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23101
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 7:25pm
Subject: Secretary
> Strange that you don't recall that scene, Dan, because it's a
> long, dragged-out one and one of the most "extreme" and puzzling in
> the movie!
I remember the scene that Bill was talking about in his second post. But
I didn't remember a scene in which Maggie was "nailed to her desk" - I
presume that was a metaphor.
> For one thing, the happy ending, with its shift from kink to vanilla
> bliss, is a total copout, unless it's taken as being tongue-in-
> cheek and ironic.
I actually think that bliss was what the movie was working toward, even if
it wasn't always clear to me along the way. (I didn't think the lovers
had gone vanilla - I just presumed they were taking a break while Maggie
recovered.) What did you think the logical outcome was? - Dan
23102
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 7:44pm
Subject: Re: Re: Ordinary People vs. Raging Bull
> But again Dan, isn't La Motta all about the pulpy granduer ?
I've been skipping this because I felt as if I'd addressed it in an
earlier post:
"I can't find a way to relate to David's concept that the epic/romantic
stuff is La Motta's vision of the ring. (The actual psychology of being
in that kind of situation is actually more like a Straub film, or
something: everything is reduced, fragmentary, hyperlucid. But I guess
that's neither here nor there.) To imagine yourself larger than life, but
bathed in gore and lit semi-nightmarishly...? What it resembles for me is
the psychological cocktail that you find in some comics, pulp fiction,
video games: a fantasy of power fused with a projection of sadism."
To rephrase, in three parts: 1) Part of me is simply bothered that this
sort of thing could pass for a portrayal of boxing, and can't accept that
a boxer would feel that way; 2) important elements (film noir, slo-mo
gore) just don't feel subjective to me; 3) instead, they feel a lot like
objective, but perhaps faintly adolescent, psychosexual projections found
in other cultural artifacts.
Maybe I'm overreacting (as I imply in #1), so response is welcome. - Dan
23103
From: thebradstevens
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 7:50pm
Subject: Re: Ordinary People vs. Raging Bull
>
> To rephrase, in three parts: 1) Part of me is simply bothered that
this
> sort of thing could pass for a portrayal of boxing, and can't
accept that
> a boxer would feel that way; 2) important elements (film noir, slo-
mo
> gore) just don't feel subjective to me; 3) instead, they feel a lot
like
> objective, but perhaps faintly adolescent, psychosexual projections
found
> in other cultural artifacts.
>
But surely the boxing scenes are shot in a manner which suggests that
what we are being offered is a glimspe into hell. The scenes may
be 'exciting', but only in the sense that all great filmmaking is
exciting.
23104
From: Peter Henne
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 7:53pm
Subject: Re: Notre musique / Masculine Feminine / youth
"Tout Va Bien" is 1.66, and "Letter to Jane" is 1.33. I've seen both projected. In fact, New Yorker used to distribute a 16mm print of "Tout Va Bien" matted to retain the proper aspect ratio. "Letter to Jane" was shot and distributed on 16mm, and I don't believe there is any reason to think it should be matted.
In 1962 Godard asserted that 1.33 and Scope were the only two aspect ratios he valued. "1.66 is worthless," he said. "I don't like the intermediate ratios." ("Godard on Godard," Da Capo Press, 1986, section 93, p. 183.) He violated that principle with "Weekend," which is most certainly 1.66, but if memory serves correctly, "La Chinoise" beforehand is 1.66 as well. Could somebody help me out with that?
From "Passion" onward, evidently all of Godard's features may be viewed correctly in the 1.33 ratio. "1.33 is harder, more severe" he said in that same 1962 interview. "King Lear" was soft-matted, projected 1.85 in theatres but full frame on its Cinematheque Collection video release. You can see the reel markers at the end of each reel on the CC videotape; reel markers in modern feature films are placed in the extreme upper right corner, and you can't see them if the image is cropped down from 1.85 to TV size (which is a little smaller than 1.33). I've never seen "First Name: Carmen" projected, but on the full-frame Fox Lorber DVD you also see the reel markers at the end of each reel. I saw "For Ever Mozart" at the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles in 1.66, but to me the sense of composition looked better in a very slightly matted review tape that New Yorker sent me.
Peter Henne
Craig Keller wrote:
Speaking of Godard + OARs, I just picked up the 'Tout va bien' /
'Lettre ΰ Jane' disc from Criterion; haven't put it in yet but I'm
assuming the latter is 1.33, and the former (I know) is 1.66. I've
heard that this was the preferred ratio for 'La Chinoise,' 'Week-end,'
and 'Tout va bien' (most recently from Frodon), but I'm anxious to put
this in and see if it "looks" right, or whether regardless of any
"original theatrical release precedents," it should have been left
unmatted.
__________________________________________________
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23105
From: Matt Armstrong
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 8:04pm
Subject: Re: Secretary (Was: Expressionism )
> And at the end where she has stationed herself at the desk, not
even getting
> up to go to the bathroom, while her friends and family and a news
crew gather
> round, it simply can't be happening. But It's not followed through
consistently.
>
> My speculation was, how much is this kind of in-and-out "as the
character
> sees the world/himself"
I think you're right that the scenes which take place in the office
could be read as fantasy. Notice there's no discussion at any point
about sexual harassment or any kind of real-world consequence for
their behavior. One clue is that Spader's character keeps orchids.
The office feels like a hothouse for Maggie's delicate psyche.
There's an almost humid quality to the atmosphere. The lighting
seems deliberately artifical. It feels claustrophic, and the
dialogue often seems muffled.
I don't think the movie needs to be read only as fantasy however.
The ending is perfectly plausible within the conventions of
heterosexual masochism (to use a favorite term here.) In fact, the
point is to test Maggie's submission by "forcing" her to lose
control (ie. wet her pants.) Her humiliation in this context, and
Spader's willingness to push her that far, are the transcendent
moment they've been building towards. That her family and the press
clamor outside makes it nothing less than a coming out party.
My problem with the film is that it didn't go *far enough.* Since it
does straddle the fence between erotic fantasy and "masochists are
just like everyone else" appeal to liberal vanilla sensibilities, it
simply wasn't bold enough to do justice to the messiness of the
character's desires.
23106
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 8:07pm
Subject: Re: madlyangelicgirl (Was:: The CarnivalI wasn't think of it as a budding roman)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
I wasn't thinking of it as a budding romance - just a budding female member. If
she came in asking questions and exploiting us, it could have been just a
defense mechanism, after which she might have begin venturing ideas of her
own with increasing confidence - ideas that would have made our threads a
bit more variegated and lustrous.
I
23107
From: Matt Armstrong
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 8:46pm
Subject: masculine/feminin
Saw this in its new print last night, and it was a real treat, since
I'd only ever watched on video before. The highlight for me was the
(shocking) parody of Bergman, and Paul running up to the
projectionist to complain about the aspect ratio. I also really
enjoy the long takes. The scene where Paul attempts to ask Madeline
to marry him is a a wonderful, tense and funny sequence. The one
other ironic shock was hearing Paul invoke the Iraqi/Kurd war in his
opinion polling toward the end. This, if anything, makes the movie
current.
What I wonder about, and I know folks here will be able to lend
insight, is why the women in the film are all so apolitical. What
exactly is Godard's point here?
23108
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 9:10pm
Subject: Re: masculine/feminin
--- Matt Armstrong wrote:
>
> What I wonder about, and I know folks here will be
> able to lend
> insight, is why the women in the film are all so
> apolitical. What
> exactly is Godard's point here?
>
>
>
>
Not all of them. You're forgetting the blonde on the
subway train where Godard "samples" Leroi Jones'
"Dutchman."
Then there's the woman who shoots her husband in the
cafe. Definitely a political act in context.
And of course there's Brigitte Bardot reading the
speech from the Vauthier play for Antoine
Bourseillier.
Chantal Goya, Marlene Jobert and Catherine-Isabelle
Dupont embody a very specific youg woman -- the
"children of Coca-Cola" as opposed to Leaud and his
male friend being "the children of Marx."
Interestingly Chantal Goya went on to become a pop
singer specializing in children's songs. Marlene
Jobert later became a rather big star with "Rider in
the Rain." But after doing "Le Depart" with Leaud for
Skolimowski, Catherine-Isabelle Dupont never made
another film. And neither did the actor who played
Leaud's friend Robert.
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23109
From:
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 4:12pm
Subject: Re: Fantasy (was: Secretary)
Andrew Sarris has argued that films are so dream-like already, that
everything we see on the screen should be regarded as fantasy, not reality. Film is
probably the closest of all artforms to our nightly dreams.
People used to accept this idea - Hortense Powdermaker didn't title her book,
"Hollywood, the Dream Factory" for nothing. Consequently, I am a little
skeptical about assertions that if films are less than 100% realist, then we have
suddenly switched into the delusions or daydreams of one of the characters.
People used to WANT films to be fantastic. In "The Temptress" (Fred Niblo), Greta
Garbo shows up on a remote site in the Argentine pampas, carrying what looks
like 20 steamer trunks of Paris fashions.
Even films which are 'realistic" take great dramatic license. Just saw "Air
Force" (Howard Hawks). It is statistically unlikely that any routine plane
would just happen to visit many of the sites in the Pacific attacked on Dec 7.
People accept this because it makes for a revealing story. The cross section of
characters is also supposed to be broad.
I love to go to the movies to daydream. So does much of the cinema audience,
past, prsent and probably future. I think of what I see on screen as fantasy.
Mike Grost
23110
From:
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 4:15pm
Subject: Re: Re: Fuller and Space (Was:: Sam Fuller's Korean War Movies
In a message dated 05-02-18 12:49:39 EST, you write:
<< What are "Fuller's five cardinal points" ?
>
> thanks
>
> -Sam W
the shack, the police hq, the gang hq, the joint, the zone >>
I understand the first four - but what is the zone? (Guess: the joint is
night clubs and such-like?)
This was a terrific post. It looks like a sequel to Bill's Dwan article, in
Senses of Cinema, which focussed on Dwan and Space. Here is an analysis of
space in Fuller.
Mike Grost
23111
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 9:39pm
Subject: Re: Re: Secretary (Was: Expressionism )
> My problem with the film is that it didn't go *far enough.* Since it
> does straddle the fence between erotic fantasy and "masochists are
> just like everyone else" appeal to liberal vanilla sensibilities, it
> simply wasn't bold enough to do justice to the messiness of the
> character's desires.
My impression is that real-life S/M people are positively tiresome in
their insistance that the lifestyle is wholesome, healthy, consentual,
etc. SECRETARY winds up in much that head space, and so seems to me a
plausible S/M fantasy in statistical terms. Seems to me that movies tend
to favor fate-trips in which an obsessed couple carry their aberrant
desire to an extreme conclusion. Which, cliche or no, is a valid
aesthetic option...but probably not much of a reflection of real-life
sexuality. - Dan
23112
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 9:47pm
Subject: Re: masculine/feminin
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
> --- Matt Armstrong wrote:
>
>
> >
> > What I wonder about, and I know folks here will be
> > able to lend
> > insight, is
In La Chinoise and the Dziga-Vertov Group films women are very political. In
the post DV films made with Mieville, a woman is the voice of politics, whose
"cruel mothering" is always directed at a backward male. But Godard's women
were almost always bitches, starting w. Jean Seberg in Breathless. Cf. "The
T(h)errorized," my translation of Daney's article on the DV and post-DV films,
which is on Steve Erickson's web site - I'm told.
23113
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 9:51pm
Subject: Re: Fantasy (was: Secretary)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
I think of what I see on screen as fantasy.
Verty good points, Mike, re: Air Force or The Temptress. Fantasy is the
baseline - which is why a film like Belle de Jour is possible, although IMO
there is only one (rather long) sequence there where the boundary betweren
Severine's real and dream lives is indiscernable: the Duke. And that didn't
start out life as a mixture - it was supposed to be a real trick. But you would
admit to there being dream sequences in films - say, Tracy's in Father of the
Bride?
23114
From: Matt Armstrong
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 9:53pm
Subject: Re: Secretary (Was: Expressionism )
>
> My impression is that real-life S/M people are positively tiresome
in
> their insistance that the lifestyle is wholesome, healthy,
consentual,
Yes, some are. Since some folks have ended up in jail for practicing
consensual SM, this is a fairly understandable position. I don't
think emphasizing consent is a small point either. Rush Limbaugh
recently compared the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib to S&M, and
there was very little critical attention payed to this remark. Given
that kind of rhetoric, I think making the distinction is a political
necessity.
> etc. SECRETARY winds up in much that head space, and so seems to
me a
> plausible S/M fantasy in statistical terms. Seems to me that
movies tend
> to favor fate-trips in which an obsessed couple carry their
aberrant
> desire to an extreme conclusion. Which, cliche or no, is a valid
> aesthetic option...but probably not much of a reflection of real-
life
> sexuality. - Dan
I agree that most people don't carry their fantasies to an extreme
conclusion. But I'd argue that the lovers in "Secretary" don't
either. A better example would be either Polanski's "Bitter Moon"
or "Moonlight Whispers."
23115
From: Matt Armstrong
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 10:04pm
Subject: Re: masculine/feminin
> subway train where Godard "samples" Leroi Jones'
> "Dutchman."
This character is political, but she's racist, just as in "The
Dutchman." I guess I should have asked why the only female character
who speaks politics is portrayed in a negative light.
> And of course there's Brigitte Bardot reading the
> speech from the Vauthier play for Antoine
> Bourseillier.
Ironic, given Bardot's current political reputation as an
unapologetic racist.
>
> Chantal Goya, Marlene Jobert and Catherine-Isabelle
> Dupont embody a very specific youg woman -- the
> "children of Coca-Cola" as opposed to Leaud and his
> male friend being "the children of Marx."
So, the women are slaves to fashion and consumerism, while the men
are politically engaged? I realize that both men are shown to be
politically naive, even hypocritical, but it does stick out that all
of the young women are portrayed as apolitical.
23116
From: Yoel Meranda
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 10:06pm
Subject: Taste of Honey
Brian wrote: "Kind of like Taste for Honey -- Was Richardson gay?"
Anybody who likes this film?
