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SCREENING LOG
- 1/05/2004-1/11/2004
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I watched RABBIT PROOF FENCE, SPIES, OUT OF THE PAST, A MATTER
OF LIFE AND DEATH, VOYAGE TO ITALY and SHOW PEOPLE. In order
of preference:
Voyage To Italy (1953, Roberto Rossellini)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046511/
Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders play an unhappy couple
whose business/vacation trip to Italy only exacerbates their
tension. Rossellini shot this on the fly and it shows: it
is more roughhewn and choppy in its assembly than any other
film of his I've seen, even GERMANY YEAR ZERO. Inadvertently
or not, somehow these apparent flaws fall into Rossellini's
career-long investigation of the relationship between perception
and Truth -- there's an honesty to the abrupt cuts and awkward
framings that seem to say, "Hollywood shine and polish are
not what matters; attractive illusion is not what matters
-- keep focused on Truth; raw, unvarnished Truth, and if you
must admit to your lying artifice then all the better." This
pursuit of human honesty is not so simple, given how husband
and wife shellac their interactions (ranging from petty conversations
to all-out brawls) with defensive barbs -- the two seem to
have erected permanent invisible walls between each other,
and the result is one of the most heartbreaking depictions
of marital decline I've ever seen, heartbreaking in how it
makes one realize how often the seeds of destruction between
loved ones are laid when the smallest gestures are perceived
as slights by doubtful minds. They both seek release, in different
directions: Bergman explores various museums, ruins and natural
wonders, and in each case she finds a raw vitality that taps
into her inner longings, reminding her at once of the reinvigorating
power of life as well as the looming specter of death and
despair. Sanders seeks more hedonistic fulfillments among
the Italian women he encounters, only to be confronted with
his own moral bankruptcy -- his smug, emotionally bankrupt
performance pre-empts and surpasses Bill Murray's acclaimed
mugging in LOST IN TRANSLATION by 50 years -- and it is sad
to see how Sofia Coppola's movie treats similar thematic material
so lazily in how it romanticizes its own designer pining,
so antithetical to the raw terrain Rossellini broke wide open.
He was perhaps the first filmmaker to make the oh-so-very
cinematic theme of seeing and perception central to his filmmaking
objectives, bringing cinema into the modern era of critical
self-awareness while paving the way for Godard, Antonioni
(big time) and many others -- yet implicit in this film is
a forceful argument that even the most attentive perception,
without faith in the good of life and humanity, is meaningless.
The ending of this movie is one of the most troubling, difficult
and mysterious acts of faith -- not only on the part of the
characters but also the director -- that I've ever seen, where
honesty and pretense, hope and desperation seem to mingle
into one moment, as intractable as it is unforgettable. Believing
in this moment is an act of faith in itself, and even I am
not sure if I'm willing to go that far, but by this point
the film has already gone well beyond what most could ever
hope to achieve. #2 for 1953 between TOKYO STORY and THE NAKED
SPUR
A Matter of Life and Death (1946, Michael Powell and Emeric
Pressburger)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038733/
The film begins with a matte painting of outer space and
an inscription: "This is a story of two worlds: the one we
know and another which exists only in the mind of a young
airman whose life and imagination have been violently shaped
by war. Any resemblance to any other world known or unknown
is purely coincidental." The last line is probably the most
lucid account of Michael Powell's entire filmography I've
ever read: an aesthetic where the stiff-upper-lip of mundane
reality is given the thumb for the sake of unbridled, expressive
creativity, spectacle, storytelling and plain ol' showmanship.
