Sunset Boulevard's relationship to noir is probably more contained in the narration and its tone -- the film irresistibly moves toward tragedy.
No film noir is as inventive as Hollow Triumph.
The Killers constantly circles around its elliptical plot.
--Wampa 12, The Film Noir Bible, 2003
Sunset Boulevard was directed by the cynical Billy Wilder in 1950 and, among many other plot elements, it is one of the few films, along with Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place (1950), to deal with the lower levels of Hollywood employees struggling to make a living. Its unusual narrative device --a dead man narrating while lying in a swimming pool -- is an effective element in the general darkness of this film, about a young screenwriter (William Holden) who becomes the kept man of a silent movie star (Gloria Swanson). Swanson's butler is played by Erich Von Stroheim. Stroheim, in real life, was an incredibly brilliant director who directed Swanson in his last film, the never-released Queen Kelly. In Sunset Boulevard, Queen Kelly is screened by Swanson's character, Norma Desmond, as an example of what her films were like. One problem I have with this film and its brilliant dialogue (at one point Holden tells an amusing story about the fate of one of his screenplays) is Wilder's attitude toward silent films; it is unclear to me whether Wilder and others considered (as many people do) silent films to be primitive and unappealing. Over to play cards at Norma's decrepit house are Anna Q. Nilsson, H.B, Warner and Buster Keaton; Holden calls them "the wax works." Does Wilder consider these actors, who made many wonderful films, as just has-beens? After all, Wilder himself briefly started with silent films in Germany. Or was Wilder just pandering to the audience, as many people then, and even more so now, consider silent films of little artistic merit? Many of us who have seen silent films, including those of Buster Keaton, Cecil B. DeMille, Von Stroheim and D.W. Griffith, in good prints and projected at the proper speed, are impressed by their marvelous artistry. When Jack Webb says to William Holden, in Sunset Boulevard, "where did you get that suit, from Adolphe Menjou?" I chuckle briefly and then remember the wonderful performance of Menjou in Chaplin's A Woman of Paris (1923), which in 1950 had long been out of circulation.
Hollow Triumph, 1948, was ostensibly directed by Steve Sekely, but since Sekely's career was undistinguished and shows little of the artistry of Hollow Triumph, I am willing to believe, as has been reported, that Paul Henreid directed most of it; it was a Henreid production and he kept it at low-budget Eagle-Lion to keep control over this bizarre story. Henreid plays a criminal who discovers that a local psychiatrist looks just like him; on the run from the mob he kills that doctor and takes his place, The doctor has a scar on one side of his face so Henreid, a medical school drop-out, gives himself a matching scar. Unfortunately, he is working from a flipped photo and puts the scar on the wrong side, but fortunately nobody even notices, except for a moving scene at the end when the cleaning lady mentions it, as Henreid unsuccessfully flees killers about to get the doctor for his unpaid gambling debts. What makes this movie work as well as it does is Henreid' s deadpan direction, a moving performance by the voluptuous Joan Bennett as first the doctor's and then the imposter's lover, and John Alton's cinematography. Alton was a master of light and shadow and did several films noirs for director Anthony Mann (later he became adept at wide-screen color in films he did for Allan Dwan). Alton shoots from weird angles in semi-darkness that give this strange story an oneiric credibility.
The Killers, directed by Robert Siodmak, was made in 1946 at the beginning of the film noir cycle. It uses Hemingway's story intelligently at the start, emphasizing the importance of literature and pulp literature on film noir. The story then focuses on the insurance policy that the murdered Swede had left to a maid at a hotel in Atlantic City. The Killers, like many films of the time, was influenced by Citizen Kane (1940), as we only see what the insurance company investigator sees in the flashbacks he hears and never actually see what goes on between Burt Lancaster (in his first film) and Ava Gardner (who betrays him), except to the limited extent it was seen by others. There is a powerful score by Miklos Rosza and cinematography by Woody Bredell, including a robbery shot in one take with a crane, and many shots that pave the way for later films noirs, including backlighting and dark foregrounds
note: Turner Classic Movies is continuing its series of films noirs on Fridays in July; it is also offering a free online course on the subject (I am taking the course and recommend it highly). The most useful reference book on film noir I have is Wampa 12's The Film Noir Bible, available from Amazon.
Monday, June 29, 2015
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Wendy Whelan : Moments of Grace
Wendy Whelan: Moments of Grace recently aired on WNYE, a local educational station; produced and directed by Tom Thurman it was originally made for KET, Kentucky Educational TV, and has a strong emphasis on Whelan's childhood in Louisville, Kentucky. In the documentary it is left murky how and why Whelan started at the School of American Ballet in New York when she was 15, in 1982, but she was actually encouraged by her teachers in Louisville, Cecile Gibson and Robert Dicello, to audition for Suzanne Farrell when Farrell came to Louisville scouting for students. Whelan does mention benefactors in Louisville who enabled her to move to New York but no details are given and no information is forthcoming about her education after her one year in a Louisville high school.
To me the oddest thing in the documentary is that there is no mention whatsoever of George Balanchine, who died in 1983, and whether Whelan ever met him. There are interviews with choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, with whom Whelan has had a long collaboration, and Whelan's husband, David Michalek talks about Jerome Robbins. There is a long excerpt of Whelan dancing in Robbins's In Memory Of but there only momentary glimpses of Whelan in Balanchine's Agon and Symphony in Three Movements and the ballets are not identified. Whelan was a superb interpreter of Balanchine's Stravinsky ballets; her angular movements were better suited for the intensity of these modern ballets than the softer romantic ballets in which she was also cast. Perhaps a clue about the absence of Balanchine in Wendy Whelan: Moments of Grace comes when Whelan, who can be quite articulate, says she does not dwell on the past but only thinks of the present and the future.
