The Complete Jacques Tati

Aside from his general lack of recognition as one of film history’s great comedians, the most tragic part of Jacques Tati’s working life is his minimal output (indeed the two are probably connected). On the positive side of things though, while Tati directed just six feature films, this limited filmography is ideal for a concise yet thorough compendium of the his entire oeuvre. Realizing this anthologizing potential, the Criterion Collection has assembled The Complete Jacques Tati, an extraordinary compilation.

Along with Tati’s six features (Jour de fête (1949), Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953), Mon oncle (1958), Playtime (1967), Trafic (1971), and Parade (1974)) are six shorts that credit Tati as performer, writer, and/or director (On demande une brute (1934), Gai dimanche (1935), Soigne ton gauche (1936), L’école des facteurs (1947), Cours du soir (1967), and Forza Bastia (2002)), as well as Dégustation maison (1978), directed by Tati’s daughter, Sophie Tatischeff. All are presented here in new digital restorations (2K for everything except PlayTime, which receives a 4K treatment). There is also a multitude of bonus features, including essays (visual and textual), interviews, introductions, and documentaries. Were it not for the quality and appeal of these films to begin with, however, this set would not have been warranted in the first place. So now that it has been released, it provides as good a time as any to look at Tati’s work and see just why his was one of the most original, inventive, and humorous of cinema’s comedic voices, and to then wonder why it hasn’t been sufficiently heard.

On demande une brute

This voice began in On demande une brute (Brute Wanted), where Tati assumes a soon to be familiar role of a genial, timid man who falls victim to a fallacious identity. Tati’s youth and height are more striking in this short than any aspect of the film’s narrative or, quite honestly, its humor, though we do see early examples of how Tati the performer utilizes surrounding objects as comedic props. Gai dimanche (Fun Sunday) is more representative of Tati’s future filmic and comedic approaches. There is the appearance of an automobile with its intrinsic difficulties, and there are several examples of Tati’s perception-based wit, where what the audience sees forms the punch line of character action: a customer seems to disappear simply because Tati and his cohort can’t see him; a one way arrow indecisively rotates back and forth, causing Tati confusion at the wheel while we are privy to its true cause. In Soigne ton gauche (Keep Your Left Up), an early short directed by René Clément, Tati plays a wannabe boxer and thus capitalizes on a key part of his stage routine at the time. He also emerges as a more formidable screen presence. In the earlier two shorts, Tati was but one of the primary players; here he is the star of the show, his mimetic physicality fully on display.

L’école des facteurs (School for Postmen) is Tati’s first (surviving) directorial effort and serves as the basis for Jour de fête, where he plays Francois, the same bicycling postman. In that later work, Tati rehashes and expands upon several of the same routines shown here. Cours du soir (Evening Classes) was filmed during Playtime’s production, on its immense sets, and features Tati as an acting instructor who basically demonstrates to his pupils a number of his most popular stage routines (playing tennis, fishing, boxing), all of which later reappear in Parade. As part of his lecture, he stresses the observation of multiple types of behavior as a critical aspect of comedy, as indeed it was for Tati.
 
Rounding out the shorts are Dégustation maison (House Specialty), Tatischeff’s award-winning short, shot in the same town as Jour de fête, and Forza Bastia (Festive Island), a soccer documentary started by Tati in 1978 and later discovered by Tatischeff, who assembled the footage and released the film in 2002. Taken together, these shorts are uneven though undeniably valuable entries into the Tati cannon and the Tati world, each in some way acknowledging crucial elements of the filmmaker’s initial mime acts and his feature length motion pictures.

Jour de fête

In the first of the latter, Jour de fête, the small town of Sainte-Severe-sur-Indre is sent into a tizzy as a ragtag fair sets up shop, rousing the curiosity and fascination of the townsfolk. These individuals are not usually prone to personality alternation, but for this event they’re going get themselves and the town “gussied up.” Everyone puts their best face forward, everyone except a hunched over elderly woman who sees all and provides wry commentary over the goings-on. She’s not thrilled and she’s keeping tabs on everyone else, calling them out for their posturing. In a way, she voices a more acerbic view of what Tati’s cinema will also consider: watching people behave in ways that, while perhaps natural, are nonetheless peculiar.

Tati’s later Mr. Hulot character is rather affable and generally well-liked, but here, Francois is a frequently mocked town fool; he’s never treated cruelly, but he isn’t exactly taken seriously. And when he becomes enamored by the prospect of delivering mail by helicopter, “American style,” the support he appears to receive from his neighbors is actually ridicule at his own expense, as they alone realize the absurdity of such a highfaluting endeavor. These aerial postmen are all the rage in America, where there is even a contest for the “sexiest Apollo in the US post.” But this is not America and Francois is no Apollo. He has trouble enough just getting around normally; add alcohol into the mix and he struggles to even get on his bike.

You know Francois is doomed to fail when he falls for the allure of speed and the idea of keeping up with the Americans, for in a Taiti film speed is seldom a good thing. Jour de fête stresses a leisurely pace preferred by most of Tati’s more endearing characters. Such a lifestyle is frequently given preferential screen treatment; a world is better when it is slower and calmer, when dogs laze in the street and geese block traffic. Speed is an affront to Tati’s largely unhurried tenor. Speed leads to stress, anxiety, anger, and frustration. In Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953), Tati’s next feature, a fast car shows up and causes great distress as it zips around, and the titular holiday itself is shown to be less carefree than one might assume, due largely to its burdensome temporal requisites. Part of that film’s humor is in its depiction of the coordinated work it takes to get away from work, the hassle of a vacation: catching trains, setting up at the beach, loading and unloading luggage, having a meal on time — this isn’t easy!

Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday

When the dust settles in Jour de fête, things are returned to their easygoing norm. “News is rarely good,” says the old lady, who comforts Francois about his inability to deliver the mail as fast as the Americans. “So let it take its sweet time.” Jour de fête may end with the beauty of just another day, but these days are changing, and as Tati’s work progresses, the speed of post-war modernity is unavoidable.

In Tati’s work, one also notices the dehumanizing habit of routine: fixed intervals of driving to work and driving home, of lunch and dinner, of waking in the morning and going to sleep at night — regular events of a regular day held with regularity. Not quite synonymous with speed, though likewise a similar symptom of modern life, comically customary routine is frequent fodder for derision. When the dinner bell rings in Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, the herd of tourist cattle promptly gathers inside and the beach becomes deserted and the streets are at a standstill (perhaps routine in this case actually helps counter some of the bustle?). The individuals might be there to have fun, but one must still follow the rules.

