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SCREENING LOG
- 6/23-6/29, 2003
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I watched THE PORNOGRAPHERS, THE HUNT, HUSBANDS, DAY FOR
NIGHT, DAY OF THE LOCUST, VIOLENCE AT NOON, DEATH OF A BUREAUCRAT,
TOKYO DRIFTER, BLOOD BROTHERS, ONE-ARMED SWORDSMAN, MARAT/SADE,
SEVEN WOMEN, SWORD OF DOOM, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
and IRMA VEP. In rough order of preference (with the proviso
that having seen as many films as I have this past week my
comments are largely impressionistic, whatever is left stuck
on the wall is what matters but that's the inevitable outcome
no matter how many movies one sees, perhaps.)
1 x alchemy :
Irma Vep (1996, Olivier Assayas) second viewing
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0116650
Watching this film was a self-evaluation in many respects.
I watched it three years ago when I was starting to write
about movies in earnest (http://www.alsolikelife.com/kdogg/journal/i/irmavep.htm).
Looking back at that review I can't say I'm all that proud
of what I wrote; I hardly knew jack about French cinema at
the time so much of what I wrote was conjectural (though not
wholly off the mark). I was just looking for a way in, because
for the most part the film baffled me, even though there was
much of intrigue. I find this very perplexing, as last week
I wasn't nearly as locked in to any of the other 14 movies
I watched as I was with this one -- this time everything made
sense, everything was right. I guess much has changed in the
time between two viewings:
- I have seen LES VAMPIRES, the classic silent serial that
serves as the object of this movie's desire and now I completely
understand the premise of wanting to remake it for the 21st
century, as well as the complete folly of trying to do so,
as well as the necessity.
- I have a much better understanding of the French film
industry and how it may see itself in the global cinema market
and the choices it has to make in order to continue to thrive
if not survive in the current market conditions.
- I have been involved in film productions, and man, all
I have to say is that this movie nails down the sensation
of a what it's like to be in a live film production better
than any other movie I can think of. DAY FOR NIGHT? pfffffffft.
- My appreciation of film has expanded through extensive
viewings over the past three years. This point above all gives
me pause. I have to wonder how worthwhile it is to say that
to truly appreciate this film one has to appreciate the elements
of Feuillade, Rivette or Tarkovsky that clearly inform and
enhance this film, if those are truly necessary signposts
for being impressed by how smart and how instinctive Olivier
Assayas is working. For now I'll say that to some extent you
do have to be interested in learning more, you have to care.
At the very least, you have to care about movies, what they
are, why they are made. In a sense that's no different than
what people have said on behalf of John Ford or Lars von Trier
or Bresson or Besson or anyone. For whatever reasons I haven't
seen enough of Assayas' films to make any definitive claims
at this point, just IRMA VEP and COLD WATER, which featured
20 minutes of mindblowing cinema (imagine Andrei Tarkovsky
filiming a teenage rave). But based on the strength of those
two films I'll be hard pressed to find many European filmmakers
more relevant or exciting right now.
So with all that I suppose my reasons for liking this film
are personal but I'd have been the least to expect it three
years ago when I was fumbling with this film. Now it's obvious
how relevant it is to me, but even objectively speaking this
film has more to say about French cinema in the current moment
than any film I can think of (with perhaps IN PRAISE OF LOVE
trailing second) . I don't know what it means to say that
the most important French movie of the 90s was shot mostly
in English, but there it is.
3 x John Ford in China and the Chinese John Ford:
Blood Brothers (1973, Chang Cheh)
http://www.imdb.com/Title?0069881
Of the four films I've seen by kung fu auteur Chang Cheh,
this is his least characteristic work, as well as his most
complex and moving. Two happy-go-lucky bandit brothers befriend
an ambitious mercenary who vows to someday become a court
general and to have the brothers as his lieutenants. By the
time that day comes, the bonds between them are strained by
the mercenary's unrelenting ambition, willing to sacrifice
anything for what he wants, his ambitions including the wife
of one of the brothers. While the action scenes are top notch
(with some of the most spectacularly over-the-top death scenes
anyone's ever had the audacity to film) it's the psychological
intrigues that make this arguably Chang's masterpiece -- there's
an unexpected level of sympathy and even tenderness directed
towards each of the four main characters, allowing for the
motivations of each to be understood, whether they be simple
brotherly loyalty, sexual frustration and unspeakable longing,
or blind individual ambition. The bloody finale seems to bespeak
a nihilistic view of humankind, but everything leading up
to that moment is too rich with human feeling to be shrugged
off.