There is plenty of film, taken by her father, of Wendy dancing when she was five and six years old, and her parents and siblings reminisce at great length. There is also a considerable amount of footage of Wheeldon ballets, just not enough of Wendy Whelan dancing Balanchine.
To me the oddest thing in the documentary is that there is no mention whatsoever of George Balanchine, who died in 1983, and whether Whelan ever met him. There are interviews with choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, with whom Whelan has had a long collaboration, and Whelan's husband, David Michalek talks about Jerome Robbins. There is a long excerpt of Whelan dancing in Robbins's In Memory Of but there only momentary glimpses of Whelan in Balanchine's Agon and Symphony in Three Movements and the ballets are not identified. Whelan was a superb interpreter of Balanchine's Stravinsky ballets; her angular movements were better suited for the intensity of these modern ballets than the softer romantic ballets in which she was also cast. Perhaps a clue about the absence of Balanchine in Wendy Whelan: Moments of Grace comes when Whelan, who can be quite articulate, says she does not dwell on the past but only thinks of the present and the future.
There is plenty of film, taken by her father, of Wendy dancing when she was five and six years old, and her parents and siblings reminisce at great length. There is also a considerable amount of footage of Wheeldon ballets, just not enough of Wendy Whelan dancing Balanchine.
Monday, June 22, 2015
Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight (1965)
Bells ringing in the distance give funereal punctuation to the very first scenes in the film, and motives of rejection and farewell are dominant throughout.
Joseph McBride, Orson Welles, The Viking Press Inc., 1972
Chimes at Midnight has reappeared, after years of distribution limbo, at Turner Classic Movies and Film Forum, to celebrate the 100th birthday of Orson Welles; just as Citizen Kane begins with the death of Welles, Chimes at Midnight ends with his death. In between there is a significant amount of work, most of it compromised by studio cuts and low budgets and a certain self-destructive streak in Welles himself. After Chimes at Midnight his films were mostly unfinished In some ways Welles' portrayal of Falstaff in the film is a self-portrait, of whoring and drinking and questionable companions. But it is also a powerful portrait of a lovable and melancholy man searching for meaning. It is mostly based on Shakespeare's Henry IV, with parts from Henry V, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Richard II and narration from Holinshed's Chronicles.
The soundtrack is quite compromised: post-synchronized with a number of characters dubbed by Welles himself. But Welles has found visual equivalents for Shakespeare's words (relatively familiar to many of us), just as Balanchine did in his marvelous ballet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and has cast wonderful faces in his film, not only his own but Margaret Rutherford, John Gielgud and Keith Baxter as the juvenile Hal. I am almost always disappointed in theatrical productions of Shakespeare (most recently I saw Derek Jacobi as Lear) because there is too much emphasis on declaiming the words and not enough on the feelings and thought they represent. Welles uses low and high camera angles, tracking shots and complex cutting, to capture the social and political complexities of the time. His scenes of the Battle of Shrewsbury capture the rapid descent of war from grand spectacle, as the armored horseman are lowered onto their horses, to futile death and suffering in the mud.
The influence of John Ford on Chimes at Midnight is considerable, from Fort Apache (1948) to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962); Welles has said that he studied Ford's Stagecoach (1939) before making his own films and by 1965 he shares Ford's pessimism as an old man. Of course Welles was only 50 when he made Chimes at Midnight, but he has been hearing the chimes for some time and was an old twenty-five when he made Citizen Kane. Chimes at Midnight is Welles' elegant testimony to his successes --from radio and theatre, where he first did Shakespeare, to film and television -- as well as his many compromises and failures.
Joseph McBride, Orson Welles, The Viking Press Inc., 1972
Chimes at Midnight has reappeared, after years of distribution limbo, at Turner Classic Movies and Film Forum, to celebrate the 100th birthday of Orson Welles; just as Citizen Kane begins with the death of Welles, Chimes at Midnight ends with his death. In between there is a significant amount of work, most of it compromised by studio cuts and low budgets and a certain self-destructive streak in Welles himself. After Chimes at Midnight his films were mostly unfinished In some ways Welles' portrayal of Falstaff in the film is a self-portrait, of whoring and drinking and questionable companions. But it is also a powerful portrait of a lovable and melancholy man searching for meaning. It is mostly based on Shakespeare's Henry IV, with parts from Henry V, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Richard II and narration from Holinshed's Chronicles.
The soundtrack is quite compromised: post-synchronized with a number of characters dubbed by Welles himself. But Welles has found visual equivalents for Shakespeare's words (relatively familiar to many of us), just as Balanchine did in his marvelous ballet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and has cast wonderful faces in his film, not only his own but Margaret Rutherford, John Gielgud and Keith Baxter as the juvenile Hal. I am almost always disappointed in theatrical productions of Shakespeare (most recently I saw Derek Jacobi as Lear) because there is too much emphasis on declaiming the words and not enough on the feelings and thought they represent. Welles uses low and high camera angles, tracking shots and complex cutting, to capture the social and political complexities of the time. His scenes of the Battle of Shrewsbury capture the rapid descent of war from grand spectacle, as the armored horseman are lowered onto their horses, to futile death and suffering in the mud.
The influence of John Ford on Chimes at Midnight is considerable, from Fort Apache (1948) to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962); Welles has said that he studied Ford's Stagecoach (1939) before making his own films and by 1965 he shares Ford's pessimism as an old man. Of course Welles was only 50 when he made Chimes at Midnight, but he has been hearing the chimes for some time and was an old twenty-five when he made Citizen Kane. Chimes at Midnight is Welles' elegant testimony to his successes --from radio and theatre, where he first did Shakespeare, to film and television -- as well as his many compromises and failures.
