going to Hollywood: "From the trunks you're packing,
> you must be going to stay a long time." Maybe his
> improbable nature caused him to want to be dominant
> with Eve, to own her as it were. But eventually he
> goes
> to back to being masochistic with rough trade.
Again -- where are they?
Look, I'm sympathetic up to a point but you can't turn
the undertones of a studio era film into primary text.
Mankiewicz was really psuhing the edge of the envelope
with Eve herself. Her overtures to Margot fall just
short of that of a sapphic stalker. Margot is, of
course all tied up with Bill and ignores that side of
Eve -- which the film translates into deviousness
anyway. Birdie is, of course, wise to Eve -- and karen
completely blinkered by her, until the powder room
scene ( a great moment in Mankiewicziana.) But all
this comes under the heading of lesbians "slipping one
past the goalie" in the studio era.
If you want to talk about REAL gay material then
you're talking "Rope" where, as James Agee said of
"The Miracle of Morgan's Creek," "The Production Code
was raped in its sleep."
As the old Native American said, "All About Eve," like
"Laura" speaks with forked tongue.
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22810
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 9:36pm
Subject: Re: Re: Humbert Balsan
--- Jonathan Rosenbaum
wrote:
>
> He also produced, if I'm not mistaken, at least one
> of Eduardo de
> Gregorio's features, and wrote for Positif. I knew
> him somewhat. A
> shocking and sad bit of news.
>
Didn't he also work with Rivette?
>
>
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22811
From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 9:42pm
Subject: Re: Five Fingers
ht666 wrote:
> Micahel Wilson (the other one) wrote the script, but
Mankiewicz obviously had a hand in the dialogue.
JLM rewrote the entire script. He wasn't going to
renew his contract with 20th Century, so he took on
this script to fulfill his obligations. He knew he wasn't
going to get screen credit, so Wilson got an Oscar
nomination and won a Golden Globe for something he
didn't write.
> What do we make of Mank and cynicism?
5 Fingers and The Honey Pot are JLM at his most cynical.
Both films were made after gruelling experiences: THP after
Cleopatra and 5 Finges after DeMille's attempt to oust JLM
as President of the Directors Guild over the loyalty oath
issue. JLM's response to the affair was to make "People
Will Talk."
But after PWT, Zanuck would not produce JLM's movies
anymore, and JLM realized that Zanuck's productions always
got the lion's share of attention at the studio. Somebody had
to go and it wasn't going to be Zanuck.
I see Diello's laughter at the end as expressing in part
Mankiewicz's wry/cynical take on Hollywood. JLM was the
toast of Hollywood just a year earlier: a back-to-back winner of
Oscars for writing and direction (like Joe DiMaggio's 56-game
hitting streak in baseball, the Oscar accomplishment I think will
be hardest to duplicate, never mind better). Now he was without
a studio for the first time since 1929. All his fame and awards
were as useless as Diello's counterfeit money. Diello tosses it
all away, just as Mankiewicz did by packing up and decamping
from Hollywood.
Brian
22812
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 9:47pm
Subject: Re: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
I second David E's comments, or most of them, but also, in a more
general way but along the same lines, I've always been uncomfortable
with pushing the analysis of characters in films, and taking about what
their motivations are and what they do later, as when
Brian Charles Dauth wrote:
> But eventually he goes
> to back to being masochistic with rough trade
a little bit too far. Sure, to some extent Hollywood narrative films are
constructed to encourage you to make inferences about characters, and
get a bit lost in their worlds. But these characters are not as fully
fleshed out as people in real life. The question, it seems to me, should
not be what does the character do after, but what, if anything, does the
film encourage us to imagine the character does after. Often films don't
really raise that question at all.
Someone supposedly asked Hitchcock what Scottie does after the end of
"Vertigo," and the way I heard the story, he replied, "He makes love to
the nun." The absurdity of that notion especially given Scottie's
apparent physical (flapping tie) and massive metaphysical impotence
makes this point: In "Vertigo," there are no characters after the movie
ends. More generally, the question should be what we're expected to
understand about characters according to the codes of representation at
the time, not where do our fantasies about the characters take us --
unless, of course, we acknowledge those thoughts as just fantasies.
Fred Camper
22813
From: Dave Kehr
Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 10:15pm
Subject: Re: Humbert Balsan
I knew him quite well, and, as always seems to be the case with
suicides, he seemed like the happiest and best-adjusted man in the
world. Apart from all of his production work, he also put up Sam
Fuller and his wife in Paris for most of their exile there, lending
them his apartment near the Champs Elysses. A remarkable man, whose
loss will mean a great deal to international film.
Dave Kehr
22814
From: thebradstevens
Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 11:17pm
Subject: Re: Five Fingers
>
> JLM rewrote the entire script. He wasn't going to
> renew his contract with 20th Century, so he took on
> this script to fulfill his obligations. He knew he wasn't
> going to get screen credit, so Wilson got an Oscar
> nomination and won a Golden Globe for something he
> didn't write.
The story I heard was that Mankiewicz rewrote the entire screenplay,
but was asked to share the credit with Michael Wilson, despite the
fact that there wasn't a single word of Wilson's draft left.
Mankiewicz was so angry about this that he refused to take any credit
at all, leaving Wilson with the entire screenplay credit.
Can't recall where I heard this story, but it stuck in my mind,
because Mankiewicz's brother had a hand in writing CITIZEN KANE, and
this was exactly the kind of thing I could imagine Charles Foster
Kane doing.
22815
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 11:40pm
Subject: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
>
> Brian Charles Dauth wrote:
>
> > But eventually he goes
> > to back to being masochistic with rough trade
>
> a little bit too far.
I would say, more than a little bit. The 'rough trade" statement
is made with authority and definitiveness, as though Allison's
masochistic tastes were obvious for all to see. I almost said to
myself: "Have I missed a leather bar scene in the movie?" I agree
with Fred that this is more like indulging in a fantasy about the
character than an analysis of the character. Nothing was propounded
in support of this queer theory.
More generally I think one should be circumspect about speculating
about what a character feels and does if such speculations are not
supported by at least some solid clues in the film. Characters are
what the film tells us they are. They don't exist outside of it
(that's why asking what they do after the film is over is
irrelevant: they no longer exist, not only in "Vertigo" but in all
films). Ambiguities in a character should not be a pretext to let
our imagination run wild.
Of course it's fun to speculate. David Thomson wrote a wonderful
novel that imagines what happened after the end of many great
movies. Mark McPherson leaves his wife Laura, taking away their
daughter Mary, disappears and takes the name Barney Quill. etc...
JPC
22816
From: Saul
Date: Sun Feb 13, 2005 11:41pm
Subject: Great Films I Confess I Fell Asleep Thru (was: Great Films Members haven't Seen)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
> Are you confessing you fell asleep?
> Another possible thread: "Great Films I Confess I Fell Asleep
> Through".
Scrolling through old posts in search of someone disproving Rivette's
account of the tracking shot in Kapo, I came across JP's comment and,
seeing as no-one took up his suggestion, though "better late than never".
So here goes for films I know confess to having slept through:
(1) Most recently Angelopoulos's "The Weeping Meadow", (though I did
love the film). (It was a midnight to 3am screening, I'd been up for
several days straight, drinking .. well ... not lightly ... and was
finally at breaking point. I didn't quite fall asleep, but dozed in
and out of consciousness for most of the 3 hour running time. And I
can say that it's quite unnerving to wake up out of a sleep, and
before collecting your thoughts or remembering your exact location,
being confronted with a huge image, (I was in the very front row), of
a crying woman.
(2) I'm not sure if this counts, but on a recent re-viewing of "Light
Sleeper" I was put into a trance. The film started, and next thing I
knew I was watching the climatic shootout. I hadn't been 'asleep', but
on someone other plane of consciousness. I'm still not quite sure what
happened here.
(3) And though I can't think of exact titles at the moment, some of
those period films, the Merchant-Ivory kind, with running streams and
lush bucolic scenery, are just sometimes too much to keep my eyes open
through.
Of course, I'm often up in the wee hours of the morning watching old
tapes or dvd screeners or, what's wonderful here in Australia, is that
the ABC often plays old British films all night long, 3 or 4 in a row,
between about midnight and 6am, so it's a common part of my film
viewing life to battle tiredness, or inversely insomnia, while gorging
on films.
22817
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 0:08am
Subject: Re: Great Films I Confess I Fell Asleep Thru (was: Great Films Members haven't Seen)
--- Saul wrote:
I'm not sure if this counts, but on a recent
> re-viewing of "Light
> Sleeper" I was put into a trance. The film started,
> and next thing I
> knew I was watching the climatic shootout. I hadn't
> been 'asleep', but
> on someone other plane of consciousness. I'm still
> not quite sure what
> happened here.
>
Neither am I because I find it to be Schrader's very
best film. For once the theoretical matrix he likes to
put his characters into fits perfectly.
And he finally got his cribbing the finale of
"Pickpocket" right!
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22818
From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 1:26am
Subject: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
David writes:
> Can we back upa bit on this? "All About Eve" was made
under the production coed. And under said code NO gay
characters existed.
But Mankiewicz along with Cukor and Leisen put queer
characters in their films. They were talented enough to
get away with it.
> While it'sperfectly possible to "read" Addison as gay
in the sense that had Mankiewicz been given a freer hand
he would have made him so works only up to a point.
> And that point is the hotel room scene.
I think the reading can go beyond the hotel room scene.
> And just wherre is said rough trade in "All About Eve"?
> Nowhere.
> You're talking about a logical impossibility in terms of
1950's Hollywood.
JLM cannot portray it, but it exists offstage. In the staircase
scene, Addison says: "Too bad. They're going to play the
third act offstage." Mankiewicz built his screenplays as a
series of scenes/acts with indications to look offstage for
those members of the audience who care to do so. The
films make perfect sense without looking there, but JLM
included markers for those who cared to follow.
> Again -- where are they?
Offstage.
> Look, I'm sympathetic up to a point but you can't turn
the undertones of a studio era film into primary text.
I think in the case of JLM it is more than undertones. He
had more control than many auteurs since he was a writer/
director. He constructed his screenplays like a playwright.
There is a tremendous sense of backstory. For example,
I always wonder: how did Margo become Margo? Did
she ever have Eve moments during her rise? Also, so many
of JLM's films begin in medias res -- Dragonwyck; The Ghost
and Mrs. Muir, House of Strangers, A Letter to Three Wives,
All About Eve, Suddenly Last Summer, Sleuth -- he is
directing the audience to look backward, before the start of
the story. He was not only a great director in the sense of
working with actors and visual design, he was also a great
scenarist in terms of both dialogue and deep structure. Since
he controlled both the writing and directing of his films, he
worked not so much text and undertones, but text and subtext.
> If you want to talk about REAL gay material then
you're talking "Rope" where, as James Agee said of
"The Miracle of Morgan's Creek," "The Production Code
was raped in its sleep."
I remember liking it when I have seen it, but I do not know it
well enough. I have an on-again/off-again response to
Hitchcock.
Fred writes:
> The question, it seems to me, should not be what does the character
do after, but what, if anything, does the film encourage us to imagine
the character does after. Often films don't really raise that question at
all.
To me what someone earlier called "default films" are those that end
with the credits. For me, films by auteurs exist beyond their running
times. They invite viewers (if they wish) to help create the narrative.
This was even more crucial during the years of the Production Code
since filmmakers had to rely on viewers to make explicit in their minds
what had to remain camoflauged on screen. Mankiewicz was a master
of this type of film.
JPC writes:
> The 'rough trade" statement is made with authority and definitiveness,
as though Allison's masochistic tastes were obvious for all to see.
I think they are. Many other people I know see them as well. Not
everyone will, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. Viewers will see
what they are capable of seeing and respond accordingly.
> More generally I think one should be circumspect about speculating
about what a character feels and does if such speculations are not
supported by at least some solid clues in the film.
Addison is queer. Addison is masochistic. Queer male masochists I
have known have often been into rough trade. Even more so in the
1950's when someone of Addison's stature would most probably not
have been part of the queer leather underground.
> Characters are what the film tells us they are. They don't exist
outside of it (that's why asking what they do after the film is over is
irrelevant: they no longer exist, not only in "Vertigo" but in all films).
