Titicut Follies

TITICUT FOLLIES

a documentary from 1967

directed/produced/edited by

Frederick Wiseman

The documentary begins and ends with performances from Titicut Follies, the talent show put on by inmates of the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane. The hospital is the subject of the documentary. What does it mean that Frederick Wiseman chose to title this documentary (his first) after their talent show, and bookend the documentary with these performances? I don't know the answer. The name offers little clues, it comes from "the Wampanoag word for the nearby Taunton River."

Wiseman's documentaries, those that I've seen, feel both shockingly authentic and dynamically cinematic. It's his gift. He's described his process:

All aspects of documentary filmmaking involve choice and are therefore manipulative. But the ethical ... aspect of it is that you have to ... try to make [a film that] is true to the spirit of your sense of what was going on. ... My view is that these films are biased, prejudiced, condensed, compressed but fair. I think what I do is make movies that are not accurate in any objective sense, but accurate in the sense that I think they're a fair account of the experience I've had in making the movie.

Which it to say Titicut Follies approximates the experience of being in a mental health hospital in 1967. It depicts people with broken minds and broken lives, in stark black and white, and with a curious and compassionate eye for their minutia. If this sounds unbearable, it sometimes almost is, but it's a testament to Wiseman's vision that the mental health hospital aspect never overwhelms the human aspect. There are no lapses into pure sensationalism or naughty voyeurism, no intentionally prolonged sequences meant to agonize the audience. Perhaps then the title is meant to evoke the playful and imaginative side of the inmates as a way of showcasing their humanity and their souls shining amid the darkness of mental illness.

For some reason it was easier for me to watch the documentary than it is for me to write about it now. As I investigate, through the act of writing, my thoughts while watching the movie, I realize I'd kept my thoughts at a safe and neutral distance, and now I'm self-sabotaging my defense. It's tough to enter this world. Personally, I don't like hospitals, they make me nervous, I don't like sickness, it makes me anxious, I don't like to see people suffer, it makes me suffer, and mental illnesses seem terrible because they ravage personalities. For me, watching this movie is looking into the eyes of tragedy.

I'd avoided watching this movie, which I've had access to for a while, because I thought the bulk of the movie was going to be mistreatment of the patients. I thought that for some reason. Happy to say the bulk of the movie isn't. Unhappy to say the conspicuous mistreatment I anticipated was in actuality more sinister and subdued. This photo is a good summary:

An elderly nude man cups his privates before an employee in an akimbo stance. Worse, in this scene the staff bullies the man. They repeatedly ask him when he's going to clean his room, even when it's obvious the question irritates him. The question is ten-times more horrible because there's nothing cleanable about his room:

Clean what, I wonder, a pitiful thought. This is his room I realize, a terrible revelation. This is his life -- a thought that chills my veins.

Purely by contact, the lives of the staff are revealed as well. All the audience learns about them is learned from seeing them at their work. It must be difficult to face so much misery on a daily basis, and to work with people with whom it's difficult to forge meaningful connections. Their task is a difficult one, period, and I wonder if all members of the staff were trained and educated in the treatment of the mentally ill, i.e., were they trained to deal with their own emotions.

Another scene depicts the tube-feeding of a patient by a cigarette-smoking staff member. Two staffers hold his feet down by tugging on hand towels wrapped around his ankles. The staff jokes that the man being tube-fed is a pro at it, they say they can tell because of his stoicism. This scene is tearfully intercut.

Here I am describing the worst moments as if they were the entire movie. Wiseman pierces the surface of chaos and gloom with moments of deep and fundamental human universality. What's more essential to personal volition than the control of one's own thoughts? Wiseman portrays the hospital not as a mausoleum, but as an arena.

The battle being waged in this arena, he suggests, extends beyond the hospital operations. While other documentarians might get lost in the purely superficial aspects -- how strange or cruel or sad the hospital is -- Wiseman keeps his magnifying glass on the people, through it all, so that the people are more important than the disease, the hospital, or whatever else.

Wiseman says he's

trying to make a movie. A movie has to have dramatic sequence and structure. I don't have a very precise definition about what constitutes drama but I'm gambling that I'm going to get dramatic episodes. Otherwise, it becomes Empire. ... I am looking for drama, though I'm not necessarily looking for people beating each other up, shooting each other. There's a lot of drama in ordinary experiences. In Public Housing, there was drama in that old man being evicted from his apartment by the police. There was a lot of drama in that old woman at her kitchen table peeling a cabbage.

It's a shame Wiseman's documentaries are only available from his company Zipporah at high costs, e.g. the Titicut Follies dvd is listed at $34.95 for individual use, $500 for educational use. This is undoubtedly a huge factor in his films remaining underseen by the majority of people. I've seen three other older documentaries by renting them at Cinephile, an atypical rental store, and I saw Crazy Horse at the Nuart. I confess other recent documentaries of his have played at local theaters and I missed them for various reasons. I have uncertainties about how I'll see them now. Seems like a shame to me, one of our greatest documentarians being a scarcity. There could be some reason behind it, like he wants to keep the price point fixed to attract only 'serious' i.e. professional/educational viewers, but I can't call any reason good that keeps his movies underseen and damages the possibility and joy of random discovery and exploration.

