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1201
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 4:12am
Subject: Re: Kurosawa and Marker
> (deep breath) Marker is one of my blind spots. It may have to do
> with speaking French.
Do you mean difficulty in understanding spoken French in films (as you
mentioned before)? Because Marker has always dubbed in English whenever
possible. And, like Wim Wenders, he's one of Europe's biggest advocates
for dubbing.
But then Marker's films are in French, Spanish, English, Russian,
Japanese...
Marker is as good as Santiago Alvarez but unlike Alvarez he is the
ultimate non-conformist.
Gabe
1202
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 4:43am
Subject: Essay films
I like La Jetee. I have to see more Marker. I guess this is my
version of the "I've never understood the fuss about Mizoguchi" move,
intended in this case to make a point (at the expense of a
universally admired filmmaker who certainly doesn't need me to praise
him!) about essay films: I believe they are really, really hard to
pull off, and I think there are a lot of easy essay films out there
that don't cut the mustard, unless you just happen to be an
unconditional lover of the genre. Welles, a brilliant theorist of
essay films, kept trying throughout his life to make a good one, and
only succeeded at the very end, with Filming Othello. (I don't
consider The Fountain of Youth an essay film, although its form
influenced some of the botched attempts, like Portrait of Gina.) On
the other hand, Budd Boetticher nailed it in one try ("My Kingdom
For"), as did Vidor in both his attempts. Godard is obviously the
champ, although his later essays turn into the film equivalent of
lyric poetry, which is also hard to pull off in any medium (unless
you are an unconditional lover of the genre. As a point of
comparison, Blake Lucas loves westerns so much that he loves
Universal westerns of the 50s!) I don't think Godard always does pull
it off, but parts of Histoire(s) du cinema certainly come close
enough for government work. I don't know Resnais' early shorts well
enough to generalize (I do think Van Gogh sucks), but Cayrol and
Queneau aren't poetasters - they're the real McCoy, and it seems to
me that that's what Resnais always used. (But Queneau's narration for
the plastics film is a poem...) Duras is a very great filmmaker, but
her way of combining voice and image is not really essayistic. For me
La Femme du Gange and Navire Night, two hard-to-see films which blow
everyone and his uncle out of the water, are really experiments with
narrative form, like The Fountain of Youth and La Jetee. Thom
Andersen's new essay film, Los Angeles Plays Itself, is very good. It
will have its premiere either at UCLA or at Toronto, whichever is
slated first.
1203
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 5:26am
Subject: oh boy
If Kurosawa is overrated, then I guess I'm one of the ones at fault, although I think I've rated him
high enough for my own purposes. I'm a big fan, at least up until the HIGH AND LOW/RED
BEARD cusp, after which my affection lessens somewhat. Last summer's Kurosawa/Mifune
series at Film Forum only enhanced my esteem for films like SEVEN SAMURAI and THRONE
OF BLOOD, and turned me onto a few that I hadn't seen before (THE BAD SLEEP WELL, I
LIVE IN FEAR, SANJURO).
Chris Marker rules, but I don't like the A.K. doc at all (do we want to blame Kurosawa for this? I
suppose if we say he's "overrated" we could, very easily), and I haven't been able to watch all
of LEVEL FIVE in one sitting.
Sorry these comments are lacking in depth or explanation, I've just moved to a new apartment
and I'm exhausted.
Jaime
1204
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 5:37am
Subject: Re: Essay films/ Fred Halsted Tribute?/Kurosawa & Marker
hotlove666 wrote:
>...Thom
>Andersen's new essay film, Los Angeles Plays Itself...
>
Hmmm. Is Andresen paying tribute in his title to an early 70s gay porn
film called "L.A. Plays Itself," directed by one Fred Halsted? If he
isn't, and if he doesn't know this film, he should at least be aware of
it, because others will be. It's in imdb, for example.
Stuart Byron, a former Variety critic who I knew and whose taste in film
was pretty good, claimed that this was a great work of film art. I knew
of this claim and somehow got invited to a private screening of it and
Halsted's short "Sex Garage" (whose cast, shockingly, included a WOMAN)
at MoMA, circa 1974. I thought they were both terrible, completely
uninteresting as cinema. But Halsted did have some supporters.
Bill, I don't think the essay film is any harder to do well than any
other genre, unless what you mean is that a narrative film that's
indifferently directed can be carried by a good script and acting,
whereas an essay film kind of has to be good as a film. Also, it's not
really a well defined category. Is "Chronique d'Un Ete" an essay film or
cinema verite? By its end it's surely an essay of some sort.
Great "essay films" include Ivens's "The Story of the Wind," Brakhage's
"Blue Moses" and "Sincerity" and "Duplicity" series, most of Hollis
Frampton's pre-1972 films, various great early Franju shorts ("Marie
Curie"), a number of great Hanoun films -- most of them, really, Jermoe
Hill's "Film Portrait," arguably a number of films by George Landow,
Christopher Maclaine's "The End," Jonas Mekas's "Lost Lost Lost" and
"Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania," Pat O'Neill's "Water and
Power," virtually all the films of Yvonne Rainer, Alexander Sokurov's
deeply moving "Confession" and "Elegy of a Voyage," arguably von
Sternberg's "Anatahan." Not to mention virtually all the pre-1935 films
of Dziga Vertov. I might add a plug for a film I recently plugged here,
clearly a film essay if there ever was one, Wilkerson's "An Injury to
One." And this is not a complete list, even from what I've seen.
Actually Ed Wood's "Glenn or Glenda" certainly qualifies, as loony and
as delirious as it is. Oh, and van der Keuken. And 325 terrific essay
films I haven't even seen yet (just guessing).
Or perhaps what you're really doing is admitting to a preference for
fictional narratives, perhaps even preferably of the Hollywood variety?
Jaime, I'm glad to hear from at least one other Marker admirer who
doesn't like "A.K." And I was being only semi-serious in "blaming"
Kurosawa himself; actually, it's good to hear a Kurosawa admirer doesn't
like it.
- Fred
1205
From:
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 1:47am
Subject: Joris Ivens
In a message dated 8/13/03 10:37:37 PM, f@f... writes:
>Great "essay films" include Ivens's "The Story of the Wind"
I've been wanting to see this ever since Zach brought it to my attention by
selecting it, I believe, as his favorite film of all-time. I know Fred's seen
it on film (humor), but how were you able to view it, Zach? I see it's not
available on video. As someone completely unfamiliar with his work, what other
Ivens are must-sees?
"F for Fake" and "Filming 'Othello'" are definitely great essay films, though
quite different from one another actually. The former is better regarded, I
think, as a freeform meditation on various subjects (fakery, authorship, the
nature of art, the impermanence of art) which integrates documentary and
fictional segments. The latter seems to me more like an actual filmed essay, a
memory of the making of Welles' "Othello" combined with the testimony of others.
In any case, Welles loved the form and in latter years was reconceiving his
decades-in-the-making "Don Quixote" as an essay film.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
1206
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 6:15am
Subject: Re: Joris Ivens
Peter:
"As someone completely unfamiliar with his work, what other Ivens are
must-sees?"
His career was very long. About half of what I've seen is really great,
and the rest varies from very good to terrific, with a few exceptions,
such as "Song of the Rivers," good only in a few parts, and rather
revoltingly and explicitly Stalinist in a way that will only be apparent
if you know the history of the period. (Why everyone rags on Leni -- who
surely deserves it -- and gives a pass to Stalinst and Maoist filmmaking
is a topic for another day.)
If I could design an Ivens viewing program for you, I'd have you start
with his two wonderful early poetic short films, "Rain" and "Bridges,"
and proceed through some of the better 30s documentaries. Of the later
films a key pair would be the sublimely poetic "Le Mistral" -- and
earlier film about the wind -- and the equally poetic, but explicitly
political documentary "17th Parallel," which is really also a light poem.
The ten part film made in China is uneven, but worth seeing.
- Fred
1207
From: Rick Curnutte
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 2:09pm
Subject: Re: Kurosawa
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Damien Bona"
> Like Peter, I think Madadayo is the director's best film.
I was sent a screener for this when it was released theatrically
here, but was so cold on Kurosawa that I never bothered to watch it.
Obviously, I need to take a look at it.
Rick
1208
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 2:20pm
Subject: Re: Joris Ivens
Peter:
> I've been wanting to see this ever since Zach brought it to my
attention by
> selecting it, I believe, as his favorite film of all-time.
Yep, this is it.
> I know Fred's seen
> it on film (humor), but how were you able to view it, Zach? I see
it's not
> available on video. As someone completely unfamiliar with his
work, what other
> Ivens are must-sees?
I saw it on film at, regrettably, the last screening in Walter
Reade's retrospective. I had the chance to see it again at the
National Gallery of Art when I was at my parents' home in the spring
of last year, but I had an unusually bad allergic reaction to the
Virginia pollen and my cats, and couldn't make the screening.
A TALE OF THE WIND and several other Joris Ivens films are coming out
on DVD indefinitely - the official Ivens website (www.ivens.nl) isn't
very specific though. I've haven't seen enough or read enough to be
an Ivens expert, but I do know the gist of his life story as well as
the categories of some of his films. He started out interested in
photography (if memory serves, his father ran a photo shop that Joris
eventually took over for a short time), became interested in cinema
in the late 1920s, and started making films with other Dutchmen at a
film club. His early stuff apparently already showed promise:
unfortunately I haven't seen famous ones like RAIN or THE BRIDGE.
Most of these sorts of films were documentaries or purely poetic,
although he did make one fiction film, LES BRISANTS.
In the 1930s he started paying attention to leftist causes: BORINAGE
(another I haven't seen) is about the conditions of Belgian
laborers. THE SPANISH EARTH, perhaps Ivens' most famous film, is an
American-made documentary on the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway wrote
the narration, and Welles was supposed to speak it, but for reasons
that I can't recall at the moment, I believe Hemingway went on to
read it himself on the soundtrack. Can't recall if the Welles
soundtrack is extant.
(Good anecdote that I've told people before: the Ivens bio LIVING
DANGEROUSLY relates the story, which may well be a lie, about
Hemingway and Welles getting into a big fight around the time THE
SPANISH EARTH was being produced. Hemingway essentially accused
Welles of being a sissy, and Welles complied by gesticulating
effeminately and so on. This enraged Hemingway, the two brawled for
a while, and ended the night as friends, filling their bellies with
liquor.)
The rest of Ivens' career seems connected to his political concerns:
if there was a war or labor movement, Ivens was there to document
it. He travelled all over the world, meeting artists and political
leaders, always loyal to the cause. He had an affiliation with the
Communist Party for most of his life (though there is considerable
doubt that he really paid dues or was officially registered much),
and in his later years he was tormented that his dedication to Stalin
and Stalinism was, in fact, not a means of achieving the world he
wanted. As far as I know Ivens remained a leftist until his death,
but any taste he had for party dogmatism was probably gone by then.
A few highlights in his filmography -
LA SEINE A RECONTRE PARIS (1957) - Probably my second favorite film
of his, a gorgeous lyrical poem about the Seine river. Yet it also
doubles faintly as a sly ethnographic portrait. (Speaking of essay
films, doesn't Rouch count!?) Narration written (and, if I recall,
spoken) by Jacques Prevert.
A VALPARAISO (1963) - Beautiful, perhaps most notable for the Chris
Marker narration (written, not spoken, by him).
POUR LE MISTRAL (1965) - Good to see this film about the winds of a
region in southern France. Ivens was asthmatic and became fascinated
by the wind and air.
A TALE OF THE WIND (1988) - Co-directed by his wife, now widow,
Marceline Loridan. It's kind of hard to describe this film, because
most broad adjectives I can give to it only highlight that I can
usually apply the opposite. It's huge and intimate, profound and
carefree. Ivens mixes a bunch of his concerns and the results look
like an effortless testament: swan songs simply don't come more
personal or more flawless. Ivens' life practically began with
the "birth of cinema," and his acknowledgment of this fact comes in a
supremely graceful, humble nod to A TRIP TO THE MOON. I don't really
want or need to oversell this film, it is what it is, and I love it.
