"Even philosophy succumbed to the "terrorism" of innovation. When French philosophers began to look for an insurance policy against the greatest possible ill—fidelity to the past, the repetition of dépassé philosophies—one of their inventions was la rupture épistémologique. This miraculous concept made it possible for the communist Althusser to be an old-style aparatchik on the one hand and, on the other, one hundred per cent innovative, almost as much so as Marx himself, since Althusser was the first to take full measure of the prophet's innovative genius.
"The psychoanalyst Lacan pulled exactly the same trick with Freud. Very quickly, however, one single rupture épistémologique for all times and for all people seemed paltry. Each thinker had to have his own, and then the really chic thinkers had several in a row. In the end, everybody turned themselves into a continuous and monstrous rupture, not primarily with others, but with their own past.
"This is how inconsistency has become the major intellectual virtue of the avant-garde. But the real credit for the tabula rasa school of innovation should go to Nietzsche, who was tired of repeating with everybody else that a great thinker should have no model. He went one better, as always, and refused to be a model—the mark of genius. This is still a sensation that is being piously repeated today. Nietzsche is our supreme model of model-repudiation, our revered guru of guru-renunciation."
—Catty words from René Girard ("Innovation and Repetition," 1990) hip through sheer squareness, "radical" through Roman Catholic traditionalism.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
"I Slipped"
If you haven't seen Once Upon a Time in America then you may want to skip these brief lines. I'm not discussing a serious narrative spoiler, but those who prefer carte blanche should look away.
*
When Dominic meets his fate he tells Noodles: "I slipped." These words, which appear to quietly haunt Noodles for the rest of his life, blindside us. Like an iceberg set upon our Titanic, they come unbidden to catch us unawares—extraneous to plot development and not even immediately applicable to pathos, "I slipped" is like a perpendicular insertion into the linear progression of time and the narrative. Of course, Once Upon... is not a linear film and its conceptualization of time, memory, history, and diegetic reality is like a Möbius strip (and in this it has a common overarching feature with another great philosophical genre film of the time, Videodrome). There are many such perpendicular insertions, touches which seem to come from out of "nowhere," but which make prevent any such sleek gangster movie. This movie spreads outward, and more on that aspect in the future. But like icebergs and Titanics, the iceberg was always there first, and our own shortcomings of perception and planning, our habitual shackles, are truly to blame: the iceberg may appear out of the mist but it does not come to be out of the mist. So when Dominic says, "I slipped," we get a split second that's easy to accept, but hard to assimilate. For a moment the narrative line morphs into a sturdy horizontal cross-section of these big concepts, "America," "youth," "masculinity," "violence," etc. Almost all such narrative treatments of these kinds of Big Issues in film appear clumsy, shallow, obsequious next to Leone's film.
Time means something different for this moment; not a narrative time but an intrusion, a pause on narrative chronology to reflect upon the underlying experience that burns off the moment we comprehend a narrative through-line. What kind of cross-section here? Actually Once Upon a Time in America is not at all a cross-section of America, or of children or men, or of American Jews or New Yorkers. Its handling of all these things tends toward the narrow and specific, the personal, and if these are ever elevated to generalized principles (anecdotal, nostalgic, exemplary) it is only because the children's narrative, at the very least, is the one sure aspect of the story organized under the sign of memory. When one looks back one has to come up with ways to make sense of the fragmented and stylized slivers that comprise our private, experiential histories.
Hence "I slipped" means a lot of things. It tells us something about the miserable and admirable courage of these hustling street kids; Dominic, too proud to admit he got shot, but too close to death to be proud consciously, has to blurt out something that comes to mind—anything that might save face in front of his pals. It's the sort of explanation that comes to a sleepwalker's mind when she has been awakened; those of us who have been in this position ourselves will understand the weird explanations (neither lies, nor false, evasive but naked) that come to the lips, and we may fancy a guess that this is the sort of last hurrah of Dominic's experiential self we see. Of course: he slipped.
*
When Dominic meets his fate he tells Noodles: "I slipped." These words, which appear to quietly haunt Noodles for the rest of his life, blindside us. Like an iceberg set upon our Titanic, they come unbidden to catch us unawares—extraneous to plot development and not even immediately applicable to pathos, "I slipped" is like a perpendicular insertion into the linear progression of time and the narrative. Of course, Once Upon... is not a linear film and its conceptualization of time, memory, history, and diegetic reality is like a Möbius strip (and in this it has a common overarching feature with another great philosophical genre film of the time, Videodrome). There are many such perpendicular insertions, touches which seem to come from out of "nowhere," but which make prevent any such sleek gangster movie. This movie spreads outward, and more on that aspect in the future. But like icebergs and Titanics, the iceberg was always there first, and our own shortcomings of perception and planning, our habitual shackles, are truly to blame: the iceberg may appear out of the mist but it does not come to be out of the mist. So when Dominic says, "I slipped," we get a split second that's easy to accept, but hard to assimilate. For a moment the narrative line morphs into a sturdy horizontal cross-section of these big concepts, "America," "youth," "masculinity," "violence," etc. Almost all such narrative treatments of these kinds of Big Issues in film appear clumsy, shallow, obsequious next to Leone's film.
Time means something different for this moment; not a narrative time but an intrusion, a pause on narrative chronology to reflect upon the underlying experience that burns off the moment we comprehend a narrative through-line. What kind of cross-section here? Actually Once Upon a Time in America is not at all a cross-section of America, or of children or men, or of American Jews or New Yorkers. Its handling of all these things tends toward the narrow and specific, the personal, and if these are ever elevated to generalized principles (anecdotal, nostalgic, exemplary) it is only because the children's narrative, at the very least, is the one sure aspect of the story organized under the sign of memory. When one looks back one has to come up with ways to make sense of the fragmented and stylized slivers that comprise our private, experiential histories.
Hence "I slipped" means a lot of things. It tells us something about the miserable and admirable courage of these hustling street kids; Dominic, too proud to admit he got shot, but too close to death to be proud consciously, has to blurt out something that comes to mind—anything that might save face in front of his pals. It's the sort of explanation that comes to a sleepwalker's mind when she has been awakened; those of us who have been in this position ourselves will understand the weird explanations (neither lies, nor false, evasive but naked) that come to the lips, and we may fancy a guess that this is the sort of last hurrah of Dominic's experiential self we see. Of course: he slipped.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Tomorrow's Clerks
The strong and stable institution is that which can sustain dissent from within—like the strong body that can withstand bacteria, viruses, and other toxins more readily than a body with a weak immune system. The exceptions are pyramidal institutions whose structures are made to allow for a downward cascade of authority (corporations, militaries).
Though I am aware that the New York Times tells me little of consequence, I read its content anyway. Some of it. Like some of you surely did, I read Fish's self-satisfied write-up of Frank Donoghue's book, The Last Professors. I get the same bewildering discomfort reading accounts like Donoghue's as any other young academic does. So if the liberal arts as we know them are in jeopardy (and boy do they always seem to be in jeopardy!) how do we humanities scholars survive?
The great university systems of the modern world existed within power structures which were national, protected and differentiated in both cultural tradition and laws of the state. The universities existed under the dominant paradigms of the system which enveloped them, and as with all capital, resources, and intellectual manpower, the game is rigged in favor of the owners. The great civilizations always maintain some activity for the advancement of leisure and learning. In some of these civilizations these activities are codified and restricted so that a great deal is the prerogative of the elite classes of people.
If tomorrow's age (which is already underway today) is that of transnational capital, will tomorrow's haven for dissent from within—the space it allows for a scholarly spirit of disinterestedness—be sustained by these very corporations and their for-profit institutions, operating through webs of virtual space and "global cities" and English (or some other lingua franca)? And I wonder if, as a corollary to this, the future of a strong liberal arts (or equivalent) education will revert to the privilege of a few or will remain viable on a relative mass scale.
More broadly: will that very scholarly spirit of disinterestedness remain or will it evolve into a new and unrecognizable thing altogether (i.e., in less optimistic words, die out)?
Though I am aware that the New York Times tells me little of consequence, I read its content anyway. Some of it. Like some of you surely did, I read Fish's self-satisfied write-up of Frank Donoghue's book, The Last Professors. I get the same bewildering discomfort reading accounts like Donoghue's as any other young academic does. So if the liberal arts as we know them are in jeopardy (and boy do they always seem to be in jeopardy!) how do we humanities scholars survive?
The great university systems of the modern world existed within power structures which were national, protected and differentiated in both cultural tradition and laws of the state. The universities existed under the dominant paradigms of the system which enveloped them, and as with all capital, resources, and intellectual manpower, the game is rigged in favor of the owners. The great civilizations always maintain some activity for the advancement of leisure and learning. In some of these civilizations these activities are codified and restricted so that a great deal is the prerogative of the elite classes of people.
If tomorrow's age (which is already underway today) is that of transnational capital, will tomorrow's haven for dissent from within—the space it allows for a scholarly spirit of disinterestedness—be sustained by these very corporations and their for-profit institutions, operating through webs of virtual space and "global cities" and English (or some other lingua franca)? And I wonder if, as a corollary to this, the future of a strong liberal arts (or equivalent) education will revert to the privilege of a few or will remain viable on a relative mass scale.
More broadly: will that very scholarly spirit of disinterestedness remain or will it evolve into a new and unrecognizable thing altogether (i.e., in less optimistic words, die out)?
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Saying Something
"... I can't tell you how the president handles the question of health insurance in America. But on the issues having to do with us he has a very clear worldview. Like Arik, he has a loathing of violence; a loathing of everything having to do with terrorism and the use of force. And he has a loathing for untruthfulness and for failure to carry out commitments. He doesn't accept the Middle Eastern political style in which you come and say something and then forget what you said. From that point of view he is very American. He doesn't tolerate nonsense. He can't stand the Middle Eastern jabbering with nothing underlying it."
—Dov Weisglass on soon-to-be-ex-President Bush. (Hat tip to the Colonel for the link.)
And by this time next year, will many of us forget our prior derision of simplistic Republican moral binarism (and a hypocrisy towards violence), and expound rational Democratic programs for humanitarian militarism in all pockets of the world in order to reach the exact same goals, i.e., the "spreading" of "democracy/peace/freedom" from our glorious bag of tricks? I wonder if there will be, can be, anything short of our economic downfall to prevent this.
—Dov Weisglass on soon-to-be-ex-President Bush. (Hat tip to the Colonel for the link.)
And by this time next year, will many of us forget our prior derision of simplistic Republican moral binarism (and a hypocrisy towards violence), and expound rational Democratic programs for humanitarian militarism in all pockets of the world in order to reach the exact same goals, i.e., the "spreading" of "democracy/peace/freedom" from our glorious bag of tricks? I wonder if there will be, can be, anything short of our economic downfall to prevent this.
Margin Notes
"[A]esthetic form is not, as it is sometimes presented, a sort of line drawn around the emotions which we experience in art, rendering them orderly and harmonious. It is part of the very texture of these emotions, which can be fast, light, kaleidoscopic, childlike, spontaneous, while typifying mature adult configurations and contradictions."