Mon oncle (1958), Tati’s third feature, goes even further in its good-natured disdain of the modern and its inherently overpowering progress. It also moves beyond the countryside and detached beach resorts (locations that would ostensibly cater to the laid-back), and situates itself primarily in a contemporary domestic milieu. The picture begins with scenes of construction and housing developments on the rise. Contrasting with this imagery of the new is Hulot’s residence on the outskirts of the city, a rustic old-world setting. Hulot is shown reaching his room at the top of a multistoried house via various windows and hallways looking in, resulting in one of the film’s greatest visual set pieces. Seen from a distance, he appears, disappears, and reappears as he makes his way through this erratically organic structure that bears no rhyme or reason in its blueprint.

At the other end of the architectural spectrum, his sister’s ultra modern home desperately strives to be unique from the other homes that are exactly like it. Its interiors and exteriors are artificial and rarely convenient. The meticulously arranged outdoor area, with every sleek element situated just so, conveys nothing natural and certainly doesn’t suggest a homey comfort. It also seems to take an awful lot of effort to maintain. Cleanliness in particular goes with the territory, and we see that Madame Arpel (Adrienne Servantie) makes it an obsessive habit to tidy up any and every surface around her, wiping off the gate, her son’s book bag, the car bumper, and so on. The residence and its bells and whistles are clearly superficial. “No, it’s just me!” assures her husband, Charles (Jean-Pierre Zola), when she switches on the ridiculous fish fountain as he enters the property. No use wasting the device on him. It needn’t be on for the grocer either. No reason to impress him. The family even eats dinner outside and they sit outside to watch television. This house is a good show, but is it livable?

Mon oncle

In Tati’s modern times, gadgetry might provide a fancy service, but it seldom does so practically, efficiently, and consistently. The house of Mon oncle is populated with conveniences such as bouncing dishes, lest they be dropped (other dishes, as Hulot finds out, well, they don’t bounce), but inevitable technical difficulties arise, as when the fish fountain succumbs to sputtering in its death throes. And even when everything is working, it’s still not sensible. At one point, when the family has seemingly every device in the house running, the final joke is that the machinery even cuts off communication. Mr. and Mrs. Arpel can’t hear or speak above the clamor.

If the house itself is representative of the pompously extravagant, many of its visitors are the same way. As with the arrangement of the home, the people and their interactions are similarly artificial. When the Arpel’s receive company, their pleasantries are punctuated by false modesty and pretentious exchanges of well wishing. When they host a party, it starts as prim and proper as possible but, in no small part thanks to Hulot, it dissolves into minor chaos … a much more enjoyable minor chaos.

Once away from the house, it’s more of the same: a banal pattern of customary intervals and regulated conformity. Lines dictate where to go, for safety sake, true, but also to keep everyone in order. These strict linear designations are in contrast to the more haphazardly developed province in which Hulot resides. The world of Mon oncle and Playtime, Tati’s next picture, correspond to a general Tati theory of heightened color only when necessary and illustrative, and is therefore otherwise cold, grey, and sterile, further contributing to a sense of dehumanization, as do the incessant geometric patterns that give the settings their regimentation and orderly drabness.

The sequences at Mr. Arpel’s factory and the scenes of his traversing back and forth also point toward Playtime, which opens the scope of Tati’s observations. This time he is examining the whole of modern city life, from industry to retail to entertainment, from 9-5 workaday behavior to fun-loving nighttime shenanigans; the 50-minute restaurant sequence is an elaborately choreographed representation of Murphy’s Law, where the best laid plans of the new venue’s opening is a nearly never-ending series of disaster and destruction.

Playtime

The opening airport scene reveals a procession of people coming and going from all angles and from any number of entryways, all emphasizing how densely layered Tati’s labyrinthine mise-en-scene can be, and is especially in this film. People can emerge from anywhere, often accompanied by a single associative sound that comically draws attention to their entrance and exit. Deceptive windows and reflections form visual layers upon visual layers. The fish bowl corporate interiors betray their division from the exteriors, the separation oftentimes confused as the settings appear undifferentiated. Yet at the same time, people are sealed off from one another. Cubicle culture is not at all conducive to human interaction. Characters in close proximity to each other don’t even realize it because they are cut off by dividing walls; they will cross rooms to call one another on the telephone when they are unknowingly within speaking distance.

All of this is part of Tati’s geographic plan of humor, whereby he places the camera at an ideal vantage point from which to cover a given area. We see what the characters can’t, and thus we are in on jokes they are oblivious to. Such a masterful sequence comes later where the camera remains outside an apartment building, with the accompanying exterior sounds, while the drama unfolds silently through large windows; we are essentially watching screens within screens (perhaps a nod to Tati’s picture framing background). The view of the apartments suggest an interchange between the neighbors, but the joke of the insinuation is for our eyes only.

If there is a single symbol to associate with the pace and shift of the modern way of life, it would be the automobile, and Playtime ends with a carnivalesque procession of vehicles that lead directly to Tati’s next film, Trafic, where rows and rows of cars signal a specific sign and form of modernity. The automobile is an emblematic consequence of a speed-centric, mechanized existence, as well as its dual innovation and frustration. If the cars aren’t going recklessly fast they’re breaking down, further evidence of the fallibility of technology. In Trafic, as its name implies, there are cars … and cars, and cars, and cars. Cars everywhere. As if in a Dr. Seuss book, there are cars on ramps and cars on freeways, cars that are parked and cars that speed; old cars, new cars, nice cars, worn cars. As Hulot and his crew make their trek to an automobile exposition in Amsterdam, their biggest impediment along the way? What else? Car trouble. One sequence even culminates in perhaps cinema’s most amusing multi-car pile up.

Trafic

Yet in this road trip structure, Tati incorporates his clearest and, for the most part most conventional, sense of narrative progression, where the characters have a clear goal and the film itself has an obvious forward momentum that begins somewhere and ends somewhere else, with dramatic conflicts hindering the progress in between. While there may be an ostensible destination, the diversions along the way are plentiful and diverse, ranging from running out of gas to the burdens of bureaucratic rigmarole and misunderstanding (more symptoms of this modern age).

En route to the expo, Tati sets his sights on car culture: gas station giveaways (free busts with a fill up) and those who regard their vehicles as invisibility vessels (drivers picking, poking, and scratching in a bodily display of amusing private behavior). A further consequence of all these vehicles is the effect they have on human conduct. Anticipated road rage shows just how foolish people can look when they’re angry, and when windshield wipers mirror the body types and movements of the drivers, we see just how accordant technology and its users have become.

While Tati’s humor may reside in this realm of unique individual portrayal based largely on mute imitation, his exceptional audio design should not be ignored. Just as there are these observational segments that don’t rely on sound for their effect, there are also symphonies of trunks and hoods and doors opening and shutting with occasionally rhythmic flourish. Likewise, one can’t overstate the importance of the score in a Jacques Tati film, the sublime audio accompaniment to what are in many ways silent pictures. The score of Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, for example, is never elaborate or varied. It is more of a recurrent musical motif that chimes in and out on a whim and sets the tone of lighthearted respite. It is not in any way manipulative in terms of narrative response or character development. The same holds true for all of Tati’s work.

Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday

Diegetic sounds are also sporadic at best. Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday screeches with intercom squawks and squeals that sound like the disembodied adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon. And when certain characters speak, it’s more of a grunt than a discernable language. In Playtime, mechanical thingamajigs give off ambient hums while funny sounding furniture mixes with punctuations of isolated noise, humorous in their solitary context: zippers, shuffling of papers, brushing of clothes, etc.

Sound is quite important to Tati’s art, there’s no doubt about that. It’s just dialogue that is of little concern. Though there is often background chatter, verbal exchanges are largely superfluous. Aside from something like Mon oncle, where the pretentious exchanges between the pretentious people are part of the point, words seldom matter; noises maybe, but not actual dialogue. This is evidenced in the irregular subtitling. In many cases, not only would it be difficult to pinpoint the dialogue worthy of translating, it simply isn’t always important.

Some examples of where dialogue does have relevance is when the old man in Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday relays his army experience while a youngster espouses ramblings about ideology and the bourgeoisie. Both bore the daylights out of those around them, and when the two meet, sparks predictably fly. They both would have been better off keeping quiet. Jour de fête also has an interesting early twist on dialogue’s unreliability, where the soundtrack of a movie showing at the fair plays over the silent interaction between two characters as they flirt, their interactions appearing to coincide with the dialogue from the film.

This then leads to an additional component of Tati’s aural design, his use of sound emanating from unseen sources. The smallest of sounds are accentuated and highlighted to emphasize their comic peculiarity (the dong of the swinging door to the dining area in Hulot, for example), and they will reoccur as comedic refrains of silly sounds that in real life would go ignored but when presented as isolated noises are rendered amusing. When the aural and the visual work in tandem, some of Tati’s finest moments emerge, as when in Jour de fête Francois swats at a buzzing bee. From a distance, where the sound of the insect is less audible, he looks ridiculous. But when the bee makes its way to the farmer looking down on the postman, he too starts swatting and it all makes sense.

Jour de fête

Still, Tati’s comedy is generally based on the visual. In keeping with his thematic worldview, his camera is objective, with few close-ups and little intricate editing. He typically maintains a wider shot giving ample space for pictorial density and individual movement. His films are full of everyday dramas, sometimes more than one in any given frame, but we’re just where we need to be to see them. There is relatively minor camera maneuvering, with more attention paid to an appropriate angle (to best capture the joke) and maintaining an appropriate tempo (to make the joke work). Then there are the sight gags from Tati the prop master. If it’s in the frame, it very well may come into play. Like a life-size game of Mousetrap, Tati’s mise-en-scene is a complex contraption of elements springing into action and making their presence known. In Trafic, Tati takes his mastery of material objects to another level with the demonstration of the Swiss army knife camping car, a singular summation of his ability to take the standard and turn it into something ingenious and surprising.

Some bits of business in Tati’s films are so quick and subtle they can go unnoticed on initial viewings, and sometimes, as in the eyeball windows of Mon oncle, there can be punch lines more than an hour in the making. In Playtime (shot in 70mm and greatly benefitting from the detailed 4K transfer), his Tativille canvas is large and shown in great depth. A gag could be anywhere and it’s up to the audience to democratically scan the set, all as part of Tati’s passive vs. participatory sense of audience interaction. In Trafic, a long shot joke takes its very humor from its distance, when strings designating stations at the expo can’t be seen from our faraway vantage point. Subsequently, everyone appears to be high stepping over nothing. As his staging is distinguished by rigid compositions with little extraneous space, long shots full of fore and background material can concurrently reveal slivers of the screen that hide a nearly obscured joke.

Immediately with Jour de fête, Tati established one of his key aesthetic approaches, that of the observational passing glance, an objective survey of everyday surroundings to reveal the comical (the row of merry-go-round horse heads hanging out the back of a truck to start the film, for instance). But it’s not just the inanimate that spark comedic allure, though there are moments when objects amusingly take on a life of their own (runaway bikes, electrical devices on the fritz, uncooperative cars). There are also the pleasantly average foibles of pleasantly average people.

Playtime

So who inhabit Tati’s carefully constructed worlds? The people of Playtime run the gamut, from corporate stiffs, to working class locals, to tourists. Aside from the family vacationers in Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, there are the hiking revelers with their youthful, outdoorsy exuberance. The sweet blonde girl, Martine (Nathalie Pascaud), attains a degree of bemusement and humor in a way that no other adult is in the picture does, while the mischievous kids in Mon oncle exploit the tempers and temperament of the grownups. In Trafic, teenagers and young adults are given a considerable prominence. Whoever the people in a Tati film are, and whether they are exercising, working, or just walking around, it’s like a dance, a pure spectacle of bodies in motion, a helter skelter public mingling with people of all shapes and sizes bumbling and fumbling around one another as they all go about their typically banal business.

One of the funniest — and darkest — sequences in all of Tati’s films is the trick played on Maria (Maria Kimberly) by a few young people in Trafic. The hilarious bit is capped by Hulot wiping his feet on what is perceived to be her puppy, ripping off its nose (a button), and trying it on like a vest (which it is). But this is atypical for Tati’s characters. Usually goofiness is innate in their behavior; they do things they do and happen to look funny doing them. Rare are those who go out of their way to goof around. Another exception in Trafic is when the mechanic and another driver are inspired by footage of the moon landing and decide to continue fixing the car in exaggerated low-gravity slow motion.

Of course, the most memorable character in Tati’s fictional films is the character played by Tati himself, which, in all but Jour de fête, is Mr. Hulot. Aside from the pains he causes his brother-in-law in Mon oncle, Hulot is a generally beloved fellow, though he is, according to his brother-in-law, “no role model.” Mr. Arpel owns a Dachshund that goes to work with him sometimes, often running ahead of him and giving off a warning to the workers that the boss is coming, spurring on everyone to look as busy as possible. When Hulot sees the dog coming, he gets down on the floor and plays with it.

Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday

Tati’s characters (Hulot and Francois) frequently take time to fix problems. This can be productive (an ingenious method for helping a cross-eyed man hammer correctly) or it can result in the emergence of even greater obstacles (an elaborate dance/struggle when planting a pole). For all of his dimness, Francois is conversely clever at making do with what’s around, like hitching a ride on the back of a truck and using the bed as a table. But just as Hulot’s best intentions often go awry, he quite innocently causes trouble wherever he goes. He’s awkward and at times oblivious, and the world is a precarious one, with much that can go wrong. It’s an unsteady relationship. Still, Hulot, like Francois, is here to help. In Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, he is worried about taffy falling, he’s swift to carry Martine’s suitcase, and he’s quick to punish a perceived peeper. Yet when jazz disrupts a quiet evening, sending everyone into pandemonium, the angered tourists find the source. It’s Hulot, of course, sitting right beside the blaring record payer. He’s doing just fine.