--Zach
1209
From: Greg Dunlap
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 2:29pm
Subject: Re: Re: Joris Ivens
> THE SPANISH EARTH, perhaps Ivens' most famous film, is an
> American-made documentary on the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway wrote
> the narration, and Welles was supposed to speak it, but for reasons
> that I can't recall at the moment, I believe Hemingway went on to
> read it himself on the soundtrack. Can't recall if the Welles
> soundtrack is extant.
There is a DVD that has THE SPANISH EARTH and THE 400 MILLION on one
DVD, and it contains both the Welles and Hemingway narrations for THE
SPANISH EARTH. According to the DVD, Welles' voice was considered "too
beautiful" for the film.
> A TALE OF THE WIND (1988) - Co-directed by his wife, now widow,
> Marceline Loridan. It's kind of hard to describe this film, because
> most broad adjectives I can give to it only highlight that I can
> usually apply the opposite. It's huge and intimate, profound and
> carefree. Ivens mixes a bunch of his concerns and the results look
> like an effortless testament: swan songs simply don't come more
> personal or more flawless. Ivens' life practically began with
> the "birth of cinema," and his acknowledgment of this fact comes in a
> supremely graceful, humble nod to A TRIP TO THE MOON. I don't really
> want or need to oversell this film, it is what it is, and I love it.
I saw this as part of the Ivens retrospective here last year, and was
also quite blown away and moved by it. I will not try to describe it
any more than Zach will, besides he did a very good job. It was after
seeing it that I picked up the aforementioned DVD and while the films
are interesting, they are of a different breed than A TALE OF THE WIND,
and from my understanding this is a fairly unique piece within his
career, sadly.
=====
--------------------
Greg Dunlap
heyrocker@y...
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
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1210
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 3:01pm
Subject: Essay Films
Fred,
Nope - I'm just admitting my ignorance, not having seen most of the
films on your list, which I will pursue systematically when my rich
uncle dies, and unsystematically till that longed-for day.
But it seems that every time someone tells me about a great essay
film, I'm disappointed when I see it. Maybe it's that, because they
usually don't cost much, filmmakers figure "hey, I can do one of
those," and then others - more accustomed perhaps to a steady diet of
narrative than you - say, "hey, that was kinda different" and give it
the cinematic equivalent of a gentleman's C, when in fact it is one
of the most demanding of all cinematic forms. I repeat: I've seen all
the extant Welles essay films, and I spent about thirty minutes
discussing his love of the form with him, and being blown away by his
brilliant ideas on the subject, but the only one that I think he made
work is Filming Othello. F for Fake is a B, with extra points for the
part Oja Kodar wrote, at the end.
For one thing, anyone with a good crew, script and actors can make a
decent narrative film, but a good essay film depends pretty much on
the filmmaker, even if he/she is working with a good editor, while a
good cinematic lyric poem is as hard to pull off as any lyric poem,
which is to say, as hard to pull off as anything I know - in
literature, the small presses have been cranking out proof of that
since the heyday of Grub Street (when the essay poem was still the
dominant poetic short-form). Which doesn't mean that there are only 3
or 4 good ones - it's just that not everybody gets to be Keats!
Case in point (although I guess Shelley would be a better lead-in for
this): The Story of the Wind. A former friend I saw it with was in
awe when we walked out. I thought the editing was bad. Then I found
myself in an editing room with the friend and quickly understood the
look of awe. I suspect The Story of the Wind is a "too late film,"
and will make a point of seeing the ones you list - noting with
interest that you aren't a million percent convinced by the whole
Ivens filmography yourself. There again: near-total ignorance on my
part.
Absolute and total agreement about Glen or Glenda, which also makes
use of word/image techniques not seen/heard since the early days of
sound: an amazingly sophisticated film.
Thom is alluding to LA Plays Itself in the title of his essay film on
Los Angeles in the movies, but by making it Los Angeles Plays Itself,
he is making the point (which I find a bit stretched) that calling
his native city "LA" is a barbarism perpetrated by Hollywood. That
said, the militant nativism of the commentary track is part of what
makes this Thom's best essay film yet. Unlike the all-knowing
voiceovers of Muybridge and Red Hollywood, he structures this film
around the gripes and occasional kudos of a v.o. who is obviously a
hometown boy (or girl - I believe he had an actress redo his temp
track), anchoring the whole thing in something human while making
possible a somewhat looser structure than the two previous ones.
Maybe he'll loosen up more when he makes his next one, but this one
is a lot of fun. It does contain a little bit of the near-homonym
homoerotic film you were asking about.
(The roughcut of Frederick Marx's new doc I saw in SF [sic] was very
good, and he fearlessly called it Boys 2 Men, or perhaps he was just
unaware that there's a high-profile gay feature out there with the
same name. Recommended viewing. NOT another Basketball Diaries!)
The French and the essay film: I have never discussed a documentary
or documentary project with a French intellectual who didn't say that
it was or was going to be "something between fiction and
documentary" - a noble theoretical tradition that has also spawned a
lot of terrible documentaries - I think we do them better. But essay
films are something else.
1211
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 3:05pm
Subject: To Zach
Thanks for a great essay on a filmmaker you know much better than I
do. I'll re-see Story of the Wind when it comes out on DVD, with some
of the others.
1212
From: programming
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 3:46pm
Subject: Re: oh boy
> Jamie wrote:
>
> Chris Marker rules, but I don't like the A.K. doc at all (do we want to blame
> Kurosawa for this?
>
>
> I've not seen A.K., but Marker's video on another Less than Meets the Eye
> filmmaker (Tarkovsky) is terrific. I think there is a richer vein of material
> to mine in Tarkovsky, though, compared to Kurosawa, in terms of themes that T.
> addresses that Marker is interested in.
>
> Marker's video on Medvedkin (whose Happiness I remember being great, although
> I've not seen it in a long time) is also terrific.
>
> So we don't have a pattern.
>
> (and Level Five IS a tough one - not up to Marker's usual standards I think)
>
> [Chicagoans, there are tentative plans for a mini-Marker retrospective at the
> Film Center next year (spring?)]
>
> Patrick Friel
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
1213
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 4:39pm
Subject: Level 5
I am really glad to hear that Patrick thinks this isn't up to Marker's
standards. This gives me hope.
1214
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 4:56pm
Subject: Re: Marker, & Essay films
hotlove666 wrote:
>I am really glad to hear that Patrick thinks this isn't up to Marker's
>standards. This gives me hope.
>
>
>
Haven't seen "Level 5," but "Cry of the Owl" is another example of a
sub-par Marker. If I were going to try to convince you, I'd show you "Le
Joli Mai," "Cuba Si!," "The Kuomiko Mystery," "Sans Soleil," and "The
Last Bolshevik," which Patrick referred to -- it's the one on Medvedkin .
As for those "hey, I can do one of those" essay films, it seems to me
that I've seen more than a few Hollwyood feature wannabes that can be
described the same way, and that are so inept and poorly acted and
un-entertaining that they make even me appreciate the precise editing
and smooth cinemtography of a terrible and soulless blockbuster.
I'm glad we agree about "Glenn or Glenda"!
I will definitely try to see "Los Angeles Plays Itself" based on your
description. Besides, I'm partial to Thom Andersen ever since he
introduced me at a program I did at the LA Filmforum by calling me "The
last film critic in America" -- by which he meant the only critic he
knew of who won't write on a film from seeing only a video copy. I've
seen only his Muybridge film years ago.
- Fred
- Fred
1215
From: Damien Bona
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 6:01pm
Subject: Stuart Byron
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
>
>
> Stuart Byron, a former Variety critic who I knew and whose taste in
film
> was pretty good, claimed that this was a great work of film art. I
knew
> of this claim and somehow got invited to a private screening of it
and
> Halsted's short "Sex Garage" (whose cast, shockingly, included a
WOMAN)
> at MoMA, circa 1974. I thought they were both terrible, completely
> uninteresting as cinema. But Halsted did have some supporters.
>
Stuart was a prototypical auteurist critic; I used to read him in the
Boston Phoenix when I was in high school and learned a lot from his
writing. He felt then Edwards's 10 was the second best film of the
70s, second only to Nashville.
By the way, Fred, Stuart had ulterior motives in hyping L.A. Plays
Itself -- he was the film's publicist.
1216
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 6:31pm
Subject: Re: Stuart Byron
Damien:
"By the way, Fred, Stuart had ulterior motives in hyping L.A. Plays
Itself -- he was the film's publicist."
Yeah, I only recently figured that out! If I had known that thirty years
ago maybe I would have been spared -- though I suppose the film was
rather educational in its way.
Stuart was a great guy in some ways, though. I remember first meeting
him when I was about 20, and he said something that suggested a way of
thinking about Hollywood film that hadn't really occurred to me before.
He talked about young auteurists seeking out films like "Firecreek"
(which I'd seen, and hadn't liked) that they hoped would keep the
Western alive, and he said something like this: "One reason that film
was such a rich medium is that it was an invented medium, so the realm
of classical narrative hadn't yet been explored in film in the way it
had in the nineteenth-century novel. Thus you could have more classical
works coexisting with more (not his word) modernist and avant-garde
works. But now the classical tradition has been fully explored, and just
as it is no longer really possible to write a sonnet in the style of
Keats, it will no longer be possible to make classical narratives."
The point of recounting this is not that he was right or wrong -- such
sweeping statements are rarely either "right" or "wrong" -- but that it
provided me with an interesting perspective I hadn't had before. And in
some sense and in some ways surely he was right. I mean, whatever you
think of Spielberg, I've never heard it argued intelligently that he's a
genuinely great and original filmmaker.
Stuart wrote a long paper on Minnelli that I don't think was ever
published but that I still have a copy of somewhere. His basic take was
that Minnelli's theme was freedom, and it was actually very helpful to
me to read at the time. It certainly helped me understand the ending of
"Some Came Running," even if I didn't accept his idea that the ultimate
realization of that theme was the even more space-expanding ending of
"On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" -- though he did have a point about
that film too.
I was very sad, after he died, when a friend send me a blurb that had
appeared in a gossip column before he died that said he had AIDS and was
hoping to hear from old friends. Even though I only met him a half-dozen
times at most, I certainly would have gotten in touch.
- Fred
1217
From: Ruy Gardnier
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 6:37pm
Subject: Re: Joris Ivens
LE MISTRAL!!!!!!!
----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Camper"
To:
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 3:15 AM
Subject: Re: [a_film_by] Joris Ivens
> Peter:
>
> "As someone completely unfamiliar with his work, what other Ivens are
> must-sees?"
>
> His career was very long. About half of what I've seen is really great,
> and the rest varies from very good to terrific, with a few exceptions,
> such as "Song of the Rivers," good only in a few parts, and rather
> revoltingly and explicitly Stalinist in a way that will only be apparent
> if you know the history of the period. (Why everyone rags on Leni -- who
> surely deserves it -- and gives a pass to Stalinst and Maoist filmmaking
> is a topic for another day.)
>
> If I could design an Ivens viewing program for you, I'd have you start
> with his two wonderful early poetic short films, "Rain" and "Bridges,"
> and proceed through some of the better 30s documentaries. Of the later
> films a key pair would be the sublimely poetic "Le Mistral" -- and
> earlier film about the wind -- and the equally poetic, but explicitly
> political documentary "17th Parallel," which is really also a light poem.
>
> The ten part film made in China is uneven, but worth seeing.
>
> - Fred
>
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> a_film_by-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
1218
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Aug 14, 2003 7:29pm
Subject: Essay films
Fred,
Thom is also a considerable critic in his own right, but such a
perfectionist that he has never published!
I still insist that my grandmother could make a good narrative
film if she had the crew, cast and script and wasn't too
unsympathetic to the material, and many do - many screw it up,
too. I just got an e-mail being circulated about a well-known H'wd
auteur who fell off the wagon while shooting a big budget
location film and even managed to screw up the camerawork by
one of the best in the business by being autocratically
incompetent. Then he planted a story with a suceptible journalist
blaming it all on the "suits" - a technique he has perfected over
the years. And there are lots of people who make one or two
films because they're good at taking orders and go to tv - but they
at least get the films in the can (or the producer does, as recently
happened on The Bourne Amendment, where Sony asked Frank
Marshall to step in and finish the shooting).
Wannabes are everywhere, particularly in cinema, because of
the glamor, but there is no room for wannabes making essay
films or lyric films - you're naked to the world on one of those.