Of course they exist outside of the films in which they appear. They
go on to exist in the minds and emotions of observers. The fact
that they do exist in this way is one of the reasons people write
about film. For me it is the marvelous fact that people like JLM,
using light, shadow, dialogue, images, etc are able to conjure up real
people who exist beyond the boundaries of the screen.
To me, to limit characters to being what the film tells us reduces film
to a series of formal rules and conceits -- a craft instead of an art. For
me, great works of art invite us to add to them, invite us, in some
cases, to carry on the story once the movie is over. Take the end of
Eve for example: hundreds of Phoebes in endless reflection spreading
out, taking over the screen -- ambition unloosed. For me, Mankiewicz
is directing the audience to go outside the film and recognize the Eves
and Phoebes who exist in every day life.
Brian
22819
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 1:30am
Subject: Re: Great Films I Confess I Fell Asleep Thru (was: Great Films Members haven't Seen)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Saul" wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> > Are you confessing you fell asleep?
> > Another possible thread: "Great Films I Confess I Fell Asleep
> > Through".
>
Did I write that? When was it? Completely forgot.
"I fall asleep too easily
I fall asleep too fast."
Falling asleep means nothing, though. I fell asleep for ten
minutes during one of my favorite films the first time I saw it. I
was just tired. I woke up refreshed and was transfixed. The nap did
me good. JPC
22820
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 1:49am
Subject: Re: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- Brian Charles Dauth
wrote:
>
> But Mankiewicz along with Cukor and Leisen put queer
> characters in their films. They were talented
> enough to
> get away with it.
>
Marginally at best. "Sylvia Scarlett" and "Midnight"
were made before the code overtook the industry-- and
the former (while brilliant) was a major flop.
>
> JLM cannot portray it, but it exists offstage.
Well if it's offstage it's not there.
In
> the staircase
> scene, Addison says: "Too bad. They're going to
> play the
> third act offstage."
And we know full well what that refers to --Bill and
Margot doing it. Nothing gay in that.
Mankiewicz built his
> screenplays as a
> series of scenes/acts with indications to look
> offstage for
> those members of the audience who care to do so.
> The
> films make perfect sense without looking there, but
> JLM
> included markers for those who cared to follow.
>
That's like saying "From the look in Bette Davis' eyes
you can tell that Margot's favorite dish is veal
marsala."
>
> I think in the case of JLM it is more than
> undertones. He
> had more control than many auteurs since he was a
> writer/
> director. He constructed his screenplays like a
> playwright.
> There is a tremendous sense of backstory. For
> example,
> I always wonder: how did Margo become Margo? Did
> she ever have Eve moments during her rise?
A good question. But as Mankiewicz didn't write it
into the script it's impossible to answer.
And as Fred has said, in absolute cinematic turns it
never happened. Margot was born with the opening
credits of "All About Eve" and died whith "The End"
Also, so
> many
> of JLM's films begin in medias res -- Dragonwyck;
> The Ghost
> and Mrs. Muir, House of Strangers, A Letter to Three
> Wives,
> All About Eve, Suddenly Last Summer, Sleuth -- he
> is
> directing the audience to look backward, before the
> start of
> the story.
So? Pure speculation that can't be substantiated.
>
> > If you want to talk about REAL gay material then
> you're talking "Rope" where, as James Agee said of
> "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek," "The Production
> Code
> was raped in its sleep."
>
> I remember liking it when I have seen it, but I do
> not know it
> well enough. I have an on-again/off-again response
> to
> Hitchcock.
Well get cracking! You want a gay Hollywood movie?
Here it is! The characters are gay. The theme is gay.
The screenwriter is the leading man's lover. The set
decorator was gay-bashed during the shooting. And Cary
Grant turned down the lead because . . .
>
> To me what someone earlier called "default films"
> are those that end
> with the credits. For me, films by auteurs exist
> beyond their running
> times. They invite viewers (if they wish) to help
> create the narrative.
> This was even more crucial during the years of the
> Production Code
> since filmmakers had to rely on viewers to make
> explicit in their minds
> what had to remain camoflauged on screen.
> Mankiewicz was a master
> of this type of film.
>
And Parker Tyler was a master at confecting imaginary
scenarios. Gore Vidal had a great deal to say about
this in "Myra Breckinridge" as I'm sure you know.
> JPC writes:
>
> > The 'rough trade" statement is made with authority
> and definitiveness,
> as though Allison's masochistic tastes were obvious
> for all to see.
>
> I think they are. Many other people I know see them
> as well. Not
> everyone will, but that doesn't mean they aren't
> there. Viewers will see
> what they are capable of seeing and respond
> accordingly.
>
Again -- Bette Davis and veal marsala.
>
> Addison is queer. Addison is masochistic. Queer
> male masochists I
> have known have often been into rough trade. Even
> more so in the
> 1950's when someone of Addison's stature would most
> probably not
> have been part of the queer leather underground.
>
Oh brother -- now we're REALLY off the rails! Addison
DeWitt as George Platt Lynes? HAH!
>
> Of course they exist outside of the films in which
> they appear. They
> go on to exist in the minds and emotions of
> observers. The fact
> that they do exist in this way is one of the reasons
> people write
> about film.
Parker Tyler on acid!
>
> To me, to limit characters to being what the film
> tells us reduces film
> to a series of formal rules and conceits -- a craft
> instead of an art.
So everything's open to a delerium of interpretation?
Fabulous! Then I can reconfigure the "Atchison Topeka
and the Santa Fe" number in "The Harvey Girls" to
REALLY be about how cater-waiters and chorus boys
founded West Holywood!
For
> me, great works of art invite us to add to them,
> invite us, in some
> cases, to carry on the story once the movie is over.
> Take the end of
> Eve for example: hundreds of Phoebes in endless
> reflection spreading
> out, taking over the screen -- ambition unloosed.
> For me, Mankiewicz
> is directing the audience to go outside the film and
> recognize the Eves
> and Phoebes who exist in every day life.
>
True. But Arthur Miller (not gay as I recall) wants us
to look for Willy Lomans too.
"Attention must be paid!"
But just a scooch of restraint s'il vous plait.
__________________________________________________
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22821
From: Aaron Graham
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 2:19am
Subject: Re: Great Films I Confess I Fell Asleep Thru (was: Great Films Members haven't Seen)
> Neither am I because I find it to be Schrader's very
> best film. For once the theoretical matrix he likes to
> put his characters into fits perfectly.
>
> And he finally got his cribbing the finale of
> "Pickpocket" right!
I also find it to be Schrader's best film, too, although I wish he
had more of a budget to include the Bob Dylan songs he wrote into the
screenplay. Schrader even had the chutzpah to list it as one of the
best films of the 90s in a "Film Comment" poll.
-Aaron
22822
From: Saul
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 2:26am
Subject: Re: Great Films I Confess I Fell Asleep Thru (was: Great Films Members haven't S
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
> --- Saul wrote:
>
>
> I'm not sure if this counts, but on a recent
> > re-viewing of "Light
> > Sleeper" I was put into a trance. The film started,
> > and next thing I
> > knew I was watching the climatic shootout. I hadn't
> > been 'asleep', but
> > on someone other plane of consciousness. I'm still
> > not quite sure what
> > happened here.
> >
>
> Neither am I because I find it to be Schrader's very
> best film. For once the theoretical matrix he likes to
> put his characters into fits perfectly.
I agree. Not only is it one of Schrader's very best films, it's one of
my all time favourite films, (notice I said RE-watching), as my
website, "Light Sleeper: Late Night Writings on Cinema" demonstrates
in its title. I wasn't citing this as a negative example, at certain
points in my life I tend to fall into trance-like states with much
ease, I just thought it was one of my oddest viewing experiences,
seeing as the film seemed to jump from the opening dolly down the
street to "wham" "blam" and a blood-splattered wall.
22823
From: Saul
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 2:30am
Subject: Re: Great Films I Confess I Fell Asleep Thru (was: Great Films Members haven't S
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
> Did I write that? When was it? Completely forgot.
You wrote it January 18th 2004 at 2.10pm
(http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/message/6762)
> Falling asleep means nothing, though. I fell asleep for ten
> minutes during one of my favorite films the first time I saw it. I
> was just tired. I woke up refreshed and was transfixed. The nap did
> me good. JPC
I seem to be doing nothing but agreeing with people today - and yes, I
agree it means nothing, but it does add a very interesting
extra-textual layer to a viewing experience, which intersects with
another thread which was running at more or less the same time as this
original thread in Jan '04 about critics mis-remembering scenes from
films in the pre-video era. By the way, I'm curious, which is the
favourite film you napped through ten minutes of??
Saul.
22824
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 2:56am
Subject: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Charles Dauth"
wrote:
>.
>
> To me what someone earlier called "default films" are those that
end
> with the credits.
All films, whether by auteurs or not, end with the credits. The
fact that they continue to live in your mind makes no difference.
For me, films by auteurs exist beyond their running
> times. They invite viewers (if they wish) to help create the
narrative.
You don't have to create the narrative. it's already there. You
can fantasize about it as much as you want, of course, and it's fun,
but the narrative does not need your fantasizing.
.
>
> Addison is queer. Addison is masochistic. Queer male masochists
I
> have known have often been into rough trade. Even more so in the
> 1950's when someone of Addison's stature would most probably not
> have been part of the queer leather underground.
>
You never presented any evidence that Addison is queer and
masochistic and into "rough trade". He may or may not be, that's
irrelevant, because nothing in the film points to his being so.
(and if David challenges you on gay matters, then you're in
trouble!).
Why is it so important to you to turn this character into
something completely imaginary (at least to most of us here)? Is it
because you're into "rough trade" yourself? Or because some of your
best friends are? Or because you like to fantasize about it? Nothing
wrong about any of this of course, but why drag it into a
discussion of this particular film?
I'm sorry if I get "personal" but that's what you've been doing
yourself. It never occurred to me to project my own sexual fantasies
onto characters in movies. I just don't think this is the way film
should be approached.
> > Characters are what the film tells us they are. They don't exist
> outside of it (that's why asking what they do after the film is
over is
> irrelevant: they no longer exist, not only in "Vertigo" but in all
films).
>
> For me it is the marvelous fact that people like JLM,
> using light, shadow, dialogue, images, etc are able to conjure up
real
> people who exist beyond the boundaries of the screen.
>
They don't really "exist" beyond the boundaries of the screen.
You're just saying that they have affected you and you think and
feel about them. That is NOT the same thing. JPC
22825
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 3:01am
Subject: Re: Great Films I Confess I Fell Asleep Thru (was: Great Films Members haven't S
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Saul" wrote:
>
By the way, I'm curious, which is the
> favourite film you napped through ten minutes of??
>
> Saul.
Victor Erice's "El sol del membrillo".
22826
From: Saul
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 3:06am
Subject: "Oh, Michelle, it's taken me so long to come to you (was: Film I confess I .....
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Graham"
wrote:
> I also find it to be Schrader's best film, too, although I wish he
> had more of a budget to include the Bob Dylan songs he wrote into the
> screenplay. Schrader even had the chutzpah to list it as one of the
> best films of the 90s in a "Film Comment" poll.
I don't recall any Bod Dylan songs written into the "Light Sleeper"
script - Schrader makes the ocasional comment such as, "Willie Colon
plays on the jukebox", but that's about it.
22827
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 4:11am
Subject: Philip Glass makes it clear
Some gems from a less-than-articulate Philip Glass on Australian TV last
night:
Asked about 'music as narrative', he responds:
"Yes, the sound carries the narrative. The sound - and the image". (What's
left?)
Asked about music and meaning:
"Music carries the meaning. If you put the same piece of music with two
different sets of images, then the images change but the music doesn't."
(Well, duh!)
What do list members think of Glass' film scores?
Adrian
22828
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 3:39am
Subject: Biograph/Triangle (Was: What Time Is It There?)
> Dan calls this the Biograph style
I think I probably said the Triangle style. This was a reference to a
comment Godard once made about (I think) the films of Boris Barnet. I
remember watching Rohmer's L'AMI DE MON AMIE and suddenly understanding
the idea that the Renoir/Rossellini-inspired post-Bazin camera aesthetic
was a bridge to early film style, bypassing BIRTH OF A NATION, Eisenstein,
and Hollywood decoupage. - Dan
22829
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 3:44am
Subject: Re: Philip Glass makes it clear
--- Adrian Martin wrote:
>
> What do list members think of Glass' film scores?
