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This group is dedicated to discussing film as art
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22301
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 6:06pm
Subject: Lola Montes (Was: Machismo and the left)
> I wonder if the restoration of "Lola Montes" is done yet,
> (I saw 4 or 5 mins of the restoration at a Kodak tech seminar 2 years ago)
> then we can all see what we think now, should be
> interesting.
A more or less complete restoration by Munich's film archive was shown,
surreptitiously, at Film Forum about a year ago. - Dan
22302
From:
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 1:07pm
Subject: Re: Film School Paranoia? (Was: Ambersons cans in Brazil)
In a message dated 2/4/05 1:05:19 PM, hotlove666@y... writes:
> Staying on-topic, I wonder if others here who teach film are feeling the
> chill. I don't teach, so I have no way of knowing.
>
I TA for a class about gender and sexuality in film. One of the students
expressed an interest in watching porn in class. She had just seen DEEP THROAT and
was eager to discuss it. And we did for a few minutes at the beginning of
class. But the professor admitted that she doesn't show porn because "this is a
red state" (Texas). Then she told us a story (which I'm sure I'll mangle a bit)
about a prof in Arizona who showed porn in class. Some higher-ups
(highers-up?) and govt. people got wind of it. Apparently, the govt. appropriated its
yearly funds to the school MINUS the prof's salary. He was (is?) tenured so they
couldn't fire him. Not sure what happened with him. But in any event, it was
enough to scare (for lack of a better word) our prof. "And quite frankly, porn
isn't worth it," she ended.
For what it's worth, I saw some VERY hardcore porn flicks (we're talking
fisting and the like) as well as the deadly dull BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR in two
undergrad classes at UW-Milwaukee during the reign of Bush I.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
22303
From: Noel Vera
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 6:07pm
Subject: novelizations (was Re: New York, New York - novel into film, or film into novel?
Good novelizations? I read Kotzwinkle's adaptation of E.T. and aside
from a few touches, never thought it was anything special. Orson
Scott Card's adaptation of The Abyss is supposed to have more solid
characterization than usual (I dipped into maybe the first few
chapters, heard his character sketches were also used by the cast).
Arguably Greene's The Third Man and Clarke's 2001, and each has its
virtues (Greene's prose, Clarke's clarity). But I'd say I prefer the
film versions, overall. Asimov's version of Fantastic Voyage made
more sense, actually. The sequel he did had little to do with the
first novel/movie, made even more sense, but I thought was far less
satisfying.
Here's a strange one: I never even read the book, I've only read a
review of it, on Asimov's SF Magazine book review section: a
novelization of Beauty and the Beast (I'm not even sure which one,
but definitely not the Disney version), where Beauty is a bookworm
reading in Beast's library, the equivalent of that mythological
library that has a copy of every book ever written, and she is
dismayed by the name "Rudyard Kipling" ("What kind of name is
that?"). I don't know who wrote this or what edition, but that was a
lovely little detail and I'd love to find out...
22304
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 6:12pm
Subject: novelizations (was Re: New York, New York - novel into film, or film into novel?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
> Just did an internet search for Jim Thompson's bibliography, and
> noticed that he wrote the novelization for Michael Roemer's
> remarkable 1964 film NOTHING BUT A MAN - only the novelization
> doesn't appear to have been published until 1970!
The Ironside novella does contain a few Thompson themes. But since
he wrote that and THE UNDEFEATED to tie in with the film's
promotion, he could not be as explicitly bleak as in his novels.
Tony Williams
22305
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 6:20pm
Subject: Re: Lola Montes (Was: Machismo and the left)
--- Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
> A more or less complete restoration by Munich's film
> archive was shown,
> surreptitiously, at Film Forum about a year ago. -
> Dan
>
What was incldued that isn't in the version we've
known since 1963? More Ivan Desny material I hope?
More Anton Walbrook?
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22306
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 6:26pm
Subject: Re: Film School Paranoia? (Was: Ambersons cans in Brazil)
--- LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> I TA for a class about gender and sexuality in film.
> One of the students
> expressed an interest in watching porn in class. She
> had just seen DEEP THROAT and
> was eager to discuss it. And we did for a few
> minutes at the beginning of
> class. But the professor admitted that she doesn't
> show porn because "this is a
> red state" (Texas).
How baroque.
Then she told us a story (which
> I'm sure I'll mangle a bit)
> about a prof in Arizona who showed porn in class.
> Some higher-ups
> (highers-up?) and govt. people got wind of it.
> Apparently, the govt. appropriated its
> yearly funds to the school MINUS the prof's salary.
> He was (is?) tenured so they
> couldn't fire him. Not sure what happened with him.
> But in any event, it was
> enough to scare (for lack of a better word) our
> prof. "And quite frankly, porn
> isn't worth it," she ended.
>
The new documentary "Inside Deep Throat" made by the
World of Wonder dudes , but distributed by Universal
via Imagine, should provide us all with an interesting
occasion.
> For what it's worth, I saw some VERY hardcore porn
> flicks (we're talking
> fisting and the like) as well as the deadly dull
> BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR in two
> undergrad classes at UW-Milwaukee during the reign
> of Bush I.
>
> Kevin John
>
Porn changed radically when video took over. Theaters
disappeared . 16mm shooting ended, and a whole new
world of home viewing opened up. Now porn is a zillion
dollar industry because it's all designed to be seen
"in the privacy of your bedroom."
__________________________________________________
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22307
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 6:31pm
Subject: Re: Film School Paranoia? (Was: Ambersons cans in Brazil)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
>
> In a message dated 2/4/05 1:05:19 PM, hotlove666@y... writes:
>
>
> > Staying on-topic, I wonder if others here who teach film are
feeling the
> > chill. I don't teach, so I have no way of knowing.
> >
> I TA for a class about gender and sexuality in film. One of the
students
> expressed an interest in watching porn in class. Some higher-ups
> (highers-up?) and govt. people got wind of it. Apparently, the
govt. appropriated its
> yearly funds to the school MINUS the prof's salary. He was (is?)
tenured so they
> couldn't fire him. Not sure what happened with him. But in any
event, it was
> enough to scare (for lack of a better word) our prof. "And quite
frankly, porn
> isn't worth it," she ended.
>
>> Kevin John
I believe that Linda Williams teaches a class on pornography in
California and SCS had a debate at a New York conference several
years ago where she and New York U. professor Chris Straayer
debated on whether an "emission" was pee or cum. But, as Stephen
Prince (who teaches at Virginia Polytechnic) commented to me on the
airport shuttle, if either of us attempted to teach such a class in
our respective States we would be automatically fired.
Some 20 years ago, the Dean of Communications fired a theatre
professor who dared to stage that sexually offensive play LYSISTRA.
So the Theatre Department (with the later exception of graduate
students) has played safe ever since. A year later, they ran THE
THREEPENNY OPERA and did not dare show Mack and Polly undress for
bed so they used a curtain to conceal them. It did cast sexually
suggestive shadows more "explicit" than the play's original
intention.
Finally, in the good old days when Chairs of certain departments
wanted "feel good" film classes in the university core curriculum
and Directors wanted to cram the sessions so that multiple choice
questions were the only possible option, I was threatened with
violence in my office by a student (who resented the standards I
attempted to bring into the class as well as running Orson Welles's
MACBETH which he hated) when this was unofficially permitted by the
higher administration. Despite the fact that two graduate students
heard the threats and were willing to testify on my behalf, the then-
Chair refused to support me and claimed that my defense against a
greviance begun by the violent student would fail. "Nobody wins
these things if a student brings a greviance." Fortunately, the
greviance was dropped half-way by the student.
The assistant Chair refused to remove my home address from open
access information (this has now changed for everybody) on the
grounds that I was a "public servant." Hence, home and family were
liable to violent actions on the part of "unhappy customers."
This has nothing to do with the political situation Bill has cited
but my experiences (in southern Illinois) reveal how the
establishment could revert to past practices should the climate
change drastically. (The Klan is also very active 30 miles away in
this area).
So far, things are not bad. My two classes of students are very
good and seemingly open-minded. But things could change at any time.
Tony Williams
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
22308
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 6:42pm
Subject: Re: Re: Sights & Sounds (silent films, Brakhage, McLaren)
JPC, we agree about watching silent films silent, but I find your
position on post-circa-1930 silent films rather curious. I mean, it
seems to me one could make a pretty good argument that these are the
only "true" silent films, because they made silent when having sound was
a genuine choice, and the cultural "favored" choice as well, so in most
cases a film made intentionally silent had a pretty good reason for
being made that way. Brakhage was asked almost every time he showed
films to a "general audience" why he made his films silent, and these
questions were often couched as complains: "I would have enjoyed it much
more if there was music," etc. But almost no one ever asks a filmmaker
why he bothered to add sound. For a narrative film, one might wonder why
one could not tell the story just visually and with a few titles if
necessary. For non-narrative films, why can't the images sustain
themselves without sound? The fact that these questions are almost never
asked is an indication of massive bias.
I don't like to dump on someone else's pleasures, and if you love
McLaren's films I don't want to argue that you shouldn't. But I have to
say I completely hate them. They seem to me to be so obviously cute, so
manipulative in their cuteness, as to be not really "about" anything
except manipulating to produce trivial pleasures -- short of like a
slasher movie, I would guess.
Fred Camper
22309
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 6:46pm
Subject: Re: re: Scorsese's detractors
> could there possibly be a film about a 'rogue
> seducer' more SEXLESS than AVIATOR? Sex has always been hard for
> Scorsese to depict or even approach: it's that puritanical/squeamish
> Bresson side of him ...
I haven't seen MEAN STREETS in 30 years, but I've never been able to
forget the scene where Keitel's girlfriend Amy Robinson has an epileptic
fit as Keitel and De Niro fight. De Niro storms out, and Keitel leaves
his spasming girlfriend on the floor and runs out after his buddy. And
the film proceeds to forget about the girlfriend too, staying with the
Keitel-De Niro negotiation. Later we see Robinson walking on the street
with the boys - no reference to what happened. I keep hoping that someone
will tell me that I saw an incomplete print.... - Dan
22310
From: thebradstevens
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 7:09pm
Subject: novelizations (was Re: New York, New York - novel into film, or film into novel?
> Thompson from what I remember didn't make a lot of money from his
> books. Philip Dick, to cite a similar example, had to write fast
and
> plenty to support himself and at one point had to live off dog
food.
> His books were often found in the porn section.
Wasn't Kurt Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout character based on Dick?
22311
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 7:12pm
Subject: Re: Re: For Chicagoans - NY Filmmaker Bruce McClure in Person tonight and Sat.
The first of the two McClure programs in Chicago was terrific. Since
I've seen three of the four pieces on the second, I can testify that
will be terrific too.
One thing I felt this time that I hadn't been that aware of before was a
connection to Abstract Experssionist painting. Choosing a few basic
shapes for each piece (with the excpetion of one of the four last night
that had pictures of, gulp, human beings), he gives it a kind of iconinc
emotional-symbolic power that reminded me of Barnett Newman, Mark
Rothko, and Adolph Gottleib. Of cousre these pieces are moving in time,
there's rapidly flickering change and random variations too, and there's
also sound with many, so the effect is different, and there's a
reference to the nature of film projection itself that's important too.
I saw four members of our group there, all of whom liked the work. (This
is a pretty classy group we have here, huh!) Since a showing of his work
requires McClure's presence, if you have a chance to see one, don't miss
it. I looked at a video screener in the process of writing my capsule,
and this is work that *really* doesn't translate -- I didn't even like
it much on video.
Fred Camper
22312
From: Craig Keller
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 7:14pm
Subject: Pas sur la bouche - US Release
Very interesting -- Resnais's latest hasn't been theatrically released
in the U.S. (to my knowledge?), but Wellspring are releasing it on disc
on March 22nd -- cause for rejoice! (They've gone with anglifying the
title to "Not on the Lips," rather than the more deliciously sordid --
and accurate -- "Not on the Mouth.")
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007IO6GO/dvdbeaver-20/
ref%3Dnosim/102-0900034-4988138
craig.
22313
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 7:32pm
Subject: Re: Pas sur la bouche - US Release
This is great news. It's my very favorite Alain
Resnais film and thus makes my all-time top ten (at
"Senses of Cinema")
Particularly important as it's his first all-out
musical. "Stavisky" with its Sondheim score threatens
to break into song and dance at every moment -- but
doesn't. And leave us not forget his casting Elaine
Stritch in "Providence."
The lovely and supemely talented Lambert Wilson is a
standout here. Be sure to get his CD of Broadway
ballads. (Everything I want in a man, quite frankly --
gay, French, sings Sondheim!)
--- Craig Keller wrote:
>
> Very interesting -- Resnais's latest hasn't been
> theatrically released
> in the U.S. (to my knowledge?), but Wellspring are
> releasing it on disc
> on March 22nd -- cause for rejoice! (They've gone
> with anglifying the
> title to "Not on the Lips," rather than the more
> deliciously sordid --
> and accurate -- "Not on the Mouth.")
>
>
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007IO6GO/dvdbeaver-20/
>
> ref%3Dnosim/102-0900034-4988138
>
> craig.
>
>
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Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
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22314
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 7:42pm
Subject: Re: Film School Paranoia? (Was: Ambersons cans in Brazil)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
>
> > For what it's worth, I saw some VERY hardcore porn flicks (we're
talking
> fisting and the like) as well as the deadly dull BEHIND THE GREEN
DOOR in two
> undergrad classes at UW-Milwaukee during the reign of Bush I.
Yeah, well Bush I was so in favor of birth control that his nickname
on the Hill was "Rubbers." Bush II is his mother's boy - a real bitch.
Universal is distributing Inside Deep Throat, a documentary about the
DT phenom, which I'll be seeing next week. Brian Grazer is the
producer, and I assume he forced it down Uni's, er, throat -
otherwise I can't imagine them handling it.
22315
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 7:45pm
Subject: novelizations (was Re: New York, New York - novel into film, or film into novel?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Noel Vera"
wrote:
>
>
>
> Arguably Greene's The Third Man and Clarke's 2001, and each has its
> virtues (Greene's prose, Clarke's clarity). But I'd say I prefer
the
> film versions, overall.
Of course, but 2001 and Lost Worlds of 2001 (rejected chapters from
the novel) are very helpful for interpretation. The opening of 2001,
which ytalks about 30 dead people for every living one on the planet,
rather forcefully makes the point that the book (and the film) are
about influence.
Another novelization would be the novel of Mister Arkadin, signed by
Welles but reportedly ghosted by Maurice Bessy.
