You
really can’t go wrong with any of the 16 titles included in Herzog: The
Collection, the recently released limited edition Blu-ray set. This
stunning compendium features several of the incomparable Werner Herzog’s
finest fiction and documentary films (including many that fall
somewhere between those categories), most available for the first time
on Blu-ray. Though the strongest cases could be made for Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo,
it would be difficult to necessarily pick the “best” film included
here, but one movie that has always stood out as being among Herzog’s
most unusual is Stroszek, from 1977. Well received upon its release, and now recognized as one of the German filmmaker’s finest films, Stroszek is something of an enigma in Herzog’s career full of enigmatic works.
The
picture follows three Berliners as they flee their homeland for the
safe haven that is Wisconsin. There is the prostitute Eva, played by Eva
Mattes, primarily known for her collaborations with Herzog’s fellow
German New Waver, Rainer Werner Fassbinder (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Effi Briest, and Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven,
among others). Then there is Bruno Stroszek, played by the inscrutable
Bruno S., primarily known for, well, being the abused, trouble-making,
mentally unstable son of a prostitute. Dubbed by Herzog the “unknown
soldier of German cinema,” Bruno had worked with the director on The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
three years prior, also in the title role. Lastly, there is Scheitz,
played by Clemens Scheitz, another amateur and rather odd fellow with a
total of six credits to his name, four of them with Herzog.
Stroszek
begins as Bruno is released from prison (the real Bruno was also in
frequent trouble with the law). Toting some luggage, his accordion, and a
bugle, the music-loving Bruno proclaims he is “entering freedom,” but
his delight at this is sadly ironic, for no sooner is he out than he
begins to see just how harsh, demanding, and restricting the outside
world can be. The disheveled and wild-eyed Bruno is warned to stay away
from alcohol (apparently a key factor in his incarceration), so of
course the first thing he does is grab a beer at the bar. There he meets
up with Eva, a low-class prostitute under the thumb of an abusive pimp.
With pimps, a prostitute, and a pub, this film, in the beginning
anyway, looks more like a Fassbinder feature than one by Herzog, but it
doesn’t take long for that to change.
Simple
minded though he may be, Bruno is a stark contrast to this criminal
thug. He is compassionate, gentle, and seems to truly care for Eva. The
exact extent of his feelings is difficult to discern, however, for Bruno
— the actor and the character — is frequently shown to be utterly
bewildered by his surroundings, physically and mentally strained to
comprehend others and express himself. It might seem at first perhaps
cruel for Herzog to have such a clearly uneasy individual in front of
the camera, but quite quickly, the touching humanity conveyed by this
nonprofessional is extraordinary.
Bruno
joins Scheitz back at his apartment. The old man has been looking over
Bruno’s belongings while he was away, and he tells Bruno he will soon be
leaving for America where he will join his nephew. He’ll be traveling
by boat, he says, because planes are “built the wrong way.” Eva
repeatedly tries to escape the clutches of her pimp, but he is
relentless and belligerent. Finally, after he trashes their apartment,
brutally assaults Eva, and humiliates Bruno, the trio decides to leave
once and for all (after Eva “works” to get enough money).
Following
a brief sightseeing stopover in New York City, the group purchases a
car for $495 and they’re on their way to America’s Dairyland. Already
Bruno struggles to come to terms with this strange new land: “What kind
of a country would confiscate Bruno’s mynah bird?” he wonders aloud.
Once in Railroad Flats, Wisconsin (actually Plainfield), Scheitz’s
nephew greets the group with a “welcome” sign, colorful streamers, his
Indian coworker waves an American flag, and, for some reason, they give
the visitors Hawaiian leis. On a tour around town, the nephew also
informs them that there have been not four, but possibly five murders in
the area; he regularly checks for evidence with his metal detector.
Bruno gets a job working with the nephew in a garage while Eva begins
waitressing at a truck stop. Bruno dons a cowboy hat, they get a mobile
home, and Scheitz studies animal magnetism. Joy and hope surface for the
first time in the film, and after the hardships of Berlin, the three
can begin anew. “Now we’ve made it,” declares Scheitz.