Conversely, occasionally a H'wd director like like Boetticher or
Vidor, accustomed to working with the whole panoply of
industrial filmmaking help, actually does one of these little
one-man films better than a lot of the people doing it for a living -
which makes me think that just maybe there's a reason to
consider that real cinema is one thing, not several, a notion you
and Thom Andersen both exemplify.
I still remember the shock of pleasure when Hawks alluded to
Shoot the Piano Player, then my favorite foreign film, via a ghastly
Dumb Swede joke he wrote into El Dorado. This was long before
Spielberg (groan!) hired Truffaut to act in Close Encounters,
when it was still a shock to discover that that partricular barrier
didn't exist.
I will try to see any film Ivens made about the wind, including
reseeing Story of... when it comes out on DVD - that is THE
archetypal subject for an essay film (or even more, for a lyric),
which is why I was so bummed out when I saw Story of...
Obviously I need to give it another try.
1219
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Fri Aug 15, 2003 1:19am
Subject: Rouge
Though not quite ready yet, Adrian Martin and co's Rouge is nearing the
legendary with its new list of contents:
http://www.rouge.com.au/espace.html
If you wish to subscribe, you get an email back saying they will let
you know when updates are made. I say subscribe now (and tell your
friends) so they can hurry it up!
Gabe
1220
From: Rick Curnutte
Date: Fri Aug 15, 2003 1:06pm
Subject: Re: Rouge
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Gabe Klinger wrote:
> Though not quite ready yet, Adrian Martin and co's Rouge is
nearing the
> legendary with its new list of contents:
>
> http://www.rouge.com.au/espace.html
>
> If you wish to subscribe, you get an email back saying they will
let
> you know when updates are made. I say subscribe now (and tell your
> friends) so they can hurry it up!
>
> Gabe
This is great news! Adrian's written some stuff for me in THE FILM
JOURNAL in the past, and I've been anxiously awaiting this. Thanks
for the heads up, Gabe.
Rick
1221
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2003 7:47am
Subject: light and...playing catch-up
Electricity = good.
At the exact moment of the power failure, I was writing what was to
become the most brilliant and witty analysis of Chris Marker and
Orson Welles imaginable. It is lost forever. I can't remember what
I wrote, so you'll all just have to make do with what's out there
right now. Very sorry.
Also these Marker works are highly recommended (if they were not
mentioned already):
'Remembrance of Things to Come' (co-directed with Yannick Bellon)
'One Day in the Life of Andre Arsenevitch'
'The Last Bolshevik' (one of the major films of the 1990s)
'The Owl's Legacy' [TV Series]
'Letter from Siberia'
'L'Ambassade'
'The Battle of the Ten Million' (have not seen '¡Cuba Sí!')
'Grin Without a Cat' (the version I saw was that of the 2002 re-
release; I am unclear as to the specific differences between each
version, although I think one or both of the recent Film Comment
profiles on Marker should have good info on the film and its history)
'2084'
I have seen several of his video pieces, they were okay but I didn't
really get into them. Worth seeing, I guess: 'Matta'; 'Tokyo
Days'; 'Berlin 1990'; 'Bestiaire'; 'Prime Time in the Camps'; 'SLON
Tango'
Actually the last one is pretty stupid - a video shot of an elephant
in slow motion, set to some music. Perhaps I saw it out of context
or away from something that would have given it some meaning
(something I thought more than once when I recently saw all of these
videos in a row at Anthology Film Archives), but I could see no rhyme
or reason for it. It's Marker's worst film or video.
Jaime
1222
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2003 11:44am
Subject: Re: Rouge
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Gabe Klinger wrote:
> Though not quite ready yet, Adrian Martin and co's Rouge is nearing the
> legendary with its new list of contents:
>
> http://www.rouge.com.au/espace.html
Is it named after Kieslowski's ROUGE? Or Stanley Kwan's?
1223
From:
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2003 11:06am
Subject: Mekas
Fred Camper mentioned Jonas Mekas' work as essay films.
Recently TV unexpectedly showed Mekas' Scenes From the Life of Andy Warhol
(1990), a roughly 40 minute collection of Mekas' home movies which include the
artist. So at last, got to see a Mekas film here! The film has a pleasant
visual style - most of the images are creatively composed, and there is a good
sense of rhythm to the camera movements. Mekas has been filming what he calls his
Home Movies for over 50 years. Would love to see more of these. It is not
quite clear that this is an essay film, at least in the sense that Marker's are.
Mekas has seemingly no message here, other than warmth and affection for the
people portrayed - he only shoots happy moments, according to an interview with
the director that accompanied the film. Instead, there is a steady stream of
visual beauty that Mekas has uncovered with his camera. It is this sense of
visual joy and beauty that is Mekas' subject. It is better to see the film at
least twice - the formal compositional patterns become clearer and clearer every
time you watch it.
Did not like Marker's Sans Soleil at all. The relentless Communist propoganda
really made me gag. By the time that Marker opines that Communism builds
character, I was ready to throw tomatoes at my TV. I have an intense loathing of
both Facism and Communism. I can't even abide to hear Wagner or Richard Strauss
on the radio - if they come on, I get up and switch the radio off! La Jetee
also seems like an over-rated turkey.
Power is now back on in my part of Detroit. I have not been ignoring
a_film_by - have simply been without power here.
Mike Grost in Detroit.
1224
From: vincent lobrutto
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2003 5:31pm
Subject: Re: Mekas
Mike Grost wrote"
Mekas has been filming what he calls
his
Home Movies for over 50 years. Would love to see more of these. It is not
quite clear that this is an essay film, at least in the sense that Marker's
are.
The Mekas films can be identified as essay films - traditionally, much of Mekas' work has been catagorized as a Diary Film. I included an entry on the form for The Encylopedia of American Independent Filmmaking. Here it is:
diary film: Avant-garde, experimental film form where the filmmaker carries a camera, often a Bolex or a digital video camera, and records personal observations, impressions, and events as a diarist would with pen and notebook. Edward Pincus's Diaries (1976) is a five-year portrait of his marriage. Andrew Noren's Kodak Ghost Poems are short, one-to- two minute segments of daily realism, romantic episodes filled with texture, and lovingly rendered female nudity. Howard Guttenplan, director of The Millennium is also an accomplished diary filmmaker. The best known diarist is Jonas Mekas whose Diaries, Notes and Sketches is a model of the form. The epic work is in several parts, Walden (1969), Lost, Lost, Lost (1975), In Between (1978), Notes for Jerome (1978) and other films. Mekas helped define the style by utilizing single-frame shooting, bursts of frames, handheld camera movement, and over - and underexposure. Diary films, often unedited, are direct impressions of the diarist. This
most personal cinema is documentary and artist and shares the inner-most emotions and feelings of the "writer."
Vinny LoBrutto
---------------------------------
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Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
1225
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2003 10:17pm
Subject: Another Diary Film, Spots of Time
John Dorr, the founder of the Los Angeles video co-op EZTV (where I
believe Dan made his first feature), made a diary film, John Dorr's
Christmas Greetings, and sent it to friends before his death. Like
John's four video features, it is a work of quirky genius.
One of the things John had been doing was shooting video 8mm behind-
the-scenes every day during the making of Short Cuts. The footage was
later turned into a conventional 2-hr doc for HBO, not edited by
John, but he included bits of what he had shot and even of the
finished Altman feature in his diary/letter. He actually edited a
little sequence about the filming of the scene where the fisherman
find the body in the river that is the best evocation of a film shoot
I've ever seen, because John, a great editor, cut it to capture the
way time flows during a shoot in a natural setting.
Needless to say, the subject of the sequence being filmed by Altman
also fits into the loose diary form, not just because John knew he
was dying, but because it unconsciously reenacts one of Wordsworth's
gloomiest "spots of time" in The Prelude, and an archetypal symbol of
death-/self-consciousness ("The Drowned Man") in the poetic tradition
that feeds into many of these diary or essay films. Maybe John hooked
into it through Carver's sophisticated use of the motif in the story
- I haven't read it - or maybe it just surfaced while he was picking
his footage to edit, as archetypes have a way of doing.
I believe that one of the few genuine Proustian moments (another
version of Wordsworth's "spots of time") in cinema appears in Budd
Boetticher's last film, "My Kingdom For." While watching video
footage he shot of Carlos Arruza, Jr., doing rejoneo in Budd's
bullring near San Diego (the film was edited on 2 VCRs in his and
Mary's bedroom) he realized that Carlos Jr. had made the same pass
exactly the same way Carlos Sr. did when Budd was filming him for the
documentary Arruza, filmed from the same angel, according to Budd's
Bressonian theory that there is only one angle from which a
particular moment of a bulfight should be filmed, which he as a
bullfighter would always instinctively select. So he put the old
footage of the father in the film, cutting to it from the new footage
of Carlos Jr. and letting his own voiceover carry the burden of the
meditation on Time enacted by the images.
1226
From:
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2003 6:52pm
Subject: Behind the scenes docus
In a message dated 8/16/03 6:18:35 PM, hotlove666@y... writes:
>One of the things John had been doing was shooting video 8mm behind-
>the-scenes every day during the making of Short Cuts. The footage was
>later turned into a conventional 2-hr doc for HBO, not edited by
>John
Was this "Luck, Trust, and Ketchup"? I'm a big, big fan of "Short Cuts" and
I actually remember thinking that the footage in this documentary was
fascinating (and that whoever shot it had amazing, even unprecedented access), but
that it was poorly assembled. Now it all makes since if the director didn't even
get to edit it.
I am in the "haven't seen" category for Marker's "A.K.," but the best film
I've seen in the subcategory of "behind the scenes" docus is Vivian Kubrick's
"Making 'The Shining.'" Elegantly assembled, she and editor Gordon Stainforth
were able to winnow down her hours and hours of footage into a few key moments
which seem to summarize the feeling of a Kubrick set. There's Kubrick The
Tyrant, but also Kubrick furiously typing new dialogue as the actors rehearse and
Kubrick explaining color coded scripts to his mother. Vivian K. began
shooting a similar documentary during "Full Metal Jacket," but I believe it was
abandoned at some stage.
I also quite enjoyed Alexandra Bogdanovich's documentary of her dad at work
on "The Cat's Meow," featured on the DVD of that film. Again, there's just an
intelligence in terms of what's included (scenes of Bogdanovich giving
direction, blocking scenes, acting out performances) and what's not (a lot of talking
heads and actors talking about motivation.)
Sorry for the brief tangent.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
1227
From:
Date: Sat Aug 16, 2003 6:54pm
Subject: Re: Re: Joris Ivens
A big thanks to Zach and Fred for their succinct and informative remarks on
Ivens. He sounds like a fascinating person and filmmaker. If I'm ever able to
track down some of the key works (or if they're released on those DVDs), I'll
definitely post something here.
Thanks again, guys.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
1228
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 0:00am
Subject: Re: Mekas
To Mike Grost, I did stop and think a minute before recommending some
Jonas Mekas films as "essay films." I supposed you could argue that all
of his films are "essay films," but that would be an argument at the
margins of the "genre," certainly not one I would make in the context of
offering recommendations. Personally, I wouldn't call most of Mekas's
films essay films, and certainly wouldn't call "Scenes From the Life of
Andy Warhol" an essay film. The two that I recommended, "Lost Lost
Lost" and "Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania" clearly are, the
first even more clearly than the second, and the first, which is three
hours long, is also my favorite Mekas film, though there are a few
recent long ones that I've not been able to see.
But for most Mekas films, I think you're right that a "sense of visual
joy and beauty" is their subject, or at least one of their subjects. The
way I sometimes put it is that Mekas's rapid-fire style intensifies
seeing by focusing one's attention in a very particular way.