22316
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 7:55pm
Subject: Re: Lola Montes (Was: Machismo and the left)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
>
> >
> > A more or less complete restoration by Munich's film
> > archive was shown,
> > surreptitiously, at Film Forum about a year ago. -
> > Dan
> >
>
> What was incldued that isn't in the version we've
> known since 1963? More Ivan Desny material I hope?
> More Anton Walbrook?
Stefan Droessler did it, and Marcel Ophuls kept it from being shown
at Cannes and elsewhere. From seeing comparison footage, I'd say
Marcel is being chauvinistic in insisting that the French restoration
he surpervised is the best version of the film.
For example, the concluding pull-back is cut into in the Marcel
version, and the wallah is buried under the sad hurdy-gurdy music; in
the restored version, for which the copy text predates the French
version, the pullback is intact, and the multilingual wallah is
audible. The people in the line are talking about money, and the last
word on the soundtrack is "dollars." Marcel's argument for keeping
the cut is that his father made it because he eventually decided that
the pullback was too long, but second thoughts after a bomb aren't
necessarily the best guide for restoration, or we'd still be looking
at a 2-hour Heaven's Gate.
Details of the two versions are in a catalogue I have which I'll try
to dig out and report on in more detail. Joseph K may have better
information on this than I - the screening of comparison footage
happened at his place. Stefan showed the whole restoration at Cal
Arts during the same visit at Thom Andersen's request.
22317
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 7:56pm
Subject: Re: Re: Pialat (Was:: OT: If I were a burglar)
> << It's even more of a ritual in Jacques Becker films: of the ones I've seen
> (all but the Arsene Lupin film and L'OR DU CRISTOBAL), a man hits a woman in
> every one but ALI BABA, unless I miss my count. >>
>
> I do not recall anything like this in "Le Trou" (Becker).
I can't recall at the moment either, so maybe I was wrong. I do believe
there were some scenes with Marc Michel and his girlfriend, but don't know
about the violence. - Dan
22318
From: Mathieu Ricordi
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:09pm
Subject: Rivette's Joan The Maid DVD question
Jacques Rivette's "Joan The Maid" finally
arrived in one of my local video stores on
DVD. But the running time seems suspect
to what I had previously heard.
This DVD version clocks in at: PART 1- 112 minutes
PART 2- 116 minutes
Could anybody please let me know if this seems acurate,
or if this DVD is indeed a cut version of the film
(which would really suck, considering how long I've
waited for it).
Thanks,
Mathieu Ricordi
22319
From: Craig Keller
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:18pm
Subject: Re: Rivette's Joan The Maid DVD question
On Saturday, February 5, 2005, at 03:09 PM, Mathieu Ricordi wrote:
>
> Jacques Rivette's "Joan The Maid" finally
> arrived in one of my local video stores on
> DVD. But the running time seems suspect
> to what I had previously heard.
> This DVD version clocks in at: PART 1- 112 minutes
> PART 2- 116 minutes
>
> Could anybody please let me know if this seems acurate,
> or if this DVD is indeed a cut version of the film
> (which would really suck, considering how long I've
> waited for it).
This is indeed a cut version of the film. Facets Video will release
-anything-.
craig.
22320
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:19pm
Subject: Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Killer Mutant Snowman
I agree with Fred's characterization of slasher films as a rule, but
the above-referenced 2003 release redeems the genre. Written and
directed by Michael Cooney - who wrote Identity - it's better than
Jack Frost, which he also made, despite being even cheaper. Jack
Frost is famous for the fact that the snowy location picked for the
shoot failed to produce snow, so that snowmen, necessary for the
plot, had to be built in snowless front yards. Jack Frost 2 is set in
a tropical resort where the characters have gone to get away from it
all (and from Jack, a serial killer whose DNA was mingled with snow
in a road accident), where for some reason no one has a tan. It's
also shot on video, unlike the original.
Despite some unwise choices about the stock characters peopling the
island paradise, the film, when it gets rolling, is wittier than all
but a few recent Hollywod comedies, and rather well directed. At
first it seems that Cooney has compensated for the budget cutbacks by
going the Val Lewton route - there's a pastiche of the swimming pool
scene in Cat People - but over the long haul he makes no concessions
in realizing his vision, which required hundreds of killer snowballs
birthed by Jack, with little snowman faces and big teeth. When they
are destroyed, there's a closeup of his eye - a piece of coal - with
a tear coming out of it. Overall, the effect is pleasantly
reminiscent of the early work of the Kuchar Brothers.
Don't turn it off before the end credits. JF1 mixed credits with
catchphrases uttered by the crew during the catastrophic shoot, but
the end-credits of JF2:ROTKMS is a little film-within-the-film, very
funny in its own right.
Gore efects are pretty minimal, presumably because they would have
shattered the budget.
22321
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:26pm
Subject: Re: Rivette's Joan The Maid DVD question
--- Mathieu Ricordi wrote:
>
> Could anybody please let me know if this seems
> acurate,
> or if this DVD is indeed a cut version of the film
> (which would really suck, considering how long I've
> waited for it).
>
This DVd is indeed a cut version of the film. I
assumed that Rivette did the cutting but someone (I
forget who) on the list has informed me otherwise. Yes
this indeed sucks (though "Joan" is not my favorite
Rivette )
__________________________________
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22322
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:31pm
Subject: Cinephiles and the culture at large (Was: Brazil)
> 5. The young cinephiles of Brazil are very much worth meeting -- I
> enjoyed meeting Ruy, Filipe, Fernando, and others. And they don't just
> know cinema. They knew and loved the Le Corbusier building when I
> mentioned it. Sticking to early skyscrapers, how many New York
> cinephiles know Louis Sullivan's Bayard Building in Manhattan --
> especially those in their 20s? Or even the great Woolworth Building?
I dunno - could you possibly be underestimating NY cinephiles? They seem
pretty interested in culture in general, to my mind. - Dan
22323
From: Aaron Graham
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:32pm
Subject: Re: Scorsese's detractors
> I haven't seen MEAN STREETS in 30 years, but I've never been able
to
> forget the scene where Keitel's girlfriend Amy Robinson has an
epileptic
> fit as Keitel and De Niro fight. De Niro storms out, and Keitel
leaves
> his spasming girlfriend on the floor and runs out after his buddy.
And
> the film proceeds to forget about the girlfriend too, staying with
the
> Keitel-De Niro negotiation. Later we see Robinson walking on the
street
> with the boys - no reference to what happened. I keep hoping that
someone
> will tell me that I saw an incomplete print.... - Dan
It happens almost like this: Robinson has a seizure, Keitel doesn't
know what to do, and De Niro doesn't care. A neighbor, played by
Scorsese's mom, interrupts their fight and Keitel asks her to take
care of Robinson. Keitel and De Niro then exit the apartment and have
the rest of their fight outside.
But you're right: Robinson is completely fine minutes later outside
and Keitel doesn't think to ask her how she is.
-Aaron
22324
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:36pm
Subject: 2004 11 Per CdC
Editors:
1. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
2. West of the Tracks [Tie Xi Qu] (Wang Bing)
S-21 (Rithy Panh)
The Village (M. Night Shyamalan)
5. Shara (Naomi Kawase)
6. Rois et reine (Arnaud Desplechin)]
The Brown Bunny (Vinvcent Gallo)
Gerry (Gus Van Sant)
9. Cafe Lumiere (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Kill Bill 2 (Quentin Tarantino)
Saraband (Ingmar Bergman)
Readers:
1. Gerry
2. Rois et reine
3. Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)
4. Tropical Malady
5. 2046
6. Saraband
7. Shara
8. L'esquive (Abdellatif Kechiche)
9. Kill Bill 2
10. Clean (Olivier Assayas)
The Jan. issue, which I haven't seen yet, contains a thick dossier on
Korean cinema, and #600 (April) will feature a section guest-edited
by Kitano (a game).
22325
From: Mathieu Ricordi
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:36pm
Subject: Re: Rivette's Joan The Maid DVD question
Quoting David Ehrenstein :
> This DVd is indeed a cut version of the film. I
>
> assumed that Rivette did the cutting but someone (I
>
> forget who) on the list has informed me otherwise. Yes
>
> this indeed sucks (though "Joan" is not my favorite
>
> Rivette )
Thanks. Well, back to searching I guess.
I'm pretty sure it won't be my favorite
Rivette either, although I expect it to
at least top "Secret Defence".
Mathieu Ricordi
22326
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:39pm
Subject: Re: Rivette's Joan The Maid DVD question
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Mathieu Ricordi
wrote:
>
>
> Thanks. Well, back to searching I guess.
> I'm pretty sure it won't be my favorite
> Rivette either, although I expect it to
> at least top "Secret Defence".
I know it has a poor rep, but I like Secret Defense, which is a kind
of unoficial fifth installment (now that the oficial fourth is done)
of Les filles du feu.
22327
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:43pm
Subject: Re: Re: Scorsese's detractors
--- Aaron Graham wrote:
>
> It happens almost like this: Robinson has a seizure,
> Keitel doesn't
> know what to do, and De Niro doesn't care. A
> neighbor, played by
> Scorsese's mom, interrupts their fight and Keitel
> asks her to take
> care of Robinson. Keitel and De Niro then exit the
> apartment and have
> the rest of their fight outside.
>
> But you're right: Robinson is completely fine
> minutes later outside
> and Keitel doesn't think to ask her how she is.
>
And at the end of the movie there's a car crash and
the end credits roll before we find out who lives or
dies.
Get it now?
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22328
From: Mathieu Ricordi
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:42pm
Subject: Re: 2004 11 Per CdC
Quoting hotlove666 :
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Editors:
>
>
>
> 1. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
>
> 2. West of the Tracks [Tie Xi Qu] (Wang Bing)
>
> S-21 (Rithy Panh)
>
> The Village (M. Night Shyamalan)
>
> 5. Shara (Naomi Kawase)
>
> 6. Rois et reine (Arnaud Desplechin)]
>
> The Brown Bunny (Vinvcent Gallo)
>
> Gerry (Gus Van Sant)
>
> 9. Cafe Lumiere (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
>
> Kill Bill 2 (Quentin Tarantino)
>
> Saraband (Ingmar Bergman)
Well this is a surprise. I thought Cahiers du Cinema had
given up doing year end lists. I couldn't find one for 2003,
was there one?
Mathieu Ricordi
22329
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:44pm
Subject: Los Olvidados (Was: Brazil)
> More, the mindset of such places and the people that inhabit them
> seems to escape these films. A friend of mine who lives in housing
> commission, just yesterday had his dog set on fire by a neighbour who
> didn't like it - the neighbour having been recently released from
> prison after serving a stint for manslaughter - the dog died. Not a
> single movie title comes to mind that has captured these areas,
> (please feel free to pipe up and tell me some if there are any!)
Nothing captures anything exactly, but I just resaw LOS OLVIDADOS last
night, and it didn't shy away from the dog-burning aspects of slum life.
Interestingly, the film has an abstract, almost Hollywoodish feel, just on
the level of artifice vs. reality. None of the slum kids are convincing
as such, for instance. I'm increasingly impressed by the film, but
somehow it doesn't strike me as an effective social protest: the horror in
the film is mostly material for an interesting, rebellious kind of
formal play. - Dan
22330
From: Michael E. Kerpan, Jr.
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:45pm
Subject: Re: Rivette's Joan The Maid DVD question
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Mathieu Ricordi wrote:
> Thanks. Well, back to searching I guess.
> I'm pretty sure it won't be my favorite
> Rivette either, although I expect it to
> at least top "Secret Defence".
There is no subtitled home video release of the full version of
Rivette's "Joan". In fact, there is NO current release -- anywhere;
the French video (SECAM, unsubbed -- obviously) seemed to be out of
print last time I checked. No rumors (that I've heard) of any
impending French DVD release.
I'd offer you my copy of the French video -- but is virtually
unwatchable (it seems to have been almost erased -- either it was
defective or was ex[posed to way too much something or other during
its shipment from France -- right after 9/11).
Actually, "Secret Defense" is one of my favorite Rivette films. I
cerainly like it a lot more than "Celine and Julie" -- but not quite
as much as "Pont du Nord", "Haut bas fragile" or "Gang of Four").
MEK
22331
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:50pm
Subject: Re: Cinephiles and the culture at large (Was: Brazil)
Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
> I dunno - could you possibly be underestimating NY cinephiles? They seem
> pretty interested in culture in general, to my mind. - Dan
Of course many are. I know some of them. I'm just making an "anecdotal"
guess about averages. The old joke about one or another New York
cinemphile: "He's never been to the *upstairs* of the MoMA." And it was
close to true for a few, when I lived there in the 70s. Keep in mind
also that I was responding to what I thought was a post calling Rio de
Janeiro and Sao Pãulo "hellholes," though the author later wrote that
wasn't his intent.
Fred Camper
22332
From: Craig Keller
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:51pm
Subject: Re: Rivette's Joan The Maid DVD question
On Saturday, February 5, 2005, at 03:36 PM, Mathieu Ricordi wrote:
> Thanks. Well, back to searching I guess.
> I'm pretty sure it won't be my favorite
> Rivette either, although I expect it to
> at least top "Secret Defence".
If you've only seen 'Secret défense' once (the title doesn't translate
to "Secret Defense," but "Top Secret" -- suh-cray day-fahnce), you
should give it another try -- it's one of my favorite films. There are
many great scenes -- the first meeting between Bonnaire and
Radziwilowicz comes to mind (along with his stopping by her place and
drinking the wine), all the laboratory scenes, and, most obviously, the
two train voyages.
craig.
22333
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:53pm
Subject: Re: Rivette's Joan The Maid DVD question
--- Mathieu Ricordi wrote:
> I'm pretty sure it won't be my favorite
> Rivette either, although I expect it to
> at least top "Secret Defence".
>
Oh no, "Secret Defense" is a key Rivette --
particularly in realtion to the discussion we've been
having in here about his recent dissing of Minnelli
and Mankiewicz.
"Secret Defense" was made right after "Joan," clearly
indicating that there was something he wanted to do
with Sandrine Bonnaire that he couldn't in a costume
drama. So he throws her into a typical Rivette
paranois film -- complete with mysterious brother.
What marks it is the extended series of train rides.
During the rides Bonnaire resolves to kill Jerzy
radzilowicz. ordinarily this would be done in couplew
of minutes via dialogue with another character. But
there's no one she can really talk to so Rivette
contrives for us to simply observe her -- a bit like
the way we observe lancaster at the climax of "The
Leopard." But here it's a lot stealthier as at the
strt of the sequence we expect a simple train ride
shot, that suddenly turns into a lenghty sequence --
demaind out re-orientation. Here Rivette is "doing
something" with Bonnaire -- what he accuses Minnelli
of not doing with Maclaine in "Some Came Running." I
don't agree with him, but at the same time I know what
he means. Likewsie mankiewicz'declamatorymode of mise
en scene is anti-Rivette. But that doesn't invalidate
it.