A tennis match in Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, with Hulot’s unconventional jutting and poking serve, upsets his playmates. (Knowing when a joke works and should reappear, Tati resurrects this serve when Hulot attempts to beat down some wayward fireworks.) Hulot also expresses some Chaplinesque panic when his shoe is caught on a fox rug and he think the beast is attacking him. Hulot is also a gentleman. When dancing with Martine, he finds a shred of fabric to touch on her backless dress, and in PlayTime, he’s especially kind to Barbara (Barbara Dennek), escorting her around and buying her gifts. By the end of Trafic, it seems Hulot may have actually made a romantic conquest, as he walks off under an umbrella shared with Maria.

By PlayTime’s production, Tati was having some fun with his Hulot persona, sprinkling scenes with false Hulots that tease the audience and the other characters. And the opening titles of Trafic proclaim, “Mr. Hulot in Trafic.” Indeed, the Hulot character (lurched forward, pipe in mouth, umbrella in hand, sporting a tan trench coat), had become a fully recognizable commodity. Jacques Tati’s final feature-length work, however, does not contain Hulot. It also isn’t a fictional film. Made for Swiss television, Parade, shot in a variety of formats and respectively presented as such for this Criterion release, covers an elaborate stage show put on by Tati, largely based around his “world-famous sporting impressions.”

Parade

With slight of hand routines and pratfalls are interactive performances where audience members are encouraged to move, sing along, dance, and even participate in some of the skits (a rather odd mule riding contest brings forth several eager attendees; the sequence ends with a sweet payoff). There are again many people clamoring together, and again, there is an unusually large amount of young people. These folks are dressed to the nines in the outlandish fashions of the day and many jovially ham it up when the fancy strikes them. Is this behavior staged, or simply in the spirit of the evening? Or in the spirit of a Tati film? The eclectic menagerie of sounds and colors and acts and antics include actors, clowns, acrobats, tumblers, props, magicians, musicians, and singers, all performing with great revelry. Parade can be a spotty hodgepodge of routines, yet Tati the ringmaster is clearly orchestrating his spectacle with great affection and for that, it feels like a truly personal project.

With the vast assortment of illuminating bonus features accrued for this Criterion set are alternate versions of certain films. Jour de fête comes in three variations, including a partly colorized 1964 version and the full-color 1995 rerelease version. Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday is presented in two versions, including the original 1953 theatrical release, and Mon oncle’s disc includes My Uncle, the version Tati created for English-language audiences. In the case of Jour de fête, which was originally filmed in an experimental Thomsoncolor process with black and white as a backup, the color is rather hit and miss. The partial colorization includes mostly dabs of red and blue on certain ornamentation (flags, banners and the like), and the full color version is rudimentary, minimally expressive, and generally inconsistent in quality; it’s a historical curio more than any giant step forward in the technology. The original Hulot, longer than the later cut, contains a different score, isn’t as tightly constructed, and, perhaps most lamentable, is missing the terrific joke of Hulot’s collapsed boat chomping through the water like a shark, which Tati shot and added in 1978 (no doubt in playful reference to Jaws). My Uncle similarly has differing sequences than the French version and is about 10 minutes shorter, to no great avail in either case. If anything, this mixture of variations on the same films show that Tati, despite his limited output, was never creatively stagnate. There was always some cinematic tinkering to be done.
REVIEW  from FILM INTERNATIONAL

‘Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson’

The popularity of the Western, at one point America’s reigning genre champion, was starting to wane considerably by the mid-1960s and well into the 1970s. In part to keep the form alive, and in part to examine just want made this type of film what it once was and had now become, many filmmakers, Sam Peckinpah most notably, began to approach Westerns through a self-consciously analytical lens. These were Westerns that were, in one way or another, about Westerns themselves: what made them work, what their key tropes were, how could their conventions be subverted or updated, and how could this old-fashioned genre be made modern?

Director Robert Altman, no stranger to subverting conventions and thwarting expectations, had already tackled this in 1971, with McCabe & Mrs. Miller. His variation on the Western had a more ambiguous and ambivalent hero than the genre classics; its setting was a dank, dark snow-covered wilderness, rather than the open prairie or desert; its themes were more capitalistically corrupt than stalwartly moralistic. While the film is extraordinary—one of his best—it wasn’t, in a general sense, very fun. Warren Beatty was amusing enough, but the picture itself was rather somber.

With Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson, released five years later, Altman was again breaking down the Western, only this time, he was focused on one critical aspect of the genre and of America’s Western heritage: the making and maintenance of a myth. And this time, he was having a lot more fun with it.



“Robert Altman’s Absolutely Unique and Heroic Enterprise of Inimitable Lustrel,” as the opening credits proclaim, picks up with The Star, AKA William ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody (Paul Newman), as he seeks to keep his Wild West Show thriving as a viable form of entertainment by way of elaborate show business hijinks mixed with a dash of historical liberty. This is the basic crux of the film: the balance of history and entertainment, real life and performance, reenactments and feats of skill next to exaggerations and individual variations on what really occurred. Sometimes, these lines are explicitly and painfully clear, as when a horse steps on (through?) one of the performers—”That’s the real thing,” declares another shocked player; sometimes, the distinction is less obvious, as in The Sure Shot, AKA Annie Oakley (a terribly cute Geraldine Chaplin), who has a talent that legitimately justifies her own celebrity.

The circus-like atmosphere of Buffalo Bill is right up Robert Altman’s alley, with an assortment of individuals coming and going (a cast of 500-plus), all speaking over one another in classic Altman style. Among the more interesting are The Relative, AKA Ed Goodman, played by an oddly meek and fawning Harvey Keitel, who scurries around his famous uncle, and The Legend Maker, Ned Buntline, played by Burt Lancaster. Buntline is the man who, for all intents and purposes, “invented” Buffalo Bill and his supposed exploits. Throughout the film, he continues spinning the yarn that perpetuates the myth.



Then there is The Indian, Sitting Bull (Frank Kaquitts), brought in to add some much-needed drama and generally fabricated conflict to the show (“Is he tame?” wonders one character). Essentially mute, Sitting Bull nevertheless manages to rouse Bill’s ire by the mere existence of his own legend, and the stereotypically opaque Native American dialogue causes a good deal of frustration. When Sitting Bull’s handler says something about the chief visiting the sun “and the squaws move teepees to the moon’s path,” one of Bill’s cohorts demands the Indian “Stop sunning and mooning us.” And later, Bill proclaims, “You tell Sitting Bull that Buffalo Bill says his leaves can turn whichever way he wants as long as he knows which way the wind is blowing.” He then proudly turns to his group: “I gave him back the same kind of murky logic that he gave us.”

