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This group is dedicated to discussing film as art
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23701
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Mar 3, 2005 11:27pm
Subject: Re: Re: My Name is Nobody
--- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> Noel is right that Once Upon a Time is tough to top
> for sheer esthetic chills
> and thrills - hard to separate from Morricone's
> masterpiece of a score -
And that's because the score was recorded first and
the film shot to it.
__________________________________
Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web
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23702
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 0:14am
Subject: Re: Royal Wedding (Was: Walters & Minnelli)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
>
> >
> > Was Garland supposed to have the Jane Powell role in
> > ROYAL WEDDING?
>
> Yes. it was to be a reunion for Garland and Astarie
> asthey had been such a hit together in "easter
> Parade."
>
Hard to imagine Judy as Fred's sister, but then why not?
> I
> > think Powell is absolutely delightful in that film.
> > (With FUNNY FACE and
> > SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, it's my favorite Donen.)
>
>
She was absolutely wonderful in "7 brides for 7 Brothers" --
another great Donen. In the great tradition of the civilizing power
of strong women in frontier times. "It's Millie! It's Millie!" And
to think that short-sighted narrow-minded feminists trashed the
film! JPC
://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/
23703
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 0:22am
Subject: Re: Re: Royal Wedding (Was: Walters & Minnelli)
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> She was absolutely wonderful in "7 brides for 7
> Brothers" --
> another great Donen. In the great tradition of the
> civilizing power
> of strong women in frontier times. "It's Millie!
> It's Millie!" And
> to think that short-sighted narrow-minded feminists
> trashed the
> film!
Indeed. The movie's a masterpiece. Saw it at Radio
City when it opened. Met one of the Birdes, recently
-- Ruta Lee. She and Debbie Reynolds run a charity org
called The Thalians. She said everyone was
disappointed that the studio put so little money into
the film, but they went out and made something great
anyway.
__________________________________
Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web
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23704
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 0:24am
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:
> > jess writes:
> >
> >
> >
>
> >
> > To me Ford has always been both anti-racist and racist. There
> > are moments/films that are smart and subtle critques (The
> > Searchers) and then those that make my skin crawl (my
> > reaction -- YMMV): the ending of "The Prisoner of Shark Island"
> > and Stepin Fetchit.
>
"Shark Island" is a major Ford, very grim, and much
underrated. Stepin Fetchit is a genius who transcends petty notions
of racism and uncle tomism. And Bill K. seems to have a castration
complex. He sees castration everywhere (must have read to much old
Cahiers stuff). JPC
> Rosabell's extraordinary fecundity is contrasted cruelly with
Mudd's castration
> as he hobbles home aged by prison - a castration that begins with
his attempt
> to conceal the facts of life from his little girl, who then
delivers Booth's boot to
> the detectives because she has made it a sled for her dolly. (The
return of the
> repressed.)
>
> Mudd replaces the Ford Mother who is not yet present in this film
to incarnate
> the Law: as a result of his repressive attitudes, he
is "castrated" by being
> separated from his family and thrown in a prison on an island
surrounded by
> sharks. And while there he gradually assumes the maternal role by
tending
> the plague victims.
>
> When he returns at the end, Ford's mise-en-scene shows his age
even
> though the script has elided the passage of time. The announcement
that
> Rosabell has done it again is just another example of the cruel
Fordian irony
> which is brought to bear on one of the most aberrant Ford heroes
of the 30s,
> whose lot generally was not a happy one.
>
> I wish that Prisoner of Shark Island had been aired daily after
9/11 as a
> comment on the unconstitutional imprisonments and tortures that
Cheney,
> Rumsfeld and Gonzalez were setting in m otion. Although ironically
Mudd
> turns out to have probably been part of the conspiracy to kill
Lincoln - along
> with Lincoln's Secretary of War.
>
> Tag Gallagher says that The Searchers were made during the
yearlong
> Supreme Court deliberations on school integration.
23705
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 0:54am
Subject: Re: Royal Wedding (Was: Walters & Minnelli)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> > She was absolutely wonderful in "7 brides for 7
> > Brothers" --
> > another great Donen. In the great tradition of the
> > civilizing power
> > of strong women in frontier times. "It's Millie!
> > It's Millie!" And
> > to think that short-sighted narrow-minded feminists
> > trashed the
> > film!
>
> Indeed. The movie's a masterpiece. Saw it at Radio
> City when it opened. Met one of the Birdes, recently
> -- Ruta Lee. She and Debbie Reynolds run a charity org
> called The Thalians. She said everyone was
> disappointed that the studio put so little money into
> the film, but they went out and made something great
> anyway.
>
Donen keeps bitching about not being given money to shoot on
location. The last time we had lunch together (I know, I know, name
dropping -- it was also the first time -- 4 years ago in Paris, I
think) he was still grumbling about it. But actually the fake
backdrops are perfect for this wonderful operetta-like musical. Why
would anybody want real locations?
By the way, David, there's much more to the lyrics of "Spring
Spring Spring" than what's in the film. There's a record somewhere
with Astaire and Bing (or am I mistaken) singing the whole thing
which I heard once. All those great rhymes! JPC
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
> Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web
> http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/
23706
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 1:03am
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
>
> ---
>
> "Shark Island" is a major Ford, very grim, and much
> underrated. Stepin Fetchit is a genius who transcends petty notions
> of racism and uncle tomism. And Bill K. seems to have a castration
> complex. He sees castration everywhere (must have read to much old
> Cahiers stuff). JPC
>
Specifically the collective text by J-P Oudart, Serge Daney and Bernard
Eisenschitz on Young Mr. Lincoln - the locus classicus for the discussion of
the complex relationship between ecriture and ideology to which Daney
referred in our interview. It is available in English in an old Screen magazine
and in the 2nd volume of the BFI Cahiers collection, edited by Nick Browne.
May even be on the Net for all I know.
Shark Island is fantastic. It's very interesting to look at the 30s Fords as
prelude to that "aberrant" film and the stabilization of Ford's myth in the 40s. I
wrote an article about that which has yet to be published.
23707
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 1:28am
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
First of all ,has anuyone pointed out that it's not Stepin Fetchit in PRISONER OF SHARK
ISLAND but Ernest Whitman who plays Mudd's sidekick Buck? Fetchit isn't even in
PRISONER.
But about the ending... at least one other list member and I emerged from a screening of
PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND in Buenos Aires last year and thought the ending (when both
Mudd and Buck are reunited with their families) is great. I don't see any ambiguity to
it: it's an equally emotional moment for both; it doesn't look down on either. Or am I
missing something? There are even discussions earlier in the film about how Mudd freed
all of his slaves. THis doesn't necessarily exempt the film from charges of racism, but *I*
didn't detect any.
Gabe
23708
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 2:25am
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Gabe Klinger"
wrote:
>
> First of all ,has anuyone pointed out that it's not Stepin Fetchit
in PRISONER OF SHARK
> ISLAND but Ernest Whitman who plays Mudd's sidekick Buck? Fetchit
isn't even in
> PRISONER.
Somehow I didn't think Fetchit was mentioned in relation to "Shark
Island" but just as an actor Ford loved to use. Maybe the writer
used his name as representing all lowly negro characters of his
type...
23709
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 4:35am
Subject: Re: VV on Westerns
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jess_l_amortell"
wrote:
>
> Not sure why, but I was surprised by a few comments in the Village
Voice's catch-all coverage of Film Forum's western series:
http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0509,westerns,61593,20.html
> First, there's a reference to "the overlong, overpraised Rio
Bravo" auteurist passion and insight, shall we say?
I don't think it's overpraised, but I might agree
with "overlong". When I first saw it in France when it was released
I thought it was just about the perfect movie. It was missing about
15/20 minutes, mostly scenes with Dickinson. When I saw the full
version I felt those cuts were not such a bad idea. I dislike most
of the stuff with Dickinson. JPC
23710
From:
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 2:27am
Subject: Last image of Play Dirty (Was: Staying power)
I'm coming to this discussion late, but has anyone mentioned Andre de Toth's
masterpiece "Play Dirty"? The end credits (which in this case are simply a
cast list and some information about where the film was made) play over the
final image. But de Toth lets the image continue for another 10 seconds or so (I
haven't clocked it precisely on my tape) after the credits conclude before
finally cutting to a title card reading, "The End." It's almost as though de
Toth is being meditative for a few moments following the abruptness and
suddenness of the closing of the story.
In any event, I sure wouldn't want to leave the film until it was truly over!
Peter
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
23711
From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 1:24pm
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
JPC writes:
> Stepin Fetchit is a genius who transcends petty notions
of racism and uncle tomism.
Huh? What is petty about racism?
As Donald Bogle writes:
"His appearance, too, added to the caricature. He was tall and skinny and
always had his head shaved completely bald. He invariably wore clothes that
were too large for him and that looked as if they had been passed down from
his white master. His grin was always very wide, his teeth very white, his
eyes very widened, his feet very large, his walk very slow, his dialect very
broken."
More at:
http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/coon/
I'd be curious to know your defense of this racist stereotype.
Ford was using hiim as late as 1953(!). Again, Ford's attitudes seem
consistent with a white man born at the begining of the 20th century. It
doesn't take away from his craftmanship, but I do not think you have to
whitewash his racial views to appreciate his talent -- they exist side by
side in both Ford and his films.
Gabe wirtes:
> Fetchit isn't even in PRISONER.
Sorry, I was unclear in my writing. I was pointing out some of the more
problematic racial aspects found in Ford's films.
> Or am I missing something?
Maybe it plays differently in Buenos Aires. But to this Brooklyn boy and
his husband from Columbia, South Carolina, it is one more stereotype of
Black sexual potency and irresponsibility.
It might well be that non-Americans raised in different cultures will have
variant responses to these images based on their upbringing/education. But
since Ford was making films for an American audience, I think it is
important to keep in mind how his images played to Americans and whether
they supported or challenged contemporary racial ideologies.
Brian
23712
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 2:31pm
Subject: Re: The Wrong Man (Was: pieceashit FUNNY GAMES)
> Still haven't seen FG, but I consider The Wron gMan an exemplary
film
> when it comes to giving the audience a hard time. Does it bother
you
> that AH did that?
Well, Hitch engages in a sado-masochistic game with the audience,
where he pleasurably tortures us for two hours and makes us love it.
THE WRONG MAN is maybe his grimmest film, most serious of aspect, but
the game is still underway, and Hitch felt compelled to give us a
happy ending as reward for suffering at his hands - even though it
meant distorting the facts somewhat.
I enjoyed THE WRONG MAN, unbearably tragic and anxiety-provoking as
it is, and I think I was intended to enjoy it. And it wasn't sadistic
pleasure, it was an empathic experience of heightened emotion which
was very cathartic for me, and which showed me aspects of life in
truthful and enlightening way. Didn't get any of that from PASFG, nor
was I intended to. That, for me, is the big difference.
D Cairns
23713
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 2:32pm
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Charles Dauth"
wrote:
> JPC writes:
>
> > Stepin Fetchit is a genius who transcends petty notions
> of racism and uncle tomism.
>
> Huh? What is petty about racism?
>
Caution! We're entering the minefield of Political Korrectness!
By "petty" I meant the inability to see past a "racist"
stereotype (99% of all negro characters in pre-Poitier Hollywood
films can be described as racist stereotypes)and to acknowledge the
originality of a persona, the brilliance of the characterization,
the surrealistic invention of the "very broken" dialect (fully
deserving of the linguist's attention). "Caricature" can achieve the
level of genius.
The reviling of Fetchit is somewhat akin to what I described in a
post yesterday as the narrow-minded feminist condemnation of "Seven
Brides" as "sexist" (when it is actually an indictment of sexism).JPC
>
Again, Ford's attitudes seem
> consistent with a white man born at the begining of the 20th
century. It
> doesn't take away from his craftmanship, but I do not think you
have to
> whitewash his racial views to appreciate his talent -- they exist
side by
> side in both Ford and his films.
