As regular readers of this blog know I think most movies made today look as though D.W. Griffith never lived. Still, I do watch current movies and do find some of them interesting.
Hell or High Water was directed by David Mackenzie in 2016 (not to be confused with Samuel Fuller's Hell and High Water of 1954) and a similar film, Good Time, was directed by Benny and Josh Safdie in 2017, listed by Film Comment magazine as the best film of last year. The Safdie film is a virtual remake of the Mackenzie film but is impressive not only for its Queens locations but also for the diverse and accurate cast of the denizens of the borough. In both films two brothers rob a bank to save their house and it goes horribly wrong. The strengths of both films are their effective use of location (West Texas in the Mackezie film), their rigorous variants of genre conventions and the influence of such superb filmmakers as Raoul Walsh and Don Siegel.
I liked Terence Davies's A Quiet Passion (number two on Film Comment's best of 2017) better than his House of Mirth (2000) because it doesn't attempt dramatize Emily Dickinson's poetry the way the earlier film tried to dramatize Edith Wharton's prose. Instead it we hear Dickinson (played by Cynthia Nixon) reciting the poetry over an image of her struggling to write it. Film biographies of artists often try to find drama where there is none, since most artists spend their time creating their art, something difficult to capture on film. By focusing on the poetry itself in its original context A Quiet Passion reminds me of the austerely beautiful Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, directed by Jean-Marie Sraub and Daniele Huillet in 1968, with its emphasis on Bach's music performed on period instruments in actual locations.
Friday, February 23, 2018
Thursday, February 22, 2018
Lamont Johnson's A Covenant with Death (1967)
Lamont Johnson spent most of his career directing television but did direct some subtle and excellent theatrical films, especially One on One (1973) and the Last American Hero (1977). A Covenant with Death was Johnson's first film and the first film for Gene Hackman. Hackman was usually cast as a working man, often a cop, as he was in his this film, or a struggling private detective. Hackman made four or five films a year from the 60's through 2001; his last film was in 2004.
The premise of A Covenant with Death (from a Stephen Becker novel) is an intriguing one: a man convicted of murdering his wife is scheduled to die by hanging in 1920's New Mexico, but on the scaffold he kills the hangman. While waiting for the new hangman to arrive the condemned man is found to be innocent, but he is re-arrested for killing the hangman. Unfortunately the whole thing is fudged a bit by making it appear that the killing might have an accident. The judge who is struggling with the legal dilemma is half Mexican and questions of prejudice come up but are never explored in any depth.
The cinematographer on A Covenant with Death was Robert Burks, who photographed many Hitchcock films, including Vertigo (1958) and The Birds (1963). A Covenant with Death was Burks's penultimate film and its bright, flat lighting suggests that Johnson was thinking of television and the credit for the low-key cinematography of Vertigo should be credited to Hitchcock more than to Burks.
The premise of A Covenant with Death (from a Stephen Becker novel) is an intriguing one: a man convicted of murdering his wife is scheduled to die by hanging in 1920's New Mexico, but on the scaffold he kills the hangman. While waiting for the new hangman to arrive the condemned man is found to be innocent, but he is re-arrested for killing the hangman. Unfortunately the whole thing is fudged a bit by making it appear that the killing might have an accident. The judge who is struggling with the legal dilemma is half Mexican and questions of prejudice come up but are never explored in any depth.
The cinematographer on A Covenant with Death was Robert Burks, who photographed many Hitchcock films, including Vertigo (1958) and The Birds (1963). A Covenant with Death was Burks's penultimate film and its bright, flat lighting suggests that Johnson was thinking of television and the credit for the low-key cinematography of Vertigo should be credited to Hitchcock more than to Burks.
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn
I draw a breath and guess again, "You enjoy manipulating others."
--A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window (William Morrow, 2018).