I haven't seen it but it is Morrissey's (the lead singer of one of
my favorite bands, The Smiths) favorite film. He stole lines from
that film for at least six or seven of his songs. If anybody is
interested you can check the link below and search for "Taste of
Honey".
http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~moz/nicked.htm
yoel
23117
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 10:07pm
Subject: Re: Fuller and Space (Was:: Sam Fuller's Korean War Movies
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> In a message dated 05-02-18 12:49:39 EST, you write:
>
>
> I understand the first four - but what is the zone?
Thanks, Mike. "The Zone is the underworld of the city, the back alley, the
garbage dump, the refuge where zoos send unwanted beasts, the film of gas
chambers that is shown at the Nuremeberg Trials in Verboten, the corpses
that are the refuse of the Reich, being shoveled into ditches: everything that is
cast out so that the City can shine like a thousand diamonds. If Fuller's City
spawns a revolution in his last two films, it is a revolution made not by the
professionals -- terrorists or black militants -- who are in the pay of the Gang,
but by the people of the Zone, who finally find a way into the sun."
You don't have all five points in every film, but the variations are interesting to
follow, as with any archetype. For example, Michael in Street of No Return
has moved from living on a boat to living in a garbage-strewn alley, so the
Shack and the Zone have been merged at the beginning of that film. And
again, the extraordinary pan that links the "Smoking Mountain" in Madonna
and the Dragon to the shot of Manila harbor with its skyscrapers: linking the
City to the Zone, which is its hidden face.
You could also add a sixth point - the Eagle's Nest, but it only appears in two
films: the hubristic roof apartment in Underworld where the Gang has built a
swimming pool that poor children are invited to use and the wheel that Ryan
dies on in House of Bamboo: the Icarean polar opposite of the Zone.
23118
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 10:10pm
Subject: Re: Taste of Honey
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Yoel Meranda"
wrote:
>
> Brian wrote: "Kind of like Taste for Honey -- Was Richardson gay?"
>
> Anybody who likes this film?No, but for what it's worth I wouldn't mind
seeing Mademoiselle again.
23119
From: Craig Keller
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 10:13pm
Subject: Re: Re: masculine/feminin
On Friday, February 18, 2005, at 05:04 PM, Matt Armstrong wrote:
> So, the women are slaves to fashion and consumerism, while the men
> are politically engaged? I realize that both men are shown to be
> politically naive, even hypocritical, but it does stick out that all
> of the young women are portrayed as apolitical.
Sticks out, if the chinstrap on one's PC-radar-helmet is fastened too
tightly. Yes, the three women portrayed in this particular story are
slaves to fashion and consumerism, and the men are "politically
engaged." But so what? As you acknowledge, the men's political
"engagement" comes off as hardly anything more than rhetorical or
sloganeering, so it's a plague (in the most febrile sense) on both of
the titular houses. The most political -act- in the film is not any of
the graffiti'ing, it's Paul intervening on the projectionist, lecturing
him on ISO specifications for aspect ratio, and (we assume he's had
some measure of success), leaving.
"Engaged women" can be found prior to this film in leading roles in
'Une femme mariιe,' 'Pierrot le fou,' and 'Vivre sa vie.'
craig.
23120
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 10:13pm
Subject: Re: Peckinsexual (Was Peckinpah / Melville (male-male bonding)
> Haven't seen former. Who's gay in the latter? I remember Richard
> Conte as something of a ladykiller in that. Need to see it again
in
> one of my weekly noirathons.
>
> They are Fanto and Mingo, the two hoods employed by Richard
Conte, played by Earl Holliman and Lee Van Cleef.
Tony Williams
23121
From: Craig Keller
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 10:18pm
Subject: Erratum - Re: masculine/feminin
On Friday, February 18, 2005, at as hardly anything more than
rhetorical or
> sloganeering, so it's a plague (in the most febrile sense) on both of
> the titular houses
Got my sentence mixed up as is my wont -- that should read: "as hardly
anything more than rhetorical or sloganeering, and febrile in the most
ineffectual sense -- so it's a plague (in a most feeble sense) on both
of the titular houses."
cmk.
23122
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 10:18pm
Subject: Re: Taste of Honey
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Yoel Meranda"
wrote:
>
> Brian wrote: "Kind of like Taste for Honey -- Was Richardson gay?"
>
> Anybody who likes this film?
>
> I believe Richardson died of AIDS. The gay character in the film
played by Murray Melvin is more nurturing and sympathetic towards
Rita Tushingham's dilemma than her awful mother (played by Dora
Bryan) who returns in the end to give Melvin his marching orders.
Like several of the 60's British "kitchen sink" New Wave films,
this has become rather dated due to its manneristic stylistic
techniques. But it has been years since I've seen it and I may be
wrong.
Tony Williams
23123
From:
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 6:05pm
Subject: Re: Fantasy (was: Secretary)
Certainly agree that films are full of explicitly marked fanstasy and dream
sequences. Some of the greatest films are fantasies or dreams of one of the
characters: "Sherlock Jr" (Keaton), "Providence" (Resnais). Not to mention "The
Wizard of Oz" and a film structured much like it, "The Woman in the Window"
(Lang).
My "Secret Beyond the Door" (Fritz Lang) article tracks some dream sequences
in 40's Hollywood:
http://members.aol.com/MG4273/lang.htm#Secret
Much of the power of a film like "Air Force" (Howard Hawks) is that it offers
an idealized vision of what communion among a team might be like. The same is
true of "Rio Bravo". This vision is Hawks', not one of the character's. These
films are realistic in the sense they are not fantasy a la "Oz". But "Rio
Bravo" is not a sociologically realistic portrait of a typical sheriff's office
in 1880. Nor is "Air Force" a look at what real air force units are all like in
real life. They are Utopian visions of their director. Much of film seems to
function this way: they are fantasies designed to offer a vision.
Bunuel, Cocteau, Deren, Anger and their descendents among the creators of
music videos are a different case. They deliberately mix the real and the
fantastic, in creative ways. Just saw "Shock the Monkey" (Brian Grant, 1984) again.
What an astonishing piece of mise-en-scene! (No monkeys get shocked in the
film, by the way - this is NOT Salo!) People who miss music videos such as this or
"Poison Arrow" (Julien Temple) or "Black Cars" (Derek Burbidge) are missing
out on some of the great joy of the cinema.
Mike Grost
23124
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 11:16pm
Subject: Re: Secretary
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
> I remember the scene that Bill was talking about in his second
post. But
> I didn't remember a scene in which Maggie was "nailed to her
desk" - I
> presume that was a metaphor.
>
Definitely a metaphor. The nailing is of her own making and
consists of keeping her position no matter what -- a sign of total
obedience.
>
> I actually think that bliss was what the movie was working toward,
even if
> it wasn't always clear to me along the way. (I didn't think the
lovers
> had gone vanilla - I just presumed they were taking a break while
Maggie
> recovered.) What did you think the logical outcome was? - Dan
Hard to tell, because very little about the movie is "logical"
and the "logic" of the S/M relationship (any one) is evident only to
the masochist -- if that. You might consider logical that the two
should settle down into their S/M routine (which seems to have been
your interpretation, Dan) but that is undramatic and not suitable as
an ending (although the cyclical, repetitious nature of S/M rituals
would tend to make such an ending predictable, if not inevitable;
good exemples are the founding text, "Venus in Fur", and "La Femme
et le Pantin" -- both the novel and it's Sternberg film
version, "The Devil Is a Woman." ) Also logical at least in dramatic
terms would be an escalation leading to some kind of major crisis:
breakup, madness, violence, murder... This is the favorite kind of
outcome for movies dealing with such topics. But with SECRETARY,
which presents itself as a comedy of sorts, you couldn't have that.
I feel that the director had painted himself into a corner.
I also disliked the fact that the girl's masochism was presented
as a consequence of her mental instability -- as if a 'different"
sexual preference had to have a clinical explanation. Homosexuals
too used to be considered mentally sick not so long ago! The truth
is that most masochists are probably just as "sane" as you and I
(assuming of course that you and I are sane!) JPC
23125
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 11:29pm
Subject: Re: Secretary
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
The other thing that's tricky here is that the S&M relationship is between a) a
man and a woman but also b) a boss and an employee -- eg a class
relationship. Just as the s&M relationship in Night Porter was between a
former extermination camp guard and his former prisoner. In each case it's
supposed to be ok because they're really perverting the hierarchical
relationship handed them by society by enjoying it.
23126
From: Matt Armstrong
Date: Fri Feb 18, 2005 11:29pm
Subject: Re: masculine/feminin
> Sticks out, if the chinstrap on one's PC-radar-helmet is fastened
too
> tightly.
Funny I never got accused of being too PC until I joined this list.
Maybe I am being too hasty, but the woman I saw the film with
seconded my impression. It's too bad there aren't more women on the
list who might add to the discussion.
Since Godard's films are so carefully made and his politics so well-
considered, I was actually asking if site members knew of a specific
reason why he chose to make the women politically inarticulate. Bill
mentioned that all of Godard's women were "bitches" and a other
critics have accused him of sexism. So I was hoping to hear from
this list on the matter.
If this is giving folks deja vu of the discussions vis a vis class
in MDB, I apologize. But what would be the point of discussing
Godard without talking ideology? He's the most political filmmaker
alive.
23127
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 0:03am
Subject: Re: masculine/feminin
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Matt Armstrong"
wrote:
>
> > Sticks out, if the chinstrap on one's PC-radar-helmet is fastened
> too
> > tightly.
>
> Funny I never got accused of being too PC until I joined this list.
> Maybe I am being too hasty, but the woman I saw the film with
> seconded my impression. It's too bad there aren't more women on the
> list who might add to the discussion.
Amen. But one woman you andf I know, Matt, was dragged kicking and
screaming into joining and just lurks. O Mystery, thy name is Woman.
> Since Godard's films are so carefully made and his politics so well-
> considered, I was actually asking if site members knew of a specific
> reason why he chose to make the women politically inarticulate. Bill
> mentioned that all of Godard's women were "bitches"
Not "bitches," Matt -- bitches. You've seen Pierrot le fou - what would you call
Marianne: a strong woman character? She's a typical noir femme fatale, as is
Seberg in Breathless - or for that matter, Deneuve in Mississippi Mermaid. I
don't think this means that the New Wave was misogynist, but I was struck by
the repetitiveness of the character - particularly in Godard - when I was a
college sprout, a few years before women's lib.
That's not to say that Godard isn't dialectical - he doesn't fit into easy
categories, a la feminist film theory. In Charlotte et son Jules, where
Belmondo is pathetic and Charlotte is all-powerful, she barely speaks. She's
not a bitch, but she's also not exactly a dust rag, mute or not. And that's
Godard doing the talking for Jules. Belmondo tells Seberg that she's "infame"
as he dies; Brially says the same to Karina at the end of A Woman's a Woman,
and she corrects him: "Non, cheri - I am 'UNE femme.'"
The "cruel mothering" visited on the male after Godard is politicized is a
continuation of the sexual politics of the early films. I would even suggest that
mute Fonda/blabby Godard in the notorious Letter to Jane is an unconscious
repeat of Charlotte et son Jules.
23128
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 0:14am
Subject: Re: Re: Taste of Honey
--- peckinpah20012000
wrote:
I believe Richardson died of AIDS.
He most definitely did. Tony Richardson was bi. But in
the later years of his life he went predominantly gay.
The gay
> character in the film
> played by Murray Melvin is more nurturing and
> sympathetic towards
> Rita Tushingham's dilemma than her awful mother
> (played by Dora
> Bryan) who returns in the end to give Melvin his
> marching orders.
>
I saw "A Taste of Honey" on stage with Joan Plowright
and Angela Lansbury. The film is a bit more
problematic in that it goes towards a "Seventh Heaven"
style bittersweetness, whereas on stage it was a lot
more direct. Plus it was more brechtian in that there
was a jazz band on stage and the characters would
burst into music hall songs.
> Like several of the 60's British "kitchen sink" New
> Wave films,
> this has become rather dated due to its manneristic
> stylistic
> techniques. But it has been years since I've seen it
> and I may be
> wrong.
>
Yes, it's dated, as is "The Loneliness of the
Long-Distance Runner" -- especially after Lindsay
Anderson took the "kitchen sink" and treated it like a
Marcel Duchamp "readymade."
Richardson is definitely a "subject for further
research." I do love "Tom Jones" and "The Loved One."
"The Charge of the Light Brigade" is likewise
teriffic, and "Laughter in the Dark" isn't at all bad.
I'd very much like to see "The Sailor from Gibraltar"
and "Red and Blue" -- his mini-musical with Vanessa
Redgrave.
Can't say I care much for his later films, however.
__________________________________________________
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23129
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 0:36am
Subject: Re: Secretary
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
> The other thing that's tricky here is that the S&M relationship is
between a) a
> man and a woman but also b) a boss and an employee -- eg a class
> relationship. Just as the s&M relationship in Night Porter was
between a
> former extermination camp guard and his former prisoner. In each
case it's
> supposed to be ok because they're really perverting the
hierarchical
> relationship handed them by society by enjoying it.
For the record, I didn't "write" the above, Bill did. But I can't
disagree with his point, only with his "it's supposed to be OK" --
whether it's OK or not is beside the point. SM relationships by
definition are always perverting traditional structures and
hierarchies -- although they strive to create new ones of their own.
JPC
23130
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 1:56am
Subject: re: Masculine Feminine/youth
A curious sidelight on the topic of MASCULINE FEMININE as a capturing of
youth: Philippe Garrel often recounts that, as a teenager, he hated this
film, the first Godard he saw in the mid 60s, he and his friends dismissing
it as the account of an 'old man' looking down, from some detached position,
on then-conteporary youth. Eventually, it was seeing ALPHAVILLE that turned
Garrel into a Godard fan - and he has remained so ever since!
Adrian
23131
From: Craig Keller
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 1:17am
Subject: On the cinematic consumption --
-- actually, this great essay muses mostly on music and its
relationship to the anxiety of the New Culture Consumption in our temps
modernes, but the piece is broad enough that it also can apply, in my
estimation, to festival survey-summaries, Olaf Mφller's columns, DVD
and VHS consumption/swapping, film blogs, and our listserv. From
today's edition of Pitchfork Media --
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/columns/puritan-blister/05-02-18.shtml
craig.