>
Glass is one of the biggest nothings around. His
dweedle-dweedle-dweedles are the musical equivalent of
shag carpeting.
__________________________________
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Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
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22830
From: K. A. Westphal
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 4:01am
Subject: Re: Great Films I Confess I Fell Asleep Thru (was: Great Films Members haven't S
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> > Are you confessing you fell asleep?
> > Another possible thread: "Great Films I Confess I Fell Asleep
> > Through".
Most Regrettable Instance of Falling Asleep: Midnight screening of M
on TCM.
Most Pleasant Instance of Falling Asleep: LE CORBEAU
Great Films I Need to Be: CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT, AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON, THE
LEOPARD, TABU, KILLER OF SHEEP, all of Bresson
You may revoke my membership presently.
--Kyle Westphal
22831
From: Craig Keller
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 4:06am
Subject: Re: Philip Glass makes it clear
On Sunday, February 13, 2005, at 11:11 PM, Adrian Martin wrote:
>
> What do list members think of Glass' film scores?
Dross. I'll cite the relentless portentousness of 'The Hours'' score,
used by Stephen Daldry as though it would add the dramatic "snap" that
the interweaving eras failed to create. Big-time sentimentality, in
Joyce's sense: unearned emotion.
But, I do like the Glass-orchestrated "Icct Hedral" on the B-side to
Aphex Twin's "Donkey Rhubarb."
All in all though, I much prefer Hans Otte.
craig.
22832
From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 4:41am
Subject: Re: Philip Glass makes it clear
I haven't seen most of the recent Glass-scored films. "Koyaanisqatsi"
was bad enough.
There is a purpose behind my posting, though, which is to say that at
the beginning, Glass was a pretty engaging composer. Not great, but at
least very good. "Music with Changing Parts" and especially "Music in
Twelve Parts" are quite interesting and powerful; even subtle and
complex. I heard the latter in Town Hall and somewhere have them on
vinyl too. But by the end of the 70s, as his ambition of Making it Big
began to manifest itself (I don't really know his intent; that's how it
looked), his music got more simple minded and pretty and un-engaging,
more like wallpaper.
His score for Robert Wilson's great play, "Einstein on the Beach," may
or may not have been good music on its own, but was great in the play.
Even more, his score for Lucinda Childs's incredibly great "Dance" was
just fine -- because it completely supported what she did.
Fred Camper
22833
From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 5:19am
Subject: Re: Philip Glass makes it clear
There is a purpose behind my posting, though, which is to say that
at the beginning, Glass was a pretty engaging composer. Not great,
but at least very good. "Music with Changing Parts" and
especially "Music in Twelve Parts" are quite interesting and
powerful; even subtle and complex. I heard the latter in Town Hall
and somewhere have them on vinyl too. But by the end of the 70s, as
his ambition of Making it Big began to manifest itself (I don't
really know his intent; that's how it looked), his music got more
simple minded and pretty and un-engaging, more like wallpaper.
His score for Robert Wilson's great play, "Einstein on the Beach,"
may or may not have been good music on its own, but was great in the
play. Even more, his score for Lucinda Childs's incredibly
great "Dance" was just fine -- because it completely supported what
she did.
Fred Camper
I completely agree with this estimation (apart from "Dance," which I
haven't heard), and would only like to add that (a) Glass's early
music was especially potent when heard live, and (b) with very few
exceptions (e.g., "Kundun"), films that use Glass scores are less
good because of them--and that even includes "Nosferatu".
Jonathan Rosenbaum
22834
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 5:23am
Subject: Re: Philip Glass makes it clear
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
,
>
>
> His score for Robert Wilson's great play, "Einstein on the Beach,"
may
> or may not have been good music on its own, but was great in the
play.
> Even more, his score for Lucinda Childs's incredibly great "Dance"
was
> just fine -- because it completely supported what she did.
>
> Fred Camper
Lucinda Child's "Dance" is one of my most cherished memory of a
time in New York when I saw as much modern dance as I could (and
there was a lot around). You brought back a great memory, Fred!
Thanks. JPC
22835
From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 5:28am
Subject: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
David writes:
> Well if it's offstage it's not there.
We will just disagree.
> That's like saying "From the look in Bette Davis'
eyes you can tell that Margot's favorite dish is veal
marsala."
No it is not. You are using an absurd extreme to
try and discredit my observation.
> A good question. But as Mankiewicz didn't write it
into the script it's impossible to answer.
Again I disagree. I think it is the viewer's choice to
answer it or not. It is like looking at a painting of a girl
staring out of a window in rapt attention; some people
will wonder what she is looking at and some will not.
> And as Fred has said, in absolute cinematic turns it
never happened.
Who defined these absolute cinematic terms? Was
there a memo? Or has convention over time harderned
into a strict set of rules?
> Margot was born with the opening credits of "All
About Eve" and died whith "The End"
Again, we disagree.
> So? Pure speculation that can't be substantiated.
So what is wrong with imagination? Isn't that what
art is about? Firing the viewers' imaginations? Or
should art only be approached analytically through
discussion of its formal, measureable attributes?
> And Cary Grant turned down the lead because . . .
Farley Granger wouldn't sleep with him?
>And Parker Tyler was a master at confecting
imaginary scenarios. Gore Vidal had a great deal to
say about this in "Myra Breckinridge" as I'm sure
you know.
I read Parker Tyler because of Vidal. Always liked
both of them though it has been a while since I read
Tyler, and Vidal was rather cruel.
> Again -- Bette Davis and veal marsala.
Fine. Why are so interested (it seems) in limiting what a
person can get out of a film?
> Parker Tyler on acid!
Okay, I don't understand this comment
> So everything's open to a delerium of interpretation?
Isn't one of the markers of a work of art that is is open to
many interpretations? I do not believe there are an
infinite number of them, but I suspect there are many more
than people realize.
> Fabulous! Then I can reconfigure the "Atchison
Topeka and the Santa Fe" number in "The Harvey Girls"
to REALLY be about how cater-waiters and chorus
boys founded West Holywood!
Sure if you want to. But again you are using an absurd
extreme and not dealing with the more modest example I
posted.
> True. But Arthur Miller (not gay as I recall) wants us
to look for Willy Lomans too.
And that is his gig. Doesn't invalidate Mankiewicz's.
> But just a scooch of restraint s'il vous plait.
Restraint is lovely. I just think some people go too far
with restraint (more like mummification) in limiting what
a work can be about or the legitimate approaches to
criticizing/analyzing/approaching it.
JPC writes:
> All films, whether by auteurs or not, end with the credits.
The fact that they continue to live in your mind makes no
difference.
To you. Unless you are claiming cinematic godhead and
setting down rules for all viewers, every person is free to
approach a movie as they please, aren't they?
> (and if David challenges you on gay matters, then you're
in trouble!).
With all due respect to David, is he the delimiter of what is
and what is not queer in movies? Is this a title he has claimed
for himself, or are you Bolingbroke-like offering him the crown?
> Why is it so important to you to turn this character into
something completely imaginary (at least to most of us here)?
Did I say it was important?
> Is it because you're into "rough trade" yourself?
No.
> Or because some of your best friends are?
No.
> Or because you like to fantasize about it?
No.
> Nothing wrong about any of this of course, but why drag it
into a discussion of this particular film?
David mentioned Addison's masochism and I commented on it.
What is the big deal about it?
David's exact sentence was:
"Having sex with Addison and then rushing
right out to seduce Lloyd feeds Addison's
masochism -- which hasn't been discussed as
yet."
> I'm sorry if I get "personal" but that's what you've been doing
yourself.
That is what you perceive me to be doing (which is interesting in
itself in a different way).
> It never occurred to me to project my own sexual fantasies
onto characters in movies.
What makes you think I am projecting my sexual fantasies onto
characters? Have I ever posted what my sexual fantasies are?
Was David projecting his sexual fantasies when he brought up
Addison's masochism? You criticze me for going outside the
bounds of a film, but then you go outside the bounds of my posts
to write about my sexual fantasies which I have never discussed.
Interesting.
> I just don't think this is the way film should be approached.
People are entitled to their own approaches. If yours works for
you great.
> They don't really "exist" beyond the boundaries of the screen.
You're just saying that they have affected you and you think and
feel about them. That is NOT the same thing.
Do they even really exist on the screen without a viewer?
Brian
22836
From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 5:54am
Subject: OT on Lucinda Childs's "Dance" (was: Philip Glass makes it clear)
Thanks very much to Jonathan and JPC for comments on Glass and Childs. I
completely agree with Jonathan about the importance of hearing the good
early Glass pieces live. They had a physical, visceral impact that
intersected in fascinating ways with their complexity.
And I'm delighted to learn that at least one other of our some 175
members actually saw "Dance." (Do we have an elite group here or what?)
I've loved other Childs pieces, especially the great "Mad Rush," but
"Dance" was one of the great aesthetic experiences of my life. JPC,
please add to and or correct my description below as necessary. Works of
art this great should be remembered!
"Dance" was billed as a collaboration between Chlids, Glass, and Sol
LeWitt, who did the stage design, but to my mind it was Childs's
choreography that completely dominated the other two artists, who are
not exactly minor figures, whatever one thinks of them. Glass's music
had already grown less complex than his earlier work, but here its "wall
of sound" (apologies to Mr. Spector) effect was perfect for creating a
sense-filling environment. A series of transparent scrims divided the
stage into different parallel planes in depth, and dancers would move
back and forth in very complex rhythms. What's amazing about Childs's
movements is that they seem fairly simple and un-emotive, yet are also
infinitely varied, and create rhythms unlike any others I've seen.
"Dance" was something like 70 minutes, performed without a break, and
was one of those art works that, like, say, a Peter Kubelka film,
completely changed my sense of pace and type of attention -- making me
feel much more alive.
Fred Camper
22837
From: Aaron Graham
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 6:47am
Subject: Re: "Oh, Michelle, it's taken me so long to come to you (was: Film I confess I .....
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Saul" wrote:
> I don't recall any Bod Dylan songs written into the "Light Sleeper"
> script - Schrader makes the ocasional comment such as, "Willie Colon
> plays on the jukebox", but that's about it.
According to the draft I own (first draft revised, January 1991),
there's several Dylan songs mentioned. Most are taken from
the "Empire Burlesque" album, including "Something is Burning".
-Aaron
22838
From: Saul
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 7:24am
Subject: Re: "Oh, Michelle, it's taken me so long to come to you (was: Film I confess I .
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Graham"
wrote:
> According to the draft I own (first draft revised, January 1991),
> there's several Dylan songs mentioned. Most are taken from
> the "Empire Burlesque" album, including "Something is Burning".
Whereabout did you obtain this script? Is it downloaded from the
Internet? I have the "Collected Screenpalys 1" (Faber and Faber,
2002), which contains a re-print of the "Light Sleeper" script they
first published in 1992.
And just returning to a point David made earlier about "Light Sleeper"
being the most successful Schrader because he managed to insert his
characters into the theoretical matrix he outlined in "Transcendental
Style" and which he is so keen on, I think it must be added that
Schrader is a better screenwriter than he is director, and succeeds on
the page in ways he doesn't on the screen. "Gigolo" is a complex
script which perfectly expresses many ideas, and even levels of
Julian's character (which are lost in the film), in ways that the film
doesn't. Even the literary antecedents of Dostoyevsky, (again from
Bresson), Kafka, etc, are much clearer. Perhaps you'd agree David that
a Schrader script needs a good director, such as Scorsese, to fully
realize it, (though "Auto Focus" is perhaps his most perfect
expression of his Transcendent Style")("Boys just wanna have fun",
no?). So if we judged Schrader as a screenwriter, or analyzed his work
as such, I think a piece like "American Gigolo" would take on a much
more important position. Do you, or does anyone else here, know what
exactly constituted Mardik Martin's changes, additions, and/or
deletions to "Raging Bull"
22839
From: Jason Guthartz
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 7:51am
Subject: Potemkin restored
I guess this is what was holding up the Eisenstein "Silent Years" DVD
box that Criterion has been planning.