The Archers flex their bows with more restless energy and
twists and turns than any of their other films, investing
the screen with an endless succession of quirky ideas that
come to life through precise detail: a vision of heaven as
a grand military style bureaucracy (somewhat disturbingly
segregated), where a pilot who was supposed to die were it
not for the bumbling of a French angel (referred to as a "conductor")
is placed on trial for wooing an American WAC while missing
his appointment with the afterlife. Somehow this takes a detour
into a specious argument between British and American values
(the film was intended to patch up post-war relations between
the two nations) which then sidesteps back into a rather unoriginal
conclusion of "love conquers all." The film often gets carried
away with its baroque digressions into irreverence, but it
is rarely tasteless and does the best to illustrate the full
range of Powell and Pressburger's talent. I'm not sure to
what extent this particular, hopelessly Eurocentric vision
of both life and the afterlife speak to me (at least it's
not as flawed as BLACK NARCISSUS), but it's a bracing and
suggestive exploration of how the cinematic imagination transcends
the boundaries of objective and subjective consciousness,
with an intimacy and iconoclasm that are multi-faceted and
brilliant. #5 for 1946 between BRIEF ENCOUNTER and THE BEST
YEARS OF OUR LIVES
Out of the Past (1947, Jacques Tourneur)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039689/
I was more impressed than moved by this legendary classic
-- many would say this is the quintessential film noir, which
maybe accounts for why it never really blew me away with a
sense of originality. The screenplay is first rate in the
way one expects a film noir to be, a baroque tapestry of double-crossings
and terminal skepticism punctuated with many memorable one-liners
that convey a fatalistic knowingness on the part of the characters.
I can't say that Robert Mitchum's acting in this movie did
it for me -- he conveys as much nuance as a slab of meat with
the voice to match. But this deadpan has its own set of world-weary
associations -- a guy who's not quite emotionally dead enough
to give up yearning for a better life, and yet seems driven
by desires well beyond his control. Everyone in this world
is a cipher who seems condemned to darkness; the film has
an outlook of grim fatalism that would probably move me if
I felt more connected to the characters. A second viewing
may help bear out the nuances to these tragic emotions lurking
in the shadows. Jane Greer makes for a classic femme fatale
and Kirk Douglas is memorable as her jealous boyfriend even
if his thin young frame is perpetually upstaged by his chin.
#6 for 1947 between RECORD OF A TENEMENT GENTLEMAN and MONSIEUR
VERDOUX
Spies (1928, Fritz Lang)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019415/
Straddling the worlds of Feuillade and Hitchcock, Fritz Lang
was a pioneer in the development of the suspense film. This
fun, inventive, and breathlessly paced proto-Bond flick features
an archvillain who assumes triple identities: diabolical criminal
mastermind, bank president, and vaudeville clown(!). There's
an exotic subplot with a Japanese diplomat forced to commit
seppuku upon losing his libido and his secret documents to
a sexy undercover floozy barely clinging to her kimono, and
one particularly unforgettable overhead shot of two boxers
pummeling each other in a ring that becomes surrounded by
ballroom dancers, like a Lynchian noir version of a Bubsy
Berkeley dance number. #10 for 1928 between STREET ANGEL and
THE WIND
Show People (1928, King Vidor)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019379/
A very game Marion Davies plays a Southern belle who goes
through hard knocks as a fledgling actress struggling in Hollywood.
As in his other film of '28, THE CROWD, King Vidor is interested
in presenting how the Everyman survives in large social systems,
the values they impose and the conformity they demand. The
results here aren't as singular or visually striking, but
Vidor has a lot of fun inserting real-life celebrities into
the mix, giving an insightful insider's look into Hollywood
a good 60 years before Altman's THE PLAYER (at one moment
Davies' character actually meets Marion Davies!). Particularly
memorable is a scene where the actress is duped into playing
a comic foil in a slapstick movie, setting up a hilarious
gag at her expense, which then does an amazing hairpin turn
into melodrama as she is reduced to humiliated tears -- a
fine example of Vidor's virtuosity at leading the audience
to respond as expected while openly exploring the mechanics
of how these effects are achieved.
Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002, Philip Noyce)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0252444/
An occasionally suspenseful but generally rote rendition
of the true story of three mixed-race Aborigine girls taken
under custody by the Australian government to cultivate them
and prevent further miscegany. The story is a sure-fire audience-pleaser
in terms of its righteous content blended with an exotic setting;
otherwise it's a perfunctory retelling of the girl's defiant
and improbable flight to freedom, their weary, soiled expressions
carrying all the pathos required to seal the deal -- nonetheless
the movie takes extra measures to cue the viewers' responses
by including an all-purpose racist villain to jeer (the state
overlord of the Aborigines, played with surprising nuance
by Kenneth Branagh). Noyce seems to have a knack for turning
post-colonialist guilt into mainstream entertainment, with
this and THE QUIET AMERICAN placing him on the map as an issues-driven
filmmaker. Unfortunately his treatment of this these important
issues are about as safe and self-congratulatory as a campaign
speech.
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