But
such optimism doesn’t last. Before long, the barren wintery landscape
reflects the breakdown of Bruno’s American dream. “Everyone can make
money in America,” argues Eva, but Bruno soon becomes disenchanted and
tension grows between him and Eva. The bills add up, the language
barrier makes potential solutions next to impossible, and the bank
eventually repossesses their home. Eva tries to earn more money (guess
how), but it’s not enough. She leaves with some hillbilly truckers while
Scheitz and Bruno embark on a drastically ill-conceived retaliatory
endeavor that gets the former arrested and sends the latter on his way
alone to the film’s stunning conclusion.
From the uncomfortable early scene with a premature baby to the film’s dancing chicken denouement, Stroszek
is marked by one strange moment after another. Never quite disturbing,
but frequently unsettling, certain sequences have a naturally occurring
oddness. Perhaps because Werner Herzog was a stranger to this part of
America (or perhaps simply because he is Werner Herzog), he manages to
hone in on some distinctly regional characteristics that, on the surface
and seen in their everyday banality, are relatively innocuous. However,
when he trains his objective, observational camera on these features,
and places them in the context of this unorthodox movie, they resonate
with a remarkable weirdness. With corpses of broken down vehicles
scattered in fields, dead deer strapped to the back of cars, tags left
on furniture and plastic on mattresses, and an impromptu and
surprisingly well-attended auction (the sound of an auctioneer’s
rapid-paced calling being one of the strangest damned things I’ve ever
seen or heard in real life or in the movies), this is the world of Stroszek.
There are neither exotic locales nor individuals of incredible disposition in this film, so in the Werner Herzog canon Stroszek
is something of an anomaly. Due to this normality and the lack of
fantastic characters or environmental attributes, it basically stands
alone in Herzog’s oeuvre. But this is Werner Herzog, and under this
facade of ordinariness he reveals the everyday mysteries and
peculiarities that make a rather mundane Wisconsin town in the late
1970s as alien as the Peruvian jungle and as contemporarily incongruous
as 18th century Bavaria. And our heroes, this motley trio of pleasant
outcasts, emerge to be as fascinating and as emotionally engaging as any
of the mesmerizing individuals Herzog has filmed.
It
seems redundant to say that Werner Herzog’s movies are unlike anyone
else’s, and more often than not, each of his own films are markedly
unique from what he did prior or following. But for all of the above
reasons and more, Stroszek is truly an exceptional work, with
one of cinema’s most bizarre, hilarious, and rather unnerving endings,
as is suggested by the film’s final lines of dialogue: “We have a 10-80
out here, a truck on fire, we have a man on the lift. We are unable to
find the switch to turn the lift off and we can’t stop the dancing
chicken. Send an electrician. We’re standing by…”
Love Streams,
John Cassavetes’ final film as an actor and penultimate film as
director, is also one of his most unusual features. While his
distinctive work can oftentimes be divisive, it’s easy to see how this
film more than most others could be rather off-putting to those not
appreciative of, or even accustomed to, his filmmaking technique.
Cassavetes
adapted the film with Ted Allan, based on the latter’s play, and the
film’s structure is one of the more vexing of its attributes. Dropped
into two parallel lives, with little to no backstory, only gradually are
we able to piece together certain details. First, there is Robert
Harmon (a worn and weary Cassavetes, his failing health evident). Harmon
is a writer, a drunk, and a womanizer, and he is supposedly working on a
book about nightlife, though that seems to be a mere pretense for him
to frequent clubs and pick up girls. And this he most certainly does.
His house is abuzz with a bevy of young women coming and going at
random, with no established relationship to Robert. It’s mentioned that
his writing focuses on loneliness, and though he is perpetually
surrounded by others, it quickly becomes clear that emotionally and
spiritually he is indeed a solitary figure.
The
other story in the film follows the bitter divorce and ensuing custody
battle between Sarah (Gena Rowlands) and Jack Lawson (Seymour Cassel).
