The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner directed by Tony Richardson is another extremely impressive entry from the "British New Wave" of the early 60s. I also read the original short story by Alan Sillitoe recently which is quite good as well. The film relates the story of a teenager named Colin Smith, an "angry young man" somewhat familiar from other films of the period too, who is sent to a reformatory school after getting caught for a petty crime. There he is identified and selected by the governor of the school (played by Michael Redgrave) to run in an long distance cross-country marathon championship. Most of the story is told in flashblacks, as he practices for his long distance run, which shows episodes from his life before his arrest - the grim family and social life and occasional fun and happiness with his friends. But when the time comes on the final finish line he realizes a great chance to assert his freedom (not the literal freedom but freedom of spirit and individuality) and the oppositional anti-establishment stance. The ending is pessimistic and bleak but paradoxically also very inspiring and empowering.

What I loved in this film (and other films from the period) was its tone - the disaffected, hyper-articulate and angry voice of protest against the authority and the society: sort of working-class Holden Caulfield with hyper sensitive class awareness. I also loved the B&W cinematography which makes the grim outdoor locations look so evocative. And not to forget the sheer bloody-minded and totally anti-Hollywood style endings. Two weeks after I have still been thinking about "Billy Liar," the character Tom Courtenay played in the film of the same name (which I wrote about here). He is equally wonderful in this film. Every body gesture, every single twitch of the face (I am already in love with his smile, even though he smiles very rarely) conveys something complex and profound. Nothing is ever wasted. He is probably more well-known in Britain where he has been active on stage for many years but he really deserves celebration outside as well. His performance in both films has already become one of my all-time favourites.

*******

A few words About the story by Alan Sillitoe (who wrote the screenplay for the film too). It is written in the first person and film pretty much follows it closely. The outdoor locations feel much more evocative and powerful in the film and so does Tom Courtenay's performance which transcends the character written in the story. On the other hand there are some wonderful monologues and eloquent diatribes some of which are there in the film too but the story has more of them. At one place in the film Colin rages, "Do you know what I'd do if I had the whip hand? I'd get all the coppers, governors, posh whores, penpushers, army officers and members of parliament and I'd stick them up against this wall and let them have it 'cause that's what they'd like to do to blokes like us." There is more of this in the book. It also helps to read the book imagining that particular accent, it becomes much more interesting and powerful then. It is written in a straight-forward way but it is the kind of writing whose authenticity and genuineness of the voice you feel in the gut and you don't feel the need to do any "close reading." Both story and the film highly recommended.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

These days I am catching up with the British New Wave classics of the early 60s. Karel Reisz's 1960 film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is considered an important milestone of the same movement. It is no doubt a great achievement but it suffers a little in comparison with Lindsay Anderson's This Sporting Life which came a few years later, because the setting, the characters, the tone and the basic themes are common to both to a great extent. Anderson's film is much more stylish and also much more unrelentingly bleak and bruising and as a result packs a more powerful punch. In fact Reisz was initially roped in to direct This Sporting Life but he declined saying that it was very similar to what he had already done. He then acted as a producer and finally Anderson directed it.

Albert Finney plays a rebellious young man with a dead-end job at a tool factory whose personal motto of life is "I'm out for a good time - all the rest is propaganda!" and to fulfill the same he sets out on Saturday nights having fun and generally drinking himself sick. "Don't let the bastards grind you down!" he screams at his superiors at work and anybody who questions him or asks him to "settle down." To him settling down would mean accepting a life that his parents and in fact everybody around him has accepted as real - life spent in the kitchen and glued in front of the TV. In his rebellious quest he finds himself getting involved with a married woman (played by Rachel Roberts who was also wonderful in This Sporting Life) and when things get unexpectedly messy he is finally forced to make some tough decisions. The ending of the film is somewhat ambiguous but nowhere as bleak as in This Sporting Life.

Like Billy Liar Arthur is also struggling to keep his humanity intact in the grinding circumstances of the world he lives in. But unlike Billy he takes recourse in rage and anger to assert his individuality and freedom, even when this doesn't really take him anywhere for real. "What ever people say I am, that's what I'm not," he screams looking at the mirror. There is also a lot of anger directed towards the older generation who romanticise the past. "Them was rotten days" as one of the character says in the film after being subjected to some golden-ageism. Albert Finney really shines in the role as do the rest of the cast. The accents are a little tough to get into but once you get into the tone and rhythms of the voice patterns it becomes easier and in fact all those great dialogues I quoted above will make sense only when they are spoken in a proper accent. All in all, it is another forgotten gem from the British New Wave film movement.

John Schlesinger: Billy Liar

Once in a while one comes across a book or a film which feels as if it was there just for you, as if you owned them, they belonged only to you. John Schlesinger’s 1963 film Billy Liar made me feel like that. Of course I am not the only one who feels this way. I am sure even the strongest, the most decisive and action-oriented of people have experienced moments in their lives in which they felt that life was “difficult” and taken a refuge in inwardness, a private world of dreams, thoughts and fantasies – which feels like the only way to assert one’s freedom, individuality and autonomy in an indifferent outside world bent on crushing you. Billy Liar is considered to be one of the popular classics of British cinema of the 60s and I am only surprised that it took me such a long time to come across it. I have already seen it three times and can see many times more. This is quite simply one of the finest films I have seen in a long time and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Billy Fisher (played by a sensational Tom Courtenay) dreams of becoming a writer but spends all his time daydreaming about an imaginary country Ambrosia where he is by turns a war hero, a Mussolini-style dictator and a president. In his more down-to-earth mental wanderings he imagines gunning down his nagging family and his pesky boss. He also can’t help inventing lies about his family background making it sound melodramatic. When the film starts his lies have already gotten him into some trouble. He finds himself engaged to two girls who both even share the same engagement ring. He has misspent the office money and fudged the accounts. His firm by the way is in the business of selling "funeral furnishings." Most of it is incredibly funny in that special painful way, specially because Schlesinger edits together the fantasy and real sequences so well. In the later half of the film he meets the free-spirited Julie Christie (some sort of proto-hippie) who has also rejected the immediate world she is in but unlike him she is able to “act” on her fantasies of freedom. Towards the end there is a very poignant scene where Billy suddenly becomes serious and asks her if she also finds life to be "difficult." She just smiles, we know that she understands what he is going through. When she offers him a chance to escape to London he realizes how important it is for him and for a second we see him weighing down the two sides of the decision – the security of his private life as opposed to escape into the real with its fears, uncertainties and responsibilities, everything that comes with it. In the end you just pray that she could just hold him tight and not let him leave, but well ,the ending wouldn’t have worked the same way as it does now.