—from Raymond Durgnat, "The Fantastic Voyage" (1972)
"I am not sure what Clint's politics are now. The right has disowned him and the left still does not know what to do with him. When The Gauntlet came out 30 years ago, I thought: this is an action movie that doesn't behave itself and seems unlike what has come before. People finally realized what a great film it was in the 1990s. I think Gran Torino and Changeling will be respected properly in about 10 years when other movies start being as brilliant. ... What is amazing is that Eastwood has made the two best political movies of the year since neither movie simply confirms the political biases of its spectators, but complicates them, challenges them, and ultimately leaves them strengthened. They are not the liberal-docu-porn that so many documentaries are. ... [Recently] just listening to NYC friends gush about their enjoyment of the most recent documentary they saw—I often think their mantra has become: “No I haven't done any community organizing, but I saw the documentary.” It is not that this problem is new: it is at least as old as De Sica—the artful rendering of social horror/decay to give aesthetic pleasure. Some documentarians are beginning to look at themselves at the same time that they are looking at the world, and questioning the rules about both the well-made documentary and that when filming they must document and not intervene in what they are filming."
—Brian Dauth, selected comments, The November 3rd Club
Some words to keep in mind in general, but with respect to Gran Torino: surely. It seems to me like everyone talking about this film is worried about whether it's intended to be funny or elegiac, whether we should feel OK about laughing at all the non-PC language (nevermind how that language is used and contextualized, which is close to unique), or how successfully it "deconstructs" some single earlier movie icon and ethos (inevitably Dirty Harry). In the end we embrace what we think are attitudes of knowingness and skepticism and yet we just keep fussing over the proper stances to take towards any given object.
—from Raymond Durgnat, "The Fantastic Voyage" (1972)
"I am not sure what Clint's politics are now. The right has disowned him and the left still does not know what to do with him. When The Gauntlet came out 30 years ago, I thought: this is an action movie that doesn't behave itself and seems unlike what has come before. People finally realized what a great film it was in the 1990s. I think Gran Torino and Changeling will be respected properly in about 10 years when other movies start being as brilliant. ... What is amazing is that Eastwood has made the two best political movies of the year since neither movie simply confirms the political biases of its spectators, but complicates them, challenges them, and ultimately leaves them strengthened. They are not the liberal-docu-porn that so many documentaries are. ... [Recently] just listening to NYC friends gush about their enjoyment of the most recent documentary they saw—I often think their mantra has become: “No I haven't done any community organizing, but I saw the documentary.” It is not that this problem is new: it is at least as old as De Sica—the artful rendering of social horror/decay to give aesthetic pleasure. Some documentarians are beginning to look at themselves at the same time that they are looking at the world, and questioning the rules about both the well-made documentary and that when filming they must document and not intervene in what they are filming."
—Brian Dauth, selected comments, The November 3rd Club
Some words to keep in mind in general, but with respect to Gran Torino: surely. It seems to me like everyone talking about this film is worried about whether it's intended to be funny or elegiac, whether we should feel OK about laughing at all the non-PC language (nevermind how that language is used and contextualized, which is close to unique), or how successfully it "deconstructs" some single earlier movie icon and ethos (inevitably Dirty Harry). In the end we embrace what we think are attitudes of knowingness and skepticism and yet we just keep fussing over the proper stances to take towards any given object.
Friday, January 09, 2009
A Pantheon for England
Though I have checked out Raymond Durgnat's A Mirror for England from the library several times, it is only this current go-round (where I am giving it a good thorough read) that I've paid much attention to the appendix of lists in the back. I'm not sure how I'd overlooked it before. At any rate the short appendix ends with a personal (how personal?) pantheon that Durgnat proposes for British cinema. He explicitly labels it a "first draft" and has drawn only from the films in his own index. Presumably he put this together in the very late 1960s or very early 1970s. The book, A Mirror for England, deals mainly with middlebrow British cinema from 1945 to 1958 (or from the end of WWII until the appearance of Room at the Top). But it branches out in terms of chronology and genre, as one would only expect from Durgnat.
Compounding upon Durgnat's own idiosyncrasies as a critic, it's interesting as always to see how great minds of the recent past have characterized historical developments and aesthetic achievements ... i.e., when they've done so in ways that have not been taken up as dominant paradigms or conventional wisdom. Durgnat (like the 80%-anti-Nouvelle Vague Noel Burch circa 1960, or Manny Farber who chose a humanistic Kurosawa [!] film to exemplify termite art) surprises. Who would have thought, for one thing, that this most insightful critic-advocate of Powell & Pressburger would consign all Archers' films (or Powell's individual works) to only the B list? (Could we surmise that he upgraded them in subsequent decades?) And it's difficult to dismiss Durgnat's embrace of what we think of as boring and mildewed middlebrow classics (1950s Asquith?); Durgnat was on the front lines for underground film and animated cinema, and wrote beautifully about "low" genre films (even when he didn't necessarily argue that they were artistic masterpieces, he accorded them greater attention and respect than many of those who do). This isn't like Judith Crist or other "respectable" older movie critics whose postures where that of the shepherd but whose opinions were those of the sheep.
Durgnat's tastes represent an alternate example, a robust one, for where debates and assumptions in film culture might have gone. It is this excavation of somewhat "off," even alien taste cultures that has fascinated me in recent months. I am trying to recalibrate my own eyeballs to this; starting to do things like thinking in terms of Positif as opposed to Cahiers (for example), and to rearrange the dusty old furniture that's accumulated in my brain (in general). Time to open up windows, add on a few new wings to the house, and rejuvenate things so as to retain the good things of my earlier cinephilia (and larger assumptions about art), but recontextualize them as necessary.
(Oh, and apparently Britain's greatest director was the American Mr. Losey! A nice reciprocity given how canonically Hitchcock is regarded as Hollywood's greatest director.)
* * *
'A First Draft Pantheon' - I've added the directors names & dates from the IMDB, my memory, and Durgnat's own filmography; feel free to let me know if I've made mistakes in my haste.
("drawn from all British films mentioned in the index")
A. MAJOR MOVIES
Billy Liar (John Schlesinger, 1963)
Blind Date (Joseph Losey, 1959)
Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966)
Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
The Browning Version (Anthony Asquith, 1952)
The Citadel (King Vidor, 1938)
The Criminal (Joseph Losey, 1960)
Chance of a Lifetime (Bernard Miles, 1950)
The Damned (Joseph Losey, 1963)
The Entertainer (Tony Richardson, 1960)
Give Us This Day (Edward Dmytryk, 1949)
Great Expectations (David Lean, 1946)
The Gypsy and the Gentleman (Joseph Losey, 1958)
The Happiest Days of Your Life (Frank Launder, 1950)
Heavens Above (John and Roy Boulting, 1963)
Housing Problems (Edgar Anstey and Arthur Elton, 1935)
How I Won the War (Richard Lester, 1967)
I'm All Right Jack (John Boulting, 1959)
It Happened Here (Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo, 1966)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (Richard Hamer, 1949)
King and Country (Joseph Losey, 1964)
Knave of Hearts (Rene Clement, 1954)
The Leather Boys (Sidney J. Furie, 1963)
The Little Island (Richard Williams, 1958)
Live Now Pay Later (Jay Lewis, 1962)
The Long and the Short and the Tall (Leslie Norman, 1960)
Look Back in Anger (Tony Richardson, 1959)
Love Me Love Me Love Me (Richard Williams, 1963)
The L-Shaped Room (Bryan Forbes, 1962)
The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)
Men of Two Worlds (Thorold Dickinson, 1946)
Millions Like Us (Sidney Gilliatt, 1943)
Next of Kin (Thorold Dickinson, 1943)
A Night to Remember (Roy Ward Baker, 1958)
Nothing But the Best (Clive Donner, 1963)
Odd Man Out (Carol Reed, 1947)
Orders to Kill (Anthony Asquith, 1958)
Passage Home (Roy Ward Baker, 1955)
The Plain Man's Guide to Advertising (Bob Godfrey, 1962)
Poor Cow (Ken Loach, 1967)
Private's Progress (John Boulting, 1956)
The Queen of Spades (Thorold Dickinson, 1949)
Reach for Glory (Philip Leacock, 1961)
Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)
Road Sweepers (Michael Ingrams, 19?)
Room at the Top (Jack Clayton, 1959)
The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film (Richard Lester, 1960)
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Karel Reisz, 1960)
Secret People (Thorold Dickinson, 1951)
The Servant (Joseph Losey, 1963)
Sewermen (Michael Ingrams, 1957)
The Singer not the Song (Roy Ward Baker, 1960)
The Skin Game (Alfred Hitchcock, 1931)
The Sleeping Tiger (Joseph Losey, 1954)
Sparrows Can't Sing (Joan Littlewood, 1962)
Tell England (Anthony Asquith, 1930)
Thursday's Children (Lindsay Anderson and Guy Brenton, 1954)
Time Without Pity (Joseph Losey, 1956)
Tramps (Michael Ingrams, 1958)
The War Game (Peter Watkins, 1967)
Waterloo Road (Sidney Gilliatt, 1945)
Woman in a Dressing Gown (J. Lee Thompson, 1957)
Yellow Submarine (George Dunning, 1968)
Yesterday's Enemy (Val Guest, 1959)
B. IMPORTANT MOVIES
The Angry Silence (Guy Green, 1960)
Battle of the Sexes (Charles Crichton, 1959)
Billy Budd (Peter Ustinov, 1962)
Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947)
Blackmail (Alfred Hitchcock, 1929)
The Boys (Sidney J. Furie, 1962)
Brides of Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1960)
Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957)
Brighton Rock (John Boulting, 1949)
Carry On Nurse (Gerald Thomas, 1959)
Children on Trial (Jack Lee, 1946)
Circle of Deception (Jack Lee, 1960)
Coalface (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1935)
Cottage on Dartmoor (Anthony Asquith, 1928)
Cry the Beloved Country (Zoltan Korda, 1952)
Dance Pretty Lady (Anthony Asquith, 1932)
David (Paul Dickson, 1951)
Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti, Robert Hamer, Basil Dearden, and Charles Crichton, 1945)
The Do-It-Yourself Cartoon Kit (Bob Godfrey, 1961)
Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1959)
Dunkirk (Leslie Norman, 1948)
The Edge of the World (Michael Powell, 1937)
Everybody's Nobody (John Sewell, 1966)
The Family Way (Roy Boulting, 1966)
Fires Were Started (Humphrey Jennings, 1943)
The Flying Man (George Dunning, 1962)
Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)
Guns at Batasi (John Guillermin, 1964)
Guns of Darkness (Anthony Asquith, 1962)
The Heart of the Matter (George More O'Ferrall, 1953)
Hobson's Choice (David Lean, 1954)
I Know Where I'm Going (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1945)
Industrial Britain (John Grierson, 1931)
The Intimate Stranger (Joseph Losey, 1956)
Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963)
The Kidnappers (Philip Leacock, 1953)
Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings 1941)
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Tony Richardson, 1962)
The Love Match (David Palthengi, 1953)
Love on the Dole (John Baxter, 1941)
Man in the Moon (Basil Dearden, 1960)
Man of Aran (Robert Flaherty, 1934)
The March to Aldermaston ("Under guidance of committee comprising Lindsay Anderson, Chris Brunel, Charles Cooper, Allan Forbes, Derrick Knight, Kurt Lewenhack, Lewis McLeod, Karel Reisz, Elizabeth Russell, Eda Segal, Derek York, 1959)
A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
Night and the City (Jules Dassin, 1950)
Night Mail (Basil Wright, 1936)
Oh Mr. Porter (Marcel Varnel, 1937)
Old Bones of the River (Marcel Varnel, 1938)
Once a Jolly Swagman (Jack Lee, 1948)
One-Way Pendulum (Peter Yates, 1964)
Our Mother's House (Jack Clayton, 1967)
Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)
Polygamous Polonius (Bob Godfrey, 1960)
The Pumpkin Eater (Jack Clayton, 1964)
The Rake's Progress (Sidney Gilliatt, 1945)
The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
Refuge England (Robert Vas, 1959)
Revenge of Frankenstein (Terence Fisher, 1958)
Rich and Strange (Alfred Hitchcock, 1932)
Rise and Fall of Emily Sprodd (Bob Godfrey, 1963)
Rotten to the Core (John Boulting, 1965)
Sailor Beware (Gordon Parry, 1956)
Sapphire (Basil Dearden, 1959)
Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1936)
The Stars Look Down (Carol Reed, 1940)
The Stranglers of Bombay (Terence Fisher, 1959)
Summer of the 17th Doll (Leslie Norman, 1959)
Tales of Hoffman (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1951)
Term of Trial (Pester Glenville, 1962)
They Drive by Night (Arthur Woods, 1939)
They Made Me a Fugitive (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1947)
The Thief of Baghdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, 1940)
This Sporting Life (Lindsay Anderson, 1963)
Tiger in the Smoke (Roy Ward Baker, 1956)
Together (Lorenza Mazzetti, 1955)
Tom Jones (Tony Richardson, 1962)
Tunes of Glory (Ronald Neame, 1960)
Up the Junction (Peter Collinson, 1967)
The Valiant (Roy Ward Baker, 1962)
Victim (Basil Dearden, 1961)
The Way Ahead (Carol Reed, 1944)
The Way to the Stars (Anthony Asquith, 1945)
Whisky Galore (Alexander Mackendrick, 1948)
Windom's Way (Ronald Neame, 1957)
Yield to the Night (J. Lee Thompson, 1956)
C. "The category below this would include delightful, interesting or erratic movies, such as, Genevieve, Hamlet, Lawrence of Arabia, Passport to Pimlico, The Wicked Lady, etc."