>
I was not "whitewashing" Ford's racial views (which I suspect
were more complex than the average white man's of his generation). I
was defending Fetchit's work as an artist. Louis Armstrong, another
genius, was blamed too for his undignified "clowning". JPC
> Maybe it plays differently in Buenos Aires. But to this Brooklyn
boy and
> his husband from Columbia, South Carolina, it is one more
stereotype of
> Black sexual potency and irresponsibility.
> It might well be that non-Americans raised in different cultures
will have
> variant responses to these images based on their
upbringing/education. But
> since Ford was making films for an American audience, I think it
is
> important to keep in mind how his images played to Americans and
whether
> they supported or challenged contemporary racial ideologies.
>
> Brian
Hollywood films were seen (and loved, if sometimes misunderstood)
all over the world. But you're right, not being myself African-
American, and having been born and raised in France, maybe I
shouldn't speak about such things as Stepin Fetchit and racism. But
then, by the same token, maybe I shouldn't speak about American
film in general, or anything foreign to my own "culture." JPC
23714
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 2:27pm
Subject: Re: pieceashit FUNNY GAMES
> At the risk of reanimating the "no physical violence" thread, I'd
> like to correct this point. I just re-watched "FG" and the scene
you
> describe is most definitely *not shown.*
This is quite true, but one thing I question is whether not showing
the act makes the film non-violent. Clearly a film is a strip of
celluloid and isn't "violent" in any real sense, but "a violent film"
is a film which FEELS VIOLENT to the viewer. We don't see the ear-
slicing in RESEVOIR DOGS but that's a violent scene, or a scene of
violence, more intense than most of the on-screen shootings etc.
> "FG" portrays violence, but Haneke has taken tremendous care to
> drain the kineticism from the violence.
I think we see one of the killers shot during the "rewind" sequence.
Who says violence has to be kinetic? Is non-kinetic violence more
chaste and pure than kinetic violence? Maybe, but I would say the
meaning behind it is what really counts. I appreciate there's some
filmmaking skill on display in FG, but I find it insufficient reward
for viewing the movie and I find the intent dubious.
23715
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 4:25pm
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Charles Dauth"
wrote:
"As Donald Bogle writes:
'His appearance, too, added to the caricature. He was tall and skinny
and always had his head shaved completely bald. He invariably wore
clothes that were too large for him and that looked as if they had
been passed down from his white master. His grin was always very
wide, his teeth very white, his eyes very widened, his feet very
large, his walk very slow, his dialect very broken.'"
The coon stereotype as embodied by Stepin Fetchit was subverted by
him in at least two movies, SALUTE (1929) and CHARLIE CHAN IN EGYPT.
In SALUTE (his first appearance in a Ford film)his improvised
dialogue and locutions in this early talkie have the effect of
undermining the football heroics of the white protagonist and the
Annapolis milieu and make the movie fairly radical for a sound film
of that era.
In CHARLIE CHAN IN EGYPT the coon mask drops momentarily when Stepin
flirts with a young black woman, suggesting that the coon persona is
a way of putting one over boss Charlie (in both senses of the word.)
"Ford was using hiim as late as 1953(!). Again, Ford's attitudes
seem consistent with a white man born at the begining of the 20th
century. It doesn't take away from his craftmanship, but I do not
think you have to whitewash his racial views to appreciate his
talent -- they exist side by side in both Ford and his films."
Well, Fetchit needed the work in 1953. As to Ford's racial attitudes
the evidence of the films is that his attitudes were not fossilized
and changed with the times. The evidence presented in Joseph
McBride's biography also shows that Ford struggled with his
assumptions about race and militarism after his experiences in WWII.
McBride also suggests that Ford had a homoerotic relationship with
Woody Strode (not consumated)and that he was deeply conflicted about
the need to conform to masculine behavior as defined by men of his
generation, a very complicated individual indeed.
"Maybe it plays differently in Buenos Aires. But to this Brooklyn
boy and his husband from Columbia, South Carolina, it is one more
stereotype of Black sexual potency and irresponsibility...since Ford
was making films for an American audience, I think it is important to
keep in mind how his images played to Americans and whether they
supported or challenged contemporary racial ideologies."
But was a large family perceived as irresponsible in 1936? My father
came from a family of 7 (though large Jewish familes may also have
been seen as stereotypical by white non-Jewish audiences.) But you're
quite right to raise the question of how Ford's presentation of Afro-
Americans played to white Americans of 1936. Today a variety of
responses are possible, and the question than becomes is PRISONER OF
SHARK ISLAND redeemed from its ideology by its aristry?
Richard
23716
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 5:09pm
Subject: Re: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- Brian Charles Dauth
wrote:
>
> As Donald Bogle writes:
>
> "His appearance, too, added to the caricature. He
> was tall and skinny and
> always had his head shaved completely bald. He
> invariably wore clothes that
> were too large for him and that looked as if they
> had been passed down from
> his white master. His grin was always very wide, his
> teeth very white, his
> eyes very widened, his feet very large, his walk
> very slow, his dialect very
> broken."
>
> More at:
>
> http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/coon/
>
> I'd be curious to know your defense of this racist
> stereotype.
>
Taylor mead wrote the best defense, calling Fetchit
(to whom he was often compared as being a gay version
of) a "Black Revolutionary."
Do check out William Klein's "Cassius le Grand" AKA
"Muhhamed Ali- The Greatest" wherein Fetchit appears
counselling the young Cassius Clay.
Fetchit made a great deal of money -- and spent it
lavishly. This "flaunting it" was greatly looked down
upon by "responsible" members of the black community
-- especially when Fetchit made a point of hiring a
white chauffeur.
__________________________________
Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web
http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/
23717
From: BklynMagus
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 6:08pm
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
JPC writes:
> Caution! We're entering the minefield of Political
Korrectness!
I do not think this is a minefield of polictical correctness.
I think it is just acknowledging that different images/
mise en scene have moral ideologies attached to them.
> By "petty" I meant the inability to see past a "racist"
stereotype (99% of all negro characters in pre-Poitier
Hollywood films can be described as racist stereotypes)
By why see past them? That is what I fail to understand.
These were stereotypes created to promote a certain
ideology. If by seeing "past" you mean acknowledging
that there was craftmanship involved, sure, there was
care taken, but by focusing on the craft you miss the
moral aspect which is what for me raises craft to the level
of art.
> . . . and to acknowledge the originality of a persona,
the brilliance of the characterization, the surrealistic
invention of the "very broken" dialect (fully deserving of the
linguist's attention).
I guess I see no brilliance in the caricature of Stepin Fetchit.
This was exactly the image of Blacks that the elite wished to
project and that Hollywood produced.
What you see as surrealistic invention, I see as degrading
depiction of (supposed) Black intellectual inferiority. I also
find it difficult and problematic to separate the spoken dialect
from the physical postures, gestures and mannerisms that
were displayed when speaking this dialect. The overall
impression is one of subservience and deferrence.
> "Caricature" can achieve the level of genius.
I suppose so, but I do not think Stepin Fetchit is an
example of genius.
> The reviling of Fetchit is somewhat akin to what I
described in a post yesterday as the narrow-minded
feminist condemnation of "Seven Brides" as "sexist"
(when it is actually an indictment of sexism).
I see your point, but to agree with it I would have to
accept that Stepin Fetchit was a self-consciously aware
send-up of white people's opinion of African-Americans.
I do not see any evidence that this was the case. SF is a
stooge, and he is a stooge by the virute of the fact that he
is Black, therefore inferior, and so the role of stooge is
appropriate to his being.
> . . . . Ford's racial views (which I suspect were more
complex than the average white man's of his generation).
Agreed. But that complexity stemmed from the progressive
aspects being opposed to the reactionary ones.
> I was defending Fetchit's work as an artist.
I think you can safely say he was an excellent craftsman at
portraying the coon stooge, but to judge his work on the
level of artistry, I think we have to look at the moral intent
behind it and that of the films he was in.
> But you're right, not being myself African-American, and having
been born and raised in France, maybe I shouldn't speak about
such things as Stepin Fetchit and racism.
No, of course you should. I think critics just need to acknowlege
that particular mise en scene will carry different charges for
different viewers depending on their cultural upbringing. I
for one was amazed at all I had missed/misinterpreted when
I started reading about Kurosawa and Mizoguchi. And these
misunderstandings were not due to a lack of dilligence, but to
the fact that I approached the film from a variant cultural point
of view.
> But then, by the same token, maybe I shouldn't speak
about American film in general, or anything foreign to my own
"culture."
Silence is never helpful in my opinion. What I think is important
to remember is that just as I see films through the lens of
Brooklyn, you see it through the lens of France.
Richard writes:
> The coon stereotype as embodied by Stepin Fetchit was
subverted by him in at least two movies, SALUTE (1929)
and CHARLIE CHAN IN EGYPT.
That's great. Now the question becomes: does that instance
of subversion carry over to his subsequent work where no
such subversion is included in the mise en scene? What if a
viewer has never seen these films or (worse) what if they
had been lost as so many early fims were?
Does an act of subversion transcend the runnning time of the
film in which it occurs?
> Well, Fetchit needed the work in 1953.
I read that this week in Sarris' "The John Ford Movie Mystery."
I thought it a pretty poor defense, even more so now that you
have taught me that there was a Ford film where the
stereotype was subverted.
> As to Ford's racial attitudes the evidence of the films is that
his attitudes were not fossilized and changed with the times.
Agreed. But his films are set, specific objects that embody
particular images with particular moral resonances. It is clear
from his work that he was conflicted, but when he expressed
this conflict through mise en scene, he at times employed some
odious stereotypes which he did not bother to subvert in all
instances.
> McBride also suggests that Ford had a homoerotic relationship
with Woody Strode (not consumated)
John Ford a member of the queer tribe? It is to shudder. LOL.
Was Strode queer? I thought he was married to a Hawaiian
princess?
> . . . and that he was deeply conflicted about the need to conform
to masculine behavior as defined by men of his generation
That is apparent in his films, and in my opinion he was better able
to express this conflict in his mise en scene without resorting to
unsubverted odious stereotypes.
> . . . a very complicated individual indeed.
Agreed.
> But was a large family perceived as irresponsible in 1936?
"That all those people are good for -- making babies." I heard it
alot growing up and I was born in 1960. Large families of whatever
ethnicity/race were often taken as symbols of laziness and
irresponsibility.
> But you're quite right to raise the question of how Ford's
presentation of Afro-Americans played to white Americans of 1936.
It is also to wonder if Ford was so oblilvious that he did not know
or perceive how his presentations would be recevied. It is hard
for me to believe that a man as talented as Ford could convincingly
plead ignorance in this instance.
> Today a variety of responses are possible, and the question than
becomes is PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND redeemed from its ideology
by its aristry?
I do not think the ideology can be redeeemd and to try to do so is in
my opinion a waste of time. The ideology is what is is/was. But the
fact of its inclusion does not disallow appreciation of Ford's artistry
which also is what it is/was. One doesn't cancel or redeem the other.
We just have to live with the messy fact of their co-existence in the
same mise en scene and the consequent messy responses that arise
within viewers.
Brian
23718
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 7:00pm
Subject: Re: The Wrong Man (Was: pieceashit FUNNY GAMES)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "cairnsdavid1967"
wrote:
> THE WRONG MAN is maybe his grimmest film, most serious of aspect,
but
> the game is still underway, and Hitch felt compelled to give us a
> happy ending as reward for suffering at his hands - even though it
> meant distorting the facts somewhat.
That's some happy ending! Two tiny extras shot in Fla. by a newsreel
crew walking away fr the camera with a card saying that Rose
recovered and they're now happy in Fla! Rose DID recover, eventually.
The dissolve of him praying is the only distortion, as I recall.
23719
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 7:07pm
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
> it is one more
> stereotype of Black sexual potency and irresponsibility...
>
> But was a large family perceived as irresponsible in 1936?
Not at all. And Brian has not responded to my reading of Rosabell's
hyperbolic fertility as part of a psychoanalytically overdetermined
structure, itself part of the psychoanalytic underpinnings of Ford's
oeuvre leading up to Lincoln - the signifier leading the artist by
the nose, ecriture trumping ideology.
23720
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 7:15pm
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
Isn't there some yarn about Ford obliging West Point or some other
haughty location to put SF up in white quarters during a shoot?