I don't agree about Marker, even though I do agree about communism, but
you kind of admit to a certain lack of objectivity in citing your
inability to listen to Strauss or Wagner, so I don't feel the need to
get into a disagreement over this. But here's a thought for you. We both
love Ockeghem. One of the most beautiful moments in Ockeghem occurs in
the Credo of the "Missa Mi-Mi," when the Latin words that translate into
a declaration of the belief in one true Catholic church are sung to a
rapidly ascending melody. Now the church of Ockeghem's time was known to
torture heretics to death, including Jews. One way that at least some
churches did that is by hanging them in cages inside the church until
they died of thirst. Now, I would "like" to think that several of my
fellow-Jews were so hanging during the world premiere of the Missa
Mi-Mi. This is not because I am anything other than revolted by murder
and torture, of course, but rather because, as I've said before, I don't
think many, or any, of the works of art I love are free from the
possibility of having things about them that ought to repel one as much
as you are by Marker or Wagner. I mean, some of the directors we love
the most were anti-Semites, I'm sure, even if that didn't make it into
their films. "The Searchers" is a pretty nuanced treatment of whites and
Indians, but it still has elements that could easily have been seen as
racist by most viewers of the time, even if a subtler viewer could argue
that such a reading is a misinterpretation.
Walter Benjamin said it better than I can: "There is no document of
civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism."
- Fred
1229
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 4:02am
Subject: wagner, etc.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> I have an intense loathing of
> both Facism and Communism. I can't even abide to hear Wagner or Richard Strauss
> on the radio - if they come on, I get up and switch the radio off!
Any number of films (principally prewar, I guess) have Wagner pastiche soundtracks -- what then? Doesn't Borzage's A FAREWELL TO ARMS end with the Liebestod? Even if it's probably too early to be considered historically complicit... As for Strauss, I won't even ask you about 2001!
1230
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 4:29am
Subject: Movie docs detour
The guy who edited the Dorr footage on "Short Cuts" recently made a
film about Anne Sothern at EZTV. I think he got access to Aldrich's
16mm previsualization of a sexy Grand Guignol feature he was going to
do with Sothern but never got financed - there should be some in the
doc. I gather he shot the whole thing on 16.
Some French guy has been getting the same access on Spielberg's
shoots that John had on "Short Cuts." I don't know if he shoots as
well. Or edits as well.
I assume that Kubrick helped on Making The Shining. The cut to
Scatman Crothers already in tears when we haven't seen him before and
don't know why he's crying is just too wild to be the daughter. If it
is, SHE should have made "A.I."!
Tim Burton's "Vincent and Me" remains in durance vile because the
clips would cost $250,000. One reason the film's so good is that he
obviously gave no thought to the length of clips when he was making
it. It's finished but for the Avid-back-to-film part, and the clip
payments.
Andre S. Labarthe of "Cineastes de notre temps" fame tried to "take
back" the director profile from the PR types who took it over in his
film on Welles, "The Big O." I don't think the film works, but I
appreciated the attempt. (The ugly cracks about Bogdanovich in "The
Big O" came from Analiese Varaldiev, an EZTV regular whom Dan knows.)
Some of the recent additions to that series, produced by Andre and
Jeannine Bazin (who died last month), are good: "Cinema de notre
temps," they called the new series. The Pedro Costa film on the
Straubs editing Sicilia ("Ou git votre sourire enfoui") is very good.
I'd love to see Jean-Pierre Limosin's film on Kiarostami, but someone
had gotten there ahead of me when I went to steal it from the Cahiers
offices.
Schickel's Chaplin biodoc opened here this weekend - I haven't seen
it, or his Fuller episode for the new "Men Who Made the Movies."
Bogdanovich has recut the botched "Orson Welles: One-Man Band" for
Showtime, making it his personal essay on OW, but I suspect it's
bottled up in the Beatrice Wars, like "The Other Side of the Wind."
1231
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 5:20am
Subject: Re: Movie docs detour
> Fuller episode for the new "Men Who Made the Movies."
It's good, but I don't think it had a very profound effect on me
except that it made me want to re-watch THE BIG RED ONE. Having only
seen this and the one he did on Hawks, I have to say that Schickel's
director docs seem good but not much more accomplished than something
that might be made for Turner Classic Movies or the A&E Biography
series.
> Bogdanovich has recut the botched "Orson Welles: One-Man Band" for
> Showtime, making it his personal essay on OW, but I suspect it's
> bottled up in the Beatrice Wars, like "The Other Side of the Wind."
I have a 75-minute version of ONE-MAN BAND (it's supposed to be 90
minutes, according to some listings) and all of the clips are
valuable in one way or another, and many are really delightful. My
favorite may be the no-makeup, no-sets rendition of the MERCHANT OF
VENICE monologue ("hath not a Jew eyes," etc).
However, I was not aware that Bogdanovich was working on it. I'll
ask the experts at Wellesnet.com and see what they have to say.
Jaime
1232
From: Damien Bona
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 6:13am
Subject: Re: wagner, etc.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jess_l_amortell"
wrote:
> Any number of films (principally prewar, I guess) have Wagner
pastiche soundtracks -- what then? Doesn't Borzage's A FAREWELL TO
ARMS end with the Liebestod? Even if it's probably too early to be
considered historically complicit... As for Strauss, I won't even
ask you about 2001!
I looked up Wagner on IMDb and his music is cited for 271 films,
ranging from Birth of A Nation, Hallelujah, The Scarlet Empress, A
Farewell To Arms and The Gold Rush to Citizen Kane, Manpower, Hangmen
Also Die, Interlude, Verbotten and Stalker to What's Opera, Doc?,
Help!, And Now For Something Completely Different, Police Academy 5:
Assignment Miami Beach and Andy Hardy's Dilemma.
My favorite Wagner in a movie is Mazursky's Blume In Love.
1233
From: David Westling
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 7:25am
Subject: His Kind of Woman (1950)
Robert Mitchum Vincent Price Jane Russell Jim Backus Raymond Burr A Howard
Hughes Production Directed by John Farrow and Richard Fleisher Release date
1951 Dan Milner doesn't know why he's in a Mexican seaside town, and the
guys that hired him aren't very forthcoming. Always the waiting, the
waiting...punctuated by fatalistic bravado from Mitchum and goofy
Shakespeaean hamming from Price, while it's all Russell can do to keep from
being pushed off the screen. The lack of a narrative or dramatic center in
this film brings the focus to the various set pieces: a gambling game,
vague repartee among people barely in contact with each other; no one knows
what going on, and it doesn't matter. Burr is bug-eyed and over-the-top
maniacal as the hood who needs Mitchum's identity to get back into the
States. More oblique and more nihilistic than _Kiss Me Deadly_, _His Kind
of Woman_ is a nearly forgotten gem capturing an existential anomie Sartre
couldn't even dream of.
David Westling
1234
From: George Robinson
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 8:28am
Subject: Re: His Kind of Woman (1950)
This is the first time I've seen Fleischer's name linked to this film. I'm curious where you found that information. Not that I doubt you; on the contrary, it's a lot better than the average John Farrow film and while Fleischer isn't exactly Sam Fuller, he's a lot better than Farrow.
g
Alas, where is human nature so
weak as in a bookstore?
-Henry Ward Beecher
----- Original Message -----
From: David Westling
To: a_film_by@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2003 3:25 AM
Subject: [a_film_by] His Kind of Woman (1950)
Robert Mitchum Vincent Price Jane Russell Jim Backus Raymond Burr A Howard
Hughes Production Directed by John Farrow and Richard Fleisher Release date
1951 Dan Milner doesn't know why he's in a Mexican seaside town, and the
guys that hired him aren't very forthcoming. Always the waiting, the
waiting...punctuated by fatalistic bravado from Mitchum and goofy
Shakespeaean hamming from Price, while it's all Russell can do to keep from
being pushed off the screen. The lack of a narrative or dramatic center in
this film brings the focus to the various set pieces: a gambling game,
vague repartee among people barely in contact with each other; no one knows
what going on, and it doesn't matter. Burr is bug-eyed and over-the-top
maniacal as the hood who needs Mitchum's identity to get back into the
States. More oblique and more nihilistic than _Kiss Me Deadly_, _His Kind
of Woman_ is a nearly forgotten gem capturing an existential anomie Sartre
couldn't even dream of.
David Westling
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1235
From:
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 5:09am
Subject: Essay Films, Varda
Thanks to Vincent LoBrutto, Bill Krohn and Fred Camper for really informative
posts on diary films, essay films, and Jonas Mekas!
Would love to see the films mentioned by Edward Pincus, Andrew Noren, Howard
Guttenplan and John Dorr. This is a strong reminder of how vast the cinema is,
and how much I still have to learn. A true map of the Great Films is still
very far away here!
Was just "wondering aloud" about the relation of Mekas to the essay film.
This is a branch of cinema almost entirely new to me.
Have read Mekas' book "Movie Journal". Favorite article: the one on Marcel
Hanoun. It shows Mekas' writing at its delirously poetic best.
An essay film that is visually beautiful is The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda,
2000).
The Gleaners and I shows Varda's personal sense of color. Scenes show the
bright, brilliant colors that are today called neon. Varda is unafraid to mix
several bright colors. The vibrating color harmonies that are produced can be
spectacular. The other filmmaker that one associates with neon colors is Storm De
Hirsch: see, for example, her Peyote Queen (1965). Like Varda, De Hirsch was
an independent woman filmmaker who pursued a non-standard vision through her
works.
Varda often constructs her scenes through strong vertical lines. Such lines
are found outdoors in fences, building and trucks. These lines tend to bound
regions of glowing color. At the base of the image tend to be horizontal
regions, parts of the ground, grass and sidewalks.
In principle, everyone knows about farms. In practice, most modern people in
industrialized countries have little first hand experience with farms. Varda
takes her camera to many actual farming locations. It is fascinating to see
what a potato or cabbage farm actually looks like - it is subtly different from
what one might expect. The commercial oyster beds Varda displays are also
visually fascinating. Recently, the News Hour with Jim Lehrer went to the Land of
Lakes dairy processing facility in Central California for a report (2001). The
huge plant looked utterly unlike anything I might have imagined, and the
report is a mini-classic at showing a world we have never seen. One also recalls
Lawrence G. Blochman's Recipe for Homicide (1952), a mystery novel with a
background of industrial food processing. This is a whole invisible world. Varda is
on to something different and important here.
Mike Grost
1236
From:
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 5:52am
Subject: Movie Docs
An enjoyable Making Of film is "A China Odyssey" (Les Mayfield, 1987). This
is allegedly a Making Of film about Steven Spielberg's film, Empire of the Sun.
But it slyly undercuts this subject. Spielberg's film is an extremely
unfaithful version of J. G. Ballard's novel. Mayfield's doc is structured around a
long interview of Ballard. In it, Ballard tells the original story of his novel.
This is intercut with numerous brief clips of Spielberg's movie. These now
"illustrate", not the story of Spielberg's film, but the original plot of
Ballard's book. Mayfield also includes many newsreels of old Shanghai, and other
archival footage (Empire of the Sun takes place in World War II Shanghai and
environs). It is all a little like a Classics Illustrated version of the Ballard
novel.
The biggest coup of Spielberg's film was the location photography he brought
back from filming in the real Shanghai. These scenes are in the early sections
of Spielberg's film. They are also liberally employed in the Mayfield doc.
Mayfield's film was shown on ABC TV in 1987. It seemed amazing at the time: a
whole hour long documentary on commercial TV about a major writer of fiction,
J. G. Ballard. Do not know if this doc is available on DVD anywhere.
Empire of the Sun is a major novel. But it is so harrowing and emotionally
terrifying that I do not know if I would recommend it to anyone as casual
reading. Ballard's greatest works are probably his short stories. "The Voices of
Time" (1960), widely available in "The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard", is
one of the most beautifully written short stories I have ever read. "The Cloud
Sculptors of Coral D" (1987) from the same collection also shows this great
prose stylist at his height.
Les Mayfield went on to direct the slaptsick comedy Encino Man (1992). I love
this movie, but it is perhaps too silly for the readers of a_film_by. Brendan
Fraser, my favorite leading man of the 90's, is delightful as the cave man.
Recently saw a silent comedy short "Family Life" (Robert P. Kerr, 1924) that is
also a slapstick gem. This stuff is way out, even by Harold Lloyd standards.
Mike Grost
1237
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 10:36am
Subject: David, George, Mike
Very interesting posts.
