Jean-Luc Godard, and more specifically his 1965 film Pierrot le Fou,
literally changed my life, and set me on a path toward intense and
everlasting cinephilia. Since the first time I saw that film, it has
remained my favorite movie of all time and Godard my favorite director.
So when I finally had the chance to see Film socialisme in
2010, his first feature film in six years, I had high hopes that the old
master was going to yet again bring something new to the table. Those
hopes were assuredly met. I considered the film the best of that year
and still believe it is an astonishing movie, rife with so much of what
defines Godard in this is fourth(?), fifth(?), in any case, current,
phase of his career.
The first words of Film socialisme,
at least according to the “Navajo English” subtitles, are “money –
public – water.” Literally, this refers to the key elements of the
film’s first third, which revolves ostensibly around the quest for, or
at least an inquest regarding, some Spanish gold long since missing.
There is also the varied depiction of diverse individuals as they go
about their leisurely routine aboard a cruise ship (oddly enough, the
ill-fated Costa Concordia). And finally, the gold and the people were
and are, of course, on the water. Now, this may seem like an obvious
choice to include here (of course they’re on water; it’s a boat), but I
think the purpose the water serves is crucial. It necessitates the
requisite mode of transport (for the wealth and the public) and it is
the container that assembles, and forces a sort of commingling of, its
constricted temporary residents. The water is also the surface on which
one travels to the diverse stops covered by the film, all of which bear
political and historical significance.
This
opening third, lasting about 45 minutes, is a barrage of camera angles,
color, and sound. The images range from an internet video of cats
purring to stock footage of wartime atrocities, from grainy neon footage
of people dancing to poetic snapshots of scenic splendor; these are all
cultural artifacts according to Godard. This, for better or worse, is
representative of who we are and where we exist in the world.
Consistently demonstrated in terms of visuals is a naturally occurring
florescence juxtaposed with unnatural bursts of hyper real illumination
and supplemental color. Equally eclectic are the sounds Godard chooses
to focus on, ranging from pop music (Madonna’s “Material Girl” at one
point), to the strains of Beethoven, a spontaneous song by Patti Smith,
and a young woman mimicking the cat’s meow from the aforementioned cat
clip.
The
second segment of the film is where Godard, more than he usually does,
takes a bit of a breath and gives us a fairly uncomplicated picture of
one family. That’s not to say anything about the section is “typical,”
but in honing in on the Martin family, their gas station and garage (and
llama?), and the political ambitions that seem to put the whole house
into a frenzy, Godard is painting a comparably stable domestic picture.
The mother first has the desire to run for political office, but by the
section’s end, it is the children who have thrown their hat in the ring.
Covering the family and their political decisions, as well as the
general difficulties of balancing family with work, is a local news
crew. In the course of their election profile, the TV crew surveys the
domestic strain and the domestic banality that is inherent in almost any
family portrait.
“Our humanities” is the title that signifies the start of Film socialisme’s
third and final chapter, a further discordant blend of images and
sounds covering wars, violence, death, religion, and cinema. The collage
of various civilizations wrought in moments of strife showcase most of
the very regions traversed by the cruise ship: Egypt, Naples, Barcelona,
Palestine.
As with much of Godard’s work, language is an ongoing and increasingly complex area of concern. In Film socialisme,
we see written text appearing in everything from French to English to
Hebrew, Arabic, and even in the form of hieroglyphics. Spoken language
comes across in, at least as far as I can tell, French, German, English,
and possibly some Russian. With language, history emerges, as it
usually does, as a key component of Godard’s cinema, particularly World
War II. The influence of controversial currency on the macro-global and
micro-social scene is frequently alluded to, as are the cultural
influences that have informed the multifaceted histories of the ship’s
occupants.
Famously
obtuse Godardian wordplay is playfully and frustratingly inserted
throughout. For example: “They always say that you can only compare what
is comparable. In fact, we can only compare what is incomparable, not
comparable” and, “As the whole of these parts, where the sum of these
parts, at a given moment, denies — as each contains the whole — the
parts we are considering; as much as this part denies them, as the sum
of the parts, again becoming the whole becomes the whole of the linked
parts.” Say what?
Godard
also brings in Hollywood history and film as a public entertainment as
only he can, noting the Jewish founders of the industry while comparing
the act of moviegoing (a group of people facing the same direction) to
Muslim prayers toward Mecca. This must be the “dialectical thinking”
referenced by one character.
“NO COMMENT” are the final printed words of Film socialisme, but Godard would most certainly have something more to say.
This brings me to Goodbye to Language, Godard’s latest, a film even more hyped and critically lauded than Film socialisme. In this case, not only did the film again meet my expectations, but it exceeded them. Goodbye to Language is so much more than I thought it would be.
The
struggle to communicate remains, and perhaps this is what Godard is
saying “adieu” to. “Do something so I have something to say,” demands
Josette (Héloise Godet), who at one point also suggests that people need
a translator; not necessarily to understand what others are saying, but
to translate and explain themselves. This difficulty with language
(ironic given Godard’s mastery and perplexing use of it), falls in line
with the “metaphor” category, one of two dividing intertitles that
appear throughout the film. Metaphor as in words that take on other
meanings, words that rely on other words to work, words that represent
other words. All words that, in the end, fail.
If
Godard is condemning this verbal complexity, or at least seeking a
departure from it, to do so he takes us to the second category heading:
“nature.” Here, by comparison, is simplicity. Nature is less
complicated; it needs no words. Roxy the dog (apparently the screen name
of Godard’s pet dog, Mieville, which is the last name of his long-time
collaborator and partner Anne-Marie Miéville), is said not to be naked
because a dog is naked. In other words, the defining characteristic
we’ve created as “naked” does not apply in the world of nature and
animals, where such a word is irrelevant. This, like all language, is
something artificially constructed and misconstrued by people, to our
benefit and detriment. A side note on Roxy/Mieville: he was the winner
of the Palm Dog – Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. So
there’s that.
This
preference for the naturally simplistic and escape from the
intellectually conceived also arises when Josette’s boyfriend Gédéon
(Kamel Abdeli) posits that infinity and zero are the two of man’s
greatest discoveries (or, depending on the translation, “inventions,”
which make the whole exchange even more profound). These are abstract
concepts that have a basis in reality but are more widely regarded as
ideas theoretically applied. By contrast, Josette contends the greatest
discoveries are sex and death: primordial, natural, necessary, and
biologically fundamental. Yet, were they discovered (as in mankind
gradually or suddenly realizing the scientific truths of sex and death)
or were they invented (as in mankind knew these facts of life existed
but had to assign the words to them)? What then was discovered or
invented? The acts of death and sex or the terms coined to signify them?
This evolution of language and its uses and conflicts is ever-present
in much of Godard’s work, but as Goodbye to Language’s title suggests, it’s a primary concern here.
By
this same token, and they are sequences that certainly stand out and
even garner a chuckle from Godard’s staple high-brow audience, look at
the scenes of Gédéon in the bathroom. Or rather, listen. Yes, it’s crude
and disgusting, but it’s perfectly natural, perfectly ordinary,
perfectly unmediated by manmade divisions or linguistic barriers. There
may be a multitude of words for it, but to quote Tarō Gomi’s strangely
popular text, “everyone poops.” Such an act therefore becomes a sort of
common denominator beyond any constraints of language. Gédéon and
Josette recurrently bicker about equality. Well, this is it.