23721
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 7:23pm
Subject: Bamboozled (was: Prisoner of Shark Island)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:
> JPC writes:
> We just have to live with the messy fact of their co-existence in
the
> same mise en scene and the consequent messy responses that arise
> within viewers.
>
Something people didn't get when the Young Mr. Lincoln article
appeared in 1971, but it really is a defense of the auteur theory. I
consider my Ford in the 30s piece, which shows how mind-bogglingly
accurate Ouydart's reading of Lincoln is, to be the most extreme
defense of the auteur theory ever undertaken. Sometimes I blush to
think of it.
Did you see Bamboozled, Brian? I wrote that Lee is our John Ford in a
review of 25th Hour for the Economist, which actually let the
statement stand. Joe McBride wnated to follow his Ford book with one
on Lee, but couldn't fina ny takers. Spike Lee plays self-consciously
with "coon" stereotypes in Bamboozled, my favorite film of that year,
and more recently, with all sorts of stereotypes in She Hate Me,
which was my number 5 film for 2004. I'm not saying Ford's use of SF
in Sun Shines Bright is on that level, but I don't think it's just
ideological.
Actually, I DO think it's on that level!....
23722
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 7:48pm
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:
> JPC writes:
>
> > Caution! We're entering the minefield of Political
> Korrectness!
>
> I do not think this is a minefield of polictical correctness.
> I think it is just acknowledging that different images/
> mise en scene have moral ideologies attached to them.
>
One could argue that "political correctness" consists in
substituting an "ideology" for another and refusing to see anything
but the new one -- which seems to be what you are doing.
> > By "petty" I meant the inability to see past a "racist"
> stereotype (99% of all negro characters in pre-Poitier
> Hollywood films can be described as racist stereotypes)
>
> By why see past them? That is what I fail to understand.
> These were stereotypes created to promote a certain
> ideology. If by seeing "past" you mean acknowledging
> that there was craftmanship involved, sure, there was
> care taken, but by focusing on the craft you miss the
> moral aspect which is what for me raises craft to the level
> of art.
Are you saying that in order to have "art" we need to have
moral teaching attached to it? Are you judging works ot art in terms
of the correctness of their moral content?
> > . . . and to acknowledge the originality of a persona,
> the brilliance of the characterization, the surrealistic
> invention of the "very broken" dialect (fully deserving of the
> linguist's attention).
>
> I guess I see no brilliance in the caricature of Stepin Fetchit.
> This was exactly the image of Blacks that the elite wished to
> project and that Hollywood produced.
Oh, Hollywood didn't make movies for "the elite"!
I think it's sad that because of your fixation on the alleged
racism of The Fetchit persona you must be unable to appreciate,
say, the wonderful scene at the opening of "Judge Priest" where
Fetchit is being tried for stealing a chicken. The judge (Will
Rogers) disregards the high-flown harangue of the prosecutor to
discuss bait and tackle with the accused. Finally he dismisses the
charge and the judge and Fetchit go fishing together...Instead of
enjoying the humor of the scene, you'd probably just complain that a
chicken-stealing negro is a despicably racist stereotype.
> What you see as surrealistic invention, I see as degrading
> depiction of (supposed) Black intellectual inferiority. I also
> find it difficult and problematic to separate the spoken dialect
> from the physical postures, gestures and mannerisms that
> were displayed when speaking this dialect. The overall
> impression is one of subservience and deferrence.
We need a three-piece-suit-clad negro who speaks the king's
English. Eventually we did get Poitier.
> I see your point, but to agree with it I would have to
> accept that Stepin Fetchit was a self-consciously aware
> send-up of white people's opinion of African-Americans.
I think there is some evidence of that. See David's post.
> I do not see any evidence that this was the case. SF is a
> stooge, and he is a stooge by the virute of the fact that he
> is Black, therefore inferior, and so the role of stooge is
> appropriate to his being.
>
Would you say that the Jerry Lewis persona ("The Idiot") is a
racist caricature of white people, or an anti-semitic caricature of
Jewish people?
>
> > I was defending Fetchit's work as an artist.
>
> I think you can safely say he was an excellent craftsman at
> portraying the coon stooge, but to judge his work on the
> level of artistry, I think we have to look at the moral intent
> behind it and that of the films he was in.
>
>> Brian
23723
From: Peter Henne
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 8:42pm
Subject: Re: Re: pieceashit FUNNY GAMES
You can "tease" by withholding the graphic depiction of blood and guts, and make the audience squirm all the more. And I can imagine a violent scene, constructed without seeing blood spill out of wounds, that would not lack for kineticism but if anything might gain from a less-is-more approach. The shower scene in Hitchcock's "Psycho" is the classic example. If Haneke has drained some kineticism from the violence in "Funny Games"--and I'm willing to hold out that is a possibility--it is by means other than, or in addition to, not showing wounded flesh. Perhaps it has to do with the distanciation techniques, albeit insufficient, that some of us have talked about.
Peter Henne
cairnsdavid1967 wrote:
We don't see the ear-
slicing in RESEVOIR DOGS but that's a violent scene, or a scene of
violence, more intense than most of the on-screen shootings etc.
> "FG" portrays violence, but Haneke has taken tremendous care to
> drain the kineticism from the violence.
Who says violence has to be kinetic? Is non-kinetic violence more
chaste and pure than kinetic violence?
---------------------------------
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23724
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 8:47pm
Subject: Re: Antiwar (Was: Paths of Glory)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera" >
That's the kind of irony and nihilism I thought would be more up
> Kubrick's alley. Why he pulled back with the ending he did film I
> don't understand.
But isn't the ending as we have it even more ironic and nihilistic
with Joker now a member of The Lusthog Squard singing the Mickey
Mouse Soung after becoming "real hardcore" following his killing of
the female sniper? Kubrick's mode of nihilism was always subtle and
he felt no need to spell things out for the audience but stimulate
them to work out images and sounds within a particular context. The
same is true for the voice-over - as unreliable as those in LOLITA
and BARRY LYNDON as Mario Falsetto constantly points out.
Tony Williams
23725
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 8:52pm
Subject: Re: My Name is Nobody
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" >
The intrusion of Bud Spencer's youthful insouciance and sense of
comedy
> into the myth that was set in bronze at the end of Once Upon a
Time is very
> contemporary.
I so much agree with what you and David say. It confirms feelings
written long ago in an out-of-print book by Laurence Staig, ITALIAN
WESTERN: THE OPERA OF VIOLENCE.
But don't you mean Terence Hill? The mistake may be due to recent
news concerning Hill's former screen partner Bud Spencer coming out
of retirement to support an Italian right-wing politician. None of
the films Terence Hill made can compare to MY NAME IS NOBODY which
certainly shows the presence of a major director such as Leone.
Similarly Visconti drew a good performance out of the young "Mario
Girotti" in THE LEOPARD far more magisterial than his role on one of
those Karl May German Westerns with Lex Barker which, I think, was
the second in the series.
Tony Williams
23726
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 8:58pm
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
> wrote:
> >
> Isn't there some yarn about Ford obliging West Point or some other
> haughty location to put SF up in white quarters during a shoot?
I think McBride mentions that Ford forced Wayne to bunk with
Fetchitt. Many years later, I believe Bernard Gordon mentions
meeting Wayne in Europe who signed autographs requested by black
sailors. After they left, he told Gordon, "I hate niggers."
Tony Williams
23727
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 9:02pm
Subject: Re: Royal Wedding (Was: Walters & Minnelli)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
> wrote:
> >
> > --- jpcoursodon wrote:
> >
> > > She was absolutely wonderful in "7 brides for 7
> > > Brothers" --
> > > another great Donen. In the great tradition of the
> > > civilizing power
> > > of strong women in frontier times. "It's Millie!
> > > It's Millie!" And
> > > to think that short-sighted narrow-minded feminists
> > > trashed the
> > > film!
> >
> > Indeed. The movie's a masterpiece. Saw it at Radio
> > City when it opened. Met one of the Birdes, recently
> > -- Ruta Lee.
I loved SEVEN BRIDES too, especially Jane Powell, and saw the film
many times when it was first released in England. A pity that her
career did not develop. I last saw Jane Powell in an episode of that
fondly remembered DICK POWELL SHOW which ran on BBC during the early
60s. Powell introduced the episode by recalling how studio
executives changed her surname. "They named her after the most,
debonair, leading man in Hollywood" (Smile)
"William Powell!" (Smile drops!)
Tony Williams
23728
From: peterhenne
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 9:18pm
Subject: Re: Antiwar (Was: Paths of Glory)
Tony,
I basically agree that Kubrick deliberately leaves the moral
dilemmas open for us to ponder. In that spirit, I'm not convinced
that we have to think Joker is "real hardcore" just because a fellow
Marine says he is. I'm not sure that he becomes a completely
corrupted character, and the voice-over at the end doesn't really
flag that he is. Shooting the sniper is morally complex; which is
not to say that he may be exonerated. The film is asking us here,
What would you do, and what could you do? No decision is clean.
Evacuating her to the aide station is no better than leaving her
there to die, as far as the sniper is concerned. We can surmise that
she is not going to live more than a few hours, she knows it, and
would be dishonored to be captured and treated (for no useful
purpose anyway) by American medics. I feel that Joker hasn't
necessarily lost the rest of his integrity by the end, but rather
his certainty of where to draw the line on personal conduct and
which side of that line he stands. Up to this point, he's been cocky
and sure of himself morally, acting as though he will get through
Vietnam without blood on his own hands, just by not participating
(i.e., reporting) and taking an ironic regard toward everything he
sees. Shooting the sniper is the first real action he takes, and it
sinks him into the proverbial quagmire.
Peter Henne
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
>
> That's the kind of irony and nihilism I thought would be more up
> > Kubrick's alley. Why he pulled back with the ending he did film
I
> > don't understand.
>
> But isn't the ending as we have it even more ironic and
nihilistic
> with Joker now a member of The Lusthog Squard singing the Mickey
> Mouse Soung after becoming "real hardcore" following his killing
of
> the female sniper? Kubrick's mode of nihilism was always subtle
and
> he felt no need to spell things out for the audience but stimulate
> them to work out images and sounds within a particular context.
The
> same is true for the voice-over - as unreliable as those in LOLITA
> and BARRY LYNDON as Mario Falsetto constantly points out.
>
> Tony Williams
23729
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 9:21pm
Subject: Re: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- BklynMagus wrote:
>
> I guess I see no brilliance in the caricature of
> Stepin Fetchit.
> This was exactly the image of Blacks that the elite
> wished to
> project and that Hollywood produced.
>
But what is it that Hollywood wishes to project TODAY
in a supposedly integrated and "enlightened" America?
"Soul Plane."
This monstrosity appalls me more than the most
moth-eaten of Stepin Fetchit vehicles. And it's
precisely because it was made by and for
African-Americans.
Looking at the past a variety of individuals and
situations occur. Hattie McDaniel in "Gone with the
Wind" plays a slave devoted to her mistress -- yet
she's the storngest figure in the movie. In fact she's
one of the strongest figures in the entire history of
the cinema!
Leave us not forget that Stepin Fetchit is scarcely
alone in his style of comedy. Willie Best and Mantan
Moreland make comparably entertianing/infuriating
appearances in numerous films. Yet none are as base as
Monique and the string of upscale chitlins circuit
sitcoms on UPN (United Paramount Negro)
__________________________________
Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web
http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/
23730
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 10:00pm
Subject: Re: Antiwar (Was: Paths of Glory)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peterhenne"
wrote:
>
> Tony,
>
> I basically agree that Kubrick deliberately leaves the moral
> dilemmas open for us to ponder. In that spirit, I'm not convinced
> that we have to think Joker is "real hardcore" just because a
fellow
> Marine says he is.
Sure, but there are other things going on in this scene which owe
much to mood and mise-en-scene
Shooting the sniper is morally complex; which is
> not to say that he may be exonerated.
I agree.
The film is asking us here,
> What would you do, and what could you do? No decision is clean.
> Evacuating her to the aide station is no better than leaving her
> there to die, as far as the sniper is concerned.