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Movie Journal: June 2015
those long, dreary, still evenings when even the dogs are too bored to bark and even the clocks seem weary of ticking.
Anton Chekov, "Excellent People" (1886)
Dreyer has lived long enough to know that you live only once and that all decisions are paid in full to eternity.
Andrew Sarris, 1964
Nuri Bilge Ceylan reminds me very much of austere Danish director Carl Theodore Dreyer; both directors emphasize intelligent conversation. Ceylan's film Winter Sleep (2014) is more visually sumptuous, in color and widescreen, but people spend time talking to each other, just as in Dreyer's films. Ceylan has quite successfully adapted two Chekov stories ("Excellent People" and "The Wife") to Anatolia, where social life and the economy are not so different from Russia in Chekov's time. The ubiquitous snow is beautiful but drives people indoors, where they talk to each other and try to find meaning in their lives.
Another director who uses snow effectively is Yoshitaro Nomura, in Zero Focus (1961), where a woman who has been married for two weeks goes to northern Japan to try to find her missing husband. Nomura shoots the snowy landscapes in widescreen black-and-white on a relatively low budget, with a confusing plot and flashbacks within flashbacks highlighting the role of women in U.S.-occupied postwar Japan. When I first came to New York there was a movie theatre on 55th Street that showed exclusively Japanese films, but the Japanese film industry has changed considerably and few films make it now to America; even the great films of Ozu and Mizoguchi are seldom shown, though we can thank Turner Classic Movies and Film Forum for making them occasionally available.
Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly (1955) comes at the end of the postwar film noir cycle, when memories of the war were being replaced by fear of communism. Private detective Mike Hammer is adrift, trying to find a secret that the government doesn't want him to find: "the great whatsit." The fists of a private detective are no match for the atomic power controlled by the government and individuals are left floating in the ocean, as civilization is destroyed by the opening of Pandora's box.
Tomorrow is Another Day (1951), directed by Felix Feist, represents a brief period of redemption in the middle of the noir cycle. The first part of the film, when an ex-con hooks up with a blonde taxi dancer and they kill the cop who is keeping her, is a powerful view of what it means to be an outsider in a world that is starting to prosper. The second part, where they find a job on the run, get turned in by a kid who reads about them in a pulp magazine, and then are exonerated because the cop they killed was a crook and an embarrassment to the force, is more on the sappy side; their escape from town by hiding in a truckload of new cars being delivered to a dealer, however, is impressive in its irony.
Jean Renoir's La Bete Humaine (1938), with its mixture of populism and fatalism, is a fair rendering of Zola's novel, with powerful images of running a train and trying to overcome the effects of parental alcoholism, mixing murder and violence with sexuality, as women are caught in the middle. Fritz Lang did a remake in 1954, as Human Desire (Lang: "have you ever seen any other kind of desire?") with considerably less populism and considerably more fatalism.
Anton Chekov, "Excellent People" (1886)
Dreyer has lived long enough to know that you live only once and that all decisions are paid in full to eternity.
Andrew Sarris, 1964
Nuri Bilge Ceylan reminds me very much of austere Danish director Carl Theodore Dreyer; both directors emphasize intelligent conversation. Ceylan's film Winter Sleep (2014) is more visually sumptuous, in color and widescreen, but people spend time talking to each other, just as in Dreyer's films. Ceylan has quite successfully adapted two Chekov stories ("Excellent People" and "The Wife") to Anatolia, where social life and the economy are not so different from Russia in Chekov's time. The ubiquitous snow is beautiful but drives people indoors, where they talk to each other and try to find meaning in their lives.
Another director who uses snow effectively is Yoshitaro Nomura, in Zero Focus (1961), where a woman who has been married for two weeks goes to northern Japan to try to find her missing husband. Nomura shoots the snowy landscapes in widescreen black-and-white on a relatively low budget, with a confusing plot and flashbacks within flashbacks highlighting the role of women in U.S.-occupied postwar Japan. When I first came to New York there was a movie theatre on 55th Street that showed exclusively Japanese films, but the Japanese film industry has changed considerably and few films make it now to America; even the great films of Ozu and Mizoguchi are seldom shown, though we can thank Turner Classic Movies and Film Forum for making them occasionally available.
Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly (1955) comes at the end of the postwar film noir cycle, when memories of the war were being replaced by fear of communism. Private detective Mike Hammer is adrift, trying to find a secret that the government doesn't want him to find: "the great whatsit." The fists of a private detective are no match for the atomic power controlled by the government and individuals are left floating in the ocean, as civilization is destroyed by the opening of Pandora's box.
Tomorrow is Another Day (1951), directed by Felix Feist, represents a brief period of redemption in the middle of the noir cycle. The first part of the film, when an ex-con hooks up with a blonde taxi dancer and they kill the cop who is keeping her, is a powerful view of what it means to be an outsider in a world that is starting to prosper. The second part, where they find a job on the run, get turned in by a kid who reads about them in a pulp magazine, and then are exonerated because the cop they killed was a crook and an embarrassment to the force, is more on the sappy side; their escape from town by hiding in a truckload of new cars being delivered to a dealer, however, is impressive in its irony.
Jean Renoir's La Bete Humaine (1938), with its mixture of populism and fatalism, is a fair rendering of Zola's novel, with powerful images of running a train and trying to overcome the effects of parental alcoholism, mixing murder and violence with sexuality, as women are caught in the middle. Fritz Lang did a remake in 1954, as Human Desire (Lang: "have you ever seen any other kind of desire?") with considerably less populism and considerably more fatalism.