I was just looking at "The Honey Pot" again last night
(I taped it off TCM several years ago.) Good grief
what a masterpiece! Definitely a "late period auteur"
movie. The murder mystery plotting is precise, and the
blocking is somewhat remindful of his 40's work. But
overall themise en scene is not that far from another
Venice-set film of that era -- specifically Losey's
"Eve." And it even looks forward a tad to "Don't Look
Now."
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22334
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:53pm
Subject: Re: Re: Scorsese's detractors
>> But you're right: Robinson is completely fine
>> minutes later outside
>> and Keitel doesn't think to ask her how she is.
>>
>
> And at the end of the movie there's a car crash and
> the end credits roll before we find out who lives or
> dies.
>
> Get it now?
No, that's not the same thing. It's a question of the movie framing the
question, versus the movie seemingly not realizing that there's a question
to be framed. - Dan
22335
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:58pm
Subject: Re: Re: Scorsese's detractors
--- Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
> No, that's not the same thing. It's a question of
> the movie framing the
> question, versus the movie seemingly not realizing
> that there's a question
> to be framed. - Dan
>
And I say it IS the same thing -- driving you to a
highly emotional moment that demands resolution and
LEAVING YOU THERE.
It's a very audacious film.
__________________________________________________
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22336
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 8:59pm
Subject: Re: Los Olvidados (Was: Brazil)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
I'm increasingly impressed by the film, but
> somehow it doesn't strike me as an effective social protest: the
horror in
> the film is mostly material for an interesting, rebellious kind of
> formal play. - Dan
Bunuel: "The irrational circulates through the film in the form of a
chicken." As previously noted, the characters are illiterate, but
Jaibo has an unconscious mind - witness his Freudian slip when he
says to Little Eyes: "That'll teach you to throw stones at people,"
substituting "piedra" for "madera" (Little Eyes used a piece of wood,
but Jaibo killed the squealer with a rock) by analogy with "madre"
and "padre."
He was continually "remaking" Terre sans pain. This version was all
shot on a soundstage, with mostly non-pros. The score is magnificent -
so is everything else. But neorealism it ain't. (Although the "M"
shot is pretty straightforwardly class-conscious.) Bunuel wanted to
include overtly irrational elements like an orchestra playing inside
one of the buildings in construction visible in the scene where the
blind man is savaged. The camera would have panned past it, and it
never have been explained. Dancigers vetoed the idea.
Dancigers also made LB shoot a happy ending where the hero survives
and is shown walking through the gates of the reform school, but it
was never used. The film almost got Dancigers lynched in Mexico, and
only made it into Cannes through the intervention of Octavio Paz,
then the secretary to the Mexican Ambassador in Paris. Neith LB's
communist friends nor his surrealist friends liked it after the first
Paris screening, but Pudovkin and Breton spoke up for it afterward
and it was accepted by all sides.
22337
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 9:01pm
Subject: Re: Rivette's Joan The Maid DVD question
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Michael E. Kerpan, Jr."
wrote:
>
I duped the two Joans when I rented them from a local French video
store. Not sure if they were Seacam-to-VHS transfers or just Canadian
VHS. The dupes are pretty good.
22338
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 9:06pm
Subject: The Honey Pot (Was: Rivette's Joan The Maid DVD question)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> I was just looking at "The Honey Pot" again last night
> (I taped it off TCM several years ago.) Good grief
> what a masterpiece! Definitely a "late period auteur"
> movie. The murder mystery plotting is precise, and the
> blocking is somewhat remindful of his 40's work. But
> overall themise en scene is not that far from another
> Venice-set film of that era -- specifically Losey's
> "Eve." And it even looks forward a tad to "Don't Look
> Now."
Thanks, David - I thought I was losing my mind when I said some of
the same things and no one chimed in. My only problem with the film
is Cliff Robertson's acting, but it's a minor problem. It was a joy
to re-see.
22339
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 9:09pm
Subject: Re: Sights & Sounds (silent films, Brakhage, McLaren)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> JPC, we agree about watching silent films silent, but I find your
> position on post-circa-1930 silent films rather curious. I mean,
it
> seems to me one could make a pretty good argument that these are
the
> only "true" silent films, because they made silent when having
sound was
> a genuine choice, and the cultural "favored" choice as well, so in
most
> cases a film made intentionally silent had a pretty good reason
for
> being made that way.
I agree, and I'd even say it's self-evident.
Brakhage was asked almost every time he showed
> films to a "general audience" why he made his films silent, and
these
> questions were often couched as complains: "I would have enjoyed
it much
> more if there was music," etc. But almost no one ever asks a
filmmaker
> why he bothered to add sound.
For the simple reason that ever since movies have
become "sound" movies, sound has been considered by practically
everybody (maybe one person in a million differs)an integral,
essential and indispensable part of the movie experience. Maybe it's
terribly wrong and the one person in a million is right, but that's
the way it is. There must be a reason why everybody -- except Stan
Brakhage and Fred Camper and a few dozen other human beings -- feels
that way. So the question put to SB by "general audiences" is a
legitimate question -- exactly the same question I myself asked when
starting this thread -- not as a complaint, just to know the
aesthetic motivation. And, Fred, you have provided legitimate
answers to the question in earlier posts, and so has SB in writings
you have quoted. And I am perfectly satisfied with those answers.
But, as I stated before, I can't help being conditioned to film-as-
an- aural-as-well-as-visual medium because that's the way I have
always experienced films of the circa-post-1930 era.
For a narrative film, one might wonder why
> one could not tell the story just visually and with a few titles
if
> necessary.
But why deprive yourself of sound and go back to the conditions
of silent filmmaking? It can be done (and has been done) as an
experiment -- Kaurismaki's "Juha" is an interesting, even
fascinating stunt (no dialogue at all, although there's a music
score!)but little more. A meditation on silent cinema, if you will,
it mostly proves the impossibility to recreate it. (another curious -
- and really absurd -- "experiment": Russell Rouse's "Thief" -- a
dialogue-less thriller; but it had sound effects...)
For non-narrative films, why can't the images sustain
> themselves without sound? The fact that these questions are almost
never
> asked is an indication of massive bias.
Again, there must be a reason for the "massive bias." But I
have never said that the images cannot sustain themselves without
sound. They can and do in the case of the Brakhage films I was
discussing. I just expressed a feeling of something missing -- a
feeling that may very well be misguided.
>
> I don't like to dump on someone else's pleasures, and if you love
> McLaren's films I don't want to argue that you shouldn't. But I
have to
> say I completely hate them. They seem to me to be so obviously
cute, so
> manipulative in their cuteness, as to be not really "about"
anything
> except manipulating to produce trivial pleasures -- short of like
a
> slasher movie, I would guess.
>
Fred, I must admit that nothing in Brakhage could possibly be
described as "cute" -- the last thing his films will ever evoke is a
smile... Frankly, I don't see what is "cute" in the second section
of "Begone Dull Care" which I cited as very similar to SB's own use
of vertical white lines. But I won't argue any more and will return
to the trivial pleasures which my feeble aesthetic sense loves to
wallow in.
JPC
22340
From: Michael E. Kerpan, Jr.
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 9:09pm
Subject: Re: Rivette's Joan The Maid DVD question
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
> I duped the two Joans when I rented them from a local French video
> store. Not sure if they were Seacam-to-VHS transfers or just Canadian
> VHS. The dupes are pretty good.
There was once been a Canadian (Quebecois?) release of the what seems
to have been the full version -- for some reason I thought this was
out of print too.
MEK
22341
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 9:11pm
Subject: Re: The Honey Pot (Was: Rivette's Joan The Maid DVD question)
--- hotlove666 wrote:
. My only
> problem with the film
> is Cliff Robertson's acting, but it's a minor
> problem.
Well he's less a character than a deus ex machina. And
his main job is to keep out of Rex Harrison's and
Maggie Smith's way.
In this he's a bit like Gary Merrill in "All About
Eve."
The Mankiewicz film itotherwise most reminds me of is
the sublime "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" -- a
collaboration between Mankiewicz and Bernard Herrmann.
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22342
From: Dave Kehr
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 9:12pm
Subject: RE: Digest Number 1184
Does anyone know the story behind the longer version of "Bitter Victory"
that Sony is releasing on DVD?
Dave Kehr
22343
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 9:13pm
Subject: Re: Rivette's Joan The Maid DVD question
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Michael E. Kerpan, Jr."
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> > I duped the two Joans when I rented them from a local French
video
> > store. Not sure if they were Seacam-to-VHS transfers or just
Canadian
> > VHS. The dupes are pretty good.
>
> There was once been a Canadian (Quebecois?) release of the what
seems
> to have been the full version -- for some reason I thought this was
> out of print too.
>
> MEK
I rented it 7-8 years ago. The videotheque in question gets Canadian
tapes when it can, so my dupe is probably off the Quebec version and
is hence pretty good quality, if anyone wants to borrow it.
22344
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 9:20pm
Subject: Re: The Honey Pot (Was: Rivette's Joan The Maid DVD question)
hotlove666 wrote:
>
> ....I thought I was losing my mind when I said some of
> the same things and no one chimed in. ....
Bill,
Some of us didn't reply on "The Honey Pot" because it and Mankiewicz
have been discussed here before, in the group's early months, I believe
before you joined. The thread began here
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/message/3521
In my post at
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/message/3567 I called it
".....a masterpiece, his greatest film, and his greatest film
in the specific sense of a late "testament" film. It's his "Anatahan,"
it's his "Lola Montez," it's his "Seven Women," it's his "Play Dirty...."
The thread is useful; David posted a text on the film in French.
And I am still working on my project to make our archive more accessible
and easier to search.
Fred Camper
22345
From: Aaron Graham
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 9:25pm
Subject: Re: Scorsese's detractors
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> And I say it IS the same thing -- driving you to a
> highly emotional moment that demands resolution and
> LEAVING YOU THERE.
>
> It's a very audacious film.
No argument there. It's one of my very favorite films of Scorsese.
And it seems this emotional high was intentional as didn't an early
draft have David Proval drive Keitel to the airport, because his
uncle Giovanni has asked him to leave town?
I much prefer the conclusion (and the intensity) Scorsese chose to
leave us with.
-Aaron
22346
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 5, 2005 10:37pm
Subject: Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963: Best American Sound Films)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Chris Fujiwara"
wrote:
> What interests me the most in Mankiewicz, a director whose work I
> only recently started to take seriously, American-auteurist snob as
I
> was, is the sense that everything might be different and that
things
> do become different, that decisions are being made, even as we
watch,
> but without being registered on the surface of the film; and these
> decisions change the course of the characters' lives and the course
> of the film we're watching.
>
> So Mankiewicz's films are, like Godard's, films about their own
> process, films about the cinema; because in Mankiewicz the film is
> the narrative, and the narrative is defined and viewed as always in
> process, as one of a number of possible narratives. (I'm influenced
> here by Deleuze who, as I recall, saw "The Garden of Forking Paths"
> as an emblem for Mankiewicz's work.)
>
> The preponderance of talking in his films is justified because it's
> through talking that people are persuaded, that decisions are made:
> cf. the conspirators courting Brutus in Julius Caesar; the American
> courting Phuong in The Quiet American; later in the same film, the
> Communist courting Fowler.
>
> The sense that everything might be different also has to do with a
> certain analysis of one's own life that the characters - who are,
the
> best of them, very self-aware, very rich, very interesting people -
> undertake in film after film. Above or behind the actual life of
the
> characters (those in House of Strangers, Letter to Three Wives, All
> about Eve, The Barefoot Contessa, for example) is something else: a
> possible life, a missed life, a dreamed life. And this sense of the
> doubling of life rhymes with the possibility that one person could
> take the place of another, as is threatened or realized in Letter
and
> Eve. In Letter, each heroine fears that her life has already
changed
> and suspects that this change may mean that her past existence was
> something other than she thought it was.
>
> David's perception of Le mépris as a Mankiewiczian film is very far-
> reaching; everybody knows that the Giorgia Moll character is
related
> to her character in The Quiet American, but to extend this by
seeing
> the conception of human relationships in Le mépris as related to
that
> in Mankiewicz's films is very interesting and apt. The hero's sense
> that his wife has made a decision, without his knowing when or why,
> is a Mankiewiczian intuition. Mankiewicz is probably as important
to
> Godard as Fuller, Ray, and Tashlin.
Thanks first to Fred - I revisited the interesting Mankiewicz thread,
and I'm replying belatedly to Chris Fujiwara's post without deleting
any of it because it's one of the best defeneses of M's talk I've
seen. And to add that my mad-dog mentor, HB, has said something
similar about Shakepeare's "invention of the human" - that in WS's
plays, for the first time, you have characters who listen to
themselves talking and are changed before our eyes by what they hear.
The decoupage of The Honey Pot, which is one of its great pleasures
for me, serves this vision beautifully.
I wonder if the airing on TCM has given other afb'ers - some of whom
expressed reservations back then - to revisit and reevaluate.
On the other hand, I regret to say that the CdC on-set interview was
an opportunity for JM to denounce Vietnam war protesters as new
versions of Moliere's "precieux ridicules."
22347
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 0:15am
Subject: novelizations (was Re: New York, New York - novel into film, or film into novel?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
"Wasn't Kurt Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout character based on Dick?"
In the late '60s Kilgore Trout was said to have been based on
Theodore Sturgeon, then a little later on Dick. The one Kilgore
Trout novel ever published, "Venus on the Half-Shell" was written by
Philip Jose Farmer, so perhaps Trout is an amalgam of all three
(Farmer by virtue of having written Trout's only extant novel.)
Richard
22348
From: Matt Teichman
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 1:52am
Subject: Re: Breer, McLaren vs. Brakhage
Fred Camper wrote:
>I don't like to dump on someone else's pleasures, and if you love
>McLaren's films I don't want to argue that you shouldn't. But I have to
>say I completely hate them. They seem to me to be so obviously cute, so
>manipulative in their cuteness, as to be not really "about" anything
>except manipulating to produce trivial pleasures -- short of like a
>slasher movie, I would guess.
>
Interesting...this is the way I react to some of Breer's work, for
instance, the recentish _ATOZ_ (although many of his other films, like
_Blazes_ and _Fuji_, are extraordinary, ). He does seem to have a
"McLaren/Vanderbeek side" at times, when he isn't busy investigating the
nature of representation. I'd be interested to hear how you respond to
Breer's occasional bouts of cuteness.