Anyone here attend this screening in Berlin?
There's a screening of "Potemkin" coming up here in Chicago, with an
orchestra performing Meisel score:
http://music.uchicago.edu/index.phtml?cal#mar5
but I don't know if this restored version will be used.
-Jason G.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Movies/02/13/germany.potemkin.reut/index.html
"Battleship Potemkin," Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 silent classic, has
been restored and seen in its uncensored form for the first time in
nearly 80 years.
Cut by the Germans who bought the film, altered by the Soviets and
banned in Britain and France for its revolutionary zeal, it
nonetheless became one of the most important movies in cinema history.
Restorers have worked for three years to insert scenes removed by
German censors for their extreme violence and to correct translations
of the Russian "inter-titles" which toned down the mutinous sailors'
revolutionary rhetoric.
"What we have restored now is more or less the version in which the
film was screened in Moscow in January, 1926," Enno Patalas, the
former director of the Munich Film Museum who led the restoration
effort, told Reuters.
Based on a true story, "Battleship Potemkin" dramatizes a mutiny on a
Russian ship and how it inspired a failed 1905 uprising against the
country's tsars.
Shot for the 20th anniversary of the event, seemingly minor incidents
have bloody consequences, none more so than the shot by a Cossack that
triggers a massacre on the steps of Odessa in the film's most famous
passage.
The scene, including a baby's pram hurtling towards the sea after its
mother has been killed, is back to its brutal best, with close-ups of
feet stepping on a child's corpse and a distraught mother holding
aloft her dying son.
A written introduction by Leon Trotsky, removed by the Soviets after
he fell foul of Josef Stalin following Lenin's death, has also been
reinstated.
"The only censorship cut in the Soviet Union was the omission of the
epigraph by Trotsky which we have restored now. That of course was
taken away in the 1930s and replaced by a Lenin quotation," said Patalas.
***
Late on Saturday, as part of the annual Berlin Film Festival, a packed
theatre cheered after the restored five-act film was shown,
accompanied by an orchestra playing an adaptation of the original
score written by Edmund Meisel.
22840
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:20am
Subject: Re: Park Kwang-su & Shin Shang-ok
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Maxime Renaudin"
wrote:
>
> I unevenly but overall enjoyed the few Shin's I've seen. I was
> touched by the Evergreen Tree, edifying melodrama where the purity
> of simple feelings marks the bruised face of Choi Eun-hee. Are his
> post-kidnapping works available?
I saw and liked The Eunuch and The Tenant and The Child. Post-
kidnaping there's just Disappeared - don't know about it. I misspoke
if I said he directed 3 Ninjas - he just produced it. When I saw him
he was trying to get a Genghis Khan epic off the ground, but it never
happened. Isn't there a portrait of him in the Jan. Cahiers? Oh, I
forgot...
Frodon told me he looked at a bunch of films by N. Korean directors
(Shin's students) for a possible retro and they were bad socialist
realism - worse than the Soviet variety. Except for one that could
only have been made there. A runaway train goes up a mountain, dies
and starts to roll back down. The heroine commandeers another train
and starts toward the backwardly descending first train, and she
snears it throws her train into reverse so that in stead of a crash,
train 2 cushions train 1. All done for real.
22841
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:22am
Subject: Re: Great Films I Confess I Fell Asleep Thru
Any film I have ever seen in Europe. Can't handle jet lag at all.
22842
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:25am
Subject: Re: "Oh, Michelle, it's taken me so long to come to you (was: Film I confess I .
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Saul" wrote:
>
Maybe I missed something in this thread, but it's "Funny how things
work out" in Light Sleeper. The diference between that and the
ridiculous "Oh Michelle," which isn't even English, is the difference
between the first and second attempts.
22843
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:26am
Subject: Re: Biograph/Triangle (Was: What Time Is It There?)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > Dan calls this the Biograph style
>
> I think I probably said the Triangle style.
I stand usefully corrected about this useful expression.
22844
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:32am
Subject: Lawn Dogs
Thanks to Dan for pointing me to the above referenced gem. I had
always considered Mischa Barton to be checkout-line celebrity trash,
but if she still has half of what Duigan got out of her in this film,
when she must have been twelve, she's destined for better things than
The OC. The film inspiring for its use of the proverbial centralized
female role - in this case, a child. How was his Cruz-Theron vehicle,
Dan?
22845
From: Saul
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:52am
Subject: Re: "Oh, Michelle, it's taken me so long to come to you (was: Film I confess I .
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
> Maybe I missed something in this thread, but it's "Funny how things
> work out" in Light Sleeper. The diference between that and the
> ridiculous "Oh Michelle," which isn't even English, is the difference
> between the first and second attempts.
Bill, that confusing subject line was my fault. We were talking about
"Light Sleeper", where the final line is "Funny how things work out",
and I intended on comparing it to the final line of "American Gigolo"
which is, (in the script at least, I have the film handy, but not my
multi-region player - I bought it in Vienna under the title, "Ein Mann
für gewisse Stunden" which I think, though I don't know German, is "A
Man for Intimate Hourse" or perhaps "A Man for Unusual Hours" - any
German speaker here is welcome to correct this?) "Oh, Michelle, it's
taken me so long to come to you". Only problem is, my computer posted
the message before I had finished typing, (I hate any sort of machine
that is 'smart' and decides when to do what - I think it's best us
humans stay as their overlords), and I thought for the sake of not
cluttering up the board with numerous half-posts, I'd leave it as it
was and not add the second half in a new post. I had a feeling someone
would pick up on it though and ask, "Huh?!?!". I always liked that
line, "Oh Michelle" and never found it ridiculous - it's one of the
times when Schrader's final "implosion" (as he likes to call it), of
emotion, of transcendence, really hit me. Perhaps most intensely in
"Auto Focus" - that mix of the blood splattered wall, the line "I
don't blame him - Boys just wanna have fun" or whatever he said, just
brought to a head everything that Schrader showed as lying somewhere
hidden beneath the surface of Crane.
Which brings me to another question I've been meaning to ask, for
whoever was following that male-male bonding thread. In what way does
our knowledge of a director's (or any artists) homosexuality (or
whatever his/her sexual leaning is for that matter - very pertinent to
other masturbatory threads) change the way we view their art?? I mean,
would we read the end of "The American Soldier" for example, as a
homo-erotic ballet if we didn't know what we know about Fassbinder, or
merely as a highly stylized expression of "so much tenderness"???
22846
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:59am
Subject: Re: "Oh, Michelle, it's taken me so long to come to you (was: Film I confess I .
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Saul" wrote:
In what way does
> our knowledge of a director's (or any artists) homosexuality (or
> whatever his/her sexual leaning is for that matter - very pertinent
to
> other masturbatory threads) change the way we view their art??
I learned that Brially was gay here. I see him differently in films
now - can't help it. He's in the Rivette remake of Mrs. Bixby and the
Colonel's Coat, playing the Colonel. First time I noticed a new layer
to my reactions. It'll be interesting seeing Claire's Knee again
someday.
22847
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 11:33am
Subject: Re: Lawn Dogs
> Thanks to Dan for pointing me to the above referenced gem. I had
> always considered Mischa Barton to be checkout-line celebrity trash,
> but if she still has half of what Duigan got out of her in this film,
> when she must have been twelve, she's destined for better things than
> The OC. The film inspiring for its use of the proverbial centralized
> female role - in this case, a child. How was his Cruz-Theron vehicle,
> Dan?
I liked it - see post #15985 for the beginning of a small discussion about
it. I always had the feeling that I was going to have a really good
second viewing of LAWN DOGS (something big and broad about the style threw
me during the first half), but I haven't gotten that opportunity yet. I
believe Zach is a fan. - Dan
22848
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 11:37am
Subject: Re: La Cava
THE HALF NAKED TRUTH struck me as extremely accomplished and with a
terrific sense of rhythm. It also didn't strike me as improvised
much - it seemed very sharply written.
The LaCavas I've seen have a fascinating wrongness about them, they
never seem to give moral satisfaction. In MY MAN GODFREY it's
impossible to root for Lombard to get Powell as she's an irredeemable
flake with no particular virtues, and he's a sweet, wise, sensitive
and sensible man!
22849
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 11:39am
Subject: Re: Melville (was: male-male bonding)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> >> Melville was gay.
> >
> > Is that a fact? Didn't know it. Not very surprising.
>
> I think he was talking about Herman, not J-P. - Dan
Still, it's an interesting theory. He had three cats, which appear in
THE RED CIRCLE. Does that help?
Have recently been theorizing that Peckinpah had a gay side, based on
the number of crotch and ass shots in JUNIOR BONNER (but then it is
about rodeo).
D Cairns
22850
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 11:49am
Subject: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
> > But Mankiewicz along with Cukor and Leisen put queer
> > characters in their films. They were talented
> > enough to
> > get away with it.
>
> Marginally at best. "Sylvia Scarlett" and "Midnight"
> were made before the code overtook the industry-- and
> the former (while brilliant) was a major flop.
Gotta differ here - MIDNIGHT is 1939 by which time the Code was in
full force. But since the Codemasters had only the vaguest idea of
homosexuality, or were afraid to admit to knowing more, it was
possible for gifted filmmakers to smuggle in references they couldn't
catch. To quote Laughton, "They can't censor the glint in my eye."
Anything which could be read only one way would be cut, but if the
filmmaker could offer a plausible alibi for the homosexual inference
then it might get through. And effeminate types like Pangborn were
apparently OK as long as they were never seen in groups of more than
one, and references to their predilections weren't too pointed.
D Cairns
22851
From:
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 0:52pm
Subject: Re: Philip Glass makes it clear
Adrian Martin wrote:
> Some gems from a less-than-articulate Philip Glass on Australian
TV last
> night:
[etc.]
>
> What do list members think of Glass' film scores?
Gee, that's a sort of loaded post there, isn't it? I guess those of
us who actually like some of Glass's scores are just plain sh*t out
of luck.
He has an annoying tendency to repeat himself (and of course a lot
of his music is built around that very notion) but I'd rank his
scores for THE THIN BLUE LINE and KUNDUN among the very best of
modern film scores. Sue me.
Oh yeah, I also like KOYAANISQATSI. (I know, I know: How do I sleep,
etc.?)
-Bilge
22852
From: Saul
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 1:56pm
Subject: Query: Christo
Is there anyone here stationed in NY? Does anyone know of a
documentary director/crew/etc covering his new project? Has anyone
seen Marker's Christo film??
22853
From: K. A. Westphal
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 2:01pm
Subject: Re: Potemkin restored
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jason Guthartz" wrote:
>
> I guess this is what was holding up the Eisenstein "Silent Years" DVD
> box that Criterion has been planning.
>
> Anyone here attend this screening in Berlin?
>
> There's a screening of "Potemkin" coming up here in Chicago, with an
> orchestra performing Meisel score:
> http://music.uchicago.edu/index.phtml?cal#mar5
> but I don't know if this restored version will be used.
>
> -Jason G.
I can almost guarantee that this version will not be the restored one.
For one thing, the Cinema and Media Studies department isn't
sponsoring this. It's not being touted by any CMS faculty (i.e., Yuri
Tsivian) in the official publicity. It's wholly a Department of Music
affair. There's a few lobby card-sized posters of this floating around
campus. Reproduces some of the original poster art, but makes no
mention of the restored version. (Now, granted, if anyone would be so
ignorant as to *not* tout the restored version if they had it, it
would be a campus music department)
It's probably just an attempt to draw a bigger crowd for the orchestra
by combining stodgy old music hall affectations with a Marxist movie
(adding a film or Marxism to one's program generally gets more
students to notice it).
In any event, there's a 16mm print of POTEMKIN floating around campus
that I've never seen. I'm assuming this will be the print shown.
I know it's not the "new" version, but for those who don't visit it
often, DVD has recently posted screen captures of the French disc of
POTEMKIN that looks better than I ever thought the movie could look:
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCompare8/battleship-p.htm
--Kyle Westphal
22854
From: BklynMagus
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 2:19pm
Subject: Re: Query: Christo
Saul asks:
>Does anyone know of a documentary director/crew/etc
covering his new project?