23132
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 4:58am
Subject: Re: Re: Secretary (Was: Expressionism )
>> Seems to me that
> movies tend
>> to favor fate-trips in which an obsessed couple carry their
> aberrant
>> desire to an extreme conclusion. Which, cliche or no, is a valid
>> aesthetic option...but probably not much of a reflection of real-
> life
>> sexuality. - Dan
>
> I agree that most people don't carry their fantasies to an extreme
> conclusion. But I'd argue that the lovers in "Secretary" don't
> either. A better example would be either Polanski's "Bitter Moon"
> or "Moonlight Whispers."
We are saying the same thing: that SECRETARY doesn't treat S&M as a
behavior to be pushed further and further, and that MOONLIGHT WHISPERS
does. My point is that the further-and-further approach, so common in
movies, isn't necessarily truer or more penetrating than showing people
coming to some kind of equilibrium. And that further-and-further is
pretty rare in real life: we may like the aesthetic heft of it, but I
don't think it's a cop-out to take a different tack. - Dan
23133
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 5:11am
Subject: Re: Re: Secretary
> You might consider logical that the two
> should settle down into their S/M routine (which seems to have been
> your interpretation, Dan) but that is undramatic and not suitable as
> an ending
Really? The movie is basically a love story, and love stories often end
with the couple settling into their routine. The lovers have to struggle
through their own resistance to the situation before accepting each other
- not so different from Rock Hudson and Doris Day.
> I also disliked the fact that the girl's masochism was presented
> as a consequence of her mental instability -- as if a 'different"
> sexual preference had to have a clinical explanation. Homosexuals
> too used to be considered mentally sick not so long ago! The truth
> is that most masochists are probably just as "sane" as you and I
> (assuming of course that you and I are sane!) JPC
I imagine that the self-mutilation comes from the Mary Gaitskill short
story, though I don't know for sure. I dunno, I think you're cutting this
film less slack because of the S&M angle. Maggie is screwed up, she meets
a guy, she loses him and finds him again, she works through stuff, and she
leaves her problems behind. It's not necessarily profound, but it's not
an unusual narrative trajectory. - Dan
23134
From: jaketwilson
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 5:24am
Subject: Re: Harmony Korine
> I just watched "julien donkey-boy" (1999) for the first time and was
> really quite impressed by it. A lot of it didn't always work, sure,
> but as a whole -- even a fragmented one -- I found it to be
extremely
> satisfactory. I liked that Korine's seemingly demented aesthetic was
> never one of arbitrary choices; nothing about Korine's style, when
you
> look at the film as a whole, suggests that his sole intention was to
> induce what Hoberman cited in his review as cine-stupefaction.
> Instead, to me, the film felt incredibly organised -- scored like
> music -- all about rhythm, repetition, colours, texture (especially
> that of video) etc. Whatever Korine had to say about schizophrenia
or
> mental illness -- and I have a very strong feeling that was
ultimately
> nothing at all -- comes second to his near-musical arrangement of
the
> film's various parts. I don't know. The film did it for me.
I'm with you. A friend of mine's favorite word for films he likes
is "modern" which certainly applies to Korine (and to Van Sant, at
least in ELEPHANT and GERRY). I agree that both GUMMO and JULIEN are
carefully organised films, which only improve on repeat viewing. I
see them both as basically about childhood, and I love how the
apparent chaos of the style -- damaged, babbling, infantile -- gives
rise to images of sheer unrepressed happiness, Chloe Sevigny and
friends leaping round on the bed in GUMMO, for example. And Werner
Herzog in JULIAN is just so funny! Would make a great double bill
with FREDDY GOT FINGERED.
JTW
23135
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 5:39am
Subject: Re: Re: Ordinary People vs. Raging Bull
>> To rephrase, in three parts: 1) Part of me is simply bothered that
> this
>> sort of thing could pass for a portrayal of boxing, and can't
> accept that
>> a boxer would feel that way; 2) important elements (film noir, slo-
> mo
>> gore) just don't feel subjective to me; 3) instead, they feel a lot
> like
>> objective, but perhaps faintly adolescent, psychosexual projections
> found
>> in other cultural artifacts.
>
> But surely the boxing scenes are shot in a manner which suggests that
> what we are being offered is a glimspe into hell. The scenes may
> be 'exciting', but only in the sense that all great filmmaking is
> exciting.
Yeah, there's absolutely a hellish aspect to these scenes - that's what I
meant when I talked about the film noir and gore, and earlier about
sadism. But there are different ways of doing hell, and Scorsese's is a
big, epic, romantic hell. La Motta isn't debased: he's archetypal, he's
engaged in big combat, the world is bathed in his blood and sweat. - Dan
23136
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 7:13am
Subject: Re: Secretary
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
SM relationships by
> definition are always perverting traditional structures and
> hierarchies -- although they strive to create new ones of their
own.
> JPC
But some people would say that they are caused by and reflect,
perversely, the power relations of society - much as I argued ages
ago the kinky imagery in The General Line reflects perversely and
thereby reveals the madness of Stalinism.
23137
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 7:42am
Subject: Point of View in Paradise Lost (was: Expressionism)
We have veered into a discussion of content sadomasochism from
the question I originally raised, which was suggested by David's
argument that Raging Bull, shows the world and Jake as Jake sees it,
but leaves room for other perspectives. I wondered how much this
argument gets made these days, citing not only Secretary but the last
scenes of Ed Wood, a much more controlled film. And here we are back
in the muck, talking about Maggie getting spanked. Mike did reply,
very interestingly, that film is fantastic and dreamlike by nature,
so that it's a short and not always discernable step from the larger-
than-life fantasy of classic adventure films, say, to more overt
examples of fantasy within films, and that's where I'd like to pick
up.
I did some work on Milton's Paradise Lost ages ago where I was
surprised and pleased to learn after a year of overdosing on diet
pills and grass that every "sequence" in that great founding poem
is framed as being from a particular point of view. I ended up
arguing (drawing on my reading of Oudart) that the point-of-view
structure was the basis for the post-Renaissance world view - before
Milton the world would have been divided up into cosmic scenes having
objective existence, a la The Divine Comedy. In semiotic terms,
Milton created a secondary signifying system, writing his cosmos of
perspectives over the old cosmos of scenes, which became, depending
on the place they appear in the structure of the poem, subjects or
objects: what Blake called a "cloven fiction."
Basically what all this means to me is that film (no qualification),
like literature and painting after the Renaissance, depends on
perspectival structures, whose original purpose was realism. Las
Meninas is the best-known example of how the realistic image depends
on the inscription (that word again) of the slice of reality being
portrayed as the object in some subject's gaze a subject who is
represented metonymically by his traces within the slice of life (the
painter seen in the mirror).
So Mike, realism contains within it the seeds of perspectivism or
fantasy, and vice versa. A whole narrative film seen from a single
point of view The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Rear Window can be
either expressionist or realistic. Both are grounded in the same
point-of-view structure, as is the film image, which always inscribes
an absence (which can become a presence) on the other side of the
screen. Most narrative films are less radical, and involve multiple
perspectives. So in a sense what you're saying about the ribbon of
dreams is true, but it doesn't take into account that what you're
describing began (in Las Meninas, in Paradise Lost, in the films of
the Lumiere brothers) as realism.
The history of this is the history of narrative film. My question
was: When and how and how much has it become possible to say of a
given scene or scenes (like the premiere at the end of Ed
Wood): "That's just how the character sees things/himself it isn't
real/the filmmaker isn't endorsing it." Has modernism injected this
kind of slipperiness into the once seamless illusion of reality? How
often is this argument can this argument be made? The Aviator,
David has pointed out, is another example of this freewheeling
expressionist element in modern cinema, which he calls "mannerism."
It seems to me that whatever you call it, it's the key to Scorsese's
visual style, among other things.
23138
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 7:43am
Subject: Maggie Gets Spanked (was: Secretary)
We have veered into a discussion of content sadomasochism from
the question I originally raised, which was suggested by David's
argument that Raging Bull, shows the world and Jake as Jake sees it,
but leaves room for other perspectives. I wondered how much this
argument gets made these days, citing not only Secretary but the last
scenes of Ed Wood, a much more controlled film. And here we are back
in the muck, talking about Maggie getting spanked. Mike did reply,
very interestingly, that film is fantastic and dreamlike by nature,
so that it's a short and not always discernable step from the larger-
than-life fantasy of classic adventure films, say, to more overt
examples of fantasy within films, and that's where I'd like to pick
up.
I did some work on Milton's Paradise Lost ages ago where I was
surprised and pleased to learn after a year of overdosing on diet
pills and grass that every "sequence" in that great founding poem
is framed as being from a particular point of view. I ended up
arguing (drawing on my reading of Oudart) that the point-of-view
structure was the basis for the post-Renaissance world view - before
Milton the world would have been divided up into cosmic scenes having
objective existence, a la The Divine Comedy. In semiotic terms,
Milton created a secondary signifying system, writing his cosmos of
perspectives over the old cosmos of scenes, which became, depending
on the place they appear in the structure of the poem, subjects or
objects: what Blake called a "cloven fiction."
Basically what all this means to me is that film (no qualification),
like literature and painting after the Renaissance, depends on
perspectival structures, whose original purpose was realism. Las
Meninas is the best-known example of how the realistic image depends
on the inscription (that word again) of the slice of reality being
portrayed as the object in some subject's gaze a subject who is
represented metonymically by his traces within the slice of life (the
painter seen in the mirror).
So Mike, realism contains within it the seeds of perspectivism or
fantasy, and vice versa. A whole narrative film seen from a single
point of view The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Rear Window can be
either expressionist or realistic. Both are grounded in the same
point-of-view structure, as is the film image, which always inscribes
an absence (which can become a presence) on the other side of the
screen. Most narrative films are less radical, and involve multiple
perspectives. So in a sense what you're saying about the ribbon of
dreams is true, but it doesn't take into account that what you're
describing began (in Las Meninas, in Paradise Lost, in the films of
the Lumiere brothers) as realism.
The history of this is the history of narrative film. My question
was: When and how and how much has it become possible to say of a
given scene or scenes (like the premiere at the end of Ed
Wood): "That's just how the character sees things/himself it isn't
real/the filmmaker isn't endorsing it." Has modernism injected this
kind of slipperiness into the once seamless illusion of reality? How
often is this argument can this argument be made? The Aviator,
David has pointed out, is another example of this freewheeling
expressionist element in modern cinema, which he calls "mannerism."
It seems to me that whatever you call it, it's the key to Scorsese's
visual style, among other things.
23139
From: jaketwilson
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 8:47am
Subject: Point of view (was: Maggie Gets Spanked)
> Basically what all this means to me is that film (no
qualification),
> like literature and painting after the Renaissance, depends on
> perspectival structures, whose original purpose was realism. Las
> Meninas is the best-known example of how the realistic image
depends
> on the inscription (that word again) of the slice of reality being
> portrayed as the object in some subject's gaze a subject who is
> represented metonymically by his traces within the slice of life
(the
> painter seen in the mirror).
Fascinating. But does it really begin with the Renaissance? Just for
the sake of argument I was trying to think of unreliable or at least
highly individualistic narrators from earlier periods -- maybe
SATYRICON (the original) might fit the bill?
> So Mike, realism contains within it the seeds of perspectivism or
> fantasy, and vice versa. A whole narrative film seen from a single
> point of view The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Rear Window can be
> either expressionist or realistic. Both are grounded in the same
> point-of-view structure, as is the film image, which always
inscribes
> an absence (which can become a presence) on the other side of the
> screen.
This suggests that the "meaning" of film style often depends on
metaphorical equivalence between spatial perspective and mental
perspective. But that metaphor isn't always straightforward, right?
Obviously REAR WINDOW isn't from a single point of view in the
spatial sense, even discounting the moments when we're privy to plot
information that Jimmy Stewart's character isn't. Hitchcock seems
like the ideal paradigm case because he does work so much with point
of view, a movie like REAR WINDOW both depending on this metaphor --
viewing the world being equivalent to controlling or shaping it in
one's own image -- and undermining it.
I still wonder if there might be an alternate way of looking at film,
as an autonomous stream of images without reference to an "absent"
reverse-shot point of view -- as in the case of abstract images
created without cameras, maybe.
> The history of this is the history of narrative film. My question
> was: When and how and how much has it become possible to say of a
> given scene or scenes (like the premiere at the end of Ed
> Wood): "That's just how the character sees things/himself it
isn't
> real/the filmmaker isn't endorsing it." Has modernism injected this
> kind of slipperiness into the once seamless illusion of reality?
As suggested, I think it first has to be established that the
illusion was ever "seamless" to begin with. My memory of ED WOOD is
that throughout, some scenes are filmed highly expressionistically
(e.g. Lugosi's crack-up) and others in a more "neutral" style that
might be seen as referencing B-movies. Not sure how systematic this
is, or how to interpret it, particularly given the complication of
trying to relate Burton's style to that of the Ed Wood films
themselves.
JTW
23140
From: thebradstevens
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 11:24am
Subject: Re: Ordinary People vs. Raging Bull
> Yeah, there's absolutely a hellish aspect to these scenes - that's
what I
> meant when I talked about the film noir and gore, and earlier about
> sadism. But there are different ways of doing hell, and Scorsese's
is a
> big, epic, romantic hell. La Motta isn't debased: he's archetypal,
he's
> engaged in big combat, the world is bathed in his blood and sweat. -
Dan
But this is one of the most fascinating things about Scorsese: the
way he shows us how his characters perceive themselves (usually in
grandiose/romantic terms), and simultaneously presents a critique of
this viewpoint: TAXI DRIVER, GOODFELLAS, THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (where
the protagonist's perceptions are purely romantic), THE KING OF
COMEDY, CASINO. This is why I detested KUNDUN - because for the first
time, the central character's perception of himself is indulged.
Haven't seen THE AVIATOR yet.
23141
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 11:47am
Subject: Re: Peckinsexual (Was Peckinpah / Melville (male-male bonding)
> > They are Fanto and Mingo, the two hoods employed by Richard
> Conte, played by Earl Holliman and Lee Van Cleef.
Thanks - I'm off to look at it with fresh eyes. That makes it an even
more aberrant film than I thought! Joseph H Lewis is my hero.
23142
From: Matthew Clayfield
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 0:47pm
Subject: Donald Trump on "Citizen Kane"
http://www.errolmorris.com/content/aborted/projects_donald.html
From one of Errol Morris' aborted projects, "The Movie Movie."