All of the above regarding Goodbye to Language
is undeniably up for debate. As per his tendency, Godard compiles a
dense layer upon layer of narrative strands, character significance, and
thematic concerns, very few of which are explicitly stated and depicted
in any conventional sense. Subsequently, there is going to be
considerable confusion about the plot, such as it is to begin with. But
to me, this is secondary, and has been in many of Godard’s films,
especially his more essayistic features (or as in the first and last
portions of Film socialisme). More than any sort of
storyteller, Godard is recently a visual artist first and foremost, with
cinematic philosopher coming in second.
Save
for that philosopher bit, this is similar to how I feel about Michael
Bay. Yes, I’m comparing Jean-Luc Godard to Michael Bay, but hear me out.
There is no denying that as a storyteller Bay lacks, shall we say,
subtly and originality. Fine. Now to be sure, that part isn’t the same
as Godard, but where they do both excel in similar ways is in their
sheer devotion to imagining new images, to creating breathtaking or
innovative pictures, reveling in the motion and aesthetic forms that are
principal elements of motion pictures. This is, in a way, getting back
to the earliest of films, those turn of the century movies that just
wanted to present something that people hadn’t seen before: the “Cinema
of Attractions,” as Tom Gunning dubs it.
Bay’s
attractions might be explosions and CGI robots, but in many cases, they
look spectacular, as do his camera maneuvers, camera placement, and his
use of light and color. It’s all about the visually spectacular. The
same goes for Godard, though with obviously different intentions,
techniques, and effects. With Goodbye to Language, Godard
creates some of his most captivating images yet: the bursts of blown out
digital color (the shot of the children walking through a field
peppered with flowers); the blood (or color red, as he might contend)
against the white tub; a hand reaching down through water littered with
leaves; trees, lots of trees; and fascinating angles that obscure part
of a shot’s primary focus, provocatively leaving one to wonder if that
point of focus was really the focus after all — where else, perhaps,
should we be looking?
Such a visual tactic of foiling the viewer’s expectations is tantamount to Goodbye to Language,
particularly in regards to Godard’s use of 3D, which is, as it has been
noted by critics the world over, quite unlike anything done before. To
start with some of the more understated examples, keeping in mind the
inherent shift in depth when working in 3D, and simultaneously
disregarding the need to properly adjust that depth of field, Godard
frequently composes a 3D image where a small, not immediately
perceptible point of the screen is in focus. Through the blurred rest of
the image, we search for this focal point, which, once found, produces a
notable effect of fuller visual context where, as alluded to above, we
must alter our conception of where Godard is directing our vision.
When
the camera is moving, such as a low angle track toward the end of the
film, the impact is even more noticeable. This specific shot glides by
table and chair legs as most of the image is a scattershot blur of lines
close to the camera. Where should we be looking? It’s certainly not the
foreground. It’s only once we’ve passed the table that we realize just
how far in the background the focus is, but once that is established,
the wider image comes into view.
Even
more profound is the separation of a 3D image into two distinct 2D
images via a single camera pan. This particular decision on Godard’s
part, which I believe happens twice, has been commented upon by other
critics, but for me, and admitting some slight hyperbole, this technique
in it contemporary context is as groundbreaking as Godard’s jump cuts
were in 1960. This represents not only a drastic alteration of
preconceived notions concerning what 3D should or should not do (and
many would contend this is something that definitely should not be
done), but it is a further evolution in Godard’s continued exploration
of multiple images and cinematic screens.
As far as I can remember, a normal split screen is relatively rare in Godard’s work, but starting around the mid-1970s, with Numéro deux
most notably, Godard began to incorporate multiple images via
superimposition and the compilation of multiple screens in one image. In
this 1975 film, for example, on screen at certain moments is Godard
himself surrounded by up to three television monitors, each playing a
different image, in effect creating a fusion of three or more screens
within the standard viewing screen itself. With this 3D dual screen
technique, Godard is again presenting distinct screens simultaneously,
but now, not only are they both shown at the same time, but with the
blink of an eye, the audience has the power to single out and alternate
their chosen focus. It’s a remarkable experiment in cinematic technique
and spectator interaction.
Detractors of Goodbye to Language
(and no doubt there are many reasons why people would not like the
film) are quick to point out the “amateurish” quality of Godard’s
technique, or they will argue that they could have shot simple scenes of
their dog and it wouldn’t be considered art like this film is. I
understand this argument, but I fail to see what that actually takes
away from Goodbye to Language. Sure, it is occasionally rough
around the edges, and in his attempt to illustrate the inherent flaws of
3D, Godard creates some difficult viewing that genuinely does at times
hurt the eyes, but I would contend that he turns even this into a
positive aesthetic experience. Forget if it looks proper (which, who
cares) or seamless (which, it doesn’t), Godard is exploring the bounds
of 3D imagery, calling attention to the format in the process, as much
deconstructing the format as he is the linguistic concepts noted
earlier. With 3D, a format he considers to have no set rules as of yet,
the parameters of possibility are even more spacious.
This
is not unlike his frequent implementation of direct to camera character
dialogue, his now famous editing disruptions, his switching to the
negative in A Married Woman, or when he had cinematographer Raoul Coutard point the camera right at the audience in Contempt.
It’s all a matter or exploiting and exposing the various artistic tools
of filmmaking and the employed cinematic apparatuses: cameras, lights,
tracks, even actors. This is paralleled by the shots of others taking
pictures in Film socialisme, where a recording device is, in
effect, recording devices in use; a self-reflexive portrait of art in
and of itself. Godard’s emphasis is on the process of one capturing
images and thus capturing reality or a memory. It’s a way of singling
out methods for recording, manipulating, arranging, and disseminating
images.
As consistent as the images are in Film socialisme,
at least as far as their visual prominence and appeal, there is still a
degree of technical variability. The digital devices used to capture
and render certain shots are implemented with a varying degree of
quality, some with a resolution as sharp as a tack, some as pixelated
and as muddled as a bootleg copy of a poor VHS copy, but that’s how
those instruments work. The sound of the wind outside and the beats of
the dance music send reverberations crackling through the soundtrack,
while on the visual field, focus is often murky to the point of being
nonexistent. Godard was never one to adamantly insist on absolute
technical perfection (dialogue misspoken or repeated, mismatched
cutting, etc.), and here, these are technical faults that add to the
sense of unstructured recording and to the idea that any of the
contributing devices are imperfect modes of recording and transmission,
just as language may be an imperfect mode of expression.
Why then would anyone be surprised by the fact that for a moment you see the crane’s shadow during one particular shot in Goodbye to Language?
Godard has never tried to hide the fact that his movies were movies.
3D, he has argued, is something of a lie to start with, insofar as it is
a flat screen that would have audiences believe it is not. The way
Godard incorporates the format here, he is at once calling 3D’s bluff
while also recognizing that in that false sense of perspective, one can
still approach the illusory depth in an interesting way. It may not
really be three dimensions, but what can be done with that illusion, to
emphasize, criticize, and distort it?
Couched in the credits with the list of actors, the texts quoted, and the composers whose diverse music audibly accentuates Goodbye to Language’s
imagery, is a list of equipment used. This isn’t uncommon with Godard,
but it does, I think, stress the value of the technology. To Godard, the
camera equipment used is just as integral as the performers or the
dialogue. This film, arguably more than any of his others, is in large
part actually about this technology. It would, of course, be watchable
in 2D, but many of its artistic arguments would be lost. As fellow Sound
on Sighter Kyle Turner noted in his review of the film, unlike Gravity and others, Goodbye to Language
truly redefines 3D in film, and in so doing, I would say its makes 3D
viewing a more than a necessity (not something that can be said for
previous movies in the format); indeed, the film would be unthinkable
and ineffective without it.