There was a lot of filming on Saturday and Sunday
in Central Park. Unfortunately, I do not know if
any of them were documentary film makers. But
there were people with video camera and 16 mm
cameras.
Brian
22855
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 2:36pm
Subject: Re: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- Brian Charles Dauth
wrote:
>
> No it is not. You are using an absurd extreme to
> try and discredit my observation.
>
Not absurd at all -- by standards you've set yourself.
> > A good question. But as Mankiewicz didn't write it
> into the script it's impossible to answer.
>
> Again I disagree. I think it is the viewer's choice
> to
> answer it or not. It is like looking at a painting
> of a girl
> staring out of a window in rapt attention; some
> people
> will wonder what she is looking at and some will
> not.
>
And some people don't really carre for veal marsala.
> > And as Fred has said, in absolute cinematic turns
> it
> never happened.
>
> Who defined these absolute cinematic terms? Was
> there a memo? Or has convention over time harderned
> into a strict set of rules?
Let's just say I did. Good grief do films mean nothing
to you? Are they just collection of random images and
sounds for you to hallucinate over?
>
>
> So what is wrong with imagination? Isn't that what
> art is about? Firing the viewers' imaginations? Or
> should art only be approached analytically through
> discussion of its formal, measureable attributes?
>
Yes.
> > And Cary Grant turned down the lead because . . .
>
> Farley Granger wouldn't sleep with him?
>
Farley wasn't his type. And Arthur wouldn't have stood
for it.
No the play -- and the role of Rupert Cadell -- was a
little to close for Cary's comfort.
>
> Why are so interested (it seems) in limiting
> what a
> person can get out of a film?
>
Because what you're talking about isn't criticism at
all.
> > Parker Tyler on acid!
>
> Okay, I don't understand this comment
You will.
>
> > So everything's open to a delerium of
> interpretation?
>
> Isn't one of the markers of a work of art that is is
> open to
> many interpretations? I do not believe there are an
> infinite number of them, but I suspect there are
> many more
> than people realize.
But you actas if there are an infinite number of them.
here you are hallucinating rough trade for Addison
DeWitt on the basis of what?
Absolutely nothing!
>
> > Fabulous! Then I can reconfigure the "Atchison
> Topeka and the Santa Fe" number in "The Harvey
> Girls"
> to REALLY be about how cater-waiters and chorus
> boys founded West Holywood!
>
> Sure if you want to. But again you are using an
> absurd
> extreme and not dealing with the more modest example
> I
> posted.
>
NOthing modest aout your example whatsoever!
> > True. But Arthur Miller (not gay as I recall)
> wants us
> to look for Willy Lomans too.
>
> And that is his gig. Doesn't invalidate
> Mankiewicz's.
>
Bu not Mnakiewicz's gig as you hallucinate it.
> > All films, whether by auteurs or not, end with
> the credits.
> The fact that they continue to live in your mind
> makes no
> difference.
>
> To you. Unless you are claiming cinematic godhead
> and
> setting down rules for all viewers, every person is
> free to
> approach a movie as they please, aren't they?
>
No they're not.
> > (and if David challenges you on gay matters, then
> you're
> in trouble!).
>
> With all due respect to David, is he the delimiter
> of what is
> and what is not queer in movies?
I am the Earth Mother and you're all flops!
> > Why is it so important to you to turn this
> character into
> something completely imaginary (at least to most of
> us here)?
>
> Did I say it was important?
>
You sure act like it was, dear.
> > Is it because you're into "rough trade" yourself?
>
> No.
>
> > Or because some of your best friends are?
>
> No.
>
> > Or because you like to fantasize about it?
>
> No.
>
> > Nothing wrong about any of this of course, but why
> drag it
> into a discussion of this particular film?
>
> David mentioned Addison's masochism and I commented
> on it.
> What is the big deal about it?
>
> David's exact sentence was:
>
> "Having sex with Addison and then rushing
> right out to seduce Lloyd feeds Addison's
> masochism -- which hasn't been discussed as
> yet."
>
> > I'm sorry if I get "personal" but that's what
> you've been doing
> yourself.
>
> That is what you perceive me to be doing (which is
> interesting in
> itself in a different way).
>
> > It never occurred to me to project my own sexual
> fantasies
> onto characters in movies.
>
Oh Prunella!!!!
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22856
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 2:41pm
Subject: Re: Re: "Oh, Michelle, it's taken me so long to come to you (was: Film I confess I .
--- Saul wrote:
>
> Which brings me to another question I've been
> meaning to ask, for
> whoever was following that male-male bonding thread.
> In what way does
> our knowledge of a director's (or any artists)
> homosexuality (or
> whatever his/her sexual leaning is for that matter -
> very pertinent to
> other masturbatory threads) change the way we view
> their art?? I mean,
> would we read the end of "The American Soldier" for
> example, as a
> homo-erotic ballet if we didn't know what we know
> about Fassbinder, or
> merely as a highly stylized expression of "so much
> tenderness"???
>
If there's a homoerotic ballet up on the screen
there's reason to suspect the filmmaker in question
may have something of a rooting interest in it.
a fortiori I knew from the moment I saw "Lola" back in
1962 that Jacques Demy was gay. He didn't cop for
twenty years! I don't think he was onto himself. But
art doesn't lie.
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22857
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 2:44pm
Subject: Re: Re: "Oh, Michelle, it's taken me so long to come to you (was: Film I confess I .
--- hotlove666 wrote:
> I learned that Brially was gay here. I see him
> differently in films
> now - can't help it. He's in the Rivette remake of
> Mrs. Bixby and the
> Colonel's Coat, playing the Colonel. First time I
> noticed a new layer
> to my reactions. It'll be interesting seeing
> Claire's Knee again
> someday.
>
Well he's a very great actor and quite believable as a
soigne literary letcher a la Paul Gegauff.
Likewise Pascale Greggory is a thoroughly convincing
sulky straight boy in "Pauline at the Beach"
>
>
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22858
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 2:47pm
Subject: Re: Re: La Cava
--- cairnsdavid1967 wrote:
>
> THE HALF NAKED TRUTH struck me as extremely
> accomplished and with a
> terrific sense of rhythm. It also didn't strike me
> as improvised
> much - it seemed very sharply written.
>
Indeed it is. It's a great Lee Tracy movie. And it's
tale of a carny barker who promotes a cooch dancer
(Lupe Velez at her most amusing) into phony royalty is
more timely now than when it was made.
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22859
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 2:48pm
Subject: Re: Re: Melville (was: male-male bonding)
--- cairnsdavid1967 wrote:
>
> Still, it's an interesting theory. He had three
> cats, which appear in
> THE RED CIRCLE. Does that help?
>
Like I said -- Metrosexual!
> Have recently been theorizing that Peckinpah had a
> gay side, based on
> the number of crotch and ass shots in JUNIOR BONNER
> (but then it is
> about rodeo).
>
I think not. There are gay characters in "Bring Me the
Head of Alfredo Garcia" as I recall.
>
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22860
From: BklynMagus
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 3:25pm
Subject: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
David writes:
> Let's just say I did. Good grief do films mean nothing
to you?
Of course they mean something to me.
> Are they just collection of random images and
sounds for you to hallucinate over?
Not random at all in the hands of a good director.
But just because a director controls/manipulates/
fixes images and sound does not mean that he
has the same control over people's responses.
They will vary with the person.
> Me: Or should art only be approached analytically
through discussion of its formal, measureable
attributes?
> David: Yes.
But then the question becomes: who gets the power/
authority to determine the measurable attributes.
On the one hand I am very old-fashioned: I believe
that film canons and their importance. But I am also
aware of the danger of limited the approaches people
can take toward a work of art.
> No the play -- and the role of Rupert Cadell -- was a
little to close for Cary's comfort.
I was teasing. After I track down "Casino", "Rope" will be
next. BTW: do you know why "Casino" was not one of
the recent Scorcese re-realeses?
> But you actas if there are an infinite number of them.
I explicitly stated that I did not believe there were an
infinite number of them.
>Me: . . . every person is free to approach a movie as
they please, aren't they?
>David: No they're not.
Why not? Who/what limits their approaches and under
what/whose authority?
Brian
22861
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 4:09pm
Subject: Re: Query: Christo
> >Does anyone know of a documentary director/crew/etc
> covering his new project?
Albert Maysles, according to an article in the Times the other day: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/08/movies/08mays.html?
22862
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 4:16pm
Subject: Re: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- BklynMagus wrote:
>
> Not random at all in the hands of a good director.
> But just because a director controls/manipulates/
> fixes images and sound does not mean that he
> has the same control over people's responses.
> They will vary with the person.
>
Sure. But that doesn't make such responses valid.
Back in the 60's I had endless arguments with people
about "Blow-Up" who swore upand down about events
thatsupposedly took place in the film that were not
there. As video wasn't available showing these morons
how stupid they were required endless visits to the
theater. Yet even when confronted with the evidence
they refused to beleive it.
I take it you would argue that their boneheaded
misperceptions were perfectly valid.
>
> But then the question becomes: who gets the power/
> authority to determine the measurable attributes.
Serious critics with track records!
>
> I was teasing. After I track down "Casino", "Rope"
> will be
> next. BTW: do you know why "Casino" was not one of
> the recent Scorcese re-realeses?
>
I would imagine because its initial pressing is still
available.
>
> >Me: . . . every person is free to approach a movie
> as
> they please, aren't they?
>
> >David: No they're not.
>
> Why not?
Because then you don't have serious criticism at all.
You don't have art either. Everyone would be free to
make up any damned thing that suited their fancy.
You may find this prospect enjoyable. I don't.
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22863
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 4:20pm
Subject: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Charles Dauth"
wrote:
>> So what is wrong with imagination? Isn't that what
> art is about? Firing the viewers' imaginations? Or
> should art only be approached analytically through
> discussion of its formal, measureable attributes?
>
"measurable" is the key word. Of course there are other, "fun"
approaches. Dali's "paranoia criticism" or the post WWII French
surrealist of the "L'Age du Cinema" group who practised what they
called "Elargissement irrationnel" of movies (for example
asking: "What is Poppy's sexual perversion in "Shanghai Gesture"?)
(Note: was it "elargissement"? We discussed it once with Adrian I
think. I wish I hadn't lost my precious collection of the short-
lived "Age du Cinema"). All fun, as is Thomson's "Suspects". But it
shouldn't be confused with film criticism. JPC
>
>
> JPC writes:
>
> > All films, whether by auteurs or not, end with the credits.
> The fact that they continue to live in your mind makes no
> difference.
>
> To you. Unless you are claiming cinematic godhead and
> setting down rules for all viewers, every person is free to
> approach a movie as they please, aren't they?
>
They are, of course. But fantasizing about a character's sexual
tastes when the film gives no clue to them is not film criticism.
See above. JPC
>
> With all due respect to David, is he the delimiter of what is
> and what is not queer in movies? Is this a title he has claimed
> for himself, or are you Bolingbroke-like offering him the crown?
>
I simply meant that David is famously expert at detecting
gayness wherever it is or might be, so his rejection of your own
detection should give us pause. JPC
> What makes you think I am projecting my sexual fantasies onto
> characters? Have I ever posted what my sexual fantasies are?
> Was David projecting his sexual fantasies when he brought up
> Addison's masochism? You criticze me for going outside the
> bounds of a film, but then you go outside the bounds of my posts
> to write about my sexual fantasies which I have never discussed.
> Interesting.
>
Attributing sexual behavior to a character who has given no
indication of such behavior I call a sexual fantasy. JPC
>
> > They don't really "exist" beyond the boundaries of the screen.
> You're just saying that they have affected you and you think and
> feel about them. That is NOT the same thing.
>
> Do they even really exist on the screen without a viewer?
Now we can have a real zen discussion! Shades of that tree
falling in the forest. JPC
PS I apologize for putting my initials all over the place. Just
trying to clarify who said who. JPC
>
> Brian
22864
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 4:27pm
Subject: Re: OT on Lucinda Childs's "Dance" (was: Philip Glass makes it clear)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> And I'm delighted to learn that at least one other of our some 175
> members actually saw "Dance." (Do we have an elite group here or
what?)