The interplay of fantasies with dreary reality reminded me of the recent film Pan’s Labyrinth though I think this film is much superior and much more complex than that. As I said it is nothing extraordinary to invent a private world in which one can be secure, free and powerful and most of our life as teenagers are indeed built around the same. That’s why superhero fantasies are so powerful and appealing and so universal. Although the basic idea is the same I thought Billy Fisher was a much more complex character than your average teenager fantasizing about being a superhero. Most of the film is actually shot on the outside, real location in the city of Bradford which is in the process of modernization with old buildings being demolished and new ones coming up which are no less dreary than the old ones. In this context the fantasies and lies of Billy rather paradoxically make him a much more “authentic” character because he is rejecting and negating the drab realities of his existence. He has escaped into a higher realm of truth which is beyond the “facts” of his world. This also reminded me of Robert Musil in The Man Without Qualities who says that in the modern world the “sense of the possible” can exist only in an inward-looking life – an approach built on the negation of what is merely “real” in a shallow way. In fact the only difference between Billy Fisher and a great artist or a writer is that he can’t get himself to act and start his novel that is inside him. (He gets stuck on what name he should choose before starting the book)

Tom Courtenay as I mentioned above is absolutely sensational in every single scene (and he is in almost every scene of the film). His tone and voice rhythms with which he relates his fantasies on the voice-over give those scenes a sense of poignancy which they wouldn’t have had otherwise. Julie Christie has a shorter role but she is absolutely stunning as well. The sequence in which she walks through the streets swinging her handbag is just pure cinema. Actually this scene is one of the hallmarks of French new wave cinema too – a celebration of freedom and free-spiritedness. Her character is also quite refreshingly forward looking – she openly says that she has had quite a few boyfriends and she is still portrayed as a “good girl.” The outdoor location cinematography is brilliant too in the way it uses those sights and sounds and makes them intrinsic to the story. There is a wonderful twist sequence with a wonderfully silly song (“Twisterella”) which almost made me break into a twist. Other characters are perfectly played as well – in fact I can’t think of any single thing in the film which is any less than pure perfection. I also think that they copied the “plastics” sequence in The Graduate from this film or at least took their inspiration from here. (In one of the sequence Billy’s boss shows him a miniature model of coffin made of Plastic - the future obviously!!)

Actually characters who struggle with their indecisiveness and their inability to seize the day and act are quite common in fiction and films but there aren’t many as painfully real as Billy Liar. This is one of the rare occasions when even after realizing that it was all just a story I kept wondering whatever happened to him after the story ended? What did he end up with and what became of him eventually? The truth is not that hard to find I guess, because I feel he is somewhere close to me, in fact a little too painfully close. Lots of details about the film and specially its sources here. I am already looking for the original novel now.

Lindsay Anderson: This Sporting Life

This Sporting Life was the first film directed by Lindsay Anderson and by any criteria it is certainly an extremely impressive debut. It belongs to the cycle or genre of British films in the early 60s which had angry young man and working class protagonists and which dealt with gritty and realistic subject matter. They are also, rather condescendingly I think, known as "kitchen-sink" films. There are lots of scenes shot inside the house (indeed around kitchen and sink) and it is all very depressing and gloomy as expected but that is only one part of the film.

Richard Harris (who played Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films) plays Frank, an aspiring and ambitious rugby player, who gets a lucky break because of his aggressive and confrontational style of playing. Although financially secure his attempts at transcending his class identity prove unsuccessful. Even more bitterly he is rebuffed by his widowed landlady who refuses to return his attentions mainly because she is still mourning for her dead husband and also because she can perhaps see through his macho-posturing and his violent personality and realise how hopeless their relationship will be in a conservative society like theirs.

The film is quite long and the story (and specially the ending) is utterly and relentlessly bleak but it is also very gripping mainly because the two lead actors are so good. Richard Harris looks and acts like young Marlon Brando - the inarticulate angry young man who can express himself only through aggression and violence. Rachel Roberts who plays the landlady also gives a painfully moving performance. They were both nominated for quite a few awards that year. The film also becomes more interesting because Anderson uses a non-linear style of storytelling with unexpected and random flashbacks. It is confusing initially but once you get into the rhythm the effect becomes very powerful. It is also shot very beautifully in a stark and realistic manner using the landscape to capture the feelings of despair and hopelessness very well. This goes very highly recommended! I am already looking for other kitchen-sink films now.

Lindsay Anderson: If...

Lindsay Anderson's If... is another very typical work of its time (it was released in 1968), alive with a sense of possibilities and bursting with anti-establishment fervour. For the audiences now, however, it feels ironic if not completely anachronistic. This tale of violent "resistance" by a small bunch of young students against their superiors and their "oppressors" at a British public school will remind more of random shootings in American schools rather than an act of revolution, even in the abstract. There was a flurry of articles a few months back, many of them film related, in American and European media about the youth movements of 1968 on the occasion of its 40th anniversary, most of them feeling nostalgic about the last time when there was any hope for change. The young generation now is probably the most conformist ever so a film like If... can only be appreciated as an artifact from a lost time.

There is also another reason for the change in perspective for contemporary audiences. Even at that time there were voices (even non-traditionalist and non-conservative) which expressed doubts and fears about the nature of youth movements. Albert Camus' essay The Rebel is probably the most representative and famous of these. Camus talked about the ethical issues (and granting that they were indeed "romantic" acts) behind anarchism and statements like "violence and revolution are the only pure acts" or "one man can change the world with a single bullet in the right place." Many of these doubts were later justified when the violent youth movements themselves degenerated into banal terroristic acts. A few months back I saw Fassbinder's The Third Generation which tried to comment on one such organization - the Baader-Meinhof gang in West Germany - about how their idealism degenerated into something that will find a place in a B-grade Bonnie and Clyde film.

If... is a great film, and totally deserving of the classic status that it has achieved. Malcolm McDowell leads a small gang of boys to rise up in violent "revolution" against the administrators and their seniors at the school who routinely punish the young boys in the name of abstractions like "glory", "tradition", "obedience" etc. The narrative of the film is very loose, we just see episodes from the life of these young boys. There is a beautiful sequence when McDowell and one of his friends escape outside and flirt with a beautiful waitress (who later joins their gang). Another member of his gang is attracted to a pretty blond boy who is his junior and there is a beautiful and quietly erotic scene in which the young boy gazes down from the railing at him when he is practicing gymnastics on the rails. I read somewhere that Anderson was himself a closeted homosexual and I think that explains the homoerotic gaze that is present in the film in quite a few places.

I also found the use of alternate B&W and Colour sequences interesting. On the commentary McDowell says that Anderson initially tried it just as an idea because he was not able to light the interiors of the Chapel as he wanted but then he liked the result and he used it at quite a few other places. As a result of this film gets a strange texture and mood. The B&W scenes have this dreamy quality which add to the atmosphere of the film. The long shots of the school are also very poetic and beautiful. The scenes of violence are also presented in a surrealistic manner which, for those few who had doubts (the film was apparently highly controversial when it came), makes it clear that it is not meant to be seen literally. A good article on the film from The Guardian.

Petulia

Richard Lester's Petulia feels like a very typical late 60s film. It belongs to the bunch of films of the initial years of what came to be known as the "new hollywood" and which later flourished in the early seventies. These films were inspired by the modernistic European art films, specially the new wave. These films emphasised form and style over content, eschewed simple psychological portraits with straightforward and cliched character motivations. They also rejected the conventional, linear, cause-and-effect narrative in favour of discontiuity both in time and in place, something that more than anything else separated these from the classical hollywood cinema.