To J-P, Re: soundless films...how about Warhol? His silent pieces
strike me as justifications in themselves for film without sound. The
images of a film like _Eat_ seep into the mind in a kind of refreshing
and hypnotic way that wouldn't be possible were a soundtrack there to
distract.
-Matt
22349
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 1:54am
Subject: Re: Re: Sights & Sounds (silent films, Brakhage, McLaren)
jpcoursodon wrote:
> ....Again, there must be a reason for the "massive bias."....
You've already said what part of it is, that people are conditioned to
expect sound in movies. And since you're not arguing that it's wrong to
make silent films today, anymore than I'm arguing than it's wrong to
love Norman McLaren, we don't really disagree.
But to borrow an analogy from paiting, circa 1920 I'll bet people were
making arguments similar to yours against abstract art, because people
weren't conditioned to accept it yet. Paiting should give us a picture
of the world because that's what we expect, that sort of thing. But now
abstractions decorate shopping malls! Given enough time and enough great
films, people may come to accept silent filmmaking too. Among the other
great silent filmmakers of avant-garde cinema (though most also made
sound films): Ernie Gehr, Hollis Frampton, Ken Jacobs, Warren Sonbert,
Bruce Baillie (only one film but it's a beaut), Andy Warhol, Joyce Wieland.
Fred Camper
22350
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 2:42am
Subject: Re: Sights & Sounds (silent films, Brakhage, McLaren)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> jpcoursodon wrote:
>
>
> > ....Again, there must be a reason for the "massive
bias."....
>
> You've already said what part of it is, that people are
conditioned to
> expect sound in movies. And since you're not arguing that it's
wrong to
> make silent films today, anymore than I'm arguing than it's wrong
to
> love Norman McLaren, we don't really disagree.
>
> But to borrow an analogy from paiting, circa 1920 I'll bet people
were
> making arguments similar to yours against abstract art, because
people
> weren't conditioned to accept it yet. Paiting should give us a
picture
> of the world because that's what we expect, that sort of thing.
But now
> abstractions decorate shopping malls! Given enough time and enough
great
> films, people may come to accept silent filmmaking too. Among the
other
> great silent filmmakers of avant-garde cinema (though most also
made
> sound films): Ernie Gehr, Hollis Frampton, Ken Jacobs, Warren
Sonbert,
> Bruce Baillie (only one film but it's a beaut), Andy Warhol, Joyce
Wieland.
>
> Fred Camper
I am a little bit annoyed that you quoted only one line from my
long response to you -- which was very nice and polite (and even
largely agreeing with you) although I felt a bit insulted by the
Moderator of this group telling me that my tastes were so despicable
as to be the equivalent of a taste for slasher movies. And now
you're doing it again by telling me that I am the equivalent of a
person who around 1920 would have been too dumb to understand
abstract art. You seem to have this great knack for putting down
people who do not share your avant garde tastes one hundred per
cent. Based on your apparent contempt for my "tastes" I probably
should be thrown out of this group.
JPC
PS I like Breer's "A Man and His Dog Out for Air" -- which is
probably too "cute" for you.
22351
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 3:08am
Subject: Re: Re: Sights & Sounds (silent films, Brakhage, McLaren)
jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> ....I am a little bit annoyed that you quoted only one line from my
> long response to you....
The moderators have been saying AGAIN AND AGAIN, please do NOT quote
whole posts! But you have just quoted all of mine. People can find the
post you're replying to easily enough via the subject line.
I'm sorry if you were offended. But how can I say that I hate a film you
love without offending you? I do think that "A Man and His Dog Out for
Air" is great. I'm not making a judgment about your tastes as a whole.
Maybe you find depths in "cute" that I don't, or maybe you see beyond
McLaren's cuteness to something I'm missing.
There are a lot of reasons for not liking particular things; my
reference to 1920 was not to you but to the general taste of most people
for movies with sound. It seemed to me that my comments followed on what
you said about people not being used to silent films, just as they
weren't used to abstract paintings in 1920.
I've also said again and again that the purpose of this group is not for
people to agree with the moderators! When I make a post about films it's
not as a moderator, it's as a person who is quite aware that his tastes
are very much in the minority, even in this group. But I've also lived
to see some of my tastes vindicated, which gives me a bit more
confidence in them. When I first came to love Brakhage's films, he was
almost unknown, whereas McLaren was quite popular. That doesn't prove
McLaren is bad or good, and I always am more confident about things I
love than things I don't. I had wanted to make an anti Martin Arnold
post earlier, but didn't have time when he came up; everyone who posted
on him seemed to love his films. Sometimes there's something to be
learned from an informed alternative view, it seems to me, even if you
don't agree with it.
Fred Camper
22352
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 4:13am
Subject: Norman McLaren
Well this Norman McLaren exchange has certianly opened
up quite a can of worms.
Not tostir the pot, But I feel it's imporant to remind
Fred that McLaren was an important part of Cinema 16,
that Gretchen Weinberg's drawings of him were a
constant part of her father's "Coffee Brandy and
Cigars" column in "Film Culture," and that no less an
eminence that Jean-Luc Godard expressed his admiration
for McLaren's ability to make films "all by himself."
I suspect Fred's anger isaresult of the fact that like
Mclaren drew,painted and scratched on celluloid prior
to Brakhage's efforts in that direction, but did so to
synchornize the resultant image with music, eg."Begone
Dull Care."
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
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22353
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 4:26am
Subject: Re: Re: Sights & Sounds (silent films, Brakhage, McLaren)
A little more, on further reflection.
JPC, I'm obviously the one who doesn't belong here; very few share my
tastes. I'm not really a movie fan, for example, in the way that so many
seem to be. But I enjoy and learn from your posts and others'.
Some may remember that one member left our group offended by my dislike
of Kubrick, which I had humorously exaggerated. If there's something
about my manner in expressing dislikes that could be improved, please
email me offlist.
If at all possible, please forget that I'm as moderator, except when I'm
making a post as moderator. Our Statement of Purpose is honest. Peter
and I are not trying to get people to agree with us. Discussion about
film should be free and open. If one of our members has seen and hated
Brakhage's films, you should feel free to say so. I'm not promising to
reply, but it's always good to hear alternative views, especially with
reasons.
Still, I started wondering why I felt the need to express a hatred for
McLaren's films. I think it was because he was being implicitly posed as
a preferable alternative to Brakhage. David is right that many
respectable people respect or love his films, but that's never stopped
me from disliking them. I guess I would never make a very objective film
historian.
Here's some more on why Brakhage's films are silent, thoughts that also
come out of reflecting on how he is different from McLaren.
I've written on Brakhage's work in terms of it consisting of profound
contractions at all levels, but also of how when he appears to set up an
opposition (between movement and stillness, close and far, film as a
window versus film as a material medium, or many others) he'll suddenly
drop it and go off in a different direction, changing the terms of the
argument as the film unspools.
The result is that the viewer sees something utterly non systematic and
impossible to predict. There is a profound uncertainty at every moment
of a film's unfolding. The first person self behind the camera or paint
brush reveals himself as profoundly unstable, a seeker who is trying to
embrace the whole world while at the same time trying to *not* hold on
to any specific thing. One of the deepest oppositions in Brakhage's
films is between engagement and disengagement. The things we see are
presented as objects of profoundly sensual pleasure just at the moment
that they vibrate or diffuse themselves out of existence. His universe
is constantly changing, and fundamentally ungraspable. While his films
seem to try to sprawl to embrace the whole cosmos, whether through
showing it in "Dog Star Man"/"The Art of Vision" or imagining it in tiny
light patterns in a minuscule area of glass in "The Text of Light," all
of these attempted embraces fail, and in some ways his oeuvre is about
the inevitability of that failure, which is presented as at once tragic
-- the "Dog Star Man" dies; the light patterns of the abstract films
never seem graspable -- and joyous, because the effect is that the
viewer feels every second, every instant, as an energized moment of
uncertainty and surprise.
It is all of *that* that I think will be papered over, indeed wrecked,
by even as great a sound track as "The Art of Fugue."
So in my opinion and it is just one person's opinion, Brakhage's silent
films are best and most deeply appreciated silent.
I think Brakhage himself would say that if you can't get anything out of
them that way, put on the Bach.
Fred Camper
22354
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 5:00am
Subject: Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963: Best American Sound Films)
> On the other hand, I regret to say that the CdC on-set interview
was
> an opportunity for JM to denounce Vietnam war protesters as new
> versions of Moliere's "precieux ridicules."
But isn't this rather typical of a director who finally succumbed
to blacklisting pressures and made THE QUIET AMERICAN to display his
patriotism? The film is a travesty of Graham Greene's novel
reversing the authjor's attack on blinkered American attitudes which
still rule the country today.
You may defend this film on the grounds of mise-en-scene and
language but evidence exists to show that the director collaborated
with that master of black operations Edward G. Lansdale responsible
for the Diem regime in south Vietnam and the torture of innocent
civilians.
THE QUIET AMERICAN (1958) is little better than ideological
propaganda. At least, the Noyce version did attempt to restore the
film back to Graham Greene.
Tony Williams
22355
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 5:20am
Subject: Re: Sights & Sounds (silent films, Brakhage, McLaren)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
If there's something
> about my manner in expressing dislikes that could be improved,
please
> email me offlist.
I don't think you have to be told about your manners and how
they could be improved. It would be incredibly presumptuous and rude
of me or anybody to write you to tell you what you know perfectly
well anyway.
> If at all possible, please forget that I'm as moderator,
I would be offended if anybody wrote what you wrote. I just
think it was a bit worse coming from the Moderator, whether he was
wearing that particular hat at the moment or not. Is it at
all "moderate" to tell someone that if he likes Norman Mclaren his
taste is on the level of a slasher movie fan?
.
>
> Still, I started wondering why I felt the need to express a hatred
for
> McLaren's films. I think it was because he was being implicitly
posed as
> a preferable alternative to Brakhage.
"implicitly" is the word, and it's wrong. I never suggested any
such thing.
David is right that many
> respectable people respect or love his films,
You also described him as "popular" which of course is
anathema to you. At the same time it's a ridiculous claim
considering how few people in the world have ever seen a Norman
McLaren film or even know his name. By now Brakhage is probably
as "popular" as McLaren ever was.
but that's never stopped
> me from disliking them. I guess I would never make a very
objective film
> historian.
>
No one on this Group would ever make an "objective" historian,
whatever that may mean.
22356
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 6:30am
Subject: Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963: Best American Sound Films)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000"
"You may defend this film on the grounds of mise-en-scene and
language but evidence exists to show that the director collaborated
with that master of black operations Edward G. Lansdale responsible
for the Diem regime in south Vietnam and the torture of innocent
civilians."
Several years ago there was an article in the magazine "Viet Nam
Generation" comparing Mankiewicz's film and Greene's novel and
detailing all the reversals that Mankiewicz made. This is the first
that I've heard about Lansdale's possible involvement. What's the
story behind that?
"THE QUIET AMERICAN (1958) is little better than ideological
propaganda..."
I was disappointed to read Mankiewicz's remarks about the anti-war
movement, but I think there was more to his version than ideological
propaganda. I haven't seen the picture in years but I do believe
that Mankiewicz was an artist first and a propagandist second on this
project (unless Lansdale's involvement was decisive, in which case it
was artful propaganda of a high order.) Still, it's hard to watch so
good a movie as THE QUIET AMERICAN knowing that it was made at least
in part in the service of US imperialism.
Richard
22357
From: Noel Vera
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 7:07am
Subject: Re: Scorsese's detractors
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
>
> >
> > No, that's not the same thing. It's a question of
> > the movie framing the
> > question, versus the movie seemingly not realizing
> > that there's a question
> > to be framed. - Dan
> >
>
> And I say it IS the same thing -- driving you to a
> highly emotional moment that demands resolution and
> LEAVING YOU THERE.
>
> It's a very audacious film.
I can see that happening, especially at a time and place where many
Italian men would see women as a precious commodity rather than a
full equal. I'd say Filipinos would act the same way.
It's a macho thing, I think.
22358
From: Noel Vera
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 7:10am
Subject: novelizations (was Re: New York, New York - novel into film, or film into novel?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
> wrote:
>
> "Wasn't Kurt Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout character based on Dick?"
>
> In the late '60s Kilgore Trout was said to have been based on
> Theodore Sturgeon, then a little later on Dick.
I've heard of Trout being based on Sturgeon (Trout-Sturgeon), but
I've only heard from you that he was based on Dick, though I've
always thought the biographical details matched perfectly. Did you
read this somewhere in particular?
22359
From: Noel Vera
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 7:30am
Subject: boxing films
Might as well post something I wrote at another online forum here:
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Wise's The Set Up (1949) is
that it's taken from a poem (by Joseph Moncure March), happens in
real time, and occurs in a confined space (the boxing ring, its
dressing rooms, and the street in front of it). Wise emphasizes this
somewhat, by using long takes, a camera crane, and angled shots that
link Robert Ryan's dressing room with his hotel room, where Audrey
Totter sits waiting for him.
The dialogue is pretty good, terse and realistic, even if the
overdetermination so characteristic of noir tends to get to you--the
fate of every character Ryan meets is an object lesson or commentary
on his own; every person or thing Totter meets or sees is either a
threat to her marital fidelity or a reminder of her husband's
mortality.
It's a pretty good boxing film; the fight scenes are wonderfully
edited (Wise, after all, cut Citizen Kane) and executed (Ryan was a
former boxing champ). Maybe my problem with it is that while Wise is
skilled and versatile and all, he's not a flier; if say Welles
handled this film, it would have been much more baroque, more
stylized, more dank; maybe every shot and not the first few would
have been a long take, to further unify and emphasize the
claustrophobia of the little world Ryan moved around in. It's also
(until maybe the last ten minutes) too well-lit for my taste; the
boxing ring scenes in particular, well--
Take Body and Soul, done two years earlier. Abraham Polonsky's
script isn't necessarily inferior (the dialogue here also rings
true), but the plot mechanisms are even more blatant--John
Garfield's best friend (played by Joseph Pevney--who, incidentally,
goes on to direct some of Star Trek's best episodes, including Amok
Time) points out and denounces Garfield's Moral Malaise, then gets
knocked down by a car straight after, just for dramatic effect; the
girlfriend and mother (Lillian Palmer and Anne Revere) are I suppose
Garfield's Voices of Conscience, but also so unforgiving and
relentless you feel a little sorry for the man for having these two
harridans on his back.