The Woman in the Window is the latest of the books influenced by Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl (see my posting of May 6, 2014), with an unreliable narrator suffering from agoraphobia and dipsomania. It is indeed something of a page-turner, which I don't mean as a compliment, since so-called "page-turners" are big on plot but little else; I like to enjoy and even savor the quality of the writing before I turn the page. Finn does indeed move the plot along effectively, helped considerably by writing the novel in the present tense and the first person, even though the extensive dialogue and lack of description make it seem more like an outline for a movie than a novel.
Anna Fox, the narrator of the book, spends a great deal of time watching Hitchcock movies and it is unclear if her misunderstanding of them comes from Finn or is part of Fox's inebriated thinking, because Finn's novel is more one of surprise than psychological suspense. As is the case with other imitators of Gone Girl one would not want to re-read this book after the unsurprising surprises are revealed, slowly and gradually in order to manipulate the reader; a Hitchcock film always gives one pleasure no matter how many times one has seen it. It is simply a question of artistry. I can't help but think that Finn's book would have been better if he had been less influenced by (a misunderstood) Hitchcock and more influenced by the corrosive fatalism of Fritz Lang, who made an elegant film also called The Woman in the Window in 1944,
--A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window (William Morrow, 2018).
The Woman in the Window is the latest of the books influenced by Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl (see my posting of May 6, 2014), with an unreliable narrator suffering from agoraphobia and dipsomania. It is indeed something of a page-turner, which I don't mean as a compliment, since so-called "page-turners" are big on plot but little else; I like to enjoy and even savor the quality of the writing before I turn the page. Finn does indeed move the plot along effectively, helped considerably by writing the novel in the present tense and the first person, even though the extensive dialogue and lack of description make it seem more like an outline for a movie than a novel.
Anna Fox, the narrator of the book, spends a great deal of time watching Hitchcock movies and it is unclear if her misunderstanding of them comes from Finn or is part of Fox's inebriated thinking, because Finn's novel is more one of surprise than psychological suspense. As is the case with other imitators of Gone Girl one would not want to re-read this book after the unsurprising surprises are revealed, slowly and gradually in order to manipulate the reader; a Hitchcock film always gives one pleasure no matter how many times one has seen it. It is simply a question of artistry. I can't help but think that Finn's book would have been better if he had been less influenced by (a misunderstood) Hitchcock and more influenced by the corrosive fatalism of Fritz Lang, who made an elegant film also called The Woman in the Window in 1944,
Sunday, February 18, 2018
Infants of the Spring by Anthony Powell
One learns in due course (without ever achieving the aim in practice) that, more often than not, it is better to keep deeply felt views about oneself to oneself.
---Anthony Powell, Infants of the Spring (1977, Holt, Rinehart and Winston)
I first read Powell's wonderful 12-volume work, collectively titled Dance to the Music of Time (from a Poussin painting), in the seventies (the volumes were published 1951-19750) and recently decided to re-read them. But now I am reading, for the first time, the four volumes of Powell's memoirs, starting with Infants of the Spring (a reference to a speech by Laertes in Hamlet about holding on to youth and virtue), which covers Powell's birth in 1905 to his graduation from Oxford in 1926. The style is rich and elegant, with a vocabulary ranging from "ablation" to "puissance" and beyond. It's an effective evocation of a particular upbringing in a particular time and place.
It would be rather a fool's errand to try to relate the people Powell knew (many of whom are unfamiliar to me) to those who populate his novels, and I never understood why such a game appeals to people, but his portraits of the many people he knew, especially the writers, are sharp, fair, incisive.
On Henry Yorke (who wrote as Henry Green): "He has a deep interest in the eternal contrast between everyday life's flatness and its intensity."
On Evelyn Waugh: "When not suffering from melancholy, Waugh had extraordinary powers of improvising -- and carrying through --- antics on so extensive a scale that a great professional comedian seems to have been lost in him."
On George Orwell: "Orwell's gift was curiously poised between politics and literature. The former both attracted and repelled him; the latter, close to his heart, was at the same time tainted with the odour of escape."