If the story (if it can even be called that) of Goodbye to Language
seems muddled, this should be par for the course when it comes to
recent Godard. In an interview around the time of the film’s screening
at Cannes, Godard noted the unnecessity of a screenplay, even pointing
out that it would only be needed after shooting, perhaps after editing.
With this in mind, to approach Goodbye to Language as a normal
narrative work is futile and bound to frustrate. If there is a plot
here, a moral, a message, Godard suggests it is a “message in everyday
life,” or the “absence of message.”
Finally,
to return to the supposed “goodbye” or “farewell” that the French title
of the film translates to, Godard has put forth the idea, in a
characteristically linguistic turn of phrase, that in Vaud, Switzerland,
where he resides, “adieu,” depending on the time of day and tone of
voice, can also be a greeting. Godard is as ambiguous as ever when it
comes to expounding on this potentially dual meaning of the film’s
title, but with this in mind, perhaps the film is not a fond farewell to
language after all. Perhaps it is a welcome, a recognition, or an
arrival at a new approach toward communication, with whatever form or
format possible. With Goodbye to Language, Godard has said he
was seeking “to escape from ideas,” though I’m not sure how well he
succeeded there. Yet at the same time, he sought to explore a certain
kind of language that cinema still allows: “A mixture of words and
images.” To that aim, I would say mission accomplished.
REVIEW from SOUND ON SIGHT
Right from the start of Federico Fellini’s 1960 film La Dolce Vita,
we know we’re in for something different, something exciting, something
audacious. Fellini’s choice of initial imagery announces immediately
that this is a film about the contradictions of modern life. First, we
get a helicopter carrying a large statue of Christ over Rome. It’s a
powerful image with extensive connotations. This holy figure stands as
the traditional and the sacred, and is slightly vulgarized in its
absurdity here. But it moves on, and what follows further illustrates
that things have changed: out with Christ, in with Marcello (Rubini in
the film, Mastroianni in real life). He and his “photo reporters,” now
known because of this film as paparazzi, take time away from their
coverage of the transport to flirt with some bikini-clad sunbathers on a
rooftop. We also see dilapidated ancient ruins transitioning into
high-rise apartment buildings under construction. This is late 1950s
Rome and this is the world of La Dolce Vita, a world—and
subsequently a film—of contests and contrasts: old vs. new, traditional
vs. modern, moral vs. immoral, authentic vs. fabricated.
La Dolce Vita’s
episodic structure, a narrative preference Fellini would continue to
employ (to a sometimes extraordinary degree), allows for the film to
include a variety of scenarios and characters. Locations, from bustling
sidewalks and cafes to exotic cavern-like clubs, give the film a strong
sense of physical and temporal setting, ironically so in some cases
since many sequences were shot in the famed studios at Cinecittà.
“As
much an observer as he is a protagonist,” according to David Forgacs,
Marcello is essentially our guide through this three hour odyssey. He is
an extension of the audience (we’re frequently adopting his point of
view to hammer the point home) and at the same time, he represents a
certain personality type from the period. Indeed, as Forgacs also notes
in an interview included as part of the Criterion Collection Blu-ray of
the film, La Dolce Vita is inseparable from its historical context of production.
Marcello
and his similarly wealthy, disengaged, detached, and distraught friends
are fed up and burnt out. Despite (or possibly because of) their money,
cars, houses, and clothes, they remain unhappy. Something is lacking,
something deeper in their soul. Theirs is an existential void. They make
love and money, yet both are simultaneously worthwhile and worthless.
It’s now perhaps a cliché the way they fill their lives with so much but
remain so personally empty. Their jobs (if they even have one) are
empty, their relationships (if they can even maintain one) are empty.
This might be the sweet life on the outside, but inside it is despair.
This
is no cautionary tale though. Fellini may express a commentary on the
contemporary state of things, but there is no judgment or moralizing.
“Everyone has a right to their image,” says an unhappy target of
Marcello’s photogs. Perhaps so, but what of when that image has been
socially constructed, built on a lie, built to conform to popular
societal expectations? To whom does it belong then? Getting a picture of
a prince at a nightclub and finding out what he had to eat; is this
what a journalist does? That’s what Marcello considers himself. Others
have different names for what he is.
In
any case, Marcello embodies related traits of immaturity,
irresponsibility, and selfishness, yet he can be exceptionally
sympathetic. Through the course of La Dolce Vita, he emerges a
strikingly tragic figure, a sad, lonely, and clearly confused man. He
is, of course, not the only one. Obviously, his friend Steiner, who
seemingly has it all together, is also adrift in this world where “a
phone call can announce the end of the world.” Emotionally and
spiritually vacant, they are searching; searching for commitment,
innocence, an awakening. Far more disastrous than what Marcello endures,
Steiner’s conclusion is the saddest part of the whole film. When
Steiner shoots his two children before committing suicide, all hope is
lost for Marcello, who had found a refuge in Steiner’s superficially
content home life and is suddenly stunned to find that that happiness
was just as fleeting and deceptive as his own. The semblance of normalcy
he attributed to Steiner is shattered. “I don’t know anything, anything
at all,” he tells a questioning detective. Perhaps the grass is not
always greener.
Marcello
isn’t always in a state of despair and confusion. He has his moments of
actual passion. The time he spends with his father is sweet and
pleasing. His dad is a fresh burst of contagious authenticity, in
contrast to most others in the film. We see where Marcello gets his
charm, and we see just how far from such a genuine simplicity Marcello
has strayed. Even this, however, is a complex and illusory joy. While
his father has a good time reliving his youth, old age creeps in and
catches up. Where there was some optimism, there becomes another weary
disappointment.
The
extent to which Marcello wallows in decadence and depravity is
emphasized in the final act of the film, as we finally witness his
attaining of an unpleasantly over-the-top frame of mind. It’s obvious
that Marcello is not well, that he has reached the end of his rope, and
when he takes the “chubby, mountain farm girl,” obscenely rides on her
back, pulls her hair, slaps her, throws water in her face, and then
douses her with feathers from a pillow, it’s a tough scene to watch.
Always prone to live on a whim, seeking adventure or at least a
temporary gratification, Marcello must purge himself following the shock
of Steiner’s violence. So he gives up and gives in.
As
far as the multitude of other characters in the film, is there more of a
force than Anita Ekberg’s Sylvia? Though really only briefly in the
picture, she sets the fictional world of the film on fire. From the
repeating of her descent down the airplane stairs, pandering to the
photographers, to answering inane yet occasionally stimulating questions
(“Is Italian Neorealism dead or alive?” a reporter asks. She, and
Fellini, wisely don’t answer), to her dancing in the club, and to,
finally and most famously, her jaunt through the fountain—the most
iconic image in an iconic film full of iconic images—Sylvia temporarily
takes La Dolce Vita to a whole other level. She is everything
to Marcello; she is “home.” She is overflowing (in a variety of ways),
and the jaded Marcello succumbs quickly to her allure, becoming a
bumbling, stumbling awestruck child in her presence. Her lack of
inhibition is a shock to his system.