Compounding upon Durgnat's own idiosyncrasies as a critic, it's interesting as always to see how great minds of the recent past have characterized historical developments and aesthetic achievements ... i.e., when they've done so in ways that have not been taken up as dominant paradigms or conventional wisdom. Durgnat (like the 80%-anti-Nouvelle Vague Noel Burch circa 1960, or Manny Farber who chose a humanistic Kurosawa [!] film to exemplify termite art) surprises. Who would have thought, for one thing, that this most insightful critic-advocate of Powell & Pressburger would consign all Archers' films (or Powell's individual works) to only the B list? (Could we surmise that he upgraded them in subsequent decades?) And it's difficult to dismiss Durgnat's embrace of what we think of as boring and mildewed middlebrow classics (1950s Asquith?); Durgnat was on the front lines for underground film and animated cinema, and wrote beautifully about "low" genre films (even when he didn't necessarily argue that they were artistic masterpieces, he accorded them greater attention and respect than many of those who do). This isn't like Judith Crist or other "respectable" older movie critics whose postures where that of the shepherd but whose opinions were those of the sheep.
Durgnat's tastes represent an alternate example, a robust one, for where debates and assumptions in film culture might have gone. It is this excavation of somewhat "off," even alien taste cultures that has fascinated me in recent months. I am trying to recalibrate my own eyeballs to this; starting to do things like thinking in terms of Positif as opposed to Cahiers (for example), and to rearrange the dusty old furniture that's accumulated in my brain (in general). Time to open up windows, add on a few new wings to the house, and rejuvenate things so as to retain the good things of my earlier cinephilia (and larger assumptions about art), but recontextualize them as necessary.
(Oh, and apparently Britain's greatest director was the American Mr. Losey! A nice reciprocity given how canonically Hitchcock is regarded as Hollywood's greatest director.)
* * *
'A First Draft Pantheon' - I've added the directors names & dates from the IMDB, my memory, and Durgnat's own filmography; feel free to let me know if I've made mistakes in my haste.
("drawn from all British films mentioned in the index")
A. MAJOR MOVIES
Billy Liar (John Schlesinger, 1963)
Blind Date (Joseph Losey, 1959)
Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966)
Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
The Browning Version (Anthony Asquith, 1952)
The Citadel (King Vidor, 1938)
The Criminal (Joseph Losey, 1960)
Chance of a Lifetime (Bernard Miles, 1950)
The Damned (Joseph Losey, 1963)
The Entertainer (Tony Richardson, 1960)
Give Us This Day (Edward Dmytryk, 1949)
Great Expectations (David Lean, 1946)
The Gypsy and the Gentleman (Joseph Losey, 1958)
The Happiest Days of Your Life (Frank Launder, 1950)
Heavens Above (John and Roy Boulting, 1963)
Housing Problems (Edgar Anstey and Arthur Elton, 1935)
How I Won the War (Richard Lester, 1967)
I'm All Right Jack (John Boulting, 1959)
It Happened Here (Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo, 1966)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (Richard Hamer, 1949)
King and Country (Joseph Losey, 1964)
Knave of Hearts (Rene Clement, 1954)
The Leather Boys (Sidney J. Furie, 1963)
The Little Island (Richard Williams, 1958)
Live Now Pay Later (Jay Lewis, 1962)
The Long and the Short and the Tall (Leslie Norman, 1960)
Look Back in Anger (Tony Richardson, 1959)
Love Me Love Me Love Me (Richard Williams, 1963)
The L-Shaped Room (Bryan Forbes, 1962)
The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)
Men of Two Worlds (Thorold Dickinson, 1946)
Millions Like Us (Sidney Gilliatt, 1943)
Next of Kin (Thorold Dickinson, 1943)
A Night to Remember (Roy Ward Baker, 1958)
Nothing But the Best (Clive Donner, 1963)
Odd Man Out (Carol Reed, 1947)
Orders to Kill (Anthony Asquith, 1958)
Passage Home (Roy Ward Baker, 1955)
The Plain Man's Guide to Advertising (Bob Godfrey, 1962)
Poor Cow (Ken Loach, 1967)
Private's Progress (John Boulting, 1956)
The Queen of Spades (Thorold Dickinson, 1949)
Reach for Glory (Philip Leacock, 1961)
Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)
Road Sweepers (Michael Ingrams, 19?)
Room at the Top (Jack Clayton, 1959)
The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film (Richard Lester, 1960)
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Karel Reisz, 1960)
Secret People (Thorold Dickinson, 1951)
The Servant (Joseph Losey, 1963)
Sewermen (Michael Ingrams, 1957)
The Singer not the Song (Roy Ward Baker, 1960)
The Skin Game (Alfred Hitchcock, 1931)
The Sleeping Tiger (Joseph Losey, 1954)
Sparrows Can't Sing (Joan Littlewood, 1962)
Tell England (Anthony Asquith, 1930)
Thursday's Children (Lindsay Anderson and Guy Brenton, 1954)
Time Without Pity (Joseph Losey, 1956)
Tramps (Michael Ingrams, 1958)
The War Game (Peter Watkins, 1967)
Waterloo Road (Sidney Gilliatt, 1945)
Woman in a Dressing Gown (J. Lee Thompson, 1957)
Yellow Submarine (George Dunning, 1968)
Yesterday's Enemy (Val Guest, 1959)
B. IMPORTANT MOVIES
The Angry Silence (Guy Green, 1960)
Battle of the Sexes (Charles Crichton, 1959)
Billy Budd (Peter Ustinov, 1962)
Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947)
Blackmail (Alfred Hitchcock, 1929)
The Boys (Sidney J. Furie, 1962)
Brides of Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1960)
Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957)
Brighton Rock (John Boulting, 1949)
Carry On Nurse (Gerald Thomas, 1959)
Children on Trial (Jack Lee, 1946)
Circle of Deception (Jack Lee, 1960)
Coalface (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1935)
Cottage on Dartmoor (Anthony Asquith, 1928)
Cry the Beloved Country (Zoltan Korda, 1952)
Dance Pretty Lady (Anthony Asquith, 1932)
David (Paul Dickson, 1951)
Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti, Robert Hamer, Basil Dearden, and Charles Crichton, 1945)
The Do-It-Yourself Cartoon Kit (Bob Godfrey, 1961)
Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1959)
Dunkirk (Leslie Norman, 1948)
The Edge of the World (Michael Powell, 1937)
Everybody's Nobody (John Sewell, 1966)
The Family Way (Roy Boulting, 1966)
Fires Were Started (Humphrey Jennings, 1943)
The Flying Man (George Dunning, 1962)
Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson, 1940)
Guns at Batasi (John Guillermin, 1964)
Guns of Darkness (Anthony Asquith, 1962)
The Heart of the Matter (George More O'Ferrall, 1953)
Hobson's Choice (David Lean, 1954)
I Know Where I'm Going (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1945)
Industrial Britain (John Grierson, 1931)
The Intimate Stranger (Joseph Losey, 1956)
Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963)
The Kidnappers (Philip Leacock, 1953)
Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings 1941)
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Tony Richardson, 1962)
The Love Match (David Palthengi, 1953)
Love on the Dole (John Baxter, 1941)
Man in the Moon (Basil Dearden, 1960)
Man of Aran (Robert Flaherty, 1934)
The March to Aldermaston ("Under guidance of committee comprising Lindsay Anderson, Chris Brunel, Charles Cooper, Allan Forbes, Derrick Knight, Kurt Lewenhack, Lewis McLeod, Karel Reisz, Elizabeth Russell, Eda Segal, Derek York, 1959)
A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
Night and the City (Jules Dassin, 1950)
Night Mail (Basil Wright, 1936)
Oh Mr. Porter (Marcel Varnel, 1937)
Old Bones of the River (Marcel Varnel, 1938)
Once a Jolly Swagman (Jack Lee, 1948)
One-Way Pendulum (Peter Yates, 1964)
Our Mother's House (Jack Clayton, 1967)
Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)
Polygamous Polonius (Bob Godfrey, 1960)
The Pumpkin Eater (Jack Clayton, 1964)
The Rake's Progress (Sidney Gilliatt, 1945)
The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
Refuge England (Robert Vas, 1959)
Revenge of Frankenstein (Terence Fisher, 1958)
Rich and Strange (Alfred Hitchcock, 1932)
Rise and Fall of Emily Sprodd (Bob Godfrey, 1963)
Rotten to the Core (John Boulting, 1965)
Sailor Beware (Gordon Parry, 1956)
Sapphire (Basil Dearden, 1959)
Song of Ceylon (Basil Wright, 1936)
The Stars Look Down (Carol Reed, 1940)
The Stranglers of Bombay (Terence Fisher, 1959)
Summer of the 17th Doll (Leslie Norman, 1959)
Tales of Hoffman (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1951)
Term of Trial (Pester Glenville, 1962)
They Drive by Night (Arthur Woods, 1939)
They Made Me a Fugitive (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1947)
The Thief of Baghdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, 1940)
This Sporting Life (Lindsay Anderson, 1963)
Tiger in the Smoke (Roy Ward Baker, 1956)
Together (Lorenza Mazzetti, 1955)
Tom Jones (Tony Richardson, 1962)
Tunes of Glory (Ronald Neame, 1960)
Up the Junction (Peter Collinson, 1967)
The Valiant (Roy Ward Baker, 1962)
Victim (Basil Dearden, 1961)
The Way Ahead (Carol Reed, 1944)
The Way to the Stars (Anthony Asquith, 1945)
Whisky Galore (Alexander Mackendrick, 1948)
Windom's Way (Ronald Neame, 1957)
Yield to the Night (J. Lee Thompson, 1956)
C. "The category below this would include delightful, interesting or erratic movies, such as, Genevieve, Hamlet, Lawrence of Arabia, Passport to Pimlico, The Wicked Lady, etc."