Although it appears very confounding and complex at the beginning, Petulia actually tells a rather simple story of a love triangle involving the eponymous character (played by Julie Christie at her stylish best) who is living in an abusive marriage and who starts an affair out of whim with a doctor who is in the process of divorcing his wife. The story is told in a very non-linear way with many flashbacks and flash forwards. It is actually quite confusing at the beginning, because some cuts show the events prior to their meeting and others show the violent events which are yet to come but slowly everything starts to fall into place. The use of flashbacks is quite common in classical narrative cinema but the flashback here is nothing like in Casablanca for example. They are not meant to solve a narrative problem but rather to capture a tone and mood of disorientation and also jolt the viewer into awareness of the formal aspects of the storytelling.

Petulia is also modernistic in one other way. Rather than probing into the psychological depth of the lead characters, it is more interested in capturing the feel of the city of San Francisco, specially the fabled San Francisco of 1968. Everything in the city seems colour coded - buses, road signs, the clothes people wear on the streets, the facades of the buildings. It is all very colourful but it is also very inhuman, artificial and alienating. Even the hospital seems to be colour coded! In fact in one of the scenes when a patient asks why the TV set is not working, she is told that it is just a facade which is there only to make her want the "real" thing. The film also makes it clear in this way that it is this artificiality that is creating the rifts in interpersonal relationships though it doesn't belabour this theme very much. A few scenes actually reminded me of Antonioni, in his subjects and themes if not in his visual style. There are also some trippy montage sequences involving strange visual designs and also a sequence with Grateful Dead again placing the film into a very specific period - that of sixties counterculture.

All the three leads are very good and there is a bravura cameo by the always reliable Joseph Cotten as well, but the film finally belongs to the director and his team of technicians. Julie Christie always looked very stylish but she is even more so in this film. Fashion buffs will have a specially good time watching all those clothes she gets to wear in this film. Nicolas Roeg was the DP of the film and he did an extraordinary job with everything - the colour, texture, lighting, dissolves everything is just perfect and extremely evocative. It also appears that he probably stole his flashback, flashforward, jump cut style that became his trademark in his later films as a director from this film.

An article on the senses of cinema website about the film.

Meet Me in St Louis

Filling up the gap in my film history education, as I haven't seen even the most famous and classic movie musicals which everyone else seems to have. This 1944 film by Vincent Minnelli looks to me the most typical and generic of not only musicals but also those movies in which everything ends happily ever after just right at the time of Christmas.

As I said in my post on The Bandwagon, criticising these films feels pointless, and worse, almost like kicking a puppy, however irritatingly cute. Meet me in St Louis makes a case for regionalistic identity and the value of family and community ties - though it doesn't really take this theme of big city vs small town life too far. The songs are all wonderful though there aren't as many I would have liked. I specially loved the "The Boy Next Door" and "The Trolley Song". The title tune is also great, something that will keep you humming long after you have seen it.

Unlike in regular musicals most of the songs are not part of the narrative and they don't forward the plot, on the other hand they halt the narrative by making us aware of the inner feelings and mood of the character, which normal dialogues wouldn't have been able to do. Unlike The Bandwagon this is also much more conventional in visual design - there are no graceful camera movements or dissolves or things like that. It is mostly static with characters just standing and singing.

It is not all happy ending however. There is a little girl who is alarmingly obsessed with death, though ultimately her artificial cuteness offsets any dramatic import that those scenes might have had. There is however one scene in which she "kills" her ice statues after realizing that she wouldn't be able to take them with her when she leaves St. Louis which is genuinely powerful. Overall a good wholesome entertainment something I should have seen when I was a kid.

I'm Not There

It is often said that becoming an artist or a poet is the same as finding a "voice," which is seen as the key to authenticity, to who one is, the true self but what if one keeps reinventing the self? And after all isn't that what being in the world ultimately means? Todd Haynes' I'm Not There, the best and certainly the most interesting American film of last year, poses these and many other questions and makes you think about them too. The only problem, or actually more accurately an impediment, is that Haynes assumes an extensive familiarity with Dylan's work and career (and not so much his personal life) and also wider American cultural history in general. Those who are not steeped in these matters will find themselves baffled by the film, as I certainly was when I saw it last year. The new two-disc special edition DVD comes to rescue with a nice commentary and supplementary materials which to some extent provide the much needed footnotes to the film.

As probably everybody knows this is not a dramatization of Bob Dylan's life. It is more like an advanced level critical essay on his work - part biographical yes, but more a work of cultural criticism. We see many different aspects of the idea of Bob Dylan. We see him as Rimbaud explicating his philosophy of self and language by answering questions in some kind of court room trial. The title of film, though taken directly from one of his songs, also seems to make a reference to the oft-quoted line by Rimbaud - "I is someone else", which in other words means that the moment you conceptualize your self as an abstraction you are already alienated from that idea. By casting Bob Dylan in this light Haynes himself acknowledges the limitations of any straightforwardly "factual" way of approaching him. So in other narratives which run in parallel throughout the film, Haynes tries to capture the various facets of "idea" of Dylan as constructed by his fans and admirers, the idea as an amalgamation of his influences, the idea as a spontaneous outcome of a specific subculture in a specific time and place. He also delves into his personal life but again more interested in a generalized idea. Played by Heath Ledger, it is actually the weakest section of the film for obvious reasons since it feels so far removed from his "work". I was also baffled by the "Billy the Kid" section and I am also not familiar with the Sam Peckinpah film in which Dylan acted so may be that's one reason.

As noted elsewhere also the best part is the one played by Cate Blanchett - the celebrity prophet, the so-called "voice of the generation", hounded by reporters and fans. It is also the most inspired section in visual terms. Haynes pays homage to 8 1/2, which actually enriches it thematically besides making it look absolutely ravishing. Haynes also says that he was making references to Godard's 60s films in the Heath Ledger section but I couldn't really appreciate it. He also says that he cast Charlotte Gainsbourg because she looked like the "kind" of woman which would have interested Dylan - again making it clear that the film is not interested in character but rather an idea or abstraction.

I had a couple of complaints or rather doubts about the film. First, Haynes makes absolutely no reference to Dylan's "real" ethnic roots. I understand the idea here is to show him rejecting any passively imposed identity and create and invent new ones for himself but it would have made more sense to show what he was really escaping from or rejecting. I find it specially intriguing because being a Jew he belonged to an ethnic minority in America. Without this his conversion to christianity and his later "religious" phase (you have to always use quotes talking about this film!) doesn't make a lot of sense. The other complaint is about the songs. With someone as imaginative and intelligent as Haynes at the helm I expected some sharp interpretations of his songs. As it is now, there is only one sequence which comes close to doing it - the sequence where Cate Blanchett sings about the mysterious "Mr. Jones". This is probably the best scene in the film too. (It can be seen here. The original is here.) In one other case however Haynes almost spoils a great song (contains mild nudity).

Overall this is not only a fascinating film but also demanding and very intellectually engaging. For those who are new or unfamiliar with Dylan it will inspire them to take a trip to the library or a bookstore and get a volume of one of those critical cultural and historical studies inspired by his work (I haven't done it yet) and there is no greater proof of the success of the film. This is also I think a major step forward for Haynes in what already looks like a very important body of work in contemporary American cinema. Both Safe and Far From Heaven are major and important masterworks and Velvet Goldmine was great too. I have been looking to get my hand on "Poison" and some of his early experimental medium length films but haven't been able to so far.