7 Women (1966, John Ford)
http://www.imdb.com/Title?0060050
While I have my share of problems with John Ford movies,
this, his last feature, opens him up as a mind far more complicated
than I have believed. In 1935 a female doctor (Anne Bancroft)
comes to the aid of a female missionary outpost in China about
to be invaded by Mongolian warriors. As usual, Ford can't
help but type everything in boldface -- the Brutal Savages
on one side, the Overly Civilized, Ineffectual Missionaries
on the other, and Dr. Cartwright in between as the only one
skillful and interpid enough to work both sides, like Ethan
Edwards and Tom Doniphan (and like them is denied the very
privilege of procreation they sought to protect for others
-- once again the Jesus Christ model). And yet the transposition
of Ford's trademark themes onto a cast almost entirely consisting
of women opens up a rich world of gender issues that I would
have never expected Ford of having the guts to explore, including
a complex examination of lesbian desire. At once very simple
(almost completely set on a barren soundstage) and expressively
directed (with the help of floridly brown-orange cinematography),
this is a most beguiling film from a master who at the end
of his career seems ready to start afresh.
One-Armed Swordsman (1967, Chang Cheh)
http://www.imdb.com/Title?0061597
Seminal martial arts film that laid the template followed
by so many wuxia movies (not to mention Tom Cruise movies)
hence: Hero is unjustly maligned or debilitated by oppressive
forces; Hero vows vengeance; Hero endures strict training
regimen to bolster skill set; Hero returns triumphantly to
vanquish oppressors. Not only does Chang provide the template
for legions of action films to come, he also brought his own
set of unmistakable fixations to the genre. Few directors
of any genre have seemed so obsessed with the male physique,
its paradoxical blend of obdurateness and fragility -- one
lop of a sword and a mighty warrior is reduced to a whimpering
cripple, which Chang captures in all of its visceral pain.
Aside from any auteurist claims this is an exemplar of classic
action filmmaking, totally engrossing and entertaining.
3 x Society as Farce and Pretense
The Pornographers (1966, Shohei Imamura)
http://www.imdb.com/Title?0060560
A puzzling film that ambles haphazardly through an odd assortment
of characters and styles -- this is a complex, sometimes unruly
but consistently fascinating study of a well-to-do man who
makes his living on porn films while trying to manage a peculiar
homelife: his wife won't bed with him because she fears the
wrath of her deceased husband, who she thinks is reincarnated
as the pet carp. His resentful stepson is hot for his mother;
while his stepdaughter is eliciting similar urges in himself,
leading to a number of bizarre compromising positions involving
the different family members. There's a lot going on here
in terms of messed-up sexual and family dynamics in post-Ozu
Japan, and Imamura's motley assortment of camera techniques
seems to reflect that disharmony. Knowing some of Imamura's
later works, I could appreciate the wild tonal shifts (which
recur in THE EEL) and his generally sympathetic approach towards
depicting the kinds of people whom you'd never find in an
Ozu movie.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, Don Siegel)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0049366
The immortal 50s classic that defined the paranoia of a decade
characterized by an unprecedented level of middle-class conformity
and an attendant fear of threats from the outside. This tale
is told with wonderful compactness and economy; five decades
later the lo-fi setups and special effects have yet to sink
into the b-level of camp appreciation, they still have the
power to shock. What bothered me a little was my understanding
going into the screening that this was supposed to be a critique
of McCarthyism -- unless I missed something, it could just
as easily be seen as a ringing endorsement! It's the same
problem I had with ON THE WATERFRONT -- but as with that movie,
it works brilliantly as an expression of the state of mind
of the times.
Death of a Bureaucrat (1966, Thomas Gutierrez Alea)
http://www.imdb.com/Title?0060722
Very funny farce about a man who needs to get his recently
deceased father's work card in order to receive his pension
-- too bad they buried it with him. Much bureaucratic madness
ensues, with heavy hommages to Laurel and Hardy, Harold Lloyd,
Federico Fellini and Luis Bunuel (all of whom get a thank
you in the opening credits). I can't believe Castro let them
get away with this scathing satire on dead-end bureaucracy
in the post-revolutionary Communist state, but I guess it's
innocence is too charming and harmless on the surface to resist.
3 x Cinematic Sound, Flash and Fury circa 1966
Violence at Noon (1966, Nagisa Oshima)
http://www.imdb.com/Title?0060486
How do you say Alain Resnais in Japanese? This hyperactive,
fast-cutting, time-travelling exploration of the troubled
minds of two women and the mass murderer who raped them both
is both dense and difficult, like a good (or bad, depending
on your mood) Resnais movie. But it's certainly a groundbreaker
in Japanese cinema, for its unsentimental portrayal of the
psychological affects of bodily and mental abuse between men
and women and its deft use of flashbacks to probe the wounds
of personal memory -- on both counts it's a worthy successor
to RASHOMON.