I think my memories of the people will outlast my memories of the institution. An amazing accomplishment for a documentary about the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane.

HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD

a film by Mario Bava

starring 

Reg Park as Hercules

and

Christopher Lee as King Lico

(co-)story and screenplay

Mario Bava

cinematography

Mario Bava

the sequel to

HERCULES AND THE CAPTIVE WOMEN

is

HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD

HERCULES JOURNEYS TO HADES ON A QUEST TO SAVE THE MIND OF PRINCESS DEIANIRA, HIS TRUE LOVE

"Come on, let's get out of here. Our first visit to Hades has lasted long enough." - Hercules

"Look there. Now do you think I shouldn't have thrown the golden apple into the sea?" -Theseus

THESEUS FALLS IN LOVE, LOSES HIS LOVE, BUT GAINS ANOTHER LOVE!

"You're going to have to kill me, or I'll kill you. You're my enemy" - Theseus

"This is no duel Theseus. You're only trying to kill yourself!" - Hercules

"The nightmare is over and we are together again. Nothing can harm you. Now let me see you smile!" - Hercules

"As long as Theseus steals other men's girls, I have nothing to worry about." - Hercules

Gambit ('66)

Things I wrote before I watched Gambit:

My Twitter feed has been fist pumping this movie Gambit, more so in the last couple days, because it's about to expire from Netflix streaming. I'm going to watch it because of the recommendations, it's not the kind of movie I usually go out of my way to watch. This is the Netflix synopsis:

Harry is an elite but clumsy burglar. He meets the partner of his dreams in Nicole, a Eurasian dancer, and they team up for the perfect crime -- to steal a precious sculpture from a billionaire recluse. Unfortunately, nothing goes right.

Words and phrases like 'elite' 'burglar' 'partner' 'team up' 'perfect crime' 'precious sculpture' and 'nothing goes right' don't work for me like they work for other people. Typically they refer to forms of cleverness that I don't enjoy much, that to me feel purely cinematic and cheap, but others see them as richly layered and masterfully crafted or something, I dunno. I'm not being dismissive, I just don't get it - cleverness seems subjective, like beauty.

The movie is directed by British filmmaker Ronald Neame, who was the cinematographer for forty-five movies before directing his first movie. Haven't seen one movie he shot, but I suspect I'd like the following movies based on their titles: To Hell with Hitler, Return to Yesterday, Young Man's Fancy, Let's Be Famous, George Takes the Air (original title: It's in the Air), The Phantom Strikes. He worked with David Lean it appears. It appears he worked on the scripts for Brief Encounter, Great Expectations, and Blithe Spirit, and produced two of those plus Oliver Twist. Blithe Spirit is about to be released by Criterion, I think I'll like it, this is its synopsis from IMDb:

Adapted from a play by Noel Coward, Charles and his second wife Ruth, are haunted by the ghost of his first wife, Elvira. Medium Madame Arcati tries to help things out by contacting the ghost.

Words and phrases like 'Noel Coward' 'haunted' 'ghost of his first wife' 'Elvira' 'medium Madame Arcati' 'help things' and 'contacting the ghost' work for me like they don't work for other people.

Ronald Neame has twenty-six directoral credits, including a short and a movie he was fired from, according to IMDb parentheses. Three of them are on Criterion: Tunes of Glory, The Horse's Mouth, and Hopscotch. I've seen Hopscotch, it's fun and clever grandpa stuff. I think of Walter Matthau as grandpa. In Hopscotch grandpa is always one step ahead of the CIA, he wears disguises and stuff LOL. I'm teasing the movie but the disguises are actually my fav part. Neame also directed the famous Hollywood movie The Poseidon Adventure, which I'd like to watch, but I'm waiting until I go on a cruise.

It's cool that Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine are in Gambit. It's also Alvin Sargent's first movie credit on IMDb.

Things I wrote after I watched Gambit (but no spoilers):

Nicole: Why is it that people who follow people always end up fingering trinkets?

Gambit gave me a palpitating heart and uncontrollable sweats. All while I smiled.

After opening titles and an enjoyable opening song, the story begins with a car-sourced tracking shot, following Nicole (Shirley MacLaine). I suppose you could wonder, "Why is Nicole being followed?" But with her green dress and the way she's walking and the fact that it's Shirley MacLaine, you'd be an idiot.

She enters Cherry Bar.

On stage, Nicole dances. Our perspective has been Harry's (Michael Caine). He and his crime partner observe Nicole for a dance. Her routine finished, Harry walks to Nicole's table and drops some coins in her glass. She follows him to his table. He offers her, for purposes not yet divulged, $5K American. She smokes her cigarette and considers, without saying a word.

Cut to: A TWA plane lands, a curly-mustached man in a turban steps out of a luxury vehicle, and Nicole and Harry exit the plane:

Sold.

And then it gets better.

Harry: Now will you stop asking questions?

Nicole: It's only human to be curious Harry.