I think Kubrick has never been one to deal with the conscious
realities affecting any situation but more with the dark motivations
he sees, sadly, as a part of human conditioning.
Up to this point, he's been cocky
> and sure of himself morally, acting as though he will get through
> Vietnam without blood on his own hands, just by not participating
> (i.e., reporting) and taking an ironic regard toward everything he
> sees. Shooting the sniper is the first real action he takes, and
it
> sinks him into the proverbial quagmire.
>
> Peter Henne
Exactly!
Tony Williams
>
>
> y
23731
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 10:07pm
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- BklynMagus wrote:
> > >
> But what is it that Hollywood wishes to project TODAY
> in a supposedly integrated and "enlightened" America?
>
> "Soul Plane."
>
> This monstrosity appalls me more than the most
> moth-eaten of Stepin Fetchit vehicles. And it's
> precisely because it was made by and for
> African-Americans.
>
> Looking at the past a variety of individuals and
> situations occur. Hattie McDaniel in "Gone with the
> Wind" plays a slave devoted to her mistress -- yet
> she's the storngest figure in the movie. In fact she's
> one of the strongest figures in the entire history of
> the cinema!
>
> Leave us not forget that Stepin Fetchit is scarcely
> alone in his style of comedy. Willie Best and Mantan
> Moreland make comparably entertianing/infuriating
> appearances in numerous films. Yet none are as base as
> Monique and the string of upscale chitlins circuit
> sitcoms on UPN (United Paramount Negro)
One can also cite the role of the black maid in Max Ophuls's THE
RECKLESS MOMENT whose significance has been written about by both
Andrew Britton and Robin Wood.
At the moment, "Black History Month" ends at this university and
the usual crique of AMOS N' ANDY occurs. Do any members of this
group remember the series. It was very popular in South Wales during
the 1950s when televised on BBC and I, and others, were impressed by
the comic talents of the various performers which we admired without
any racial condescension. Unlike the radio series, all the
performers were black. Amos was a down-to-eath character introducing
each episode. I only learned later that Spencer Williams (who played
Andy) had a history in black American independent cinema. Were not
Kingfish and Calhoun professionals without any of the smug posturing
of Bill Cosby in THE COSBY SHOW.? Although Lightning could be
grouped in the Willies Best category but all the other actors
performed roles similar to British Northern comedians who drew on
their brand of ethnicity for comic effect rather than disparaging
their group - something that the 60s black British comedian Charlies
Williams used to do.
The whole issue is complex and needs debate as is happening here.
>
Tony Williams
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
> Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web
> http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/
23732
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 10:14pm
Subject: Re: My Name is Nobody
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000" <
peckinpah20012000@y...> wrote:
\
>
> But don't you mean Terence Hill?
Yup, I do.
23733
From: BklynMagus
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 10:18pm
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
hl666 writes:
> And Brian has not responded to my reading of Rosabell's
hyperbolic fertility as part of a psychoanalytically overdetermined
structure, itself part of the psychoanalytic underpinnings of Ford's
oeuvre leading up to Lincoln - the signifier leading the artist by
the nose, ecriture trumping ideology.
I didn't respond because I didn't have anything to say.
It seems to be one of the ways that the scene can be looked at.
But I am not well-informed about psychoanalytic readings so
I couldn't post anything of worth on the subject.
But I do not see that reading contradicting my reading -- they
can exist side by side.
I will admit that I do not understand what you mean by a
"psychoanalytically over-determined structure" or 'the signifier
leading the artist by the nose."
As for ecriture trumping ideology, as I said above, I think they
exist in tandem, and not with one trumping the other. It is
each individual viewer who decides what trumps what.
> Did you see Bamboozled, Brian?
Yes. Unfortunately, the movie made little impact on me so
I cannot say that I recall much of it.
> Spike Lee plays self-consciously with "coon" stereotypes in
Bamboozled, my favorite film of that year . . .
Could be. Just not a filmmaker that I devote a lot of
attention to.
JPC writes:
> One could argue that "political correctness" consists in
substituting an "ideology" for another and refusing to see
anything but the new one -- which seems to be what you are
doing.
I am sorry if I am not clear. What I am saying is that two
(or more) ideologies/ecritures can exist simultaneously
in one instance of mise en scene.
> Are you saying that in order to have "art" we need to
have moral teaching attached to it?
What I am saying is that art has a moral component that
craft lacks. It is not necessarily a teaching at all.
> Are you judging works ot art in terms of the correctness
of their moral content?
No, I am just saying that they all have moral content.
> I think it's sad that because of your fixation on the alleged
racism of The Fetchit persona you must be unable to appreciate,
say, the wonderful scene at the opening of "Judge Priest" . . .
With respect, there is no need to condescend to me. You
have absolutely no idea of what I can or cannot appreciate.
This is about Ford's films, and not about posters abilities or lack
of them. To set the record straight, I can appreciate a scene
that combines elements of humor and racial (or other)
stereotypes. Enjoyment is another matter.
If I am understanding hl666's posts, he seems to assert that
certain of these elements must be considered to trump the others.
Do you agree with him? Is so why?
And for both of you: Why does there need to be a winner?
What is wrong with allowing them to co-exist on the screen as
they co-exist in life?
> We need a three-piece-suit-clad negro who speaks the king's
English. Eventually we did get Poitier.
No, the problem is that Stepin Fetchit's humorous stupidity is
grounded in the notion that he is stupid because he is Black.
Stupidity can be humorous. Problems arise when the cause
of the stupidity is grounded in a person's race/ethnicity.
> Would you say that the Jerry Lewis persona ("The Idiot")
is a racist caricature of white people, or an anti-semitic
caricature of Jewish people?
I would have to think about it. I never have since I never
saw his character's behaviors as being rooted in either
his whiteness or his Jewishness.
David writes:
> But what is it that Hollywood wishes to project TODAY
in a supposedly integrated and "enlightened" America?
Pretty much the same as it has for the past one hundred
years. I do not see much change though there have been
technological advancements.
> This monstrosity appalls me more than the most
moth-eaten of Stepin Fetchit vehicles.
I agree, but for me just because something worse that
Stepin Fetchit comes along, doesn't suddenly make him
palatable.
> In fact she's one of the strongest figures in the entire
history of the cinema!
And wherein does her strength lie? In her actions, or is
it an attribute that is ascribed to her race? Is she able to
do these things because she is a strong Black woman, or
is it after the evidence has been accumulated that we can
come to the conclusion that she is a woman who behaves
strongly and is Black?
> Leave us not forget that Stepin Fetchit is scarcely
alone in his style of comedy.
More's the shame.
> Willie Best and Mantan Moreland make comparably
entertianing/infuriating appearances in numerous films.
Agreed. As I said, these aspects exist in tandem. What
I am suspicious of is criticism that want to neglect one
at the expense of the other.
> Yet none are as base as Monique and the string of
upscale chitlins circuit sitcoms on UPN (United Paramount
Negro).
Agreed again.
Brian
23734
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 10:18pm
Subject: Re: Royal Wedding (Was: Walters & Minnelli)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000" <
peckinpah20012000@y...> wrote:
>
Jane Powell, A pity that her
> career did not develop.
She is so beautiful - and so improbable - as a native girl in Enchanted Island.
23735
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 10:23pm
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
>
> Looking at the past a variety of individuals and
> situations occur. Hattie McDaniel in "Gone with the
> Wind" plays a slave devoted to her mistress -- yet
> she's the storngest figure in the movie. In fact she's
> one of the strongest figures in the entire history of
> the cinema!
See Leslie Fiedler's The Unintentional Epic on GWTW as a feminist, anti-
racist utopia.
>
> Leave us not forget that Stepin Fetchit is scarcely
> alone in his style of comedy. Willie Best and Mantan
> Moreland make comparably entertianing/infuriating
> appearances in numerous films. Yet none are as base as
> Monique and the string of upscale chitlins circuit
> sitcoms on UPN (United Paramount Negro)
That's what Bamboozled! is about.
23736
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 10:26pm
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> > That's what Bamboozled! is about.
That clinches it! I must rent it this weekend since it is out on
DVD in this area and belongs to those prestigious "Missing in
Action" category of films that Kerasotes will never show
theatrically in "Black Rock". Others include SHE HATE ME and, so
far, VERA DRAKE. Catholics are still fair game as the one week
screening of THE MAGDELENE SISTERS showed.
Tony Williams
23737
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Mar 4, 2005 10:31pm
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000"
>
> At the moment, "Black History Month" ends at this university and
> the usual crique of AMOS N' ANDY occurs. Do any members of this
> group remember the series. It was very popular in South Wales during
> the 1950s when televised on BBC and I, and others, were impressed by
> the comic talents of the various performers which we admired without
> any racial condescension. Unlike the radio series, all the
> performers were black. Amos was a down-to-eath character introducing
> each episode. I only learned later that Spencer Williams (who played
> Andy) had a history in black American independent cinema. Were not
> Kingfish and Calhoun professionals without any of the smug posturing
> of Bill Cosby in THE COSBY SHOW.? Although Lightning could be
> grouped in the Willies Best category but all the other actors
> performed roles similar to British Northern comedians who drew on
> their brand of ethnicity for comic effect rather than disparaging
> their group - something that the 60s black British comedian Charlies
> Williams used to do.
>
> The whole issue is complex and needs debate as is happening here.
I just watched an old episode - it's like one of the indie black films of the
period, all of which except Moon Over Harlem omit the white world. There was
really nothing objectionable about the episode I saw. I "do" Kingfish
occasionally - "Let's simonize our watches..."
23738
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Mar 5, 2005 0:40am
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:
> hl666 writes:
>
> > And Brian has not responded to my reading of Rosabell's
> hyperbolic fertility as part of a psychoanalytically overdetermined
> structure, itself part of the psychoanalytic underpinnings of Ford's
> oeuvre leading up to Lincoln - the signifier leading the artist by
> the nose, ecriture trumping ideology.
>
> I didn't respond because I didn't have anything to say.
In fact, the relationship of ecriture (which is frequently the psychoanlaytic
symbolism of a film - what French psychoanalysts call "the Symbolic," and just
as frequently "the work of the signifier" - the concrete symbolizing imnage or
image part, as opposed to its meaning) to ideology is complex and varies
from film to film, director to director.
The point of the long analysis of Young Mr. Lincoln was to show that IN THE
VERY PROCESS OF "WRITING" THE IDEOLOGICAL MESSAGE Ford
subverted it. The "work of the signifier" trumped the very "signified" it was
supposed to communicate, because ultimately the signifier controls the
subject (the artist) and not vice versa - like the Almanac that circles unseen
around Lincoln till the night before the trial, whjen he is seen reading it. The
next day he pulls it out of his (very phallic) stoveepipe hat.
In Lincolne the ideology of the script is at odds with the myth at the heart ofg
Ford's cinema, in which the widowed mother incarnates the Law of the
community. Lincoln usurps that place, and unconscious imagistic subversions
of his function as incarnation of the ideal Law result: multip[le symbols of
castartion, a fleeting resemblance to Nosferatu. But he is put in that place so
that the aujra the myth would normall yconvcey on the Mpother will acrue to
him. The ecriture subverts the ideology in the process of writing it a forcefully
as possible.
Shark Island is a lesser film, but a wonderful one. If Lincoln sums up the quest
Ford was on during the 30s to find his myth, by portraying one last aberrant
hero and disposing of him with flashes of thunder and lightning the end, Mudd
is one of those failed aberrant heroes in Shark Island, and one can almost
feel Ford's satirical glee aimed at Mudd, especially at the end, when
Rosabella does it aain as he drags his castrated cadaver home.
23739
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Mar 5, 2005 0:47am
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Hattie McDaniels (Was Re: Prisoner of Shark Island )
--- BklynMagus wrote:
>
> And wherein does her strength lie? In her actions,
> or is
> it an attribute that is ascribed to her race? Is
> she able to
> do these things because she is a strong Black woman,
> or
> is it after the evidence has been accumulated that
> we can
> come to the conclusion that she is a woman who
> behaves
> strongly and is Black?