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Efficacy
"Not even all human affairs are objects of deliberation; thus no Spartan deliberates about the best form of constitution for the Scythians; each of the various groups of human beings deliberates about the practical measures that lie in its own power."
—Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (in Bk. III, 1112a)
—Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics (in Bk. III, 1112a)
At issue from some weeks back is whether Barack Obama should be respected or esteemed for being a conduit of popular will (or particular articulations of sentiment among the popular demographic). Alex, being the well-read and thoughtful commentator on political issues that he is, challenged me on this point and asked why we should esteem a leader for giving in to the demands of others. (Discussion here.) For weeks I have let this question sit on the back-burner (or maybe a back-back-burner) and yet I think if I had a strong and sound response it would have come to the fore more readily. As it stands I think I only have a partial response that needs tempering and revision. So either Alex is correct in his thinking, or if he is wrong it is not because I am right (or that I am yet right). I'll continue to think about this.
What lies in the power of the American electorate? Relatively little, on a federal level. But the electorate can pick its officials. Obama ran a campaign based famously on "change," and of course everyone who got behind him knew that the referent of this term had its roots that ran well outside of partisan politics. Of course it was partisan too. My point is that its popular appeal was not merely partisan. This was not solely a change from 'Republican' to 'Democrat.' Obama's campaign captured the speech, the votes, the labor hours, of so many millions of people because it represented a change to Washington culture in general. Certainly we cannot realistically expect Obama to deliver a sweeping transformation; nevertheless he was elected and given such a rapturous welcome by so many because of his symbolic negotiation of the office of the presidency:
"But ultimately, this race is not about Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John McCain. This election is about you—the American people—and whether we will have a president and a party that can lead us toward a brighter future." (Here.)
I do not believe that Obama was refusing to play politics when he made this appeal—from one Time Person of the Year (Barack Obama) to another (You). He and his campaign knew exactly what he was doing, and a popular opinion so cultivated, so "played," is not an opinion that can be trusted for decisive and long-term policy. Nevertheless I think that what is at stake with this office is the issue of electoral efficacy. Obama must show himself to be a conduit of populist demands (or make a convincing illusion of it, which may or may not prove easy, we shall see). If he does not honor these terms of his electoral triumph, then I fear that no amount of Lincoln & King invocation will keep history from flicking him aside in a few more years.
Gran Torino
Nobody makes movies like Clint Eastwood. I do wonder who decided on the title for Manohla Dargis' review. It's a decent review, I think basically attuned to what Eastwood's doing (no small feat for a critic these days), but the review's title ("Hope for a Racist, and Maybe a Country") is awful, and I think it misses the boat on a lot of what makes Gran Torino interesting and special.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Year's End
Normally I include some lists at year's end—a casual reflection of what I saw, and what captured my imagination. But this past year has been my weakest film-viewing go-round in several years, and it included an abnormally large proportion of (a) second or third viewings, and (b) 'humiliation' films that I probably should have seen before 2008 anyway. So I wouldn't be able to give a very fun list with regard to old films. And I barely saw anything worth noting among new releases. This is not a reflection upon the year in cinema; it says everything about my own life and schedule and the fact that the whole second half of this past year has been a cramped and hectic one where I gave up much ground on my cinephilic duties. I did really like Jia Zhang Ke's 24 City, which is a notch or two below his masterful Still Life, but still pretty impressive ... and I think it probably counts as my favorite of the small number of 2008 world premieres I've seen.
What I will do, however, is give a few words on a film that I've chosen from what I saw during each month of this calendar year. These are not necessarily the best or most interesting films I saw in each given month. They're only meant to to pique curiosity, direct attention to interesting films, or perhaps vent a little snark.
January - Dr. Caligari (Stephen Sayadian, 1989) - Surprisingly there's little of interest that Googling brings up on this cult director who has a captivating style all his own. I'd love to see his other films, whether erotic expressionist comedy cult fantasies (1980s) or all-out hardcore pornography (1990s).
February - Lo foo chut gang / Tiger on the Beat (Lau Kar-leung, 1988) - I watched this (on VHS) because I recognized the name of the veteran HK action director. What I remember is Chow Yun Fat cracking a dozen raw eggs into a big glass and then cheerily downing the whole thing. There are also scenes of cops in their underwear out in the streets.
March - Doomed Love (Manoel de Oliveira, 1978) - I saw this sitting beautiful and inviting film with very esteemed company at BAM: an unforgettable culmination to an excellent weekend.
April - Fast Workers (Tod Browning, 1933) - The theme of this minor Browning, a non-horror film, is that "the lady is a tramp." All ladies, really. Still: the movie cuts hard and fast and I continue to remember the unusual tactility of the way it depicts high rise construction.
May - Sunshine (Danny Boyle, 2007) - 2001: An American Apparel Odyssey.
June - The Frighteners (Peter Jackson, 1996) - A fairly good and solid, though maligned and forgotten, SFX genre film. I had not long before read Michel Chion (on sound and on, well, 2001) ... and something about Chion's way of analyzing films seeped into my head as I watched this and for a few hours I was convinced I would write something substantial about all the interesting little things this modest movie does.
July - When Willie Comes Marching Home (John Ford, 1950) - Olaf Möller has the best word on this: "whoaaaaaaaaaa." It's not top-drawer Ford but his well material is the stuff to make other directors envious.
August - Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008) - In the same month that I fell in love with Anna Faris' amazing performances, what good fortune to have found a comedic run to rival Smiley Face. Penelope Cruz completely owns this movie, which I think is dismal for the aggregative running time without her presence. But when she's on the screen ... "jeen-yoos"!
September - Pictures at an Exhibition (Chris Marker, 2008?) - If you watch this and/or if you read Borges' "The Library of Babel" and feel moved to tears, then you are a kindred spirit. There is something simultaneously sad and tempting about the unfolding of information into infinity, spreading out across time and the cosmos, and the fact that we can contemplate going down those rabbit holes ...
October - W. (Oliver Stone, 2008) - The most pointless movie of the year? I couldn't say but I suspect it's in the running.
November - Trop tôt, trop tard (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, 1981) - The NYC cinephiles—and beyond!—made it out to this "standing room only" screening of a very bad 16mm print of the Straubs' demanding but also hypnotic and beautiful film.
December - Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984) - For years I have put off seeing this film because I told myself I'd watch it on the big screen. After a number of missed chances, however, I finally bit the bullet and got a DVD. I have liked Leone films a lot before but this is a different level altogether: one of the very greatest movies ever made. With the exception of the casting choice of Elizabeth McGovern (which to me strikes a solitary and unnecessary dissonant chord in the whole giant opus) this is a blemish-free tour-de-force moving forward on all fronts.
I am not certain that I can think of another film that so completely marries classicism with modernism; cinema's dueling inheritances of literature, drama, painting, photography, and (hmmm) probably also the chalky residues of 20th century philosophy of mind; ironic skepticism with spectral, heartbreaking romanticism (in this its peer is Kubrick's best film, Barry Lyndon). I confidently felt this film would be a true achievement at the moment I realized Leone was going to let the phone keep ringing. This is a facility with symbol and metaphor that reclaims them for the cinema. That is, all the rich holdings that lit., painting, etc. have bequeathed to cinema simultaneously have acted as weights and shackles—to the point where it becomes somewhat embarrassing to even speak of metaphor or symbol because that channels back into the pre-cinematic prison house. In its handling of time, its evocation of memory, its transcience across space, the phone is resolutely "cinematic." At the same time there is absolutely no point in praising the employment of that ringing phone if one does not understand what it does, what it means. As far as I know there is a dearth of critical, analytical work devoted to exploring the frontier-space next to conventional and philistine wisdom in this endeavor. There are those who would believe it's all a matter of "form supports story or theme" (a sterile, boring, and wrong premise); and the alternative would invest itself into meaning without recourse to a pre-arranged system or to the invited stigma of "formalism."
(If I am not making much sense it is because I have not yet finished clarifying my thoughts!)
In 2009, I think & hope, EL will shake things up in its own humble nook of the film blogosphere by presenting some counter-arguments, some re-evaluations, and some cross-disciplinary reflections on the medium, the other media, and the world. For the sake of the readers of this blog, all of you whom I appreciate very much, I will do my best to make these further investigations interesting, provocative, informative, enjoyable, and fruitful.
Happy New Year!
What I will do, however, is give a few words on a film that I've chosen from what I saw during each month of this calendar year. These are not necessarily the best or most interesting films I saw in each given month. They're only meant to to pique curiosity, direct attention to interesting films, or perhaps vent a little snark.
January - Dr. Caligari (Stephen Sayadian, 1989) - Surprisingly there's little of interest that Googling brings up on this cult director who has a captivating style all his own. I'd love to see his other films, whether erotic expressionist comedy cult fantasies (1980s) or all-out hardcore pornography (1990s).
February - Lo foo chut gang / Tiger on the Beat (Lau Kar-leung, 1988) - I watched this (on VHS) because I recognized the name of the veteran HK action director. What I remember is Chow Yun Fat cracking a dozen raw eggs into a big glass and then cheerily downing the whole thing. There are also scenes of cops in their underwear out in the streets.
March - Doomed Love (Manoel de Oliveira, 1978) - I saw this sitting beautiful and inviting film with very esteemed company at BAM: an unforgettable culmination to an excellent weekend.
April - Fast Workers (Tod Browning, 1933) - The theme of this minor Browning, a non-horror film, is that "the lady is a tramp." All ladies, really. Still: the movie cuts hard and fast and I continue to remember the unusual tactility of the way it depicts high rise construction.
May - Sunshine (Danny Boyle, 2007) - 2001: An American Apparel Odyssey.
June - The Frighteners (Peter Jackson, 1996) - A fairly good and solid, though maligned and forgotten, SFX genre film. I had not long before read Michel Chion (on sound and on, well, 2001) ... and something about Chion's way of analyzing films seeped into my head as I watched this and for a few hours I was convinced I would write something substantial about all the interesting little things this modest movie does.
July - When Willie Comes Marching Home (John Ford, 1950) - Olaf Möller has the best word on this: "whoaaaaaaaaaa." It's not top-drawer Ford but his well material is the stuff to make other directors envious.
August - Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008) - In the same month that I fell in love with Anna Faris' amazing performances, what good fortune to have found a comedic run to rival Smiley Face. Penelope Cruz completely owns this movie, which I think is dismal for the aggregative running time without her presence. But when she's on the screen ... "jeen-yoos"!
September - Pictures at an Exhibition (Chris Marker, 2008?) - If you watch this and/or if you read Borges' "The Library of Babel" and feel moved to tears, then you are a kindred spirit. There is something simultaneously sad and tempting about the unfolding of information into infinity, spreading out across time and the cosmos, and the fact that we can contemplate going down those rabbit holes ...
October - W. (Oliver Stone, 2008) - The most pointless movie of the year? I couldn't say but I suspect it's in the running.
November - Trop tôt, trop tard (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, 1981) - The NYC cinephiles—and beyond!—made it out to this "standing room only" screening of a very bad 16mm print of the Straubs' demanding but also hypnotic and beautiful film.
December - Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984) - For years I have put off seeing this film because I told myself I'd watch it on the big screen. After a number of missed chances, however, I finally bit the bullet and got a DVD. I have liked Leone films a lot before but this is a different level altogether: one of the very greatest movies ever made. With the exception of the casting choice of Elizabeth McGovern (which to me strikes a solitary and unnecessary dissonant chord in the whole giant opus) this is a blemish-free tour-de-force moving forward on all fronts.