Harry: Yes, well as far as I'm concerned you're far too human.

Loved the soundtrack, colors, art design, photography. And Gambit made me feel clever because its cleverness was transparent, discernible. Shared. Gambit reveals the plan to you and then executes the plan. It performs this writing maneuver intelligently, and gifts the audience with insight into its variations on a scheme. The crime elements are mostly backseat to character elements, although there are great moments of crime cinema. This film helped clarify for me that it's not the 'nothing goes right' scenario I dislike, it's that I don't like it when nothing goes right seemingly because the script was written that way. I prefer the influence of life's chaos and/or character trait interference.

What happens in Gambit I won't tell you.

But. Shirley MacLaine KILLS IT. She's really great. I'll say that plans involving humans shouldn't be made without considering human nature; I think bad movies execute their plans single-mindedly, warping their characters into the shape of their plans, and that Gambit knows this but is smarter. In this way it's like a Hitchcockian crime film, but I can't think of a female protagonist from a Hitchock film as likable and relatable as Nicole in Gambit. There are also some Melvillian/Dassinian elements (I invented words).

David Holzman's Diary

"Okay, well, Penny is ridiculous. She's pride. She behaves melodramatically. She just - not credible. I know you didn't set it up, I know she really got annoyed. But I - I don't know somehow it just - it's not believable. Because - you listen, like very bad actress, in a very bad script -- horrible movie, just horrible movie. Um -- you know, I like her, it's alright. I - you know, if you want to live in her bad movie it's alright because - some people's lives are good movies, some people's lives are bad movies, and Penny's life's a very bad movie, but don't make me look at it on the screen, please. You know it -- (drags from a cigarette) -- the problem is that you wanna make a movie out of your life, alright, so you wanna be in it, you want Penny to be in it, and me to be in it, and your apartment my apartment, but, I'm an interesting character to watch, but you're not an interesting character, and Penny is certainly not an interesting character at all. And uh, I don't know, if you want to make a good movie just write a script, I'm sure you can write a better script than that. But this is not a good one. Your life is not a very good script, but, ugh. Somehow I - I don't think that you want to make a good movie. What you want do is find things about your life, find out the truth. There's something that happens that you don't understand, you wanna get to the core of it. Well David I don't think that you're gonna find it this way because if something happens and you don't understand it, [something], you're not gonna understand it any better by freezing it on celluloid and looking at it over and over again. You know - what you have to do is try to understand it the first time. And uh -- I don't know. (Drags from a cigarette.) But - you don't understand the basic principle: as soon as you start filming something, whatever happens in front of the camera is not reality anymore. It becomes part of something else. It becomes a movie. And, uh - you've stopped living, somehow. And you get very self-conscious about anything you do. 'Should I put my hand here, should I put my hand here?' 'Should I place myself this side of the frame, should I place myself this side of the frame?' And your decisions stop being moral decisions and they become aesthetical decisions. And your whole life stops being your life and becomes a work of art. And a very bad work of art this time. But, ahem (drags a cigarette, puts cigarette out). I don't know, it's just very foolish to think that there's any spontaneity in what's happening in this movie because you say to me,
'Look, I'm onna show you the film I'm doing, and I want you to tell me what you think of it.' And then what do you do? You place me in front of the mural, you make me move the table out of the way so you can see it all, and uh, you knew exactly what I was gonna say.

You didn't put words in my mouth, you didn't tell me what to say, but you knew what I was gonna say because you know me, and uh, and I'm not gonna say anything that will harm you. I won't say any truth, because I don't know you, I just know a little bit of you, and it's same way with the film, you wanna put - a little bit of David, safe part of David, the David that you wouldn't be afraid to show to anybody. But there's a David that you don't want to be in the film, and that David may be the truth. And uh -- that's what you should try to put in the film, if you don't dare face yourself other ways. Confess things to the camera. I don't know, say, say the things that -- that you're most ashamed of, things that you don't want to remember. Things that you don't want anybody to know. Maybe, maybe that way there'll be some truth. Or perhaps you should take off all your clothes and stand in front of the camera for hours. And and not do anything, just stand in front of the camera. Perhaps something magical will happen. Perhaps some truth will come out -- like, I'm not sure. But, you know, one thing I'm pretty sure of - you know, hmm -- the way you're handling this whole thing, you just getting half-truths. You're not getting truths, you're just getting half-truths, and, I think that's what's done a lot. It's very good. Okay, that - that's all I have to say. (Beat).

David, I don't want to play any games, please, turn it off."

Therese and Isabelle

To be honest (and why wouldn't I be honest?), I wasn't sure which part of my body (penis, heart, or mind, in order of suspicion) would be most frequently stimulated while watching Therese and Isabelle, a lesbian love film from 1968 by Radley Metzger, a director of softcore sex films of an artistic nature. When it began in black and white I was even more curious, because for some reason I'd expected a color film. The other films I'd seen by Metzger, Score and The Image, were in color, but anyway Therese and Isabelle is black and white, and the answer is heart.