The film is pure hokum, humanist melodrama...and yet the film as a
film, thanks to Robert Rossen (who also directed All The King's Men,
and that masterpiece of tension and visual design The Hustler) and
the great James Wong Howe (The Sweet Smell of Success, Hud, Seconds,
Jesus, what didn't he make look great?) simply blows The Set Up
right out of the water. The shadows are darker, more menacing, the
grit grittier; and when Howe (who was himself a boxer) climbs into
the ring perched on a pair of roller skates with a handheld camera,
he achieves a sense of immediacy and nightmare (the shimmering,
strobelike light that keeps Garfield blinking, as if someone had
just whacked his (and your) head with a two-by-four) that not even
Raging Bull can equal.
Was looking at Requiem for a Heavyweight recently, and while the
script may be the best of the three (by Rod Serling) and the acting
as strong (Anthony Quinn, Mickey Rooney, Julie Harris, Jackie
Gleason), the directing is gimmicky and overdone in the worst way
(Pevney might actually have done a better job).
22360
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 7:50am
Subject: Re: Re: Sights & Sounds (silent films, Brakhage, McLaren)
JPC, I must admit now I'm really puzzled. You say you never suggested
McLaren as a preferable alternative to Brakhage, but in
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/message/22288 you
contrast Brakhage, who you find "difficult to completely enjoy," with
McLaren, writing that a sequence in "Begone Dull Care" looks like a
Brakhage but is "wonderfully enhanced" by the music. How can one not
read this as stating that you find McLaren preferable to Brakhage?
That's how I did read it, so I started arguing with your personal
preference; I thought that was one thing we can do here.
On the other hand my "slasher" comparison was only for me -- that is, it
was meant to say that to me McLaren and bad Hollywood filmmaking seem
pleasure-manipulators without deeper meaning. You can argue with that
too, but I didn't write it thinking I had any idea what you get out of
McLaren, but rather to describe what I see. I explicitly specified in
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/message/22351 that you
might see more in McLaren than I do, and I also wrote that the fact that
"McLaren was quite popular....doesn't prove McLaren is bad or good," yet
you write that "popular" is "anathema" to me. (Why then do I so love
"Red River," "Imitation of Life," et cetera, to choose some big grossers
that I think are incredibly great.) It seems to me that you are
misunderstanding what I'm writing, and that you are offended by all this
frankly mystifies me, but of course you don't have to reply further if
you don't want to.
Fred Camper
22361
From: Saul
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 10:58am
Subject: Re: Film School Paranoia? (Was: Ambersons cans in Brazil)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein wrote:
> Porn changed radically when video took over. Theaters
> disappeared . 16mm shooting ended, and a whole new
> world of home viewing opened up. Now porn is a zillion
> dollar industry because it's all designed to be seen
> "in the privacy of your bedroom."
Well, porn did change radically, and for the worse. I think PT
Anderson really was onto something, except with the 90's and 00's porn
to go by, I kinda look fondly on the 80's stuff he so despised. I was
recently given a stack of old porn films by a mate, some old German
stuff from the 70's, and some 80's American porn with John Holmes and
Ron Jeremy, (whom I girl I know very humorously described as looking
"like a fat greasy Mario"). These older porn movies seemed to have
been made by people who cared about the quality of their product. They
tried to act, and shoot it interestingly, and would go out on
location, etc,etc. In all, they were more like any other film, just
with a lot more screwing. There is the occasional big budget porn film
today, or those Italian ones that go for a dash of CGI!, (really! how
can that improve porn!), but on the whole, these days, as I've said
before and will say again, every bored housewife with a camcorder and
Internet connection thinks she's a porn star, and every American
teenager dreams of directing and starring in a series like the seminal
and somewhat puerile "Bang Bus". Plus, with the DVD and Internet
revolution, porn can cater to much more specific fetishistic markets -
and on a whole has got 'weirder' and less user-friendly unless you're
into some pretty intense stuff, (which I'm not...). What's more, I
think most, (read: all) porn made within the last ten years is
extremely misogynistic and degrading to women - this wasn't always the
case. Now, every man yells, "take it bitch, take it...", whereas back
then women were actually allowed to say more often , "give it to me,
give it to me...." Fellatio has become an increasingly relied upon
position, whereas the performance of cunnilingus is at the end of a
steady decline. Gone are the days where Ron Jeremy would 'pleasure'
Christy Canyon for a 10 minute stretch - gone are the days where porn
scenes begin with a kiss as they sometimes did - now they mostly start
with a blow-job or two or three or four, or with one women surrounded
by 15 or so men all dangling their pathetic members in her face,
eagerly awaiting their turn. Another lamentable loss is the 'porn
star' - everyone anonymous man and woman with a penis or breast
enlargement gets their "15 minutes" of fame – but not a single one has
the charm or charisma of old school porn actors. And in truth, porn
"movies" aren't made anymore. A movie such as 1978's "Thoroughly
Amorous Amy" with the all-too-little-seen in other films Tracy O'Neil,
had a semblance of a plot and a happy-go-lucky air of free sex and
joyous arousal, now replaced by four hours of crudely strung together
sex scenes under somewhat-less-than-subtle titles such as "Anal Fist
Fucking Festival".
I haven't though, seen much gay porn – it isn't as widely circulated
here or as easy to get. Perhaps someone with knowledge of this area
can let me know if similar changes have occurred in that field. I
imagine so, but wouldn't mind knowing for certain.
Lord, where's a good Steubenvillian gal like Traci Lords when we need
`em!!!! Now would be a good time to help out if you're listening...
22362
From: Ruy Gardnier
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 11:27am
Subject: 10-best list cahiers du cinéma
Well, it's carnaval and I'm really busy taking the streets back, but just now I've received the february issue of Cahiers du Cinéma and their 10-best list is:
1. Tropical Malady by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
2. West of the Tracks by Wang Bing
S-21 by Rithy Panh
The Village by M. Night Shyamalan
5. Shara by Naomi Kawase
6. Kings and Queen by Arnaud Desplechin
The Brown Bunny by Vincent Gallo
Gerry by Gus Van Sant
9. Cafe Lumière by Hou Hsiao-hsien
Kill Bill volume 2 by Quentin Tarantino
Saraband by Ingmar Bergman
Now back to the streets.... and off till thursday
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
22363
From: Ruy Gardnier
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 11:32am
Subject: Re: 2004 11 Per CdC
No because the coup d'état happened on november, so they thought there was
really no point in voting for that year
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mathieu Ricordi"
To:
Sent: Saturday, February 05, 2005 6:42 PM
Subject: Re: [a_film_by] 2004 11 Per CdC
> > Well this is a surprise. I thought Cahiers du Cinema had
> given up doing year end lists. I couldn't find one for 2003,
> was there one?
>
> Mathieu Ricordi
>
22364
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 3:02pm
Subject: Re: Re: Film School Paranoia? (Was: Ambersons cans in Brazil)
--- Saul wrote:
>
> I haven't though, seen much gay porn – it isn't as
> widely circulated
> here or as easy to get. Perhaps someone with
> knowledge of this area
> can let me know if similar changes have occurred in
> that field. I
> imagine so, but wouldn't mind knowing for certain.
>
Yes in terms of a lack of artfulness. The 16mm films
of Wakefield Poole "Boys in the Sand," "Bijou" and
Jack Deveau "Drive" were real movies. Plenty of sex,
but not delivered in a regimented fashion. Current
videos are much less interesting -- especially as body
hair has become verboten. The major change, of course,
is AIDs, which has decimated the ranks. We're not
likely to see anyone like Joey Stefano again.
"The Fluffer" by Wash West and Richard Glatzer is a
very amusing demystification of the world of gay porn.
>
>
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
22365
From: Chris Fujiwara
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 3:31pm
Subject: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000" wrote:
>>
>> "You may defend this film on the grounds of mise-en-scene and
>> language but evidence exists to show that the director
collaborated
>> with that master of black operations Edward G. Lansdale
responsible
>> for the Diem regime in south Vietnam and the torture of innocent
>> civilians."
>
> Several years ago there was an article in the magazine "Viet Nam
> Generation" comparing Mankiewicz's film and Greene's novel and
> detailing all the reversals that Mankiewicz made. This is the
first
> that I've heard about Lansdale's possible involvement. What's the
> story behind that?
>
Although Mankiewicz and Lansdale were in communication before the
making of The Quiet American, the extent of Lansdale's influence on
the film has not been established to my knowledge.
I wrote a long article on the film called "A Kind of Insanity" for a
now-defunct journal called Hermenaut. Let me reproduce parts of it
that deal with Mankiewicz's government contacts and the political
significance of the differences between the film and the novel. The
pretext for this article is the publication of a (very strange) book
by William Russo called A Thinker's Damn: Audie Murphy, Vietnam, and
the Making of The Quiet American (N. Las Vegas, NV: Author22
Publishing, 1999).
The gist of my piece is that despite the changes that Mankiewicz made
to Greene's book, the film The Quiet American is too ambiguous to be
read as an affirmation of U.S. policy in Vietnam.
Has anybody done a good analysis of the differences between
Mankiewicz's Quiet American and Philip Noyce's? Most reviews of
Noyce's film mentioned the Mankiewicz film briefly; it was obvious
that no one had seen it.
Unfortunately, The Quiet American is even more resonant and pertinent
now than when I wrote this article (in spring 2000).
* * *
Graham Greene's 1955 novel The Quiet American is set in 1952,
when the French are still fighting the Vietminh in Indochina. The
book is narrated by Fowler, a cynical British journalist in Saigon.
The title character is an idealistic CIA agent who, under cover of an
economic-aid mission, provides plastic explosives to a guerrilla
leader. To the American, the guerrillas stand for the fabulous "third
force"–a nationalist movement neither pro-French or pro-Communist–he
believes is needed to build an independent Vietnam both internally
stable and friendly to the United States. Disgusted by the
guerrillas' terrorist attacks against civilians, and resentful of the
American for stealing his Vietnamese mistress, Phuong, Fowler helps a
Communist agent arrange an ambush in which the American is killed.
Fowler gets Phuong back, but his guilty conscience spoils his
victory, and he concludes his narrative: "How I wished there existed
someone to whom I could say that I was sorry."
At the end of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1958 film version of The
Quiet American, the American (Audie Murphy) turns out–through the
attestation of police commissioner Vigot (Claude Dauphin)–to have
been an idealist pure and simple, bringing plastic to Vietnam for
toys, not bombs. Greene himself led the attacks on the film for this
switch, condemning the film while it was still in production and
summing it up later as "a real piece of political dishonesty." Many
have assumed that Mankiewicz wished, or was forced, to placate the
U.S. government. But Mankiewicz said that no restrictions were placed
on his work and that he changed the plot only in order to dramatize
more sharply what he perceived as the story's main theme:
how "emotions can very often dictate political beliefs."
. . . .
Russo provides some new information on the background of the
film. To get permission to send American cast and crew members to
Vietnam, Robert Lantz (vice-president of Figaro, Mankiewicz's
production company) met with Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, who
helped clear the way for the trip. It seems incredible that Dulles
(brother of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles) would have given
his support without assurances that the film would toe the CIA/State
Department line on Vietnam.
One is all the more ready to believe that these assurances were
forthcoming after checking the chapter on The Quiet American in
Kenneth L. Geist's Pictures Will Talk: The Life and Films of Joseph
L. Mankiewicz. Geist offers evidence that the director may have been
either "brainwashed" or pressured by the American Friends of Vietnam,
a lobbying and public-opinion-manipulating group headed by former
chief of U.S. intelligence William Donovan–it included among its
members Senator John F. Kennedy–to slant the film in favor of Ngo
Dinh Diem, the U.S.-backed president of South Vietnam.
Moreover, Mankiewicz was in contact with Colonel Edward Lansdale,
then head of the CIA in Saigon, and the man widely, but probably
wrongly, assumed to have been Greene's inspiration for the title
character of his novel. In America's Longest War: The United States
and Vietnam, 1950-1975 (3rd edition, 1996), George C. Herring
writes: "Hollywood producers, with the support of the omnipresent
Lansdale and the American Friends of Vietnam, imaginatively
transformed Greene's virulently anti-American novel, The Quiet
American, into a passionately pro-American film starring war hero
Audie Murphy, a film, Lansdale told Diem, that 'would help win more
friends for you and Vietnam in many places in the world where it is
shown.'"
Herring's sources here are a letter from Lansdale to Mankiewicz
dated March 17, 1956–a date, which, if not in error, shows that the
two men were in touch even before Mankiewicz nailed the rights to
Greene's novel (late summer 1956, according to Russo)–and a letter
from Lansdale to Diem dated October 28, 1957. This was four days
after, according to Russo, the film was screened in Washington for
the Vietnamese ambassador and several State Department officials.
Russo indicates that at some point before the film's public preview
on Hallowe'en (in Stamford, Connecticut, "a more urban and
sophisticated city than most," he affirms), the film lost one minute,
going from 132 to 131 minutes. But he fails to indicate what was cut
and is frustratingly inexplicit on the key question: whether the
trimming took place after the Washington screening. (Incidentally,
the film got thumbs down in Stamford, went back for reediting, and
was finally released at 121 minutes.)
To anyone but a critic for Cahiers du cinéma, Mankiewicz's
exoneration of the American must have appeared, in 1958, sincerely
patriotic at best, cynical at worst. However, it's unlikely that the
film satisfied Lansdale, the American Friends of Vietnam, the Dulles
brothers, or Diem. The film leaves us doubtful about the American's
activities in Vietnam; as Geist asks: "Why should the Communists want
him assassinated, if his activities are truly innocent?" And if he
is "truly innocent" (and not just "innocent" in Greene's sense,
that "innocence is a kind of insanity"), he–and his country–look all
the more absurd and frightening. If indeed America's Number One war
hero has come to a poverty-stricken, revolution-torn country to help
make toy bugles, what does that say for U.S. humanitarianism and U.S.
policy?
The film never indicates that the American's vaunted third force
is anything more than a trumped-up abstraction. Mankiewicz's addition
of a direct reference to Diem (though not by name) may have been
taken as flattery, but it leaves us uneasy about the prospects for
democracy in Vietnam. The American says that he first heard about the
third force from "a very prominent Vietnamese living in exile" whom
he met while studying at Princeton (Diem's home base in the U.S. was
a Maryknoll seminary in Lakewood, New Jersey). "If all goes well,"
the American says, "if Vietnam becomes an independent republic with a
government freely chosen by its people, this man will be its leader."
(This speech sounds right for how CIA and State Department
powerbrokers talked about Vietnam, the Dominican Republic,
Nicaragua....) If the American's prescience in 1952 regarding a rise
to power that would not be consolidated until 1955 sounds sinister,
so does the phrase "if all goes well" (for whom and from whose point
of view?); most glaringly, there's the unacknowledged contradiction
between "a government freely chosen by its people" and the
foreigner's confidence about who is going to lead this government.