There are so many great moments throughout La Dolce Vita.
The craziness of when the two children say they’ve spotted the Virgin
Mary at a tree is an exemplary Felliniesque exhibition. It’s the sort of
ridiculous display that now we’ve become almost accustomed to, but
here, Fellini is clearly remarking on the madness of an excitable mass
of people; they first revere this so-called “miracle tree,” then they
tear it apart. Only one wise person sees beyond the insanity and states,
“He who looks for God finds him where he wants.” Stemming from his
passion for the circus, Fellini frequently includes these moments of
apparent disorganization and commotion and takes total control. It’s a
precarious path from hubbub, to a frenzied spectacle, to pure chaos, but
Fellini is a masterful leader. Though seemingly organic in the way
these hectic sequences develop, they nevertheless have a continual sense
of gimmickry. Everything, no matter its intent or initial gestation,
ultimately becomes a facade. Nothing ever just is.
Finally,
there’s the conclusion of the picture, a brilliantly ambiguous finale.
What is the significance of the sea creature? What is the young girl
saying? Why can’t Marcello understand? These questions ensure that the
film doesn’t really end with this last scene. Like so many great works
of filmic art, La Dolce Vita continues to live on as a direct
result of its depth and its never-ending interpretations. At nearly
every turn, there seems to be some symbolism, a meaning to be
constructed, a significance in structure, style, and image to be
discerned.
The
cache of supplemental materials on this Criterion disc all shed unique
light on this controversial film. The visual essay by filmmaker ::
kogonada examines Fellini’s use of point of view, comparing and
contrasting certain shots (especially the enigmatic final one of the
young girl) to those in The 400 Blows, Summer with Monika, and Breathless.
Lina Wertmüller, who was an assistant director on the film, recalls
her time with Fellini and sort of counters :: kogonada’s visual analysis
by noting that, “Everyone thinks what they want.” Even the interview
with Fellini himself ironically illuminates the film while also
downplaying its varied implications. Probing interviews with Fellini are
always interesting because you do truly want to hear what he has to
say, to see if he explains anything or gives some personal insight into
such and such a scene’s significance. This he sometimes does, but then
he states, as he does here, “Never trust what I say in interviews.”
Fellini’s
key collaborators were firmly in place by this point, and they do some
of their best work with this film. The great Italian cinematographer
Otello Martelli works as equally well with the artificial backdrops and
garishly decorated interiors as he does outdoors in the sun (the cafe
with shafts of light coming through the thatched ceiling and walls has
always been a favorite example). Nino Rota’s upbeat and glorious score
is, as with all of his compositions for Fellini, synonymous with the
tone of the film, its characters, and Fellini’s own visual
orchestration. And Piero Gherardi’s superb production design perfectly
renders a highly stylized time and place while his costumes beautifully
adorn individuals concerned themselves about being highly stylized in
this time and place. Gherardi won an Oscar for the former and was
nominated for the latter. La Dolce Vita earned Fellini his
fifth writing Oscar nomination and his first for direction. Most
famously though, and arguably most important given its stature on the
world stage and its signifying of a global shift in modern cinema, La Dolce Vita was also awarded the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
In many ways, this would be Fellini’s last grounding in reality. With La Dolce Vita,
it is as if he used up his last semblance of a semi-normal, subtle,
even realistic existence. Real life was itself becoming Felliniesque,
with spontaneous chaos and eccentric individuals, so the maestro would
have to expand his creative boundaries—and did he ever!
There is, in the end, no denying La Dolce Vita’s
impact. It wasn’t just a film. As Antonello Sarno contends, it was (and
still is) a “phenomenon in culture, fashion, and society.”
REVIEW from SOUND ON SIGHT
In John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
(1962), it is remarked that, “When the legend becomes fact, print the
legend.” This seems especially apt when it comes to the treatment of the
Arizona city Tombstone and the historic western yarn of the gunfight at
the O.K. Corral, the renowned confrontation between the Clantons on one
side and the Earps with John “Doc” Holliday on the other. This famous
battle, lasting all of about 30 seconds, took place the afternoon of
Oct. 26, 1881, and in recalling this skirmish, multiple variations and
interpretations have resulted in a cinematic legend in the making, with
repeated appearances of its setting, characters, and actions. When the
dust settles, one of the greatest depictions of the event, its decisive
individuals, and the surrounding area and occurrences (true or false),
is Ford’s own My Darling Clementine, from 1946.
The
reality of this gunfight is up for debate, but Western filmmakers can’t
seem to leave it alone, especially not without adding their fair share
of embellishment. The facts of the incident become less interesting,
certainly less exciting, than the filmic representation, and John Ford,
with his take, was no exception. As John Saunders has pointed out, “Ford
had more use for the already legendary figure of Wyatt Earp than the
rather dubious actuality of events in 1881.” And this despite Ford’s
insistence that Earp described to him exactly what happened, and that’s
what we supposedly see in the film. What we do see, however, is
definitely not exactly what happened.
As
the Earp brothers plan to call it a day and set up camp in the southern
Arizona desert, the baby faced James is left behind to tend to their
herd of cattle while Wyatt (Henry Fonda) and the other brothers head
into Tombstone—”wide awake, wide open” Tombstone. Ford even uses
geography with a creative license here. He shoots the town as being in
Monument Valley, his trademark location, which is at the opposite end of
the state.
Minding
their business, just passing through, and simply looking for a shave,
Wyatt in particular soon finds himself in the frenzy of this reckless
town. After bullets tear through the barbershop, Wyatt wonders, “What
kind of town is this?” and no sooner does he utter these words than he
is engaged in the seizure and removal of the guilty party, a drunken
Indian. Alas, Ford was often as guilty as anyone for playing into
stereotypes. Fun fact from Ford biographer Joseph McBride though: Indian
Charlie is played by Charles Stevens, one of Geronimo’s grandsons.
In
any case, when the brothers Earp return to their campsite, they find
their cattle missing and James killed. Based on the way he handled the
inebriated Native American and, even more than that, because the name
Wyatt Earp carries with it considerable clout, Wyatt had been offered
the position of marshal earlier in the evening and turned it down. After
he discovers that the rabblerousing Clanton clan probably had something
to do with James’ murder, he decides to take the job after all.
Here a curious thing happens in My Darling Clementine.
For a considerable portion of the film, this familial vendetta is put
on hold somewhat, as Wyatt unwittingly becomes entangled in an already
complex love triangle between the self-destructive Doc Holliday (Victor
Mature), the less than reputable saloon girl Chihuahua (Linda Darnell),
and the just-into-town Clementine Carter (Cathy Downs). To Doc (and the
film), Chihuahua represents the untamed west while Clementine stands in
for the civilized refinement of the east—a conflict at the heart of
countless Western classics—and they’re both vying for Doc’s affection.
And Wyatt, of course, inevitably develops a fancy for “Clem” as well.
Other
narrative strands are incorporated into the picture, but for some time,
the inaction of Wyatt stands out. Though he may not be overly concerned
with the aggressive pursuit of the Clantons, Ford, as he always did so
well, allows for arguably more compelling bits of supplementary
business. Not the least of these is the sequence McBride calls one of
the greatest scenes in American cinema and the “best scene in the film”
(he’s right there). It is, he says, “pure magic.” The celebrated
religious service and dance is a culmination of all things Ford:
down-home music, hearty dancing, community, a folksy hero, and society
taking shape in the midst of the western wilderness. When the townsfolk
gather to worship and celebrate where an actual church has yet to
appear, this pivotal scene typifies the times when society as a whole
begins to emerge from the rustic environment. Out of this desert, a
civilization will grow, standing alongside the natural landscape, in
conjunction and in contrast.