So much heart. Therese and Isabelle fits squarely in the tradition of boarding school romance narratives, and explores the meaning and makes subjective the experience of self-discovery that comes from investigation of the interior and/or physical world of another (and instigates all sorts of themes that I cherish).

It was Metzger's use of space and pacing that indicated to me what kind of movie this was going to be. The lead character Therese (Essy Persson) is sent to a new school in part because her mother has remarried some wealthy man whom she (the mother) enjoys making love to and traveling with. Therese isn't invited into their new lives, as she's made painfully aware, and so begins her time at the school questioning her perceptions on love, loyalty, intimacy, and self-identity.

I concede the point that my ~205kb cell phone photos, taken of my television from my couch, don't do justice to the beauty of the camerawork, landscapes, and architecture exhibited in the movie. While sometimes I question the meaning of background beauty in movies, in this one it's clear: why, when everything is so gorgeous, do I (Therese) feel so low?

The blocking sometimes evokes Michelangelo Antonioni, which, if you don't know, is actually not off base. Metzger began his civilian film career by cutting trailers for Janus, including Antonioni and Bergman films. Metzger once said that a compliment from Bergman about one of his trailers was the highlight of his (Metzger's) career (source needed, where did I hear this, did I dream it, am I making it up?). The dvd liner notes make studious mention of Georges Auric's contribution as composer for the film.

None of which matters or is important when the movie is on, because you can enter without cultural or filmic reference points, because the story is told with emotional precision and tonal accuracy. The POV is an adult Therese as she revisits the boarding school and memories of her and Isabelle's love affair are stirred by locations and objects around the grounds and school.

Isabelle (Anna Gaël) isn't the perfect romantic partner, which quality alone elevates the film into a realistic, painful, and imperfect realm. She also isn't Therese's only lover in the film, and the other encounter is poignant and necessary for emotional development, in case you still think this is some standard sex film.

Also, the movie really isn't very sexy. Most of what's explicit is narrated in voice over, and most of the voice over I had trouble finding sexy. This may have been purposeful in some instances, as their relationship is so clearly about more than sex, and their physical encounters are also about more than sex.

It's really about painful encounters with others, and it's really about the inherent instability and insecurity in our relationships with others (for me that's what it was about, maybe it'll say something else to you). Also the excitement, the nervousness, the adventure - all these things mixed up together. For example the above photo, wherein the girls stare at each other naked.

Or this photo, wherein Therese presses her ear against the wall and hears the sounds of others making love in the room next to the one she and Isabelle have rented to make love. You experience with Therese the process of learning about sexual identity, yours and others, and its ultimate value. To Metzger's credit you don't just experience it, you feel it too.

I Am Curious (Yellow) and Zusje

Mr. De Grazia: Would you state for the jury, please, some of the ways in which this film explores important issues of today?
Stanley Kauffmann: I would begin by stating its basic tone, temper, or theme is the idea of transition, that the picture has grappled basically with the idea that we are living in a time of profound change in all aspects and perspectives of modern industrial civilization; and this basic theme of change, of transition, which is affecting all our lives, willy or nilly, is explored in four or five different veins.
That is, we see change in social attitudes, change in political attitudes, change in that version of political attitudes that deals with military views, changes in sexual relations, changes in the status of women in the society ...

They fought the battle in the courts and on the screen, but does the screen remember the fight? I Am Curious (Yellow) reminds me of the possibility of absolute freedom in film narratives, of the creative potential of dramatic form in cinema. For example, for years I've carried the dream of mid-film credits, for whatever reason, and now I know what that would be like. It'd be charming.

In special features Vilgot Sjöman explains how he asked his producer for film and total creative control with no script, and because it was the 60s or Sweden or for other reasons, this happened. Sjöman shot, edited, shot, edited, and felt he didn't have a complete film, so he asked his producer for more film and ended with enough footage for two movies, Yellow and Blue, the colors on Sweden's flag.

In the book edition of Gus Van Sant's screenplays for Even Cowgirls Get the Blues/My Own Private Idaho, Van Sant talks about his screenwriting form, which he admits isn't traditional. He notes that Hollywood standards are based on a model of conformity, and he fucks conformity. He says the distinctness of his films is a direct result of the individuality present in the way he writes his screenplays.

I believe in the principles of both these anecdotes. The creative artist must allow itself limitless, unreserved potential. Cronenberg talks about this another way when he says the writer shouldn't write with a budget in mind. He insists it'd be a form of self-censorship.

Stanley Kauffmann: Psychologically, the film does its exploration in carrying forward at the same time several different strands of unassailable reality and of variations on that reality that play back and forth, that present a nicely variegated, thick texture of fact and sort of fantasies on fact, which is representative of what our society is beginning to be more and more aware of in terms of our daily perceptions of what we see, that there is a great difference between the black and white that has been formerly assumed of what is fact and what is fantasy ...

Although after all this is said, the film must be watched. What is it like to watch I Am Curious (Yellow)? It's sometimes confusing, boring, alarming, etc. It's a different type of movie, and brings with it different types of feelings.