The Great Silence

I don't like "Spaghetti Westerns" that much but this 1968 film The Great Silence by Sergio Corbucci really won me over, mainly on account of the shockingly bleak ending which is guaranteed to leave anyone gaping in horror and stunned disbelief. Sergio Leone's films and other revisionist westerns are also pessimistic but they are still centred around a more or less conventional masculine hero representing good who ultimately triumphs over evil, even though the films often acknowledge the moral and spiritual costs of revenge and violence. In Corbucci's world good however (or even moderately decent) has absolutely no chance of survival against evil and any kind of human decency always turns out to be a fatal and mortal weakness.

In the film Klaus Kinski plays a brutal and sadistic "bounty-hunter" named Loco who along with his minions is murdering petty outlaws to collect the reward which the law has placed on their heads. After one of his latest rounds of killings, the wife of one of his victims vows to take revenge and asks "the great silence" played by Jean-Louis Trintignant for help. He is introduced as a mythical, almost God-like figure, with one character claiming that he is called "silence" because wherever he goes "the silence of death follows." The real story turns out to be more prosaic and brutal. Basically when he was a kid one of those evil bounty-hunters murdered his parents and so that he wouldn't be able to speak as a witness they cut his throat and made him mute. So he has a personal grudge against Loco and the stage is set for the final confrontation but everything doesn't go as expected.

Corbucci's visual style is messy and nowhere near as elgant as Sergio Leone's, specially in the way the gunfight scenes are edited and spliced together. In great westerns these scenes come out as if elegantly choreographed but here it is mostly a mess. He however more than makes up for it by shooting the snow-covered landscapes in a very evocative manner. There are also some beautiful shots of mirrors and reflections.

The best part of the film however, and which makes the ending so powerful, is the score by Ennio Morricone. It must surely rank with one of his best (which admittedly will be much more than quite a few). It is not what one expects from a score for a western but it works beautifully all the more because of it. Unfortunately Kinski's voice is dubbed but he is still very good. Some of his closeups and his cold blue eyes send shivers down the spine. Trintignant doesn't have a word to say but he is also a very powerful presence in the film. The newcomer african-american actress Vonetta McGee is also quite good and I am guessing that the sex scene between her and Trintignant must also be one of the first to involve to a white hero and a black actress.

Throughout the film Corbucci makes his anarchistic (as opposed to Fascist) political ideas very clear. Unlike regular westerns, or even films like Dirty Harry which is based on the same mythology and character types, law isn't shown to be wimpy and unable to deal with criminals but rather law itself turns out to be the source of criminality and injustice. Throughout the film Loco keeps insisting that he is only following the law which makes him very different from conventional psychopathic villain, in the sense that he represents the "system" itself. In this light the unhappy ending makes even more sense.

The wikipedia article of the film is quite good. Not suprisingly Michael Haneke is a great fan of the ending too. The DVD also contains an alternative happy ending involving what can only be called a deus ex machina. It is ridiculous and funny in way and it seems Corbucci had a lot of fun shooting this alternative sequence.

Who Can Kill a Child?

As is clear from the title, this 1976 Horror film from Spain will not be to everybody's taste. Those who get past this initial hurdle will find themselves subjected to a long and horrific title sequence consisting of newsreel footage from the various horrors of twentieth century, holocaust, riots, famine, war etc showing children suffering, tortured, maimed and killed. I had convinced myself at that point that the film would be a fraud but ultimately it did manage to convince me of its sincerity and seriousness not long after. Many contemporary horror film makers also exploit real life horrors to justify depiction of torture and cruelty on screen (Abu Ghraib has become a familiar real life example) but watching the film itself shows how shameless and craven they are in exploiting those. I can't really pinpoint anything specific and in particular which makes Who Can Kill a Child? different and superior but I could sense a feeling of moral seriousness beneath the images of the film.

The effect of the title sequence remains with the viewer throughout the film and gives what follows a dark and despairing political subtext. The director Narciso Ibáñez Serrador in the interview says that it was his mistake to put the title sequence at the beginning and that he should have kept it for the end but personally I don't think it would have had the same effect as it does now. As the film starts we see a British couple vacationing in coastal Spain. The wife is in fact pregnant, in fact quite heavily so, which makes you wonder what they are really doing traipsing around so far away from home. (The pregnancy of course provides a horrific narrative payoff later in the film.) On their tourist excursion they find themselves on a small, remote island which initially seems to be eerily deserted with only unfriendly children and no adults in sight. They soon learn the horrific truth - children have had enough of the adult violence and it is now the payback time. I won't reveal what happens but it is quite violent (actually feels more violent than it actually is) and has a memorably bleak ending.

The look of the film is quite different from what one expects from a "horror" film - mainly because it is shot in blindingly shiny day light. The real locations are also very well exploited - there is something beautiful, bleak and eerie in that rural coastal landscape which contributes a lot to the resulting dread.

Pregnant women are advised to stay away and also those couples who are thinking about their decision to bring an innocent being into this violent and cruel world. Otherwise recommended to fans of serious and intelligent horror films. Guaranteed to leave you unsettled, even to give you a few nightmares.

Dodsworth

William Wyler's 1936 drama about the dissolution of a wealthy American couple's marriage is one of his best efforts, may be only slightly below The Letter, Best Years of Our Lives or The Heiress (of the ones that I have seen). It is refreshingly mature and unsentimental in tackling a host of subjects and themes - American provincial life, European vs American culture, snobbery, gender, aging etc.

Walter Huston plays the title character, an auto mogul, who after selling his business, decides to go on a European tour with his wife Fran, played by Ruth Chatterston (who is very impressive in the role). In Europe they both realize that they want different things from life, though in their own ways they both are uncomfortable with the onset of old age. Fran gets herself involved with a bunch of rich and faded aristocrat type men but all her affairs come to nothing. Many of these scenes very subtly criticise European mores, it portrays these people as if they were still just pretending to believe in Old Europe. Fran's final lover is an Austrian aristocrat but has actually lost all his wealth and on top of that he is a hopeless mama's boy!

She also soon gets impatient with her husband's provincial and stubbornly "American" way of life, which as the film presents it, is much more "authentic" and devoid of hypocrisy. It doesn't however trumpet the triumphalism of American culture or even get self-righteous about it. It would have been tempting to turn the wife into a villain but Wyler manages to avoid that. He shows that their marriage, though outwardly successful, has been dull and lifeless all along, specially for Fran who has spent her entire life living as a model provincial wife. There is also a subplot involving Mary Astor who plays a seemingly happy widow with whom Dodsworth tries to imagine a life of meaning and adventure.

Huston deservedly got an Oscar nomination for the role. He is really pitch-perfect for the part and so is Ruth Chatterston in the role of the wife. We can see how subtly they are transformed from self-confident, happy, even smugly satisfied to dejected, anxious and fearful old couple. One of the better romantic dramas of classic hollywood.

Suddenly, Last Summer

Suddenly, Last Summer has to be one of the most bizarre films to come out of classic Hollywood. To be honest the strangeness belongs entirely to the original play by Tennessee Williams which I have not read yet but will definitely do so soon. The film adaptation by Joseph L. Manckiewicz, as befits his reputation, is quite straightforward and flat cinematically but even then it remains an unforgettable experience. I was not at all surprised to learn that it had lots of censorship problems but even after all the cuts it manages to touch a lot of shocking and taboo topics and goes quite some way beyond the acceptable limits of what "normal" and mainstream movies are supposed to be about.