She is mentally unbalanced, previously institutionalized, and apparently
makes a living entertaining sick people, an occupation their young
daughter, Debbie, cares little for. Sarah says she and Debbie are well
liked because they are cheerful; Debbie says the sick people smell bad.
Generally, Jack is the more fit parent, and he has a touching affection
for the young girl, but it is Sarah who emerges the more tragic figure.
She is a wreck, but she remains optimistic, arguing that love is a
stream, it’s continuous, it doesn’t stop, and this keeps her going. When
she travels to Europe with an inordinate amount of luggage, the
symbolism of the baggage she carries with her is obvious.
It’s
not apparent from the start, but Robert and Sarah are brother and
sister, and their eventual reunion comes as they are both confronting
individual lives in shambles. It’s no surprise that they are related,
and when the association is made, the separate chaos begins to make
sense. Their eccentricities, though differing, nevertheless mirror each
other in terms of slow but steady paths toward self-destruction and
self-imposed alienation. He is an irresponsible drunk who acts with
heedless abandon, and with her, it’s never certain when and how she will
act out; she assures Jack, “I’m almost not crazy now,” but she still
fantasizes about killing he and Debbie. They lead unconventional lives,
there’s no doubt about it, but the film seems primarily concerned with
how well they’re doing it, are they, in fact, doing the best they can.
“Actually,” Sarah says to Robert, fully prepared to accept it, “we’re
both pretty screwed up.” This is where Cassavetes works better than
almost anyone, honing narrowly in on people and their problems.
Save for some extraordinary lighting in the past (Minnie and Moskowitz),
Cassavetes usually places little emphasis on technique, and though it
contains a brief slow-motion car crash and a rather striking overhead
traveling shot — both stylistic touches atypical for the director — Love Streams
is a largely unadorned work, with even an occasional camera bump and
mismatched cut here and there. It also seems in many ways to be
exceptionally overblown, even in terms of Cassavetes’ usual penchant for
unrestrained acting. There’s plenty of sincerity to the performances,
as one would expect, particularly when he holds a shot and simply lets
individuals talk and interact, without too much action to addle them.
And there’s plenty of arguing and yelling, adding to that candid
Cassavetes trademark. But with fits of hysterical laughter and
characters falling over themselves, coupled with the film’s piecemeal
narrative explication and the characters’ frequent recklessness, the
generally admirable emotional rawness doesn’t always produce the
requisite emotional resonance.
The new Criterion Collection release of Love Streams
contains the expected bounty of special features (Criterion was, after
all, responsible for the invaluable box set of Cassavetes’ greatest
films). Along with the new digital restoration and commentary track by
writer Michael Ventura, there is a video essay about Rowlands and
interviews with executive producer and director of photography Al Ruban,
actor Diahnne Abbott, and Cassel, as well as “I’m Almost Not Crazy . . .”—John Cassavetes: The Man and His Work (1984), a sixty-minute documentary on the making of Love Streams.
The release also includes a booklet featuring an essay by critic Dennis
Lim and a 1984 New York Times piece on the film by Cassavetes.
In Lim’s essay, he contends that, “More than a culmination of Cassavetes’s obsessions, Love Streams
… is a palimpsest through which many of his other movies are visible,”
and he goes on to cite astute similarities with such movies as Minnie and Moskowitz, Shadows, Faces, A Woman Under the Influence, Opening Night, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Husbands,
in other words, just about every film Cassavetes ever directed. While
the comparisons are accurate, and it’s not an unusual tendency to search
for allusions to past films in a great director’s final work (we’ll
forget Big Trouble for a moment, just like Cassavetes tried to), this reminiscence is partly why Love Streams
isn’t always as effective as it perhaps should be or as these other
films are. To a large degree, we’ve seen these troubled individuals
before, with their personality quirks and erratic behaviors (Robert
spontaneously hauling his neglected eight-year-old son off to Vegas,
Sarah bringing home a cab full of animals, including miniature horses),
but there can be a time when too much is just too much and the whole
thing doesn’t really ring true.