The American's sentiments seem to be confirmed by the film's
startling end title, which dedicates the film "to the people of the
Republic of Vietnam–to their chosen President and administrators."
But this title goes on over the devastating shot of the alienated,
despairing Fowler vanishing into the New Year crowd of Saigon at
night. The emotion of the shot swamps its possible function as a
metaphor for the fall of European colonialism and would keep us, even
if we didn't know Diem to have been a U.S. puppet whose heavy-handed
rule only worsened the Vietnam turmoil, from viewing the outcome
celebrated by the title with serenity. (A member of The Quiet
American production team is quoted in Russo's book as saying: "It
didn't take me long to realize that this country was no bastion of
democracy, as I had been led to believe. It was a fascist
dictatorship.")
Mankiewicz cuts some of Fowler's wilder shots at America, which
come so thick in the book as to make it seem at times like a Don
Rickles comic diatribe, and gives the American some sharp lines,
ensuring that the debate between the two heroes is more even than it
was in the novel. But the point of view that dominates the film is
still Fowler's, and it is vividly, snidely anti-American. He sneers
that the American offers "cellophane-wrapped security for the atomic
future." When, in response to Fowler's request for a cigarette, the
American tells him to keep the pack, Fowler snaps, "I asked for one
cigarette, not economic aid." Mankiewicz goes further than Greene in
locating the origin of the third force in American fantasy: "Qu'est-
ce que c'est 'third force'?" Phuong asks; Fowler replies
airily, "Fair play, man's best friend, Mom's apple pie."
Mankiewicz doesn't dilute Greene's anti-Americanism. Instead, he
replies to it. He has the American tell Fowler, "Your anti-
Americanisms are pretty worn-out too; some of them have become anti-
British by now." In a similar vein, Vigot remarks, "For my part I
dislike happy endings of the kind one finds in the older American
films–or the newer European ones." This apt challenge to the
intellectual and aesthetic prestige of European cinema is one of
several references to cinema in The Quiet American, most of them
added by Mankiewicz.
"I'm from a country that's been in existence for less than two
hundred years," the American says. "Fifty years ago we were barely
taken seriously as a nation, much less a great force for wisdom and
decision. But suddenly, now, a watch-tick of history later, the world
waits angrily for us to find answers it hasn't been able to provide
in fifty centuries." This sounds like something Audie Murphy might
have said at one of his public appearances, and, in fact, Murphy made
a related point during his moving and personal speech at the
dedication of the Alabama War Memorial at Montgomery, Alabama, in
July 1968. Noting "a disturbing attitude toward military service that
seems to be developing of late," Murphy said: "Somehow, perhaps
without intending it, perhaps because we have felt guilty about
waging war and have mistakenly looked to the abstraction 'Peace' as a
panacea for all our ills, we have more and more tended to view
military service as an unworthy occupation. But when has man ever
known Peace? A great American soldier and statesman [George Marshall,
U.S. Army chief of staff during World War II and propounder of the
Marshall Plan for postwar European reconstruction] once said, 'If man
ever does find the solution to world peace, it will be the most
revolutionary reversal of his record he has ever known.'" This view
of life as perpetual struggle is the other side of the optimism of
the sunny ideological adventurer of The Quiet American, or, perhaps,
that optimism middle-aged. Such considerations follow inevitably when
we superimpose–as Mankiewicz's film encourages us to do with its
numerous references to heroes, medals, and movies–the real-life Audie
Murphy over the character he plays.
. . . .
As Don Graham says in his excellent biography of Murphy, No Name on
the Bullet (Viking, 1989), if Mankiewicz's film "was a work far less
consolatory to American self-satisfaction" than Greene's complaints
might lead one to believe, "the reason, as much as anything, is Audie
Murphy.... In a very convincing manner he is a prototype of the
American innocence that led us into Vietnam.... He is the kind of CIA
operative who keeps winding up on network news and in congressional
hearings, an Ollie North type." Russo notes in A Thinker's Damn that
through Murphy's identification with roles as lawmen and officials in
Westerns, "he brought with him to each role the connotation that he
worked for the government.... In The Quiet American, he left the
feeling that he did represent the United States foreign policy of the
age, no matter what the Mankiewicz script said."
. . . .
22366
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 4:18pm
Subject: Million Dollar Baby
I was the last cinephile on earth to catch up with this film.
By the way, if you haven't seen the film and don't want to know
about certain plot elements and twists, READ NO FURTHER. But
everyone else has already seen it.
I wonder: Does the film take place during the 1980s? Or an
indeterminate time?
The disability complaints with the film are important to hear, and
I'm glad David posted the link to the article on the list. But I
have to say that Mike Grost's venomous grouping of Eastwood with
Gibson is entirely unfounded and unfair! Eastwood's directorial
work, in the final analysis, comes through as much more liberal than
Hollywood in general. And here is MILLION DOLLAR BABY, a
problematic film, that gets dismissed by people like Rush Limbaugh
for it's pro-euthanasia film. But as soon as Eastwood angers the
religious right, he's hit on the other side by being anti-
disability. I'm not claiming it's a wholly undeserved squeeze, but
I hate to see Eastwood so vilified--he is nowhere NEAR as bad as Mel
Gibson, and quite frankly he's done better at political filmmaking
than a lot of his colleagues. Gibson makes films and statements
where minorities are enemies, where institutions and traditions are
good. Overwhelmingly, Eastwood makes films where institutions and
traditions are undermined and questioned, and he constantly makes
films that touch upon the existence of Hollywood's ignored "others."
(This doesn't mean Eastwood didn't unwisely stack the deck when
depicting Maggie's family in MILLION DOLLAR BABY. A misstep and a
failed caricature, but it goes *against* the grain of Eastwood's
depictings of poor people, so I'm willing to take it in stride if
not condone it.)
This film IS pro-euthanasia, that is, it implicitly acknowledges an
ethical right for people to decide to die. This much is intentional
and obvious. That the film glosses over disability issues is not
so "intentional" and "obvious," but we have disability watchdog
groups whose job it is to alert us to these "glosses." I don't
believe the film is an "attack" on disability; it represents some
flaws of neglect of the issues that Eastwood would have done well to
better address in order to deepen the ethical (not to mention plot)
considerations of his film. So to me it looks like the pro-
disability groups have a point--but I wouldn't say they're
addressing the heart of the film, either.
In the end I'm convinced by the psychology of Maggie's wish to die
after living as a quadriplegic for a short while and not wanting it
anymore. That she apparently could have refused the ventilator
herself, and not asked Frankie for "help," makes MILLION DOLLAR BABY
unfortunately problematic, and not necessarily in a constructive
way. But I don't think the film endorses mercy killing as "the" way
for any and all new quadriplegics--hell, it simply DOESN'T say
this. But in its treatment of Maggie, this specific fictional
character, the film more or less requires us to accept this choice.
And because the treatment of this issue wasn't handled as well as it
could have been, it allows for the extrapolation of a lot of
unsavory things that I don't believe Eastwood was going for at all.
With BABY on top of MYSTIC RIVER, it's clear that Eastwood has moved
into a new phase in these final years of his directorial career.
(Perhaps they'll be the last two films of his life? I hope it isn't
so.) From UNFORGIVEN to BLOOD WORK he made his "aging body films,"
with the excellent and out-of-left-field MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF
GOOD AND EVIL included among them. This was the period in which I
came to know and understand Eastwood, and these last two films which
have brought him so much acclaim represent something new. They're
no longer about the body, about any bodies (much). They represent a
foray into a world of cliches and conventions, where Eastwood hopes
to rummage through them all and fashion something powerful out of
them. The viewer has to be comfortable with these cliches (and I
don't mean in a naive way) in order to accept the grain of the
film. I don't think he did well with MYSTIC RIVER, but he did a
whole lot better with MILLION DOLLAR BABY.
Still, beneathed the film's assured veneer (the mark of a veteran
filmmaker), it seems like the work of someone a little unsure about
elements, since Eastwood is *experimenting*. Not all the
experiments pay off, in the end. But I can't imagine any other
director doing this well with the same constituent parts. It's a
good, powerful film with some serious baggage.
The masterpiece remains WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART as far as I'm
concerned.
--Zach
22367
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 6:14pm
Subject: Re: Million Dollar Baby
Zach wrote:
> With BABY on top of MYSTIC RIVER, it's clear that Eastwood
>has moved
> into a new phase in these final years of his directorial career.
> (Perhaps they'll be the last two films of his life? I hope it isn't
> so.) From UNFORGIVEN to BLOOD WORK he made his
>"aging body films,"
> with the excellent and out-of-left-field MIDNIGHT IN THE
>GARDEN OF
> GOOD AND EVIL included among them. This was the period
>in which I
> came to know and understand Eastwood, and these last two
>films which
> have brought him so much acclaim represent something new.
>They're
> no longer about the body, about any bodies (much).
I think MILLION DOLLAR BABY is explicitly about the body.
Frankie sculpts Maggie into something beautiful, which he
(Eastwood) later destroys.
In the early scenes it's acknowledged that Maggie, who is only in
her 30's, is already too old to box -- even hers is a body that's
aged.
Then there's the Morgan Freeman character, whose blind left eye
is a reminder to us that he was once a "body" full of potential.
And I don't remember an Eastwood performance where the lines
of his face are quite as accentuated -- putting himself in a
hospital robe in BLOOD WORK wasn't nearly as effective as this.
> They represent a
> foray into a world of cliches and conventions, where Eastwood
>hopes
> to rummage through them all and fashion something powerful
>out of
> them.
You're only speaking of MYSTIC RIVER and MILLION DOLLAR
BABY, but isn't this true of his entire career? BIRD has many of
the tropes you find in biopics, while HIGH PLANES DRIFTER and
OUTLAW JOSEY WALES work on cliches he inherited from Don
Siegel. UNFORGIVEN, A PERFECT WORLD, and BRIDGES OF
MADISON COUNTY -- all masterpieces -- have heavier and more
obtrusive baggage than MILLION DOLLAR BABY. I don't think
there is anything that overwhelms the beauty of BABY the way
that the son & daughter subplot in BRIDGES threatens to ruin the
meatier and lovely Eastwood and Meryl Streep section.
A month ago, people were talking about MILLION DOLLAR BABY
for the right reasons. Now they're discussing all the wrong ones.
As a friend put it to me in email: [MDB] cares so deeply about
violence, about people taking care of each
other and not taking care of each other.
Gabe
22368
From: samfilms2003
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 6:23pm
Subject: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
WOW, thanks for such a thorough post on a subject of great
interest to me.
I have to confess now, I've never seen the Mankiewicz film
(maybe I should trade a Jim Thompson novel for a copy ;-)
no - I suspect Jim T may on some psychic levek be as
pertinent as Greene, who knows...)
Two short comments, one is that in some let's say "liberal" quarters
I suspect Diem was romanticised as being not "tainted" with pro-French
sympathy as opposed to Bao Dai for instance (but then again for Vietnamese
who were of the Catholic = French stance, how could that play ?)
Also, the Viet Minh were hardly sqeamish about assasinations, although
in 1958 (i.e. the film's not the novel's time) the southern movement was
I suppose in some sense 'ad hoc' - prior to the formal establishment of
the NLF.
Indeed I would consider the Delta to have been in a nearly "feudal" state
in the fifties what with Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, Saigon landlords etc.
As for the recent film, I've got nothing remotely profound to say about it,
except for a couple things; one is the strange sense Michael Caine was as much
"channeling" Graham Greene as playing Fowler. And I was impressed that
Do Thi Hai Yen as Phuong was able to flesh out a role that is so much a
cypher in the novel. Her change of expression at the dawning of reconcilliation
with Fowler at the conclusion is minor devastation.
-Sam
22369
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 6:51pm
Subject: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "samfilms2003" wrote:
>
>
> WOW, thanks for such a thorough post on a subject of great
> interest to me.
Thanks Chris for that really detailed mailing. I'd like to reply
to a few points you make. Certainly, the book is anti-American but
directed against American foreign policy rather than Americans
themselves. Remember Fowler realizing the error he made in
misinterpreting the character of an American journalist and seeing
how close he was to Pyle in that respect. Fowler does critique the
culture but he is genuinely agonized over what he has to do to stop
Alden Pyle. This leads to Graham Greene's key theme of guilt and
betrayal. Fowler does offer Pyle many chances in their last meeting
but Pyle blows it when he brushes aside the deaths of innocent
civilians as necessary for "democracy."
Also, the novel's anti-Americanism was later appreciated by Vietnam
veterans such as William Ehrhart, Philip Caputo, and David Willson
as well as journalists such as Michael Herr. I think it is rather
unfair to describe the book's criticism as being on the level of
a "Don Rickles comic diatribe. However, you should look at Michael
Redgrave's performance. Mankiewicz delibetely makes him look like a
snobbish, pompous public-school archetype of the worst aspects of
British culture. Since the director is not going to "blame the
French" as George W. does forty years later (since Claude Dauphin is
given moralistic lines ("Dey av made a bloody fool of you, Meestair
Fowlair"), how easy it is to undercut Fowler's anti-Americanism by
making Greene's creation a spiteful, jealous, middle-aged man. The
novel's French inspector is really glad that Pyle has died at the
beginning of the novel because of the damage he has caused. Chpater
one ends with Fowler explicitly recognizing that the "Company" is
really responsible for Pyle's death.
>
> IAs for the recent film, I've got nothing remotely profound to say
about it,
> except for a couple things; one is the strange sense Michael Caine
was as much
> "channeling" Graham Greene as playing Fowler.
>
> -Sam
I think Michael Caine mentions his meetings with Greene on the DVD
audio-commentary. He has obviously modelled his performance on the
author and conveys Fowler's deep sense of regret and guilt over what
he has done. However, the epilogue places Fowler in the tradition of
war journalists such as Peter Arnett who earned "grunt" respect by
always being in the front line with them, rather than Redgrave's
despicable figure who does not want to travel north to report on the
French losses in the film.
Tony Williams
22370
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 7:01pm
Subject: Re: Sights & Sounds (silent films, Brakhage, McLaren)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> JPC, I must admit now I'm really puzzled. You say you never
suggested
> McLaren as a preferable alternative to Brakhage
I'll be brief, because everybody except you and me seems to have
lost interest in this thread.
I must have expressed myself poorly. I find that the concept of an
artist being suggested as an "alternative" to another artist is
ludicrous, even meaningless, so I don't see how I could have
propounded it. All I said was that, given two sequences, one by
Brakhage, one by McLaren, using the same technique and looking very
similar, I enjoy the latter more because of the interaction between
the visuals and the music. I don't see how this can be read as
saying that McLaren is a preferable alternative to Brakhage.