"'The Movie Movie' . . . is based on the idea of taking Donald Trump,
Mikhail Gorbachev and others and putting them in the movies they most
admire. Isn't it possible that in an alternative universe Donald Trump
actually starred in 'Citizen Kane'?
23143
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 2:09pm
Subject: Re: Donald Trump on "Citizen Kane"
--- Matthew Clayfield
wrote:
Isn't it possible that in an alternative
> universe Donald Trump
> actually starred in 'Citizen Kane'?
>
>
>
>
Only if Joel Schumacher directed.
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23144
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 2:18pm
Subject: Raging Bull
> But this is one of the most fascinating things about Scorsese: the
> way he shows us how his characters perceive themselves (usually in
> grandiose/romantic terms), and simultaneously presents a critique of
> this viewpoint: TAXI DRIVER, GOODFELLAS, THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (where
> the protagonist's perceptions are purely romantic), THE KING OF
> COMEDY, CASINO.
Which is similar to what David was saying. As I mentioned, though, I have
trouble seeing the fight scenes as La Motta's vision of himself. They
seem more like a direct connection between Scorsese and the viewer, an
offering of intense physical sensation.
There's no doubt that a critique of La Motta is present in the film; and a
certain amount of sympathy is maintained as well, which I for one think is
a good thing. - Dan
23145
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 2:52pm
Subject: Re: Secretary (Was: Expressionism )
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> We are saying the same thing: that SECRETARY doesn't treat S&M as
a
> behavior to be pushed further and further,
SECRETARY's arc is definitely of the further-and-further type. It
starts mildly (almost no SM at all) and builds up to something quite
extreme. However it veers off in a completely different direction in
the conclusion, I assume in order to reassure the audience and send
them home happy and smiling. Of course the movie does not advocate
the SM behavior to be pushed further and further (it's not a
promotional effort, I don't think it's even intended to please the
SM subculture)but if the opening scene before the flashback can't be
called extreme, I don't know what can. JPC
and that MOONLIGHT WHISPERS
> does. My point is that the further-and-further approach, so
common in
> movies, isn't necessarily truer or more penetrating than showing
people
> coming to some kind of equilibrium. And that further-and-further
is
> pretty rare in real life: we may like the aesthetic heft of it,
but I
> don't think it's a cop-out to take a different tack. - Dan
I agree, except that in the case of SECRETARY, the ending makes
everything that preceded it meaningless, turns it all into a joke
(which of course you can argue it was in the first place). But
speaking in general I don't think that "they lived happily ever
after" is necessarily a cop-out. It all depends on the context. JPC
23146
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 3:50pm
Subject: Re: Point of View in Paradise Lost (was: Expressionism)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
And here we are back
> in the muck, talking about Maggie getting spanked.
It's not necessarily the muck, Bill.
I guess I missed your original post and caught the SECRETARY
discussion in mid-course.
I must confess I haven't read or thought about Milton in quite
some time. It's all a bit over my head but I'll try to address some
of your points and shut up about Maggie's spanking.
>
> Basically what all this means to me is that film (no
qualification),
> like literature and painting after the Renaissance, depends on
> perspectival structures, whose original purpose was realism.
Well, there is at least one qualification: abstract films painted
on the negative do not depend on perspectival structures. So the
question would be: are they not cinema, and if not what are they?
Las
> Meninas is the best-known example of how the realistic image
depends
> on the inscription (that word again) of the slice of reality being
> portrayed as the object in some subject's gaze a subject who is
> represented metonymically by his traces within the slice of life
(the
> painter seen in the mirror).
>
It depends on the subject's gaze, but does it depend on it's
inscription? How many paintings represent the painter portraying his
subject?
Let's study "Lady in the Lake".
>
> The history of this is the history of narrative film. My question
> was: When and how and how much has it become possible to say of a
> given scene or scenes (like the premiere at the end of Ed
> Wood): "That's just how the character sees things/himself it
isn't
> real/the filmmaker isn't endorsing it."
I don't think it's possible to say that -- ever. If the filmmaker
shows it, he's "endorsing" it. If it's on the screen it is "real" --
in the very special and limited sense that anything on the screen is
real (which dovetails with Mike's point)
Has modernism injected this
> kind of slipperiness into the once seamless illusion of reality?
Has the illusion ever been truly seamless, or did we merely allow
it to appear so? Everybody knows that the image on the screen is
only an illusion of reality. The train coming into La Ciota's
station never ran over anybody in the theatre.
How
> often is this argument can this argument be made? The Aviator,
> David has pointed out, is another example of this freewheeling
> expressionist element in modern cinema, which he
calls "mannerism."
> It seems to me that whatever you call it, it's the key to
Scorsese's
> visual style, among other things.
Can we say that scenes in The Aviator are only "the way the
character sees things/himself" as you put it? To me it makes much
more sense to say that it's the way the filmmaker sees things or
wants us to see them.
23147
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 4:13pm
Subject: Re: Re: Point of View in Paradise Lost (was: Expressionism)
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> I don't think it's possible to say that -- ever.
> If the filmmaker
> shows it, he's "endorsing" it. If it's on the screen
> it is "real" --
> in the very special and limited sense that anything
> on the screen is
> real (which dovetails with Mike's point)
>
>
Well I'm glad you put quotes are "endsoring" and
"real."
All manner of events happen in the course of a
narrative, and they're given different narrative and
thematic weight. I'm sure you're not arguing that
Hitchcock is "endosing" murdering women in shower
baths in "Psycho." More over while Norman Bates is
treated quite sympathetically in the course the film,
the endingshows that Hitchcock isn't about to let him
or us off the hook so easily. Yes he's sympathetic --
but he's also a psychopathic murderer.
>
>
> Can we say that scenes in The Aviator are only
> "the way the
> character sees things/himself" as you put it? To me
> it makes much
> more sense to say that it's the way the filmmaker
> sees things or
> wants us to see them.
>
>
But HOW does he want us to see them? Surely not to
simply endorse Hughes actions with no questions asked.
What fascinates me about the film is the fact that
when Hughes is with other people he can function quite
well -- by giving orders. When he's alone, he
threatens to break down completely. By the film's end
these two contrasting states have begun to merge as he
begins to veer towards full-time insanity.
As to his view of the world the scene where he freaks
out at the sight of the old man sweeping the floor is
telling. It's just an old man. Slow motion makes
hismovements appear ominous to Hughes. But we know
this slow-mo signals that it's Hughes' POV.Likewise
the men in business suits with white gloves who look
ominous to him as well. He hired them, but totally
forgot about it. There's even a line somewhere about
engaging people that he doesn't even know to work for
him.
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23148
From:
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 0:18pm
Subject: Re: Point of View in Paradise Lost (was: Expressionism)
Roman Polanski comes to mind as a major filmmaker, whose works often show not
"objective reality", but the world as seen by one person. Repulsion
frequently uses a distorted lens, as well as hallucinations, to take us into its
heroine's mind. Rosemary's Baby takes place in a terrifying surreal universe - the
strange distortions of the neighbors such as Ruth Gordon seen through the door
lens make them seem sinister. Even a relatively realistic film such as Tess
takes place almost entirely from the heroine's haunted point of view. The same
can be said of The Pianist.
Literary OT notes (can be skipped):
Didn't Michael Drayton often show us the world according to characters'
points of view, in historical poems like "Peirs Gaveston" and "England's Heroical
Epistles"? He is a favorite here. This was pre-Milton. And his friend
Shakepeare: Don't we often see the world from the POV of Richard III or Hamlet?
Think it was Archilochus who wrote "The fox knows many things, but the
hedgehog one great thing" (rolling up into a spiky ball to deter predators). Like
Sappho, Archilochus was a pre-classic Greek poet whose work is now reduced to
fragments. One can read all that survives in an evening (good translation in a
Penguin paperback).
Samuel R. Delany: He was eating at the next table in a Milwaukee pizza parlor
in 1972. I worked up my nerve and went over to meet him. He was very nice! In
response to his question, told him I was a mathematician. He said "I just
love you guys!" (Only person who has ever said this - people usually have some
put-down instead (:
My favorites are his two science fiction novellas in the Van Vogt tradition,
"The Ballad of Beta-2" and "Empire Star".
Patrick White: Read his short story collections, "The Burnt Ones" and "The
Cockatoos". Have never read any of his novels. He is talented, but perhaps not
my cup of tea.
Mike Grost
23149
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 6:23pm
Subject: Re: Point of View in Paradise Lost (was: Expressionism)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> Literary OT notes (can be skipped):
> Didn't Michael Drayton often show us the world according to
characters'
> points of view, in historical poems like "Peirs Gaveston"
and "England's Heroical
> Epistles"? He is a favorite here. This was pre-Milton. And his
friend
> Shakepeare: Don't we often see the world from the POV of Richard
III or Hamlet?
Yes. The perspectival structure of Paradise Lost didn't just spring
up from Milton's mind - he was cobbling together lots of things to
make it. There had been theatre - the Jacobean theatre, especially,
including the later Shakespeare - and of course Cervantes, who was
known in England. And painting. But his synthesis of many sources
into a whole new way of conceiving the world in Paradise Lost,
complete with a theodicy and the figure of Satan to make it work, is
an intellectual achievement comparable to Newton's. We are still
living in a Miltonic universe, just as we are still living in a
Newtonian universe, even if modern art and higher physics have
substantially revised both.
23150
From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 6:28pm
Subject: Re: Sam Fuller's Korean War Movies
hl666 asks:
> Ecriture vs. ideology anyone?
I think one of the things I apprciate most about Fuller
is that ecriture and ideology go toe-to-toe in his
movies -- like a fistfight right up there on screen. If
there is going to be a struggle, it is going to be a fair
one right out there in the open.
I think my lesser affection for Douglas Sirk stems from
the fact that I perceive his ecriture to be done more in
the margins of his films -- I feel that there has been an
attempt on Sirk's part to maintain a harmonious surface
whereas Fuller is a messier director: he allows ecriture
and ideology to clash in a controlled yet indiscriminate
way that is much more tactile and alive to me than Sirk's
approach (I know this is a generalization for there are
moments in Sirk that are very alive for me. On average,
however, Sirk's films supply far fewer of them per reel than
Fuller's do.). Part of the reason may be that Fuller was a
writer/director while Sirk did not write his own scripts.
David asks:
> BTW, did you spot James Dean? It was wone of his
earliest roles.
No, I didn't. Where was he (I am going to see the film again
when it platys at BAM, so hopefully I can spot him).
Other thoughts on E. vs I.:
Last night was cold in Brooklyn so husband and I decided
just to go up the street to see a movie. We saw "Constantine."
It was pretty bad, but with this new notion of ecriuture vs.
ideology running around in my head at least I had something to
do while sitting threre.
SPOILERS AHEAD: First off, the man who will help bring about
the entrance of Satan's son into our plane of existence is a
Mexican illegal alien who you see literally jump a fence to come
into the country. But even more interesting to me was my sense
that what was ecriture only a few years ago was now being used
in the service of ideology. It felt as if the culture producing
combine was just a few steps behind film artists, ready to absorb,
appropriate and transform whatever ecriture they produced.
Brian
23151
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 6:33pm
Subject: Re: Point of view (was: Maggie Gets Spanked)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson"
wrote:
But does it really begin with the Renaissance?
See my reply to Mike just before this.
> >
> This suggests that the "meaning" of film style often depends on
> metaphorical equivalence between spatial perspective and mental
> perspective.
Absolutely. It is a metaphor inscribed by metonymies (in exemplary
fashion, the mirrored image of the painter in Las Meninas).
But that metaphor isn't always straightforward, right?
> Obviously REAR WINDOW isn't from a single point of view in the
> spatial sense, even discounting the moments when we're privy to
plot
> information that Jimmy Stewart's character isn't. Hitchcock seems
> like the ideal paradigm case because he does work so much with
point
> of view, a movie like REAR WINDOW both depending on this metaphor --
> viewing the world being equivalent to controlling or shaping it in
> one's own image -- and undermining it.
The shot-revrse-shot style of course builds up the metaphor. We have
to see Stewart from Hitchcock's pov to "suture" the narrative.
Stewart's voyeurism is undermined in this way by how he is shown in
those shots, by the dialogue, and by that one moment when he's
asleep. There is also a whole play of distances using different
lenses to photograph the courtyard - and the action in the apartment.
>
> I still wonder if there might be an alternate way of looking at
film,
> as an autonomous stream of images without reference to an "absent"
> reverse-shot point of view -- as in the case of abstract images
> created without cameras, maybe.
JP has mentioned painted celluloid, but we don't have to go to that
extreme - there's also, for example, Pialat, in a film like L'enfance
nu, where the images are unsutured.
My memory of ED WOOD is
> that throughout, some scenes are filmed highly expressionistically
> (e.g. Lugosi's crack-up) and others in a more "neutral" style that
> might be seen as referencing B-movies. Not sure how systematic this
> is, or how to interpret it, particularly given the complication of
> trying to relate Burton's style to that of the Ed Wood films
> themselves.
Burton is always systematic, but as you say, he is working with
different kinds of images, and that makes possible the moments of
heightened subjectivity, I suppose. My thought is that modernism -
which he embodies - does systematically use different kinds of images
within which subjective images, not designated as such (no Vaseline
on the lens...) can occur without breaking the hypnotic flow of the
film. It seems to me that this is what David has been talking about,
and so has Mike, in a different way.
23152
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 6:39pm
Subject: Re: Point of View in Paradise Lost (was: Expressionism)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> > Basically what all this means to me is that film (no
> qualification),
> > like literature and painting after the Renaissance, depends on
> > perspectival structures, whose original purpose was realism.
>
>
> Well, there is at least one qualification: abstract films
painted
> on the negative do not depend on perspectival structures. So the
> question would be: are they not cinema, and if not what are they?
See my reply to Jake just before this.
>
> Las
> > Meninas is the best-known example of how the realistic image
> depends
> > on the inscription (that word again) of the slice of reality
being
> > portrayed as the object in some subject's gaze a subject who is
> > represented metonymically by his traces within the slice of life
> (the
> > painter seen in the mirror).
> >
>
> It depends on the subject's gaze, but does it depend on it's
> inscription? How many paintings represent the painter portraying
his
> subject?
Every singifier of perspective is a metonymy - effect representing
cause - of the painter's gaze. You don't need a muirror element to
show that.
>
> Let's study "Lady in the Lake".
I'll rent it!