Farrow is a director Sarris missed. I didn't know Fleisher was on
Some Kind of Woman, either, but before dismissing JF, take a look at
The Big Clock. A bit of a madman, Farrow fathered Mia and wrote a
widely-read biography of Father Damien, as well as other more obscure
books of hagiography, including a history of the Popes. He also
published a slim volume of poetry. The Big Clock is based on a novel
by communist poet Kenneth Frearing, but Farrow made it into an
allegory of the clockwork deity of materialism, incarnated by Charles
Laughton and brought down by Ray Milland and Farrow's wife Maureen
O'Sullivan - whom Farrow seems to have cheated on regularly, always
erasing his sin in the confessional. The elevator shot, where the
camera camps in a car that stops at succeeding floors, is Steadicam
before the letter, and the overall visual design of the film, much of
it set in a single building, is quite pleasing. Joe Dante is an
admirer.
The Ballard doc sounds fascinating. The Brits are damn clever at this
stuff. I recommend Stalin: The Red God by Frederick Baker, who is
finishing a doc on The Third Man that I can't wait to see. (The only
extant essay film by Welles I haven't seen is Vienna and The Third
Man, which JR likes.) The SF Fest's Golden Gate Awards is a great
gathering of docs. Saw two German/UK ones I loved there last year;
Rivers and Tides and The Edge of Time: Male Domains in the Caucasus.
Missed de Oliveira's Porto of my Memory, which sounds like an essay
film, much admired by Charles Tesson.
Mike, wait until you can see it in 35: Lions Love by Varda is one of
my all-time favorite films. She's uneven, but as Dan would say,
that's the one where she outdid herself.
1238
From: Ruy Gardnier
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 3:46pm
Subject: Varda, Porto
As for people are saying "it's in" and "it's out", I guess I'm not
completely familiar with the whole concept of essay film. At least, I find
myself thinking that Histoire(s) du Cinema is much more essayistic than,
say, every film by Chris. Marker I saw (Sans Soleil is more of a diary film,
Level Five more of a fictional subjective film such as the recent Suzhou
River by Lou Ye). I wouldn't know if Porto da Minha Infancia by Manoel de
Oliveira is fully an essay film. But it's clearly one of my Oliveira
favorites, much much better than Vou Para Casa, released the same year. It
is a collection of acted fragments from the strongest memories Oliveira
holds from the city Porto. The short-circuit between time as that in which
we live and time as History, one of Oliveira's reincidences, is here fully
tasteful and deep. But as the film runs only for 60 minutes, no distributor
was interested and the film was never commercially released in Brazil (as
Vou Para Casa and some others by Oliveira did). I could see it only two
times at the Mostra de São Paulo, which takes place in late octobers (it's
coming!).
As for Varda, I'm not a big fan of her career as a whole, but I have to have
my 50 cents and praise the filmmaker who made the charming Cleo but most of
all Le Bonheur, which stands for me as one of the most beautiful and strong
accounts of how life goes on. A collection of short films by Varda I was
able to see is also considerably beautiful, much more than her feature film
work in the 70s and 80s. Du Coté de la Côte is a lovely depiction of the
Côte d'Azur so sweet and charmful one would love to get a plane ticket right
away (though the praise is rather intimate, not propagandistic). Ulysse is
also a must-see, and, just to end as I started, I'm pretty in doubt if it is
an essay film: Varda does some soul-searching and tries to discovered what
was in her mind when she shot a photograph of a man, a boy and a goat's head
skull.
Ruy
1239
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 5:01pm
Subject: Farrow, Mazursky
> Farrow is a director Sarris missed. I didn't know Fleisher was on
> Some Kind of Woman, either, but before dismissing JF, take a look at
> The Big Clock. A bit of a madman, Farrow fathered Mia and wrote a
> widely-read biography of Father Damien, as well as other more obscure
> books of hagiography, including a history of the Popes. He also
> published a slim volume of poetry. The Big Clock is based on a novel
> by communist poet Kenneth Frearing, but Farrow made it into an
> allegory of the clockwork deity of materialism, incarnated by Charles
> Laughton and brought down by Ray Milland and Farrow's wife Maureen
> O'Sullivan - whom Farrow seems to have cheated on regularly, always
> erasing his sin in the confessional. The elevator shot, where the
> camera camps in a car that stops at succeeding floors, is Steadicam
> before the letter, and the overall visual design of the film, much of
> it set in a single building, is quite pleasing. Joe Dante is an
> admirer.
I'm a Farrow fan as well. I first heard about him from David Thomson,
who thinks Farrow did strong work at least up to 1956's BACK FROM
ETERNITY; I don't know if I love any of Farrow's 50s work, but between
1939's FIVE CAME BACK and 1949's ALIAS NICK BEAL are a string of
impressive movies, some of them little known: in addition to the those
two, THE BIG CLOCK, CALCUTTA, TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST, CALIFORNIA, and
YOU CAME ALONG are all worthy. Farrow favored a very fluid camera
(CALIFORNIA, as I recall, is especially full of long tracking shots) and
a heavy, dark mood. He was surprisingly grave for a Hollywood
entertainment director: if you think about THE BIG CLOCK's script, it
seems like a pretty lightweight action-adventure film, but in Farrow's
hands the forces of evil are taken very seriously; they become
psychologically plausible and hence more frightening. I guess NICK BEAL
is my favorite, though I haven't seen any of these films in a while.
HIS KIND OF WOMAN was certainly very interesting, maybe a little bizarre
in the way it mixes comedy and drama. I was mixed on it when I saw it;
maybe I'm in a better position to like it these days.
> My favorite Wagner in a movie is Mazursky's Blume In Love.
I think BLUME IN LOVE is a really wonderful film. I didn't stay with
Mazursky as long as Bill did: after BLUME he started getting a little
too splashily self-aware for my taste, and I haven't even seen anything
after SCENES FROM A MALL. But I still think the director of BOB & CAROL
& TED & ALICE and BLUME IN LOVE is a major dude, though my current
feeling is that he didn't hold onto his gift. - Dan
1240
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 5:34pm
Subject: Re: Varda, Porto
Varda can be problematic.
I wish "Lion's Love" were available. It was dimissed
as frivoilous back in 1969, but I disagree.
--- Ruy Gardnier wrote:
> As for people are saying "it's in" and "it's out", I
> guess I'm not
> completely familiar with the whole concept of essay
> film. At least, I find
> myself thinking that Histoire(s) du Cinema is much
> more essayistic than,
> say, every film by Chris. Marker I saw (Sans Soleil
> is more of a diary film,
> Level Five more of a fictional subjective film such
> as the recent Suzhou
> River by Lou Ye). I wouldn't know if Porto da Minha
> Infancia by Manoel de
> Oliveira is fully an essay film. But it's clearly
> one of my Oliveira
> favorites, much much better than Vou Para Casa,
> released the same year. It
> is a collection of acted fragments from the
> strongest memories Oliveira
> holds from the city Porto. The short-circuit between
> time as that in which
> we live and time as History, one of Oliveira's
> reincidences, is here fully
> tasteful and deep. But as the film runs only for 60
> minutes, no distributor
> was interested and the film was never commercially
> released in Brazil (as
> Vou Para Casa and some others by Oliveira did). I
> could see it only two
> times at the Mostra de São Paulo, which takes place
> in late octobers (it's
> coming!).
> As for Varda, I'm not a big fan of her career as a
> whole, but I have to have
> my 50 cents and praise the filmmaker who made the
> charming Cleo but most of
> all Le Bonheur, which stands for me as one of the
> most beautiful and strong
> accounts of how life goes on. A collection of short
> films by Varda I was
> able to see is also considerably beautiful, much
> more than her feature film
> work in the 70s and 80s. Du Coté de la Côte is a
> lovely depiction of the
> Côte d'Azur so sweet and charmful one would love to
> get a plane ticket right
> away (though the praise is rather intimate, not
> propagandistic). Ulysse is
> also a must-see, and, just to end as I started, I'm
> pretty in doubt if it is
> an essay film: Varda does some soul-searching and
> tries to discovered what
> was in her mind when she shot a photograph of a man,
> a boy and a goat's head
> skull.
> Ruy
>
>
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1241
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 5:37pm
Subject: Re: Farrow, Mazursky
Mazursky's "Next Stop Greenwich Village" is ripe for
re-evaluation. I tought it glib when it was first
released, but now I think it's among his best. Lenny
Baker's [assing (he died early on in the first wave of
the AIDS epidemic) has made it all the more touching.
--- Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > Farrow is a director Sarris missed. I didn't know
> Fleisher was on
> > Some Kind of Woman, either, but before dismissing
> JF, take a look at
> > The Big Clock. A bit of a madman, Farrow fathered
> Mia and wrote a
> > widely-read biography of Father Damien, as well as
> other more obscure
> > books of hagiography, including a history of the
> Popes. He also
> > published a slim volume of poetry. The Big Clock
> is based on a novel
> > by communist poet Kenneth Frearing, but Farrow
> made it into an
> > allegory of the clockwork deity of materialism,
> incarnated by Charles
> > Laughton and brought down by Ray Milland and
> Farrow's wife Maureen
> > O'Sullivan - whom Farrow seems to have cheated on
> regularly, always
> > erasing his sin in the confessional. The elevator
> shot, where the
> > camera camps in a car that stops at succeeding
> floors, is Steadicam
> > before the letter, and the overall visual design
> of the film, much of
> > it set in a single building, is quite pleasing.
> Joe Dante is an
> > admirer.
>
> I'm a Farrow fan as well. I first heard about him
> from David Thomson,
> who thinks Farrow did strong work at least up to
> 1956's BACK FROM
> ETERNITY; I don't know if I love any of Farrow's 50s
> work, but between
> 1939's FIVE CAME BACK and 1949's ALIAS NICK BEAL are
> a string of
> impressive movies, some of them little known: in
> addition to the those
> two, THE BIG CLOCK, CALCUTTA, TWO YEARS BEFORE THE
> MAST, CALIFORNIA, and
> YOU CAME ALONG are all worthy. Farrow favored a
> very fluid camera
> (CALIFORNIA, as I recall, is especially full of long
> tracking shots) and
> a heavy, dark mood. He was surprisingly grave for a
> Hollywood
> entertainment director: if you think about THE BIG
> CLOCK's script, it
> seems like a pretty lightweight action-adventure
> film, but in Farrow's
> hands the forces of evil are taken very seriously;
> they become
> psychologically plausible and hence more
> frightening. I guess NICK BEAL
> is my favorite, though I haven't seen any of these
> films in a while.
>
> HIS KIND OF WOMAN was certainly very interesting,
> maybe a little bizarre
> in the way it mixes comedy and drama. I was mixed
> on it when I saw it;
> maybe I'm in a better position to like it these
> days.
>
> > My favorite Wagner in a movie is Mazursky's Blume
> In Love.
>
> I think BLUME IN LOVE is a really wonderful film. I
> didn't stay with
> Mazursky as long as Bill did: after BLUME he started
> getting a little
> too splashily self-aware for my taste, and I haven't
> even seen anything
> after SCENES FROM A MALL. But I still think the
> director of BOB & CAROL
> & TED & ALICE and BLUME IN LOVE is a major dude,
> though my current
> feeling is that he didn't hold onto his gift. - Dan
>
>
>
__________________________________
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1242
From:
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 1:47pm
Subject: Composition
Art historians sometimes use simple math, such as circles and rectangles, to
explore painters' use of composition. I have been exploring the same idea,
trying to analyze the frames of classic auteur directors. There are now ten
modest articles using this approach on my web site.
Peter Tonguette, our co moderator, asked this to be shared with the mailing
list.
There is an introductory article on the subject at:
(http://members.aol.com/MG4273/zmath.htm)
http://members.aol.com/MG4273/zmath.htm
Hope at least one of these links will work on all computers.
From there, one can link to the specific film articles. These are often
embedded in longer auteur studies. For example, the mathematical article on La
Notte is part of a much longer piece on Antonioni, without much geometry. So you
need to follow the book marks at the top of each article, to get to the
specific films with math.
Film criticism needs innovation.
But it should stay true to the four big principles of auteurist film
criticism:
1) Films are works of art, and should be experienced as art.
2) Films are best understood in the context of their artist's whole career.
3) Reverence for the great classic filmmakers of the world.
4) Writing about film should address everyone in the general public who loves
film as art.
Mike Grost
1243
From:
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 2:06pm
Subject: Mazursky
"Next Stop," "Blume In Love," and particularly "Enemies, A Love Story" are
wonderful films, I think, though I'd agree that he's not the most consistent
filmmaker. I would like to mention "Tempest," a very underrated film. I quite
enjoyed this for its intelligent modernization of Shakespeare and the enjoyable
pairing of John and Gena in a non-Cassavetes film.