I started the thread as a discussion of the relationship between
image and music/sound (or lack thereof) in abstract films. Somehow
it drifted into something I never intended: a discussion of the
respective merits of Brakhage and McLaren.
Re: McLaren's "cuteness": although there is a playfulness and
sense of fun (which I assume is what you meant by "cute")in some of
his films, you won't find a trace of it in others, such as "Pas de
deux", "Mosaic", "Lines", "Narcissus," or, fo that matter, the
aforementioned middle section of "Begone Dull Care."
>
> On the other hand my "slasher" comparison was only for me --
But you addressed it to me! However, I can't stay offended for
very long, at least concerning such matters, so I won't go into it
any more.
JPC
22371
From: samfilms2003
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 7:34pm
Subject: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
> Also, the novel's anti-Americanism was later appreciated by Vietnam
> veterans such as William Ehrhart, Philip Caputo, and David Willson
> as well as journalists such as Michael Herr.
And of course for Gloria Emerson it was the Bible on the subject.
I'd have been very curious to get her take on my Caine-channeling-Greene
theory. I suspect I'd have been subject to a tirade ;-)
Makes me miss her.....
-Sam
22372
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 7:35pm
Subject: Re: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
--- peckinpah20012000
wrote:
>
> Thanks Chris for that really detailed mailing.
My thanks as well. But I believe we should all
rememebr we're looking at this through lenses that
have been refracted by a considerable amount of
history. Greene was criticizing U.S. foreign policy as
a whole. He couldn't possibly have forseen this
turning into a decades-long war that not only
destroyed southeast asia but trnasformed American
culture in ways that we're still feeling today.
Mankiewicz as indeed influenced by numerous factors
and factiosn to alter Greene's book for the movies.
But he's far from a propagandist. Approaching this
material at all was risky in commercial terms.
Makiewicz was coming off of working for Goldwyn on
"Guys and Dolls" ( a really superb film for a number
of reasons). He followed the commercial debacle of
"The Quiet American" with "Suddenly Last Summer" --
incredibly risky material that produced a monster hit.
Noyce's film makes Pyle completewly unambiguous. He's
a monster. Brendan Fraser petulantly wiping the blood
off his trouser leg is an image I shall never forget.
Likewise it's nice to see confirmed in Chris' message
the role Kennedy played in dragging us kicking and
screaming into Vietnam. Oliver Stone's notion that he
would have been against the war is utter nonsense.
Likewise insulting is his having Costner call him "Our
shining prince" -- stealing Ossie Davis' oration at
Malcolm X's funeral.
But Stone has no shame.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
22373
From: Robert Keser
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 7:46pm
Subject: Nothing But a Man (was novelizations)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
> Just did an internet search for Jim Thompson's bibliography, and
> noticed that he wrote the novelization for Michael Roemer's
> remarkable 1964 film NOTHING BUT A MAN - only the novelization
> doesn't appear to have been published until 1970!
This is a surprise. I thought that the only fan left of Roemer's
shamefully unsung film was me! It seems that Ivan Dixon moved to
directing when his charisma and acting skill didn't lead to stardom,
and of course the excellent Abbey Lincoln is still a very original
and creative singer. Luckily, Roemer's film is still available on
DVD, though the presentation is pretty much bare-bones. Actually,
the film was very well-received in a course I taught last year,
especially for its frank depiction of class differences dividing
hero and heroine, and for the very moving resolution of their
problems.
--Robert Keser
22374
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 7:58pm
Subject: Re: Million Dollar Baby (spoilers, etc., you get it)
Gabe:
> I think MILLION DOLLAR BABY is explicitly about the body.
> Frankie sculpts Maggie into something beautiful, which he
> (Eastwood) later destroys.
>
> In the early scenes it's acknowledged that Maggie, who is only in
> her 30's, is already too old to box -- even hers is a body that's
> aged.
That's interesting, but I don't know that the film focuses on the
body as a physical thing so much. "The body" in abstract, sure, and
I'm glad you've pointed this out. But almost all these concerns of
the body are present on the screenplay level, whereas in
Eastwood's "aging body films" manifest themselves in the tone of the
acted scenes themselves. The moments and feelings that I think mark
the aging body films don't show up much in MDB--but one example I
would cite would be the moment Frankie kneels down by his bedside to
say his prayers (comically mangling the sign of the cross). The
slowness of Eastwood's movements, the way the camera lingers
Anyway, you're onto something important, Gabe. After a long period
of examining his own body and image, Eastwood has decided to examine
another's body (if not so much 'image'). The first third of the
film, which I thought was awkward and unsure of itself, mirrors
Maggie's own state; the middle part is powerful and hard-hitting
("knocking out" one before there's time to think!); the final third
is slow, elegiac, tragic. Quite an interesting possiblity. So I
still think that MYSTIC RIVER and MILLION DOLLAR BABY are something
quite apart from the (roughly) 1992-2002 era, but I'm buying your
interpretation of this one being about the body in an important way.
> And I don't remember an Eastwood performance where the lines
> of his face are quite as accentuated -- putting himself in a
> hospital robe in BLOOD WORK wasn't nearly as effective as this.
This part I'm not so convinced about. I'll have to go through and
watch the last couple of films in which he starred for this.
> You're only speaking of MYSTIC RIVER and MILLION DOLLAR
> BABY, but isn't this true of his entire career?
Yes, definitely, but in a different way, I would say. Eastwood, as
a director, lets all his cliches in previous films "breathe." He
lets them exhale, or he takes the air out of them himself, and they
take on a new life within his worldview. The last two films, which
aren't nearly so easygoing as usual in their pacing and progression,
which thrust the viewer into their cliche-heavy worlds, run the risk
of forcing a viewer to adapt quickly or reject the film altogether.
The cliches, conventions, and totems are being used to a different
effect. Eastwood's trying to take on a faster kind of filmmaking, a
more intense and narratively immediate one, while retaining
something of the iconic detachment that renders his cliches "tools"
rather than "crutches."
> A month ago, people were talking about MILLION DOLLAR BABY
> for the right reasons. Now they're discussing all the wrong ones.
> As a friend put it to me in email: [MDB] cares so deeply about
> violence, about people taking care of each
> other and not taking care of each other.
This is the price I've paid for seeing the film so late. Nobody
seems to want to talk about it for the "right" reasons at this
point! The controversies are enlightening though, and Eastwood is
one of a small number of Hollywood filmmakers to ever even engage
issues though, in a way that is not button-pushing topical--so the
issues he engages are worth talking about.
Now that I've seen the film and I've been reading reviews and
critiques of it, I'm curious to find out what some of the best are.
The most insightful I've seen thus far is our own Chris Fujiwara's.
Any others out there that good which I might have overlooked?
--Zach
22375
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 8:01pm
Subject: Re: Nothing But a Man (was novelizations)
Robert:
> This is a surprise. I thought that the only fan left of Roemer's
> shamefully unsung film was me! [...] Actually,
> the film was very well-received in a course I taught last year,
> especially for its frank depiction of class differences dividing
> hero and heroine, and for the very moving resolution of their
> problems.
You aren't alone. I too think NOTHING BUT A MAN is an excellent
film. Maybe it's being resurrected by film professors--Ed Guerrero
showed it to the advanced seminar I was taking in black diaspora
film, and it was one of the best-received ones there.
--Zach
22376
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 8:17pm
Subject: Re: Nothing But a Man (was novelizations)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Keser" wrote:
> the film was very well-received in a course I taught last year,
> especially for its frank depiction of class differences dividing
> hero and heroine, and for the very moving resolution of their
> problems.
>
No need to look further for reasons why the film disappeared, but
I'll add one: The only film course I ever took was taught by Roemer,
who was a strict believer in naturalism (bolstered by his reading of
Kracauer's OTHER book) and dead set against the New Wave. He was
wrong, but not stupidly so - he screened L'Atalante at one point as
an example of a film that did everything he had been teaching against
and got away with it. He was in tears at the end. But he was marching
to a different drummer than the cinema of his day. (Ironically, the
Cahiers loved Nothing But a Man.)
The film he made before Nothing But a Man, the documentary Cortile
Cascino, was financed by CBS, I believe, and never aired. Robert
Young co-directed, and later basically gave the film to his son and
daughter-in-law as a wedding present, so that they could go film a
lot of limp 30-yrs-later footage and intercut it with the searing
black-and-white images of Cortile Cascino, to make The Life and Death
of a Sicilian Family - a travesty that Mike disowned, I believe. As a
result, Cortile Cascino, a film where his eye and head and heart were
perfectly in synch, and one of the greatest of all American
documentaries, is harder to see than ever - or was the last time I
checked.
Let me hasten to add that I have nothing against Robert Young as a
director. I love Caught, which he directed from a great script by my
former teacher and friend Eddie Pomerantz, and I highly recommend it.
Interestingly enough, the origins of Caught - Eddie had writen a
James Cain-style novel set in his old neighborhood, and discovered
when he went back that it had become Black and Hispanic - recall the
actual plot of The Plot Against Harry, Michael Roemer's last feature,
which Jonathan Rosenbaum has strongly defended.
22377
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 8:18pm
Subject: Rivette Riddle
Which Rivette film is a remake of a Hitchcock? Not a "remake" - an
actual uncredited remake.
22378
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 8:34pm
Subject: Re: Rivette Riddle
"Le Coup de Berger" is a remake of "Mrs. Bixby and the
Colonel's Coat," an episode of "Alfred Hitchcock
Presents" that Hitch directed himself.
Audrey Meadows starred.
--- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> Which Rivette film is a remake of a Hitchcock? Not a
> "remake" - an
> actual uncredited remake.
>
>
>
>
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22379
From: Chris Fujiwara
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 8:45pm
Subject: re: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000"
wrote:
>
> Also, the novel's anti-Americanism was later appreciated by
Vietnam
> veterans such as William Ehrhart, Philip Caputo, and David Willson
> as well as journalists such as Michael Herr. I think it is rather
> unfair to describe the book's criticism as being on the level of
> a "Don Rickles comic diatribe.
The phrase was ill-chosen. Though I love Don Rickles!
>However, you should look at Michael
> Redgrave's performance. Mankiewicz delibetely makes him look like a
> snobbish, pompous public-school archetype of the worst aspects of
> British culture. Since the director is not going to "blame the
> French" as George W. does forty years later (since Claude Dauphin
is
> given moralistic lines ("Dey av made a bloody fool of you, Meestair
> Fowlair"), how easy it is to undercut Fowler's anti-Americanism by
> making Greene's creation a spiteful, jealous, middle-aged man. The
I'm not British, so it's likely I don't respond to some aspects of
the characterization of Fowler that might be obvious to others. But
Redgrave's performance strikes me as more nuanced than that. He and
Mankiewicz make it difficult to reject the character. One of the most
interesting aspects of the film is the battle that goes on throughout
between Redgrave and Murphy - in acting styles, ideologies, physical
appearance, everything - and I believe that, no matter what the
ostensible biases of the script (many of which are projected at the
last minute through Vigot, who is not necessarily reliable), the mise
en scene lets it be an even battle. Noyce's film loses this aspect -
and for that reason is less disturbing than it could have been, I
think.
22380
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 8:52pm
Subject: Re: re: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
--- Chris Fujiwara wrote:
One of the most
> interesting aspects of the film is the battle that
> goes on throughout
> between Redgrave and Murphy - in acting styles,
> ideologies, physical
> appearance, everything - and I believe that, no
> matter what the
> ostensible biases of the script (many of which are
> projected at the
> last minute through Vigot, who is not necessarily
> reliable), the mise
> en scene lets it be an even battle. Noyce's film
> loses this aspect -
> and for that reason is less disturbing than it could
> have been, I
> think.
>
The "even batle" represents just how far Mankiewicz
was willing to go. He had, after all, hired an
American war hero to play the part. Murphy's calm,
non-acting style suggests bresson, redgrave is by
contrast pure theater. Much of the character's
self-loathing could have come from Redgrave himself --
and directed at himself. Looking at a wretched version
of "Arkadin" I'd taped off TV years ago last night and
he's most amusing as the antiques dealer -- about as
far from the Redgrave of "Quiet American" and "Time
Without Pity" as you can get.
But to return to Noyce, I can't imagine anything MORE
disturbing to blinkered Americans than a film that
takes the gloves off (FINALLY!) about the CIA and its
murderous practices.
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22381
From: thebradstevens
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 9:04pm
Subject: Re: Rivette Riddle
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> Which Rivette film is a remake of a Hitchcock? Not a "remake" - an
> actual uncredited remake.
Ah, but in which film did Ben Stiller play the pseudonymous writer of
CAFE FLESH?
22382
From: Craig Keller
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 9:26pm
Subject: Re: Re: Million Dollar Baby (spoilers, etc., you get it)
On Sunday, February 6, 2005, at 02:58 PM, Zach Campbell wrote:
> This is the price I've paid for seeing the film so late. Nobody
> seems to want to talk about it for the "right" reasons at this
> point!
You're not alone -- I only just saw the film yesterday. I think the
controversy surrounding the film's final act is of no long-term
consequence, and for the time being should be understood primarily as
just another American embarrassment that the rest of the world can
follow, bemused.
One thing I wanted to ask others who've seen the picture -- What's the
address on the returned envelopes? I didn't catch it, but noticed
there were a few international-bound striped envelopes in the shoebox.
I was wondering if the plain envelopes shown in close-up hadn't been
addressed either to an American city with a major Irish enclave, or to
somewhere in Ireland / Northern Ireland itself. I ask, because I'm
intrigued by the unspoken circumstances of the fallout between Frankie
and his daughter, and their context in the only slightly sketched-out
details of his past. His ghostly return, in the last shot, to the
obscure sanctity and shelter of "Ira's Restaurant" (I.R.A.) only
complicates the matter of his personal history further.
I was also intrigued by Scrap's seemingly sole outlet aside from
training -- reading through copies of the D.C. Comic 'Mystic' -- a bit
of self-reflexivity suggesting a haven of solace for Freeman's
character amid a zone fraught with memory and history.
craig.
22383
From: Saul
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 10:57pm
Subject: Re: Film School Paranoia? (Was: Ambersons cans in Brazil)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein wrote:
> Current
> videos are much less interesting -- especially as body
> hair has become verboten.
I never understood that. Even at one of the major gay clubs here,
Stonewall, no hair seems to be the go - I always preferred Fassbinder
to Araki - but I could never work out when and where exactly such a
change become so encompassing.
22384
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 11:26pm
Subject: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
"But to return to Noyce, I can't imagine anything MORE
disturbing to blinkered Americans than a film that
takes the gloves off (FINALLY!) about the CIA and its
murderous practices."