Cassavetes
always excelled at creating deeply emotional connections to his
everyday characters. They are people just like us, with our problems and
our concerns, leading lives that are commonly ordinary yet nonetheless
fascinating. His narratives, like Love Streams, which Lim
states is, “less in a flow than as a series of small jolts, guided by
the unruly impulses of characters who lurch and fumble their way from
one emotional extreme to another,” are often delightfully madcap.
Personal crises, familial drama, relationship trouble: this is
Cassavetes’ bread and butter, and his intimate, improvisational form of
filmmaking perfectly fits his rambunctious stories. So yes, Love Streams
is like these other films in this regard, as Lim demonstrates, but
Cassavetes set his own bar quite high, and similar to does not
necessarily equal as good as.
To say that Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us
is an unhurried film would be quite the understatement. This
deliberately crafted and contemplative work, one of the great Iranian
director’s finest films, moves at the pace of life. Not life as in the
hustle and bustle or stolid banality of one’s everyday experiences, but
life as in the gradual evolution of humankind’s basic existence.
Reflecting the lives of those who inhabit the rural Kurdish village that
serves as the film’s setting, The Wind Will Carry Us unfolds slowly and episodically, with its drama, or lack thereof, coming and going at a capricious moment’s notice.
Kiarostami
begins the film as we follow a car driven by disembodied voices that
bicker about directions and banter about the countryside. They drive and
drive, along winding roads, up and down the mountains, through farmland
peppered with single trees that serve as location markers. We don’t see
in the car, but it becomes clear through the dialogue that the further
the men go, the further they voyage from urban modernity to a remote,
rural, almost alien land. They finally arrive at their destination, an
isolated village that seems to be literally carved from one of the
mountains; it erupts from the earth like an organically developed
outgrowth of the terrain itself. Of these men, only one will emerge as a
character. This man, played by Behzad Dorani, appears to be the leader
of the group, and he’s the first to make contact with the inhabitants of
this village — “You’ve hidden it well,” he says.
This
man, referred to as the “engineer” (His profession? An honorific title?
A nickname?) is met by a young boy named Farzad. This child will act as
the engineer’s guide and his key local associate. It’s good that he has
a guide too, for we soon see that this labyrinthine village mirrors the
landscape, with passageways and platforms developing into layer upon
layer of residence. As if in a structure from a Jacques Tati film or as
in the best sequence from Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring,
characters appear, disappear, and reappear as they make their way
through their surroundings. Rooftops lead to front doors and steps rest
at raised gathering places. The engineer asks the boy where his school
is. “This way and that,” he says. It’s likely this is where any part of
this village could be.
It’s
not made clear at the start — to the villagers or the audience — but
these men have actually arrived to document a death ritual to be
performed once an elderly woman passes away. This lady, Mrs. Malek, the
centenarian grandmother of Farzad, is an invalid who has been very sick
for some time. It should be any day now that she departs. But it doesn’t
happen that fast. In fact, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen at
all. Perhaps she’s even getting better. In any case, Dorani and his
crew must remain on the scene, just in case anything should happen.
Subsequently,
there is downtime, a lot of downtime. The crew remains largely unseen
and inactive, not that there would be anything for them to do anyway,
but Dorani is more lively and curious and refuses to remain idle. During
the days that pass, he busies himself by wandering around, by foot or
in his car, visiting and chatting with the locals. Archaic though it may
be, he is absorbed in, and seemingly enchanted by, this traditional
culture. It’s easy to see how. The villagers are welcoming,
accommodating, and respectful to the stranger. There is, amongst
themselves and with him, a constant exchanging of pleasantries, warm
greetings of “How are you?” and salutations of “Good luck.” And wherever
he goes, he is offered food and drink. It’s a leisurely, simple life
here, a life he admires and desires, even if he seems to feel above it.
It’s a place where people sit and gather at undefined communal grounds
and where they don’t have bosses or disturbances – this, as opposed to
his constantly ringing cell phone and assertive demands.
There’s
a lot of subtle humor in the film, and the reoccurring cell phone calls
contribute to some of the most amusing sequences. The village gets
little reception, so with every call, Dorani is forced to rapidly seek
higher ground, which usually involves him rushing to his car and driving
up the nearest mountain. This repeated quest is comical and is clearly
meant to comment on the incongruity of such technology in the region
(the car breaking down at the beginning of the film perhaps served the
same purpose).