Monday, June 15, 2015
Two "Postmodern" Novels: Kate Atkinson's A God in Ruins, Jenny Offill's Dept. of Speculation
And with a massive roar the fifth wall comes down and the house of fiction falls, taking Viola, Sunny and Bertie with it. They melt into thin air and disappear Pouf !
Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins, Little Brown and Company, 2015.
This is a strange and rather adventurous route for a novel to take: it turns out that Teddy Todd did not live to the ripe old age depicted in the novel, but rather died in World War II. It is unclear to me what Atkinson is trying to accomplish here; is she trying to tell us that these characters never lived and she just made them up? Who among us does not know that? In her previous book, Life After Life, she told continuing different stories of people's lives, suggesting that it is random fate that drives us and our accomplishments, or lack thereof. I have to admit I prefer the rigor and intelligence of Atkinson's Jackson Brodie novels, which show a new and intriguing approach to the private detective genre.
Afterwards the wife sits on the toilet for a long time because her stomach is twisting. She feels something rising into her throat and spits into her daughter's pink plastic bucket. Just a little bile. She dry-heaves again, but nothing. The longer she sits there, the more she notices how dirty and dingy the bathroom is. There is a tangle of hair on the side of the sink, some kind of creeping mildew on the shower curtain. Their towels are no longer white and are fraying along the edges.
Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation, Alfred A. Knopf, 2014
Offill takes an approach more like that of Renata Adler's Speedboat (1976), many small, wry observations, with little actual narrative. I don't think this miniature approach -- sometimes rather amusing -- is much more effective than Atkinson's immense "realistic" approach that is then brought crashing down. If one is looking for something effectively "postmodern," a new way of saying new things, I recommend the novels of Vladimir Nabokov, especially Pale Fire (1962).
Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins, Little Brown and Company, 2015.
This is a strange and rather adventurous route for a novel to take: it turns out that Teddy Todd did not live to the ripe old age depicted in the novel, but rather died in World War II. It is unclear to me what Atkinson is trying to accomplish here; is she trying to tell us that these characters never lived and she just made them up? Who among us does not know that? In her previous book, Life After Life, she told continuing different stories of people's lives, suggesting that it is random fate that drives us and our accomplishments, or lack thereof. I have to admit I prefer the rigor and intelligence of Atkinson's Jackson Brodie novels, which show a new and intriguing approach to the private detective genre.
Afterwards the wife sits on the toilet for a long time because her stomach is twisting. She feels something rising into her throat and spits into her daughter's pink plastic bucket. Just a little bile. She dry-heaves again, but nothing. The longer she sits there, the more she notices how dirty and dingy the bathroom is. There is a tangle of hair on the side of the sink, some kind of creeping mildew on the shower curtain. Their towels are no longer white and are fraying along the edges.
Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation, Alfred A. Knopf, 2014
Offill takes an approach more like that of Renata Adler's Speedboat (1976), many small, wry observations, with little actual narrative. I don't think this miniature approach -- sometimes rather amusing -- is much more effective than Atkinson's immense "realistic" approach that is then brought crashing down. If one is looking for something effectively "postmodern," a new way of saying new things, I recommend the novels of Vladimir Nabokov, especially Pale Fire (1962).
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Allan Dwan's Getting Gertie's Garter (1945)
I last wrote about Dwan on July 11, 2014; the subject was his extraordinary 1930 film Man to Man(1930). Dwan had a long career, starting with D. W. Griffith in 1916 and making his final film in 1961. His films were usually done quickly, with minimal budgets, but he obviously learned from Griffith where to put the camera, how to cut a scene, how to get subtle performances from his actors. Getting Gertie's Garter is a farce -- complete with slamming doors, climbing out of windows, hiding in haylofts and under beds. Dennis O'Keefe, a skilled farceur, plays an absent-minded professor who has to recover a garter he gave an old girlfriend before his wife finds out about it, when he is required to testify in court (the man who sold it to him pocketed the money). It starts out in a Boston hospital, where he dreams that his wife is strangling him with the garter, and moves quickly to Ipswich, where O'Keefe's former girlfriend is about to get married and four couples (including a blackmailing servant and his wife) get mixed up in attempting to keep track of where the garter is (at one point O'Keefe walks around with it stuck to his butt).
The physical comedy is mostly in long shot --something Dwan learned from Griffith and Chaplin -- and it is quite effective in conveying disorientation and confusion. Whether one finds this funny or not depends on many factors, of course, but I have said numerous times that the best comedy is the most serious; Getting Gertie's Garter is at one level an elegantly choreographed farce, but at another level it is a serious film about love, marriage, jealousy and commitment. I would also say that the screenplay (credited to Dwan and others) displays an impressive level of civilized discourse, where peccadillo, roue', and dissembling are words in everyone's vocabulary.
The physical comedy is mostly in long shot --something Dwan learned from Griffith and Chaplin -- and it is quite effective in conveying disorientation and confusion. Whether one finds this funny or not depends on many factors, of course, but I have said numerous times that the best comedy is the most serious; Getting Gertie's Garter is at one level an elegantly choreographed farce, but at another level it is a serious film about love, marriage, jealousy and commitment. I would also say that the screenplay (credited to Dwan and others) displays an impressive level of civilized discourse, where peccadillo, roue', and dissembling are words in everyone's vocabulary.