>
> >
> > The history of this is the history of narrative film. My question
> > was: When and how and how much has it become possible to say of a
> > given scene or scenes (like the premiere at the end of Ed
> > Wood): "That's just how the character sees things/himself it
> isn't
> > real/the filmmaker isn't endorsing it."
>
>
>
> I don't think it's possible to say that -- ever. If the
filmmaker
> shows it, he's "endorsing" it. If it's on the screen it is "real" --
> in the very special and limited sense that anything on the screen
is
> real (which dovetails with Mike's point)
Endorsing it as real, not as good.
>
> Can we say that scenes in The Aviator are only "the way the
> character sees things/himself" as you put it? To me it makes much
> more sense to say that it's the way the filmmaker sees things or
> wants us to see them.
Beginning with Milton - sorry, but it's true - you don't have JUST
how the artist (or the Creator - Hitchcock got his God'-eye-view
shots from Milton) sees the world. There is always an array of
character perspectives - at least in narrative films on the H'wd
model. Another alternative approach to look at would be Eisenstein
and Vertov - predecessors in some ways of filmmakers like Brakhage.
But as Oudart's great study of Ivan shows, Lang (SME's first film was
a reedited Mabuse) returns with a vengeance there, so he may have
been there all along in another form.
23153
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 6:40pm
Subject: Re: Point of View in Paradise Lost (was: Expressionism)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
"...Basically what all this means to me is that film (no
qualification), like literature and painting after the Renaissance,
depends on perspectival structures, whose original purpose was
realism...
"...realism contains within it the seeds of perspectivism or
fantasy, and vice versa...
"...The history of this is the history of narrative film. My question
was: When and how and how much has it become possible to say of a
given scene or scenes (like the premiere at the end of Ed
Wood): 'That's just how the character sees things/himself it
isn't
real/the filmmaker isn't endorsing it.' Has modernism injected this
kind of slipperiness into the once seamless illusion of reality?"
What constitutes realism has changed since the Renaissance. The
history of realism is the history of its redefinitions. Keeping just
to cinema for now, a certain type of technology (synchronized sound,
or color cinematography) might be considered "realistic" at a certain
moment. But after repeated viewings of such modes, the "realistic
effect" wanes. Then different kinds of technology (stereo sound,
cgi) or narratve strategies (real-time representation) emerge and
appear more real until they in turn are exhausted. This is to say
that there is no inherently realistic form that hits maximum
verisimilitude. Rather, the realistic effect is wholly dependent on
viewers' perception habits as well as on cultural, institutional, and
social constraints, not to mention the great ambiguities of what is
meant by realism which is what your question is getting at as I
understand it.
Take a look at Roman Jakobson's essay "On Realism in Art" where he
uses examples from painting and literature to demonstrate the
relativity of the concept of realism. He looks at types of realism
that emphasize the creator's notion of reality to ones that emphasize
the perceiver, movements that attempted to deform artistic norms to
approximate reality and claims for poetic constructions as realism.
Jakobson also stressed the importance of distinguishing the various
meanings of realism in order to avoid confusion.
Richard
23154
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 6:44pm
Subject: Ecritire vs. ideology (Was: Sam Fuller's Korean War Movies)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Charles Dauth"
wrote:
> hl666 asks:
>
> I think my lesser affection for Douglas Sirk stems from
> the fact that I perceive his ecriture to be done more in
> the margins of his films -- I feel that there has been an
> attempt on Sirk's part to maintain a harmonious surface
> whereas Fuller is a messier director: he allows ecriture
> and ideology to clash in a controlled yet indiscriminate
> way that is much more tactile and alive to me than Sirk's
> approach ...Part of the reason may be that Fuller was a
> writer/director while Sirk did not write his own scripts.
Have you seen Shockproof? Fuller script, Sirk direction. Fuller was
angry because a certain shot he had written didn't get made, but I
was able to tell him, based on Sirk's CdC interview, that Sirk fought
to have it in but wasn't allowed to do it. Sam said that made him
feel a lot better about Sirk.
as if the culture-producing
> combine was just a few steps behind film artists, ready to absorb,
> appropriate and transform whatever ecriture they produced.
That is completely the case.
23155
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 6:50pm
Subject: Re: Point of View in Paradise Lost (was: Expressionism)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
The
> history of realism is the history of its redefinitions
I was replying in my post to Mike, has has a burr under his saddle
about what he calls realism, but "the realism effect" is what I was
talking about. Expressionism is arguably just another way of
producing the effect. As Bunuel said - and he was very interested in
Expressionism - neo-realism leaves out too much of reality. You need
to include dreams, fantasies, the unconscious. Belle de Jour is a
prototype for the kind of filmmaking I have brought up for discussion
here, where a varied "ontological palette" is used: Raging Bull,
Secretary, Ed Wood.
23156
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 7:16pm
Subject: Re: Re: Sam Fuller's Korean War Movies
--- Brian Charles Dauth
wrote:
>
> David asks:
>
> > BTW, did you spot James Dean? It was wone of his
> earliest roles.
>
> No, I didn't. Where was he (I am going to see the
> film again
> when it platys at BAM, so hopefully I can spot him).
>
It's been awhile since I've seen the film so I'm not
entirely certain. This was one of the small movie
parts that a producer named Rogers Brackett, who was
keeping Dean at the time, got for him.
Your points about Fuller's and Sirk's styles are very
well taken. Consequently I hope you et a chance to see
Sirk's "Shockproof," a melodrama with a script by
Fuller.
The painter Ricjard hamilton did a number of very
interesting art works based on "Shockproof" thatI
mention in my "Desert Fury" article.
Obviously they're very differentfilmmakers and
Fuller's full-frontal attack on the status quo is at
odds with Sirk's excedingly gentle subversion of it.
Yet in some ways they compliment one another.
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23157
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 7:57pm
Subject: Re: Point of View in Paradise Lost (was: Expressionism)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> >
> > I don't think it's possible to say that -- ever.
> > If the filmmaker
> > shows it, he's "endorsing" it. If it's on the screen
> > it is "real" --
> > in the very special and limited sense that anything
> > on the screen is
> > real (which dovetails with Mike's point)
> >
> >
>
> Well I'm glad you put quotes are "endsoring" and
> "real."
>
> All manner of events happen in the course of a
> narrative, and they're given different narrative and
> thematic weight. I'm sure you're not arguing that
> Hitchcock is "endosing" murdering women in shower
> baths in "Psycho." More over while Norman Bates is
> treated quite sympathetically in the course the film,
> the endingshows that Hitchcock isn't about to let him
> or us off the hook so easily. Yes he's sympathetic --
> but he's also a psychopathic murderer.
>
> You completely misunderstood me. I was not talking about
morally endorsing anything. I was talking about the filmmaker's
saying (implying): What I am showing you IS, because I am showing it
to you. (it "is" in realistic terms or in fantasy terms, or
dreamlike terms or whatever; but it's there).
>
> >
> >
> > Can we say that scenes in The Aviator are only
> > "the way the
> > character sees things/himself" as you put it? To me
> > it makes much
> > more sense to say that it's the way the filmmaker
> > sees things or
> > wants us to see them.
> >
> >
> But HOW does he want us to see them? Surely not to
> simply endorse Hughes actions with no questions asked.
>
Again, I did not use "endorse" in the sense you give it. see
above.
> What fascinates me about the film is the fact that
> when Hughes is with other people he can function quite
> well -- by giving orders. When he's alone, he
> threatens to break down completely.
He sometimes threatens to break down even when he is giving
orders: see the "Show mw all the blueprints" riff.
.
>
.
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
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> Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
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23158
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 8:17pm
Subject: Re: Point of View in Paradise Lost (was: Expressionism)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
> wrote:
> >
> > It depends on the subject's gaze, but does it depend on it's
> > inscription? How many paintings represent the painter portraying
> his
> > subject?
>
> Every singifier of perspective is a metonymy - effect representing
> cause - of the painter's gaze. You don't need a muirror element to
> show that.
> >
Do you mean that before perspective there was no painter's gaze?
>
> Beginning with Milton - sorry, but it's true - you don't have JUST
> how the artist (or the Creator - Hitchcock got his God'-eye-view
> shots from Milton) sees the world. There is always an array of
> character perspectives - at least in narrative films on the H'wd
> model. Another alternative approach to look at would be Eisenstein
> and Vertov - predecessors in some ways of filmmakers like
Brakhage.
> But as Oudart's great study of Ivan shows, Lang (SME's first film
was
> a reedited Mabuse) returns with a vengeance there, so he may have
> been there all along in another form.
Sure. There are any numbers of character perspectives. But
characters are a product of the artist's imagination, so
their "point of view" is whatever POV the artist imparts upon them.
That's all I was saying. Am I being simplistic? Should I brush up my
Oudart? (I can hear David chiming in: "Start brushing him now! --
And the critics you will wow.") JPC
23159
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 8:19pm
Subject: Re: Re: Point of View in Paradise Lost (was: Expressionism)
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> He sometimes threatens to break down even when he
> is giving
> orders: see the "Show mw all the blueprints" riff.
>
>
> .
>
Oh yes. There are a few scattered little blips of this
sort of thing earlier on but by the film's last part
he's stuffing his hands in his mouth to try to get
himself to stop.
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23160
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 0:10am
Subject: The Birds (Was: Point of View in Paradise Lost)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
> Do you mean that before perspective there was no painter's gaze?
Of course painters looked before, and their paintings were of what
they saw, but monocular perspective shapes everything in the painting
as a function of a specific gaze at a specific point in space: that's
what monocular means. In many Oriental schools or in medieval western
painting, even when the they are arranged more freely on the canvas -
no single gaze is implied.
There are any numbers of character perspectives. But
> characters are a product of the artist's imagination, so
> their "point of view" is whatever POV the artist imparts upon them.
Correct. The various male characters who see Melanie en route to
Mitch are all surrogates for Hitchcock - like runners to whom a baton
is being passed - until the guy at the dock watches her motorboat
off, after which she is being seen only by Hitchcock, in strict
alternation with her point of view. Those character perspectives mask
the director's gaze.
This substitution is the symbolic exchange that is acted out on a
narrative level in plots about what Oudart calls the castrated
metteur-en-scene: Karina looks imploringly with tears in her eyes at
Godard after she drops the egg, but then Brially is substituted for
Godard in the reverse shot, becoming after the fact the recipient of
her gaze and her disarray.
When that is about to happen as she approaches the dock at the end of
the back-and-forth trip on the lake - when she and Mitch have their
first champ-contrechamp since she started her prank (she
was "seeing/unseen" when he used the binoculars) - the gull swoops
down and pecks her on the head. We could proifitably brood over that
for quite a while. All credit to Bellour's former self for his
analysis of the sequence in 1969.
23161
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 0:13am
Subject: Point of view in Paradise Lost (erratum)
JPC: You mean that before the Renaissance there was no painter's gaze?
Of course painters looked before, and their paintings were of what
they saw, but monocular perspective shapes everything in the painting
as a function of a specific gaze at a specific point in space: that's
what monocular means. In many Oriental schools or in medieval western
painting, even when the people and objects are painted so that we
recognize them (one meaning of "realism"), they are arranged more
freely on the canvas - no single gaze is implied.
The mouse ate part of that part of my previous post.
23162
From:
Date: Sat Feb 19, 2005 7:52pm
Subject: Re: For Chicagoans - NY Filmmaker Bruce McClure in Person tonight...
In a message dated 05-02-04 12:11:49 EST, you write:
<< Highlighting the program is Bruce McClure's newest work, Christmas Tree
Stand - Part 1 (2004 approx. 20 mins.), a stunning new two-projector performance
which utilizes a black screen. Two projectors each fitted with a perforated
metal plate (punched with 3/16" diameter 1/4" diameter hole), flicker loops.
>>
Saw this at Media City, the avant-garde film festival in Windsor, Ontario,
Canada. This flicker or strobe film is more a special effect than a movie. But
it is quite a special effect!
Prediction: This will be absorbed by Hollywood real soon. Multiplex fare like
"Spiderman 3" and "Son of Lord of the Rings" will soon have multiple
projector special effects like these. Instead of being seen by 50 people at a small
theater at Media City, everyone you know will have taken their kids to it.
Burger King will give out strobe glasses with their Whoppers. Hopefully, Mr.
McClure will get some money for this - instead of being plagiarized and ripped off
by Hollywood studio execs.
As a work of art, should mention the abstract film "Zwerk", by Bart Vegter of
the Netherlands. This consists of abstract patterns of colored light, a bit
like Jim Davis or Brakhage's "The Text of Light". Would like to see more of
Vegter's films. Needed: a good DVD.
Mike Grost
23163
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 0:57am
Subject: Re: The Birds (Was: Point of View in Paradise Lost)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
>>
> There are any numbers of character perspectives. But
> > characters are a product of the artist's imagination, so
> > their "point of view" is whatever POV the artist imparts upon
them.
>
> Correct. The various male characters who see Melanie en route to
> Mitch are all surrogates for Hitchcock - like runners to whom a
baton
> is being passed - until the guy at the dock watches her motorboat
> off, after which she is being seen only by Hitchcock, in strict
> alternation with her point of view. Those character perspectives
mask
> the director's gaze.
Again I feel a little dumb, but is there really a difference
between the way she is "seen" by your so-called "surrogates" of AH,
and the way she is "seen" "only by Hitchcock" because there are no
more "surrogates"? She is "seen" by us, the viewers, through
AH's "gaze" whether there are surrogates or not. And I would dumbly
argue that the director's gaze is never "masked" or, to put it
another way, it is always "masked" but we all know that it is, so
that it is an open secret.
>
> This substitution is the symbolic exchange that is acted out on a
> narrative level in plots about what Oudart calls the castrated
> metteur-en-scene: Karina looks imploringly with tears in her eyes
at
> Godard after she drops the egg, but then Brially is substituted
for
> Godard in the reverse shot, becoming after the fact the recipient
of
> her gaze and her disarray.
>
> When that is about to happen as she approaches the dock at the end
of
> the back-and-forth trip on the lake - when she and Mitch have
their
> first champ-contrechamp since she started her prank (she
> was "seeing/unseen" when he used the binoculars) - the gull swoops
> down and pecks her on the head. We could proifitably brood over
that
> for quite a while.