Aside
from being charmed by the residents, especially the studious Farzad,
whom he helps cheat on his exams, the engineer appears utterly perplexed
by this way of life. As Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa has written, “Behzad is the
embodiment of the universal, modern, alienated, anxious, and preoccupied
man.” He is shown to be constantly inquisitive, literally so in his
bombardment of questions and visually so in his frequently bemused
expression of observance. He’s intrigued by their traditions (if Malek
eats one of the many bowls of soup provided to her, the respective cook
will get their wish granted) and fascinated by their familial
development (he’s surprised by a neighbor who is pregnant with her tenth
child).
While
the rest of his crew grows impatient, getting sick of waiting for the
old woman to die, Dorani seems perfectly content to remain. The crew is
restless to return to Tehran, some 450 miles away, and they try to push
for some action. “I can’t strangle her!” he argues. Similarly, his
producer, the source of so many of the phone calls, is upset that
nothing is happening. This old woman was supposed to have one foot in
the grave. Her continuing to live is not part of their plan. It’s
certainly callous, and at one point, the engineer asks if he’s a bad
person, but that’s their business — they want results. That’s not how
life unfolds though, certainly not this kind of life. There is no plan.
All
of this does give the film a measured pace, and at 118 minutes,
Kiarostami takes his time. Fortunately, aside from being a director of
sublime thematic and emotional resonance, Kiarostami is also a visually
inventive filmmaker. He will vary his unorthodox compositions in terms
of distance and angle, but in The Wind Will Carry Us, he
frequently incorporates a stylistic strategy whereby Dorani is talking
with people we don’t see, at least not right away. Their position is
either obscured by their surroundings, such as the man digging a ditch,
whom we never see since he is below ground and Kiarostami’s camera never
is, or where the other characters are speaking off-screen, the dialogue
playing out without instantly establishing who is it speaking nor their
spatial relationship to Dorani. Forget textbook shot-reverse-shot
technique or the employment of clearly defined over-the-shoulder camera
positioning; if and when Kiarostami does film an exchange between two
characters where he cuts between both parties (and he literally cuts –
he edited the film), they are shot singularly, frontally, and squarely
in the frame. There are times as well when Kiarostami has some fun with
the camera, such as the above mentioned disappearing/reappearing acts as
characters stroll through the village’s architectural web, or when he
shows Behzad shaving directly into the camera, the lens as his mirror.
The Wind Will Carry Us
comes from a poem by Forough Farrokhzad, which Dorani recites, and
though it wasn’t the first title chosen for the film, it perfectly suits
the depiction of the life and lives of this village. This existence is
one of natural motivation, with little to no synthetic influence. The
images of a turtle slowly walking along, of the crops swaying in the
breeze, and the meandering river all suggest a graceful, unassuming path
of life and death, not one that can be adjusted to comply with the
superficial needs of a television crew.
REVIEW from SOUND ON SIGHT
Jacques Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort is the Oscar-nominated follow-up to his immensely popular and successful The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
(1964), which with all of its dialogue sung was something of a
reinvention of the movie musical, an almost experiential musical. Young Girls, on the other hand, is simply a great musical. To be sure, Umbrellas is an excellent film as well (see my take on it here),
but while it surely resonates with its tale of love unhappily ever
after, and it radiates in attractive Eastmancolor, it’s in some ways
hampered by its own novelty. There is of course more to it than merely
the fact that everyone sings everything, but to many it’s probably best
known as the movie where everyone sings everything. Young Girls
is more traditional in that it has dialogue interspersed with the
singing and dancing sequences, and the narrative (complex if not
terribly original) proceeds in a more straightforwardly absorbing
fashion, without necessarily having the music overshadow any customary
storytelling. Gloriously composed — visually and aurally — The Young Girls of Rochefort
is a lyrically light holiday to this provincial town, with its
assortment of pleasant people having their fair share of romantic
troubles. Moreover, it’s one of the best musicals the form has ever
seen.