My Darling Clementine,
as much as it is about the story of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, and the
famous gunfight, also puts forth these ideas relating to an
ever-evolving culture. For example, Ford arranges the town so that there
is the settlement on one side of the street, consisting of bars,
hotels, and other businesses, while directly across is the open desert.
It’s a notable disparity emphasizing the gradual civilization being
developed on one hand, while also hinting at the natural landscape being
taken away on the other.
There’s
no question though, the most famous event in Tombstone’s history was
the famed gunfight, which didn’t actually happen at the OK Corral but in
a vacant lot on Fremont Street. Either way, of the many depictions of
this famous mêlée, Ford’s is one of the best. It’s a prolonged, well
staged, and intricately choreographed sequence, with several resourceful
touches on the part of Wyatt and his cohorts, even if, as per the norm,
it isn’t 100% accurate (old man Clanton wasn’t actually present and Doc
Holliday died years later from tuberculosis).
By
the end of the film, Wyatt is still reluctant to stay put. Now that he
achieved his ostensible goal of revenge, the stasis of civilization
doesn’t befit his nomadic temperament. He must keep moving. While he
functions as one who can settle the rambunctious town of Tombstone, he
isn’t content with settling himself. The town may have reached a sort of
stability, but Wyatt still has some of the wild west left in him, that
roaming spirit. It’s certainly not coincidental that throughout the
picture Wyatt chooses as his perch a position where the wilderness is
never fully out of view. He has the settlement behind him, but he is
looking out toward the unsettled.
This
was John Ford’s first film after his work with the Office of Strategic
Services during World War II, and you get the sense that he was seeking
to get back to basics in a way, to return to a black and white world
where the good guys were clearly good and the bad guys were clearly bad;
indeed, only Mature and Darnell convey any sense of moral duality. As
McBride argues, there’s a pleasant “simplicity” about the film, even if
there is some complexity underneath.
Clementine
was Henry Fonda’s fourth of eight pictures made under Ford’s direction,
and the film features a solid lineup of other Ford regulars as well,
including Tim Holt as Virgil Earp, Ward Bond as Morgan, and Russell
Simpson as the preacher, John Simpson. Jane Darwell, six years after her
Oscar-winning performance in Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath,
appears as Kate Nelson, and an uncredited Danny Borzage is the
accordionist (he also played the instrument between shots on set as
well). Even Ford’s brother Francis pops up as an old soldier lovingly
referred to by Wyatt as “Dad.” New to the Ford fold is Howard Hawks
stalwart Walter Brennan as Old Man Clanton. Apparently, he and Ford did
not get along though and this was the first and last time these iconic
Western figures ever worked together.
Cinematography
on the film (which has never looked better than on this new Criterion
Collection 4K digital restoration), was by Joseph MacDonald, something
of a cinematic heavy hitter himself. Among his credits are works with
Elia Kazan, Sam Fuller, and Nicholas Ray. For Clementine, he
paints a notable contrast between the beauty and expanse of the open
desert in the daytime and the sense of isolation and hidden danger of
the town at night; in many of these nocturnal scenes, the film is as
darkly lit as one of his noirs.
As
would befit any John Ford film, Criterion rustled up a bountiful
helping of bonus features for the new release. There’s the 103-minute
prerelease version of the film, a comparison of the two versions by film
preservationist Robert Gitt, the commentary by McBride, an interview
with western historian Andrew C. Isenberg about the real Wyatt Earp, and
a video essay by Ford scholar Tag Gallagher. There are also brief TV
programs about the history of Tombstone and Monument Valley, a radio
adaptation with Fonda and Downs, and an essay by David Jenkins. For film
history buffs, Bandit’s Wager, a 1916 silent Western short featuring John Ford and directed by Francis, is a exceptionally pleasant addition.
Ford himself was not a fan of My Darling Clementine,
though through the years, many critics have understandably held it up
as one of his finest achievements. There were multiple discrepancies
between the final film and the screenplay, and Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck
oversaw some post-production reshoots against Ford’s will, including
the controversial ending, but there are so many classic Ford touches
that even these alterations seem minor by comparison. McBride quotes
British critic and filmmaker Lindsay Anderson who perhaps gives the best
single word description of the film: “poetic.”
And as for the historical liberties, well, as Henry Fonda said of Ford, he “used history, he wasn’t married to it.”
REVIEW from SOUND ON SIGHT
“Sometimes
the class struggle is also the struggle of one image against another
image, of one sound against another sound. In a film, this struggle is
against images and sounds.”
- British Sounds
There
was something in the air when Jean-Luc Godard took up the political
banner of the late 1960s and shifted his filmmaking focus in terms of
storytelling style and stories told, and in a general sense of formal
reevaluation and reinvention. Always considered something of the enfant terrible of the French Nouvelle Vague,
Godard was keen from the start to experiment with the conventional
norms of cinematic aesthetics, from the jarring jump cuts of Breathless (1960), to the self-conscious playfulness of A Woman is a Woman (1961), to the genre deviations of Band of Outsiders (1964) and Made in USA
(1966). But Godard was still, at a most basic level, operating along a
fairly conventional plane of fictional cinema, one with relatively
typical characters and generally progressive narratives of beginnings,
middles, and ends (“but not necessarily in that order,” as he would
clarify).
But
then something happened. Not so much eschewing narrative, rather
reformatting it, Godard’s work began to change, to more blatantly
challenge and provoke; challenging and provoking those looking at his
films as films, but also those looking at his films as declarative
cultural statements. With this shift in his work, signaled by
sociopolitical features like Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1966) and confirmed by Weekend
(1967), which put the nail in the coffin of this first phase in his
filmmaking career, Godard’s output grew ever more experimental and
deliberately provocative and esoteric, alienating certai+n factions of
his previous audience along the way.
So
be it. As Godard stated, to make political films, one must make films
politically, and with that, bridges would be burnt and expectations
would be thwarted. But this was Godard the activist and provocateur as
well as the filmmaker. There was a sweeping sense of revolution all over
the world, and Godard was in it, of it, manipulating it, and filming
it.
If
one takes a general survey of Godard’s most memorable filmic moments
from 1958 to 1967, it’s safe to say that the vast majority of those
moments would be visually based. In other words, it is in many cases the
images, or Godard’s treatment of the images, that stand out: those jump
cuts; his use of color in Pierrot le fou (1965); the stark, wintery black and white photography of My Life to Live (1962); Anna Karina’s tearstained face as she watches Maria Falconetti act in Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc
(1928); and our band of outsiders doing an impromptu Charleston. Of
course, sound (or the lack thereof) is every bit as vital in these films
(even in these sequences) but by and large, the auditory usually played
second fiddle to Godard’s camera placement, movement, editing,
cinematography, etc. This too would change in post-’68 Godard. Now, if
not of a possibly greater importance, sound was on an even-keel with his
sights.
With
these elements in mind—the forging of new politically motivated paths,
the continual exploration of bold formal approaches, and a filmic
discourse that relied heavily on sound over, or at least in equal
accompaniment to, the images—Godard was making revolutionary films in a
revolutionary way.