>
A very complex series of questions, not glibly
answered. In GWTW Hattie McDaniel is playing a slave ,
faithful to her mistress. She is also a psychological
extension of said mistress -- functioning for Scarlett
much as Jimminy Cricket does for Pinnochio.
Hattie McDaniel was a very proud, very chic, upper
middle-class black woman -- who resolved to project
that fact THROUGH whatever character she played. Her
sublimely dry sassiness was impossible for audiences
to resist. So much so that she "got away with"
speaking the truth to white power in a manner no
actual black woman would be able to do in real life.
One of my favorite Hattie moments is in Fleming's
"China Seas" -- a reworking of your basic "Red Dust"
with Gable and Harlow yet again. Saying her goodbyes
to Harlow in the last reel Hattie cheerfully snarls
"Well g'bye Miss Doll -- sure hope they don't hang ya'
!"
If you want to see something close to the real Hattie
check out the "Ice Cold Katie Won't You Marry the
Soldier" number in "Thank Your Lucky Stars" -- a
tumultuous mini-masterpiece that speaks volumes about
stereotypes and their relation to lived experience.
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23740
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Mar 5, 2005 0:59am
Subject: Re: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- peckinpah20012000
wrote:
>
> One can also cite the role of the black maid in
> Max Ophuls's THE
> RECKLESS MOMENT whose significance has been written
> about by both
> Andrew Britton and Robin Wood.
>
I knew the actress who played that maid -- a marvelous
woman named Frances Williams. She was an important
union organizer for black talent in Hollywood. Ophuls
took an immediate liking to her and expanded her part
for the film.
Frances' last work was on the great TV series "Frank's
Place" where she played the all-wise Miss Marie, the
restaurant's "Waitress emeritus.' That meant she only
waited on customers who had been coming to the place
for 20 years.
Tim Reid created that show as well as starred in ti.
And his head writer was Sam Art-Williams -- an
incredible talent who should be better known. The show
tackled all sorts of things in a style that turned
from souffle light to dead serious on a dime. In one
memorable episode the youngest of the waiters -- who
was aspiring to become a chef -- nearly got caught up
in drug trafficking. Deeply troubled he runs into Miss
Marie --who knows that some serious is wrong, and
therefore doesn't even has to ask about the
particulars. A brief chat with her puts him right --
but not in a standard issue moralistic fashion.
Great show. If it pops up in re-runs, tape it!
> At the moment, "Black History Month" ends at this
> university and
> the usual crique of AMOS N' ANDY occurs. Do any
> members of this
> group remember the series. It was very popular in
> South Wales during
> the 1950s when televised on BBC and I, and others,
> were impressed by
> the comic talents of the various performers which we
> admired without
> any racial condescension.
"Amos n' Andy" was a great TV shows, crafted from a
sterotypical radio show. Tim Moore was a genius!
__________________________________
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23741
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Mar 5, 2005 2:13am
Subject: Re: Prisoner of Shark Island (Was: VV on Westerns)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
especially at the end, when
> Rosabella does it aain as he drags his castrated cadaver home.
Enough already with the castration bit, Bill. It sort of makes my
balls tingle unpleasantly. Plus, perhaps some people are not quite
sure what you're talking about, not having read the Sacred Texts.
But then I'm just an ignoramus.
JPC
23742
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Mar 5, 2005 4:56am
Subject: Prisoner of Hattie McDaniels (Was Re: Prisoner of Shark Island )
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> >
> One of my favorite Hattie moments is in Fleming's
> "China Seas" -- a reworking of your basic "Red Dust"
> with Gable and Harlow yet again. Saying her goodbyes
> to Harlow in the last reel Hattie cheerfully snarls
> "Well g'bye Miss Doll -- sure hope they don't hang ya'
> !"
>
Actually by the undersung Tay Garnett. I located my cassette of it
two nights ago - now I'll haul it out and watch it!
23743
From: Noel Vera
Date: Sat Mar 5, 2005 6:47am
Subject: Re: Antiwar (Was: Paths of Glory)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
>
> That's the kind of irony and nihilism I thought would be more up
> > Kubrick's alley. Why he pulled back with the ending he did film
I
> > don't understand.
>
> But isn't the ending as we have it even more ironic and
nihilistic
> with Joker now a member of The Lusthog Squard singing the Mickey
> Mouse Soung after becoming "real hardcore" following his killing
of
> the female sniper?
I didn't think so--but maybe it's because I read Gustav Hasford's
novel that I feel that way.
And isn't that 'finding the sniper who turns out to be some young
man/woman' something of a cliche? I was googling around, and
realized the one place it came up in was a comic book--Alan
Moore's 'The Ballad of Halo Jones,' back in 1984, where the
soldiers, in their retalling of the story, made the sniper out to be
so old (she was barely in her teens) she died of old age.
Granted Kubrick did the best he could with mis en scene and music
(the Mickey Mouse song was a nice touch); maybe if he used the
original ending, he could have made an even more powerful ending.
There was also this remarkable episode in the novel where a
Vietnamese soldier went one-on-one with a chopper...
23744
From: Noel Vera
Date: Sat Mar 5, 2005 9:04am
Subject: The Aviator
Shit, why not?
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/noelmoviereviews/message/487
23745
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Mar 5, 2005 4:34pm
Subject: Re: Antiwar (Was: Paths of Glory)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:
>
maybe if he used the
> original ending, he could have made an even more powerful ending.
>
> There was also this remarkable episode in the novel where a
> Vietnamese soldier went one-on-one with a chopper...
In my article, wherever it's posted, you'll see that I mention some
cut scenes that were in the script: the Sergeant shoving Pyle's face
into a toilet full of urine, the Sergeant forcing a recruit who has
slit his own wrists to mob up the blood before going to the
infirmary, Joker seeing a Vietcong captive thrown out of a helicopter
by a S. Vietnamese officer, Joker's death in Vietnam and funeral
stateside. All of these scenes that were assured of getting emotional
effects were removed - don't know if they were ever shot. He was
going for something other than emotion: "Teasing us out of thought,"
to paraphrase Keats, might be a good description.
23746
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Mar 5, 2005 4:54pm
Subject: Re: The Aviator
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:
>
> Shit, why not?
>
> http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/noelmoviereviews/message/487
If this is the best review yet of the film - as I believe it is -
it's in part because Noel has listened attentively to the long debate
about Aviator here at a_film_by and judiciously responded to all
sides. Which alone justifies the rather long Aviator thread.
23747
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Sat Mar 5, 2005 8:37pm
Subject: Ruiz quote on culture
I've been thinking all afternoon about these comments from Raśl
Ruiz, which comes from an interview from a 1979 issue of Framework.
I just thought I'd share it (and in a peripheral way I suppose it's
relevant to the ideology/ecriture debate) ...
"Interviewer: The theory of cultural dependency which dominates
notions of 'artistic' production in Latin America can be applied
perhaps to your work. In a sense you have been (too) easily
absorbed in the texture of the Capital of Latin American culture
that is Paris.
"Ruiz: Culture is always false. Culture is a way of separating
yourself from reality. The greater the distance from reality the
more rhetorical the culture. For example, if you have not been born
into and reared in a popular Latin American culture, you will never
be able to assimilate it. That culture is not accessible to anybody
but to those who have been born into it. I mean popular culture in
an anthropological sense. An official culture, bourgeois, dominant,
culture with a capital C, is highly rhetorical and can be learnt
later in life. You can't talk like the people of my neighbourhood
and never will. Nevertheless I can, almost at the age of forty,
read Descartes for the first time and understand it. This is the
advantage of official culture, which in this sense I consider is
more democratic than popular culture.
... I'll skip a few lines in Ruiz's response for brevity's sake ...
"The first impact of European culture I received was through films,
shocking films in black and white and with ugly people in them.
Initially this shocked me, but eventually it became a positive
impression. I am convinced that the Chilean Left would not exist
had it not been for Dostoyevsky. I believe two major factors
created the men of the Left of my generation. One was Dostoyevsky
and the other the anti-communist books published by the Americans
and distributed in Chile, in which the communists were shown to be
immoral individuals who believed in free-love, who led adventurous
lives, athey were all spies and wanted to transform the world. This
destruction appeared to be sufficiently terrible to the Americans
but it provoked enormous desires in us to be like the baddies of the
novels. I would not like to give the impression that I am simply
playing rather frivolous games, on the contrary I have thought about
this a lot."
--Zach
23748
From: Jerry Johnson
Date: Sat Mar 5, 2005 10:02pm
Subject: Problems with Criterion's "Confidential Report"?
Stefan Droessler has revealed here
http://www.wellesnet.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?
s=422938bd7b9affff;act=ST;f=1;t=84;st=40
that Criterion is not inlcuding his reconstruction of "Mr. Akadin"
on it's upcoming DVD release, which he claims is the "best" version
available. I don't know enough about the versions to know if
Criterion is being negligent, but I was hoping Mr. Rosenbaum or
others could offer an opinion on this matter.
23749
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Mar 5, 2005 11:04pm
Subject: Re: Ruiz quote on culture
--- Zach Campbell wrote:
>
> "Ruiz: Culture is always false. Culture is a way of
> separating
> yourself from reality. The greater the distance
> from reality the
> more rhetorical the culture.
And for a political exile like Ruiz this takes on the
aspect of a defense mechanism.
For example, if you
> have not been born
> into and reared in a popular Latin American culture,
> you will never
> be able to assimilate it. That culture is not
> accessible to anybody
> but to those who have been born into it. I mean
> popular culture in
> an anthropological sense.
I know what he menas, in one sense. Borges, Bioy
Casares, Sarduy and the recently departed cabrera
Infante are all to a large degree impenetrable and
profoundly mysterious to those outside of latin
American culture.
An official culture,
> bourgeois, dominant,
> culture with a capital C, is highly rhetorical and
> can be learnt
> later in life. You can't talk like the people of my
> neighbourhood
> and never will. Nevertheless I can, almost at the
> age of forty,
> read Descartes for the first time and understand it.
> This is the
> advantage of official culture, which in this sense I
> consider is
> more democratic than popular culture.
>
Quite true. And the sooner this fact is understood,
the better.
>
> "The first impact of European culture I received was
> through films,
> shocking films in black and white and with ugly
> people in them.
Love to have a list of those films!
I would not like to give the impression
> that I am simply
> playing rather frivolous games, on the contrary I
> have thought about
> this a lot."
At the same time Ruiz is nothing if not frivolous.
SERIOUSLY frivolous. A metrosexual Jack Smith as it
were.
I do hope you get to meet him sometime. He's quite the
card.
__________________________________
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23750
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 0:00am
Subject: Re: Ruiz quote on culture
David:
> > This is the
> > advantage of official culture, which in this sense I
> > consider is
> > more democratic than popular culture.
>
> Quite true. And the sooner this fact is understood,
> the better.
It's so simple and yet I'd never really thought of "official"
culture in these terms--but I certainly sympathize with it. But
this casts the tropes, the signs, the very logic of Ruiz's work in
an entirely new light for me. I feel as though I've taken a big
step towards a better understanding of ON TOP OF THE WHALE (the film
that has haunted my thoughts most lately).
> I do hope you get to meet him sometime. He's quite the
> card.
I'd love to but I doubt it will ever happen ...
--Zach
23751
From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 1:23am
Subject: Re: Problems with Criterion's "Confidential Report"?
This is the first I've heard that Stefan's version isn't being
included, so it would be silly and imprudent for me to make any
comment at this point. I can only say that, to the best of my
knowledge, Issa Clubb has been addressing the issues of what should
be included on both the MR. ARKADIN DVD and the F FOR FAKE DVD with
the utmost seriousness, and it seems unnecessary to draw any hasty
conclusions at this point.
Jonathan
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jerry Johnson"
wrote:
>
> Stefan Droessler has revealed here
>
> http://www.wellesnet.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?
> s=422938bd7b9affff;act=ST;f=1;t=84;st=40
>
> that Criterion is not inlcuding his reconstruction of "Mr. Akadin"
> on it's upcoming DVD release, which he claims is the "best"
version
> available. I don't know enough about the versions to know if
> Criterion is being negligent, but I was hoping Mr. Rosenbaum or
> others could offer an opinion on this matter.