The gull is obviously a Hitchcock surrogate. Unable to accept his
castrated state any longer, the castrated metteur en scene resorts
to sadism -- the gull's beak a metaphor/metonymy for his debased
phallus, now triumphantly drawing blood from the helpless object of
desire. And later it builds up, of course (as in "Secretary"?)
Hundreds of birds bent upon destroying the object of desire, because
desired objects cannot be possessed, so must be destroyed instead.
I rest my case.
JPC
23164
From: jaketwilson
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 5:24am
Subject: Modernism, fantasy, comedy (was: point of view)
> Yes. The perspectival structure of Paradise Lost didn't just spring
> up from Milton's mind - he was cobbling together lots of things to
> make it. There had been theatre - the Jacobean theatre, especially,
> including the later Shakespeare - and of course Cervantes, who was
> known in England. And painting. But his synthesis of many sources
> into a whole new way of conceiving the world in Paradise Lost,
> complete with a theodicy and the figure of Satan to make it work,
is
> an intellectual achievement comparable to Newton's. We are still
> living in a Miltonic universe, just as we are still living in a
> Newtonian universe, even if modern art and higher physics have
> substantially revised both.
If Milton=Newton maybe Joyce=Einstein? What we get in ULYSSES,
specifically the Nighttown chapter, is a shift into fantasy which
can't be fully accounted for as an expression of any character's
point of view, or even that of the author, as if the imagination had
taken on an unstoppable logic of its own. Part of what I think of
as "modernism" involves movies and other narrative forms where the
initial semblance of a cohesive fictional world starts to fall apart -
say MARIENBAD or DEMONLOVER or many of Raul Ruiz's films, which
almost seem to parody notions of subjectivity and "character" as
commonly understood.
In other words there are films where the distinction
between "fantasy" and "reality" matters, and those where it doesn't.
In THE TENANT it's a legitimate question whether the protagonist is
nuts or the victim of a conspiracy or both, but I wouldn't waste
energy pondering how much of EYES WIDE SHUT takes place in Tom
Cruise's head. A question raised by this discussion: what's the
relation between "fantasy" in the sense it's been talked about in
Scorsese, or the modernism of a Resnais or Kubrick, and genre
filmmakers of the "fantastic" such as Tim Burton or Polanski or a
less-known figure like Harry Kumel? I'd put Spielberg in this latter
group too, despite or because of his investment in "realism" in the
sense of manufacturing a superficially seamless fictional universe,
however fantasticated.
An interesting mixing of modes occurs in BRAZIL, which has explicit
fantasy sequences but also absurdist moments that jut out from the
narrative, and where the whole nightmare totalitarian scenario could
easily be interpreted as a projection of the hero's psyche (e.g. his
conflict with his mother). Hence while at the end we're told he's
lost contact with "reality" this reality is so problematically
defined that the moment when he slips into madness is identifiable
only in retrospect, if at all. On the other hand part of the point of
BARON MUNCHAUSEN is the argument over whether the Baron's adventures
are mere subjective fantasies - according to him they literally
happened, and there's something in the diorama-like staging of scenes
like the trip to the Moon that recalls Bill's reference to the pre-
Renaissance tendency to picture events as "objective cosmic scenes".
Ditto TIME BANDITS, which could have Dante in the background
somewhere...
Getting back to Burton it's interesting that ED WOOD is followed by
the all-star narrative freakout of MARS ATTACKS! which adamantly
refuses any stablising "central character" perspective whatsoever.
Burton is a comic filmmaker as much as anything else, and another way
of addressing these issues would be to think about comedy, which
is "expressionist" insofar as it presents worlds which we recognise
as exaggerated and distorted, but which depends (always, I'd say) on
NOT fully sharing the perspective of a character. Sometimes this
means we visually enter the character's world but this is clearly
marked as an absurd fantasy - say, Chaplin thinking his friend is a
chicken (a scene referenced by Polanski more than once). Or we see
literally what they see, but don't share their fantasy, or fluctuate
as in SHALLOW HAL.
JTW
23165
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 2:07pm
Subject: Re: Modernism, fantasy, comedy (was: point of view)
--- jaketwilson wrote:
On the other hand
> part of the point of
> BARON MUNCHAUSEN is the argument over whether the
> Baron's adventures
> are mere subjective fantasies - according to him
> they literally
> happened, and there's something in the diorama-like
> staging of scenes
> like the trip to the Moon that recalls Bill's
> reference to the pre-
> Renaissance tendency to picture events as "objective
> cosmic scenes".
> Ditto TIME BANDITS, which could have Dante in the
> background
> somewhere...
>
Excellent points re Gilliam. Interesting enough
MUNCHAUSEN has one "realistically" grounded
character, Sally Salt(the very young Sarah Polley in
what I believe may be her motion picture debut). No
matter what context she's thrust into in the course of
the film its her view of events that matters most in
the long run. And this view has less to do with
distinguishing of what's "real" as it does an
engagement with what "matters." Consequently her
greatest enemy is Death itself.
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23166
From: Raymond P.
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 3:57pm
Subject: Re: Asian name order (was: He shoots, he scores)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- samadams@e... wrote:
>
> > most writers seem to treat Apichatpong Weerasethakul
> > as if his name
> > were written in Western fashion, an article in the
> > most recent Film
> > Comment second-references him as "Apichatpong" on
> > several occasions.
> > (I thought his friends call him Joe.) Seems like the
> > whole issue is
> > likely to be lost in transliteration.
> >
>
> At a recent screening of "Tropical malady" here in
> L.A., Marcus Hu introduced me to him saying "David --
> this is Joe."
Actually, his nickname is really something that sounds like "Joei"
(there are no Anglofied pronounciation for this sound), not Joe. But
since non-Thai people will have a difficult time pronouncing even
that (no, it does NOT sound like "Joey" !), he just simplified it to
Joe. I personally call him Pi Joei (or brother Joei), which is what
his friends call him too.
23167
From: Raymond P.
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 3:59pm
Subject: Re: Three Extremes [Was: He shoots, he scores (ess-ee)]
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> By the way, Dumplings, the good but not great Fruit Chan that
Joseph
> K and I both rented at Cinefile, is really part of Three Extremes,
a
> pan-Asiatic horror trilogy directed by Fruit Chan, Park Chen-Wook
> (the recent Cannes winner) and Takashi Miike, (presumably) all
shot
> by Christopher Doyle. Anyone see all of it? The other segments,
per
> the imdb, are called Cut and Box.
Incorrect. Chris only shot the DUMPLINGS segment, not the other two.
He also shot the previous THREE's HK segment, GOING HOME.
Raymond
23168
From: Raymond P.
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 4:02pm
Subject: Re: Public Toilet
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> I've stopped worrying about Fruit Chan. Just before the good but
> conventional Dumplings he made this jaw-dropping visionary epic,
> filmed on video in Pusan, Hong Kong, Beijing, along the Great
Wall,
> in Rome and in New York, filled with signs and wonders beyond
> Hollywood's dim imaginings.
While I won't call it "epic", I also think PUBLIC TOILET is vastly
underrated. It was in my Top Ten the year it came out. Incredibly
energetic, insightful, multicultural and strangely moving...despite
its focus on, well, public toilets. I am also underwhelmed by
DUMPLINGS, and I hope this isn't the start of his commercialisation.
23170
From: Raymond P.
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 4:05pm
Subject: Re: Los Muertos
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Zach Campbell"
wrote:
>
> Just got back from Lisandro Alonso's extraordinary (I think) LOS
> MUERTOS. Hopefully other New Yorker a_film_by-ers are catching it
> today or tomorrow, and that everyone else gets the chance to see
it
> if they haven't already. No doubt I've harped on this subject
here
> before, but until someone gives me some affirmation or proves I'm
> crazy ...
>
> With each film I see by one of "them" I am more and more convinced
> that we are in the midst of a postnational cinematic art movement,
> conscious of the globe but played out in the sticks--Alonso,
> Guiraudie, Apichatpong, Odoul (at least DEEP BREATH; haven't seen
> ERRANCE), Reygadas, and maybe (I can only say by reputation and a
> few affirming words of criticism) Lucrecia Martel. Maybe more
that
> I don't know yet. In LOS MUERTOS we have motifs that pop up again
> and again in this weird Renewed Wave: long, slow, dialogue-light
> (or -free) scenes; the wilderness (especially thick wooded areas;
a
> few shots in LOS MUERTOS are practically shared with BLISSFULLY
> YOURS and TROPICAL MALADY!); the butchering of animals for food
(LA
> LIBERTAD, DEEP BREATH); loose communities of people extended all
> over a thinly-populated space; and an insertion of modernist (or
> postmodernist?) poetry and mythos in the formal and structural
> elements--see the mid-film credits in BLISSFULLY YOURS, the weird
> dream-logic of NO REST FOR THE BRAVE, the amazing camera movements
> that close JAPON (and open LOS MUERTOS), the music that
accompanies
> the credits of both Alonso films, and the numerous innovations in
> the second half of TROPICAL MALADY (which may be the most amazing
> sequence of 'narrative' cinema from the past five years). No one
of
> these films exactly embodies the movement, but the similarities
> between them all seem to comprise this exhilirating web of formal
> and thematic concerns. These films are plunging us (or at least
me)
> into new, richly textured, profound mysteries.
>
> --Zach
I previously mentioned this film as one of the best of 2004 (at the
time, no one responded). I'm glad people are finally able to see
this absolutely controlled, assured and wonderful film. Now for more
people seeing another fantastic geature, THIS CHARMING GIRL....
23171
From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 5:16pm
Subject: Deux
I just saw Werner Schroeter's extraordinary "Deux" yesterday and I've
been able to think of very little else since. Completely overwhelming
and unlike any film I've ever seen. I did my usual lazy ass online
research this morning and could find very little that has been
written about the film, aside from a typically idiotic and nauseating
Michael Atkinson review. Does anyone know if CdC or Positif wrote
about "Deux" or if there is anything out there worth tracking down on
this film?
23172
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 5:31pm
Subject: Re: Deux
Could you write some more about it here? I'm a
longtime Schroeter fan and I was frankly disappointed
in it.
--- joe_mcelhaney wrote:
>
> I just saw Werner Schroeter's extraordinary "Deux"
> yesterday and I've
> been able to think of very little else since.
> Completely overwhelming
> and unlike any film I've ever seen. I did my usual
> lazy ass online
> research this morning and could find very little
> that has been
> written about the film, aside from a typically
> idiotic and nauseating
> Michael Atkinson review. Does anyone know if CdC or
> Positif wrote
> about "Deux" or if there is anything out there worth
> tracking down on
> this film?
>
>
>
>
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23173
From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 6:34pm
Subject: A Letter to Three Wives
I just finished watching the new dvd of "A Letter to Three Wives."
In terms of ecriture vs. ideology, JLM has set the film against the prevailing philosophy of letting a thousand Levittowns bloom: Mankiewicz in Cheeverland. Whereas in "Miracle of 34th Street" the suburban house is the answer to a child's prayer, in "3 Wives" the suburban house is the receptacle of discontent.
Rita (who is on the way up) makes expicit the connection between giving in to ideology (agreeing to the sponsor's wife's rewrites) and her objective ("50 pieces of what Mrs. Addie Ross calls that most restful shade of green in the world").
There is also the distinct nastiness in the marriage between Laura Mae and Porter.
There were also two examples of what I noted about the openning sequence of "All About Eve": characters in the foreground in intense thought being contrasted against characters in motion behind them. On the dock the three wives read Addie's note and look at the telephone booth while the children run all over the place (as if the children were a visual representation of the emtional turmoil and chaos that was now going on inside each of the wives).
Later during the dinner dance sequence, the three couples are invovled in an intense discussion while the other couples present whirl on the dance floor behind them: even in the presence of marital discord, the dance of suburban repsectability must be maintained.
Brian
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
23174
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 7:16pm
Subject: Re: A Letter to Three Wives
--- Brian Charles Dauth
wrote:
>
> There were also two examples of what I noted about
> the openning sequence of "All About Eve": characters
> in the foreground in intense thought being
> contrasted against characters in motion behind them.
> On the dock the three wives read Addie's note and
> look at the telephone booth while the children run
> all over the place (as if the children were a visual
> representation of the emtional turmoil and chaos
> that was now going on inside each of the wives).
>
Very astute reading. I can certainly imagine direcotrs
like Cukor and Sirk making a greatfilm out of this
script, but not handling the mise en scene the way
Mankiewicz does.
Incidentally I think it's fairly obvious that
"Desperate Housewives" owes a very large debt to "A
Letter to Three Wives."
And that's Celeste Hplm as the voice of Addie Ross.
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23175
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 7:31pm
Subject: Re: The Birds (Was: Point of View in Paradise Lost)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
is there really a difference
> between the way she is "seen" by your so-called "surrogates" of AH,
> and the way she is "seen" "only by Hitchcock" because there are no
> more "surrogates"?
No.
She is "seen" by us, the viewers, through
> AH's "gaze" whether there are surrogates or not. And I would dumbly
> argue that the director's gaze is never "masked" or, to put it
> another way, it is always "masked" but we all know that it is, so
> that it is an open secret.
What you mean "we," Kimosabe?
>
> >
>
> The gull is obviously a Hitchcock surrogate. > I rest my case.
>
JP, I just wish it were that simple.
23176
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 7:50pm
Subject: Re: Modernism, fantasy, comedy (was: point of view)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson"
wrote:
>
> If Milton=Newton maybe Joyce=Einstein?
Pretty much. John Carpenter is very fond of post-Eisenstein physics,
too.
What we get in ULYSSES, specifically the Nighttown chapter, is a
shift into fantasy which
can't be fully accounted for as an expression of any character's
> point of view, or even that of the author, as if the imagination
had
> taken on an unstoppable logic of its own.
I entirely agree. Batty Bloom (my mentor, not the character) would
say Imagination; Derrida would say Ecriture. I'd pretty much say both.
Part of what I think of
> as "modernism" involves movies and other narrative forms where the
> initial semblance of a cohesive fictional world starts to fall
apart -
> say MARIENBAD or DEMONLOVER or many of Raul Ruiz's films, which
> almost seem to parody notions of subjectivity and "character" as
> commonly understood.
I entirely agree. Marienbad, before Belle de Jour, introduced Joycean
modernism to above-ground narrative cinema big-time. And Belle de
Jour brought it to the raincoat brigade - eg William Friedkin, who
was citing that film and Marienbad and 2001 in an AFI seminar where
he talked about new narrative forms after The French Connection.