I'm almost completely unfamiliar with John Farrow, so I've gleaned a lot of
recommendations from this discussion. Thanks!
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
1244
From:
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 2:15pm
Subject: Welles' Vienna
In a message dated 8/17/03 6:36:43 AM, hotlove666@y... writes:
>(The only
>extant essay film by Welles I haven't seen is Vienna and The Third
>Man, which JR likes.)
I actually thought this was kind of minor. It contains some lovely moments
of Welles strolling around the city, talking up its history, food, and hotels,
but is very, very short and the ending is a little unsatisfying to me. While
it isn't an essay film, his other meditation on a great city, "London," is
much better, I think, a wonderful series of comic vignettes. It's really too bad
that they can't find the sound for the Four Clubmen sequence, as it looks
different from anything else in the piece: very dynamic visually. You can see a
frame enlargement of Orson dressed as a bag lady from "London" in my
"Dreamers" piece at Senses of Cinema.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
1245
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 6:46pm
Subject: Mazursky, Fraser, Genius Loci
I actually caught up with Mazursky in his later phase, and besides
Enemies, a masterpiece, I recommend Faithful, trashed by Cher's
attempts to re-edit it, but ultimately released in the director's
cut, starring and written by Chaz Palminteri. It was one of three
films New Line acquired from Frank Price's defunct company for which
I wrote presskits. I may be the only person who saw them, since at
that point they were orphans and barely got released. I also loved,
in that package, The Stupids.
Speaking of comedy, I neglected to respond to Mike on Brendan Fraser.
I never saw Bedazzled, but it was playing on the store monitor at
Odyssey Video Friday night, and he's really funny as "Michael
Jordan"! ("Play one game at a time," "Give a hundred and ten
percent.") They should've used him in the new Swept Away. I'm looking
forward to seeing him work with Bugs and Daffy in Looney Tunes: Back
in Business.
Essay films and travel "docs" overlap, but if the director is
meditating on a place, he's not doing a travelogue - he's harking
back to another 18th and 19th Century poetic tradition, where the
spirit of the poet encounters the spirit of the place (the genius
loci, sometimes embodied as a breeze or wind). Quite apart from essay
films or lyrics that make it their subject, this Romantic tradition
is very important to directors like Ford or Cimino, who talked a lot
when I interviewed him after Heaven's Gate about his imagination's
relationship with natural locations. Most of the post-German
Straubfilms are imbued with that, too. Directors less articulate than
Cimino and the Straubs who talk about this poorly documented but
widespread and very important phenomenon will use phrases
like "getting something out of a location." John Dorr's section on
Altman's river shoot in John Dorr's Christmas Greetings is really
about John's own response to the location - Altman is never seen.
1246
From: filipefurtado
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 8:10pm
Subject: Re: Mazursky
I've seen only three Mazursky films
Next Stop Greenwich Village, Moscow on
the Hudson and Scenes from the Mall,
and disliked all very strongly. I
nearly rented Tempest yesterday.
Filipe
---
Acabe com aquelas janelinhas que pulam na sua tela.
AntiPop-up UOL - É grátis!
http://antipopup.uol.com.br
1247
From: Damien Bona
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 9:37pm
Subject: Farrow and Mazursky
The name John Farrow conjures up elaborate but pointless tracking
shots, especially in the very dull California where they seem to go
on for several moments. His Warners movies of the 30s are all
negligible but there are interesting things going on in some of his
40s work. My favorite is Red, Hot and Blue -- he imbued a Betty
Hutton musical with a surprising sense of gravity, and as a Betty
Hutton fanatic I believe all Hutton vehicles should have been treated
very seriously. Having read Mia Farrow's autobiography, I suspect
her father's life was more compelling than his films.
I love Mazursky's 70s and 80s work and in many ways he was the heir
to McCarey and his wry appreciation of human foibles. I think Harry
and Tonto and Next Stop Greenwich Vilage are particularly notable,
and their humaneness in particular renders them among the best films
of the 1970s.
David, nice to see you here. I had never heard that Lenny Baker died
of AIDS.
1248
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Aug 17, 2003 11:01pm
Subject: Re: Farrow and Mazursky
Hi Damien.
It's not a terribly well-known fact. But then, as I'm
sure you're well aware, so much of the pandemic is
lost to the ofuscation of official "history." Lenny
Baker spent his last days in an apartment complex just
off Sunset at the edge of West Hollywood. I was over
there a number of times to visit my friend Anthony
Holland (who later contracted HIV and comitted suicide
as he entered the last stages). Cynthia Harris was
also living there as were a number of television
writers and producers. I became aware of Lenny Baker's
presence through his absence -- because I never saw
him. Delivery people would stop by peridoically to
bring things to an upstairs room just over the pool.
"Oh my," said Tony, "Another delivery for poor Lenny
Baker. He's dying up there you know. Cancer. Some rare
form of it that nobody understands. And they can't do
anything about it." He was apparently quite disfigured
and didn't want anyone to see him.
So he died alone.
>
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1249
From: George Robinson
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 2:13am
Subject: Re: Mazursky, Fraser, Genius Loci
I'm embarrassed to admit that Enemies is the only Mazursky I've seen. (We did a little roundtable of our friends in the Iras -- Damien is one that you know -- last year listing our most embarrassing omissions and I didn't mention that one but I probably should have.)
However, speaking as someone who has been laboring fitfully on a book on American film and the Holocaust, I can honestly say that Enemies is one of the rare films on the topic that really is brilliant, right down to the ending.
g
Alas, where is human nature so
weak as in a bookstore?
-Henry Ward Beecher
----- Original Message -----
From: hotlove666
To: a_film_by@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2003 2:46 PM
Subject: [a_film_by] Mazursky, Fraser, Genius Loci
I actually caught up with Mazursky in his later phase, and besides
Enemies, a masterpiece, I recommend Faithful, trashed by Cher's
attempts to re-edit it, but ultimately released in the director's
cut, starring and written by Chaz Palminteri. It was one of three
films New Line acquired from Frank Price's defunct company for which
I wrote presskits. I may be the only person who saw them, since at
that point they were orphans and barely got released. I also loved,
in that package, The Stupids.
Speaking of comedy, I neglected to respond to Mike on Brendan Fraser.
I never saw Bedazzled, but it was playing on the store monitor at
Odyssey Video Friday night, and he's really funny as "Michael
Jordan"! ("Play one game at a time," "Give a hundred and ten
percent.") They should've used him in the new Swept Away. I'm looking
forward to seeing him work with Bugs and Daffy in Looney Tunes: Back
in Business.
Essay films and travel "docs" overlap, but if the director is
meditating on a place, he's not doing a travelogue - he's harking
back to another 18th and 19th Century poetic tradition, where the
spirit of the poet encounters the spirit of the place (the genius
loci, sometimes embodied as a breeze or wind). Quite apart from essay
films or lyrics that make it their subject, this Romantic tradition
is very important to directors like Ford or Cimino, who talked a lot
when I interviewed him after Heaven's Gate about his imagination's
relationship with natural locations. Most of the post-German
Straubfilms are imbued with that, too. Directors less articulate than
Cimino and the Straubs who talk about this poorly documented but
widespread and very important phenomenon will use phrases
like "getting something out of a location." John Dorr's section on
Altman's river shoot in John Dorr's Christmas Greetings is really
about John's own response to the location - Altman is never seen.
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
1250
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 2:55am
Subject: Re: Mazursky, Fraser, Genius Loci
It's one of the best films ever made about the
Holocaust.
And it's
href="http://ehrensteinland.com/htmls/g002/mazursky_grandaughter.html"
target="_blank">Paul's best film as well.
--- George Robinson wrote:
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
> removed]
>
>
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1251
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 5:41am
Subject: Enemies, A Love story
Curiously, the book was not well received by Singer's admirers, who
saw it as a cold, unpleasant aberration provoked by the author's own
survivor's guilt. Mazursky fell in love with it and waited a decade
to snag the rights.
Side notes: Joe Roth greenlit it during his tenure at Fox, and it
didn't do too well - he made his money back with Home Alone the next
year. I got to have breakfast with Lena Olin to interview her for the
presskit - one of the most peculiar people I ever met.
As I said before, I wrote a review for the Cahiers comparing the film
favorably to 8 1/2, its hidden model. Until Olin's suicide the film
is entirely from Herman's point of view, but at that point Mazursky
cuts loose from Fellini's male-centered world view, and the women
begin to exist in their own right. I have always found the last shot
of the women with the baby - after Herman vanishes from the movie
and, essentially, from the face of the Earth - both beautiful and
eerie: uncanny. They clearly don't need him anymore.
1252
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 6:24am
Subject: Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street
Finally found some time to watch the third-rate bootleg copy of Sam
Fuller's TV movie, and while it's got the expected weaknesses (mostly
having to do with the acting, and the characters always explaining
what they are doing, what they have done, and what they have to do,
to the audience) it's actually very compelling and fun. Christa is
surprisingly good, whereas Glenn Corbett is just "there"; for me, the
thing we might call "Fuller-ness," as described by many of his
admirers (from Godard to Adrian Martin to, humbly, myself) is
intrinsically pleasurable. Whatever other values a Fuller film has
(and for most, there are quite a few), "Fuller-ness" is a reward unto
itself - a turn-on. It makes a bad movie like STREET OF NO RETURN
not only palatable but delectable.
The chief source of strength (as opposed to the chief strength)of
DEAD PIGEON is the music, and the careful use of sound effects to
fake a number of scenes/shots (think of the train station in
MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS). Without the music the movie might for the
most part be hollow and ineffective, but with it, many scenes have a
strong emotional current. The music is no achievement in itself:
often it's only "mood music," the same 5-10 notes playing over and
over. One melody is marked "waiting music," the next is "suspense
music," and "action music," or "charming, eccentric music," and so
on. Think of John Carpenter's synthesizer themes. And it occurs to
me that many of Fuller's films have choice music themes, and almost
every single one has a musical interlude of one kind or another. I
even like the so-called "infamous musical number" in THE NAKED KISS
and the "bad" '80s rock tunes in STREET OF NO RETURN.
Anyway, Fuller! Fuller! Fuller! Cinema! Cinema! Cinema!
Jaime
1253
From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 6:32am
Subject: Re: Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street
Jaime N. Christley:
"....The chief source of strength (as opposed to the chief strength) of
DEAD PIGEON is the music...."
Hmmm, it's been more than two decades since I've seen it, but I did see
a good 16mm print. What I remember most is the editing, which seemed
even more extreme than with his films from 1964 and before. Isn't there
some amazing cutting of shots of babies in a maternity ward shootout scene?
Also, while I realize that some will find the children's song scene in
"The Naked Kiss" to be ridiculous, it seems to me totally obvious that
it's extremely great, essential Fuller, etc. etc. etc.
So I'm glad you like it.
You probably do have a point about Fuller and music, though I didn't
much notice it in "Dead Pigeon." Certainly the use of Beethoven in
"Verboten" is at once ridiculous and really great, as is much of what's
best in Fuller.
- Fred
1254
From:
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 2:48am
Subject: Re: Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street
I love "Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street." Amazingly, it turned up on TV
about three years ago in a pretty nice looking print; that's where I saw it. The
maternity ward scene mentioned by Fred is one of many great sequences. I know
Bill groups the film in his M.I.A. category, so I'm sure he has some
interesting things to say about it as well. (And this is as good a time as any to ask
him [or anyone else in the know]: is there any validity to the story being
circulated about Warners finally bringing out the full "Big Red One"?)
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
1255
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 7:36am
Subject: Re: Dead Pigeon (spoilers)
Fred:
> Isn't there some amazing cutting of shots of babies in a maternity
> ward shootout scene?
Yes, that was v. unexpected, even though I knew about it in advance.
I couldn't help but think, "Hey, they just cut in some shots of
babies and staged the shoot-out stuff in a room with empty cribs,"
but it caught me sufficiently off-guard to be effective.
I love the way the man and woman clown pick up the dead Charlie
Umlaut and carry him off, mocking the three or four scenes in which
Sandy and Christa carry away their drugged victims earlier in the
film.