23752
From: Noel Vera
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 8:30am
Subject: Re: The Aviator
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
> wrote:
> >
> > Shit, why not?
> >
> > http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/noelmoviereviews/message/487
>
> If this is the best review yet of the film - as I believe it is -
> it's in part because Noel has listened attentively to the long
debate
> about Aviator here at a_film_by and judiciously responded to all
> sides. Which alone justifies the rather long Aviator thread.
Thanks--regard this as high praise, considering the source.
23753
From: Noel Vera
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 8:31am
Subject: Re: Antiwar (Was: Paths of Glory)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> In my article, wherever it's posted, you'll see that I mention
some
> cut scenes that were in the script: the Sergeant shoving Pyle's
face
> into a toilet full of urine, the Sergeant forcing a recruit who
has
> slit his own wrists to mob up the blood before going to the
> infirmary, Joker seeing a Vietcong captive thrown out of a
helicopter
> by a S. Vietnamese officer, Joker's death in Vietnam and funeral
> stateside. All of these scenes that were assured of getting
emotional
> effects were removed - don't know if they were ever shot. He was
> going for something other than emotion: "Teasing us out of
thought,"
> to paraphrase Keats, might be a good description.
He was doing a good job teasing. He kind of left me behind with that
ending.
23754
From: Matt Teichman
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 0:48pm
Subject: Re: My Name is Nobody
hotlove666 wrote:
>Noel is right that Once Upon a Time is tough to top for sheer esthetic chills
>and thrills - hard to separate from Morricone's masterpiece of a score - but
>MNIN gives me more pleasure.
>
Well, I'm certainly not going to dispite the genius of _Once Upon a Time
in the West_. But I do think _My Name is Nobody_ and _Duck, You Sucker_
are more mature and sophisticated pieces; it's difficult for me to see
_Once Upon a Time_ and the Eastwood films as anything but rehearsals for
_Sucker_ and _Nobody_.
The action of these two films takes place in what one is tempted to call
a "semi-referential" diegetic world, uncertain of its relation to
history, but which plays with and profits from that uncertainty in a
beautifully self-conscious way (I think your reading of the photographer
through Marx's idea of "upside-down history" is dead-on, cutting right
to the heart of these questions). _My Name is Nobody_ spends its two
hours, more or less, riffing on the idea of allegory and trying to come
to terms with the changes it has undergone--this is explictly
acknolwedged in Beauregard's final voiceover. Nobody's deliberately
pointless Aesop fable pastiche is one overt example, though its
pointlessness makes it, ironically, deeply allegorical of a film in
which no quick draw duel is really a quick draw duel, no game of pool is
really a game of pool, no villain is really a villain, no martyr is
really a martyr, nobody is really nobody etc. I really can't think of
another film that does anything like this.
Did Leone give any reasons for not signing it?
-Matt
23755
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 2:24pm
Subject: Re: My Name is Nobody
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Matt Teichman
wrote:
> hotlove666 wrote:
>
_My Name is Nobody_ spends its two
> hours, more or less, riffing on the idea of allegory and trying to
come
> to terms with the changes it has undergone--this is explictly
> acknolwedged in Beauregard's final voiceover. Nobody's
deliberately
> pointless Aesop fable pastiche is one overt example, though its
> pointlessness makes it, ironically, deeply allegorical of a film in
> which no quick draw duel is really a quick draw duel, no game of
pool is
> really a game of pool, no villain is really a villain, no martyr is
> really a martyr, nobody is really nobody etc. I really can't think
of
> another film that does anything like this.
Nor I - and the reasons you have enumerated will be my excuse to
revisit the unique pleasures it gives. It does seem to float outside
the historical cycle of the other films.
> Did Leone give any reasons for not signing it?
There has long been a sort of communal cinephilic assumption that he
directed My Name Is Nobody, but I don't know where he talked about
it - there are two interview books, neither of which I have. I know
that he wanted Once Upon a Time in America to be his follow-up to
Once Upon a Time in the West. Of course he did sign Duck You Sucker,
after Bogdanovich pulled out of directing it, I believe. Maybe by the
time he made Nobody the sets for America were already standing and he
didn't want to wreck his momentum? I would be very surprised, in any
event, to learn that the common attribution of the film to Leone
isn't accurate.
23756
From: samfilms2003
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 4:34pm
Subject: Re: Antiwar (Was: Paths of Glory)
>>And isn't that 'finding the sniper who turns out to be some young
man/woman' something of a cliche?
But they likely were.
> He was doing a good job teasing. He kind of left me behind with that
> ending.
There's nowhere to go with it. No grand statement possible a la Strangelove
or 2001, just more of the same. History, and no more.
I saw "The Puppetmaster" again this week. I can't get that final shot
out of my head - the crowd dismantling military aircraft for scrap
metal.
but Hou is the greatest, OK I'll shut up ;-)
-Sam
23757
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 4:54pm
Subject: Dante's Hell
I hear that Joe Dante, who had been desperately seeking to see the
elusive "Hellzapoppin'" has finally secured a 16mm print. The film
has been unavailable since the rights were acquired in the eighties
by the producer of the ill-fated revival of the original Broadway
show, which was to star Jerry Lewis and folded during rehearsals
(Jerry should have fascinating things to tell about that too in his
autobiography).
This brought back memories as I was a big fan of the movie when I
was in my mid-teens -- it came out in France in 1947 and became
famous even though it never got wide release and never got dubbed
into French -- an almost unheard-of characteristic it shares only
with "Citizen Kane" as far as I know. (the subtitles were written by
a very popular -- in France -- nonsense writer/comedian/songsmith
and radio personality, Pierre Dac). The movie had an unprecedented
long run of something like 38 months in one theatre on Avenue de
l'Opera and influenced a trend of "crazy" stage shows, the most
famous called "Branquignol", which became as much of a household
word in France as Hellzapoppin'was in the U.S. at the time of the
Broadway show's triumph.
The last time I saw the movie was at MOMA in a series of "self-
referential films" maybe 20 years ago, and though my enthusiasm had
somewhat diminished since I was fifteen, I still liked it a lot.
It's a pity it cannot be seen. Universal is said to have a pristine
print in its vaults. JPC
23758
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 5:00pm
Subject: Re: Dante's Hell
Well I happen to have a less-than-pristine copy of it
I taped of TV years ago. It's quite something. It
begins in a purely surrealist mode, duplicating the
stage show on asound stage, then it brancjes off into
a "backstage-benefit-performance" movie chiefly
featuring Martha Raye and Mischa Auer.
Sally Potter cited it as one of the films that most
influenced her Julie Christie-starred feature"The Gold
Diggers."
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> The last time I saw the movie was at MOMA in a
> series of "self-
> referential films" maybe 20 years ago, and though
> my enthusiasm had
> somewhat diminished since I was fifteen, I still
> liked it a lot.
> It's a pity it cannot be seen. Universal is said to
> have a pristine
> print in its vaults. JPC
>
>
>
>
__________________________________
Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web
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23759
From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 5:19pm
Subject: Re: Dante's Hell
>
> The last time I saw the movie was at MOMA in a series of "self-
> referential films" maybe 20 years ago, and though my enthusiasm
had
> somewhat diminished since I was fifteen, I still liked it a lot.
> It's a pity it cannot be seen. Universal is said to have a
pristine
> print in its vaults. JPC
I have a digitally remastered PAL DVD of HELLZAPOPPIN' on PAL that
appears to be from the U.K., released by "Avenue One". (I think it's
out of print, but used copies can be ordered via the U.K. branch of
Amazon.) A web site for them is listed on the DVD,
www.videostorecult.com, but if you go there you discover that this
site is "under construiction". Go figure.
Jonathan
23760
From: Fred Patton
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 5:27pm
Subject: compressed time, inanimate objects, depopulated spaces
I need to frame a question by briefly citing a literary example from
Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. There is a middle section
titled "Time Passes" where an abrupt formal shift occurs, and years
race by in the space of several pages. The passage of time is
dramatized, with primary focus centered on the house, furniture and
other objects in the house, with the affairs of human beings treated
parenthetically. This extreme compression made great impact within
this novel, moving the human story forward.
I'm trying to think of some corresponding film examples, ignoring
transition devices. Bela Tarr comes to mind, because though he
doesn't do something like this in the two films I've seen (Damnation
and Werckmeister Harmonies), he is as prone to focus the camera on a
depopulated space as upon conventional human spectacle, and the fact
that this space is closely involved with a corresponding human
story, it keeps it in play. On the other hand, I recall Michelangelo
Antonioni doing something much closer in Le Eclisse. Perhaps Kaige
Chen's Yellow Earth provides the best example where a montage of
charged objects are seen in isolation and carry forward the
associated human story.
Fred Patton
23761
From: thebradstevens
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 5:42pm
Subject: Re: Dante's Hell
I have a pristine transfer that I recorded from the British
subscription channel Sky Movies, I guess 2 or 3 years ago. The first
time I saw this film was in the mid-80s, when it was screened on
Channel 4. I never realized that it was considered difficult to find,
but I guess we do things differently here in the UK - I know that
several Sam Fuller fans have mentioned not being able to find a copy
of FIXED BAYONETS, a film that seems to turn up on British TV
virtually every week!
23762
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 5:45pm
Subject: Re: Hellzapoppin' (was: Re: Dante's Hell)
Well, Doc Films at the University of Chicago showed a decent 35mm print
of "Hellzapoppin" only weeks ago. This was publicly announced; Kyle
Westhpal, a Doc member and U of C student, was also there, so perhaps he
can tell us more about where obtained it.
I had heard about it for years, but had never seen it before, which is
why I went. George Landow, the great avant-garde filmmaker who later
changed his name to Owen Land, told me about how wildly self-referential
it was. I certainly enjoyed it. It's nutty, and full of tricks, and very
entertaining. The projectionist of the film we're supposedly watching is
also seen projecting it, and seems to be part of the making or
re-editing of it too, in one of many epistemological confusions in the film.
However, judged by my personal aesthetic standards, I don't think it was
a really good film. The "space" just didn't really get going, so to
speak, and I object to reading any profundities into the
self-referentiality it's laced with. It seems to me the purpose of the
playfulness was just to get laughs and move the film along;
self-referentiality here is a shtick, and nothing more than that.
"Shtick" can be great too, and it comes pretty close here, but not in
the ways I most care about in film. The obvious comparisons would be
with Dziga Vertov's "The Man With a Movie Camera" and Stan Brakhage's
"Blue Moses," where the references to the filmmaking process have the
profoundest of meanings -- in the Vertov, as a questioning of film
illusion and as a configuration of filmmaking as another kind of human
labor; in Brakhage, as a kind of reference to the terror of and also as
a debunking of narrative film as authority. I guess I don't value the
"just fun" qualities of "Hellzapoppin'" nearly as highly.
Fred Camper
23763
From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 5:46pm
Subject: Hellzapoppin' availability (was: Dante's Hell)
I just remembered: one can get a supposedly good-quality pirated
NTSC DVD from the very reliable www.superhappyfun.com in the U.S.
for $13 + postage.
23764
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 5:50pm
Subject: Re: compressed time, inanimate objects, depopulated spaces
How about the last scene of "Muriel"?
"Je T'Aime Je T'Aime" is loaded with
time/space-compression, and it also figures in
"Vertigo," particularly in the post-breakdown sequence
where Scottie is searching for the dead Madeline and
keeps "seeing" her at the various locations they
haunted together.
--- Fred Patton wrote:
>
> I need to frame a question by briefly citing a
> literary example from
> Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. There is a
> middle section
> titled "Time Passes" where an abrupt formal shift
> occurs, and years
> race by in the space of several pages. The passage
> of time is
> dramatized, with primary focus centered on the
> house, furniture and
> other objects in the house, with the affairs of
> human beings treated
> parenthetically. This extreme compression made great
> impact within
> this novel, moving the human story forward.