Infants of the Spring tells us a great deal about the students and Oxford dons that Powell knew but little about Powell himself, though when he does talk about himself -- such as when he picked up a girl without knowing that she was a tart -- it is both moving and amusing. I am, of course, looking forward to Hilary Spurling's forthcoming biography.
---Anthony Powell, Infants of the Spring (1977, Holt, Rinehart and Winston)
I first read Powell's wonderful 12-volume work, collectively titled Dance to the Music of Time (from a Poussin painting), in the seventies (the volumes were published 1951-19750) and recently decided to re-read them. But now I am reading, for the first time, the four volumes of Powell's memoirs, starting with Infants of the Spring (a reference to a speech by Laertes in Hamlet about holding on to youth and virtue), which covers Powell's birth in 1905 to his graduation from Oxford in 1926. The style is rich and elegant, with a vocabulary ranging from "ablation" to "puissance" and beyond. It's an effective evocation of a particular upbringing in a particular time and place.
It would be rather a fool's errand to try to relate the people Powell knew (many of whom are unfamiliar to me) to those who populate his novels, and I never understood why such a game appeals to people, but his portraits of the many people he knew, especially the writers, are sharp, fair, incisive.
On Henry Yorke (who wrote as Henry Green): "He has a deep interest in the eternal contrast between everyday life's flatness and its intensity."
On Evelyn Waugh: "When not suffering from melancholy, Waugh had extraordinary powers of improvising -- and carrying through --- antics on so extensive a scale that a great professional comedian seems to have been lost in him."
On George Orwell: "Orwell's gift was curiously poised between politics and literature. The former both attracted and repelled him; the latter, close to his heart, was at the same time tainted with the odour of escape."
Infants of the Spring tells us a great deal about the students and Oxford dons that Powell knew but little about Powell himself, though when he does talk about himself -- such as when he picked up a girl without knowing that she was a tart -- it is both moving and amusing. I am, of course, looking forward to Hilary Spurling's forthcoming biography.
Sunday, February 11, 2018
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
When a person undergoes such a drastic transformation, there's simply nothing anyone else can do but sit back and let them get on with it.
--Han Kang, The Vegetarian (translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith), Hogarth, 2017
No translation is ever good enough. Few Korean novels have been as successful in the West as The Vegetarian but could that be because it is a mistranslation, as some have contended (see Jiayang Fan's article in the Jan. 15th New Yorker)? And how does one tell, if one is not completely fluent in both Korean and English? All I can say is that The Vegetarian, in translation, comes across as powerful and effective, something of a fable and a parable that works on multiple levels: a comment on Korean history as well as human passion.
The novel is about Yeong-hye's refusal to eat meat and then a refusal to eat anything at all. There are three parts: one from the point of view of her husband, written in the first person; one from the point of view of her brother-in-law and one, after she is hospitalized, from the point of view of her sister (the second two are both in the third person). I see some of the same issues here that I see in Korean television and Korean films, especially those of Hong Sangsoo: the roles of men and women in family, marriage, society and an emphasis on passivity as a kind of desperate action. There are frightening dreams, strange sexual encounters, bodies painted with flowers from head to toe and the continual struggle between individuality and conformity, all expressed in lucid prose.
--Han Kang, The Vegetarian (translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith), Hogarth, 2017
No translation is ever good enough. Few Korean novels have been as successful in the West as The Vegetarian but could that be because it is a mistranslation, as some have contended (see Jiayang Fan's article in the Jan. 15th New Yorker)? And how does one tell, if one is not completely fluent in both Korean and English? All I can say is that The Vegetarian, in translation, comes across as powerful and effective, something of a fable and a parable that works on multiple levels: a comment on Korean history as well as human passion.