> Also, while I realize that some will find the children's song scene
> in "The Naked Kiss" to be ridiculous, it seems to me totally
> obvious that it's extremely great, essential Fuller, etc. etc. etc.
> So I'm glad you like it.
It's a real emotional high! And totally unexpected. And if you are
carried along on it, to say "it's bad" becomes meaningless. (Ergo, I
am an auteurist, I think.) This is where I would side with you re:
your theories of "personal taste."
> You probably do have a point about Fuller and music, though I
> didn't much notice it in "Dead Pigeon."
Last year I attended a Q&A session with John Carpenter (hosted by
Kent Jones), and he mentioned a term called "carpet music." I may
have that wrong, but he was referring to the kind of music that
doesn't really stand on its own, and you don't really notice it (I
happened to have chosen to notice it, for DEAD PIGEON), but it
enhances a scene's effect, or creates an effect. It fills a void but
does not call attention to itself - you walk softly on a carpet, but
you don't know it's there (unless you choose to). Anyway, I think
that's what's going on with DEAD PIGEON, whereas with NAKED KISS it's
something else entirely.
Peter:
> is there any validity to the story being circulated about Warners
> finally bringing out the full "Big Red One"?
I wish I knew where I read that, but it was some time ago and I
haven't heard anything since.
Jaime
1256
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 1:13pm
Subject: Re: Enemies, A Love story
> As I said before, I wrote a review for the Cahiers comparing the film
> favorably to 8 1/2, its hidden model.
The strange ending of BOB & CAROL was quite Fellini-esque, and his
second film, ALEX IN WONDERLAND, was dubbed 1 1/2 by some critic.
Mazursky often seemed to be under the influence of Fellini, for better
or worse. I feel it a lot in NEXT STOP - he keeps pushing the
interactions toward a sort of stand-alone lyricism.
Welcome to the list, David. - Dan
1257
From: jaketwilson
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 1:25pm
Subject: Re: Mazursky, Fraser, Genius Loci
hotlove666 wrote:
> I also loved,
> in that package, The Stupids.
Me too!
> Essay films and travel "docs" overlap, but if the director is
> meditating on a place, he's not doing a travelogue - he's harking
> back to another 18th and 19th Century poetic tradition, where the
> spirit of the poet encounters the spirit of the place (the genius
> loci, sometimes embodied as a breeze or wind).
This makes me think of Kiarostami's The Wind Will Carry Us, which
presumably relates to a comparable set of poetic traditions.
Incidentally could some of Kiarostami's terrific early shorts (e.g.
Regularly or Irregularly) be considered essay films? Or is the
'educational film' a different genre again?
JTW
1258
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 1:41pm
Subject: Re: Enemies, A Love story
Hi Dan!
Paul is in love with "81/2," but the true model for
"Next Stop" is "I Vittelloni" -- which is also the
model for Scorsese's "Mean Streets."
I've always found it off that Fellini isn't popular
with most auteurists though he's arguably the ultimate
auteur.
--- Dan Sallitt wrote:
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1259
From: vincent lobrutto
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 3:00pm
Subject: Fellini
David Ehrenstein:
Paul is in love with "81/2," but the true model for
"Next Stop" is "I Vittelloni" -- which is also the
model for Scorsese's "Mean Streets."
I've always found it off that Fellini isn't popular
with most auteurists though he's arguably the ultimate
auteur.
Hi David, welcome to the list.
Great point about I Vittelloni, Mazursky and Scorsese. I've always admired Mazursky for his bi-coastal point of view and the Italian & Jewish influences in his work that merge for an original style. For most the Scorsese connection seems natural but the Mazursky seems forced. They wrongly interpret he is quoting Fellini just to be arty but the restless spirit in Vittelloni merges perfectly with the characters and their environment in Next Stop.
You are right about Fellini - just read Thomson's entry in the new dictionary edition - I was staggering after reading it. Many Italians from Italy also have a tough time with Fellini. When Roma was originaly released a well-dressed gentlemen from Rome was in front of me. When the lights came up he was incensed - "This is not Rome" "What is the name of the film?" I kept asking him" "Roma!, Roma!" Finally I said no, the title is "Fellini's Roma" - it is his vision of Rome the way he sees it. I think it is the application of imaginiation and personal psychology that turns some off and allows those of us who recognize his genius to understand his mastery over style and content. Fellini accepted and embraced what others consider grotesque - emotional and physical exageration were life to Fellini - boy do I miss him.
Vinny LoBrutto
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1260
From: Yoel Meranda
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 3:28pm
Subject: back to "genre" and "realism"
I would like to go back to the discussion on genre and realism.
Does anybody know any film that is great thanks to relationship with
any genre?
I don't and if I do that will be a total change in how I see art.
As
I mentioned in one of my previous e-mails, I believe art should
capture essential emotions through form, and that form should work in
the way Brakhage says art should be like: "Immediately
sensual".
(This is at least what I experienced in all the great films I have
seen since discovering the greatest pleasures I can get from the
films.)
The "immediately sensual" is something beyond and above
language, as
it cannot be achieved through a system of signs. And as long as the
individual is open to it, it should work outside of its references
and everything else it alludes to.
It is very obvious that knowing the "similar" art works will
help you
understand it but they are not necessary or essential to understand
it.
I guess it comes down to how you answer the following question:
What is a better way to get a Beethoven sonata: Listening to a
Beethoven symphony or listening to a few Mozart sonatas? I know many
people would go with the latter but I have to say I am very much
against that. And the simple reason is that "genre" is not an
essential part of an artwork but its creator definitely is.
I'm sure almost everybody here will agree that to understand
Ray's
Bitter Victory (a war film, and I agree that I don't need a
definition to know that) seeing other Rays will help more than seeing
other war films (am I wrong?). This simple fact just proves that, for
an auteurist, genre is not one of the essentials.
I guess the reason why Tag reacts so much to discussing genres is the
fact that people wrote too many books about genres and not
the "essentials".
I should also add that Fred's American Melodrama lectures in the
School of Art Institute of Chicago were great and the reason behind
that I think simply proves my point. He talked much more about how
each director was unique than how individual directors were similar
to or differed from others. Many people that I know of are going the
other way.
"Realism" is much more complicated word because it really is
a "ghost", something that does not exist and therefore
something that
really is not even related to anything. When somebody uses the word
realism, I usually get what he or she means following the context.
However, it still is an empty word in every single way and it has no
meaning if the author does not define it.
I personally think that the only people who used the word in an
interesting way were Mondrian and Brakhage. They were talking about
how an artwork should capture the reality of the emotions (that we
know are real in some way) and they both acknowledged that we
couldn't know anything about the reality of the outside world. I
think something very much worth reading if you have time (or even if
you don't have time) is Victor Grauer's great book
(unpublished, very
unfortunately), which you can read on his website: Montage, Realism,
and the Act of Vision. (http://worldzone.net/arts/doktorgee/home.htm)
After his lecture on Hitchcock's Wrong Man, somebody asked the most
interesting question of the discussion to Jonathan Rosenbaum:
"Why do
you think there were so many trains passing by, we both hear the
sounds and see the lights and they seem to have no connection to the
story?" His response to this very interesting question (and
I'd like
to hear if anybody has a comment on it) was something like: "The
area
the guy lived in had many train lines passing by so I guess he was
just trying to be realistic." That was the most un-cinematic
answer I
have ever heard for a good cinematic question.
So I guess the problem with the concept of realism is that either it
doesn't mean anything or it means something that blocks our
experience of art. That is of course until everybody in the world
agrees with me that it should be used in the way Mondrian used it.
Yoel
1261
From:
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 3:59pm
Subject: Genre
Genre studies is a very diffuse subject, with many different approaches.
It seems clear that genres encouraged directorial creativity in real ways.
Here is an excerpt from my web site, on the realtionship between genre and auteurism, focusing mainly on the genre of film noir:
For example, a characteristic of film noir is: "Directors are encouraged to do something creative with mirror shots." Another defining characteristic of film noir: "Directors are encouraged to do something creative with steep overhead camera angles." How the individual director does this is entirely up to the director. The genre encourages and suggests a certain approach. The director builds on that suggestion, using all of his personal creativity, to make something unique and wonderful.
For example, Anthony Mann used a series of steep overhead angles in the staircase finale of Desperate (1947). Robert Siodmak used an overhead angle at the start of the armored car sequence in Criss Cross (1949). The two sequences are very different. Mann is interested in the compositions he can create with overhead patterns of stairs; Siodmak with combining overhear shots with camera movement. Their overhead shots are not at all the same. Both are highly imaginative. Both clearly took great personal creativity on the part of their directors. They are the exact opposite of hack work: they are the sort of personal visual creativity celebrated by the auteur theory. But it is also clear that the genre of film noir encouraged both artists to experiment with overhead angles, and to do something spectacular with them in their movies.
Similarly, film noir encourages directors to make elaborate mirror shots. This almost certainly encouraged Mann to use a mirror for the famous murder scene in T-Men (1947), and Siodmak to include all the complex "mirror on the staircase" shots in The Spiral Staircase (1946). Once again, the two films show personal artistry, and their mirror shots are very different. Please also see the complex mirror shots in the hotel rooms in Phil Karlson's Kansas City Confidential and Tight Spot, or the shot combining a mirror and camera movement in the library sequence of Richard Fleischer's Bodyguard.
By contrast, Westerns, comedies and musicals of the late 1940's are far less likely to include complex mirror shots, or steep overhead angles.
Knowing about the characteristics of genres helps us understand a film. When we watch The Spiral Staircase, we can understand both what the genre of film noir encouraged Siodmak to attempt, and what is the result of his personal artistry. There is more of the latter than of the former, yet both are real.
Another example. The 1950's Hollywood Western genre includes such characteristics as: "Directors are encouraged to do something creative with landscape," and "Costume designers are encouraged to do something creative with brightly colored cowboy clothes." The specific landscapes in the films of such directors as John Ford, Anthony Mann and André de Toth are highly different and individual. Each shows their director's strong personal visual style. But it is also true that the genre itself encouraged these directors to do something spectacular with landscape.
Such an approach to studying genre is not reductive. It does not attempt to ignore personal creativity, or reduce a film to a collection of genre ideals. Instead, it helps highlight ways in which genres sponsored personal creativity.
The above approach also does not try to define genres as rigid laws, which directors must obey. Ford included landscapes in his Westerns, a genre which encouraged them. But he also invented great landscapes for his comedy The Quiet Man (1952), a genre which has little inherent interest in landscape.
Mike Grost
1262
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 4:48pm
Subject: Re: back to "genre" and "realism"
Actually Jonathan's answer is correct. "The Wrong Man"
is a hyper-realist film, shot on the locations where
it actually took place. I grew up in the smae area of
Queens and the story is quite familair to me.
Ballestrero's lawyer later ran for local office.
Trins are simply a fact of life in that area and to
ignore them in a film striving for documentary-style
realism (a la the Fox films of the same period) would
be impossible.
--- Yoel Meranda wrote:
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1263
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 5:38pm
Subject: Re: back to "genre" and "realism"
Nice post on genre, Mike.
> "Realism" is much more complicated word because it really is
> a "ghost", something that does not exist and therefore
> something that
> really is not even related to anything. When somebody uses the word
> realism, I usually get what he or she means following the context.
> However, it still is an empty word in every single way and it has no
> meaning if the author does not define it.
I guess this realism discussion drove away Tag Gallagher, which wasn't
my intention. Anyway, I saw two interesting new films recently that
both seemed to require that the R word, or something like it, be used to
discuss them.
The first was Amir Karakulov's DON'T CRY, a 2003 Kazakh film. In the
first shot, we learn that the protagonist is a foreign opera singer who
lost her voice and moved to Kazakhstan to live with family. The film is
shot with an unsteady DV camera, with non-actors improvising dialogue in
long, digressive scenes. Very little overt pleasure for the audience,
visually or verbally. At the very end, the protagonist's very sick
niece says she wants to hear her aunt sing. In the same unadorned,
dogged style as the rest of the film, Karakulov shows the actors
improvising stage makeup and applying it to their unglamorous faces.
Then, when the protagonist opens her mouth to sing, the style of the
film changes for its last few minutes: an orchestra accompanies the
protagonist's beautiful voice, the cutting becomes more classical, the
images more composed. The film becomes a full-bodied rendition of an
aria from MADAME BUTTERFLY, and then ends.
