The Melodrama

This is my first official, my first labeled, entry on the melodrama genre. I have been going through something of a melodrama phase lately. And by phase I mean the figure of melodrama has taken shape amidst the immensity of film history, and whispered in my ear sweet things about Max Ophüls's Caught, André De Toth's The Other Love, Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory, and Michael Curtiz's Flamingo Road. Flamingo Road came recommended to me by the dead, by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who listed the film as one of his favorites.

The functional melodrama works because of an agreement between the heart and screen. It is a visual, visceral secret shared with a person by a film, and the greater and braver the truth of this secret, the more the film works. Honesty is achieved by commitments from the filmmakers and actors - they must fully believe in the material and invest in it a seriousness and purpose to match the extreme heights of the human emotions conveyed.

Human emotions are conveyed with the utmost sincerity in a melodrama, even when the utterly absurd occurs. This is why melodramas from Hollywood are dazzling, and specifically, dazzling from Hollywood in the 1930s through 50s. During this period the craft of populist and sensationalistic filmmaking reaches for the highest peaks of the human heart, and the two, craft and heart, ignite and explode before the teary eyes of the audience. These movies are hot messes. The hotter and messier the better and bigger the film.

It takes a large, powerful personality to lead a melodrama, someone like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, or Elizabeth Taylor. It takes a sensitive and keen filmmaker to create a melodrama. The latter seems more interchangeable than the former: certain actors cast long shadows over the melodrama genre, while the filmmakers they worked with are more numerous, and truly great melodrama filmmakers, like Max Ophüls and Douglas Sirk, are as rare as truly great melodrama actors.

I have always been attracted to the melodrama genre, but tend to have consumed it in small doses. This is because the films destroy me, viz., they wreck my heart. I wonder what it is about the melodrama that attracts me to it; is it desire for purgation, contrition, catharsis, escape, masochism, or other, or all? Do I want to suffer and does the film help glorify my suffering? Do I want to fantasize my life as some thing of great importance and terrific emotional scope? Do I want to pretend to be rich, or pretend to be a servant? I cannot know for sure. If the answer is simple, the film isn't good.

Tomorrow - The World.

  Tomorrow - The World, a movie that "portrays the personal effect of HItler's chilling declaration:  'Today Germany, TOMORROW THE WORLD,'" was recommended to me by a friend to whom I showed the first several minutes of Friedlander's The Raven.  What the supposed connection was I'm not sure, though this isn't the first time I've been led to a curious film by an unusual route.

  It would have made more sense if I'd been showing Mayo's Black Legion, '36, the Warner Bros film in which Humphrey Bogart discovers several compelling reasons to not be a violent racist.  Like that film, Tomorrow investigates  how 'normal' people were transformed into ambassadors of hate through the influence of community and the power of social pressure.  Tomorrow is the more interesting movie because several fingers are pointed. 

  The premise is that an indoctrinated twelve year old Nazi, Emil, is sent to live with a suburban American family.  Emil is a really horrible kid, even outside out of his Nazi spy aspirations*:  he's a deceitful, mean kid who lies and mistreats people.  His new aunt says he's a good example of why all Germans should be killed, and the German housekeeper, whom he corners and speaks to of 'corroboration,' considers him a megalomanic asshole.  He's such a crappy person that his new family wavers between strangling him and sending him to prison.  Point is, on the one hand he embodies hate, on the other hand so much hate is reflected back at him.  And he's so young, he's just a kid.  The movie's closing argument is basically that he's too young to be held culpable, and its final evidence is that he cries over his murder attempt.

  The surrogate father is Frederic March, from Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!  Like Peck in The Omen, his journey leads to the attempted killing of an evil child.  It's interesting to consider the film as a precursor to demonic children films.  There are perhaps many Nazi in America films (The Stranger, Dr. Strangelove, Marathon Man, and Blues Brothers spring to mind).  The amalgamation of demon child and Nazi spy is an inspired film idea, undoubtedly the cause of the film's longevity, more than its philosophical handling of the material.  Like the grapefruit smashing in The Public Enemy, the sight of a young boy in a Nazi uniform continues to be unsettling; and even by contemporary standards the kid is a prick.  It's easy to imagine wanting to strangle him.