>
__________________________________
Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web
http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/
23765
From: K. A. Westphal
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 6:12pm
Subject: Hellzapoppin' (was: Re: Dante's Hell)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Well, Doc Films at the University of Chicago showed a decent 35mm print
> of "Hellzapoppin" only weeks ago. This was publicly announced; Kyle
> Westhpal, a Doc member and U of C student, was also there, so
perhaps he
> can tell us more about where obtained it.
>
HELLZAPOPPIN was screened as part of "Anarchist Cinema: The Vaudeville
Experience," a very good series programmed by the current Programming
Chair of Doc Films, a sophomore undergraduate at the University. It is
her favorite film (or damn near) and she organized the whole series
around a (perhaps dubious) assertion that one of the most formally
inventive and innovative periods in film history came about because a
number of washed-up vaudeville stars migrated to the movies and
brought with them a fresh disrespect for the rules of Hollywood
filmmaking. Some of the films fit this description better than others
(INTERNATIONAL HOUSE, which screened the week before HELLZAPOPPIN,
opens with a title card in Japanese, you know, for the hell of it).
As for the print, Doc has a good working relationship with the Library
of Congress, who loan us prints free of charge (aside from paying the
rightsholder, which was not a problem with HELLZAPOPPIN--I believe the
rights have lapsed). The 35mm print was very good (great grayscale,
detail, contrast, etc.), though the projectionists didn't properly
maintain focus throughout. The projectors are somewhat screwy and most
of the projectionists are trainees, so during that screening, every
change-over was missed and the audience saw the full head and tail of
every reel, which only added to the experience.
I told Fred at the time that I felt the film didn't succeed all that
well, mainly because it gets too bogged down by the very mundane
elements that Potter tries to skewer. I haven't give the film much
thought since, though I don't think doing so would yield any great
insight into the filmmaking process. I learned more, as it were, from
THE CAMERAMAN, CAMERA BUFF, A MOMENT OF INNOCENCE, and for that
matter, PERSONA.
--Kyle Westphal
23766
From: K. A. Westphal
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 6:29pm
Subject: Re: compressed time, inanimate objects, depopulated spaces
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Fred Patton" wrote:
> I'm trying to think of some corresponding film examples, ignoring
> transition devices.
It's a very strange question, but Kieslowski's BLUE comes to my mind.
There's a late scene where Juliette Binoche and Benoit Regent converse
in the background of a long shot about her late husbands's unfinished
composition. We get the vague impression of the lights fading and then
the shot slowly loses focus until there are only spots of light. We
hear Delpy's dialogue with many pauses in between, so it's unclear, at
leas to me, whether time is passing or not. We never regain the focus
in that shot, just a cut to a crisply focused medium shot of Delpy
smoking.
Your specification that the scene not be a transition device makes
this difficult, because I can't imagine a film where the passage of
time would not serve as a transition from one thing to another.
--Kyle
23767
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 6:32pm
Subject: Re: Hellzapoppin'
I'm told that Olsen and Johnson's Crazy House (1943), shown on Trio
during a week programmed by Quentin Tarantino, is better than
Hellzapoppin'.
I wonder if any record of Jerry Lewis's Hellzapoppin' exists. Given
Jer's familiarity with video technology, I bet he taped it...
23768
From: Dave Garrett
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 6:47pm
Subject: Re: Dante's Hell
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jonathan Rosenbaum" wrote:
> I have a digitally remastered PAL DVD of HELLZAPOPPIN' on PAL that
> appears to be from the U.K., released by "Avenue One". (I think it's
> out of print, but used copies can be ordered via the U.K. branch of
> Amazon.) A web site for them is listed on the DVD,
> www.videostorecult.com, but if you go there you discover that this
> site is "under construiction". Go figure.
That DVD is actually from Australia - the catalogue of titles offered
by Avenue One that came with my copy explicitly states they're an
Australian company. It used to be available from ezydvd.com.au for a
ridiculously low price, but does appear to be out of print now as it's
no longer listed on their website.
I suspect the Avenue One disc may be the source of the copy offered
by Super Happy Fun; as I recall, HELLZAPOPPIN' first showed up in SHF's list of available titles not too long after the Australian
disc became available.
Dave
23769
From: Aaron Graham
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 7:34pm
Subject: Re: Hellzapoppin'
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> I'm told that Olsen and Johnson's Crazy House (1943), shown on Trio
> during a week programmed by Quentin Tarantino, is better than
> Hellzapoppin'.
Wasn't Hellzapoppin' a big influence on Spielberg's 1941?
In keeping with the thread, I've just found this article (Joe Dante
on Hellzapoppin') online:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml;sessionid=YYMCXAOEWRZPVQFIQ
MFCM54AVCBQYJVC?xml=/arts/2003/12/20/bffmof20.xml
-Aaron
23770
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 7:48pm
Subject: Re: Re: Hellzapoppin'
--- Aaron Graham wrote:
>
> Wasn't Hellzapoppin' a big influence on Spielberg's
> 1941?
>
I don't think so, though it shares its anarchic
spirit. "1941" comes "this close" to breaking the
fourth wall, but never quite manages to do so. No
wonder as it has its hands full, being a film about
rape -- and an infinitely less wholesome one than
"Seven Brides for Seven Brothers."
__________________________________
Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web
http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/
23771
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 8:34pm
Subject: Re: Re: Hellzapoppin'
Aaron Graham wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
> >
> In keeping with the thread, I've just found this article (Joe Dante
> on Hellzapoppin') online:
>
This is pretty interesting, particularly the quotes from studio execs to
the effect that if the audience thinks the projector breaks they'll
leave; that a film can't call attention to itself. I'm no fan of the
theory that the mass audience is truly wise, but I think they're a lot
smarter than the studio execs; the evidence is that these devices can
work just fine with most audiences. The studio exec sound like academic
film-school types of the most narrow-minded sort.
On the other hand, I think this fact about mass audiences helps make my
case (not that I'm arguing with anyone here, but rather with the attempt
of some academics to read profundity into every self-referential moment
in a film): the devices in a film like "Hellzapoppin'" are read by most
as just plain entertainment, with no larger meaning. There may be one in
"Hellzapoppin," but if there is, I missed it.
Fred Camper
23772
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 9:08pm
Subject: Looney Tunes: Bacjk in Action (Was:: Hellzapoppin')
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron Graham"
wrote:
>
> In keeping with the thread, I've just found this article (Joe Dante
> on Hellzapoppin') online:
>
>
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml;sessionid=YYMCXAOEWRZPVQFIQ
> MFCM54AVCBQYJVC?xml=/arts/2003/12/20/bffmof20.xml
In that article Joe talks about Warners' refusal, during the making
of Looney Tunes, to let him do the old Avery gag of a tiny
silhouetted figure seen at the bottom of the screen as an audience
member gets up and leaves because "it takes me out of the movie." I
bought a bootleg in downtown Los Angeles (from a guy who had all the
current releases spread out in front of him on a serape) before
LT:BIA was out on video where that actually happens because, as the
bootleg was being vidcammed, someone in fact got up and walked out --
you see at the bottom of the screen an Avery-style tiny silhouette of
someone in one of the front rows getting up and leaving during the
Batmobile sequence. Joe laughed fiendishly when he heard that the gag
made it into the film despite the executive's wishes.
23773
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 9:13pm
Subject: Night Falls (Re: compressed time)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "K. A. Westphal"
wrote:
>
> >
> Your specification that the scene not be a transition device makes
> this difficult, because I can't imagine a film where the passage of
> time would not serve as a transition from one thing to another.
>
> --Kyle
How old is the devide of holding on a scene as night artificially
fall in the course of maybe 15 seconds? Hitchcock originally did this
in Notorious in a shot that had to be cut for other reasons. Was that
a first (going either way - day beginning could be shown the same
way? I've seen it in one other old film since learning about AH's use
of it, but can't recall which one.
23774
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 9:44pm
Subject: Re: Problems with Criterion's "Confidential Report"?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jerry Johnson"
wrote:
>
> Stefan Droessler has revealed here
>
> http://www.wellesnet.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?
> s=422938bd7b9affff;act=ST;f=1;t=84;st=40
>
> that Criterion is not inlcuding his reconstruction of "Mr. Akadin"
> on it's upcoming DVD release, which he claims is the "best" version
> available.
I wasn't able to access the post you describe using any version of
this URL. Can you send it to me at hotlove666@y..., Jerry?
23775
From: Robert Keser
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 10:02pm
Subject: Night Falls (Re: compressed time)
"hotlove666" wrote:
"How old is the devide of holding on a scene as night artificially
fall in the course of maybe 15 seconds? Hitchcock originally did
this in Notorious in a shot that had to be cut for other reasons.
Was that a first (going either way - day beginning could be shown
the same way?"
This occurs in Ozu fairly often and in both directions--day to night
and night to day--especially in the earlier films it seems. It's
definitely in A HEN IN THE WIND, but I believe he uses it as early
as THAT NIGHT'S WIFE (1930) and certainly in DRAGNET GIRL (1933).
--Robert Keser
23776
From: jaketwilson
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 10:59pm
Subject: Re: compressed time, inanimate objects, depopulated spaces
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Fred Patton"
wrote:
>
Fred Patton wrote:
> I need to frame a question by briefly citing a literary example
from
> Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. There is a middle section
> titled "Time Passes" where an abrupt formal shift occurs, and years
> race by in the space of several pages. The passage of time is
> dramatized, with primary focus centered on the house, furniture and
> other objects in the house, with the affairs of human beings
treated
> parenthetically. This extreme compression made great impact within
> this novel, moving the human story forward.
Something like this happens at the end of TRIPLE AGENT, where
(spoilers) the story is carried forward a few years via archival
footage, then an epilogue shows two minor characters reminiscing in
the office location seen earlier, which has remained intact though
the dramatic "world" of the film has vanished entirely. The contrast
between the solidity of places and the evanescence of human relations
is very typical of Rohmer.
JTW
23777
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 11:07pm
Subject: Our group is now indexed (Google is great; all praise be to Google)
Posting our group's archives is 100-post html files has succeeded in
getting google to index us, and it sure didn't take long; I only linked
to these files a few days ago. I've only looked at a few, but it appears
that our first 23,500 posts are all indexed. Previously google was only
indexing the first 100 KB of large files, but they seem to have changed
that, no doubt when confronted with the huge amount of wisdom in our
group's posts, and indexed the entire files.
Now if you search for
"tracking shot in kapo"
you'll get our posts as two of the hits.
And if you search for
"tracking shot in kapo" tourneur mizoguchi brakhage
you will get only our group.
Doubtless there are many other sets of search terms that will produce
only one of those html files of our posts, similar to the way that the
words
wendkos trenker markopoulos
produce as the only hit my own list of favorite filmmakers.
Thank you, Great Gods of Google.
I believe there are ways of using google and/or other search engines to
search only our group's posts. One member suggested there's a way of
setting this up on my site. I'll look into this when I get some time, or
if someone else finds a way of searching just our group, test it out and
if it works please post it. You'd want to have a way of restricting your
search only to posts in the subdomain
http://www.frredcamper.com/afilmby/ -- if you only want to search our
group's posts.
If you've been signing your posts as we request -- of if your full name
is included in your emails along side your email address -- your name
should produce our posts as at least one of the hits. Otherwise, it may not.
Fred Camper
23778
From: Andy Rector
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 11:34pm
Subject: Re: compressed time,etc. CHAIN
The film that immediately jumped to my mind is one that is utterly
contemporary and concrete: CHAIN by Jem Cohen. Making the rounds at
the festivals and just shown in Chicago (Jonathan's latest piece in
the Chicago Reader) the film deals with strip malls (by showing them
thoroughly), corporate manifestos, capital, and the human element in
coping with them. People would be
perfectly described as parenthetical here, as they are effected by
this
monsterous system.
Cohen said that in his previous films he tried to frame out malls,
logos, etc. when shooting on location (which he does all over the
world, like Lumiere, as Gabe said) to make it more beautiful. CHAIN
is the result of doing the opposite and addressing social situations
and what one could call occupation.
yours,
andy
23779
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 0:05am
Subject: Re: Hellzapoppin'
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> I'm told that Olsen and Johnson's Crazy House (1943), shown on
Trio
> during a week programmed by Quentin Tarantino, is better than
> Hellzapoppin'.