Bill also assumes the Indian has a similar penchant for show business, reasoning that he wouldn’t want to be chief otherwise. Inevitably though, the collaboration quickly becomes a contentious one. Unlike everyone else Bill surrounds himself with, Sitting Bull and his fellow Native American’s aren’t so quick to placate this blow-hard of an American hero, and more often than not, Bill and his compatriots come away looking like fools. At one point, as the Indians causally mosey away from camp, Bill and his posse head out in erratic pursuit of the perceived escapees. But despite the narrative that these men are among the best trackers in America, they return empty handed. Still, they keep on keeping on, resilient in their efforts to maintain their storied reputations. Frequently with the musical accompaniment of The Cowboy Band, Bill and the others ride somewhere between the lands of perpetual children playing cowboys and Indians and old men past their prime basking in what used to be.

This is really about all there is in terms of plot here. Even by Robert Altman standards, Buffalo Bill has a loose, free-flowing storyline. Sitting Bull causes some consternation, and the whole group gets excited by a visit from The President of the United States, Grover Cleveland, and The First Lady (Pat McCormick and Shelley Duvall), but the film is essentially a series of amusing and not always interconnected incidents. Still, the script is cleverly poignant, the dialogue is witty, and Newman gives a terrific performance; the casting of such as actor in this film about fame works well as star persona merges with star persona.



Bill is admirable in his assuredness, but as the manager of this Wild West Show enterprise, he’s a bit of a goof, and those around him aren’t much better. He knows how to play to the crowd though, and evidently the event is a national success (as it really was), so whatever he’s doing, it seems to be working. He’s a complicated man, too. He isn’t quite sure what words like “incarceration” mean, sometimes he can’t keep his own stories straight, and his reputation as a virile man’s man is betrayed by a touch of impotency, but he is, at the very least, true to himself, even if that means occasionally lying to everyone else.

More than anything though, the themes of Buffalo Bill are the most prescient aspects of the picture. While the similarly revisionist Westerns called subtle attention to their implicit concerns regarding generic formation and historical revaluation, Altman puts these issues front and center. This Western blatantly deconstructs the illusion of fame and the infallibility of a legend. There is something of an even larger American commentary in the film as well. Released during the United States’ bicentennial, it touches on what was, near the end of the 19th century, a steady distancing from the nation’s Wild West past, and what in 1976 was a reevaluation of contemporary American ideals. In the film, President Cleveland states that a man like Buffalo Bill “made this country what it is today,” and Bill, for his part, notes, “nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.” They’re both right. In the 1800s and in 1976, historical figures like Buffalo Bill, regardless of their validity, were (and still are) integral to the American mindset and the nation’s perception of itself. Yet, at the same time, while this may always be so, with each passing generation there does grow a degree of natural, and in many ways productive, skepticism. That’s why we remember older heroes while constantly searching for new ones. America knows what legends used to exist, so the question then becomes, what legends now exist? In Buffalo Bill and the Indians, the titular character finds himself stuck in the middle of just such a dilemma, and is unsteadily representative of either side.



The Kino Lorber Blu-ray of Buffalo Bill and the Indians is among three Altman titles recently released by the company, the others being The Long Goodbye (1973) and Thieves Like Us (1974). (It’s worth noting that Olive Films also recently released a Blu-ray of Altman’s great and greatly underrated Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, from 1982.) The discs look and sound sharp—the sound in an Altman film being of the utmost importance—and are undeniable improvements on preexisting DVD copies, though the bonus features are scant. With Buffalo Bill is the very brief documentary, From the Prairie to the Palace. In it, the narrator discusses the influence of this live Western show and Newman speaks about the role, saying he considers Bill an “amalgamation of all the legendary heroes in history.” There’s also some behind the scenes footage of Altman directing. Essentially, this short inclusion further makes the case for the film’s thematic core, the narrator arguing that it is “the story of the first American hero whose legend was not based on military victories or political involvement, but on myth, and a lot of publicity.”


REVIEW  from SOUND ON SIGHT

‘L’Avventura’

Michelangelo Antonioni’s enigmatic and brilliant L’Avventura is one of the benchmarks for international art cinema, a somewhat disputable designation that was, nevertheless, very much in vogue at the time of its release. Take the 1960 Cannes Film Festival for example, where L’Avventura debuted to one of the event’s most divisive responses, with initially more boos than cheers greeting this affront to conventional film narrative and form. Yet, this was also the year of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (the Palme d’Or winner), Chukhray’s Ballad of a Soldier, Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, Kalatozov’s Letter Never Sent, and Buñuel’s The Young One, to name just a few of the other titles at the festival, where, ultimately, L’Avventura came away with the Jury Prize (shared with Ichikawa’s Odd Obsession). With this impressive company to give Antonioni’s film competition, how does one explain L’Avventura’s standing, then as one of the most controversial releases of the year and now as one of the pinnacle achievements in film history, by one of cinema’s greatest masters?

To start with, there is the story, which begins as a group of upper class, self-centered northern Italians visit an island. There, without any rhyme or reason, one of the women, Anna (Lea Massari), seemingly the main character, disappears. A search ensues but this proves to be unproductive and the investigation continues back on the mainland. But as the film progresses, the search for Anna becomes secondary, if not totally unimportant. This as opposed to the relationship that develops between her lover, Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), and her friend, Claudia (Monica Vitti). In what would become familiar Antonioni fashion, the film ends ambiguously, without a clear conclusion in the search for Anna nor a definite establishment of Sandro and Claudia’s union.



This superficial account, however, overlooks the film’s vagaries, which can simultaneously frustrate an audience’s identification with the characters while also developing these same people into some very complex individuals. We know, for example, that Anna’s father disapproves of her relationship with Sandro, but other points of tension are left unspoken or unexplained. There is a generally glacial pace to get to the disappearance of Anna, with inane dialogue and various digressions along the way, and yet, when the moment of drama comes, it is rather fleeting, it soon subsides, and the characters move on with only intermittent and essentially unrelated conflicts. Those shown in the film are frequently cold and distanced from one another as well. When there is some passionate spontaneity, as often as not it is born from carelessness or a momentary selfish desire. As Anna’s friends and family debate her disappearance—a criminal act, an accident, suicide?—their attention is easily diverted, even by something as irrelevant as an ancient vase found amongst the rocks or as frivolous as yet another sexual tryst.

Within about 24 hours of the mysterious tragedy, the bond between Sandro and Claudia matures. Within about three days, though the search is still on, it is generally overshadowed by this new primary couple. By the end of the film, Claudia admits she doesn’t even want Anna to be alive, so that she and Sandro may live happily ever after (it’s soon shown that this fantasy isn’t very likely). Through it all, inquires about Anna don’t necessarily stop, and Claudia and Sandro do follow up most leads as they receive them, but this motivation is basically driven by a need to have some purpose, some reason to do something. Anna remains on their mind, but they are equally preoccupied with unproductive indecisiveness and detours that lead nowhere: anything to prolong an inevitable outcome or resolution.