As a great musical, it excels in its generic requisites. Michel Legrand’s catchy music is actually better than that in Umbrellas,
as are Demy’s songs (understandably so, since in the earlier film the
lyrics are basically conversation). Many of these songs act as
reoccurring character themes, motifs that summarize and cue associations
with their respective dreams, doubts, and feelings. Like Umbrellas,
there are times when banal chitchat is rendered musical, and moments
when spoken dialogue rhymes, but generally the songs here are clearly
distinct segments. The choreography and staging of the dance numbers,
both first-rate, are whimsically random yet with obvious structure. They
spring from nowhere, and sometimes not everyone shown seems to be on
the same page (some townspeople join in while others just mill about as
the main players enthusiastically dance around them). There’s an
arranged, improvisational quality to the routines; the movements have a
vibrancy that nevertheless appears carefully directed. Keeping
everything color-coded and connected, cinematographer Ghislain Cloquet
works brilliantly with Demy’s pastel designs, with most of the costumes
and sets in the hues of an Easter egg.
The
whirlwind weekend of the film begins on a Friday morning, with a mosaic
roster of interconnected figures, most unknowingly so, all with romance
on the mind. There are two freewheeling young men who arrive as part of
the fair: Étienne (George Chakiris) and Bill (Grover Dale), sweeping
into the modest town like they own the place and mixing and mingling as
if they’ve known the residents forever. The other duo is Delphine and
Solange Garnier (real-life siblings Catherine Deneuve and Françoise
Dorléac). They are a “pair of twin born in the sign of Gemini,” the
former a piano teacher and composer, the latter a dance teacher, the
both of them longing for love, a better career, and a more hip existence
in Paris.
Their
mother, Yvonne Garnier (Danielle Darrieux), runs a glass-enclosed café
centrally located in the middle of town, which is frequented by, among
other regulars, Maxence (Jacques Perrin), a budding artist who has his
ambitions sidetracked by his naval duty. The wistful Maxence has painted
his “feminine ideal,” which is hung up in the gallery owned by
Guillaume Lancien (Jacques Riberolles) and which looks strikingly like
Delphine, whom he has never met. Guillaume, however, does know Delphine
and harbors unrequited feelings for her.
There’s
also Simon Dame (Michel Piccoli), who just opened a music store and
encourages the career of Solange. Finally, there’s Boubou (Patrick
Jeantet), Yvonne’s youngest child, from a different father than the
girls. As it turns out, Simon is Boubou’s dad. He was engaged to Yvonne
but their marriage was thwarted because, among other reasons (though
primarily), she dreaded the thought of being referred to as “Madame
Dame” (it is comical, and some of the other characters can’t help but
laugh when she tells her story). She and Simon have no idea that the
other is in such close proximity, but both separately wish to reunite.
Finally, there’s Andy Miller, a friend of Simon’s. When Solange picks up
Boubou from school, the boy throws a tantrum and tosses his school bag
on the ground, its contents falling out. As she kneels down to pick
everything up, there’s another set of knees there to help. Those knees
belong to Andy, who is played by Gene Kelly.
The
casting of Kelly here is interesting. The film goes to another level
when he appears, his iconic role in the musical genre bringing with it
all sorts of connotations and allusions to prior masterworks. The music
knows this and dramatically swells. Sure, that’s partly because it’s
love at first sight for Andy and Solange, but it’s also because it’s
Gene Kelly. His mere presence gives the film an amusing, self-conscious
sensibility. It’s 45 minutes in before he appears, and another 30
minutes or so after that before he’s seen again, but his imprint on the
film is unforgettable, for reasons not the least of which have to do
with his casting as a fine example of the French idolatry for classic
Hollywood personalities. (He doesn’t have the name or face recognition
of Kelly, but including Chakiris, who starred in West Side Story earlier in the decade, was similarly a casting coup for Demy, the musical fan that he was.) Hollywood aside, in the best Nouvelle Vague tradition there are other, more local cinematic references throughout, from the mention of Truffaut’s Jules and Jim to characters referring to Legrand himself.