The film basically contains two long monologues with brief scenes in between. Elizabeth Taylor plays Catherine who seems to go insane after witnessing the death of his cousin Sebastian during their European vacation. Sebastian's mother Mrs Venable, played by Katharine Hepburn, is trying to cover up the truth about the horrible circumstances of his death by persuading a young doctor, played by a very ill-looking Montgomomery Clift, to lobotomise Catherine. In the end Catherine under the influence of a truth-serum tells the shocking story of what really happened "Suddenly Last Summer".

The film, as I said, effectively contains two long monologues delivered by both the lead actresses. I sometimes wonder why more films don't use this device of monologue since it offers so many poetic possibilities. I can't think of any director after Bergman and Fassbinder who used monologues effectively. (Not surprisingly they both had successful parallel career in theatre.) In the first monologue Katherine Hepburn recounts a trip she took with his son to the Galapagos islands where they both saw with their own eyes the horrible sight of flesh eating birds devouring the just-born turtles. This cruelty of nature convinces Sebastian that he has finally seen the "face of God," a cruel, psychopathic God. He is shown to have strong nihilistic strain in his personality and disturbingly the film links it to his artistic vocation of poetry and his homosexuality. To him love is just a facade under which people use and exploit each other. He doesn't even spare his own mother and cousin from this.

Gore Vidal who co-wrote the screenplay with Williams has been one of the most prominent gay rights activist in America and it is actually interesting to see it as a mockery of society's homophobia by exaggerating the portrayal of homosexual character by turning him into a faceless voiceless paedophile, with a cold and monstrous heart. Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor are as expected both very good, though they do ham it up good at a couple of places. The final scene in which Taylor screams for "help" comes off as ridiculously over the top and so does the first scene in which Hepburn enters the stage through a bizarre elevator. I don't think any of these is their faults though. Overall I found it quite unsettling, something that is hard to shake off easily. Specially admirable since it was a mainstream success, garnering a few Oscar nominations, including a couple for the two leads.

À nos amours

Superficially and thematically Maurice Pialat's A nos amours resembles any number of French films which explore the sexual awakening of precocious young women. In fact it is such a recurring subject that it almost seems like an entire subgenre of french cinema itself. Contrary to what one normally expects (in line with "teen movies" that Hollywood makes) these are not youthful films at all - they don't look forward into the future with a sense of possibilities, possibilities of adventures and knowledge that comes from sexual experience. Rather, the tone in these films is almost Miltonic - sexual knowledge leading to the fall and the despair resulting from the loss of the prelapsarian paradise. I don't want to imply that these are conservative films or in any way support social conservatism or taboos. In most of the cases they are extremely frank and sometimes downright brutal and direct, as in this case. Sex in these films is seen as a source of psychological alienation - the mind-body problem that is one of the keys to the human condition. Erich Rohmer is probably the most accomplished thinker and director on this subject in french cinema. His "Moral Tales" (specifically Claire's Knee, My Night at Maud's and The Collector) explore almost every aspect of this subject and feel like making almost the final statement on it.

More recently, Catherine Breillat has used the same prototype to deliver assaults on the institution of heterosexual relationship. She sees sexual awakening not as a loss of innocence and the feeling of "one-ness" but rather an intiation of women into a world of brutality, exploitation and nothingness which to her are intrinsic elements of any female experience of heterosexual romance. Daft, of course, but an interesting view nevertheless. Specially when you see scenes like one in which her lead actress mournfully intones "I'm a hole", all the time holding her lover's organ in her hands. I do think she is quite an interesting fimmaker even if much too often, she is too intellectual, too doctrinaire and too strident to be taken really seriously. Though I think Fat Girl is a major masterpiece, one of the key texts of feminist cinema. Interestingly the criterion DVD of A nos amours contains a brief appreciative interview of Breillat, who was actually one of Pialat's protegees. (She worked as one of co-screenwriters and directorial assistant in one of his films).

Coming back to the film, it does lend itself to all these readings but ultimately the film still feels very elusive. The simple plot is about an adolescent girl, played by an astonishingly good (and maddeningly sexy) Sandrine Bonnaire, who goes on a sexual rampage in order to escape from her dysfunctional family. There is something perverse in the way Pialat shows her relationship with her family members, not just her father, played by Pialat himself, but also her mother and her elder brother who all seem to be jealous of her, because of her budding sexuality and often react with abrupt violence. She in turn refuses to have sex with the nice-looking, if rather effete, boy who she is in love with and arbitrarily breaks-up with him. She then promiscuously sleeps with any number of boys, who are all much more macho-looking, who come in her way. In a memorable and actually pretty disturbing scene she responds to the "thank you" of one of those boys by saying "You're welcome. It's free." The film sustains this tone of bitterness for its entire length, ending with a haunting freeze frame (again a recurring feature in french films). She feels certain that she will never be happy anymore in her life and her last chance of happiness was the time she spent with her boyfriend in the alps (before all the sex stuff came in between) again invoking that Miltonic theme. In fact the title of the film also underscores the same. (It means "for our loves" in English.)

The family scenes are shot in a very naturalistic style, without any hint of dramatisation, because of which the sudden eruption of violence feel all the more painful. Pialat has been compared to Cassavetes and it is easy to see why. I can understand the motivation of using this style of film-making and the immediacy and unmediated intensity it brings but still I personally feel a bit remote from this school of film making. I would much rather have Bergman (Scenes from a Marriage) or Fassbinder. I don't agree that dramatizing devices necessarily distance the viewers and lessen the emotional impact of a scene. In fact they give viewers space where they can think for themselves and then feel. Most of the interviews and commentaries on the disc emphasise the fact that the film was highly improvised and one of the main intentions of Pialat was to dissolve the artificial barrier between the actor as a person and the character that he or she plays in the film. The scene where the father talks about the "missing dimple" was not in the script and the talk genuinely seems to have taken Bonnaire by surprise and it shows in the scene. There is something mysterious in that scene which wouldn't have been there if it were pre-planned and rehearsed - the idea of the unique and unrepeatable moment that still photographers and even documentary film makers always try to capture on film.

As I said, Sandrine Bonnaire is extraordinary in the film. In fact I was feeling jealous myself all the time too! I had seen her in Claude Chabrol's La Ceremonie before and she was excellent in that as well (though probably eclipsed by Isabelle Huppert who has the more flambuoyant part in it) but really she is in a class of her own in this film. I was actually shocked to learn that she was only 15 when she did it. I mean she doesn't really look 15 from any angle but more than that it is difficult to imagine such a young actor having access to such complexities of inner life with all its difficult and mysterious emotions. She doesn't really try too hard and as a matter of fact more credit goes to Pialat and her style of film making that makes it look all so effortless and natural but it is still impossible to imagine the film without her presence. She reminded me of young Sissy Spacek, who was probably much older but looked very young, when she acted those classic 70s films with Mallick, De Palma and Altman. And also, of course, of young Isabelle Huppert but the film wouldn't have been the same with any of these actresses. It is impossible to describe in words what really happens on her face, as she sizes up and down a good looking boy through her gaze or stares into the space mysteriously. You just have to see it yourself.