> I've loved other Childs pieces, especially the great "Mad Rush,"
but
> "Dance" was one of the great aesthetic experiences of my life.
JPC,
> please add to and or correct my description below as necessary.
Works of
> art this great should be remembered!
Fred, I'll forgive anyone who loves Child's "Dance" for calling me
retrograde! Your description brought back by now too-faint memories
of that totally mesmerizing, enchanting show. I remember tears of
pure ecstasy running down my cheeks. Very few films have affected
me this way. I wonder if the show has been preserved on film or
tape? JPC
>
22865
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 5:02pm
Subject: Re: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
I dunno, I don't see a problem with Brian making speculations about de
Witt's sexual tastes (although perhaps they could be labelled more clearly
as speculation). However:
> "That I should want you at all suddenly strikes me as the height of
> improbability. But that in itself is probably the reason. You're an
> improbable person Eve, and so am I. We have that in common. Also, a
> contempt for humanity, an inability to love or be loved, insatiable
> ambition and talent. We deserve each other."
>
> Queer Addison finding it improbable that he should
> want queer Eve.
Whenever I hear dialogue like the above in a movie, I always think a) the
filmmakers are pairing off two characters for elemental storytelling
reasons that have nothing to do with psychology; and b) they are going to
try to throw some psychological talk into the air to justify it, whereas
they probably should have just shut up while they were ahead.
And, I must confess, in the case of Mankiewicz, I also think c) he is
going to make matters worse by getting grandiloquent.
- Dan
22866
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 5:41pm
Subject: Re: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- Dan Sallitt wrote:
> I dunno, I don't see a problem with Brian making
> speculations about de
> Witt's sexual tastes (although perhaps they could be
> labelled more clearly
> as speculation).
No. He's decided that Addison is queer, period. He's
so wedded to this that when I brought up masochism he
immediately seized upon it as proving Addison liked
roguh trade -- completely forgetting heterosexual
masochism!
Look, let's clear the deck on this thing, shall we?
Mankiewicz was a highly sophisticated filmmaker who
lucked out by coming to work for Zanuck at Fox when he
did. Of course it all ended badly, but Zanuck did in
his fashion respect writers and knew surefire material
when he saw it.
"All About Eve" was made during the production code
whic SPECIFICALLY PROSCRIBED THE DEPICTION OF GAY
CHARACTERS. One can of course point to Franklin
Pangborn and other minor types working their way
through, but it's not the same thing as making a
full-bore film about gays and lesbians.
Making a film set in the "cynical" world of the
theater was a neat trick in an era insisting on
wholesomeness. But Mankiewicz pulled it off by means
of the fact that Margot and Bill are genuinely in love
-- and so are Lloyd and Karen.
Addison who clearly doesn't have much use for love is
alligned with the villain of the piece. But Eve
doesn't have much use for people save as means to her
ends. Frankly she's a few steps shy of a
Highsmith-style psychopath, though she doesn't get a
chance to actually "kill for a part this good."
Addison is the Evil Twin of Sheridan Whiteside of "The
Man Who Came to Dinner" -- a rendition of Alexander
Wolcott. Kaufman & Hart made "Sherry" straight, and
Mankiewicz does likewise with Addison.
For more than one reason.
As I've said before the hotel room scene is the
pivotal moment for the entire film. It unmasks Eve for
the heartless scheme rshe really is without any
"wiggle room" for her to scurry out of. Addison isn't
fooled by her like the other characters. He knows who
she is and what she wants. And he wants her for sex --
and to use as a tool of his trade.
He's a kingmaker and he wants to put her on the throne
on his terms. But she's a slippery character, and
while Addison is nominally a "villain" he's not quite
as bad as he might like you to believe in some ways.
When he tells Eve that Lloyd will never leave Karen
he's making a solidly based observation, but he's also
protecting his flank. As much as he likes to make
mischief he knows that if Lloyd were to leave Karen
for Eve it would be the end of him -- and the end of a
sizeable protion of the theater he loves. So he puts
Eve in her place. Addison's genuine sexual interest in
Eve is absolutely central to this, and while he may be
as Meterosexual as the day is long neither he nor the
film work at all if he's gay.
And that's why he's not.
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22867
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 5:59pm
Subject: Re: Re: Scorsese: Goombah or Genius?
> The Last Temptation of Christ is the most thoroughly researched,
> archeologically accurate film on Christ and on the crucifixion put
> on film that I know. Okay, so they all speak like they're standing
> in the streets of New York, but that's an anachronism that's
> actually interesting (there was a discussion here some months
> earlier about the impossibility of actually capturing speech of past
> historical periods--which I take to mean 'if you can't actually
> capture how they talk, you might as well insert your notions').
> Here, characters immediate and interesting to Scorsese (because they
> talk and act and feel much the way he does) are inserted into the
> most accurately realized world of ancient Palestine yet filmed.
I was completely fascinated by Keitel's performance as Judas Iscariot.
Admittedly, it was outrageous to play the character so 20th century, but
it seems to me that the payoff was enormous: a whole new way of relating
to that character, with the help of a network of modern social
associations that don't need to be explained to us.
There's no good solution to the anachronism problem - Keitel and
Scorsese's approach at least has the virtue of dodging the "we didn't know
how a pharoah talked" pitfall. - Dan
22868
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 6:05pm
Subject: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> Mankiewicz was a highly sophisticated filmmaker who
> lucked out by coming to work for Zanuck at Fox when he
> did. Of course it all ended badly, but Zanuck did in
> his fashion respect writers and knew surefire material
> when he saw it.
An obliquely related anecdote in the Preminger interview w.
Bogdanovich (Who the Devil Made It?): When OP suggested Clifton Webb
for Laura, "a casting directtor named Rufus LeMaire was present. He
said, 'I was at Metro when Webb made a test there, and he 'flies' -
implying that he was homosexual - 'you can't have him in the film.'
So I started a fight for Clifton Webb." Long story: It turns out the
casting director was lying - Webb never made a screentest. (Zanuck
had asked to see the test from Metro rather than paying for a new
one.) When OP confronted LeMaire about the lie in the dining room,
Zanuck - "a very interesting man" - said to make the test. Longer
story. Webb didn't want to test with an unknown, Tierney. So
Preminger shot the test w. Webb solo against Zanuck's orders, and
Zanuck thought Webb was "flying." Etc. Every key element in Laura was
a fight like that, often because of Zanuck: he hated the song, for
instance. It's one of the most interesting interviews ever. But I
assume if anything like this had gone on re: Eve it would be detailed
in All About All About Eve and/or Pictures Will Talk.
22869
From: Travis Miles
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 6:28pm
Subject: Re: Pupi Avati
I must admit being totally at sea regarding an upcoming Pupi Avati series
here in New York. I've seen nothing, and have no idea of his reputation.
Anyone have any recommendations, thumbnail sketches, or suggestions on where
to find some good introductory materials?
Thanks,
T
22870
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 6:33pm
Subject: Re: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
> "All About Eve" was made during the production code
> whic SPECIFICALLY PROSCRIBED THE DEPICTION OF GAY
> CHARACTERS.
But that's exactly what gives us room to speculate. A film made under the
Code that wants to treat a forbidden subject is likely to be forced to
contradict itself. The speculator isn't obligated to explain everything
in the film, because part of the film may have to play ball with the Code,
and part may have another agenda.
> He's a kingmaker and he wants to put her on the throne
> on his terms. But she's a slippery character, and
> while Addison is nominally a "villain" he's not quite
> as bad as he might like you to believe in some ways.
> When he tells Eve that Lloyd will never leave Karen
> he's making a solidly based observation, but he's also
> protecting his flank. As much as he likes to make
> mischief he knows that if Lloyd were to leave Karen
> for Eve it would be the end of him -- and the end of a
> sizeable protion of the theater he loves. So he puts
> Eve in her place. Addison's genuine sexual interest in
> Eve is absolutely central to this, and while he may be
> as Meterosexual as the day is long neither he nor the
> film work at all if he's gay.
I have very little riding on this particular issue, but it looks as if
you've just given Addison a completely self-sufficient reason to stymie
Eve: because he doesn't want to damage the theater he loves. If so, his
being straight or gay would not seem structurally important in this
regard. - Dan
22871
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 6:34pm
Subject: Re: Pupi Avati
> I must admit being totally at sea regarding an upcoming Pupi Avati series
> here in New York. I've seen nothing, and have no idea of his reputation.
Me too. I think I've avoided his films just because his name is Pupi.
Any input is welcome. - Dan
22872
From: BklynMagus
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 6:45pm
Subject: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
Me:
> But just because a director controls/manipulates/
fixes images and sound does not mean that he has
the same control over people's responses. They
will vary with the person.
David:
> Sure. But that doesn't make such responses valid.
Why?
> I take it you would argue that their boneheaded
misperceptions were perfectly valid.
Misperceptions are not equivalent to interpretations.
I am not endorsing the errors in misperception. What
I am arguing for is greater latitude in interpretation.
> Serious critics with track records!
Is this a self-selecting group? I would love to believe
that all critics are serious and there is an objective
standard against which their merit can be evaluated,
but I doubt it exists. There are plenty of unserious
critics with far longer track records than many critics
you or I might consider serious. Luck, chance and
politics play a sigificant role in whether a critic gets
a track record or not. Would that it were only based
on objective measures of merit.
> I would imagine because its initial pressing is still
available.
Casino is not available. That is the odd thing to me.
> Because then you don't have serious criticism at all.
You don't have art either. Everyone would be free to
make up any damned thing that suited their fancy.
You will have art whether or not there is serious criticism.
I think once again you go to extremes. For example:
you said you knew Demy was gay when you saw Lola.
What led you to this knowledge? Was any part in this
realization played by the fact that you yourself were gay?
Other queers and non-queers may not see what you saw.
If Demy had died without coming out would it have changed
the truth of your perception?
JPC writes:
> "measurable" is the key word.
I agree. My further question, as you can see above, is who
sets the criteria? If it is "serious film critics with track
records," where did that standard come from? I have read
many "sfc's with tr's" who I found totally bogus.
A tentative argument I would make is that the auteur
theory is pragmatically the best theory with which to
study a film since it opens up the most possibilities.
Brian
Brian
22873
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 6:49pm
Subject: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- hotlove666 wrote:
But I
> assume if anything like this had gone on re: Eve it
> would be detailed
> in All About All About Eve and/or Pictures Will
> Talk.
>
Indeed it would have been.
Putting possible charges of homophobia aside -- as
Webb was indeed gayer than a stmpede of Disney cows --
Zanuck was right to observe caution. Webb was a major
stage star but not a film star. At his age thoughts of
stardom would indeed seem a stretch. Yet his work in
"laura" launched a second career for him. Moviegoers
loved his curdled waspishness.
This in turn leads one to wonder what Zanuck might
have said had "Eve's" original casting gone through
with Claudette Colbert as Margot. Obviously most
moviegoers weren't as wise to "Uncle Claude" (as Don
Bachardy called her) as they might have been to a
screamer like Webb. It would have made Eve's pitch to
Margot somthing else!
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22874
From: Chris Fujiwara
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 6:48pm
Subject: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
It reminds me of the nonsensical question "How Many Children Had Lady
Macbeth?"
The statement "Addison DeWitt is gay" is meaningless to me, because
Addison DeWitt doesn't exist except as a character in a film that
does not apparently allude to his gayness, represent it, or require
my belief in it.
In order to make it have meaning, I have to translate it into one of
the following:
1. Mankiewicz or George Sanders thought of Addison as gay. (For this,
I'd demand either external evidence or a reasonable deduction from
internal evidence.)
2. The film's contemporary audience, or some part of it, regarded
Addison as gay. (Only external evidence will do here.)
3. Reading Addison as gay somehow elucidates or enriches the film.
(Here a persuasive argument or intoxicating "surrealist expansion"
would be called for.)
By putting it in these terms I avoid having to get into the difficult
question of "who decides" whether the interpretation is valid -
critics with track records, the interpretive community (however that
may be constituted or defined), or some other agency or institution.
(Ultimately one may have to get into the question, since it underlies
#3. But for the moment I can skip it.)
Nothing I've heard so far supports 1, 2, or 3.