Monday, June 8, 2015
Willa Cather's A Lost Lady
The sky was burning with the soft pink and silver of a cloudless summer dawn. The heavy, bowed grasses splashed him to the knees. All over the marsh, snow-on-the-mountain, globed with dew, made cool sheets of silver, and the swamp milk-weed spread its flat, raspberry-coloured clusters. There was almost a religious purity about the fresh morning air, the tender sky, the grass and flowers with the sheen of early dew upon them. There was in all living things something limpid and joyous -- like the wet, morning call of the birds, flying up through the unstained atmosphere. Out of the saffron east a thin, yellow, wine-like sunshine began to gild the fragrant meadows and the glistening tops of the grove.
Willa Cather, A Lost Lady (Vintage Books,1923)
Marian Forrester is the lost lady, living in Sweet Water with her older, retired, husband Captain Forrester, a former magnate of the railroad (Sweetwater is also the name of the town awaiting a railroad in Sergio Leone's great film Once Upon a Time in the West, 1968). Once the captain becomes bankrupt Marian continues to keep up appearances as best she can, until her husband dies. While he is still alive she has adulterous affairs, unsuccessfully hidden from Neil Herbert, an admirer of hers whom she casts aside when the captain dies. Great things were expected of the Western town of Sweet Water, but the town gradually became isolated and forgotten and Marian moved away.
For years Neil and his uncle, the Dalzells and all her friends, had thought of the Captain as a drag upon his wife; a care that drained her and dimmed her and kept her from being all that she might be. But without him she was like a ship without ballast, driven hither and thither by every wind. She was flighty and perverse. She seemed to have lost her faculty of discrimination; her power of easily and graciously keeping everyone in his proper place.
Cather's style is marvelously low-key, observing landscapes, personalities and relationships from various points of view and showing us how individuals are shaped by their time and their environment. Marian was originally engaged to a millionaire of the Gold Coast when she was nineteen and weeks before the wedding her espoused was shot and killed by a jealous husband. She went on a retreat into the mountains, fell while hiking, and was rescued by the captain. We only find this out at the end of the book.
The end of an era; the sunset of the pioneer. This sums up much of Cather's work.
There were two movies made from Cather's book. I have not seen Harry Beaumont's version (1924), but the version made by Alfred E. Green in 1934 is a brisk programmer (a mere 61 minutes), with a lovely performance by Barbara Stanwyck and little to do with the book. I am unaware of any author who liked the movie made from their book (with the possible exceptions of Harper Lee and Kurt Vonnegut) and Cather so disliked what Warner Brothers did with her book that she stipulated in her will that no more movies could be made from her books.
Willa Cather, A Lost Lady (Vintage Books,1923)
Marian Forrester is the lost lady, living in Sweet Water with her older, retired, husband Captain Forrester, a former magnate of the railroad (Sweetwater is also the name of the town awaiting a railroad in Sergio Leone's great film Once Upon a Time in the West, 1968). Once the captain becomes bankrupt Marian continues to keep up appearances as best she can, until her husband dies. While he is still alive she has adulterous affairs, unsuccessfully hidden from Neil Herbert, an admirer of hers whom she casts aside when the captain dies. Great things were expected of the Western town of Sweet Water, but the town gradually became isolated and forgotten and Marian moved away.
For years Neil and his uncle, the Dalzells and all her friends, had thought of the Captain as a drag upon his wife; a care that drained her and dimmed her and kept her from being all that she might be. But without him she was like a ship without ballast, driven hither and thither by every wind. She was flighty and perverse. She seemed to have lost her faculty of discrimination; her power of easily and graciously keeping everyone in his proper place.
Cather's style is marvelously low-key, observing landscapes, personalities and relationships from various points of view and showing us how individuals are shaped by their time and their environment. Marian was originally engaged to a millionaire of the Gold Coast when she was nineteen and weeks before the wedding her espoused was shot and killed by a jealous husband. She went on a retreat into the mountains, fell while hiking, and was rescued by the captain. We only find this out at the end of the book.
The end of an era; the sunset of the pioneer. This sums up much of Cather's work.
There were two movies made from Cather's book. I have not seen Harry Beaumont's version (1924), but the version made by Alfred E. Green in 1934 is a brisk programmer (a mere 61 minutes), with a lovely performance by Barbara Stanwyck and little to do with the book. I am unaware of any author who liked the movie made from their book (with the possible exceptions of Harper Lee and Kurt Vonnegut) and Cather so disliked what Warner Brothers did with her book that she stipulated in her will that no more movies could be made from her books.
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle, Book Three (translated from the Norweigan by Don Barlett).
Book Three of Knausgaard's series is more straightforward, at least in time, than the first two volumes. It focuses on his years with his parents on the island of Tromoya, from when he was six (he says he can't remember anything before that age) until about twelve. It concentrates on his parents, his one brother, school, friends, nature, soccer, books, and music. It captures quite effectively those years, when there is much pleasure but, often, much fear. Karl Ove is very much afraid of his father and fond of his mother, "all the things mothers do for their sons, she did for us." About his father he says, "Inside my room there is only one thing I longed for and that was to grow up. To have total control over my own life. I hated Dad but I was in his hands. It was impossible to exact any revenge on him. Except in the much-acclaimed mind and imagination, there I was able to crush him."
She (Knausgaard is talking about his mother) saved me because if she hadn't been there I would have grown up with Dad, and sooner or later I would have taken my life, one way or another. But she was there, Dad's darkness had a counterbalance, I am alive and the fact that I do not live my life to the full has nothing to do with the balance of my childhood. I am alive, I have my own children, and with them I have tried to achieve only one aim: that they shouldn't be afraid of their father.
Knaugaard's father blames Karl Ove for everything and punishes him accordingly: he is sent to bed without supper for breaking the television, which he did not do, and for losing a sock at the swimming pool, where he is forbidden to go again.
Karl Ove falls in (puppy) love with Kajsa and conveys the tenderness and beauty of walking together.