I am not certain that I can think of another film that so completely marries classicism with modernism; cinema's dueling inheritances of literature, drama, painting, photography, and (hmmm) probably also the chalky residues of 20th century philosophy of mind; ironic skepticism with spectral, heartbreaking romanticism (in this its peer is Kubrick's best film, Barry Lyndon). I confidently felt this film would be a true achievement at the moment I realized Leone was going to let the phone keep ringing. This is a facility with symbol and metaphor that reclaims them for the cinema. That is, all the rich holdings that lit., painting, etc. have bequeathed to cinema simultaneously have acted as weights and shackles—to the point where it becomes somewhat embarrassing to even speak of metaphor or symbol because that channels back into the pre-cinematic prison house. In its handling of time, its evocation of memory, its transcience across space, the phone is resolutely "cinematic." At the same time there is absolutely no point in praising the employment of that ringing phone if one does not understand what it does, what it means. As far as I know there is a dearth of critical, analytical work devoted to exploring the frontier-space next to conventional and philistine wisdom in this endeavor. There are those who would believe it's all a matter of "form supports story or theme" (a sterile, boring, and wrong premise); and the alternative would invest itself into meaning without recourse to a pre-arranged system or to the invited stigma of "formalism."
(If I am not making much sense it is because I have not yet finished clarifying my thoughts!)
In 2009, I think & hope, EL will shake things up in its own humble nook of the film blogosphere by presenting some counter-arguments, some re-evaluations, and some cross-disciplinary reflections on the medium, the other media, and the world. For the sake of the readers of this blog, all of you whom I appreciate very much, I will do my best to make these further investigations interesting, provocative, informative, enjoyable, and fruitful.
Happy New Year!
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Signs
Moving image art can ponder the indexical bearing of the human on a material/imagistic edifice; it can take it as a theme or a problem. The hand on the screen cannot communicate with a screen, but the screen itself communicates with the owners of the hand: can become a gun, figuratively speaking, and can rob you of your leisure and all that it's worth as surely as it can nurture with a gift, kissing you. (Godard understands this fact.)
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Statistics
"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic."
—Apocryphal quote frequently attributed to Stalin.
A question posed by both Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and Tavernier's Le Juge et l'assassin (1976): how to reconcile the law of the land which condemns murder when the society that is built upon, and enforces, such laws requires same in much larger numbers than any one individual can achieve?
What other films treat this topic?
—Apocryphal quote frequently attributed to Stalin.
A question posed by both Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and Tavernier's Le Juge et l'assassin (1976): how to reconcile the law of the land which condemns murder when the society that is built upon, and enforces, such laws requires same in much larger numbers than any one individual can achieve?
What other films treat this topic?
RIP, Robert Mulligan
An excellent director whose understanding of the medium was fluid, inventive, well-applied. His work didn't have a recognizable style except to those interested in looking. As Dave Kehr pointed out, it has a lot to do with the subjective point-of-view. He was also an early chronicler of the young Reese Witherspoon's forearms, in The Man in the Moon. I wrote a few words about two Mulligan films here, in 2005.
(Blogging to resume this week ...)
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Sunday, December 07, 2008
More Christmases
More graffiti on the Four Christmases subway poster at my stop. "This Christmas ... think long and hard about Reese Witherspoon's forearms." "This Christmas disappear into the world between Vince Vaughn's thigh meat." "Obama 08."
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Checkpoint
A couple more weeks and things will start easing up. (I will get around to discussions left unpursued, as well.) In the meantime, here's a clip:
Monday, November 10, 2008
Stepping Stone
"The modern prince, the myth-prince, cannot be a real person, a concrete individual. It can only be an organism, a complex element of society in which a collective will, which has already been recognised and has to some extent asserted itself in action, begins to take concrete form. History has already provided this organism, and it is the political party—the first cell in which there come together germs of a collective will tending to become universal and total. In the modern world, only those historico-political actions which are immediate and imminent, characterised by the necessity for lightning speed, can be incarnated mythically by a concrete individual. Such speed can only be made necessary by a great and imminent danger, a great danger which precisely fans passion and fanaticism suddenly to a white heat, and annihilates the critical sense and the corrosive irony which are able to destroy the "charismatic" character of the condottiere (as happened in the Boulanger adventure). But an improvised action of such a kind, by its very nature, cannot have a long-term and organic character. It will in almost all cases be appropriate to restoration and reorganisation, but not to the founding of new States or new national and social structures (as was at issue in Machiavelli's Prince, in which the theme of restoration was merely a rhetorical element, linked to the literary concept of an Italy descended from Rome and destined to restore the order and the power of Rome). It will be defensive rather than capable of original creation. Its underlying assumption will be that a collective will, already in existence, has become nerveless and dispersed, has suffered a collapse which is dangerous and threatening but not definitive and catastrophic, and that it is necessary to reconcentrate and reinforce it—rather than that a new collective will must be created from scratch, to be directed towards goals which are concrete and rational, but whose concreteness and rationality have not yet been put to the critical test by a real and universally known historical experience."
—from Gramsci, trans. Hoare & Nowell-Smith, "The Modern Prince."
More will follow as I find time for it.
—from Gramsci, trans. Hoare & Nowell-Smith, "The Modern Prince."
More will follow as I find time for it.
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Mirror and Vortex
I saw this poster graffiti for the upcoming (romantic?) comedy Four Christmases this morning in the subway. I had to whip out my cellphone and take a few pictures.
"Don't you want to walk into the mirror?"
"I'm alone in this vortex."
See. I didn't know the song until I googled the lines. I like it much more thinking of these as random lines some jokester marked on their own.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
People Get Ready
So do we now refer to ourselves as the United States of Anti-America? The United States of Arugula? For eight years I patiently waited for my moment of schadenfreude as the right-wingers who talked about mandates and country first would simply have to face up to a demographic "pwning." Like with the losers at the end of Revenge of the Nerds, it becomes apparent ultimately that there are more of us than there are of you.
Obama's name is the sign under which popular sentiment has crystallized, and in exercising agencies we must use these signs as they come to us. Long planning to vote for Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente, stumping for McKinney to numerous friends and acquaintances, I nevertheless wavered near the end. I admit with some reluctance that I am not a robot, I bend and change. I do not believe Obama is our political messiah. Yet, the energy and sense of community around his candidacy were there in addition to the regular establishment partisanship I can't stomach. I ended up casting my vote for Obama/Biden on the Working Families line because I realized that during the day, it would be around Obama that speculation and aspiration would cohere. People were talking about him in the bodega where I got coffee before voting. (Queens went 75% Obama, last I looked, which actually made it the most McCain-friendly borough after Staten Island.) The point is not him, he is the focal point projected by us. But in recognizing this fact it is vital that we do not establish a program of mere narcissism, which is what Palin offered her base. ("She's like us, she's normal like us!") Obama could offer something very similar to his supporters, and this we must avoid. We have to acknowledge the nature of our symbolic actions and movements. Obama will be a respectable president only if we ensure that he is one. I think his election is one step, an important landmark step of significant symbolic value and potentially significant policy value. But we must ensure our direction. Obama will almost definitely be a miserable president if we continue to cede him, ever more profoundly, to the owners of capital and the disseminators of images. He's already within their clutches. The only reason Americans do, and can, feel like we exercise any efficacy at all is simply because his ascendant star (so to speak) had not been completely preordained and overdetermined before even arriving on the scene. The fact that people worry about his inexperience is precisely why we can extend a measure of hope.
And I do not use that last word liberally.
I always enjoy reading Ran Prieur, who frequently comes up with angles I hadn't quite considered. Still, he's lamenting what he interprets as the "dodged bullet" nature of the election, which should have been a progressive landslide but wasn't. I, on the other hand, wonder if Prieur is being untrue to some of his more deeply-held principles—such as that change is best when it comes gradually. We should not invest too much in the feel-good symbolic value of this election, not unless we're just party hacks. Which is why we should not be too disappointed if the landslide (including more of that sweet, sweet schadenfreude) didn't come. If we're being serious, this should be the first part of a long-haul sort of move, and Obama will be succeeded by more progressive candidates, and federal government will find as a competitor more and more serious popular/grassroots threats to its power insofar as it is aligned with national and transnational corporate interests.
Let it break! We will figure out where to house the refugees of George W. Bush.
According to Thomas Friedman, the breaking of the modern Republican Party is more along the lines of being the long end to the Civil War. I know, I know—picking on Friedman is like shooting fish in a barrel. No serious person takes him seriously. He thinks that the election of Barack Obama is proof that, finally, "the American Civil War [has] ended." Unable to conceive of history outside of these sixth-grade storybook terms, Friedman dutifully hews to the liberal-capitalist party line, where the Civil War was "about" slavery, and the march of progress and the Union. But because the Southern states have dragged their feet with regard to Union "progress," with Jim Crow, segregation, and all that, the Civil War (i.e., "racism") has still had hot embers up until 11pm EST last night. What's offensive is that he says this: "the Civil War could never truly be said to have ended until America’s white majority actually elected an African-American as president." Come on, Friedman! Give it a few more generations, and America's white majority may no longer even exist. We wouldn't be so incredibly central to the project of his beloved white liberal history. Do you all hear this? White folks did this, they ended the War Between the States, they finally put a closing chapter on the long novel of racial strife that has divided our great nation. Sojourner Truth didn't do it. Martin Luther King, Jr., didn't do it. Malcolm X surely didn't do it. It didn't take black people. It didn't take Barack Obama, even, really. It took white people electing a black man to let us know that the (trumpets please!) Civil War is finally over.
Stellar. We white folks ultimately elected a black person, even though the majority of us voted for his white opponent. I would be happier, and more surprised, if the news stories about Obama's historic victory were not explained in terms of what it means for white people and what great things we've finally done. If there is a job for the intellectual class over the next few years, it will be in exposing, correcting, and focusing the way our history is being written and peddled to us before our very eyes. How we understand popular or progressive history, especially, is how we understand our own history. This is too important to let textbooks, newspapers, movies tell it to us first. Their way. We will insist on ours.
At any rate ... now another stage begins. The other party's back is broken, and we the electorate should make the Democrats aware that we could do the same to them if they do not heed us. Now should be when the gloves come off.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Eat, Sleep, Breathe, Write, Etc.
I wish I could exercise my right to be lazy. I'm currently undergoing the busiest period I've ever had in my life. So ... I wanted to jot down a few words to indicate something about my relative absence. (Especially now that, I see below, Alex has demanded new material.) This may also explain, if not excuse, why I may be out-of-touch for long periods of time. Things like sleep, blog writing, and blog reading have had to take a backseat. Movies themselves have had to take a backseat, although this past week or two have seen a slight bump in the film-watching department: yesterday, my first glimpses of Jean-Daniel Pollet's work outside of Paris vu par... (Pourvu quo'on ait l'ivresse and L'Amour c'est gai, l'amour c'est triste), and also recently some Aki Kaurismäki (Girish once cited him as his most repeated-viewing-friendly director), some more Anna Faris, some Rossellini (side note: by coincidence, this was posted on my birthday!). At any rate, EL was created as a public notebook for me to jot down whatever I'm thinking, especially when it's superfluous to more official intellectual requirements, but I just don't have the necessary amount of time/energy/attention to provide adequately for this notebook at the moment. I'm not calling a hiatus or sabbatical because I want the freedom to post a blog entry or two if I get the time and the urge. But if little shows up ... know that it's just Life yanking me along.Despite the hectic schedule, one must always eat, so let me say a few words about two excellent restaurants in my beloved borough that I had dinner at this past weekend. Mombar is an Egyptian place on Steinway; I have wanted to go here since I moved to the borough in 2005. My fiancée and I—yes, I've also gotten myself betrothed this season—went here on Halloween, as we decided not to celebrate the holiday this year on account of being generally exhausted. It made for one of the emptier restaurant experiences I've had on a Friday night in New York: there was one couple already in the restaurant when we arrived, they left, and a second couple came in as we were finishing up. Given how good the food was, however, this had to have been a fluke because of Halloween. We ordered a spinach & chickpea appetizer (delicious, garlicky), a "Sahara mix" appetizer dish (pita chips with things like hummus + green apple slice on top), a mombar entree (spiced sausage in sauce), and the lamb tajeen. The kitchen gave us a complimentary order of Egyptian fried bread. Himalayan Yak is a recently re-opened Nepali/Tibetan/Indian joint on Roosevelt. We ordered ~9 dishes for 6 people, my favorite of which was the sizzling lamb. But there were also a few fantastic potato-based veg dishes, a solid boar leg appetizer, some quite good steamed beef momos (though Tangra Masala's are still my favorite ever). Should you venture into Jackson Heights and wonder if this place is BYOB, we found out the hard way that it is not, but the management were nice and allowed us to drink our shiraz anyway.