Stanley Kauffmann: ...what this director is aiming at is exactly that slight fuzziness, slight blurring of the line between what is fact and what is fiction.
It is a part of a modern view of not just art but a lot of matters. What used to be thought of as a clear dividing line, an iron barrier between art and life, should go or can go or has gone, and we are not really aware of it yet.

I quote Kauffmann not simply as an authority, but because of the eloquence and insight in his answers, and his participation in the context of Yellow. Such compassion was shown for a quest of meaning, such tenderness for the individual. It's important to me to see that the movie, in its time, was treated seriously despite its potential lack of solutions, and despite its sometimes playful surface. Kauffmann excavated the inner questions of Yellow, so that the court could grasp the sense of a shared journey between audience and film.

I believe that while exploring the dimensions of a film, as an audience member, you should also be exploring dimensions of yourself, and as the film is more and more revealed to you, you are more revealed to yourself. This can happen in so many interesting ways, but a direct course to indirectness shouldn't be dismissed, although I think in contemporary films it perhaps has been, as a preference for elusive focal points has been relegated to the art house. Mainstream characters, potentially perfect (sometimes designed to be perfectly flawed for dramatic purposes), have replaced people, who have a history of imperfection and ambiguous virtue.

In particular it's interesting that a complex, multi-sided and ongoing battle for societal harmony is explored on a macro scale through the politics of Sweden, and on a micro scale through Lena's experiences, especially her stormy love affair and home life. Yellow's narrative is of Lena, a free thinking 20 year old who tallies the changes brought by radical external development as she participates in her life's narrative and expansion of personality identity, sometimes cordial and sometimes in conflict with the outside world.

The movie knows our greatest problems lie within as much as anywhere else, that the seeds of discord are in the hearts of people and their relationships with each other. The movie wants to truthfully depict this, but is concerned about its manipulations and short cuts, and so Sjöman includes himself and his own conflicts as a filmmaker. The documentary aspects aren't granted automatic ascendency over the fictional elements, and sometimes the two are blended so that vital questions remain more important than easy answers. I too suffer from immense confusions, not easily solved by applying dramatic devices to my life (though I sometimes try, to great disaster, because strong emotions rarely, and then hardly, follow story beats), and find the ideas of Yellow sometimes liberating, sometimes cathartic, and sometimes simply, wondrously relatable.

The question of the camera and its effect on reality is a fundamental concern in filmmaking. Zusje's technique of a protagonist in a camcorder pov raises implicit ideas about the camera's ability to record facets of a person's soul, and of a camera's ability to illuminate the emotions of a person in front of or behind the camera.

Martijn visits his estranged sister Daantje, who has started her own life in Amsterdam. What Martijn's life is like I'm less sure of, and what I know about Daantje I know from Martijn's camera. The film is the record of their relationship as witnessed by Martijn's camera, and we cannot know about the man behind the camera without knowing about the people in front of the camera, and vice versa, and the audience works to realize what they are not showing or telling.

The subjective camera brings us closer to the characters' living experiences and creates an ambiguous emotional surface. For example, why does Martijn hide behind the camera, what is he hiding, and is he hiding? Another example, do the others tolerate Martijn despite his camera, or because of his camera - are they starving for recognition, in whatever form, for attention, however it comes? Is it even about any of these things? The nexus of the film is in the relationship between brother and sister, and the film's narrative is the surface, the mask to, an inward investigation of intricate connections between the siblings.

I had long wanted to do a film that felt like a found home video, and Zusje is that film. Martijn fabricates and conjures a narrative of partial and absolute reality, aiming his camera as a way of personal emphasis, and the people around him respond in spontaneous and unprogrammed behavior sometimes, calculated and purposeful behavior other times. That is, the camera becomes a symbol of the human eye, the obtrusiveness of our lives upon each other, and the way our presence shapes the lives of others.

These two films represent courageous encounters with the substance that envelops certain mysteries of being human. If the mysteries were clearly solved, the essence of mysteries would be neutralized, and the struggle for self-identity trivialized. Answers needn't be strained from dramatic forms. In forcing clarity on complex matters there is the danger of reductionism, and also an ironic non-admission of complexity, a kind of dramatic accusation about the nature of uncertainty. Simply, irrationality itself must thrive in the heart of a film that truly wants to deal with matters of irrational humanity and eternal riddles.

In the spirit of Yellow, I'd like not to end on what appears to be a summation. I'd like to say that I like the scene in Yellow when Lena has a conversation with MLK Jr. from her bike. I like her pedaling feet, and I like Jr.'s face, which must have done so much of his work for him, as it's an incredibly sincere and naked human face, with eyes like deep portals, etc.

Breathless ('60). Okay, also some Breathless ('83).

"Truffaut was too complacent, too precious, too superficially cinephilic, too sentimental about children, and far too willing to let his extraordinary cinematic fluency carry what would otherwise have been so much inconsequential bourgeois fluff. Let it be said that this position is rather heavily dependent on a comparison between Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, and between their respective approaches to politics and narrative during the crunch moment of the late sixties - Godard the revolutionary antinarrative firebrand versus Truffaut the apolitical storytelling lapdog. As May '68 and its polemical extremes have faded into the distance, Godard's cinema has retained much of its power, while his politics have come to seem modish and fairly ridiculous. Meanwhile, Truffaut's body of work has only become more impressive with each passing year. His often remarked facility with the language of cinema, as evident in his great films as in his minor ones, now seems less noteworthy than his daring sense of speed, his attraction to complicated emotional states that few of his colleagues would even touch, and the always remarkable proximity of life and death in his work. Not to mention the continual sense of surprise."