The reoccurrence of unrelated deviations goes beyond the characters; a reluctance to reach a conclusion is at the heart of the film itself. There is frequent discussion in the picture about needing things to be clear and obvious, for actions and behavior to have a degree of certainty, but for Antonioni, this is not at all a principal concern. People will act impulsively, often without any definitive incentive, and we’re left to wonder, sometimes with the other characters, why they do what they do. Upon receiving Anna’s Bible, for instance, her father asserts she must not have committed suicide—how could someone religious do that?—but this is a false assumption, one that naively presumes life to have explainable rationale.

Further, L’Avventura is where we see the most overt early example of Antonioni’s use of location as a metaphoric and metonymic device. There are often-cited examples of how Antonioni presents running themes through careful framing and character juxtaposition, both in regards to setting. In his commentary track, Gene Youngblood points to the opening scene where Anna and her father discuss her relationship with Sandro, her intentions, and where they both may be heading in life. Behind the two, as this conversation goes on, we see at once older structures as well as the construction of new, modern high-rise apartments. The conflict of the old giving way to the new, of modernity overcoming the more rigorous and aged, is not only in the discussion between the father and daughter but is shown in their knowing placement in the midst of this construction.

Then there is the yacht ride to Lisca Bianca, setting up the conflicts amongst the various other, rather extraneous characters of the film. As they approach the uninhabited island, we begin to see it in the distance growing in stature and expansiveness. Antonioni stages the frivolous and egocentric bits of dialogue against the backdrop of an island and the association is explicit. Whether or not the characters are truly affected by what will take place there, the fact that it occurs on an island brings into focus the connection between this isolated and inhospitable solitary land mass and these characters so self-absorbed, so surrounded and yet so alone.



Similarly, the last image of the film has Sandro on a bench and Claudia standing by his side. This much is situated on the left half of the frame while a large wall takes up the entirety of the right. For this couple, now with issues of their own, their surroundings are closing in. Like the fog in Antonioni’s earlier Il Grido (1952) and later Identification of a Woman (1982), where the environment limits the vision of the characters and forces them to address more immediate and localized concerns, here Sandro and Claudia have to face themselves, to face the present, and to decide the best course of action for their uncertain yet increasingly moribund future together.

Throughout L’Avventura, Antonioni’s audacious camera placements (like this divided final composition) cut off or conceal part of the setting, obscure part of a body or a face, or deny the audience the object of a character’s attention. This sort of visual strategy likewise reflects the film’s narrative refusal to be complicit in conventional forms. And as the characters roam in and around various places, Antonioni’s acute attention to detail puts forth so much in the interior spaces as well as the exterior locales that one contemplates without any clarification their presumed, but by no means obvious, significance. The newly released Criterion Blu-ray of the film, which looks spectacular, allows for exceptional focus on just this sort of pictorial devotion, highlighting much of the film’s visual density.

This disc also contains the original English-language trailer for the film, an essay by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, a copy of what Antonioni had to say about the film during its Cannes premiere, two essays by Antonioni, read by Jack Nicholson, star of the director’s extremely underrated The Passenger (1975), and Antonioni: Documents and Testimonials, a documentary that covers his life and work. Youngblood’s commentary is a thorough analysis of this controversial picture, with much indeed in it to analyze; and that there is still yet more to say about the film is evinced by Olivier Assayas’ readings and examinations of various aspects of the movie, from style to character interaction.

Following L’Avventura, Antonioni’s next film in what would come to be considered a trilogy of sorts was La Notte in1961, with L’Eclisse following in 1962. While these films revisit a number of the same themes and aesthetic designs that would be crucial to Antonioni’s work throughout his career, it is with L’Avventura that one truly gets the sense of ground being broken. That’s not to say it is the best film he ever directed (though I would argue it is), but this is the film of his that most clearly worked to usher in a new form of cinema, from which there was no turning back.


REVIEW  from SOUND ON SIGHT

‘The Conformist’

When first introduced to the improved quality of Blu-ray technology, there were about a dozen films I couldn’t wait to see in the format. These were movies of extraordinary beauty that I knew would surely benefit from the enhanced visual resolution. Now, with the arrival of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist on a stunning new Raro Video edition, another one of those titles can be scratched off the list. What makes this an exciting release, however, goes beyond the look of the picture (though that is paramount). This is, in every regard, one of the greatest films ever made.

The Conformist is a complex chronicle of the tormented, ruthless, and devious Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a rising-through-the-ranks Fascist enforcer. The film is a fascinating look at the extent to which one will go to escape the past, fit in with the present, and secure a place in the future. Clerici is the embodiment of repression: repression of heartfelt desire, emotion, everything except ambition. He’s about to wed Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli), a simple-minded petty bourgeois whom he dismisses as “mediocre” and “all bed and kitchen.” Even Giulia’s mother thinks her daughter is not worthy of Clerici. The marriage would be a sham; it’s not at all about love. Yet, for him, the union is a necessity. In his eyes, marriage is about normalcy, stability, and security. More than anything else, Clerici wants to be like everyone else. When a friend asks him what a normal man is like, he responds, “He likes people similar to himself and does not trust those who are different.”

Clerici is given an assignment that should be easy enough and would do a good deal to establish himself as a vital political soldier. He is to travel to Paris and reconnect with his former anti-Fascist professor, Quadri (Enzo Tarascio), and determine who the old man’s subversive contacts are back in Rome. Shortly thereafter, counter orders instruct Clerici to simply kill Quadri. But the mission becomes complicated when Clerici falls for Quadri’s wife, Anna (Dominique Sanda); this despite the fact that Giulia has accompanied him on his trip to France.



With the moral crisis of Clerici’s romantic involvement is a political crisis that likewise compromises his responsibilities, and the two are never entirely disconnected. He instructs his driver and Fascist associate Manganiello (Gastone Moschin) to place country before family, yet he is quickly willing to drop everything and go to Brazil with Anna. Indeed, she is a formidable beauty, with more than a hint of danger. One particularly striking shot has her seductively striding toward the camera, thumbs in her pockets; she poses enticingly in the doorway then lounges nonchalantly in a chair. Though she had earlier embraced Clerici, she later stares him down as she similarly flirts with his nude fiancé. The provocative sexual tension between her and Clerici as well as between her and Giulia (to say nothing of her apparent fondness for her husband) leave one to wonder what exactly her angle is in the whole enterprise. In any case, this interior rupture leaves Clerici in a perpetual state of discomfort, his pent up angst only occasionally given some levity in oddly quirky behavior.

The planned assassination is further hindered when Anna unexpectedly travels with her husband on the morning he is to be killed, and Clerici has already been told there can be no witnesses to the murder. The eventual confrontation along an isolated forest road is cold and calculated, yet it erupts with a chaotic violence. Amidst the serenity of the towering trees, the wind, the snow-covered mountainside, Clerici becomes stoic in the face of his obligation and his inscrutable emotions, thus forcing others to give chase as Anna flees. Bertolucci employs a frantic handheld camera that conveys the desperation of not only those pursing the young woman but of her own tragic plight.