As an addendum, there is Poodam's, which is in my immediate neighborhood and which I ate from for probably the sixth time recently. For years this corner was notorious because it hosted a string of horrible Thai restaurants. (I had the worst Thai food I've ever had there once.) But the current incarnation is a fairly solid establishment, and for this I am thankful. (Though I wanted to move to Queens largely because of the food options, the neighborhood in which actually I live is unfortunately skimpy on good restaurants, especially since Le Sans souci closed.) If you happen to go there, I would recommend sticking to their Isaan specialties and the appetizers. Don't bother with curries or their chicken dishes, which are an improvement on what I tried at the same location previously, but still merely average. Anything with duck, pork, sausage, or seafood, any kind of "salad," or the chive dumplings ... those seem to be the smart choices. OK.
More will come to EL at some point in the next month or two, but I can't say how frequently. And finally: let's enjoy these elections tomorrow ...
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Quote of the Day
“Did not workers previously resort at once to sabotage and set fire to factories?—To induce men to reconcile their interests peacefully without involving the legal system, there is, in the end, apart from all virtues, one effective motive that often enough puts into the most reluctant hands pure instead of violent means: it is the fear of mutual disadvantages that threaten to arise from violent confrontation, whatever the outcome might be. Such motives are clearly visible in countless cases of conflict of interests between private persons. It is different when classes and nations are in conflict, since the higher orders that threaten to overwhelm equally victor and vanquished are hidden from the feelings of most, and from the intelligence of almost all.”
—Walter Benjamin, “Critique of Violence” (p. 245 in SW1).
—Walter Benjamin, “Critique of Violence” (p. 245 in SW1).
Friday, October 10, 2008
Your Audience Is One
Superfluous plus: maybe in the wake of this financial crisis people in Hollywood will begin to remember the poor, and to deal with the everyday fact of difference. Hollywood can do "Derelicte," really earnestly too, but it can't really deal with the poor. (If and when transnational media corporations produce works that, for whatever reason, once again engage these issues, I hope Andy Rector will start to trace this progression at Kino-Slang, regardless even of the films' aesthetic worth.)
This is a point I have made a lot, but: one of the interesting things about teen movies in the 1980s vs. their late 1990s counterparts is that the former are generally much more class-conscious. Still "Hollywood," plenty of wish fulfillment and obfuscation, sure, but they acknowledge certain disparities in the way communities are separated, how individuals are thereby classified and subjected to different social options. These disparities are plasticized out of existence in (most) recent teen films. Have you seen Step Up? 10 Things I Hate About You? These are films where the outsider/underdog is never really poor. They are coded as bohemian instead or, more precisely, bobo. I kind of enjoyed The Devil Wears Prada, but Anne Hathaway's living a life of relative privilege, albeit stressful privilege, in that movie, and would not be able to afford her apartment with a live-in cook boyfriend—if I recall—unless there was some serious trust fund support. Why can't there be more studio films with cramped, imperfect apartments!? Or—God forbid—living conditions that require one to interact and compromise with their neighbors. A striking feature of The Karate Kid is that little Danny Russo meets people right away in his surroundings. Most importantly, Mr. Miyagi. Hollywood fantasy, especially today, it seems to me, is about being able to live without interference from neighbors, without being in a situation where one is forced to negotiate space, noise, bills, chores, commutes. I haven't analyzed large bodies of films to be sure of it; it's simply an impression of aggregate generalities. It's a potential shortcoming of mainstream American film that corresponds to the giant, malicious bubble under which so many of us here have lived for some years.
When 'Hollywood' (which is not run by the poor) can more honestly represent workers, mass media entertainment will: we can all claim in the theater that "I Got a Name" once again.
Truth: on a blog that I read which hosts sociopolitical opinions decidedly different than my own, a commenter recently commended Sarah Palin, in the VP debate—which I mostly didn't watch, and clearly didn't need to—for using the phrase "working class" rather than "middle class." I, too, cringe at the meaningless ubiquity of this phrase in the political media spectacle: middle class, which is peddled to represent the self-respecting aspirations of the working poor as well as the self-deprecating pretensions of the rich. So why is it that fringe rightist-libertarians are cheering on La Maverick when they would surely froth at the mouth if Obama or Biden were to speak in such terms (inciting "class warfare" no doubt)? As if the Republican or Democratic establishments would every honestly care about the majority ...
Continuing on.
As I posted on Girish's blog recently, I am a big fan of Times Square (Allan Moyle, 1981), and I am a big fan of this scene in particular, which energizes a seriously fantastic and obscure pop tune with a remarkable bit of performance/filmmaking. From seconds 0:18 to 0:55 in this clip, the camera pans from left to right, starting with the character Nicky (Robin Johnson) and moving across the floor—over the owner/manager, waitstaff, patrons, multiracial, spanning in age from adolescence until middle years, none of them exactly privileged—to the spot in the curtains from which Pammy (Trini Alvarado) will emerge. Cut to the original angle of Nicky for a moment, then an over-the-shoulder medium of shot of her, from her height, giving us a long-shot view of poor Pammy's "striptease" debut. This final shot literalizes the communality and desire implicit in the long tracking shot, which in its own way and context echoes our hero M. Lange (only lacking his armed figure to bring us, in cold righteous murderous rage, to absolution). In the absence of this Langean absolution—i.e., retaliation against our oppressors—we have a moment of supreme ecstacy, arrived at slowly, once the body armor has been let down. "In this material world run on injustice and terror, where "popular" is confused with "industrial," any cultural expression that does not hurl an angry cry or wail a song of mad love (often one and the same) merely collaborates in the regulation and preservation of this world." (Nicole Brenez, Abel Ferrara, trans. Adrian Martin.) Listen to the "na-na-na-na-na-na" part, where Johnson's throaty cackle mixes with Alvarado's progressive confidence. The stage routine began with disembodied laughs on the soundtrack, but it arrives in an orgasmic affirmation of communal pleasure.
In the mainstream cinema this is a commodity more precious than gold, and it is doled out in dust and leaf form most of the time; rarely do we witness it really.
In a few minutes of a mostly-forgotten teen film we have a passage that can sit in dialogue with Renoir, Prévert, Makavejev, Reich. I'm not saying it's great cinema in the same sense that Peter Kubelka is great cinema. But it's a rich and wonderful accomplishment of some genuine kind.
If we listen to this song from the film we witness something fascinating and, also, rare. (Cf. this bell hooks quote.) This is a politicized identification across groups, a communal act of siding with the underclasses and all the "lower" categories of people in the social sphere. "Your daughter is one."
This is a point I have made a lot, but: one of the interesting things about teen movies in the 1980s vs. their late 1990s counterparts is that the former are generally much more class-conscious. Still "Hollywood," plenty of wish fulfillment and obfuscation, sure, but they acknowledge certain disparities in the way communities are separated, how individuals are thereby classified and subjected to different social options. These disparities are plasticized out of existence in (most) recent teen films. Have you seen Step Up? 10 Things I Hate About You? These are films where the outsider/underdog is never really poor. They are coded as bohemian instead or, more precisely, bobo. I kind of enjoyed The Devil Wears Prada, but Anne Hathaway's living a life of relative privilege, albeit stressful privilege, in that movie, and would not be able to afford her apartment with a live-in cook boyfriend—if I recall—unless there was some serious trust fund support. Why can't there be more studio films with cramped, imperfect apartments!? Or—God forbid—living conditions that require one to interact and compromise with their neighbors. A striking feature of The Karate Kid is that little Danny Russo meets people right away in his surroundings. Most importantly, Mr. Miyagi. Hollywood fantasy, especially today, it seems to me, is about being able to live without interference from neighbors, without being in a situation where one is forced to negotiate space, noise, bills, chores, commutes. I haven't analyzed large bodies of films to be sure of it; it's simply an impression of aggregate generalities. It's a potential shortcoming of mainstream American film that corresponds to the giant, malicious bubble under which so many of us here have lived for some years.
When 'Hollywood' (which is not run by the poor) can more honestly represent workers, mass media entertainment will: we can all claim in the theater that "I Got a Name" once again.
Truth: on a blog that I read which hosts sociopolitical opinions decidedly different than my own, a commenter recently commended Sarah Palin, in the VP debate—which I mostly didn't watch, and clearly didn't need to—for using the phrase "working class" rather than "middle class." I, too, cringe at the meaningless ubiquity of this phrase in the political media spectacle: middle class, which is peddled to represent the self-respecting aspirations of the working poor as well as the self-deprecating pretensions of the rich. So why is it that fringe rightist-libertarians are cheering on La Maverick when they would surely froth at the mouth if Obama or Biden were to speak in such terms (inciting "class warfare" no doubt)? As if the Republican or Democratic establishments would every honestly care about the majority ...
Continuing on.
As I posted on Girish's blog recently, I am a big fan of Times Square (Allan Moyle, 1981), and I am a big fan of this scene in particular, which energizes a seriously fantastic and obscure pop tune with a remarkable bit of performance/filmmaking. From seconds 0:18 to 0:55 in this clip, the camera pans from left to right, starting with the character Nicky (Robin Johnson) and moving across the floor—over the owner/manager, waitstaff, patrons, multiracial, spanning in age from adolescence until middle years, none of them exactly privileged—to the spot in the curtains from which Pammy (Trini Alvarado) will emerge. Cut to the original angle of Nicky for a moment, then an over-the-shoulder medium of shot of her, from her height, giving us a long-shot view of poor Pammy's "striptease" debut. This final shot literalizes the communality and desire implicit in the long tracking shot, which in its own way and context echoes our hero M. Lange (only lacking his armed figure to bring us, in cold righteous murderous rage, to absolution). In the absence of this Langean absolution—i.e., retaliation against our oppressors—we have a moment of supreme ecstacy, arrived at slowly, once the body armor has been let down. "In this material world run on injustice and terror, where "popular" is confused with "industrial," any cultural expression that does not hurl an angry cry or wail a song of mad love (often one and the same) merely collaborates in the regulation and preservation of this world." (Nicole Brenez, Abel Ferrara, trans. Adrian Martin.) Listen to the "na-na-na-na-na-na" part, where Johnson's throaty cackle mixes with Alvarado's progressive confidence. The stage routine began with disembodied laughs on the soundtrack, but it arrives in an orgasmic affirmation of communal pleasure.