First
stop: England. Though initially considering The Beatles (the project
fell through after several meetings and besides, according to Colin
MacCabe, John Lennon was suspicious of Godard), The Rolling Stones
entered the picture. Godard had early on expressed an appreciative
interest in the group, particularly their 1967 psychedelic album “Their
Satanic Majesties Request.” Cut to a year later and the Stones are
working on “Beggar’s Banquet,” which, aside from containing songs of the
moment like “Street Fighting Man” and “Salt of the Earth,” starts with
the controversial and brilliantly written antagonistic anthem “Sympathy
for the Devil.”
One Plus One, as Sympathy for the Devil
was originally titled, is often now subtitled, and is still considered
by Godard purists, captures the gradual orchestration of this opening
track, shot over the course of three days, beginning with rough strains
of improvisatory inspiration as they meld into a more fully formed
creation. As Godard’s camera dollies, pans, and tilts its way through
the recording studio, we see the entire Stones crew at work: Mick
Jagger, clearly in charge; Keith Richards, too cool for school and
erroneously billed as “Keith Richard”; Bill Wyman, hovering around the
margins; Charlie Watts, who never looks entirely thrilled to be there;
and Brian Jones, who at just 27 would be dead within eight months of the
album’s release.
The sequences of Sympathy for the Devil
that focus on the Stones, roughly about half the film, which are
intercut with those sequences that will soon be discussed, contain the
false starts, slip ups, frustrations, struggles, and achievements that
inevitably go into most artistic endeavors. Aside from sound being
obviously key in the development of a rock song, Godard incorporates an
audio editorializing by having the sound randomly focus on specific
elements of the song: Keith’s guitar, Mick’s vocals, Charlie’s drums,
etc. There isn’t necessarily a rhyme or reason to what gets the
attention when, nor is there always a correlation between who happens to
be on camera and what sound in heard. This is Godard manipulating the
sounds of the Stones as he had with other sounds before and continues to
do today, amplifying certain fragments then and others now, often with
little to no obvious justification.
The other half of Sympathy or the Devil
is the more explicitly political and formally demanding portion and was
shot a few weeks after these studio sequences. This assortment of
segments features an eclectic and uneven mix of episodic vignettes. Anne
Wiazemsky sprays discordant graffiti on city surfaces and turns up in
the woods as Eve Democracy, the film’s producer, Iain Quarrier, whom
Godard would later punch in the face following disputes about the film’s
title and its conclusion, is a “fascist porno book seller,” and Black
Power militant Frankie Dymon, as himself, is joined in a junk yard by
likeminded comrades in arms. Over some of this, or dropped in as the
scenes transition, we hear Sean Lynch providing commentary by way of a
text that includes political, sexual, and violent references to Richard
Nixon, Che Guevara, Ben Barka, Trotskyites, Lolita, Francisco Franco,
General Walt Disney, and others.
The
audio/visual assemblage of these sequences is fascinating if not always
coherent or interesting. The first primary chapter features Dymon and
other heavily armed black revolutionaries as they roam amongst, on, and
even in the broken down shells of dilapidated vehicles behind a garage.
In this junk yard, a Godardian set piece if ever there was one, several
of the men recite from texts by Eldridge Cleaver, Amiri Baraka, and
Stokely Carmichael, either simply aloud or repeated into a tape
recorder, preaching and preserving the respective sentiments. This
includes passages proclaiming a need to “concentrate on the main enemy”
to others touting the smooth skin and softness of white women.
Alongside
these extracts, Godard’s additional audio or visual accompaniment is
often ironic or upsetting to the perceived verbal focus. As we hear the
call to militant arms, the men’s voices are frequently drowned out by
the real world sounds of nearby car horns, passing ships, or planes
flying overhead; there are additionally times when Lynch’s voiceover
also interrupts the recitations. As these slogans of revolution are
proclaimed or usurped, we are urged to assume one of two things: first,
when a passage is clearly audible, by that fact we should presume its
importance (why else would Godard make it so comparatively
comprehensible?); and second, when the sounds of the everyday world
going about its business come in over the readings, we then question the
text’s significance (it must not have been too important to hear).
Taken together, Godard seems to be providing a contradictory commentary
about the meaning and potency of these black power passages as they are
highlighted and confronted.
No
less aurally distinctive is the sequence with Wiazemsky as Eve
Democracy. This segment follows a film crew as they ask Eve an
assortment of questions about culture, drug use, sexuality, and
politics. To each question, Eve answers only “yes” or “no,” a simplistic
response to these dense and complex questions, again an ironic verbal
contrast on Godard’s part: “A man of culture is as far from an artist as
a historian is from a man of action.” “Yes.” “There is only one way to
be an intellectual revolutionary and that is to give up being an
intellectual.” “Yes.” (Richard Brody points out that Wiazemsky spoke no
English, so Godard just cued her “yes” or “no.”) And like in the junk
yard scene, amongst the beautiful green foliage of the forest even these
sounds of social proclamation are occasionally compromised by the
aurally overpowering natural songs of birds chirping.
The
third key non-Rolling Stones sequence takes place in a bookstore with
an amusingly diverse inventory that includes everything from “Playboy”
and “Penthouse” to “Justice League America” comic books, “Wrestling
Illustrated,” “Motorcycle Mechanic,” “Complete Man,” and assorted
sexually suggestive novels. Amidst magazine covers touting bawdy tales
and crime stories, Quarrier reads from Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” As the
black power readings earlier leave one less than convinced of their
polemic power due to Godard’s constant aural interruptions, the sections
from “Mein Kampf” are similarly diminished in their influence by, on
the one hand, Quarrier’s rambling presentation, and, on the other, the
more dominant visual incorporation of tantalizing, comical, and tawdry
magazines, which Godard’s camera continually hovers over.
The
final segment of the film brings us back amongst the broken down cars
as two African American women are interviewing the ostensible leaders of
this revolutionary group. Spoken topics covered span the link between
communism and Black Power, the oppression of the black populace in urban
ghettos, and how Black Power will lead to political and economic gains.
Most prescient in terms of this analysis is the stated hindrance of the
communication barrier between classes and races: “Although we speak the
same words, we are speaking completely different languages.” This then
is something of a rarely overt proclamation of Godard’s own verbal
preoccupations, especially as this film is concerned.
Through
all of this, Lynch’s text and the Rolling Stones’ music come in and out
of the soundtrack. But by the film’s end, “Sympathy for the Devil” as
an organized song begins to take shape. When we return to the Stones
during the final stages of the song’s completion, there is an evident
cohesion of the tune’s disparate elements. Contrast this with the
incongruous juxtaposition of political verbiage and ambiguous imagery in
the film’s political segments. A little more than an hour into the
picture, some of the political narration comes in over the Stones, but
it seems to have trouble competing with the band as they hit their
groove. Also as the song nears completion, we hear the isolation of
vocals, drums, etc., all prior to the final mix. Here the similarity to
the political vignettes is also obvious, as through the incorporation
and dissemination of disparate sounds, Godard makes clear that context
is everything, that any sound out of its unifying whole is perceived to
be odd or incomplete, just as the reoccurring spoken texts are more or
less vital given their surrounding accompaniments.