  This is copyright 1944, Lester Cowan Productions.  Germany had not yet surrendered.  I see it as a discussion about the twin problems of the perpetuance of Naziism after the war, and the veil of circumstance that both protected some genuine Nazis and condemned those morally and spiritually enfeebled by the Nazis.  Tomorrow suggests a solution of tolerance and second-chances, but the situation is one of poisoned youth and corrupted innocence, of a twelve year old boy, and I see less complexity in this scenario than in others.  It began as a play of ideals, and it retains this form in the film:  its final point is obvious, its path contrived.  It's sometimes outrageous, sometimes tedious.

* Simpsons reference:  You remember when Bart was a foreign exchange student?  He went to a miserable French country farm, and an I think Russian boy/spy came to live with the Simpsons family.  This movie several times reminded me of that episode.

Detour.

"That's life. Whichever way you turn, fate sticks out a foot to trip you."

Sometimes I worry about the perils of critical distillation. Hardly ever is the critical element of film appreciation a multi-headed beast, only in special circumstances do you hear about the technique of the filmmaker, and his/her method of expression as a collaboration between talented and creative pre-, post-, production crew members. The art of filmmaking is a processes involving the transformation of human emotions and ideas into celluloid, and as the art continues to grow so does the intensity of these facets and the attention to detail in the components of film design.

Douglas Trumbull recently stated that the future of special effects is the creation of an immersive environment and a straying from traditional narrative. The semantics of the statement seem to de-emphasize the writerly aspects of filmmaking, but Trumbull is really talking about a journey away from narratives of traditional form toward narratives of senses, and the identifier and creator of sensual experiences has been and continues to be the writer of the film. It's like Trumbull is talking about a tastier cake, and it's not that we shouldn't record the recipe, but we need to examine the ovens, the ingredients, the chefs; we need to explore the chemistry and science of our recipes, ask ourselves the hard questions about flavor, color, texture, and presentation.

I use cake as a simile because great filmmaking involves an irreversible reaction in which the components of the film combine in spiritual, emotional, chemical ways. A great film should change you while exposing itself as a piece of work beyond pure formal theory. It should be like a tornado sweeping through the small-town of your imagination. This is what I think. Sometimes I mind wrestle ardent intellectual types who pontificate an idea of 'perfect' art, which I suppose means flawless design and technique, and I guess inarguable results. I've heard that axiom about how your response to the Mona Lisa reveals more about yourself than anything about the Mona Lisa. I agree with that to the extent that please reveal your opinion of the Mona Lisa so that I can learn more about you! Because for fuck's sake if we just stick it on a wall and call it great great great forever it's going to become some boring, immaterial and inhuman artifact. Art should never be like the Grand Canyon, I don't think so, I subscribe more to the eccentric view of 'magical electricity' than the view of 'perfect art,' because I don't want to say "That wonder of the world gorge there, yeah, just fuckin' erosion and other natural processes. Magnificent, sure, otherworldly, no." The Mona Lisa as a piece of great art should defy natural order! I believe Leonardo's mind was in direct contact with something incorporeal, something emotional and non-scientific, when he created the Mona Lisa.

Leonardo was a great fucking painter. Painted two of the most well known and lasting pieces from the Renaissance. You don't have to tell most people about Leonardo, they already know. Can a film like Detour affect a person on the level of the Mona Lisa? Fuck yeah. And that's art, and how art extends beyond perfection.

The first thing most people will say about Detour is that it's not very good, and the second thing is probably that they liked the movie. I love the movie. Even without a sophisticated or mature sense of cinematic technique it achieves existential levels of contemplation and deep currents of guilt, sadness, futility, struggle, endurance, suspense, drama, intrigue, etc. It's a film of naked emotion, the more naked due to the less production gloss. That's art.