In the mainstream cinema this is a commodity more precious than gold, and it is doled out in dust and leaf form most of the time; rarely do we witness it really.
In a few minutes of a mostly-forgotten teen film we have a passage that can sit in dialogue with Renoir, Prévert, Makavejev, Reich. I'm not saying it's great cinema in the same sense that Peter Kubelka is great cinema. But it's a rich and wonderful accomplishment of some genuine kind.
If we listen to this song from the film we witness something fascinating and, also, rare. (Cf. this bell hooks quote.) This is a politicized identification across groups, a communal act of siding with the underclasses and all the "lower" categories of people in the social sphere. "Your daughter is one."
Saturday, September 27, 2008
The Man from Craigslist
Reply to: hous-42346111340733@craigslist.org
Date: 1934
Beautiful flat for sale. Generic but roomy. Money hidden in briefcase, a few English touches. In winter one must wipe the windows clean to see out of them. Decorate it as you will. Call and ask for Georges.
- it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
PostingID: 13473234512
Dear M. Simenon,
The flat has worked out very well. I have taken to heart your blessing to treat the flat as I wish. You have left me a simple set of rules, a list of things done and not done, and a gripping progression for every minute that I have been there. (Though, at times, when I relate it to my friends, I admit they sometimes find it obscure.) Some of my dear ones have come to live with me in this flat, and I have had a fine tall Englishwoman in with me too. Once or twice I have found it necessary to play the Hungarian drinking games of old: interminable balancing acts set, deadpan, to music. It has been much fun. Your flat, though simple, allows me to roam all over. In fact, sometimes, I think that I have experienced your flat in a way quite different from how you experienced it or intended others to experience it. But it is my way and you seem liberal enough about the prospects. I have broken down a few walls and ignored a few of the main hallways for my purposes. But one walks free and heavy here and I like it.
Yours,
Béla
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Waiting Game
Please forgive my scarcity; I'm busy working on extra-lucrative "hot genes," or reasonable facsimiles thereof. I'm not gone, nor have I run out of ideas for EL at the moment. Only very occupied with other things.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Seriously
One of the interesting things about the late Positif film critic Robert Benayoun's film Serious About Pleasure (1975) is how seamlessly it appears to (a) channel the modernist sound-image shenanigans of Daisies, Tati, maybe even Rivette and Resnais, and/or (b) bring to full bloom entrenched comedy "plastics" in the mode of Frank Tashlin and Jerry Lewis. The two approaches meet in the middle, they kiss and fall in love, they hang out in this little modest, and modestly meta, comedy—which is no doubt comparable to Bertrand Blier's Les Valseuses in terms of a French ménage à trois, but as I haven't seen that film, I won't be doing the one comparing.
"Jerry, deciding at the outset that every gag has, of course, been used at least once before, decides to make us guess what his gags are going to be."
—Benayoun, "Jerry Lewis: Man of the Year" (Positif, March 1963)
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
The Firing Squad
More standard-issue words on form, politics, and cinephilia.
The first thing I noticed about Jon Jost's Sure Fire ('90) was the speech, which captures the way (some) people talk in that deep, desert, mountainous American West—something like a cross between the Midwest and a generalized Southern accent. This is the speech of long stretches of highway and mountains, of desolate rest stops, lonely big sky country. (It's the speech of the sort of fellow I imagine Emmylou Harris & Willie Nelson sing about in one of the saddest songs ever, "One Paper Kid"—or, come to think of it, the people in Mikel Rouse's new music opera Failing Kansas.) The camera doesn't show us the characters in a frontal medium shot or close-up for some time; in fact Jost shies away from close-ups and frontal shots quite a bit in this film. I would not stress the case too far, but maybe there is something to be said for a film which emphasizes environment, custom, ritual in dealing with a weirdly, pathetically charismatic hero. The great Tom Blair exerts a lot of raw personal force in a character to whom nobody who pays attention does so because they wish to.
Monologues become positively Faulknerian, and are rendered mournful not only through the content of the dialogue and the speech tones, but also through the spatial relations between characters. Blair sits and instructs his character's wife at length about what she's to do back home while he's away on business: she doesn't listen. The wives speak amidst the ruins. The scene where Tom Blair's son gets his first gun is a masterpiece of surprise & volume. And so on. I'll try to get some screencaps put up here sometime.
The quality of light in this film bathes a lot of the shots—albeit ones I saw on an old VHS—in almost startling white: the air is complicit in the drama, takes it to another world. Subsisting mostly on a diet of standard, and recent, commercial cinema in recent weeks (buoyed along only by dear Anna Faris) I was clobbered in a way comparable to that when you see a true masterpiece, or when you are very young as a cinephile and only just begin to seek out the "different" stuff, revelling in the ineffable and deep novelty of cinema that scoots around outside the comfort zone that has been established for you.
* * *
Above: an image from Irving Lerner's Murder by Contract (1958)
Cinephilia is constantly (mis)understood as a pathology, but in many of the objects of cinephilia itself we see the artistic treatment of this problem. Murder by Contract's is a dehumanized hero (a compelling cipher, unlike the psychologized hero of Lerner's Studs Lonigan). The affirmation of will at the expense of life, as well as the attendant allure of such devotion (i.e., for some people) is the very material of this film, and it is not alone. The hero in Murder is well-regulated by time, appointment, duty; immune to vagaries of appetite—sexual or gastronomic. But he's not above his environment, and his code is shaped by something external to it: we could have a fun parlor game speculating about whether it's his Id, his upbringing, his class position ...
I penned that write-up of Studs Lonigan almost two years ago, and still haven't seen a third Lerner film (but I did revisit Murder by Contract).
And check out the two dissolves:
Without doing a bit of research I was positive that Martin Scorsese knew Murder by Contract well and modeled some of Taxi Driver on that film. (Even if you haven't seen Lerner's film I'll bet you thought the same thing when you saw these screengrabs above!) A single bit of googling reveals as much. It goes to show how maybe the source material of classical cinema has been frequently manipulated, misconstrued. Scorsese is sometimes thought of as a politically centrist or right-leaning filmmaker (for the Catholic content, his choice of protagonists, and/or his support of Elia Kazan, perhaps). But if he's good enough for David Ehrenstein, I'm willing to give the world's most cinephilically fascinating fast-talker the benefit of the doubt. The first step in diagnosing the politics of the film school brat generation, the 'New Hollywood' of the MPAA era's beginnings, might be to trace out not only what their films said and how they related to their moment (what Shampoo says about the Nixon era & gender roles, etc.) but also which cues the filmmakers themselves took from their famously self-aware knowledge of the cinema that preceded them.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Some Words
My observation of the Spanish War and the rape of the Philippines led me to consider the character of our minor adventures in Samoa and Hawaii; and there I found the same record of chicanery and fraud, implemented by violence. In both instances the United States had acquired possession through revolutions made to order by its official agents. Then I went on to take stock of our continental adventures in the same line. I knew what imperialism meant in former times, what its springs of action were, and what its customary modes of procedure were. My classical studies had thoroughly acquainted me with these phenomena of the old days around the Mediterranean, and I had as yet seen nothing to suggest any essential difference between modern imperialism and the imperialism which I had studied and understood. Thus I was able to read between the lines of standard American historical writing, even such as was dished up for the young in our educational institutions. It was clear to me that our acquisition of Texas was a matter of sheer brigandage, and that force and fraud played approximately equal parts in our acquisition of California. I carried on my survey of American imperialism through the Mexican War, our systematic extermination of the Indians, and so on back into the colonial period; and I emerged with the conviction that at least on this one item of imperialism, our political history from first to last was utterly disgraceful.
—Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, pp. 103-104.
Hence, it should be noted that a conqueror, after seizing power, must decide about all the injuries he needs to commit, and do all of them at once, so as not to have to inflict punishments every day. Thus he will be able, by his restraint, to reassure men and win them over by benefitting them. Anyone who does not act in this way, either because he is timid or because he lacks judgement, will always be forced to stand with sword in hand. He will never be able to rely upon his subjects, for they can never feel safe with him, because of the injuried that continue to be inflicted. For injuries should be done all together so that, because they are tasted less, they will cause less resentment; benefits should be given out one by one, so that they will be savoured more. And above all a ruler must live with his subjects in such a way that no unexpected events, whether favourable or unfavourable, will make him change course. For when difficult times put you under pressure you will not have enough time to take harsh measures, and any benefits that you confer will not help you, because they will be considered to be done unwillingly, and so you will receive no credit for them.
—Machiavelli, The Prince (trans. Russell Price)
—Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, pp. 103-104.
Hence, it should be noted that a conqueror, after seizing power, must decide about all the injuries he needs to commit, and do all of them at once, so as not to have to inflict punishments every day. Thus he will be able, by his restraint, to reassure men and win them over by benefitting them. Anyone who does not act in this way, either because he is timid or because he lacks judgement, will always be forced to stand with sword in hand. He will never be able to rely upon his subjects, for they can never feel safe with him, because of the injuried that continue to be inflicted. For injuries should be done all together so that, because they are tasted less, they will cause less resentment; benefits should be given out one by one, so that they will be savoured more. And above all a ruler must live with his subjects in such a way that no unexpected events, whether favourable or unfavourable, will make him change course. For when difficult times put you under pressure you will not have enough time to take harsh measures, and any benefits that you confer will not help you, because they will be considered to be done unwillingly, and so you will receive no credit for them.
—Machiavelli, The Prince (trans. Russell Price)
Palin
I doubt I'm the first to say this. My fear about Sarah Palin, from looking at news and from commentary left and right, is not about '08, but about '12. I'm confident that McCain will lose handily in November, but the set-up for Palin now may be for Republicans what the '04 set-up was for Obama and the Democrats. And just like Obama will energize a lot of people outside the party and the older electorate, so will Palin—provided she performs well tonight at the convention. Media-savvy populism in the spectacular age: they're slowly and surely catching onto "grassroots" in ever more insidious ways.
Palin is analogous to Obama in the relationship she bears to her party: not fiercely partisan (as in occupying an established faction) so much as a wave overtaking rotted beachfront property. Same beach, same water, same stuff: yet different. She may be as easy to underestimate as Obama was; and, like him, she is probably just honest, independent, and fresh enough to capture the attention of a tectonically-shifted party base. Don't mistake me: in calling Palin honest, etc., I don't for a second hope to see her in power or the policies she'd propose enacted. If certain rumors are to be believed, she is a cutthroat politician, a very bright and crafty stateswoman (just like Obama is sharp, very sharp). But—I would propose—darlings like Obama and Palin remind viewers/voters of people they've known and admired in real life, to a greater extent than the more massaged images of Biden, the Clintons, the Bushes, McCain, Romney (he's almost like a relic: in an age of comedy & caricature his corporate-religious Aryan perfection sets up jokes well before the late night shows get to him). People still believe in the image but their hunger for "realism" is exerting gravitational pull. Perhaps we're coming full circle from the famed TV election of Kennedy versus Nixon.
The real-real people in national politics (McKinney, Kucinich, Paul) remain on the fringes. The system isn't broken, it works only too well. We're just misinformed as to what it's supposed to do ...