Kent Jones introducing the Criterion edition of Shoot the Piano Player. I thought of it last night during a screening of Breathless, as I was wondering the extent of Truffaut's influence on the film. He's credited with the story. The legend is the film began without a full script; Godard wrote scenes in the morning and fed the actors lines, sometimes during the scene.

Though I sensed a lot of Truffaut during the hotel scene between Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo. There's his brand of philosophical playfulness and romantic insight; most of the adjectives Jones used in his above introduction as ways of describing Truffaut, as ways of differentiating between the filmmakers, are present in the scene: speed, complicated emotional states, proximity of life and death, continual sense of surprise - doesn't that describe Breathless? It's rather fun to hang out around the film and ask these questions, to speculate using a knowledge of the filmmakers and their films. What seems manifest is a shared ideology, whether Truffaut wrote lines or not, Breathless feels like an utterance of many.

The question of creative leadership has a curious corollary, How much of Godard is in Breathless? What percentage of Godard's capabilities, as we know them in the present, are detectable in Breathless? One of the fascinating aspects of Godard is his remarkable dexterity and amazing leaps in style. He seems capable of true invention and fantastic vision, classic and romantic pursuits in cinema, and incredible qualities for a filmmaker who makes daring, masterful use of dramatic form, and hovers his narratives conspicuously near his characters, as to ground them in a human element. Godard is about the explosion of cinema from the interior self to the exterior screen. There is playful presaging of this theme in Breathless, in the strong presence of cinema throughout. Belmondo admires Bogart's photo outside the cinema; a police pursuit ends in a cinema; Belmondo and Seberg experience cinematic dimensions as filmic characters when they see a western movie they end up becoming. The special effect is a trigger of the imagination, the elevation from reality by the channeling of characters' desires as interpreted by the grammar and reality of film.

So is Band of Outsiders a fuller Breathless, for example? There seems so little trail-blazing in Breathless today; it feels like an essential statement, a first-voice moment for a great filmmaker. Whatever conventions Breathless challenged upon its release, whatever expectations of narrative it reversed, were further untangled and unbound in Band of Outsiders. What's more beautiful and makes better use of Raoul Coutard, Breathless or A Woman is a Woman, or My Life to Live, Contempt, Pierrot le fou (or a non-Godard?!)? The questions seem to impose their answers on the experience of the film, though they shouldn't. I see enough footholds and special attributes within Breathless to allow the perpetuation of the question, How good is Breathless?

It's pretty fucking good. It still feels spontaneous, fluid, and frenetic; dangerous, sensuous, and playful. The match-cuts of Seberg in the convertible are riveting, Les Champs-Élysées is ever as gorgeous, and Belmondo is eternally charming. The movie is a game of meaning between Godard and the audience, and of seduction (shimmers of love) between Seberg and Belmondo. I don't think the diminishing power of its stylistic luster exposes surprising flaws; it might allow a clearer view of the emotional range of the characters. The films tours the minds of two characters pinned to Paris, 1960, and you really get to know and experience them, really enter their heads. I wonder if its specificity, in style and content, narrows the entry doorway in the present. It doesn't for me, but the projectionist last night told me there were an unusual number of walk-outs, and most people I know don't even bother seeing Breathless anymore.

Is one viewing of Breathless enough? Is it not a great film? Is there a better Godard film? Back to these questions, somehow back to these questions. The cinematic well of Godard goes deep and continues to deepen, and I think back here at the start is a great place to be. I think we have to continue to ask ourselves where we're coming from if want to know where we're going.

So last night was the first time I'd seen Breathless as a bigger fan of Truffaut than Godard, and the film still worked. It was also the first time I'd seen Breathless ('60) since I saw Breathless ('83). The latter Breathless is a remake that's faithful to the letter but not the spirit of the film. Mostly the same things occur, transplanted to '80s Los Angeles. The director is Jim McBride, the co-writer is L.M. Kit Carson, Gere stars in it, and everything else about it is average. It doesn't have the magnetism of Godard's film, nor the scope. But it's not horrible. I don't think it's horrible. It was even effective as an agent in further appreciating the original, because it allowed me to see the first film's intentions explored, to have a point of reference, and an expanded interpretation of the film.

Daisies.

Is it true that the moon is a detached piece of the Earth? If it isn't, believe anyway that it is, just for a moment. The relationship between most normal mainstream cinema and Daisies is the same as the relationship between the moon and the Earth. Chytilova's film was formed by the materials of cinema, but it exists solitarily, orbiting a greater mass.