Marat/Sade (1966, Peter Brook)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0060668
Peter Brook directed his own famous theatrical production
of a dramatization of the murder of French revolutionary Jean-Paul
Marat, performed by the inmates of Charenton Asylum under
the direction of fellow inmate the Marquis de Sade. Watching
this I couldn't help wondering how much more overwhelmingly
visceral and intimate this production would play out on the
stage, with the actors going bonkers and committing all sorts
of upsetting acts only inches away from one's person. On screen
it plays cold and distant despite the incessant shouting and
caterwauling -- the chaotic ending only underscores this failure
to translate on screen what must be a shocking and terrifying
climax on stage. Maybe the coldness was Brook's deliberate
aim in reconceiving his work for a distinctly different medium,
and it's certainly watchable in its own right, but I still
can't get over my initial response that this is essentially
a hand-held homemade re-enactment of what I understand to
be a legendary production; the cinematic version doesn't do
much in illuminating its own cinematic properties (Dreyer's
PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC, for example, is a far more cinematic
realization of Antonin Artaud's theories of audience-involved
art than this filmed version of an Artaudian play). But even
as such the meaning of the play is still there, the dilemma
of revolution as being both the noblest and basest impulse
in humankind.
Tokyo Drifter (1966, Seijun Suzuki)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0061101
I must have enjoyed this film as I noticed I had ranked
it among my top 10 films of 1966 last Friday -- today I barely
remember a thing about it other than the irresistible color
scheme, most prevalent in drop-dead gorgeous shootout climax
and a number of spiffy suits.
2 x Days of The Movies as Hell
Day for Night (1973, Francois Truffaut)
http://www.imdb.com/Title?0070460
Truffaut's love letter to the filmmaking lifestyle is a comfortable
breeze, heavy on episode and the easy aphorism on life and
art and other cocktail party conversation topics. Given the
reputation of the director, it's startling how this film is
absent of any driving artistic vision other than to validate
the soapish antics of the cast and crew as some kind of profound
statement on the creative process. It's much less reminiscent
of the pirouetting complexity of Jean Renoir (probably the
man Truffaut was aiming for) than the audience ingratiation
of Tim Burton's ED WOOD, but like Burton, Truffaut renders
the foibles of his visionless cast and crew so lovingly that
what can one do but loosen their shoulders and enjoy the ride.
Day of the Locust (1975, John Schlesinger)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0072848
I confess I've never read Nathanael West's famous jeremiad
on Hollywood decadence, but this adaptation certainly points
to a vivid surrealism at work, which seems as characteristic
of Schlesinger as to West. Still I found the film a bit too
languorous at times, and Burgess Meredith the only character
to drum up any real sympathy on my part (though Donald Sutherland
is quite good too). The sets are gorgeous, as is Conrad Hall's
cinematography and the apocalyptic ending is certainly memorable
-- if anything it reminded me of BARTON FINK. Overall it works
strikingly as a loose, abstract impression of Hollywood as
Hell -- as with BILLY LIAR and MIDNIGHT COWBOY Schlesinger
seems eager to employ surrealism for eye-popping effect without
really knowing what he's saying with them.
3 x It's a Man's Man's Man's Man's World
Husbands (1970, John Cassavetes)
http://www.imdb.com/Title?0065867
Made on the heels of the commercially successful FACES, Cassavetes
first color feature is a stubborn, indulgent study in male
mid-life crisis that only pays off at the very end. Three
friends (Cassavetes, Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara, all compelling)
attend another friend's funeral, act really obnoxious during
the wake to hide their own sense of emptiness and guilt, and
set out for a weekend of yankee debauchery in jolly England.
The scenes where they are finally split up and each coupled
with a callgirl is where this willfully improvisational movie
stops making noise for the sake of noise and breaks into something
honest and revelatory about these bruised and confused male
egos.
Sword of Doom (1966, Kihachi Okamoto)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0060277
A samurai pic notable for its focus on an unrepentantly evil
protagonist, following him soberly along his bloody path of
personal destruction. As with SAMURAI ASSASSIN, Okamoto employs
a lot of surface action and nifty swordplay to compensate
for what I find to be a rather thin message, this one about
the evil of applying the samurai trade towards consummately
selfish aims. That message really hits its stride only in
the finale, a ludicrously over-the-top bloodbath that goes
on forever until one realizes that the film has become completely
engulfed in the anti-hero's internal hell. The plot twists
that lead up to that amazing moment are fairly engaging, peppered
by finely choreographed swordfights here and there. My favorite
Okamoto film remains RED LION.
La Caza/ The Hunt (1966, Carlos Saura)
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0060223
I might need help appreciating this film, as I understand
it to be very important to the history of Spanish cinema as
a thinly veiled parable of the cutthroat internecine hostilities
provoked by the Franco regime, as illustrated by the disastrous
interactions between four macho buddies out on a rabbit hunt.
I found it near impossible to connect to any of the characters,
and the film tested my patience in building towards its bloody
climax, which if anything reminded me too much of RESERVOIR
DOGS. I'm afraid to say I found this overly schematic to impress
me beyond the realm of simple allegory, regardless of how
incendiary it may have been at the time of its release.
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