The novel is about Yeong-hye's refusal to eat meat and then a refusal to eat anything at all. There are three parts: one from the point of view of her husband, written in the first person; one from the point of view of her brother-in-law and one, after she is hospitalized, from the point of view of her sister (the second two are both in the third person). I see some of the same issues here that I see in Korean television and Korean films, especially those of Hong Sangsoo: the roles of men and women in family, marriage, society and an emphasis on passivity as a kind of desperate action. There are frightening dreams, strange sexual encounters, bodies painted with flowers from head to toe and the continual struggle between individuality and conformity, all expressed in lucid prose.
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
Beauty and the Beast
Jean Cocteau's film of Beauty and the Beast (1947) is perhaps the best film of a fairy tale, the only possible competition being Jacques Demy's Peau D'ane (1970), influenced by the Cocteau film, with its handmade special effects and its star Jean Marais, who played the beast in Cocteau's film. There have been many versions of Beauty and the Beast in literature, film and TV, including Ron Koslow's TV version 1987-1989, of which I am rather fond and which has a beast that rides on top of subway trains to rescue his love and in turn is loved for himself. In Cocteau's version Belle does love the beast for himself, in spite of his animal attributes; that love breaks a spell and turns him (back) into a prince and they fly together to his kingdom.
The story of beauty and the beast goes back to French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740 and Cocteau's film is a period piece, vaguely dated around that time. Belle has two mean sisters who make her do all the work while they go about in their finery, bankrupting their father, who gets captured by the beast for stealing one of his roses on a return trip from a merchant. Belle gives herself up in exchange for her father and gradually grows to love the beast, his kindness and generosity quite different from the men in her village.
Certain elements of Cocteau's film turn up in the animated Disney version, including a talking door and mirror. We recently saw the stage version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, performed by a local Bay Ridge community theatre: Jeff Sahama Productions in association with Ridge Chorale. It was at The Saint George Community Center Theatre at 11th Avenue in Brooklyn. I assume because it was the licensed "full-book" production it was the complete Broadway version, full of sentimentality fueled by insipid songs and turning Cocteau's poetic beauty of a film into a meretricious production, complete with poor sightlines and excessive amplification. That being said, my six-year-old daughter loved the show: for the story and for the humor and enthusiasm of its mostly amateur cast, especially Lindsey Zelli as Belle. I do think director and choreographer Isabella Sirota and co-choreographer Gianna Sciortino (both students at Pace University) did a fairly good job with the choreography, all things considered.
The story of beauty and the beast goes back to French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740 and Cocteau's film is a period piece, vaguely dated around that time. Belle has two mean sisters who make her do all the work while they go about in their finery, bankrupting their father, who gets captured by the beast for stealing one of his roses on a return trip from a merchant. Belle gives herself up in exchange for her father and gradually grows to love the beast, his kindness and generosity quite different from the men in her village.
Certain elements of Cocteau's film turn up in the animated Disney version, including a talking door and mirror. We recently saw the stage version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, performed by a local Bay Ridge community theatre: Jeff Sahama Productions in association with Ridge Chorale. It was at The Saint George Community Center Theatre at 11th Avenue in Brooklyn. I assume because it was the licensed "full-book" production it was the complete Broadway version, full of sentimentality fueled by insipid songs and turning Cocteau's poetic beauty of a film into a meretricious production, complete with poor sightlines and excessive amplification. That being said, my six-year-old daughter loved the show: for the story and for the humor and enthusiasm of its mostly amateur cast, especially Lindsey Zelli as Belle. I do think director and choreographer Isabella Sirota and co-choreographer Gianna Sciortino (both students at Pace University) did a fairly good job with the choreography, all things considered.
Thursday, February 1, 2018
True Crime and Fictional Crime
The Eastern shore of Virginia is a hangnail, a hinky peninsula separated from the rest of the state by the Chesapeake Bay and a few hundred years of cultural isolation.
--Monica Hesse, American Fire: Love, Arson and Life in a Vanishing Land (Liveright, 2017)
I wasn't up to his cynicism. I looked at the oaks, the moss lifting in the wind, purple dust rising from a cane field, Bayou Tech glinting in the sun like a Byzantine shield. La Louisiane, the love of my life, the home of Jolie Blon and Evangeline and the Great Whore of Babylon, the place for which I would die, the place for which there was no answer or cure.