Coupled with Bertolucci’s canted angles, elaborate camera movements, and static compositions of notable balance, Vittorio Storaro’s gorgeous Technicolor cinematography gives The Conformist its visual novelty, which is probably the film’s most pronounced attribute. The mélange of colors at a party (ironically attended primarily by blind people) contrast with the starkness one associates with the Fascist regime. At times, the opposed hues of bold colors and industrial blandness will also unify in a single image, as when a somber cityscape at dusk is shot through by piercing yellow headlights. In the same way, the vast echo chambers that comprise the regime’s office buildings are barren, grey, sterile, and generally unadorned facilities. Certain domestic interiors, on the other hand, are a mergence of illumination, costume, and set design; Giulia’s black and white striped dress mirrors and blends with the horizontal shafts of sunlight coming in the partially open blinds, for example. Throughout the film, every scene — nearly every shot — is a dazzling play of light and color, texture and movement.

The narrative disjunction of The Conformist, with multiple flashbacks spanning almost Clerici’s entire life, is additionally compounded due to the film’s abrupt shifts in pace and editing, with brief shots countered by longer takes, frontal camera positions next to extreme high and low angles, sweeping crane shots next to a stationary, restrained distance. Bertolucci, a devout disciple of Jean-Luc Godard, infuses The Conformist with several instances of Godardian juxtaposition, and in Adriano Apra’s visual essay, which accompanies this disc and primarily consists of an interview with Bertolucci, the critic breaks down via graphs and diagrams the film’s patterns of camera movement, scene duration, and narrative chronology. But while Godard’s experimentation was often integrated as a self-consciously formal approach to cinematic aesthetics, Bertolucci’s choices are arguably more character-driven, with the disparity of stylistic forms echoing the inconsistency of Clerici’s principles and yearnings. (In another Godard connection, Alberto Moravia, who wrote the novel upon which The Conformist was based, also penned “Il Disprezzo,” the source for Godard’s Contempt, 1963.)
 


Had this style been The Conformist’s sole distinguishing feature it would still be significant, but there is an equal substance that gives the film its historical, social, and psychological resonance. This is primarily achieved through Bertolucci’s inspection of Clerici, his troubled youth, his policy-driven aspirations, and his deep-seeded, unspoken motivations. A homosexual experience with an older chauffeur at the age of 13 led him to a shocking act of violence, and the event has never left him. Its lingering impact is a result of the guilt of the encounter and/or the feelings that remain and may not ever quite subside. His father, equally political in his own time, is now confined to a mental institution. (An anonymous letter writer contends the insanity is a result of syphilis and may be hereditary; Clerici assures Giulia he has only ever suffered “moral maladies.”) And his haggard and drug-addled mother may or may not be having an affair with her Japanese driver, who may or may not be providing her with the morphine. Clerici wants little to nothing to do with these personal demons and familial failings. These things stand out. Clerici wants to blend in. He wants to be just another Fascist suit and hat that tows the party line. Despite some of his half-hearted romantic actions, he exudes contempt for drama and passion.



As a face to 1930s/40s Italian Fascism, Marcello Clerici is something of an exception to the normal portrayal of similar individuals. Far from the depraved caricatures of Pasolini’s Salo (1975), for example, Clerici is actually a fully-formed and complex character. He is more than merely a brutal one-dimensional killer. He has a back-story, however ambiguous; he has a personality, however insipid; and he has his reasons, however indefinite. Most prominently, as seen in shots like that behind the opening credit scrawl or in the enigmatic close-ups of his face as he and Manganiello drive toward the woods, Clerici conveys a capacity for introspection. While he may make a mockery of confession, there can be no denying that his past deeds weigh heavily on his current state, and by the end of the film, shocking realizations about those very deeds send him reeling in genuinely emotional distress. Confronted simultaneously with the demolition of his political ideals and the truth of at least part of his personal torment, Clerici manages to emerge almost as a sympathetic individual.

Only Storaro’s cinematography on Apocalypse Now (1979) gives his work here some competition, and Georges Delerue’s score is only bested by his music for Contempt. The production design by Ferdinando Scarfiotti and the costumes by Gitt Magrini add to the film’s glorious whole, and the performances by all involved are excellent. Sandrelli’s innocence as a decent young woman who just wants to blindly love Clerici counters nicely against Sanda’s knowing seductress, and Trintignant, on whom the film hinges most, is a contradictory blank slate of emotion. He is almost like a walking, talking personification of Lev Kuleshov’s famous editing experiment, his surface stoicism expressing so much based on surrounding elements, shots, and sequences. Yet to register so much by doing so little shows a notable understated restraint. The Conformist followed Bertolucci’s The Grim Reaper (1962) and Before the Revolution (1964) and was released a few years before Last Tango in Paris (1972) and 1900 (1976). To say the least, he was in the midst of an exceptional period of filmmaking. At the same time though, the reason The Conformist works so well (and looks and sounds so good), has a lot to do with these key collaborators.
REVIEW  from SOUND ON SIGHT

‘It Happened One Night’

When Frank Capra came upon the 1933 Samuel Hopkins Adams story “Night Bus,” he thought it would make a great film. He bought the property and took it to screenwriter Robert Riskin, with whom he had worked a few years prior on Platinum Blonde (1931). The script was set to be Capra’s next feature for Columbia, then a lower-rung studio where he was their preeminent director. The problem? Nobody wanted to make the film. Several top actors and actresses of the day turned down the picture, Robert Montgomery, Carole Lombard, and Myrna Loy among them. Clark Gable, not yet the caliber of star he would become, eventually accepted the male lead, and Claudette Colbert eventually (and reluctantly) took the female lead … under the condition that her $25,000 salary would be doubled, which it was. The film’s entire budget was $325,000. Shooting lasted a mere four weeks.

When all was said and done though, the film, retitled It Happened One Night, came away with five Academy Awards, becoming the first film (and one of only three films still) to receive Oscars in the “big five” categories: best picture, director, actor, actress, and screenplay. It’s funny how things work out.

This is what romantic comedies are all about — things improbably and hilariously working out for the best. That’s certainly the case with It Happened One Night. When runaway heiress Ellie Andrews (Colbert) jumps ship and flees her father (Walter Connolly), neither she nor he expect what transpires. Against his wishes, she plans to marry the curiously named and rather irrelevant “King” Westley (Jameson Thomas). To do so, she must get to New York City without anyone finding out who she is, lest they alert her father to her whereabouts. At the same time, a drunk down on his luck reporter, Peter Warne (Gable), has been newly fired (or has assertively quit, as he pretends to fellow drunkards).



Both Ellie and Peter are stubbornly independent. She has apparently been a handful for some time (“Daughter escaped again,” wires her father), and she certainly bares her fair share of firecracker determination. Similarly, Peter is more than content to go his own way, talking tough and being charmingly reluctant to give an inch. Neither are in a state of repose when they meet. She’s agitated and he’s inebriated. To say the least, they get off on the wrong foot. Which of course means they’re destined to fall in love.