Miss Julie

I saw this 1951 Swedish film last Saturday. It is an adaptation of the Strindberg's classic play of the same name, perhaps his most famous and certainly the most often performed. I found it visually captivating and emotionally affecting, mainly due to its director Alf Sjoberg's visually inventive style and superb and stirring performances by the two leads. Notwithstanding its obvious artistry, most casual viewers will still be offended (and justifiably so) by Strindberg's politics, not only of gender but also of class, but that would be a somewhat shallow reaction. I think a more intellectually stimulating way to respond to it will be to see it as an expression of Strindberg's ideology of negation, rather than simple misogynistic and reactionary fantasies and ravings of a bitterly pessimistic man and in that sense it provides a lot of thought-provoking ideas to both feminist and socialist-progressive critics.

First a few words about the contents of the play. It is a tragedy in one act. The whole play is set in the kitchen of a manor house in the countryside. Outside the servants of the house and the general public are celebrating the midsummer eve by singing, dancing and drinking. Inside the kitchen there rages the age-old battle of the sexes btween the two lead characters - Miss Julie, the daughter of the house and Jean the valet. Miss Julie is taught by her evil feminist mother to hate all men which is a problem for her because she lusts for sex and secretly longs for degradation, specially on this midsummer eve, when she has been acting "wild." She has also recently broken off her engagement because she treated her fiancee as a dog (literally so). Jean on the other hand is bitterly self-conscious of his social-status, having grown-up on a life-time of abuse and humiliation. He has big ideas about becoming a man of wealth and stature but like Miss Julie, slavery is so deep-rooted in his soul that just the voice of his master is enough to make him forget all his grand ideas and turn him into a meek dog. The two meet, one looking to degrade herself and the other looking up (in one scene both tell their dreams accordingly in explicit terms) and ultimately everything ends in a tragedy, but only after Strindberg has poured as much of his bitterness as he could in the mutual violent recriminations of the two. (By the way what is it with the sadistic directors and the poor canaries? Fassbinder murdered one in his Berlin Alexanderplatz too. Thankfully both happen offscreen and are staged, or at least I hope so.)

The play is restricted to just one space but film manages to break it open into outside and it becomes really beautiful. I don't know how the midsummer nights in nordic countries feel like but it looks wonderful on the screen. Sjoberg also tranforms the monologues of the play into actual action in the film, some of them very inventively. It reminded me of what Bergman did in Wild Strawberries. It is similar here, Miss Julie imagines the possibilities of some action and we actually see her in the foreground as the action as she imagines it unfolds in the background. The dream sequences are also imaginatively shot.

As I said, the politics of the play and the film may alienate a lot of fair-minded viewers. Strindberg's basic point is undeniable though. Feminism (actually it is a particular variety, mostly in Strindberg's imagination) can leave women alienated from their true, authentic selves - as constituted by their desires, instincts and psycho-sexual proclivities - and so can result in despair and tragedy like what happened to Miss Julie. It is actually true for any other ideological system as well. Strindberg is only wrong in what he thinks is feminism. Real feminism (like in Simone de Beauvoir for example) is not about conforming to some ideal, whether of subservient female, a lesbian or a manhating harpy, but rather finding and creating one's own identity and purusing it with full autonomy and freedom. Thought in this way it is actually a solution for alienation and despair. Also, anybody who is acquainted with the notion of "false consciousness" will see in automatised slavery of Jean an expression of the same. Strindberg, unlike Marxists and other progressive critics, is too pessimistic to believe that anything can ever be done for these people.

In short a thought-provoking, gripping and capivating film. It won quite a few awards in its time, including the grand prize at the Cannes film festival, but is not so well known these days, at least outside Sweded where it is considered a classic. It might be because Bergman has crowded out most of Swedish cultural output in the outside world. Incidentally Sjoberg also directed Torment in 1944 which was Bergman's first screenplay. I saw it recently too and found it quite good - characteristically dark and bleak, though also youthful.

Performance

Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg's 1970 classic Performance is the kind of film which divides the critical opinion to the extremes. Richard Schickel in Time called it "the most disgusting, the most completely worthless film I have seen since I began reviewing" and the cranky critic John Simon thought it was "indescribably sleazy, self-indulgent and meretricious." At the same time estimable British film critic Colin MacCabe considers it "the greatest British film ever made." (All quotes from this review of Colin MacCabe's book on the film from the BFI classics series.) I personally thought it was awful but in a totally sui-generis way. In fact it is the kind of awful film we can't have enough of, specially in these times when we get only generic kind of awful films. Even the so-called artistic films feel generic and predictable.

In the first half of the film we follow the daily routine of an ultra-violent young gangster and a thug Chas (James Fox in an extremely impressive and solid role) as he goes on his regular work of beating and shooting people. After he disobeys one of the orders he is himself very brutally roughed up and when he kills off one of his assailants he is forced to flee from both the police and the boss. He finds shelter in the apartment of a has-been rock star played by Mick Jagger (who like the film itself defines his own category of awfulness) and his two female concubines. It is very hard to summarize what happens in the second half of the film, although it is advisable that one should take some psychedelic drugs or at least be a little high to really appreciate all the mind-bending stuff that goes on.

I won't hazard a guess as to what really happens and what it all means actually but at a general level it is pretty obvious. As the title clearly indicates the film is about the idea of human identity as a performance. Who one is, is really all about impersonation and role playing and this includes one's gendered identity too. This was also one of the main elements of counterculture ethos. The idea that one has to shed one's socially imposed identity and search for a new self, taking help from sex and drugs on the way. Further, the film seems to point out a line of continuity between the public persona of a gangster and a rock star, and by analogy between creativity and violence. "The only performance that makes it, that really makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness" as one of the key lines of the film has it.

The film is full of references to other art-forms. Borges seems to the pre-eminent deity of the film. His portrait appears at a key moment in the film as a bullet goes through it. Cammell also mentioned that idea of the film came from reading Vladimir Nabokov's Despair. In any case, the idea of psychological double, identity crisis and identity switching is not so uncommon in films or literature. The most famous of all might be Bergman's Persona. I also love Robert Altman's 3 Women which is similarly mind-bending exercise in identity switching.

What gives Performace its special status is the accuracy and intimacy with which it captures the look and feel of the "swinging London." These people wake up to a good casual threesome sex. Soon after the girl injects some drug into her bottom as nonchalantly as if she were taking morning tea. In one scene all three are in the bath tub and Jagger asks the two girls to smell his hair and see if it needs washing! I don't know, I had my anthropological eye open that's what kept me going in a serious way.

It was also the first film in which Roeg used his trademark cut-up technique of extreme non-linear editing. It is extremely effective here, much more than it is in his later films (I have seen only Don't Look Now and Bad Timing). I sometimes wonder why this hasn't become so common, specially since it is such a powerful and effective way to represent subjectivity, stream of consciousness and a process of thought in cinema. When in fact films do use it they make it look more a like a music video or an advertising commercial. Mainstream narrative cinema still unfortunately seems to be stuck in the linear cause and effect sort of editing.