The walk across the field had never been so long as it was this evening. Holding her hand was almost more than I could bear; all the time I felt an urge to withdraw my hand to bring this unbearable happiness to an end.
Of course this love comes to an end quickly, as he insists on setting a record for a kiss: fifteen minutes, beating a friend's record by ten minutes.
The winters are long and dark, the time spent reading The Hardy Boys and Jules Verne (his mother takes him to get a library card and discourages his dependence on comic books) and listening to The Beatles, but Spring returns every year.
Outdoors we do what we always do every Spring: cut branches off the birch trees, tie bottles onto the remaining stumps, collect them the next day full of light-colored viscous sap, and drink it. We cut branches off the willow trees and made flutes from the bark. We picked large bunches of white wood anemones and gave them to our mothers.
Karl Ove returns to soccer, riding his bike, exploring the woods and streams of the island, and flirting with girls, conveying it to his readers in exquisite detail. He also cries many times during these years and is unafraid to express his emotions, even though he does not fully understand them, then or later.
She (Knausgaard is talking about his mother) saved me because if she hadn't been there I would have grown up with Dad, and sooner or later I would have taken my life, one way or another. But she was there, Dad's darkness had a counterbalance, I am alive and the fact that I do not live my life to the full has nothing to do with the balance of my childhood. I am alive, I have my own children, and with them I have tried to achieve only one aim: that they shouldn't be afraid of their father.
Knaugaard's father blames Karl Ove for everything and punishes him accordingly: he is sent to bed without supper for breaking the television, which he did not do, and for losing a sock at the swimming pool, where he is forbidden to go again.
Karl Ove falls in (puppy) love with Kajsa and conveys the tenderness and beauty of walking together.
The walk across the field had never been so long as it was this evening. Holding her hand was almost more than I could bear; all the time I felt an urge to withdraw my hand to bring this unbearable happiness to an end.
Of course this love comes to an end quickly, as he insists on setting a record for a kiss: fifteen minutes, beating a friend's record by ten minutes.
The winters are long and dark, the time spent reading The Hardy Boys and Jules Verne (his mother takes him to get a library card and discourages his dependence on comic books) and listening to The Beatles, but Spring returns every year.
Outdoors we do what we always do every Spring: cut branches off the birch trees, tie bottles onto the remaining stumps, collect them the next day full of light-colored viscous sap, and drink it. We cut branches off the willow trees and made flutes from the bark. We picked large bunches of white wood anemones and gave them to our mothers.
Karl Ove returns to soccer, riding his bike, exploring the woods and streams of the island, and flirting with girls, conveying it to his readers in exquisite detail. He also cries many times during these years and is unafraid to express his emotions, even though he does not fully understand them, then or later.
Thursday, June 4, 2015
John Ford's 7 Women (1966)
What 7 Women ultimately affirms is the necessity of individual integrity in the face of nihilism.
Joseph McBride and Michael Wilmington, John Ford, Da Capo Press. 1975
It is not until 7 Women that Ford can bear to look at women with a degree of sexual ambiguity.
Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema, The University of Chicago Press, 1968
I thought it was a hell of a good picture.
John Ford, quoted in John Ford by Peter Bogdanovich, University of California Press, 1968
7 Women was Ford's last film; it explored Ford's traditional themes, expressed his unhappiness with the Vietnam War and events of the sixties, and explored new ideas about the roles of religion and women that he was unable to pursue (he died in 1973, without an opportunity to make another film after 7 Women). It takes place in China in 1935, where a mission composed of one man and several women gets caught up in a civil war and are saved by the sexual sacrifice of a doctor with little faith in God. She kills the bandit leader and helps the missionaries to escape. The setting is not unlike one of Ford's Westerns and the bandits are an extreme version of Ford's Indians: unlike the Indians in Ford's Westerns they have no redeeming virtues and no explanation is given for their anarchic behavior.
This last film of Ford's expresses the pessimism of all his later films, especially The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: as tradition and patriotism recede it is up to individuals to assert honor and integrity. The film is shot on claustrophobic sets in beautifully muted colors of grays, browns and blues. As Dr. Cartwright goes to kill Tunga Khan and herself she emerges from the darkness in traditional Asian dress with a bright red sash. Veteran cinematographer Joseph Lashelle shoots impressive wide-screen compositions and Elmer Bernstein provides an appropriately low-key score. Sue Lyon leads the children at the mission to safety singing "Shall We Gather at the River," one of Ford's favorite songs. The final words in the script are "so long, you bastard," as Dr. Cartwright poisons Tunga Khan; it serves as Ford's farewell to all the producers and studio heads who interfered with his films, including this one.
Joseph McBride and Michael Wilmington, John Ford, Da Capo Press. 1975
It is not until 7 Women that Ford can bear to look at women with a degree of sexual ambiguity.
Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema, The University of Chicago Press, 1968
I thought it was a hell of a good picture.
John Ford, quoted in John Ford by Peter Bogdanovich, University of California Press, 1968
7 Women was Ford's last film; it explored Ford's traditional themes, expressed his unhappiness with the Vietnam War and events of the sixties, and explored new ideas about the roles of religion and women that he was unable to pursue (he died in 1973, without an opportunity to make another film after 7 Women). It takes place in China in 1935, where a mission composed of one man and several women gets caught up in a civil war and are saved by the sexual sacrifice of a doctor with little faith in God. She kills the bandit leader and helps the missionaries to escape. The setting is not unlike one of Ford's Westerns and the bandits are an extreme version of Ford's Indians: unlike the Indians in Ford's Westerns they have no redeeming virtues and no explanation is given for their anarchic behavior.