Now, whether Waldo Lydecker is gay (transposed into the same three
propositions) is more interesting.
I'd also ask whether Waldo Lydecker is impotent - and whether the
filmmakers might not have conceived of impotence and homosexuality as
metaphorically equivalent (since they couldn't represent or discuss
either directly because of the Production Code).
Cf. the Paul Lukas character in Tourneur's Experiment Perilous and
the Charles Bickford character in Renoir's Woman on the Beach.
22875
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 6:58pm
Subject: Re: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- BklynMagus wrote:
For example:
> you said you knew Demy was gay when you saw Lola.
> What led you to this knowledge? Was any part in
> this
> realization played by the fact that you yourself
> were gay?
> Other queers and non-queers may not see what you
> saw.
> If Demy had died without coming out would it have
> changed
> the truth of your perception?
>
I just knew you'd jump on that one! Demy never made a
gay film in his life. He did, however, deal with
subjects of little interest to straight filmmakers. I
happend to have known him personally. And I knew his
lover David Bombyck (producer of "Witness" and
"Explorers" among other titles) a good deal more.
But this has nothing to do with what was onscreen, not
does it mean thatDemy's films must be "translated"
into gay ones when they're not.
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22876
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 7:03pm
Subject: Re: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
> But that's exactly what gives us room to speculate.
> A film made under the
> Code that wants to treat a forbidden subject is
> likely to be forced to
> contradict itself.
But "AllAbout Eve" DOESN'T contradict itself. The
Addison thatJLM wrote and directed is not gay.
Period.
The speculator isn't obligated
> to explain everything
> in the film, because part of the film may have to
> play ball with the Code,
> and part may have another agenda.
>
Well Brian clearly has an agenda -- but it's not
JLM's.
>
> I have very little riding on this particular issue,
> but it looks as if
> you've just given Addison a completely
> self-sufficient reason to stymie
> Eve: because he doesn't want to damage the theater
> he loves. If so, his
> being straight or gay would not seem structurally
> important in this
> regard.
Yes it woudl, because Addiosn's abilitytosexually
dominate Eve is acrucial aspect of the power that he
wields over her. A gay Addison would hav no such power
-- or recourse to use it.
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22877
From: BklynMagus
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 7:33pm
Subject: Re: Demy is Gay (was Mankiewicz vs. Rivette)
David writes:
> Demy never made a gay film in his life. He did,
however, deal with subjects of little interest to
straight filmmakers.
What would these be?
> But this has nothing to do with what was onscreen,
not does it mean thatDemy's films must be "translated"
into gay ones when they're not.
I want to be sure I am clear: it was nothing on screen
that led you to believe Demy was gay -- it was the
subjects he chose to deal with that told you.
Brian
22878
From: BklynMagus
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 7:45pm
Subject: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
hl666 writes:
> But I assume if anything like this had gone on
re: Eve it would be detailed in All About All About
Eve and/or Pictures Will Talk.
Why? To think so is like standing at the entrance
to a subway, observing people get off, seeing only
men and concluding that there are no women in the
the city since only men got off.
Because it wasn't detailed only means . . . it wasn't
detailed.
I guess I am not the only one who speculates.
Brian
22879
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 7:57pm
Subject: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> But this has nothing to do with what was onscreen, not
> does it mean thatDemy's films must be "translated"
> into gay ones when they're not.
>
>
> David, could you describe what, in "Lola", made it perfectly
clear to you that Demy was gay? I must confess that such a thought
never occurred to me when I saw the film (and loved it) in the year
of its release, but admittedly I was still naive and paid little
attention to such things. Retrospectively i have a few clues but
would like to check them against your infallible instinct. JPC
>
>
> __________________________________
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22880
From: BklynMagus
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:13pm
Subject: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
David writes:
> when I brought up masochism he immediately
seized upon it as proving Addison liked roguh
trade -- completely forgetting heterosexual
masochism!
To remember heterosexual masochism, now that is
masochistic.
> "All About Eve" was made during the
production code whic SPECIFICALLY PROSCRIBED
THE DEPICTION OF GAY CHARACTERS.
And good auteurs were constantly trying to outwit
the code in this and other areas. JLM himself has
acknowledged that Eve was lesbian, and I think
it within reason to take him at his word.
Also, if you couldn't depict gay characters, then
how can the killers in "Rope" be gay?
> One can of course point to Franklin Pangborn
and other minor types working their way through,
but it's not the same thing as making a full-bore film
about gays and lesbians.
But isn't there anything in between -- again you seem
to posit things in extreme terms: either Pangborn
mincers or a full-bore film about queers. Isn't it
possible that some films were made where significant
characters were queer, but the entire film did not
revolve around this fact?
> Addison is the Evil Twin of Sheridan Whiteside of "The
Man Who Came to Dinner" -- a rendition of Alexander
Wolcott. Kaufman & Hart made "Sherry" straight, and
Mankiewicz does likewise with Addison.
Isn't this as much speculation as my saying Addison is
queer? Where are the connections? Because K & H
made Whiteside straight, JLM must have followed
suit? Whiteside is certainly interested in more than
theater, while Addison "knows no other life, no other
world."
> And he wants her for sex -- and to use as a tool of his
trade.
What evidence do you have of this? Does he ever say
he wants her for sex?
> He's a kingmaker and he wants to put her on the throne
on his terms.
I would agree that he wants to be kingmaker and also
that he wants to be seen as kingmaker (hence the
appearance in the Cub Room) . But I would speculate
that he wants to be seen as kingmaker for the cachet
it will give him among other gay men, and not because
he wants wants to control Eve and obtain sexual favors.
> As much as he likes to make mischief he knows that if
Lloyd were to leave Karen for Eve it would be the end of
him -- and the end of a sizeable protion of the theater he
loves.
Why would it be the end of him? And why would it end a
sizeable portion of the theater he loves? So long as she is
onstage, acting in plays written by "commercially the most
successful and artistically most promising" American
playwright, what could Addison object to if he loves the
theater so much? Will Eve became a great actress only
under his control?
However, the marriage would end his role as (perceived)
kingmaker and the cachet that went along with it in
my view.
If Addison is masochistic, why would he want to
dominate Eve sexually? Don't masochists normally want to
be dominated? Maybe it is a new kink: forcing a sub to be
dom. Also, if Eve is lesbian as JLM claimed, then why would
Addison want to have sex with her? I have heard
that there are straight men who like that, but what evidence
is there that Addison is one of them?
> Addison's genuine sexual interest in Eve is absolutely
central to this,
Addison does not need to have any sexual interest in Eve
whatsoever for this to be true. Because he loves the theater
does not mean he desires Eve sexually. He can do what he
does without a drop of desire. He can do it merely for the
cachet of being seen as kingmaker and all the perks that go
with it (both sexual and non-sexual). He can be gay (Vito
Russo claimed he was, and I would say he could be considered
a serious film critic) or he can be asexual or he might
even be straight.
> . . . neither he nor the film work at all if he's gay.
For you. But for me it works just as well if he is gay or
even asexual.
Brian
22881
From: George Robinson
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:13pm
Subject: Re: Query: Christo
Saul wrote:
>Is there anyone here stationed in NY? Does anyone know of a
>documentary director/crew/etc covering his new project? Has anyone
>seen Marker's Christo film??
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>.
>
>
>
Albert Maysles has been documenting Cristo's work for many years and has
been on the scene in Central Park for all of this project.
g
--
If art reflects life, it does so
with spiral mirrors.
-- Bertolt Brecht
22882
From: Craig Keller
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:31pm
Subject: The Piccadilly palare (was: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette)
On Monday, February 14, 2005, at 03:13 PM, BklynMagus wrote:
> David writes:
>
>> when I brought up masochism he immediately
> seized upon it as proving Addison liked rough
> trade -- completely forgetting heterosexual
> masochism!
>
> To remember heterosexual masochism, now that is
> masochistic.
(The world rolls its eye.)
Sorry to bring this party to such a crashing pause, but I must ask an
apparently naive question:
What's "rough trade"?
22883
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:41pm
Subject: Re: Re: Demy is Gay (was Mankiewicz vs. Rivette)
--- BklynMagus wrote:
> David writes:
>
> > Demy never made a gay film in his life. He did,
> however, deal with subjects of little interest to
> straight filmmakers.
>
> What would these be?
Dreamy losers drifting from job to job. Sailors.
Chorus girls raising the children of the me who had
abandoned them. Impossible dreams coming true.
>
> I want to be sure I am clear: it was nothing on
> screen
> that led you to believe Demy was gay -- it was the
> subjects he chose to deal with that told you.
>
And the style. I can't imagine a straight man making a
film like "Lola." "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" maybe
but not "Lola."
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22884
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:42pm
Subject: Re: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- BklynMagus wrote:
> Because it wasn't detailed only means . . . it
> wasn't
> detailed.
>
That Zanuck didn't write a memo complaining that
George Sanders was "flying."
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22885
From: BklynMagus
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:45pm
Subject: Re: The Piccadilly palare (was: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette)
Craig asks:
> What's "rough trade"?
1) Putative straight males who will have sex with
gay men for money or other rewards.
2) Gay male hustlers who assume the posture of
straight men and have sex for money.
In both cases there are also elements of class
differences.
Brian
22886
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:46pm
Subject: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> >
> > David, could you describe what, in "Lola", made
> it perfectly
> clear to you that Demy was gay?
Alan Scott in his sailor's suit climbing off the
carousel in slow motion for one thing. Sent my
depraved schoolboy's heart all aflutter. If Jacques
wasn't sleeping with him then I'm John Huston!
But over and above that I can't imagine a striaght
filmmaker taking a character like Lola seriously. A
"dance hall girl" with a heart of gold, caring for the
"love child" her "Dream Man" saddled her with and
believing that he'll return -- and then he does!
I just can't see the Sam Peckinpah version of this.
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22887
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:57pm
Subject: Re: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- BklynMagus wrote:
>
> Also, if you couldn't depict gay characters, then
> how can the killers in "Rope" be gay?
>
As I saiud, Hitch and Arthur raped the production coed
in its sleep. Take a good, long look at"Rope." It's
quite amazing in which it says everything without
saying anything.
>
> But isn't there anything in between -- again you
> seem
> to posit things in extreme terms: either Pangborn
> mincers or a full-bore film about queers. Isn't it
> possible that some films were made where significant
> characters were queer, but the entire film did not
> revolve around this fact?
>
Very few. Read Vito Russo.
> > Addison is the Evil Twin of Sheridan Whiteside of
> "The
> Man Who Came to Dinner" -- a rendition of Alexander
> Wolcott. Kaufman & Hart made "Sherry" straight, and
> Mankiewicz does likewise with Addison.
>
> Isn't this as much speculation as my saying Addison
> is
> queer?
No.
Where are the connections? Because K & H
> made Whiteside straight, JLM must have followed
> suit?
No, it'sthat the character established the precendent
of the "man of the theater" filled with "cutting wit."
Whiteside is certainly interested in more
> than
> theater, while Addison "knows no other life, no
> other
> world."
>
And that's why Whiteside is the squarer character. But
his success set a precedent that made Addison
possible. I can't imagine Addison apeparing in a
major Hollywood movie without Whiteside preceeding him
> > And he wants her for sex -- and to use as a tool
> of his
> trade.
>
> What evidence do you have of this? Does he ever say
> he wants her for sex?
>
YES! Very explicitly in the hotel room scene, and also
in the dressing room scene.
> > He's a kingmaker and he wants to put her on the
> throne
> on his terms.
>
> I would agree that he wants to be kingmaker and also
> that he wants to be seen as kingmaker (hence the
> appearance in the Cub Room) . But I would speculate
> that he wants to be seen as kingmaker for the cachet
> it will give him among other gay men, and not
> because
> he wants wants to control Eve and obtain sexual
> favors.
>
Well were are those gay men? They're sure as hell not
in "All About Eve."
>
> Why would it be the end of him?
Lloyd can't live without karen. And a dead Lloyd means
no "Footsteps on the Ceiling" for Addison to review
next season.
So long
> as she is
> onstage, acting in plays written by "commercially
> the most
> successful and artistically most promising" American
> playwright, what could Addison object to if he loves
> the
> theater so much? Will Eve became a great actress
> only
> under his control?