The cowardice, emptiness, and bad luck of main character Al Roberts seem a reflection in the pool of human imperfection. He works on his own as a dimwitted protagonist whose miserable circumstances lead to a downward spiraling narrative, but he takes on greater meaning when seen as a symbol for the human condition: the human condition of being yourself, being conscious of yourself, and lacking control of your future. I can see the death of Charles Haskell Jr as a genuine mistake, but I detect or project animus in the eyes of Roberts as he tugs on the telephone chord late in the movie. There seems to be a moment in which the violence of his efforts penetrates his mind, and he wonders in fear what the results of his emphatic frustration could be. The moment works on its own as an instance of strangulation, but works better as a symbol of the destructive power of fear and ensnarement.

That's a popular noir trope which continues to be used today, as in 2008's The Square, the idea that all is forgivable on the path of redemption. A lot of revenge fantasy films isolate and amplify this concept. A difference here is that Roberts is no badass, he's pathetic. Sartre would have either hated the guy or been fascinated by him, because he gives up all control of his life, avoids his freedom and independence, and constantly searches for a way to be irresponsible and unaccountable. He's ecstatic that Vera might alleviate the burden of his circumstance, and although as an audience member you know it can't end well, you also cheer Roberts's minor salvation, this new buffer between him and the painful misery of his crime. Because you can't imagine Robert managing any aspect of his life, you accept his reception of this new person, who, even with her hostility, constitutes companionship.

He works on his own, but he's better as a symbol of our desperation, and his ability to function as a symbol makes Detour good art. I just simply believe that human imperfection is our own greatest mystery. Beyond the mystery of the stars, the big bang, etc. I like the astronomical theory that we are formed by the dust of the universe, that we are the remnants of energy from stars, and I believe there are ever expanding ever growing and impossible to fathom territories of the interior, as with the exterior universe, and that unlike the exterior universe, parts of ourselves cannot be explained or observed with instruments, processes, or intellectual constructs. I believe this because I believe in art as a portal into the unknowable.

Of course, Detour isn't without design. The characters work because of the story, and the production isn't so horrible as to be devastatingly obstructive. The actors are okay. Edgar G. Ulmer had legitimate directing chops. Fellow blogger Roger Ebert demystifies the experience of the film I'm describing. Hell, he isn't even overwhelmed by the intrusion of chance, "`Detour' is an example of material finding the appropriate form. Two bottom-feeders from the swamps of pulp swim through the murk of low-budget noir and are caught gasping in Ulmer's net. They deserve one another. At the end, Al is still complaining: 'Fate, [or] some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me, for no good reason at all.' Oh, it has a reason."

His response is justifiable. His pronouncement human. The feeling that the weak deserve their fate is an expression of nature and evolution. As I've said, I believe art is a battle with the natural. And so I say that the end of Detour is reasonable is of secondary importance to the central force of the film, which is the unreasonableness of the whole goddamn cosmos, always creating in order to destroy. Or maybe that's what Ebert meant. I think it'd be better though if I framed it so that it appears I'm building on Ebert's ideas rather than reiterating his point. Anyway it's headed toward this: Detour is imperfect, its characters are imperfect, but it suggests perfectly a simple human question. And that's art.

Detour couldn't withstand a comprehensive analysis of its construction. Or at least, the results wouldn't be flattering. Certain mistakes have to be overlooked, or rather, certain mistakes shrink in stature when next to certain towering strengths. A film like this gains from critical distillation, is allowed to shine as brightly as better made films. What, then, of the better made films? Aren't they worth examining twice, thrice more thoroughly? What is the relationship between critical dissection and emotional appreciation? People sometimes ask me if the more I know about films the less I enjoy them. They mean they don't even want to look under the hood. They mean they fear the parts under the hood. I think sometimes criticism ignores what's under the hood, and that's bad. I think sometimes criticism ignores what's under the hood, and that's good.

Gran Casino.

Buñuel's first directorial assignment in Mexico, and the closest film following L'Age d'Or, by release date, that I have been able to see, Gran Casino is a murder thriller set predominantly in a casino/hotel environment. An oil field is an intermittent backdrop, the politics of which serve as the narrative's catalyst, and there are also musical sequences. In a brief synopsis it sounds almost promising; the tragedy, in my opinion, is that Buñuel was simply a director-for-hire and the film plays out on the wheels of convention. It's all musical melodrama.