But this won’t be easy, and it isn’t. Be it in the cramped quarters of their bus, as they hoof it along a country road, or in the confines of a motel room, they butt heads, trade barbs, and annoy each other. The sexual tension is obvious, to us anyway. They’re both quick with a quip, as the genre dictates; she derisively refers to him as “young man,” while he appoints her a “brat.” He has a tremendous ego, is rather domineering, and initially thinks of her as just a headline. She’s stuck up, pretentious, and self-absorbed. Yet through the course of their road trip romance, the realization of potential success (her marriage, his story) starts to diverge from their new, true, desires.

As enduring as the comedic love story of It Happened One Night is, the film is also very much of its time. Despite her independence, Ellie is desperately helpless, adopting the clichéd gender role of the early 1930s, and Peter at times expresses the worst kind of masculine assertiveness. There’s no maliciousness in its intent, and one must bear in mind the film’s historical context of production, but when you hear Peter declare (to Ellie’s father no less), “What she needs is a guy that’d take a sock at her once a day, whether it’s coming to her or not,” well, it’s a little awkward.

Nevertheless, It Happened One Night also encapsulates more poignant elements of its era, far more significant than any old-fashioned notions of domestic conduct. Lines waiting to get into outdoor camp showers, phrases of homespun hokum, and train car vagabonds; all of this keeps the film deeply imbedded in its Great Depression milieu. Certain portions of the film bring to mind The Grapes of Wrath and its scenes of destitute travelers and impoverished folks just getting by. To paraphrase Ma Joad, “These are the people,” and Peter especially shows affinity for the common everyman of America.



Still, as It Happened One Night is, more than anything, a romantic comedy, one probably shouldn’t get too bogged down in this realistic backdrop. Yet it was most certainly on the mind of Capra. At one point, Peter says he wants to tell a “simple story for simple people,” and this could very well be the recurrent modus operandi for Capra himself. Sure, he’s all for having a good time, as he does here, but along the way, there is no reason not to sprinkle in some social commentary, cleverly so in this case. Peter seems to have an utter disdain for money and is more concerned about moral fiber (“Ever hear of the word humility?” he asks Ellie). And his musings about proper donut dunking technique, about the best ways to thumb a ride, and his explanation of why Ellie has no idea what a piggy-back ride is (“I never knew a rich man yet who could piggy-back ride”), keep him on the side of the average American Joe. Part of the film’s evolution is her coming around to his side of the tracks, as when she merrily joins an impromptu sing-a-long on the bus or when she shows him a thing or two about how to really best hitch a ride.

If It Happened One Night endures, and is continually regarded as the Hollywood classic that it is, it’s due to the romance and the comedy, both dependent on the screen chemistry of Colbert and Gable and on Ruskin’s fantastic screenplay. In the case of the latter, the dialogue especially pops in the best screwball tradition:

Peter: Now listen, Joe.
Joe: Don’t “Joe” me.
Peter All right, Joe. Listen.
***
Peter: I never did like the idea of sitting on newspapers. I did it once, and all the headlines came off on my white pants. On the level. It actually happened. Nobody bought a paper that day. They just followed me around over town and read the news on the seat of my pants.
***
Peter (when Ellie falls into his lap): Next time you drop in, bring your folks.

That’s amusing dialogue no matter what year it is.

Of course, Capra deserves due credit as well. His direction is flawless. From the tonal shift when Peter and Ellie realize their conflicted predicament — the film suddenly turning still, quiet, slow, and serious — to the single take on Gable and Colbert eating breakfast in exceptionally banal naturalistic performances, Capra was a master at keeping the viewer engaged. He could also be sly when he needed to, as in the film’s Lubitschian conclusion, a perfectly romantic way to subvert the censorial codes of the time.

But is the film a screwball comedy? In a conversation between Molly Haskell and Phillip Lopate, included as part of the newly released Criterion Collection Blu-ray, the two question It Happened One Night’s designation as such, to say nothing of its place as perhaps the first of its kind. As they point out, it is lacking the “physical chaos,” the relentlessly rapid-fire dialogue, and the same degree of silliness as, say, Howard Hawks’ Twentieth Century, which, as Haskell points out, was released the same year.



The exchange between these two influential critics is but one standout feature of this Criterion release. There is, first and foremost, the 4K digital restoration, which looks fantastic, as well as an interview with Frank Capra Jr., the nearly two-hour long documentary, Frank Capra’s American Dream, and a new digital transfer of Capra’s first film, the 1921 silent short Fultah Fisher’s Boarding House. There is also an essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme and the 1982 American Film Institute tribute to Capra. This last inclusion is particularly entertaining, as a who’s who of legendary stars proclaim their admiration for the director. It’s great to see so many Hollywood luminaries in one room, all still alive and kicking: Colbert, James Stewart, Bette Davis, Charlton Heston, Peter Falk, Jack Lemmon, and Fred MacMurray, among others. A very funny Steve Martin even turns up, as does Telly Savalas, who shares a short but touching story about how Capra’s films affected him and his friends.

Together with Ruskin, Capra would go on to make several of his most acclaimed films, such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can’t Take It with You (1938), and Meet John Doe (1941). And while It Happened One Night garnered Capra his second Oscar nomination for director and his first win, he would receive further trophies for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and You Can’t Take It with You, and additional nods for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). However, I must admit a lukewarm response to Capra in general, though I would count It Happened One Night as his finest film. While his pictures have their moments — some truly great moments — many leave me indifferent. At the same time though, I genuinely appreciate his value to film history and American culture. 



While I don’t necessarily consider his films among Hollywood’s best of the best, their cultural stamp is undeniable. It’s coincidental that I would write on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari right before this (and that the Blu-rays of each were released the same day), because I see some striking similarities between that German masterwork and Capra’s most memorable features. Chief among these is how their respective nations of origin are represented. Capra and Caligari tap into national consciousness in extraordinary ways, reaching audiences of their time with profound cinematic statements (albeit one obviously more metaphorically than the other). To understand Weimar-era Germany, watch Caligari. To understand America in the 1930s and ’40s, watch a Capra film.

Even today you can see why Capra endures. In the AFI tribute, the director himself reveals the secret to his art: “the love of people,” “the freedom of each individual,” the “equal importance of each individual.” This is why Frank Capra is vital to American film history and why his films are always worthwhile. Reflecting on this in 2014, when Americans have such a jaundiced view of their government and society, Capra’s work still touches on important and culturally relevant features: freedom, individual value, equality. It’s also about a love of country — its promises, its possibilities, and its people. And this is something the immigrant Francesco Rosario Capra expressed as well as any other American filmmaker.


REVIEW  from SOUND ON SIGHT