This is a liberation of a different sort, not for example exclusively liberated from one thing. Because it's so impractical and impertinent in nature, it feels critical, maybe it's slightly critical, owing to its political context, but I don't think it's a critical film. I think that its total liberation lends itself to the idea that the film is a sponsorship for anarchy. How cute! Two girls, inviting older men out to dinner, and then ditching them at train stations, and in between discussing men, invisibility, etc, and going on crazy adventures, can be interpreted on deeper, more sinister levels.

Say that about a contemporary American comedy. Just try it.

These two amiable, adorable Czech girls, who go on a series of hilarious, entertaining escapades, are the conduits for the film's extraordinary, expansive depth. The reason Daisies feels framed within greater dimensions is because the quest of the two Maries is the essential point of anarchy: lawlessness, independence. Their terrain is limitless. How do you know you exist Marie, you aren't registered, you don't have a job. I exist Marie, because I am here with you. Essentially.

The narrative is anecdotal, and the filmmaking is playful. A shade of green in apples becomes a green-tinted image of the girls. Green apples in water become green apples on a plate. A trip becomes a sit. A train journey becomes a magical, colorful segue. Scissors cut into the film, rearranging the characters on screen. The girls seem to be able, in part, to manipulate the reality of their existence. The control they exercise in their narrative journey to become bad is sensational, surreal, and alluring. It is ultimately enough to provide them a final escape from themselves. However, the nature of this escape still follows the logic of reality, which requires that we pay for everything.

Peeping Tom.

In the roughly five years since I last watched Peeping Tom (the receipt is saved inside the case, purchased December 2004, before I knew you could find any dvd you wanted online, back when my collection was completely dependent upon the stock of Borders and Best Buy; I remember finding Peeping Tom in Fingerprints in Long Beach and telling my friend "I don't have the money for this but I don't know when I'll see it again") my life has progressed only in a behind-the-camera sense. Only through thoughts of the camera, by imagining the world through a lens, an imaginary lens at that, wanting to record everything and being able to record hardly anything. And my eyes have stolen the images of all I've seen, none of it first belonging to me.

I've brought myself into a desert of passion and lost my way. Deluded and in a fit of hysteria, hallucinating dreams of the silver screens, I watched Peeping Tom again last night in the perfect state to be genuinely thrilled. Imbued with my own guilt, thoroughly directed along by master craftsman Michael Powell (you can forget how good some filmmakers are), and able to understand what was being shown to me, Peeping Tom was for me a white-knuckled hair-raising endeavor.

Karlheinz Böhm, with the veneer of a masculine Hitchcockian blonde, channels the pitiful eeriness of Peter Lorre. His voice is shy and limited, as are his eyes, and his movements and the noises he makes (Helen never knows when he is home, but her blind alcoholic mother Vivian does), but he is unguarded, unprotected: he allows Helen easy access into his personal world, he hides a corpse on his own set, he takes photos of his bodies being discovered. He's crazy we know, and he knows it, except only he knows the extent. He knows the direction the madness is headed in, and once revealed to us, Böhm, Mark Lewis, becomes a tragic hero of morbid, warped, obsessive and passionate intensity. He seeks to fill a void created by his father, who taught him to love through the camera and by fear, and as an artist he risks everything to fill the void.

I'm reminded of Paul Schrader's quote on screenwriting, "When screenwriting, be prepared to drop your pants and show your dirty laundry. If you can't do that, better find yourself something more polite." Michael Powell goes well beyond this, beyond irrational fears and embarrassing idiosyncrasies, beyond failed romances and personal regrets. It's not the usual dramatic material Powell explores in his film, but the unusualness of his attractions at a sinister and intrinsic level. In the special features Peeping Tom is referred to as a Chinese Box, with riddles and mysteries and puns hidden within itself. Consider the ways in which the film overlaps with Powell's personal life: Powell casting himself as Mark's father, including his own first camera in Mark's collection, and casting his own son as young Mark. The creepiness of the film is immensely heightened by its apparent honesty and lack of compromise.

In its completeness Peeping Tom exposes what is unnerving about the Josh Harris types and captures the futility and randomness of modern murder better than Bogdanovich's Targets or McNaughton's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Peeping Tom also investigates the development of psychosis in a serial killer better than any other movie, exceeding the usual motivations or explanations. The horrifying revelation at the end of Psycho is rapidly summarized by a doctor in the next scene, but Peeping Tom explains itself out over the course of its running time, allowing the character of Mark to grow and enlarge in our minds.

Most of this could not be achieved without the skill of Michael Powell. A great thriller is directly the result of a great filmmaker, it's a genre that magnifies the strengths and weaknesses of the filmmaker, and it's impossible to fake. Michael Powell, Alfred Hitchcock, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Brian De Palma, Roman Polanski, Richard Franklin, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa are all names linked to unbridled passion for cinema. A bad thriller works on movie mechanics, and they're like seeing the inside of a clock, while a great thriller, like Peeping Tom, can change both the way you see the breathing world, and the way you see cinema.

Il Posto.