This last film of Ford's expresses the pessimism of all his later films, especially The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: as tradition and patriotism recede it is up to individuals to assert honor and integrity. The film is shot on claustrophobic sets in beautifully muted colors of grays, browns and blues. As Dr. Cartwright goes to kill Tunga Khan and herself she emerges from the darkness in traditional Asian dress with a bright red sash. Veteran cinematographer Joseph Lashelle shoots impressive wide-screen compositions and Elmer Bernstein provides an appropriately low-key score. Sue Lyon leads the children at the mission to safety singing "Shall We Gather at the River," one of Ford's favorite songs. The final words in the script are "so long, you bastard," as Dr. Cartwright poisons Tunga Khan; it serves as Ford's farewell to all the producers and studio heads who interfered with his films, including this one.
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Chris Marker's La Jetee and Time Travel Narratives
Shot entirely in still photographs and masterfully edited, La Jetee is both strikingly original and a typical example of the work of the Resnais-Marker-Varda group: a love story of nameless individuals existing outside time, set against a background of war and concentration camp horror, concerned with the problems of time and memory and the interaction of past and future.
Roy Armes, French Cinema, A.S. Barnes and Co., 1966
La Jetee is an intelligent, low-key film, a mere twenty-eight minutes long, a meditation on time and memory, that is intended to pose questions rather than give answers: after World War III a man is sent back in time, falls in love and witnesses his own death. This is shown entirely in black-and-white still photos, with narration. It was the basis for Terry Gilliam's film, Twelve Monkeys (1995), as well as the TV series of the same name created by Travis Fickett and Terry Matalis this year. The film and TV series tried to make details explicit that were only suggested in Marker's film and succeeded in being incoherent and rather bloated, compared to the spare elegance of La Jetee.
I have just about caught up with all three seasons (so far) of Simon Barry's Continuum, a Canadian series about time travel, and another attempt to understand the details and paradoxes of the subject. The first two seasons were fairly straightforward, with a police officer from the future chasing escaped terrorists into the present, teaming up with present-day police to stop the terrorists from changing the future; then things went a bit crazy in the third season, as multiple examples of individuals began to exist in different "timelines." Emily Fox's Hindsight this year on VH1 used time travel more effectively (perhaps because there has only been one season), by having a character, Becca, on the eve of her second marriage, travel back in time to just before her first marriage. Becca just stayed in her past, trying to change things for the better and contending with frustration; there was no attempt to move the narrative between times or explain paradoxes. There is a second season planned and we will see if Fox can continue with her admirable restraint.
Roy Armes, French Cinema, A.S. Barnes and Co., 1966
La Jetee is an intelligent, low-key film, a mere twenty-eight minutes long, a meditation on time and memory, that is intended to pose questions rather than give answers: after World War III a man is sent back in time, falls in love and witnesses his own death. This is shown entirely in black-and-white still photos, with narration. It was the basis for Terry Gilliam's film, Twelve Monkeys (1995), as well as the TV series of the same name created by Travis Fickett and Terry Matalis this year. The film and TV series tried to make details explicit that were only suggested in Marker's film and succeeded in being incoherent and rather bloated, compared to the spare elegance of La Jetee.
I have just about caught up with all three seasons (so far) of Simon Barry's Continuum, a Canadian series about time travel, and another attempt to understand the details and paradoxes of the subject. The first two seasons were fairly straightforward, with a police officer from the future chasing escaped terrorists into the present, teaming up with present-day police to stop the terrorists from changing the future; then things went a bit crazy in the third season, as multiple examples of individuals began to exist in different "timelines." Emily Fox's Hindsight this year on VH1 used time travel more effectively (perhaps because there has only been one season), by having a character, Becca, on the eve of her second marriage, travel back in time to just before her first marriage. Becca just stayed in her past, trying to change things for the better and contending with frustration; there was no attempt to move the narrative between times or explain paradoxes. There is a second season planned and we will see if Fox can continue with her admirable restraint.
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937)
Without any doubt at all the most powerful idea of the film comes after the announcement of the retaking of Douaumont by the French. It's the singing of La Marseillaise by an English soldier who is dressed as a woman and who removes his wig.
Francois Truffaut, quoted in Renoir by Raymond Durgnat, University of California Press, 1974
Jean Renoir is something of a forgotten film director. Watching La Grande Illusion recently on Turner Classic Movies I can see why: the idea that everyone has their reasons is perhaps too subtle an understanding of humanity for today's audiences. When I was in college I loved La Grande Illusion, somewhat mistakenly viewing it as mainly an anti-war film, the grand illusion being that a war could end future wars. I found Renoir's La Regle du Jeu (Rules of the Game,1939) too complex in its exploration of class in France, not understanding that La Grande Illusion is more about class than it is about war: German Commandant von Rauffenstein (beautifuly played by Erich Von Stroheim)has more in common with his aristocratic prisoner de Boildieu than de Boidieu does with his French colleagues Marechal (Jean Gabin), working-class, and Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio), Jewish. Rauffenstein shoots de Boildieu when he creates a diversion for the escape of Marechal and Rosenthal and is immensely sad that nationalities should trump class. I still have the vivid memory, from when I first saw the film forty years ago, of Rauffenstein cutting his well-tended geranium to signify both the death of de Boildieu and the end of an era.
La Grande Illusion is beautifully photographed by Christian Matras, with a constantly moving camera that effectively captures the camaraderie of prison camps as well as the divisions caused by nationality and language: when Marechal is moved from a prison camp he hurriedly tries to tell an English officer that an escape tunnel is almost finished but is unable to get through the language barrier. But when Marechal and Rosenthal escape they are helped by a German woman running a farm with a very young son; she recites the battles where her husband and sons died and becomes, very briefly, Marechal's lover, even though she speaks only German and he speaks only French. The last shot of the film is a long shot of the two escapees trudging through the snow to safety in Switzerland.