Cruising is the brilliant result of that fusion between H'wd and
modernism.
>
A question raised by this discussion: what's the
> relation between "fantasy" in the sense it's been talked about in
> Scorsese, or the modernism of a Resnais or Kubrick, and genre
> filmmakers of the "fantastic" such as Tim Burton or Polanski or a
> less-known figure like Harry Kumel?
Well, first of all, Kumel is very much known to me (and Peter T.)
since I found a director's cut of Daughters of Darkness at Amoeba.
It's a masterpiece, and probably derives from the experiments with
erasing boundaries in a Belgium film I still have yet to see, The Man
with the Shaven Head. I know from reading about it in CdC that the
later film was also a turning point for some in the 60s. (Another we
haven't mentioned was Bergman in Persona.) I believe there's some
paradigm-bashing going on in Daughters as well, although what
interests me about it at the moment is the question of whether the
husband is a serial killer as well as "rough trade." Marienbad is
obviously a point of refernce for Daughters of Darkness.
Todorov postulates ambiguity as the key to The Fantastic, but
cinematic fantasy has always tended to keep those boundaries
demarcated, if only retroactively, a la Caligari.
part of the point of
> BARON MUNCHAUSEN is the argument over whether the Baron's
adventures
> are mere subjective fantasies - according to him they literally
> happened, and there's something in the diorama-like staging of
scenes
> like the trip to the Moon that recalls Bill's reference to the pre-
> Renaissance tendency to picture events as "objective cosmic
scenes".
In fact, the dumb shows enacted in English theatre before Milton on
the inner stage of the theater in the round are referenced in
Paradise Lost, where they become objects in a subject/object world.
> Burton is a comic filmmaker as much as anything else, and another
way
> of addressing these issues would be to think about comedy, which
> is "expressionist" insofar as it presents worlds which we recognise
> as exaggerated and distorted, but which depends (always, I'd say)
on NOT fully sharing the perspective of a character. Sometimes this
> means we visually enter the character's world but this is clearly
> marked as an absurd fantasy - say, Chaplin thinking his friend is a
> chicken (a scene referenced by Polanski more than once). Or we see
> literally what they see, but don't share their fantasy, or
fluctuate as in SHALLOW HAL.
Comic use of Expressionism has long been part of the mix we're
talking about, although I tend to find Hal's visions uncanny rather
than funny.
Thank you for a stimulating post, Jake.
23177
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 7:56pm
Subject: Gilliam (was: Modernism, fantasy, comedy )
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> Interesting enough
> MUNCHAUSEN has one "realistically" grounded
> character, Sally Salt(the very young Sarah Polley in
> what I believe may be her motion picture debut). No
> matter what context she's thrust into in the course of
> the film its her view of events that matters most in
> the long run. And this view has less to do with
> distinguishing of what's "real" as it does an
> engagement with what "matters." Consequently her
> greatest enemy is Death itself.
Terry Gilliam's films theorize about the imagination in a way that
Burton has also begun to do in Ed Wood and Big Fish. Depp and del
Toro in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas are the Quixote/Sancho Panza
couple he was unable to get on film because of what I call, in my
presskit for Lost in La Mancha, The Quixote Curse. (Cf. the fictional
author's farewell to his pen at the end of Book 2 for the origins of
the Curse...)
23178
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 8:00pm
Subject: Re: Deux
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "joe_mcelhaney"
wrote:
Does anyone know if CdC or Positif wrote
> about "Deux" or if there is anything out there worth tracking down
on
> this film?
CdC reviewed it at some length, but since they've stopped indexing
their issues, I can't immediately lay hands on it for you.
23179
From: acquarello2000
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:35pm
Subject: Re: Deux
> Does anyone know if CdC or Positif wrote about "Deux" or if there is
>anything out there worth tracking down on this film?
Did you stay for Gary Indiana's "discussion" with Bulle Ogier
following the film? He talked in some length about how he thought
that the film mirrored the dynamics between Schroeter's mother (the
rolle played by Ogier) who had just recently died, his muse Magdalena
Montezuma (represented by Huppert's Magdalena) who had died earlier,
and Schroeter himself. Anyway, he seemed more interested in presenting
his thoughts on Schroeter than talking to Bulle Ogier so I finally
left after 30 minutes, but it sounded as though he must have some
lengthy piece on it somewhere (maybe for Film Comment?).
acquarello
23180
From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:46pm
Subject: Re: Deux
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> Could you write some more about it here? I'm a
> longtime Schroeter fan and I was frankly disappointed
> in it.
I don't think I can do that after only one viewing. As I said in my
original post, I found the film overwhelming so I just don't know if
I have the vocabulary for dealing with it right away. I should admit
that my knowledge of Schroeter's body of work is small. I saw "Maria
Malibran" and "Kingdom of Naples" in the 1980s but haven't seen them
since. I saw (and very much liked) "Love's Debris" a few years ago.
But Schroeter's films, like Glinda in Muchkinland, come and go so
quickly and I have never had the opportunity to sufficiently absorb
what they're doing. Undoubtedly my stupefaction before "Deux" has
partly to do with my sorting through a film which seemed, on a first
viewing, to defy conventional categorizations of art cinema, film
modernism, the avant-garde, underground cinema, etc. The film seemed
to have elements of all of them and yet did not firmly belong to
any. It was also a film that seemed to be willfully opaque and
impenetrable, dense in both its inter-textual references and
autobiographical elements. Bulle Ogier, who was present at the
screening, said that all of the characters in the film are meant to
be elements of Schroeter's own personality or are meant to be his
mother or M. Montazuma, etc. I'm sure that's true but I wonder if the
film can be reduced to that. At any rate, all of the "reviews" I've
seen complain that the film is incapable of being
understood: "symbol-clogged" (or some such nonsense) was the term
the brilliant Stephen Holden used. At the same time, the film also
seemed to be very simple, almost self-explanatory and I would no more
ask what it "means' than I would ask what a Lumiθre film means. A
film about birth, life, death, the body and voice of the mother, of
the father, of the child's struggle for sexual and personal
wholeness. There are some possible links here with Ruiz but Ruiz
seems almost tame in comparison with Schroeter.
Formally, I thought it was astonishing, one of the most brilliant
fusions of montage and mise-en-scene since Eisenstein, Lang and
Sternberg. (Julianne Lorenz feels that this film is her masterpiece.)
In this film ostensibly about "twins" Schroeter and Lorenz seem to
explore endless variations on shots being linked through parallels,
contrasts, and various other permutations. But the serial killer
thematic also suggests shots being connected through a process of
serialization and accumulation. But no sooner did I feel that I might
be getting a handle on the film it seemed to slip away from me and re-
invent itself.
There are many other things to say: the presence of Ogier and,
especially, Huppert, their physicality and daring and how they so
completely give themselves to the film. Apart from everything else
it is a magnificent spectacle, a star vehicle, a diva film and
strongly connected to pleasure.
These ramblings are about all I'm capable of at the moment and it's
possible that everything I've said here could be applied to many
other Schroeter films. I don't know.
23181
From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 10:07pm
Subject: Re: Deux
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "acquarello2000"
wrote:
>
> > Does anyone know if CdC or Positif wrote about "Deux" or if there
is
> >anything out there worth tracking down on this film?
>
> Did you stay for Gary Indiana's "discussion" with Bulle Ogier
> following the film? ... he seemed more interested in presenting
> his thoughts on Schroeter than talking to Bulle Ogier so I finally
> left after 30 minutes, but it sounded as though he must have some
> lengthy piece on it somewhere (maybe for Film Comment?).
>
> Well, if he ever writes something about "Deux" I hope he gets his
shit together first. His entire presence at that event was
singularly revolting and offensive. He gave a rambling and
embarrassing introduction to the film. For the q&a, as you note, he
wouldn't let Ogier talk but instead tried to turn the event
into "Gary Indiana: Live on Stage at the Walter Reade." If he had
anything to say, if his presence was in any way attractive and
ingratiating it might not have been so bad. But he had absolutely
nothing to say. When Gavin Smith introduced Ogier, she came onstage
and then had to stand there awkwardly while she and everyone else
waited for Indiana, still in the audience, to neurotically shuffle
through his bag for his notes. It was the height of bad manners and
passive-aggressive behavior. Eventually, Gavin came to the edge of
the stage and began to attempt to wrest some control away from
Indiana. By that time, most of the audience had left in disgust or
boredom. When the audience was finally, finally permitted to ask
questions, Indiana initially began to answer for her. At that point,
people began to scream, "Let her talk!" And she did, becoming
considerably more animated and engaged. I asked her if she ever saw
a screenplay for "Deux" and, if so, did that screenplay more or less
conform to the final version of the film. She said that she was with
Schroeter in Paris when he worked for two months on the first draft,
which was entirely written in prose form, like a novel. About six
months later, another version was written, a more extended version of
the earlier one, this time with dialogue filled in. She supplied a
number of interesting anecdotes about working with him but I can save
those for later, if anyone's dying to hear them.
She also said some interesting things about Rivette...
Oh, by this point Gary Indiana, since the spotlight had been taken
away from him, looked singularly bored, head craning all over the
place, like a child suffering from ADD. At one point, while Ogier
was talking, he even turned to Gavin and asked him what time it
was.
23182
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 10:39pm
Subject: Speaking of divas...
LOS ANGELES - Actress Sandra Dee died Sunday. She was 63.
She died of complications from kidney disease.
23183
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 10:52pm
Subject: Re: Re: Deux
--- joe_mcelhaney wrote:
His entire presence at that
> event was
> singularly revolting and offensive. He gave a
> rambling and
> embarrassing introduction to the film. For the q&a,
> as you note, he
> wouldn't let Ogier talk but instead tried to turn
> the event
> into "Gary Indiana: Live on Stage at the Walter
> Reade." If he had
> anything to say, if his presence was in any way
> attractive and
> ingratiating it might not have been so bad. But he
> had absolutely
> nothing to say. When Gavin Smith introduced Ogier,
> she came onstage
> and then had to stand there awkwardly while she and
> everyone else
> waited for Indiana, still in the audience, to
> neurotically shuffle
> through his bag for his notes. It was the height of
> bad manners and
> passive-aggressive behavior. Eventually, Gavin came
> to the edge of
> the stage and began to attempt to wrest some control
> away from
> Indiana. By that time, most of the audience had left
> in disgust or
> boredom. When the audience was finally, finally
> permitted to ask
> questions, Indiana initially began to answer for
> her. At that point,
> people began to scream, "Let her talk!" And she
> did, becoming
> considerably more animated and engaged.
Well that's really disappointing. I know Gary. He's a
good writer but a rather erratic character.
I asked her
> if she ever saw
> a screenplay for "Deux" and, if so, did that
> screenplay more or less
> conform to the final version of the film. She said
> that she was with
> Schroeter in Paris when he worked for two months on
> the first draft,
> which was entirely written in prose form, like a
> novel. About six
> months later, another version was written, a more
> extended version of
> the earlier one, this time with dialogue filled in.
> She supplied a
> number of interesting anecdotes about working with
> him but I can save
> those for later, if anyone's dying to hear them.
>
> She also said some interesting things about
> Rivette...
>
That I'd like to hear.
When I first went toparis in '83 I was sitting in left
bank restaurant having lunch when Rivette came in and
sat down alon. A few beats later Bulle Ogier joined
them. For a fan likeme it was a magical moment right
out of a Rivette film.
"Deux" isn't the first time Ogier has wroked with
Schoreter. The references tomagdalena Montezuma were
pretty clear. But in that the film was somethign of
another version of "Der RosenKoenig" -- with Huppert
and Ogier posturing much as Montezuma had in that
film. Not my favorite Schoeter mode. it worked in "The
Death of Maria Malibran" -- with Montezuma and Candy
Darling. But I prefer the neo-realist Scoroeter of
"Kingdom of Naples" and (above all) "Palermo oder
Wolfsburg" in which Montezuma played a lawyer.
I also love the opera film, in which singers do a
favorite aria in the presence of someone they love.
Schroeter's been through a lot in recent years as many
of his nearest and dearest were lost to AIDS.
Montezuma's death (cancer I believe) came at the heels
of this string of AIDS deaths.
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23184
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 11:13pm
Subject: Re: Deux
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
Huppert and Ogier posturing much as Montezuma had in that
> film. Not my favorite Schoeter mode. it worked in "The
> Death of Maria Malibran" -- with Montezuma and Candy
> Darling. But I prefer the neo-realist Scoroeter of
> "Kingdom of Naples" and (above all) "Palermo oder
> Wolfsburg"
Me three. I love the two neorealuist films as I love few films of the
80s. I have yet to really get into Maria Maliban et al. at all. But
I'll see anything he makes.
Mickey Cotrell (an LA actor/publicist, for those who don't know him)
seemed at one point to be helping Schroeter here with the opera
films. I wonder if he has tapes of some of the films?
Sorry to here Gary Indiana was acting badly at the screening. He's
still one of my favorite writers.
>
> __________________________________
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23185
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 11:18pm
Subject: Re: Los Muertos
Raymond:
> I previously mentioned this film as one of the best of 2004 (at
> the time, no one responded). I'm glad people are finally able to
> see this absolutely controlled, assured and wonderful film. Now
> for more people seeing another fantastic geature, THIS CHARMING
> GIRL....
I for one didn't respond because I was just waiting for a chance to
see the film--I'd been hyped up ever since I heard about it. (After
I watched a tape of LA LIBERTAD, courtesy and recommendation of
Gabe, I was hooked.) Alonso's filmmaking is a breath of fresh air,
evoking the familiarity of nothing so much as dreams, much like
Apichatpong Weerasethakul. He's now up on my list of big-timers for
the decade.
I'll keep an eye out for THIS CHARMING GIRL.
--Zach
23186
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Feb 20, 2005 11:45pm
Subject: Re: Deux
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "joe_mcelhaney"
wrote:
>
> Does anyone know if CdC or Positif wrote
> about "Deux" or if there is anything out there worth tracking down
on
> this film?
POSITIF published a brief note on it (#497-98, July-Aug. 2002)
after it was shown at Cannes, but you wouldn't like it. it's almost
entirely negative. "Decadent narrative delirium," Huppert plays "a
number of physically repulsive scenes" etc...