When I watched Il Posto recently I kind of felt a Planet of the Apes sense of revelation. You know how the Statue of Liberty was there the whole time? Well Il Posto has been here the whole time, through my ruminations on Bujalski and Bahrani, beyond the Italian Neorealism years which I often find so melodramatic, and existing even as a precursor to Kieslowski. Like Kieslowski, Olmi is a documentary filmmaker turned narrative filmmaker, and likewise Olmi brought into his narratives the sensibilities of his documentaries.

It's become obvious to me that if you focus your narrative intensely upon your subject with complete honesty and a passion for accuracy, and disregard purposefully whatever modern conventions of filmmaking are prevailing, you can create a film that's wholly engaging and dramatically convincing. When you strip the mechanics of storytelling from a film, your film can become truly alive. The protagonist of Il Posto walks among the living indeed: he walks in a real Milan, he applies to the actual Edison Company of Milan, takes real aptitude tests, converses with his bosses, and, most important to me, his emotions by way of Olmi's direction are depicted authentically and without exaggeration.

It's a mellow film, and I think the pace matches the personality of the mellow protagonist. I think it's edited so the story evolves in the speed of his thoughts. A really great unique quality of Olmi, compared to most other filmmakers in the same vein, including contemporary filmmakers, is that he allows poetry to escape into his frames. Take for example the first scene with the boss:

The camera is of course looking down on Domenico from the elevated perspective of the boss, which conveys his insecurity in this moment and also the boss' dominance, but the framing doesn't suffer from what I think could be an unnatural embellishment. Instead it heightens the sense of Domenico's anxiety, also achingly present in the actor's face, and compliments rather than overpowers the scene. What the camera does is act as a psychological additive, like was common from cinematography back in the day and is very uncommon today, but it does to an equal degree as the film's scene is operating, so that it blends into the narrative, suggests greater ideas existing beneath the scene, and builds on Olmi's true Milan. The camera is uncovering more truth without suggesting a falsely dramatic realm. That's a thine line I think, and it's really difficult to navigate.

What it is also means is that Olmi is interested in every aspect of his film's reality. The total experience of the Edison Company and not the singular experience of Domenico. His intentions and their execution allow me to understand what Domenico is entering into. I can understand 1960's Milan from 00's Portland. I can understand an entire room of 1960's Milan people.


In this scene Domenico has entered a room already mostly full of people waiting to take the Edison admissions tests. This view captures both the tension of the moment and the weight of the pressure, the sense of Domenico's isolation, and the feelings of everyone in the frame with him. The camera will move and more people are yet to arrive, but even in this one shot you can wonder what the two seated are thinking about, why the standing man is staring that way; you wonder about Domenico's fate, share his nervousness, and enter the politics of a waiting room, Edison Company, Milan, 1961. Olmi has Domenico acting, the rest of the room acting, and the camera acting: this is why his film presents a whole reality with a complete truthfulness.

Pitfall.

July 30 2007. From IMDb. Original text left unaltered. No comment.

Titled: I say yes.

There's something in the rhythm of Pitfall that I find absolutely compelling. I like movies that don't take the cowardly way out, that don't sacrifice the feeling for the plot. And when you deal with these subjects (death, man's place in the modern world, morality, liberty) it's easy to picture them as plot elements, thousands of years of storytelling has simplified and distorted these ideas and you begin to see what doesn't exist except as a concept in archetypal forms. You form an image of what actually isn't concrete. You begin to think you can identify loss because you know Miss Havisham, and you can place loss into that, and regret becomes Terry Malloy, and rage becomes Inspector Javert. This is what a great story does: it animates concepts. That's art, don't get me wrong, and it can be brilliant, I think it simplifies the world but I don't think it's in any way simple. A great story has the unbelievable capacity of infecting your own life narrative, of weaving its own themes into your everyday. But I think it exists separately and as its own abstraction.

For the ineffable, the unidentifiable, and the unobservable (what I experience the most in my life, usually experiencing epiphany as hindsight), a greater abstraction is necessary. I think that the modern world cannot be defined by the ways of the old, I agree with everyone who has said this (Kandinsky and Pollock spring to my mind). And with Pitfall, perhaps the rhythm was a confluence of emotion, I felt like the film worked as a whole, like it operated for the purpose of abstractly expressing the abstract, and so I felt it, I experienced Pitfall.

The multiple plot developments are suggestions. Any Lynch fan could identify this tactic immediately. You give the audience some of what they want, and then you continue on with what you want (plenty of other examples of this, but I feel Lynch's mechanics are most in the style of Pitfall). They keep you moving forward, they're interesting, and they enable great visual stimulation, but the truth of the film is outside these moments. You really get a sense of Pitfall when you watch it the second time, because then you ride the other current running through the film, the one occurring in the texture of the film. Reading the Criterion essays, it was the repeated mentioning of the collaborative process that formed Pitfall that appealed to me. And when I rewatched the film I saw better how fully realized Pitfall was, how every component worked to enhance the other. I noticed that if I didn't follow the 'plots' but followed the progression of feeling it became a different story. Fractured, incomplete, insincere, alien, yes, but progressive, and deliberate. By the end it hit me, the whole goddamn thing stirred me up and affected me.

That's my favorite kind of movie. I recommend.