As expected the film feature a truly avant-garde musical score composed by fantastically named Jack Nitzsche. Mick Jagger also sings a song called "Memo from Turner". It is a pretty strange song, and it gets even stranger in the film. The set-design, specially in the second half is also excellent. The background is full of references to surrealistic paintings and other art works, most of which will require many repeat viewings to actually pin down.

In short, Performance is a thoroughly unique (and depending on context questionable) experience. Definitely deserves a wider renown, much beyond its cult reputation. Senses of Cinema has an article on Donald Cammell which also has some insightful remarks about the film. Cammell's career never really took off and he tragically took his own life in 1996 at the age of 62. Nicholas Roeg went on to make a bunch of classics, which though mostly reviled and lambasted by establishment critics have managed to garner cult reputation. Jim Hoberman also has some interesting things to say about the film.

Vincent Minnelli: The Band Wagon

A major gap in my film history education so far has been my relative unfamiliarity with American movie musicals. I also feel somewhat reluctant to do anything about it since I am not particularly fond of this genre. Recent death of one of the great stars of MGM musicals Cyd Charisse and reading all the eulogies prompted me to see the classic 1953 musical The Band Wagon by Vincent Minnelli. (An appreciation of her in new york times here.)

To call it inconsequential, I realize, will itself be a totally inconsequential complaint. One is supposed to admire the craft and the skill, the way bodies move gracefully through the space and the way it manages to express a feeling, though in this case, it is true only for one dance sequence in the film, "Dancing in the Dark" (copied below). Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse enter the central park (created on the studio sets) as colleagues in an upcoming dance musical and leave as lovers. The dance sequence captures this progression beautifully, the effect couldn't have been the same if it had used any other narrative means. Rest of the song and dance pieces are also very skillfully done. Specially the last one in which Fred Astaire parodies a sleazy hard-boiled detective from one of those film-noirs, complete with blonde and brunette femme fatales. (The blonde in trenchcoat will remind of Kiss Me Deadly. The youtube only has a section of the whole sequence.) My eyebrows were raised at the way the film seems to offer an apology (or defence, depending on one's point of view) of populist mass entertainment but then again it is, as I understand, totally missing the point. Anyway here is the "Dancing the Dark" sequence...

Douglas Sirk: Imitation of Life

Douglas Sirk's 1959 classic melodrama Imitation of Life is that rare thing - an intellectually provocative film which is also an excellent exercise for the lachrymal glands. Be prepared with at least half a dozen hankies before you watch it. It didn't make me cry (but that is only me) but left me feeling quite bitter. I still prefer his earlier film All that Heaven Allows more which not only has a satirical tone which is missing in this film but also exhibits a more self-conscious critical intelligence in its expose of the hypocrisy, shallowness, cruelty and materialism of social and family life in suburban America of the 50s. Imitation of Life is actually even more bitter and the picture it presents of American society even uglier, which is all the more powerful and effective because it is presented to us through remarkably glossy and shiny images. It is this stylistic irony that makes Sirk so beloved of critics and directors, specially those who use popular genres and employ irony as a tool of social criticism. As I have mentioned many times before on this blog, I really love the Fassbinder and Todd Haynes versions of the Heaven story.

Imitation of Life tells the story of four women who struggle to make their life more than just imitations of life. Lola is an aspiring actress who has been struggling hard and having a rough time at it after her husband's death. By chance she meets a black woman Annie Johnson, mother of a daughter herself, who is herself desperate for finding a job of a housemaid because no one wants to employ a maid with a child. Lola reluctantly agrees to take her into her household. The story then follows two different threads. First is about Lora and how she navigates the sexually opportunistic world of show-business and finds success. The second thread follows Annie's daughter Sara Jane who tries to deny her racial identity (she is light-complexioned) in order to find fulfillment in life. For her denying the racial identity is same as denying her mother which is the main source of dramatic conflict, specially when the mother is so super-humanly angelic and self-sacrificing. The scene where she goes to meet her daughter in California (where she works as a backstage extra in a sleazy variety show) for the last time must be one of the saddest in the all of classical Hollywood.

The way Sirk takes the thrust of the story away from Lana Turner (the film's obvious star attraction) and the white protagonists is another subversive element which distinguishes it from other soapy-melodramas. To give black characters autonomy and their own subjectivities must have been revolutionary at that time, when they were mostly consigned to supporting and stereotyped roles. Also the way he deals with the thorny question of racial (and in general any persecuted minority) identity is pretty sophisticated. Sara Jane can't understand why she can't live like a white person when she has a white skin. In a society which is racist and discriminatory identity is not something one can just simply choose. And in such a society repudiating who one is is an unethical and politically reactionary act, even when one doesn't identify explicitly with the group. It is Sara Jane's tragedy that she can't fathom the true ethical horror of her decision, at least not until it is too late. The actors who play Annie and Sara Jane (Juanita Moore and Susan Kohner) are also both astonishingly good. They were deservedly nominated for Oscars though they didn't win. There is also a brilliant and very moving rendition of a gospel song at the end of the film by renowned gospel singer Mahalia Jackson (billed prominently in the credits). The film was also a huge box office smash but was dismissed by critics as being too soapy and melodramatic. It was only in 70s that Sirk's films grew in reputation with european critics and directors like Fassbinder started championing him. Sirk had retired long before, in fact it was his last film in hollywood, he went back to Europe and lived a life of retirement and occasionally teaching at film school).

I need to see some of his other films too - specially The Magnificent Obsession. In any case Imitation of Life and All that Heaven Allows are two of the finest melodramas made in Hollywood. Just keep those hankies ready.

John Frankenheimer: Seconds

John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate is one of the best and certainly the strangest political thrillers to have ever come out of Hollywood. The remake starring Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep which came a few years ago was excellent too but still the original remains unsurpassed, even by the great paranoia classics of the 70s like The Parallax View or The Conversation, of which it was definitely a precursor.

Seconds is not really a paranoia thriller though it definitely has some elements of that genre too. The story reminded me of Vanilla Sky and its original Spanish film Open Your Eyes though it must be said that use of plastic surgery to gain a new identity isn't really a unique or uncommon idea for a plot. It is not just the idea but what you do with it and how that matters and the film really scores in that department. The film begins with a sad and nervous looking man, approaching his old age named Arthur Hamilton being followed by a mysterious person and getting calls from a friend long thought of as dead. After a while we learn that he is being offered a chance to change his identity by faking his death and transform himself to a different and younger person, that is to have a "Second" go at life. The outfit making the offer identifies itself simply as "The Company." He is initially skeptical but after reflecting on it and giving a truly unsettling and disturbing monologue, reflecting on the usual stuff - how life is wasted in the pursuit of the trivial and the realization of the essential phoniness of human relations in modern society - he accepts the offer. As expected he gets a new life with the personality of Rock Hudson and an apartment in california but soon enough he realizes once again that the life of a "Second" is not what he had really expected it to be. What follows is really too shocking to reveal here and you must see it for yourself. Suffice to say that the ending is really downbeat and frightening.