23187
From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Mon Feb 21, 2005 0:04am
Subject: Re: A Letter to Three Wives
> I can certainly imagine direcotrs like Cukor and
Sirk making a greatfilm out of this script, but not
handling the mise en scene the way Mankiewicz
does.
Agreed. I am beginning to see that many 1950's
movies have as part of their make-up an anxiety
about women and marriage. I stumbled into
"Rear Window" today on TCM was hooked for
the umpteenth time (I am never able to resist it).
Watching RW plus reflecting on your post made
me think of Cukor's "The Marrying Kind," "Adam's
Rib," "The Model and the Marriage Broker," etc.
The 50's seems just overrun with marriage-anxious
movies. JLM's "Guys and Dolls" becomes clearer
seen as a movie about marriage anxiety with songs
added (and his changes in the plot and additions/
deletions of songs make perfect sense).
> Incidentally I think it's fairly obvious that
"Desperate Housewives" owes a very large debt to
"ALetter to Three Wives."
I have never seen it, but it makes sense: aren't we
once again in a marriage-anxious time? Also DH was
created by a queer man, and JLM can be seen as an
early metrosexual, so the connection is even stronger.
> And that's Celeste Hplm as the voice of Addie Ross.
One of the extras on the dvd informed me that the
studio did a contest around the country to see if
people could identify who voiced Addie Ross.
Brian
23188
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 21, 2005 0:43am
Subject: Re: Re: A Letter to Three Wives
--- Brian Charles Dauth
wrote:
>
> I have never seen it, but it makes sense: aren't we
> once again in a marriage-anxious time? Also DH was
> created by a queer man, and JLM can be seen as an
> early metrosexual, so the connection is even
> stronger.
>
True to some degree, for "Desperate Housewives" also
shows how far we've drifted away. Admittedly they're
in different modes as "DW" is a satirical comedy and
"ALTTW" is a serious comedy of manners.But they're
both set in suburbia. Mankiewicz was exploring it as
new territory. Marc Cherry deals with it as a place
that former city-dwellers are "rediscovering."
Mankiewicz deals with issues of class, money and
status -- with sexual desireability coming in last.
Cherry is all about sex. The women are all unspeakably
gorgeous and so are the men (especially that hunky
gardner!) Also as a TV show "DW" has no intention of
cutting very deep. "Cyncial" as it may be there's
nothing in it quite like the mariage of paul Douglas
and Linda Darnell in "ALTTW." In fact there's not much
like it anywhere. Very striking in that Mankiewicz
shows that the marriage that's superficially the least
romantic is actually the strongest.
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23189
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Feb 21, 2005 2:57am
Subject: Re: A Letter to Three Wives
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> "ALTTW" is a serious comedy of manners.But they're
> both set in suburbia. Mankiewicz was exploring it as
> new territory.
Isn't it interesting, and telling, (but telling what, exactly?)
that "suburbia" became a mild version of Hell almost at the same
time as it was sold as the ultimate middle-class American heaven?
Not just in lit. (Cheever, Updike, everybody) but in movies too.
Mainstream movies, whose audience was largely, precisely, those very
middle-class suburbanites.
I have often wondered: How come those audiences didn't recognize
themselves in those movies, and resent them? Just because in their
minds movies were inconsequential? Or maybe they just didn't go to
the movies much. They had all those parties to attend to. (it's
interesting, incidentally, how in movies, people go to the movies
only when they have absolutely nothing better to do).
It's rather easy to see ALTTW as fantasy -- it certainly was
difficult to see it as "realistic" from my French point of view when
I first saw it. Those people on the screen had absolutely no
relation to anybody or anything I had ever known (for one thing they
were wealthy beyond anything I could imagine, and yet somehow
pretended to be sort of ordinary). In a way it was a kind of "pure"
cinema, although I had a vague notion that they must have some kind
of relationship to an American reality. Perhaps that was part of the
fascination of American cinema for a French teenager back then. It
didn't matter what genre, it was all in a fantasy world.
This is probaly drifting off topic. Although it might somehow
connect with some recent posts. Signing off.
JPC
Marc Cherry deals with it as a place
> that former city-dwellers are "rediscovering."
> Mankiewicz deals with issues of class, money and
> status -- with sexual desireability coming in last.
> Cherry is all about sex. The women are all unspeakably
> gorgeous and so are the men (especially that hunky
> gardner!) Also as a TV show "DW" has no intention of
> cutting very deep. "Cyncial" as it may be there's
> nothing in it quite like the mariage of paul Douglas
> and Linda Darnell in "ALTTW." In fact there's not much
> like it anywhere. Very striking in that Mankiewicz
> shows that the marriage that's superficially the least
> romantic is actually the strongest.
>
>
>
> __________________________________
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> Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone.
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23190
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 21, 2005 3:15am
Subject: Re: Re: A Letter to Three Wives
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> Isn't it interesting, and telling, (but telling
> what, exactly?)
> that "suburbia" became a mild version of Hell almost
> at the same
> time as it was sold as the ultimate middle-class
> American heaven?
> Not just in lit. (Cheever, Updike, everybody) but in
> movies too.
> Mainstream movies, whose audience was largely,
> precisely, those very
> middle-class suburbanites.
>
This is why I get so annoyed when the 50's is
characterized as a confromist era. Suburbia was
offered as the answer to the post-war prayer. yet no
sooner was it established than it was criticized. The
50's were a highly critical era in America. The Beats
were "heading off for the territory" like apack of
aging Huck finns. But there was protest and upset
everywhere.
> It's rather easy to see ALTTW as fantasy -- it
> certainly was
> difficult to see it as "realistic" from my French
> point of view when
> I first saw it. Those people on the screen had
> absolutely no
> relation to anybody or anything I had ever known
> (for one thing they
> were wealthy beyond anything I could imagine, and
> yet somehow
> pretended to be sort of ordinary).
Well this is part of the Franoc-American stylistic
divide. The people presented in the film were quite
typical of the upper middle class in America. They had
money, but it wasn't always secure. They had clothes,
but they wore them only to the Country Club. Here in
America everyone saw them as very believable types.
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23191
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Mon Feb 21, 2005 3:42am
Subject: Re: Speaking of divas...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
>
> LOS ANGELES - Actress Sandra Dee died Sunday. She was 63.
> She died of complications from kidney disease.
Gosh, I saw that Dan O'Herlihy had also just died (at 85). (I know you had mentioned him fairly recently.)
..in case Mahalia Jackson, or someone, is listening..
23192
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 21, 2005 4:23am
Subject: Re: Re: Speaking of divas...
And Hey There -- you with the stars in your eyes --
John Raitt died too.
--- jess_l_amortell wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
> >
> > LOS ANGELES - Actress Sandra Dee died Sunday. She
> was 63.
> > She died of complications from kidney disease.
>
> Gosh, I saw that Dan O'Herlihy had also just died
> (at 85). (I know you had mentioned him fairly
> recently.)
>
> ..in case Mahalia Jackson, or someone, is
> listening..
>
>
>
>
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23193
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Feb 21, 2005 4:31am
Subject: Re: A Letter to Three Wives
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
).
>
> Well this is part of the Franoc-American stylistic
> divide. The people presented in the film were quite
> typical of the upper middle class in America. They had
> money, but it wasn't always secure. They had clothes,
> but they wore them only to the Country Club. Here in
> America everyone saw them as very believable types.
>
>
> But, David, there were upper middle class people in France too,
even though the term has no real equivalent in French. And my
problem in France (assuming you can call it that) was not of seeing
the country club as some kind of unattainable upper middle class
heaven, but rather of seeing it as one of those mythical,
incomprehensible American institutions with no real French
equivalent, part of a weirdly ritualistic society that made the
American culture look somewhat like the mirror image of primitive
societies with their murkily complex structures and rituals. I must
say after living in the USA for thirty years, I still feel pretty
much the same, no matter how much I have learned.
I'm sorry if this belongs in the OT site. Maybe it is not OT to
the extent that it relates to two different apprehensions of the
American cinema -- the native one and the foreign one. There is no
doubt that the "foreignness" of American films were a great part of
their attraction for French people of my generation. (I'm not sure
it's still the case). ALTTW or a Sirk melodrama or practically
anything with a claim to "realistic drama" was first perceived as an
exotic product, and you had to work your way through and up from the
exoticism to any consideration that this was actually about people
who were supposed to be real and whom everyone in America, as David
puts it, saw as "very believable types."
> __________________________________________________
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23194
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Feb 21, 2005 4:44am
Subject: Re: Speaking of divas...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> And Hey There -- you with the stars in your eyes --
> John Raitt died too.
>
Love never made a fool of you/You used to be too high./Hey there -
you on that high flying cloud/ Though she won't throw a crumb to
you/You think some day she'll come to you./ Better forget her. her
with her nose in the air. She has you dancing on a string. break it
and she won't care... Won't you hear that advice i hand you like a
brother or aren't you seeing things too clear, are you too far gone
to hear, is it all going in one ear... [ Someone stop me...]
> > >
> > > LOS ANGELES - Actress Sandra Dee died Sunday. She
> > was 63.
> > > She died of complications from kidney disease.
> >
How could Sandra Dee possibly be 63? Can such things be?
> > Gosh, I saw that Dan O'Herlihy had also just died
> > (at 85). (I know you had mentioned him fairly
> > recently.)
> >
Bunuel's Crusoe dead! The film is available on DVD. Grab it
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> __________________________________________________
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23195
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 21, 2005 4:44am
Subject: Re: Re: A Letter to Three Wives
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
And my
> problem in France (assuming you can call it that)
> was not of seeing
> the country club as some kind of unattainable upper
> middle class
> heaven, but rather of seeing it as one of those
> mythical,
> incomprehensible American institutions with no real
> French
> equivalent, part of a weirdly ritualistic society
> that made the
> American culture look somewhat like the mirror image
> of primitive
> societies with their murkily complex structures and
> rituals.
And that's what Mankiewicz shows as well. Note that
Jeanne Crain and her husband areliving beyond their
means, resulting in her being forced to get by on a
less than stylish dress. This too was typical. It
LOOKs wealthy but the wealth involved is precariously placed.
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23196
From: Raymond P.
Date: Mon Feb 21, 2005 5:06am
Subject: Re: Los Muertos
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Zach Campbell"
wrote:
>
> Raymond:
> > I previously mentioned this film as one of the best of 2004 (at
> > the time, no one responded). I'm glad people are finally able to
> > see this absolutely controlled, assured and wonderful film. Now
> > for more people seeing another fantastic geature, THIS CHARMING
> > GIRL....
>
> I for one didn't respond because I was just waiting for a chance to
> see the film--I'd been hyped up ever since I heard about it.
(After
> I watched a tape of LA LIBERTAD, courtesy and recommendation of
> Gabe, I was hooked.) Alonso's filmmaking is a breath of fresh air,
> evoking the familiarity of nothing so much as dreams, much like
> Apichatpong Weerasethakul. He's now up on my list of big-timers
for
> the decade.
>
> I'll keep an eye out for THIS CHARMING GIRL.
>
> --Zach
Keep an eye out for the Hungarian Benedek Fliegauf as well - possibly
my favourite new filmmaker. With two outstanding features under his
belt, his incredibly skillful direction recalls, IMO, the heydays of
Eastern European cinema, albeit 10 times more bleak and depressing
(if you can believe that!). He's influenced by Bela Tarr without
needing to ape him (like Gus van Sant). Try and see FOREST and DEALER
at all costs.
23197
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 21, 2005 5:11am
Subject: Re: Re: Speaking of divas...
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> How could Sandra Dee possibly be 63? Can such
> things be?
>
> > > Gosh, I saw that Dan O'Herlihy had also just
> died
> > > (at 85). (I know you had mentioned him fairly
> > > recently.)
> > >
And he was in "Imitation of Life" too!
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23198
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Mon Feb 21, 2005 2:05pm
Subject: Staying power
Can I get a show of hands on this? Is it only me, or do MOST of us here at
AFB agree that it is sensible, sometimes useful & informative, sometimes
even fun - and, most importantly, a necessary act of respect towards a movie
- to stay until the very end of the credits? I ask this because, in my home
town of Melbourne, almost EVERY paid film and unpaid film critic heads for
the door immediately after (and sometimes before) the 'final image' of the
plot has played itself out. And then there's some minutes left to go,
including sometimes an extra scene! Even tonight at a preview of
CONSTANTINE, an actual AFB member - you know who you are! - went south long
before a very important (and charming) post-credits scene arrived.
Personally, I like watching end credits, I often learn something I didn't
expect to from them. And - after all - the film is simply NOT OVER until the
last frame has unspooled, the soundtrack has ended, the lights have come on
and the curtains have closed !!! Or am I being excessively old-fashioned
about this?
still in the theatre, Adrian
23199
From: K. A. Westphal
Date: Mon Feb 21, 2005 1:55pm
Subject: Re: Staying power
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Martin wrote:
> Personally, I like watching end credits, I often learn something I
didn't
> expect to from them. And - after all - the film is simply NOT OVER
until the
> last frame has unspooled, the soundtrack has ended, the lights have
come on
> and the curtains have closed !!! Or am I being excessively old-fashioned
> about this?
>
> still in the theatre, Adrian
Though I find most closing credits to be excessively generous, I
usually try to stay for them. Film is a powerful thing; it's almost
rude to interrupt its spell by rising prematurely. It can make for an
awkward situation when seeing a film with a friend not so inclined.
That said, I don't think sitting until the last frame is absolutely
essential. My understanding of the film is not enhanced by knowing who
drove the director to the set. End credits are so uniform that they
are rarely integrated into the aesthetic concept of the film--though
if they are, it's usually in uncharmingly self-conscious way.
Post-credit snippets are always slight (in content and length) and
can't bode much for the thematic aims of the film.
--Kyle
23200
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Feb 21, 2005 1:59pm
Subject: Re: Staying power
--- Adrian Martin wrote:
>
> Personally, I like watching end credits, I often
> learn something I didn't
> expect to from them. And - after all - the film is
> simply NOT OVER until the
> last frame has unspooled, the soundtrack has ended,
> the lights have come on
> and the curtains have closed !!! Or am I being
> excessively old-fashioned
> about this?
>
You are.
Sometimes it's worth staying through to the very end
-- especially if the film has a good score. Most of
the time it seems optional, at least to me.
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