Francois Truffaut, quoted in Renoir by Raymond Durgnat, University of California Press, 1974
Jean Renoir is something of a forgotten film director. Watching La Grande Illusion recently on Turner Classic Movies I can see why: the idea that everyone has their reasons is perhaps too subtle an understanding of humanity for today's audiences. When I was in college I loved La Grande Illusion, somewhat mistakenly viewing it as mainly an anti-war film, the grand illusion being that a war could end future wars. I found Renoir's La Regle du Jeu (Rules of the Game,1939) too complex in its exploration of class in France, not understanding that La Grande Illusion is more about class than it is about war: German Commandant von Rauffenstein (beautifuly played by Erich Von Stroheim)has more in common with his aristocratic prisoner de Boildieu than de Boidieu does with his French colleagues Marechal (Jean Gabin), working-class, and Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio), Jewish. Rauffenstein shoots de Boildieu when he creates a diversion for the escape of Marechal and Rosenthal and is immensely sad that nationalities should trump class. I still have the vivid memory, from when I first saw the film forty years ago, of Rauffenstein cutting his well-tended geranium to signify both the death of de Boildieu and the end of an era.
La Grande Illusion is beautifully photographed by Christian Matras, with a constantly moving camera that effectively captures the camaraderie of prison camps as well as the divisions caused by nationality and language: when Marechal is moved from a prison camp he hurriedly tries to tell an English officer that an escape tunnel is almost finished but is unable to get through the language barrier. But when Marechal and Rosenthal escape they are helped by a German woman running a farm with a very young son; she recites the battles where her husband and sons died and becomes, very briefly, Marechal's lover, even though she speaks only German and he speaks only French. The last shot of the film is a long shot of the two escapees trudging through the snow to safety in Switzerland.
Monday, June 1, 2015
Citifield, May 30,2015
As much as I love going to baseball games I have mostly been to see the Brooklyn Cyclones and Staten Island Yankees in recent years, largely due to price and convenience. Also, my son Gideon, my wife Susan and I go mostly for the beauty of the game (absent from televised games) and don't worship particular players or particular teams. In addition, the playing by the minor league players is often as skillful, and sometimes more so, as that of the major league players.
Citifield is a pain to get to from Bay Ridge, one has to go through Manhattan. Saturday Gideon and I met my brother and his two sons for brunch and then took the LIRR from Penn Station; it took about twenty minutes and cost $4 for the comfortable ride, my first time using this method of transportation. I had always toughed it out on the 7 train on my many trips to Shea Stadium.
I don't find Citifield much of an improvement over Shea Stadium: the sightlines are often inferior and the place, totally enclosed, has a claustrophobic feeling. Perhaps the food is better, but since I don't partake of the overpriced offerings I can't accurately say (I usually bring a peanut butter sandwich). The loud and annoying music and games between innings was a considerable impediment to the discussions about the game Fred, Gideon, Jeffrey and Greg and I attempted; the constant attempts by the scoreboards to get the crowd to cheer were also an irritant (are people so used to canned laughter and applause they can't figure out when to cheer?)
Our seats Saturday were down the left field line on field level and we did have a good view of the grounders fielded by the third baseman (Ruben Tejada playing in place of the injured David Wright) and the shortstop (Wilmer Flores) and thrown across the diamond to first base. One gets a sense of the timing and effort necessary to throw that distance; on TV one sees a cut from fielder to first baseman. It's also clear how fast the pitches are, something also lost on the flattened telephoto image of TV. What made the game less than exemplary were the number of pitchers used (eleven, four of them Mets), the number of hits (fourteen for the Marlins, nine for the Mets), the number of errors (four), and the number of runs (Marlins 9, Mets 4). Even a poorly played game, however, cannot distract me from the balletic beauty of baseball as seen in its entirety (on each pitch each player is responding) on the huge field of green grass on a gorgeous Spring day.
Citifield is a pain to get to from Bay Ridge, one has to go through Manhattan. Saturday Gideon and I met my brother and his two sons for brunch and then took the LIRR from Penn Station; it took about twenty minutes and cost $4 for the comfortable ride, my first time using this method of transportation. I had always toughed it out on the 7 train on my many trips to Shea Stadium.
I don't find Citifield much of an improvement over Shea Stadium: the sightlines are often inferior and the place, totally enclosed, has a claustrophobic feeling. Perhaps the food is better, but since I don't partake of the overpriced offerings I can't accurately say (I usually bring a peanut butter sandwich). The loud and annoying music and games between innings was a considerable impediment to the discussions about the game Fred, Gideon, Jeffrey and Greg and I attempted; the constant attempts by the scoreboards to get the crowd to cheer were also an irritant (are people so used to canned laughter and applause they can't figure out when to cheer?)
Our seats Saturday were down the left field line on field level and we did have a good view of the grounders fielded by the third baseman (Ruben Tejada playing in place of the injured David Wright) and the shortstop (Wilmer Flores) and thrown across the diamond to first base. One gets a sense of the timing and effort necessary to throw that distance; on TV one sees a cut from fielder to first baseman. It's also clear how fast the pitches are, something also lost on the flattened telephoto image of TV. What made the game less than exemplary were the number of pitchers used (eleven, four of them Mets), the number of hits (fourteen for the Marlins, nine for the Mets), the number of errors (four), and the number of runs (Marlins 9, Mets 4). Even a poorly played game, however, cannot distract me from the balletic beauty of baseball as seen in its entirety (on each pitch each player is responding) on the huge field of green grass on a gorgeous Spring day.
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