Truthfully, I wish I could've experienced the full depth of the musical melodrama, whatever it may be. Someone, Lions Gate or otherwise, pulled a real fuck you for the dvd release and only subtitled the dialogue. All musical sequences are without subtitles - so for me part of this film is missing. Some of the scenes are visually appealing and work purely visually, including the spotlight number and the flashlight dance routine, but especially during clear moments of expository driven music, or Mercedes simply singing by a piano, subtitles are essential.

And when I speak of the visual appeal of the music sequences, I'm referring also to a desire on my part to search out Buñuel in the film. I get a real kick considering what his directing of a music number would have been like. I approached the 63 year old film as a scavenger hunt, desiring to find the little objects of Buñuel's personality hidden within the film. This is one clear example:




Gerardo is in Mercedes's hotel room. Her brother Jose has been murdered by the rival oil baron. Behind the curtain awaits another murderer. Mercedes notices his feet sticking out beneath the curtains, and Gerardo approaches with a statue in hand. Gerardo strikes at the curtains, and Buñuel cuts to this shot:



The curtains superimposed over the image of a glass shattering.

There's then a scene of henchmen coming to collect Gerardo's dead body. They call up to the room from the street. Mercedes calls down that there is no body. They say something like "Oh, I guess it's better there's no dead body" (a pretty funny line), and they leave.

Gerardo and Mercedes then approach the curtains:



And Gerardo pulls the curtains open:



It's a closet, in reality there was no glass behind the curtains. Buñuel has thus used the shattering glass as a metaphor for the man's head being crushed. This visual concept is terribly arresting and creative. Its use opens my perspective on physical harm, breaking glass, and the filmic relation possible between the two. It's a total Buñuelian moment.

Other motifs in Gran Casino, visual and narrative, seldom reach this level of imagination. It is steeped in strokes of high-adventure and colossal-risk, which I don't mind (who minds oil derricks as scenery?), but the part of me that begins to accept these everyday action thriller elements is most challenged when a truly idiosyncratic and imaginative moment bursts out of the framework. And then I remember what cinema really is, what it's true potential is.

Day of Wrath.

There's one truly vindictive character in Day of Wrath, the mother, whose suspicions are valid. There's only one truly innocent character, the son, and he betrays his father and contributes to the conditions which lead to his death. There's one victim, the wife, and she's the witch. There's one great tragedy, the death of the husband/preacher, and his punishment is retribution.

There's one God in Day of Wrath, and it is in the name of that God that the priests torture the old woman. There's only one Evil One, and it's the Evil One's power that allows the wife to free herself from oppression and grants her her only meaningful relationship.

The torture and killing of the old woman is outright barbarianism and an absolute injustice. I suppose this depiction is what made Dreyer have to flee Denmark from the Nazis. Though even in her scenes I could not, despite her suffering, and despite the great sadness and grief Dreyer injects into her scenes (her clothes torn off her, her body tied to the stake, her screams as she falls into the fire), consider her character wholesome or morally pure. The old woman attempts to leverage the life of the priest's wife, whose mother was a witch, against her own life in order to grant herself freedom. This is a self-serving action which would be justifiable if you believed one life is worth more than another life, based on the virtues of the person. It also becomes misdirected: while the woman initially wants the priest to recognize the fairness in freeing her (the priest freed the mother in order to marry the daughter) as the moment of death approaches the old woman seems more vengeful, as if she could lastly accept her death if the wife died as well. She's out for the wife's blood as they're out for her blood, though there isn't any indication that the wife is even passively playing a hand in the old woman's death. The wife first hides the old woman, then denies ever seeing her, and then stays inside, visibly upset, during her killing.

The wife is a witch, though, and the old woman is not. I would expect a film in which there is an actual witch to be a film about morality, but I always think of morality as being polar, you're morally right or morally wrong, and Dreyer is definitely saying here, in Day of Wrath, that the actions of all are intertwined in the tragic and doomed destinies of each. The film then is not amoral or immoral, but about sin, the imperfections of humanity, and the corruptibility of perspective. The imperfections of the religious and the wicked. His characters seem to be expressing that one is not worse than the other and that, regardless of morality or intention, their fate is shared.