Palin is analogous to Obama in the relationship she bears to her party: not fiercely partisan (as in occupying an established faction) so much as a wave overtaking rotted beachfront property. Same beach, same water, same stuff: yet different. She may be as easy to underestimate as Obama was; and, like him, she is probably just honest, independent, and fresh enough to capture the attention of a tectonically-shifted party base. Don't mistake me: in calling Palin honest, etc., I don't for a second hope to see her in power or the policies she'd propose enacted. If certain rumors are to be believed, she is a cutthroat politician, a very bright and crafty stateswoman (just like Obama is sharp, very sharp). But—I would propose—darlings like Obama and Palin remind viewers/voters of people they've known and admired in real life, to a greater extent than the more massaged images of Biden, the Clintons, the Bushes, McCain, Romney (he's almost like a relic: in an age of comedy & caricature his corporate-religious Aryan perfection sets up jokes well before the late night shows get to him). People still believe in the image but their hunger for "realism" is exerting gravitational pull. Perhaps we're coming full circle from the famed TV election of Kennedy versus Nixon.
The real-real people in national politics (McKinney, Kucinich, Paul) remain on the fringes. The system isn't broken, it works only too well. We're just misinformed as to what it's supposed to do ...
Saturday, August 30, 2008
More Faris
Just Friends is a surprisingly bitter movie. Not that it's attitude towards its characters is particularly contemptuous (the Mom, perhaps) but that it's spurred along by deep-seated resentment. As a result the film is a bit all-over the place: part Farrellyesque body comedy, part teen movie sentimentalism, part small town winter wonderland romp (cf. Groundhog Day, Trapped in Paradise, Home for the Holidays). Regarding the seething emotions that justify the entire story, it should come as no surprise that the director was the same guy who "covered" Les Liaisons dangereuses.
The story goes that Ryan Reynolds was a sensitive fat kid in high school, in love with his oblivious, slightly aloof best friend (Amy Smart). He leaves his Central Jersey hometown in shame, and ten year's later he's a slim, charming, vapid ladies' man with a high-paying job in show biz. He's meant to court a manic, untalented, hot young pop star (a slightly exaggerated Avril Lavigne/Ashlee Simpson type) so that she agrees to sign her next record with his company. En route to a romantic Parisian weekend at her insistence, the plain is forced to land in Trenton ... over Christmas ... and Reynolds will visit his hometown for the first time since he graduated from high school. You see where all this ends up going. You probably can figure out 95% of the plot and 75% of the gags simply from this description. (Hint: Chris Klein has a role, too, and he also went from being "not hot" in high school to "hot" in his late 20s.) How tacked-on are the emotional progressions of all the characters, though? Normally in movies like this, which press the sentimental romance button at appropriate times (as this one does), there's at least an attempt to finesse out some kind of an emotional arc. Not here. The only appropriate word to describe the "emotional core" of the bond described to us between Reynolds' protagonist and Smart's object of affection is clusterfuck.
So why did I really watch this movie? Anna Faris! She doesn't reach the same heights as she does in Smiley Face, but as in The Hot Chick she has a "scene-stealing" presence. (In fact, in The Hot Chick Faris herself plays the "best friend" with romantic inclinations toward her BFF.) Here she plays none other than the pop star Samantha. What makes the performance so rewarding is that she acts as though she were in a movie and she's constantly flummoxed by the fact that the plot is always moving away from her. Her little tics, her movements, her schizophrenic consciousness blurted out from moment to moment. I mean, Faris is making Samantha act this way, as part of the character who knows and acts as if she were in a movie or tv show. It's a level of meta that the rest of the film doesn't really approach.
The story goes that Ryan Reynolds was a sensitive fat kid in high school, in love with his oblivious, slightly aloof best friend (Amy Smart). He leaves his Central Jersey hometown in shame, and ten year's later he's a slim, charming, vapid ladies' man with a high-paying job in show biz. He's meant to court a manic, untalented, hot young pop star (a slightly exaggerated Avril Lavigne/Ashlee Simpson type) so that she agrees to sign her next record with his company. En route to a romantic Parisian weekend at her insistence, the plain is forced to land in Trenton ... over Christmas ... and Reynolds will visit his hometown for the first time since he graduated from high school. You see where all this ends up going. You probably can figure out 95% of the plot and 75% of the gags simply from this description. (Hint: Chris Klein has a role, too, and he also went from being "not hot" in high school to "hot" in his late 20s.) How tacked-on are the emotional progressions of all the characters, though? Normally in movies like this, which press the sentimental romance button at appropriate times (as this one does), there's at least an attempt to finesse out some kind of an emotional arc. Not here. The only appropriate word to describe the "emotional core" of the bond described to us between Reynolds' protagonist and Smart's object of affection is clusterfuck.
* * *
So why did I really watch this movie? Anna Faris! She doesn't reach the same heights as she does in Smiley Face, but as in The Hot Chick she has a "scene-stealing" presence. (In fact, in The Hot Chick Faris herself plays the "best friend" with romantic inclinations toward her BFF.) Here she plays none other than the pop star Samantha. What makes the performance so rewarding is that she acts as though she were in a movie and she's constantly flummoxed by the fact that the plot is always moving away from her. Her little tics, her movements, her schizophrenic consciousness blurted out from moment to moment. I mean, Faris is making Samantha act this way, as part of the character who knows and acts as if she were in a movie or tv show. It's a level of meta that the rest of the film doesn't really approach.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Scratch Sheet
Right away in Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate, Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) swindles a valuable four-volume edition of Don Quixote from the collection of a stroke-silenced patriarch. He deals with the book collector's greedy heirs, who wouldn't know what he's talking about when he references the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili but are wowed by his estimation of their father's library's value. The tack Polanski takes here is that of the unbeliever changing money in the temple: literature and the occult have their prices, and their predators and prey. The truth of a thing? Beside the point.
A thought: Johnny Depp and Robert Downey, Jr. are Hollywood's two best fortysomething male stars. (Sean Penn gets mentioned for this sort of honor a lot, but he doesn't really "act" these days, does he? In the normally even-keel Clint Eastwood's most frenetic and frenzied film (that I've seen), Mystic River, Penn spews out his lines too much like tortured poetry. I couldn't take it.) If Depp is indeed to play the Riddler in the next Batman movie, I may actually have to see it—though it's bound to be even worse than the painfully mediocre Dark Knight.
Nolan's Batman films are not very interesting to me, though the embrace he's received from most onlookers suggests he's found his element, so maybe I should just shut my mouth. (The indie filmmakers who debuted in the 1990s have shown that their inexpensive calling cards deservedly land them what they've wanted to do deep down all along: make expensive, accessible pop art. Still, I'm inclined to think that veteran Sam Raimi is doing a better job than Nolan, Singer, et al.) The most interesting Batman scenes Nolan made were the first half-hour (ish) of Batman Begins, which I perversely enjoyed for its almost mistakenly open militaristic-fascistic inclinations. Of course then the film goes back into the safe, muddled waters of the spectacular mainstream, and its follow-up The Dark Knight hardly deviates from this lucrative comfort zone. ("Ambiguity" is the hoped-for interpretation plastered like a salve over the film's deliberately muddled status quo politics, methinks.)
(Speaking of Downey and of superhero films, I still have yet to see Iron Man...)
Back to The Ninth Gate—a good, basic, "termitish" movie. What's not to like? In the blockbuster age it is refreshing when a mainstream film (about rare book collections and the occult, no less) keeps its claims modest, makes no huge gestures by the end. Roger Ebert, in his review of the film, suggests this is a fault. I don't think it is; I like these mainstream genre films that gently stir up huge questions but don't presume to provide summary philosophical answers. The film tickles you, but doesn't scratch the itch: you must look elsewhere, outside the film, to continue the thread. I watched this film years ago, and took another look at it (in about thirteen segments) on YouTube, where I've enjoyed watching several contemporary Hollywood movies over the last few weeks. (Call it a "new media research project" with a team of one.) There's a difference between the ambiguity of a film that is all over the place, over-reaching itself and its own sense of importance, and the ambiguity of a film that never presumes its own high value, that plays its hand close the chest.
A thought: Johnny Depp and Robert Downey, Jr. are Hollywood's two best fortysomething male stars. (Sean Penn gets mentioned for this sort of honor a lot, but he doesn't really "act" these days, does he? In the normally even-keel Clint Eastwood's most frenetic and frenzied film (that I've seen), Mystic River, Penn spews out his lines too much like tortured poetry. I couldn't take it.) If Depp is indeed to play the Riddler in the next Batman movie, I may actually have to see it—though it's bound to be even worse than the painfully mediocre Dark Knight.
Nolan's Batman films are not very interesting to me, though the embrace he's received from most onlookers suggests he's found his element, so maybe I should just shut my mouth. (The indie filmmakers who debuted in the 1990s have shown that their inexpensive calling cards deservedly land them what they've wanted to do deep down all along: make expensive, accessible pop art. Still, I'm inclined to think that veteran Sam Raimi is doing a better job than Nolan, Singer, et al.) The most interesting Batman scenes Nolan made were the first half-hour (ish) of Batman Begins, which I perversely enjoyed for its almost mistakenly open militaristic-fascistic inclinations. Of course then the film goes back into the safe, muddled waters of the spectacular mainstream, and its follow-up The Dark Knight hardly deviates from this lucrative comfort zone. ("Ambiguity" is the hoped-for interpretation plastered like a salve over the film's deliberately muddled status quo politics, methinks.)
(Speaking of Downey and of superhero films, I still have yet to see Iron Man...)
Back to The Ninth Gate—a good, basic, "termitish" movie. What's not to like? In the blockbuster age it is refreshing when a mainstream film (about rare book collections and the occult, no less) keeps its claims modest, makes no huge gestures by the end. Roger Ebert, in his review of the film, suggests this is a fault. I don't think it is; I like these mainstream genre films that gently stir up huge questions but don't presume to provide summary philosophical answers. The film tickles you, but doesn't scratch the itch: you must look elsewhere, outside the film, to continue the thread. I watched this film years ago, and took another look at it (in about thirteen segments) on YouTube, where I've enjoyed watching several contemporary Hollywood movies over the last few weeks. (Call it a "new media research project" with a team of one.) There's a difference between the ambiguity of a film that is all over the place, over-reaching itself and its own sense of importance, and the ambiguity of a film that never presumes its own high value, that plays its hand close the chest.
Note on a Face
Anna Faris' work in Gregg Araki's pot comedy Smiley Face is a hilarious catalogue of contortions and facial non sequiturs. She lets her eyes get big and her face a little wild, the chin rounding down the gullet with a pouty lip. When you look at, say, Megan Fox in Transformers, no matter what the physical demands of the scene her flawless face remains in the mode of a Calvin Klein ad. Not Faris! With gusto she moves around awkwardly. (Anyone who gets as much a kick as I did out of her rolling "escape" from her car in the parking garage is a kindred spirit.) Is there any other young comedic actress whose tiny movements of facial muscles comprise such a large part of the attraction of the image? The hunch of her back, the tyrannosaurus arms: this unfortunate stoner in Smiley Face had me in stitches.
Will report back if I go through more of the work of La Faris and it proves noteworthy.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Final Image
"Often, at the end of a movie, filmmakers feel the need for some takes of the sky, a landscape, empty streets, and so on. There is no movement in those shots, and the directors could simply film still photographs. But the eye discovers this immediately, because even if there is no movement (in either the subject or the camera) the presence of movement always appears in any filmed image. This play of mobility and fixity is a dwelling-place of involuntary signs."
—Raúl Ruiz, Poetics of Cinema
The last image of a film that comes to mind most readily when thinking about this excerpt is that of João César Monteiro’s Vai-e-Vem, where our hero's eye (and heart?) stop.
—Raúl Ruiz, Poetics of Cinema
The last image of a film that comes to mind most readily when thinking about this excerpt is that of João César Monteiro’s Vai-e-Vem, where our hero's eye (and heart?) stop.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
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