No, but he'd like her to be under his control. Isn't
that obvious?
>
> If Addison is masochistic, why would he want to
> dominate Eve sexually? Don't masochists normally
> want to
> be dominated?
See: Fassbinder, Rainer Werner
Maybe it is a new kink: forcing a sub
> to be
> dom. Also, if Eve is lesbian as JLM claimed, then
> why would
> Addison want to have sex with her?
See: "Basic Instinct"
I have heard
> that there are straight men who like that, but what
> evidence
> is there that Addison is one of them?
The very film we're talking about!
Incidentally Bella Darvi, one of Zanuck's lady loves,
was primarily sapphic.
>
> Addison does not need to have any sexual interest in
> Eve
> whatsoever for this to be true. Because he loves
> the theater
> does not mean he desires Eve sexually. He can do
> what he
> does without a drop of desire. He can do it merely
> for the
> cachet of being seen as kingmaker and all the perks
> that go
> with it (both sexual and non-sexual). He can be gay
> (Vito
> Russo claimed he was, and I would say he could be
> considered
> a serious film critic) or he can be asexual or he
> might
> even be straight.
Or he might be Zontar-- The Thing From Venus.
>
> > . . . neither he nor the film work at all if he's
> gay.
>
> For you. But for me it works just as well if he is
> gay or
> even asexual.
>
Asexual? Hah!
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22888
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 8:58pm
Subject: Re: The Piccadilly palare (was: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette)
--- Craig Keller wrote:
>
> What's "rough trade"?
>
>
Nominally 'straight" men who'll do it for money. See
Joe Dallesandro.
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22889
From: BklynMagus
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 9:00pm
Subject: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
Chris writes:
3. Reading Addison as gay somehow elucidates or enriches the film.
(Here a persuasive argument or intoxicating "surrealist expansion"
would be called for.)
What do you mean by an intoxicating "surrealist expansion"?
As for Waldo - again I read him as queer.
1) Flirting with McPherson in the bathtub
2) The comment Shelby makes about Waldo looking natural on
his knees (something like that).
> I'd also ask whether Waldo Lydecker is impotent
Never occured to me.
> and whether the filmmakers might not have conceived of
impotence and homosexuality as metaphorically equivalent
Seems likely -- when JLM couldn't make the Count in "The
Barefoot Contessa" gay, he made hm impotent.
Brian
22890
From: programming
Date: Tue Feb 14, 1905 9:16pm
Subject: Fwd: Jean-Michel Frodon at the Alliance Francaise (in Chicago)
>>
>> The Alliance Française of Chicago presents:
>>
>>
>> A LECTURE BY
>>
>> JEAN-MICHEL FRODON, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF CAHIERS DU CINÉMA:
>>
>> “L’EXCEPTION CULTURELLE, AVENTURE POLITIQUE ET RÊVE ARTISTIQUE” / “THE
>> CONCEPT OF CULTURAL EXCEPTION: POLITICAL ADVENTURE AND ARTISTIC DREAM”
>>
>>
>> Jean-Michel Frodon, film critic, editor-in-chief of Cahiers du cinéma,
>> author of several books on film, and founder of the French “Cinema Study
>> Circle” L’Exception, will visit the Alliance Française of Chicago on
>> Thursday, February 17 to speak about “cultural exception as political
>> adventure and artistic dream.” The lecture will be in French, and a
>> reception will follow. See below for more detail on Mr. Frodon and his
>> lecture.
>>
>>
>> DATE: THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, AT 6:00 P.M.
>>
>> PLACE: THE ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE OF CHICAGO, 810 North Dearborn Street,
>> Chicago (one block west of the Chicago Red Line stop)
>>
>> Free admission for members, $5.00 for non-members.
>>
>> To reserve a seat in the possibility of a large crowd, please call (312)
>> 337-1070.
>>
>>
>> ****
>>
>>
>> JEAN-MICHAEL FRODON has written and edited such works as ‘L’âge moderne du
>> cinéma français’ (1995), ‘La projection nationale’ (1997), ‘Hou
>> Hsiao-Hsien’ (1999), and ‘Conversation avec Woody Allen’ (2000).
>>
>> Frodon joined the newspaper Le Monde in 1990, and became its film critic
>> in 1994. Since July 2003 he has been the editor-in-chief of Cahiers du
>> cinéma, the flagship French film magazine. In 2001, Frodon created the
>> association L’Exception (www.lexception.org <http://www.lexception.org/> ), a
>> group uniting
>> intellectuals and industry types to discuss cinema. He has been a crucial
>> figure in a renewed dialogue between French critics and filmmakers, and
>> counts among his admirers and sparring partners directors such as Arnaud
>> Desplechin and Olivier Assayas. His tenure at Cahiers du cinéma has been
>> marked by a lively interest in the relationship between politics and
>> cinema, pathbreaking studies of the vanguards of European and African
>> cinema, and refreshingly serious critical assessments of the way new
>> technologies such as DVD are changing the nature of film viewing and
>> appreciation.
>>
>> His lecture will concern the idea and practice of “cultural exception.”
>> “Cultural exception” is most notably a prominent rule of the General
>> Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT) whereby, through import
>> restrictions, cultural goods and services are exempted from the
>> unrestricted commercialism of other types of "merchandise." The concept
>> has both political and aesthetic implications. It holds a central, if
>> controversial, place in the French cultural tradition—as central to the
>> French self-image as the cinema itself. “Cultural exception” has been used
>> as the basis for an idea of the “French cinema” at home and abroad and as
>> an alternative model of international relations, which in terms of mass
>> culture has long been dominated by America/Hollywood.
>>
>> Mr. Frodon’s visit is part of a North American tour organized by the
>> Alliances Françaises d’Amérique du Nord.
>>
>>
>> ****
>>
>>
>> FILM SCREENING: WAITING FOR HAPPINESS
>>
>> As a complement to his lecture, the Alliance Française will be screening a
>> film of Mr. Frodon’s choosing, Abderrahmane Sissako’s WAITING FOR
>> HAPPINESS, on Friday, February 18. Considered the most important African
>> filmmaker to have emerged in the past decade, Sissako (LIFE ON EARTH)
>> beautifully observes the mosaic of life in a small seaside village on the
>> West Coast of Africa where the inhabitants have created their own kind of
>> modern world. A poetic reflection on themes of exile, travel, home, and
>> displacement. The film will begin at 7:15 p.m in the Alliance Française
>> auditorium, 810 N. Dearborn Street.
>>
>>
>>
> Pleas email cineclub@a... if you have any questions or comments.
>
>
------ End of Forwarded Message
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
22891
From: Chris Fujiwara
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 9:29pm
Subject: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:
> What do you mean by an intoxicating "surrealist expansion"?
Please see Jean-Pierre's message 22863.
I think Paul Hammond's The Shadow and Its Shadow, an anthology of
surrealist writings on film, has some of the relevant texts.
22892
From: BklynMagus
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 9:32pm
Subject: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
David writes:
> Read Vito Russo.
I have and he refers to Addison and Eve as two of a kind.
> No, it'sthat the character established the precendent
of the "man of the theater" filled with "cutting wit."
JLM needed no precedent for creating Addison. Did JLM
ever say that Whiteside was an inspiration or precedent
for Addison? If he didn't, then it is just specualtion.
> I can't imagine Addison apeparing in a major
Hollywood movie without Whiteside preceeding him.
And that is your speculation. Could be true, could be
false. No way to test the hypothesis.
> YES! Very explicitly in the hotel room scene, and also
in the dressing room scene.
What does he say? The most explicit thing I remember is
that Eve now belongs to him. He doesn't indicate what he
is going to do with her now that she belongs to him.
> Lloyd can't live without karen. And a dead Lloyd means
no "Footsteps on the Ceiling" for Addison to review
next season.
Footsteps is already written. He stops the marriage on the
night of its opening.
> . . . but he'd like her to be under his control. Isn't
that obvious?
I agree, but just not for the reason you postulate.
> See: Fassbinder, Rainer Werner
And this is supposed to mean?
> The very film we're talking about!
If you accept the premise that Addison is hetero.
> Or he might be Zontar-- The Thing From Venus.
Again the out-of-left-field comment that responds
to nothing.
> Asexual? Hah!
I don't like that reding either, but hey.
Brian
22893
From: BklynMagus
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 9:35pm
Subject: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
David writes:
> But over and above that I can't imagine a striaght
filmmaker taking a character like Lola seriously. A
"dance hall girl" with a heart of gold, caring for the
"love child" her "Dream Man" saddled her with and
believing that he'll return -- and then he does!
Sans child, sounds like Wilder's Irma La Douce.
Brian
22894
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 9:45pm
Subject: Re: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- BklynMagus wrote:
> David writes:
>
> > Read Vito Russo.
>
> I have and he refers to Addison and Eve as two of a
> kind.
>
"Killer to Killer," he says.
"Champion to Champion," she says.
Get it?
No I don't suppose you do.
>
> JLM needed no precedent for creating Addison. Did
> JLM
> ever say that Whiteside was an inspiration or
> precedent
> for Addison? If he didn't, then it is just
> specualtion.
>
That's like saying that Unless Warner Bros.
specifically said so there's no realtionship between
""Golddiggers of 1933" and "Golddiggers of 1937."
>
> > YES! Very explicitly in the hotel room scene, and
> also
> in the dressing room scene.
>
> What does he say? The most explicit thing I
> remember is
> that Eve now belongs to him. He doesn't indicate
> what he
> is going to do with her now that she belongs to him.
>
He's going to fuck her of course! What do need? Flash
Cards?!!!
> > Lloyd can't live without karen. And a dead Lloyd
> means
> no "Footsteps on the Ceiling" for Addison to review
> next season.
>
> Footsteps is already written. He stops the marriage
> on the
> night of its opening.
>
Ah but both the play and the marriage go on!
> > See: Fassbinder, Rainer Werner
>
> And this is supposed to mean?
>
You could look it up!
>
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22895
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 9:46pm
Subject: Re: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
But "Irma" is played for laughs. "Lola" is absolutely
serious.
--- BklynMagus wrote:
> David writes:
>
> > But over and above that I can't imagine a striaght
> filmmaker taking a character like Lola seriously. A
> "dance hall girl" with a heart of gold, caring for
> the
> "love child" her "Dream Man" saddled her with and
> believing that he'll return -- and then he does!
>
> Sans child, sounds like Wilder's Irma La Douce.
>
> Brian
>
>
>
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22896
From: BklynMagus
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 10:05pm
Subject: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
David writes:
But "Irma" is played for laughs. "Lola" is absolutely
serious.
Kind of like Taste for Honey -- Was Richardson gay?
Brian
22897
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 10:09pm
Subject: Re: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
> But "Irma" is played for laughs. "Lola" is absolutely
> serious.
>
> Kind of like Taste for Honey -- Was Richardson gay?
Well, yeah, I think he was. - Dan
22898
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 10:09pm
Subject: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:
> David writes:
>
> > But over and above that I can't imagine a striaght
> filmmaker taking a character like Lola seriously. A
> "dance hall girl" with a heart of gold, caring for the
> "love child" her "Dream Man" saddled her with and
> believing that he'll return -- and then he does!
>
> Sans child, sounds like Wilder's Irma La Douce.
>
> Brian
Have you seen "Lola", Brian? If you had, I don't think you could
make that comparison.
To David: sailor, and the treatment of the Lola character, those
were indeed the clues I expected. Makes sense to me. Now! JPC
22899
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 10:12pm
Subject: Re: Re: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette (Was Re: Mankiewicz's Mise en Scene)
--- BklynMagus wrote:
> David writes:
>
> But "Irma" is played for laughs. "Lola" is
> absolutely
> serious.
>
> Kind of like Taste for Honey -- Was Richardson gay?
>
Bi. Died of AIDS.
>
>
>
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22900
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Feb 14, 2005 10:15pm
Subject: Re: The Piccadilly palare (was: Mankiewicz vs. Rivette)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Craig Keller
wrote:
>
> Sorry to bring this party to such a crashing pause, but I must ask
an
> apparently naive question:
>
> What's "rough trade"?
Another naive (?) question: What's "the Picadilly palare"?
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