>
I have a tape of "Crazy House". It's definitely not better, or
even as good, as "Hell". Aside for a few scenes (e.g. the opening)
it's not really delirious and looks/sounds more like a string of
Universal musical shorts strung together. I have to watch it again
though. I remember it got a rave review in L'ECRAN FRANCAIS back in
1948 or so! JPC
23780
From: Hadrian
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 0:12am
Subject: Re: Hellzapoppin' availability (was: Dante's Hell)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jonathan Rosenbaum"
wrote:
>
> I just remembered: one can get a supposedly good-quality pirated
> NTSC DVD from the very reliable www.superhappyfun.com in the U.S.
> for $13 + postage.
I could be wrong, but Superhappyfun got that in a trade with us, which we in turn got
from The Fang, a 16mm transfer company in New York owned by a guy that inherited
his father's collection of army prints. Regardless, I'm pretty sure that's the furthest up
the bootleg ladder in terms of quality you're gonna get (plus he has nice boxes).
Unfortunately The Fang does not have a website, but if someone emails me I can get
them an address to order his catalog --which is full of goodies, with a heavy
emphasis on J.D. movies, and other 50's B-stuff (William Castle, an early Richard
Lester, "Ring-a-Ding Rhythmn", etc.
Hadrian
23781
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 0:11am
Subject: Re: Hellzapoppin'
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- Aaron Graham wrote:
>
>
> >
> > Wasn't Hellzapoppin' a big influence on Spielberg's
> > 1941?
> >
>
> I don't think so, though it shares its anarchic
> spirit. "1941" comes "this close" to breaking the
> fourth wall, but never quite manages to do so. No
> wonder as it has its hands full, being a film about
> rape -- and an infinitely less wholesome one than
> "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers."
>
> Surely you mean "rape" as in "The Rape of the Sabines". JPC
>
>
> __________________________________
> Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
> Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web
> http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/
23782
From: Yoel Meranda
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 0:16am
Subject: Breer's films in Anthology: See or Die
Anthology Film Archives is showing thirteen Robert Breer films on
Monday at 7:30pm and I wish I had a way to force all the a_film_by
people who live in the New York area to attend this screening.
Breer might be my favorite filmmaker. All of his films depend on the
very nature of cinema in the way they take frame (and not shots) as
the primary building block of film as art. These films are extreme
aesthetic experiences and they are so intuitive that unlike many
other filmmakers I like, they did not require a few viewings to get
how great they are. They are also very very funny.
After the first few films of his that I saw, the only expression I
could come up with was "Impossible!". How can a human mind can go so
easily to those depths that seem to be beyond our capacities, I
honestly don't know.
If you need further encouragement, you should check Fred's article on
Breer's films titled "On Visible Strings":
http://www.chicagoreader.com/movies/archives/0697/06067b.html
I will certainly be there... if I was the dictator of this country,
you would either see these films or be killed, or tortured, or
something like that.
Yoel
23783
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 0:41am
Subject: Re: Re: Hellzapoppin'
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> >
> > Surely you mean "rape" as in "The Rape of the
> Sabines". JPC
> >
> >
Well in "Seven Brides" they called it "The Sobbin'
Women" and it was mere abduction as in "The
Fantasticks."
In "1941" actual rape is at issue as Treat Williams
wants the heroine in the most literal manner possible.
With all the recent discussion of "The Big Red One,"
I'm surprised that "1941" hasn't come up, as Bobby
DiCicco stars and Sam's in it too.
__________________________________
Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web
http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/
23784
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 0:59am
Subject: Re: Rape (was: Hellzapoppin')
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
>
> > >
> > > Surely you mean "rape" as in "The Rape of the
> > Sabines". JPC
> > >
> > >
>
> Well in "Seven Brides" they called it "The Sobbin'
> Women" and it was mere abduction as in "The
> Fantasticks."
>
That was my point, David. there is rape and then there is rape. A
major theme in "7 Brides" is the denial of sex ("I'm a lonesome
polecat --- 'cause I ain't got/ A feminine polecat...")JPC
23785
From:
Date: Sun Mar 6, 2005 8:01pm
Subject: Re: compressed time, inanimate objects, depopulated spaces
In both "Giant" (George Stevens) and "Same Time, Next Year" (Robert
Mulligan), the story charges forward over the years, with the same rooms seen
re-decorated in new ways, reflecting different time periods. The latter film is
especially frightening, depicting the rapid flow of human life.
A different time metaphor: in "Scarface", the title anti-hero blows away
pages from a calendar using a machine gun! A startling image.
Mike Grost
23786
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 1:07am
Subject: Re: Re: Rape (was: Hellzapoppin')
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> That was my point, David. there is rape and then
> there is rape. A
> major theme in "7 Brides" is the denial of sex ("I'm
> a lonesome
> polecat --- 'cause I ain't got/ A feminine
> polecat...")
True. And the whole dramatic tension of the film is
derived from Jane Powell's spectacularly successful
efforts to "tame" these wild mountain men with
feminine civility.
The Barn-Raising Dance is a demonstration of the
back-and-forth between savage fighting instinct and
civilized courtship through dancing.
it's one of the few musical numbers that don't "stop"
the action, but continue it. In fact it's absolutely
pivotal to the entire film as the thrust of the plot
proceeds directly from it.
There are echoes of Kidd's "Seven Brides" choreography
in the jitterbug contest scene in "1941" -- whcih is
far more tumultuous.
I do wish Spielberg would direct a full-out musical
for once. "Merrily We Roll Along" would be perfect for
him.
__________________________________
Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web
http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/
23787
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 1:14am
Subject: Re: Our group is now indexed (Google is great; all praise be to Google)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Posting our group's archives is 100-post html files has succeeded
in
> getting google to index us, and it sure didn't take long; I only
linked
> to these files a few days ago. I've only looked at a few, but it
appears
> that our first 23,500 posts are all indexed.
Bitchun!
23788
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 1:17am
Subject: Re: compressed time, inanimate objects, depopulated spaces
Once Upon a Time in America
23789
From: Fred Patton
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 1:21am
Subject: Re: compressed time, inanimate objects, depopulated spaces
Thanks for all the great leads. I disregarded strict shot
transitions because I was looking for cases where the narrative
continued taking over without aid of actors, but continuing their
story. In this case, people on screen was okay as long as they
didn't dominate as actors.
The end of TRIPLE AGENT, which I haven't seen, sounds like an
intriguing case that I will have to check out. It makes sense that
most of the examples are epilogues.
MURIEL, my favorite Resnais possibly, seems to fit along the lines
of LE ECLISSE. I've only seen JE T'AIME, JE T'AIME once as a bad
copy of a worn VHS tape and I came away feeling that I hadn't really
experienced the movie. I think there's an element of what I'm
looking for there, once I get beyond the disjointedness.
I forgot all about Victor Erice's SOL DE MEMBRILLO, where in the
last fifteen minutes, time itself dominates without people getting
involved, but their story is all the while being carried forward.
The tree and its fruit, which the painter has dedicated so much of
his artistic efforts to capturing, are seen to decay over many days.
The unoccupied regions of the house are shown, where the artwork
gives a kind of testament to the lives that envisioned and created
them. It's really a profound way to continue experiencing the lives
of the main characters, which never return to the screen.
The others I'll have to see, especially CHAIN, which while perhaps
being something different than I was seeking out, sounds most
compelling.
Fred Patton
23790
From: jaketwilson
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 1:55am
Subject: Re: compressed time, inanimate objects, depopulated spaces
> The unoccupied regions of the house are shown, where the artwork
> gives a kind of testament to the lives that envisioned and created
> them. It's really a profound way to continue experiencing the lives
> of the main characters, which never return to the screen.
Slightly off-topic, but the technique of displacing character emotion
onto "empty" scenes is almost a defining feature of the artsier kind
of modern comic book -- Chris Ware's JIMMY CORRIGAN, for example.
JTW
23791
From: Peter Henne
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 2:00am
Subject: Re: Re: compressed time, inanimate objects, depopulated spaces
Fred, I hope you will allow one more example. Would Angelopoulos' "Ulysses' Gaze" qualify? I'm thinking of the family photograph shot, in which 10 years pass by in the dining room and foyer of Kietel's family home, in a single, nearly 10-minute take. Here it would seem people and objects receive equal emphasis.
Peter Henne
>
Fred Patton wrote:
The passage of time is
> dramatized, with primary focus centered on the house, furniture and
> other objects in the house, with the affairs of human beings
treated
> parenthetically. This extreme compression made great impact within
> this novel, moving the human story forward.
JTW
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23792
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 2:12am
Subject: Re: Rape (was: Hellzapoppin')
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
>
> >
> > That was my point, David. there is rape and then
> > there is rape. A
> > major theme in "7 Brides" is the denial of sex ("I'm
> > a lonesome
> > polecat --- 'cause I ain't got/ A feminine
> > polecat...")
>
> True. And the whole dramatic tension of the film is
> derived from Jane Powell's spectacularly successful
> efforts to "tame" these wild mountain men with
> feminine civility.
>
Actually it's woefully UNsuccessful at first -- which adds to the
complexity of the whole thing. It takes time to civilize the
frontier.
> The Barn-Raising Dance is a demonstration of the
> back-and-forth between savage fighting instinct and
> civilized courtship through dancing.
However the fighting instinct rules in the end. So actually
Millie's civilizing effort comes to naught.
> it's one of the few musical numbers that don't "stop"
> the action, but continue it. In fact it's absolutely
> pivotal to the entire film as the thrust of the plot
> proceeds directly from it.
True. in every way a great moment in cinema history!
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
> Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web
> http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/
23793
From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 3:36am
Subject: Re: Hellzapoppin' availability (was: Dante's Hell)
It's available (or was) on Avenue One DVD from Australia, PAL region
0. Watchable quality from 16mm print via analog master (better, as I
recall, than the Fang's version).
The DVD directs us to http://www.videostorecult.com/ to order, but at
the moment it says new website under construction.
--
- Joe Kaufman
23794
From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 3:51am
Subject: Re: Hellzapoppin' availability (was: Dante's Hell)
Sorry, I originally missed the other thread that covered this DVD in
some detail.
--
- Joe Kaufman
23795
From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 4:28am
Subject: Re: compressed time, inanimate objects, depopulated spaces
One more: The Ghost and Mrs Muir
Brian
23796
From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 7:41am
Subject: Re: Re: Our group is now indexed (oops)
Apparently it's only a recent few hundred posts that are indexed. The
Google Gods are not so awesome. Give it time, I hope....
Fred Camper
23797
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 2:20pm
Subject: Morris Engel
A very important filmmaker has died
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/07/movies/07engel.html
I hope "I Need a Ride to California" will be shown one
day soon.
__________________________________
Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday!
Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web
http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/
23798
From:
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 5:03pm
Subject: "Monkey on My Back"
I wonder if I could solicit any words of recommendation for Andre de Toth's
"Monkey on My Back"? It was made in 1957 and consequently can probably be
considered as belonging to the director's late period. I've found other late de
Toths, like "Day of the Outlaw" and "Play Dirty," to be absolutely brilliant,
so perhaps this is as well? Also, perhaps Fred could comment on whether he
feels it would transfer reasonably well to video. The reason I am asking about
this particular film is indeed that it was recently put out on DVD.
Peter
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
23799
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 11:24pm
Subject: Re: "Monkey on My Back"
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
"I wonder if I could solicit any words of recommendation for Andre de
Toth's 'Monkey on My Back'?"
It's worth seeing but it's not in the same league as DAY OF THE
OUTLAW or PLAY DIRTY or CRIME WAVE and THE INDIAN FIGHTER for that
amtter. Perhaps de Toth was constrained by the screenplay and the
living presence of the story's protagonist. Anyway, the movie had
a "Playhouse 90" ambience with relatively high-key lighting, which
made wonder if it was conceived for television originally.
Richard
23800
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Mar 7, 2005 11:50pm
Subject: Debra Hill
John Carpenter's former writing/producing/life-partner Debra Hill just died, I'm
told.
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