As I said, the plastic surgery plot is quite cliched even when it is mixed with a sharp and biting social critique but what makes the film so powerful is its visual style and the atmosphere Frankenheimer creates with his extraordinary set-design and some of the most bizarre camera-angles and scene compositions ever. (It was the work of pioneering cinematographer James Wong Howe.) Like in The Manchurian Candidate one of his signature style is having a face in an extreme closeup in one corner of the frame with the background still in deep focus. He also uses the architectural interiors in a very evocative manner. The film also uses lot of really strange point-of-view and hand held shots all in effect create a nightmarish ambience which gives the story its power. It is a great classic, surprisingly little known even among the fans of sci-fi and horror.

There is a great essay on the film on the senses of cinema website, though I must say that the claim that it is the most depressing movie ever is obviously a hyperbole. That living a "normal" life (that is materialistic and acquisitive) is the same as wasting a life isn't really a revolutionary idea after all, however unsettling it might be to introspect on it.

A Face in the Crowd

I saw Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd yesterday, a terrific film in every respect. There is absolutely no reason why it should remain unheralded as a genuine American classic, it is every bit as a good as On the Waterfront, in fact in some respect even better as the subject matter - the nexus between politics and pop culture entertainment and the inbuilt potentiality of culture industry for demagoguery - remain more relevant for our times than ever before.

This is a typical American phenomenon though of course it is now no longer confined just to America. Almost everywhere Politics has transformed into show business, a variation on vulgar popularity contests, with politicians playing the role of media personalities. The fine line which separated advertising, public relations, media, business, politics and entertainment no longer exists. Kazan's film is an extremely sharp, and somewhat bitter, expose of this phenomena before it really became mainstream.

Andy Griffith gives a tour-de-force performance as a country singer who becomes a national media phenomenon not long after starting as an improvisational singer in a local community radio program "A Face in the Crowd". His rise is shown in a highly exaggerated (and very witty) manner. He is advising presidential hopefuls about how to run their campaigns. He is even offered a role in the cabinet, handling the department of boosting of national morale. Politically Kazan and his writer Budd Schulberg (they were together responsible for On the Waterfront as well) are firmly positioned on the left. Lonesome Rhodes might be a voice from the grassroots but he is still a demagogue, a populist demagogue but that doesn't change the essential nature of his politics. The senator he is helping is obviously a right winger who is exhorting people to be "individualistic" like true Americans so that he can cut social security and pensions!

The tone of the film is hyperbolic and bitterly satirical, may be that's one reason why it wasn't a success when it was first released. Also, the fact that people generally won't take kindly to the suggestion that they are just dumb sheep, always ready to believe what they see on TV or listen on radio. In its mood and tone, and also the subject matter, it is similar to Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole though fortunately it avoids excessively misanthropy and spleen. It also seems to be a precursor of Robert Altman's classic and much superior Nashville, which also explores the intersection between politics and culture industry. Nashville is also a satire but it is much more subtle, complex and incisive.

Kazan is a very important figure in the history of American films, mainly because of his conception of film acting ushered in a new era. Andy Griffith in this film is in the same league as James Dean and Marlon Brando. He was not a trained actor, he was actually a stand-up artist which fits perfectly with the role in this film. He is not "polished" which is exactly what his character also is. The rest of the cast is also superb as is the subtle but very effective visual style of the film. A great film in all respects, certainly deserves to be on the same shelf as On the Waterfront.

For more, an article by Jim Hoberman in Village Voice.

Southland Tales

Richard Kelly's follow-up to his sensational debut Donnie Darko is even more logic resistant than its predecessor. When it premiered at the Cannes film festival last year it was widely ridiculed and booed by critics and audiences. After reading a few reports and reviews it appeared to be the kind of film I would like but now that I have seen it I was a little disappointed by it. But only a little. Parts of it are excellent and very funny satire of contemporary American culture and politics and even though these parts never cohere to become one whole, which is actually part of the plan since the idea is to convey the essential chaos and fragmented and non-teleological nature of contemporary reality, which is absolutely fine, the film is still fitfully insightful about lots of things.

What happens in the film is very difficult to describe. The plot involves a porn actress with visionary pretensions named "Krysta Now" played by Sarah Michelle Gellar who also aspires to become an entrepreneur and a singer. The "Now" in her last name captures the philosophy of instant gratification which is the basic idea underlying pornography, and of course our entertainment industry in general. She also hosts a talk show and discusses violence, politics and argues why "teen Horniness is not a crime" (it is part of the song she sings.) Then there is an amnesiac action hero played "The Rock" who goes around looking blank-faced and at the same time mimicking Arnold Schwarzenegger. There are actually quite a few characters in the film who are suffering from amnesia which is obviously intended to be some kind of cultural commentary. Other characters include an Iraq veteran who keeps reading from the book of revelation about the apocalypse on the voiceover throughout the film and the republican candidates Eliot and Frost (yes, the great poets) who are being blackmailed by a bunch of self-styled terrorists who call themselves "Neo-Marxists". They want a ban on the Big Brother-style company USIDent which keeps an eye on all the citizens over the internet which is being run by a matriarch straight out of The Manchurian Candidate. And yes before all of this, there was a Nuclear attack on America and America is at war with Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and a bunch of other countries.

People who didn't like Donnie Darko will have an even tougher time with this one. The same super-smart kiddie-sensibility is at work here too. Only this time it is not the time travel but contemporary American culture and politics. Still there is lot of stuff about "quantum entanglements" and "space time rift" and in general apocalypse for dummies in this film too. What made Donnie Darko so memorable for me was the main character played with such depth, intelligence and vulnerability by Jake Gyllenhal. There are no such characters in this film. In fact the whole notion of a "character" is out of place within the context of this film. Amnesia is not just a random device in the plot - it is what defines these people. Most actors seem to be aware of their celebrity and pop culture personae and act accordingly, either in line with their image or in contrast to that image.

Image is then what all these people are. The film seems to capture this postmodern sense of reality very well. There is nothing like a foundational reality. It has been completely taken over by manufactured images. Images don't "represent" anything "real", they just refer to other images. Our networked world is nothing but a giant mesh of intertextuality. People who are familiar with the postmdodern theories of media (McLuhan, Baudrillad et.al ) will have more interesting things to say about this film. Kelly is aware of the dark social and political implications of this nihilistic philosophy but doesn't seem to able to put his fingers on the nerve. There is no consistent thread of anger which could bind these disparate threads together as a result his satirical attacks come out as scattershot and blunted as a result. In fact this film reminded me a lot of The Manchurian Candidate which is similarly over the top and bizarre but which has a heart in the centre too, and a sincere anger at the state of the things. There are lot of other references to classic movies too - like the apocalyptic noir classic Kiss Me Deadly by Robert Aldrich and even Mulholland Dr. There is similar "I had a dream last night" scene in the diner in this too. And another in which "Rebekah Del Rio" performs star spangled banner. I also don't think the humour of the film will travel easily. I myself had a lot of problems since I couldn't figure out so many references to contemporary pop culture. On the other hand the scene where a man asks his girlfriend in a deadpan manner, "Do you want to fuck or watch a movie" had me in splits. I can't say about other people.

There is a fantastic essay on the film by Steven Shaviro which goes in depth and discusses its "post-cinematic" form and other postmodernist ideas in the context of this film. Long and slightly highfalutin but worth reading. There is also a very helpful plot summary and a FAQ about the film on Salon.