I saw it at an art house in Santa Monica and the audience applauded
at the end, but here it was a case of preaching to the already
converted. Even so, I prefer Mankiewicz's version despite the
ideological ambiguities.
Also, wasn't the release of Noyce's film delayed in the wake of
9/11? I vaguely recall some controversy connected with the
distribution in the US.
Richard
22385
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 11:35pm
Subject: Re: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
--- Richard Modiano wrote:
>
> I saw it at an art house in Santa Monica and the
> audience applauded
> at the end, but here it was a case of preaching to
> the already
> converted. Even so, I prefer Mankiewicz's version
> despite the
> ideological ambiguities.
>
Is everyone familiar with Godard's CdC review of the
Mankiewicz? Georgia Moll was cast in "Contempt"
because of it. And there are other mise en
similarities with Mankiewicz in the film -- though
more from "The Barefoot Contessa" than "The Quiet
American."
> Also, wasn't the release of Noyce's film delayed in
> the wake of
> 9/11? I vaguely recall some controversy connected
> with the
> distribution in the US.
>
No. The Weinsteins just didn't like it. Pressure from
Caine, who rightfully declared he gave one of his best
performances in it, forced them to release the film.
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22386
From: Maxime Renaudin
Date: Sun Feb 6, 2005 11:59pm
Subject: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein >
Is everyone familiar with Godard's CdC review of the
> Mankiewicz?
The review by Godard ("Un athlète complet") is actually not so good.
(Let's say that's the way I read it.) I don't quite understand why,
with such a review, the film was #1 in his '58 list. The main idea
of the review is (to me): "In fact, A Quiet American is mostly
lacking in Cinema". Meaning mise-en-scene. "Everything is there:
remarkable actors, bright dialogue and finally no cinema." It seems
to me that both Rivette and Godard agree on the subject. There is
none behind the camera. If Mankiewicz was an "auteur", I guess it
was with the narrowest meaning of the word. And I don't see anything
remarkable in Redgrave's performance. Rather outrageous. The camera
doesn't think, but the dialogue is weeping of intelligence.
22387
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 0:17am
Subject: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- peckinpah20012000
> wrote:
>
>
> >
> >> Likewise it's nice to see confirmed in Chris' message
> the role Kennedy played in dragging us kicking and
> screaming into Vietnam. Oliver Stone's notion that he
> would have been against the war is utter nonsense.
> Likewise insulting is his having Costner call him "Our
> shining prince" -- stealing Ossie Davis' oration at
> Malcolm X's funeral.
>
> But Stone has no shame.
Thanks David.
This was the very same point I made in my "Oliver Stone: Less Than
Meets the Eye" analysis published in cineACTION 29 1992, which took
issue with Robin Wood's reading of BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY in #23
which held that Cruise's Kovic was going to use the Democratic Party
platform to speak against patriarchy.
Sometimes, history does matter but not in the way Stone interprets
it.
Tony Williams
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________
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22388
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 0:25am
Subject: Re: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
--- peckinpah20012000
wrote:
>
> Sometimes, history does matter but not in the way
> Stone interprets
> it.
>
Well the "Alexander" debacle may well put a crimp in
his sails. He's a very ignorant man, and incredibly
arrogant to boot. A winning combo.
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22389
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 0:28am
Subject: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> >
>
> Is everyone familiar with Godard's CdC review of the
> Mankiewicz? Georgia Moll was cast in "Contempt"
> because of it. And there are other mise en
> similarities with Mankiewicz in the film -- though
> more from "The Barefoot Contessa" than "The Quiet
> American."
>
Actually, according to Kevin Lewis, "The third force: Graham
Greene and Joseph L. Manckiewicz's THE QUIET AMERICAN, FILM HISTORY
10 (1998): 487, the director cast the inexperienced Giorgia Moll to
depict a sexy heroine despite the fact that she was not Asian.
Figaro's publicist and long-time M. friend suggested French-
Vietnamese actress France Nuyen who was rejected by the director in
favor of a German-Italian model who "potryays Phuongh as a poised
Filipino Miss Universe on a Bob Hope tour." (Lewis).
Another interesting article worth consulting is by Mariam Darce
Frenier, "Two QUIET AMERICANS: Turning British Literature into
American Propaganda," which appeared in VIETNAM GENERATION 1.1.
(1987): 81-93.
Tony Williams
>
> __________________________________________________
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22390
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 1:01am
Subject: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> >
>
> Well the "Alexander" debacle may well put a crimp in
> his sails. He's a very ignorant man, and incredibly
> arrogant to boot. A winning combo.
>
> Interestingly, POSITIF praised the film highly (Bourget in his
review calls it "magnificent"). But of course Stone is one of
Ciment's favorites (there's also an interview of Stone, by Ciment,
in the same issue).
While I'm at it, isn't it funny that Woody Allen's films now are
released in France months before the U.S.? "Melinda and Melinda" has
been playing in Paris since early January. Again, high praise in
POSITIF and an interview (I think it's the ninth or tenth Allen
interview published by the mag.) But of course the French passion
for Allen is equalled only by the sixties' craze for Jerry Lewis.
>
> __________________________________
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22391
From: Jason Guthartz
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 1:20am
Subject: Re: Sights & Sounds (silent films, Brakhage, McLaren)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
> But why deprive yourself of sound and go back to the conditions
> of silent filmmaking? It can be done (and has been done) as an
> experiment -- Kaurismaki's "Juha" is an interesting, even
> fascinating stunt (no dialogue at all, although there's a music
> score!)but little more.
Do you also consider films made since the 1950s which do not use
CinemaScope to be "stunts"? and what about contemporary films which do
not use color? don't use optical effects? don't use CGI? Are they all
"experiments" to you?
Just because new materials and tools become available or standardized
by an industry doesn't mean there's nothing left for individual
artists interested in exploring the aesthetic possibilities of film's
fundamentals.
Bruce McClure's works show entire new avenues to explore in this
regard; though he uses sound, his multi-projector works are most
notable for the new aesthetic possibilities they create for the
projected image(s). Indeed, from now on, I will call any film which
does NOT use more than one projector an "experimental stunt"!
-Jason G.
22392
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 2:07am
Subject: Re: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> > Interestingly, POSITIF praised the film highly
> (Bourget in his
> review calls it "magnificent"). But of course Stone
> is one of
> Ciment's favorites (there's also an interview of
> Stone, by Ciment,
> in the same issue).
>
I trust we can expect "Le Livre de Stone" presently.
> While I'm at it, isn't it funny that Woody
> Allen's films now are
> released in France months before the U.S.? "Melinda
> and Melinda" has
> been playing in Paris since early January. Again,
> high praise in
> POSITIF and an interview (I think it's the ninth or
> tenth Allen
> interview published by the mag.) But of course the
> French passion
> for Allen is equalled only by the sixties' craze for
> Jerry Lewis.
> >
And this year the Los Angeles Film Critics Association
honored Jerry with it's "Career Achievement" award.
Very much doubt there's one in the offing for the
Woodman, who has become "auteur non grata" of late.
He hasn't made anything worth sitting through since
"Bullets Over Broadway"
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22393
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 2:41am
Subject: Re: Sights & Sounds (silent films, Brakhage, McLaren)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jason Guthartz"
wrote:
>
> Do you also consider films made since the 1950s which do not use
> CinemaScope to be "stunts"? and what about contemporary films
which do
> not use color? don't use optical effects? don't use CGI? Are they
all
> "experiments" to you?
>
I can't really take this objection seriously. You just cannot
equate any new technical innovation (and there have been thousands
of them since the beginning of film) with the advent of sound, which
was absolutely momentous and divided the history of cinema between
before and after like nothing ever since has been able to do. I just
can't believe you're being serious in suggesting that CinemaScope or
color have changed movies the way sound did.
22394
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 2:55am
Subject: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
>
> Very much doubt there's one in the offing for the
> Woodman, who has become "auteur non grata" of late.
>
> He hasn't made anything worth sitting through since
> "Bullets Over Broadway"
>
But that's where the French disagree with you, David; they adore
every single new Allen film. That's the old story of American
critics being unable to recognize the genius of their own filmmakers.
Note that I enjoy referring to "the French" although being one
myself. It's the nice thing about sitting on a fence. I greatly
admired Allen myself once, and wrote quite a few glowing reviews (in
POSITIF) of his films, but I have become somewhat disenchanted and
can't comprehend how so many French critics still think every new
Allen film is, if not a masterpiece, at least something of rare
value. But then, this may have to do with auteurist's fetishistic
attachment to auteurs' late period -- a well-known syndrome on this
Group.
By the way, no French critic (I may be wrong of course, I don't
read them all) noticed that "Small Time Crooks" was a rip-off of the
wonderful "Larceny Inc." Did any American critics?
22395
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 3:12am
Subject: Re: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> By the way, no French critic (I may be wrong of
> course, I don't
> read them all) noticed that "Small Time Crooks" was
> a rip-off of the
> wonderful "Larceny Inc." Did any American critics?
>
>
>
>
No. Most American critics spoke of how weak it was --
and how it stole from "The Honeymooners" for its last
line. It was better than "Celebrity" and the well-nigh
unspeakable "The Hollywood Ending" but not by much.
Allen was never really a social satirist and his
personal obsessions were quite mundane. Looking back
on his career he coasted on the charm of Diane Keaton
(especially in "Manhattan Murder Mystery" which is
pure piffle without her) and Mia Farrow. Her turn in
"Broadway Danny Rose" (to my mind his best film) is
really amazing.
His dramas -- "Interiors," "Another Woman,"
"September" -- are uniformly awful.
Alexander Payne is so much sharper than Allen I don't
know where to begin. And I don't consider him to be a
major talent (as yet.)
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22396
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 4:28am
Subject: Re: Rivette Riddle
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> "Le Coup de Berger" is a remake of "Mrs. Bixby and the
> Colonel's Coat," an episode of "Alfred Hitchcock
> Presents" that Hitch directed himself.
>
Go, David!
Claude de Givray's review in CdC compared it (at length) to Beyond a
Reasonable Doubt (a property AH read and passed on), but it is indeed
a remake of one of AH's most stylistically uninflected shorts - a
kind of footnote to what The Brad calls the Dahl Trilogy (Lamb, Pool
and Poison). It's a rare opportunity to compare and contrast - the
Rivette couldn't be more different, stylistically, from the Hitchcock.
All this by way of recommending Their First Films, a DVD I got from
Cinefile which also includes Le chant de la styrene, Charlotte et son
Jules, Histoire d'eau AND L'amour existe, Pialat's prize-winning 1961
short about the banlieus and bidonvilles of Paris.
22397
From: Jason Guthartz
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 4:29am
Subject: Re: Sights & Sounds (silent films, Brakhage, McLaren)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
> I can't really take this objection seriously. You just cannot
> equate any new technical innovation (and there have been thousands
> of them since the beginning of film) with the advent of sound, which
> was absolutely momentous and divided the history of cinema between
> before and after like nothing ever since has been able to do.
I can't believe *you're* being serious in suggesting a single "history
of cinema" which pivots around a point when sound was widely adopted!
You're suggesting a "history" based on technology and its commercial
viability within a particular aesthetic tradition.
I'm not equating anything with anything else, nor am I setting up a
hierarchy by which films are deemed to be "stunts" or "non-stunts"
depending upon which technological elements they incorporate or the
currency of those elements.
You seem to be confusing the existence of synchronized sound with its
purposeful or artful usage. You notice the sound element in a
Brakhage film merely because of its absence. Meanwhile, how many
filmmakers of recent years use sound only because its there, because
that's what they're expected to use, but don't use it in any artful
way whatsoever, except in the standard way of synching dialogue to
mouth-movements and adding some pop tunes or orchestral swooning and
swelling in the most predictable ways? Sound usage in cinema exists
on multiple continuums, from silence to white noise, from
synched-with-image to aleatory, from independent accompaniment to
soundtrack-printed-on-film.
For those interested in film as art, in the aesthetics of
materials-put-into-forms, there can be no clear dividing line in its
history such as the one you would like to draw. Your focus on the
existence of sound as a technological option and explicit condemnation
of any filmmaker who merely refuses to utilize sound in particular
ways (i.e., at all) is baffling, but, more importantly, problematic.
My problem is when you and others purport to talk about "cinema" and
define its history in ways which ignore the contributions of important
artists to the realm of moving-visual poetics. You talk about *the*
history of cinema when in fact you're only talking about *a* history
of cinema, about that portion of cinema which involves characters
photographed walking and talking and interacting. You conflate a
particular tradition (let's call it "narrative") with the entire
history of the form, then express bewilderment when those who do not
work within the narrative tradition (whom you would call
"avant-garde") fail to adhere to the standard practices for narrative
tradition. It's the same type of
carelessness-verging-on-deliberate-hostility toward non-narrative
cinema as when Roger Ebert says, "Almost every movie ever made
observes the '180-degree rule'...."
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050107/ESSAYS/501070302
I don't care about anyone's tastes and distastes, but when one who
claims to be a cinephile discusses cinema in a public forum, there's a
diffference between expressing/explicating one's tastes and using
language which passive-aggressively obscures awareness and recognition
of non-mainstream practices to further a particular
philosophical-aesthetic agenda. The harmful consequences should be
obvious, and, fool that I am, I expect those in this forum (especially
the older folk) to know better.
-Jason
22398
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 4:33am
Subject: Re: Rivette Riddle
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
> >
> > Which Rivette film is a remake of a Hitchcock? Not a "remake" -
an
> > actual uncredited remake.
>
>
> Ah, but in which film did Ben Stiller play the pseudonymous writer
of
> CAFE FLESH?
Permanent Midnight. Is Stahl's name not on the film? Or is "Jerry
Stahl" a pseudonym for someone else?
22399
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 4:40am
Subject: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> Is everyone familiar with Godard's CdC review of the
> Mankiewicz?
Along with the reviews of Bitter Victory and Montparnasse 19, it
constitutes Godard's Mission Statement before making Breathless.
22400
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Feb 7, 2005 4:43am
Subject: Quiet American (WAS Re: Mankiewicz (was: Cahiers 1963))
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
isn't it funny that Woody Allen's films now are
> released in France months before the U.S.? "Melinda and Melinda"
has
> been playing in Paris since early January. Again, high praise in
> POSITIF and an interview (I think it's the ninth or tenth Allen
> interview published by the mag.) But of course the French passion
> for Allen is equalled only by the sixties' craze for Jerry Lewis.
When Jacky interviewed him in 1978 for CdC he started of: "They've
heard of me in France?!"
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