Though
we do hear the completed version of “Sympathy for the Devil” at the end
of the movie, this was not by Godard’s design and was done very much
against his will. To Godard, the completed song signified a conclusion
to the film’s political commentary as well, something he insisted was
still a work in progress. “Sympathy for the Devil” should remain
unfinished, just as the plight of the socially and economically
repressed remains unresolved. Still, during this concluding scene, which
has a general disarray of action, the multiple tracks of sound seem
appropriate given the rest of the film’s complex nature. And as Richard
Roud summarizes, “One knew how important the soundtrack was to Godard’s
films, but One Plus One proves it is primordial.”
Two years after Sympathy for the Devil,
Godard, now fully ensconced in the political climate of the era,
returned to England to make an even more revolutionary and formally
audacious film. Shot on 16mm at the behest of London Weekend Television
(which turned down and later disowned the film) British Sounds, or See You at Mao
(1970), is also divided into distinct segments, beginning with a
tracking shot that spans a considerable length of a MG assembly line at
the British Motor Car Factory in Oxford. In shooting this, Godard
retains the realistic surrounding sounds of the industrial force.
Aurally alongside the grinding, grating, pounding machinery is a voice
reciting passages from “The Communist Manifesto.” The inclusion of the
ear-splitting factory sounds was done, according to Godard, to stress
his point that while audiences decry the harsh noise for its 10 minutes
of screen time, the workers who toil away in such a factory are exposed
to the unremitting cacophony for eight hours a day. Point well taken.
The inclusion of the Marx/Engels text, which preaches against economic
disparities, suggests the working class is slave to machines and
overseers, and warns against the exploitation of wage labor, is clearly
the more obvious auditory message. Taken together, these two sounds work
in an odd unison where we actually see a type of labor discussed in the
“Manifesto” put into practice as a sort of illustrated thesis. During
this opening portion, we are also introduced to another audio theme that
will last through the entire film. An older man (later a woman) reads a
history of authoritarian abuse and worker difficulties to a young girl,
who then repeats the text.
The second part of British Sounds
takes leave from a broad appeal for working class rights and hones in
on the concerns of women. A feminist text by Sheila Rowbotham rails
against the exploitation of women, who when also workers are amongst the
“exploited of the exploited,” while we see a totally nude young lady
walk up and down stairs and enter in and out of two rooms. Here is a
most perplexing form of audio/visual contrast or conflict on Godard’s
part. While the text condemns blanket stereotypes and the
objectification of women, we see the nonchalant objectification of
women, the camera even at one point lingering on her pubic region
(“Conceal your sex!” sounds out a male voice). Of course, every serious
Godard scholar is quick to point out the non-titillating fashion with
which the nudity is shown, but it’s still a curious decision. And when
we see the woman on the phone, echoing the voiceover narration, the
impression is that she is merely parroting the lines, repeating what she
is told, not necessarily thinking for herself, which seems to go
against the point of the segment.
Godard
next includes black and white footage of a man spouting out statements
in sharp contrast to the sentiments of the film so far. As an obvious
counterpoint to the leftist proclamations in the first two sections,
this astonishingly crass individual spews his extreme points of view
regarding youth needing to “play their part in industry,” criticisms of
students and worker ideology, and grumbling about “communist rabble” and
Vietnam detractors. Most shocking are statements like, “Sometimes it’s
necessary to burn women and children” and “We don’t like colored people,
and I’ll tell you why.” Such profoundly offensive declarations are
visually paired with either the man himself or insertions of printed
text, everyday workers, or families.
The
constrictive fourth segment of the film has a group of men sitting in
close proximity around a table discussing business strategy and
effective modes of production, while also recognizing the physical and
mental toil that factory labor has on the workers. Though these men
speak like management, they also note the need for a “political party
committed to Marxism and capitalism” and they are quick to profess the
need of both millionaires and those in poverty in order for capitalism
to exist. This least interesting (visually) of the chapters appears to
try to have it both ways (aurally), with little success in either case.
Following a poster with the words “students sound,” the next part of British Sounds
has a group of university students listening to, and then
revolutionarily rewriting, songs by The Beatles: “Hello, Goodbye” (“You
say US, I say Mao”), “Revolution” (is rewriting really necessary?) and
“Honey Pie” (“Money Pie”). These members of the Peoples Poster Brigade,
as one poster indicates they are, are the youthful alarm of the coming
revolution. Though their use of pop music to make their case is another
ironic audio choice, they seem earnest in their attempts to take a
commodity of popular entertainment and turn it into something
politically active. In other words, to quote two of the printed texts
that appear in this film, this is the amalgamation of “capital sounds”
and “militant sounds.”
British Sounds
concludes with two short scenes. The first features a bloodied arm
making its way through the snow-covered ground toward a red flag, the
second a barrage of voices and songs played over a montage of fists
bursting through the Union Jack with appeals for solidarity. Throughout
the film, the overlap of words makes for some challenging listening,
with, like in Sympathy for the Devil, the assumption is that
what is heard most audibly must by that fact carry some weight. To this
effect, we get calls for the “abolition of the wage system” and
statements that tie in nicely to this analysis, like “speech is the
expression of power.” “It was the sound,” argues Richard Brody, “not the
image, that mattered, because the sound carried the lecture, the
doctrine, or rather, the indoctrination.”
In
their conglomeration of multiple voices sounding off on everything from
communism to orgasm, from Kennedy to Vietnam, Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil, or One Plus One, and British Sounds, or See You at Mao,
are prime examples of the filmmaker’s ever expanding use of sound in
film, as an artistic tool and as a propagandist instrument. According to
Penelope Gilliatt, Godard wanted to “pound people with language.” “Even
these raw first works of a new stage that is now tough going seem
likely in the end to reach the ears of people out of sympathy with
[Godard's] radical politics,” she writes, “not because of the yelling
powers of polemics but because of the carrying powers of a poet’s
voice.”
That
poet’s voice continues to be heard, and over the course of the 40-plus
years since these two films, it has been heard in ever-varying modes of
expression. It is little wonder that when Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville
started a video production and distribution company in 1972 they dubbed
the enterprise “Sonimage,” and it’s no surprise that some of his more
recent films of astonishing visual flourish bare the aurally evocative
titles For Ever Mozart (1996), Our Music (2004), and Farewell to Language
(2014). Godard remains as adamant as ever to explore the integration
and juxtaposition of the visual and the aural, getting down to the most
fundamental features of motion picture art, commerce, entertainment, and
politics.
ARTICLE from SOUND ON SIGHT
Widely
and justly heralded for his trendsetting Spaghetti Westerns, Sergio
Leone’s final and arguably most ambitious work was in another staple
American genre. Like these Westerns though, this film was as much of its
respective variety as it was about it. Once Upon a Time in America, with its name obviously derived from Leone’s previous Once Upon a Time in the West,
is a gangster film of the highest order, and, at the same time, it
recalls so many of its predecessors, from the Warner Brothers classics
of the 1930s to The Godfather. This was by design. As Leone himself notes, “My film was to be an homage to the American films I love, and to America itself.”
Out now on a newly restored and extended director’s cut Blu-ray, America
stars Robert De Niro as David “Noodles” Aaronson. Probably the
quintessential gangster movie actor of the modern era, De Niro was by
this point firmly established as one of the preeminent performers of his
generation, with two Oscar wins already to his credit. He is joined
here by James Woods, fresh off his excellent turn in Videodrome
but still a few years away from his first Oscar nomination and about a
decade from becoming a household name, as partner in crime Maximilian
“Max” Bercovicz. Rounding out their gang are Patrick “Patsy” Goldberg
(James Hayden) and Philip “Cockeye” Stein (William Forsythe). There is
also “Fat” Moe Gelly (Larry Rapp), their loyal friend, and his sister,
Deborah Gelly (Elizabeth McGovern), Noodles’ perpetual love interest. As
the names of these characters indicate, America is somewhat
distinct as far as contemporary gangster films are concerned in that it
is primarily populated with Jews rather than Italians. This doesn’t so
much add or take away anything from the plot, but it does give the
characters and the film in general a distinctively illustrated cultural
background.