--James Lee Burke, Robicheaux, (Simon & Schuster, 2018
Since Truman Capote's In Cold Blood in 1966 true crime books have become more like novels and novels more like true crime. But for me the best crime stories, true or fictional, are rooted in a particular place and time, with interesting indigenous characters.
There is not much to do in Accomack County on the Eastern Shore of Virginia -- low-paying jobs (in what was once a prosperous agricultural area), volunteer fire departments, alcohol and drugs -- while the "Born Heres" resent the wealthier "Come Heres", with their second homes on the water. Tonya Bundick and Charlie Smith become lovers and start burning down empty houses, to prove their love and somehow overcome Charlie's impotence. Hesse structures the story like a mystery and details the lives of quiet desperation led by the locals who are arrested and prosecuted by those who managed to get an education; most of the locals could not afford to go to college. Hesse fortunately goes easy on possible psychological explanations: "some people light things on fire because they feel they have to."
Robicheaux is Burke's twenty-first book about his eponymous character, a cop in New Iberia, Louisiana, and is even darker than its predecessors, as Dave Robicheaux broods about the death of his wife, worries about his adopted daughter and occasionally beats up some bad guy when he is drunk, after which he goes to an AA meeting. Robicheaux loves Louisiana but can't stand many of its inhabitants, criminals and scammers of all sorts. Dave's closest friend is Clete Purcell, a PI and a man of strong morality and self-destructive habits who he became close with in Vietnam, about which they both still have nightmares. Burke's shimmering style of violence in men and beauty in nature is divided into varying first-person and omniscient narrators, a strange combination that presages fate bearing down on Dave Robicheaux.
--Monica Hesse, American Fire: Love, Arson and Life in a Vanishing Land (Liveright, 2017)
I wasn't up to his cynicism. I looked at the oaks, the moss lifting in the wind, purple dust rising from a cane field, Bayou Tech glinting in the sun like a Byzantine shield. La Louisiane, the love of my life, the home of Jolie Blon and Evangeline and the Great Whore of Babylon, the place for which I would die, the place for which there was no answer or cure.
--James Lee Burke, Robicheaux, (Simon & Schuster, 2018
Since Truman Capote's In Cold Blood in 1966 true crime books have become more like novels and novels more like true crime. But for me the best crime stories, true or fictional, are rooted in a particular place and time, with interesting indigenous characters.
There is not much to do in Accomack County on the Eastern Shore of Virginia -- low-paying jobs (in what was once a prosperous agricultural area), volunteer fire departments, alcohol and drugs -- while the "Born Heres" resent the wealthier "Come Heres", with their second homes on the water. Tonya Bundick and Charlie Smith become lovers and start burning down empty houses, to prove their love and somehow overcome Charlie's impotence. Hesse structures the story like a mystery and details the lives of quiet desperation led by the locals who are arrested and prosecuted by those who managed to get an education; most of the locals could not afford to go to college. Hesse fortunately goes easy on possible psychological explanations: "some people light things on fire because they feel they have to."
Robicheaux is Burke's twenty-first book about his eponymous character, a cop in New Iberia, Louisiana, and is even darker than its predecessors, as Dave Robicheaux broods about the death of his wife, worries about his adopted daughter and occasionally beats up some bad guy when he is drunk, after which he goes to an AA meeting. Robicheaux loves Louisiana but can't stand many of its inhabitants, criminals and scammers of all sorts. Dave's closest friend is Clete Purcell, a PI and a man of strong morality and self-destructive habits who he became close with in Vietnam, about which they both still have nightmares. Burke's shimmering style of violence in men and beauty in nature is divided into varying first-person and omniscient narrators, a strange combination that presages fate bearing down on Dave Robicheaux.
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