The experiment was fascinating, but I felt that the bulk of the film was
too tedious for me, even though I understood why Karakulov wanted it
that way. The other film, Lee Chang-Dong's 2002 South Korean OASIS, was
more to my taste. Here, the main character is a childlike, antisocial
criminal, just out of jail after three convictions, and clearly heading
for more trouble, as he gets in the face of everyone he meets, and seems
incapable of suppressing his rebelliousness against all social norms.
It's quite difficult to sustain identification with this character.
Eventually he meets and is inexplicably attracted to a woman who is
pretty much completely disabled with cerebral palsy: she can sometimes
get out a few words, but can't control her body enough to walk, crawl,
or stand.
The first clue to Lee's aesthetic plan comes in the woman's first scene.
We see a CGI bird fluttering around the ceiling of a small apartment.
Eventually the bird morphs into a beam of light: Lee pans down to show
the light coming from a mirror in the hand of the disabled woman, in our
first glimpse of her. There is no stylistic precedent for this special
effect in the film. The scene plays out without further fantastic
elements, but Lee repeats the trick soon after: the mirror, now broken,
reflects dots of light onto the ceiling, which turn into CGI butterflies
and fly away. As the film begins to document the romance between these
characters, fantasy interludes become a part of the film's narrative:
the characters from an Indian mural on the wall enter the film at one
point, and at various times the actress playing the disabled woman
simply stands up, drops her cerebral palsy impersonation, and becomes a
normal attractive woman for the balance of a scene. The criminal
character seems partly redeemed by love in the film's second half, and
partly unable to change his sociopathic ways.
The main thing I want to say is that you really can't get at the heart
of what these films are trying to do without the R word. In DON'T CRY,
the contrast between uneventful actions/uncomposed images/unacted
dialogue and a full-bodied operatic high is the point of the movie:
style changes. In OASIS, the interplay between the debilitating
portrait of psychological and physical malfunction and the imagery of
fantastic idealism is the basis for the film's structure. You can try
to talk about DON'T CRY purely in terms of opera and everyday life, or
OASIS purely in terms of a depiction of inner life made manifest, but
then you lose the main point, which is that the films' form is
dichotomized, and the two styles collide meaningfully within each film.
If you don't use the word "realism," you just have to talk around it,
as I've been trying to do.
Another thing I want to say is that the baseline of realism that each
film lays down seems to have something to do with a denial of pleasure,
a pleasure that other movies usually give us. In DON'T CRY, we are
denied pleasure in so many ways: there's no narrative kick, no enjoyable
character, no lucid imagery (the film is shot in DV). In OASIS, we're
denied the considerable pleasure of likable characters and beautiful
bodies to identify with, and the pleasure of seeing people change or
even control their lives. Here the form of realism is Zola-like, and if
I'm not mistaken, the word "realism" first became popular in conjunction
with Zola, no? Anyway, I do believe that a denial of a pleasure that
has become conventional is often or always part of the shifty "realism"
concept.
- Dan
1264
From: Ruy Gardnier
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 6:12pm
Subject: Re: Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street
sorry to ask but what's an M.I.A.?
----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Monday, August 18, 2003 3:48 AM
Subject: Re: [a_film_by] Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street
> I love "Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street." Amazingly, it turned up on TV
> about three years ago in a pretty nice looking print; that's where I saw
it. The
> maternity ward scene mentioned by Fred is one of many great sequences. I
know
> Bill groups the film in his M.I.A. category, so I'm sure he has some
> interesting things to say about it as well. (And this is as good a time
as any to ask
> him [or anyone else in the know]: is there any validity to the story being
> circulated about Warners finally bringing out the full "Big Red One"?)
>
> Peter
>
> http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> a_film_by-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
1265
From:
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 3:33pm
Subject: M.I.A
In a message dated 8/18/03 2:55:45 PM, rnobrega@c... writes:
>sorry to ask but what's an M.I.A.?
I should apologize for throwing the term out there without giving some
background!
"M.I.A." (Missing In Action) is a term Bill uses to describe some of the
post-Hollywood films of Hollywood directors like Welles, Vidor, Boetticher, and so
on. I'll let Bill give a full explanation, but I touch on his definition
briefly in my piece on Welles' "The Dreamers" (an "M.I.A." film if there ever was
one.)
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/27/welles_dreamers.html
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
1266
From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 8:08pm
Subject: Re: M.I.A
ptonguette@a... wrote:
>In a message dated 8/18/03 2:55:45 PM, rnobrega@c... writes:
>
>
>I should apologize for throwing the term out there without giving some
>background!
>
>"M.I.A." (Missing In Action) is a term Bill uses to describe some of the
>post-Hollywood films
>
Well, but you should explain the source, for those whose first language
isn't English. It's originally a war term, for a soldier who cannot be
found and is probably either captured by the enemy or dead. It could
also be used for people in other situations -- a person who is hiding
out from a big fightwith her husband might be slightly ironically said
to be "missing in action." So it can be used for a film too, something
that gets lost not in actual war but in the chaos of commercial
distribution.
I'm reading the genre stuff with interest and thinking about a response
when I get time to write one.
- Fred
1267
From:
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 4:10pm
Subject: Re: M.I.A
In a message dated 8/18/03 4:08:40 PM, f@f... writes:
>Well, but you should explain the source, for those whose first language
>isn't English.
Fred's right - my apologies, Ruy.
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
1268
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 9:18pm
Subject: Re: back to "genre" and "realism"
Yoel:
> I'm sure almost everybody here will agree that to understand
> Ray's
> Bitter Victory (a war film, and I agree that I don't need a
> definition to know that) seeing other Rays will help more than
seeing
> other war films (am I wrong?). This simple fact just proves that,
for
> an auteurist, genre is not one of the essentials.
But what if one rejects the premise that a film is to
be "understood"? I don't think one understands art: one experiences
it. Different contexts will lead to different ways of understanding
this experience. The binary opposition between "knowledge of other
Ray films" and "knowledge of other war films" doesn't get at the root
of auteurism, in my opinion. Both (as well as many other
classifications) are important for contextualizing and probing our
experience of art.
> "Realism" is much more complicated word because it really is
> a "ghost", something that does not exist and therefore
> something that
> really is not even related to anything. When somebody uses the word
> realism, I usually get what he or she means following the context.
> However, it still is an empty word in every single way and it has
no
> meaning if the author does not define it.
This simply isn't true though! I already set forth a definition that
nobody's bothered to comment on, so here I go again -- realism is the
attempt to recreate the semblance of reality of art. It isn't
necessarily illusionism: people don't have to be "fooled" for art to
be realist. And it's clearly dependent on historical and cultural
context: what is realistic to an ancient Egyptian isn't necessarily
so to a 19th-century Parisian, and what's more, realism might not be
valued so highly in one context in comparison to another. And, most
importantly, to speak of realism in art or to call an artwork realist
is *not* the same as saying it is actually "realistic"
and "truthfully representative" (ideas that, I believe, actually are
bankrupt). But this is, as far as I can tell, a satisfactory
definition of realism, and just because the concept is constructed
and mobile doesn't mean it is therefore "nonexistant."
'Auteurism' is a complex word too, but by this sort of rationale we
could call "auteurism" a word without meaning. Maybe it is, but that
doesn't stop us from discussing the issues with the utmost dedication
and interest. The same with realism, an important concept running
throughout the history of art, in fact long before the celebration of
individual authorship entered our enlightened homo sapien minds.
--Zach
1269
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 9:45pm
Subject: Big Red One
I started working on getting that restored in 1978, when the
lorimar cxut was released. Got Joel Silver involved, was told the
neg had disappeared, found it with a little help from Lieth
Adams. Joe Hyams took it on and got it ok'd by Bob Daley, with a
production number, then it stopped dead. Joe never said why.
Christa asked me and Tony Bozanich (post-production
coordinator on It's All True, my partner on the restoration project)
to hand off to Michael Friend, then head of the Academy Archives,
where he had done a lot of important work just barely inside his
brief of restoring Oscar winners (e.g. all of Satyajit Ray!) and
some outside it. We gladly did so. No sooner had Michael
started doing a budget with Curtis Hanson than I got a call from
Rick Schmidlin, of Touch of Evil remix fame, wanting in. I asked
Michael, who had the misfortune to know Schmidlin before
anyone and said "Over my dead body." I told Schmidlin he
wasn't needed. Someone who should have known better gave
him Christa's number, and in one afternoon he talked her into
dumping Michael, without telling him or consulting me. When I
heard about it, I told her the guy was just interested in scoring
and would forget her as soon as he had. She went ahead;
Michael, outraged, bailed out, and subsequently lost his job
(he's now at Sony), and Schmidlin didn't return Christa's calls for
3 years. Lately Richard Schickel has gotten interested in
pursuing it through his Warner Video connection, with Schmidlin
and the ever-faithful Curtis, but I hear from Christa that they may
only restore a couple of scenes for the DVD - not what Michael
or, before him, Tony and I had planned at all. A tragedy. But I
adore Christa, who made a mistake because Schmidlin came in
with a recommendation from someone she trusted.
Another tragedy is what became of Street of No Return. The
alcoholic French producer took Sam's cut and spent a year with
TEN EDITORS (look at the credits!) recutting it, turning what
would have been a beautiful swan song into chopped liver. As
Fred has pointed out, Sam had great editing ideas, and the
obvious rhythmic flaws in Street, Red One and Shark, which was
also taken away from him, are not his style. So the swan song
turns out to be The Madonna and the Dragon (aka Tlinginlit), a
down-and-dirty political noir shot in the Phillipines just before the
overthrow of Marcos, while the Street producer was "saving"
Sam's cut. I love Madonna and also, for the record, Thieves After
Dark, a beautiful film that caught many critics off guard because
they hadn't noticed that White Dog was the work of a man who
had recently become a father, and had finally gotten WWII off his
chest with Red One. His last film, a 30-minute Patricia
Highsmith adaptation called The Day and Hour of Reckoning
made for French tv, is quite insane. I think Jaime would like it.
Maybe someone will have a French Fuller retro some day and
kick it off with his first Eurofilm, Dead Pigeon. Fred, I think we
both saw it at the First Avenue Screening Room.
1270
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 9:57pm
Subject: MIA
One nuance: when I started writing about the MIA's for Cahiers,
they hadn't been heard from for a while, and I wanted to say they
were "Missing, but in action" - ie they had been making films
outside the system. (The Cahiers had been inattentive to
American cinema for years as well, because of Vietnam, where
the military expression "MIA" had resurfaced.) My original intent
was to contrast them with filmmakers of the CIA (Cinema
Independant Americain), which was essentially at that time a
government grant system - one that Serge D. had asked me to
fill them in on, although I never did. The idea was that The Other
Side of the Wind or Metaphor were better models for young
filmmakers desiring to work outside the system than Nick
Broomfield or Jill Godmillow, the two examples I had in mind
when I coined the never-used term "CIA." That configuration has
changed with Sundance, but I still cherish the MIAs. Auteurist
nostalgia.
1271
From:
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 7:03pm
Subject: Re: Big Red One
In a message dated 8/18/03 5:45:47 PM, hotlove666@y... writes:
>I hear from Christa that they may
>only restore a couple of scenes for the DVD - not what Michael
>or, before him, Tony and I had planned at all. A tragedy.
That's unbelievably depressing. I don't understand why they wouldn't put out
the full version of the film if they have access to the deleted scenes.
Something similar seems to be happening with the upcoming DVD of Bogdanovich's
"Mask"; there are deleted scenes listed as special features, but there's no
indication that they've been restored to the actual film. I hope I'm wrong.
I will say that it's a real testament to Fuller's genius that I do very much
like the current versions of "The Big Red One" and "Street of No Return"; as
butchered as they are, the force of his talent and personality makes them
better than many films where the directors had final cut! I haven't seen "Thieves
After Dark" or "The Day and Hour of Reckoning," but I think I've seen them
turn up on eBay from time to time, so I'll definitely keep my eyes peeled.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
1272
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 11:29pm
Subject: Red One
It's a mystery to me. Since the key to financing a true restoration
of Sam's cut is tv sales (according to a plan worked out by Marvin
Us