In smaller roles are Joe Pesci (just
his eighth credited feature film) as Frankie Manoldi, and Jennifer
Connelly in her big screen debut as the young Deborah. Key Leone
collaborators Ennio Morricone (music), Tonino Delli Colli
(cinematography), and Nino Baragli (editing) were also involved, and as
with most of their work for Leone or elsewhere, America is all the better for their exceptional contributions.
Part of what gives America its ambitious quality is its scope. Post-Goodfellas,
it’s perhaps not that uncommon to have such a life-spanning chronicle
of one man’s venture in gangsterdom, but even that pillar of the
gangster picture doesn’t touch America as far its lingering on minute details and crucial moments. Of course, America‘s now restored four-plus hour runtime allows for considerable temporal luxury as well.
Based on Harry Grey’s novel “The Hoods,” America
follows the journey of four young men as they ascend the ranks of New
York’s ruling criminal class, with all the loves and losses and
friendships and fights in between. The story is indeed a sprawling one
(little wonder there are six screenwriters credited) and it has the
familiar rise and fall structure that befits the gangster film so well,
for while it is always enjoyable to see the young hood make good, we
know that peak success is short lived, and the downfall must soon come.
As the film begins and we see Noodles in his older age, we are aware
that he obviously survives, so the question then becomes what exactly is
it he has survived? After leaving the city 35 years earlier, Noodles is
called back, but by whom, and why?
As part of the film’s complex
flashback structure, we instantly see that a younger Noodles is on the
lam, to the ultimate detriment of his friends, and it’s made clear that
the million dollars he has presumably stashed away is missing, but these
various loose ends of narrative have yet to be tied together. It’s
about 39 minutes into the film before Leone takes us to the very
beginning of these young men, where the then adolescent crew does odd
street jobs and shows off some criminally enterprising ingenuity.
Friendships are forged, sexuality is explored, and while a grand drama
unfolds when the boys are older, for now, in their youth, we witness a
series of vignettes that shape the men they would become.
It is about half way into America‘s
second hour when we leave their childhood and with them enter a more
dangerous, amusing, and dramatic adult existence. When Noodles is
released from prison (to keep this spoiler free, I’ll skip over the
actions that put him there), things have changed. He was absent through
the group’s more substantial formation and its emergence in stature and
respectability, and thus he returns and remains something of an
outsider, even though the others have done everything they could to
maintain his involvement, going so far as to retain his cut of their
profits. But now, conflicts of business and pleasure develop (Noodles
has been away from both) and there are struggles between the
individual—Noodles attempting to recapture a portion of life he was
denied—and the group. It doesn’t help that Noodles is fairly
antagonistic, continually provoking those around him, especially Max,
with whom he has always had a complicated relationship.
The street kids have grown up and
away from their low-level escapades and are now fully entrenched in the
professions of bootlegging and prostitution, and they’re very successful
at both. They are now also associated with crooks of a different color,
namely politicians. Add to this their involvement with union leaders
and their hostility toward corrupt law enforcement and you have most of
the key ingredients to any great gangster film.
There is no denying America‘s
indebtedness to gangster pictures of years past, and as shown in many
of the genre’s archetypal titles, the gangster has always been the
preeminent cinematic antihero. These men are lawbreakers and wrongdoers,
but more often than not, we’re in their corner, frequently cheering
them on along the way. America takes this tendency, intensifies
it, and aggressively confronts it. Yes, Noodles, Max and the others are
for all intents and purposes our heroes, and there’s no question they
can be charming and quite appealing, darkly funny even (the
baby-swapping), but they can be dastardly. They are, after all,
murderers and rapists. “We have enough enemies without being gangsters,”
says Noodles’ Jewish driver in a newly added scene, and this is
something of an implied reoccurring theme throughout the film. These
men, Noodles especially, have the ways and means to live an honorable
life, but they are constantly reverting to their criminal ways. “Why go
looking for trouble?” you can almost hear his Jewish mother ask. Even
after Noodles finally has his romantic evening with Deborah, which is
preceded by the heartfelt line when she asks if he has been waiting long
and he responds, “All my life,” the beautiful sequence culminates with
arguably his most barbaric action.
As a coming of age fable, America
is very much about myth making, not unlike Leone’s Western film
preoccupations (once upon a time…). He depicts moments as if in a
memory, a dream, or as if captured via a Polaroid picture that has long
since been tucked away in some forgotten and suddenly discovered
shoebox. This gives the film a touching poignancy, an appreciable
atmosphere of nostalgia, and a rendering of a very specific time and
place. There are the loves had and those lost, the schemes and feuds,
the sex and violence, the rites of petty crime and surprisingly harsh
consequences. Leone’s color and lighting choices reflect this subdued
wistful tone. He trades in his previous penchant for expressive and
exaggerated imagery and sound for a more classically subtle and
melancholic style (though we do get moments of lasting amplified noise
for dramatic effect, such as the opening phone ringing—recalling the
creaking windmill that begins Once Upon a Time in the West—or Noodles provocatively stirring his coffee).
This is also a wholly unusual
landscape for Leone. Gone are the scorching, open western vistas; the
sands of the desert have blown away and been replaced by cold, wet
asphalt. Towering skyscrapers and bridges now surround this new breed of
outlaw. Yet even in this foreign territory, Leone’s early 20th century
Manhattan streets, with all of their bustling liveliness, have clearly
been crafted by one who has a fondness for the era, or at least an
exceptional knowledge of it. The art direction by Carlo Simi (also known
for great work on numerous Spaghetti Westerns) contributes to an
authentic recreation down to the smallest facet. By the end of the film,
one truly feels as if having been through something and having
experienced a world. Sure, a lot of this has to do with the film’s
length, allowing for ample time to take it all in, but more than that,
it’s this level of detail and the subsequent absorption into the milieu.
Where Once Upon a Time in America
stands apart from nearly every other gangster film is in its strongly
emotional conveyance of regret, of missed opportunities, opportunities
lost, and of a somber reflection. And this isn’t only noticeable at the
film’s conclusion. Throughout the entire picture, the characters appear
to live as if they can see their own demise right before their eyes.
“You can always tell the winners at the starting gate,” says Noodles,
adding, “and the losers.” They seem to be aware that there is likely no
permanence to what they’re doing, that their end, probably tragic, is in
some ways inevitable.
Once Upon a Time in America
is not a perfect film. No question it has more than enough greatness,
but the “big reveal” conclusion in particular has never been totally
satisfying. The reasons for Noodles’ return, the intricate revenge plot
behind it, and the incorporation of political intrigue feel like they
belong in another film. Nevertheless, the film was a true passion
project for the 55-year-old Sergio Leone. (He supposedly turned down a
chance to direct The Godfather in order to work on this
picture.) Tragically, though, he would pass away a mere six years later.
While it is undeniably sad to see such a great director die so
early, and to think of what else he could have accomplished, as final
films go, this is about as good as it gets.
REVIEW from SOUND ON SIGHT