Everyone
is in place by this point, and unbeknownst to them all, the love they
desire is just around the corner. Rochefort is a small town — how long
can they continue to miss these corners? A song declares, “Chance often
does things right, but it got its wires crossed,” and that’s what moves
much of the drama in The Young Girls of Rochefort: barely
missed connections, past associations, lost and unfound loves. There’s a
lot going on, yet Demy insisted that the plot meant little to him. More
important was “a general feeling, a moment in life, just moments of
existence.” While some of these moments are temporarily tragic, in that
they revolve around individuals deeply pining for love and living with
regret, more often than not, they are simply delightful. The characters
are smiling, dancing, and carefree. How carefree? When it’s revealed
that a recent dinner guest is actually an ax murderer, Yvonne thinks
back to his uncooperative behavior at that dinner and humorously
decries, “And that fuss about cutting the cake!”
Life
and death, love and solitude: it’s all part of the game, and Demy and
his characters take it in stride. The always insightful Jonathan
Rosenbaum compares the film’s “poetic vision and its artisanal
techniques” to Jacques Tati’s Playtime, with a similar
“polyphonic plot of crisscrossing missed connections, ironically built
in relation to a closely intertwined community.” It’s a spot-on
association, and the Tati connection carries even further in the way his
films and this Demy picture in particular treat life’s follies and
foibles with a subjective bemusement. There’s also a resigned
recognition of the tragically uncontrollable. So it’s fitting then, too,
that Rosenbaum also quotes Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story,
specifically when Kyoko ponders, “Life is disappointing, isn’t it?”
Rosenbaum does not, however, include Noriko’s response, where she
answers smiling, “Yes, it is.” In other words, C’est la vie.
The new Criterion Collection release of The Young Girls of Rochefort
is but one part of their fabulous ‘The Essential Jacques Demy’ set.
Boasting new restorations of six of Demy’s best films and a wealth of
bonus features, this is one exceptional compilation. The disc for Young Girls
is representative of what’s included with each title. There’s a
discussion between Demy biographer Jean-Pierre Berthomé and costume
designer Jacqueline Moreau, and a short segment from a 1966 series about
the film. But the real highlights are a 1966 interview featuring Demy
and Legrand, and Agnès Varda’s 1993 documentary The Young Girls Turn 25.
The
Demy/Legrand inclusion gives a fascinating and charismatic glimpse at
the duo’s creative process, where we see just how interconnected they
are, how indispensable their respective contributions are to the picture
as a whole. It’s amusing to see the two of them collaborate and banter
with the interviewer. But Varda, Demy’s widow and an excellent filmmaker
in her own right, is responsible for what is the most emotionally
affecting of the bonus features. It’s genuinely touching to see the
footage she shot of Demy during the film’s production, and to hear her
loving comments about her gifted husband. Mostly though, her documentary
revolves around a visit to Rochefort as the town and seemingly all of
its residents prepare to celebrate The Young Girls of Rochefort’s
25th anniversary. “We were all sort of slumbering,” says one gentleman.
“The film people came and we awakened … and we all began to sing.”
Everyone in the documentary, from Deneuve to some of the extras who had
only the smallest of roles, speak with warm fondness for the film
(basically the town’s primary claim to fame) and Demy as a man and
filmmaker. As part of the celebration, public performances feature
costumes and songs from the film, the town is festooned in the film’s
distinctive colors, there are municipal dedications in the names of
those associated with the film, and schoolchildren draw pictures of the
“Young Girls”. One youth interviewed even shows that wherever she goes,
she carries with her a copy of The Young Girls of Rochefort on videocassette.
Sure
it’s the setting, but is there really any call for a whole town to
elaborately commemorate a film like this? Is it a film that is so good
it needs to be with someone at all times? Is it that enjoyable, that
charming, that memorable? To again quote Noriko, “Yes, it is.”
REVIEW from SOUND ON SIGHT
Even if we weren’t told at the start that Picnic at Hanging Rock
was about a group of girls who disappeared Saturday, Feb. 14, 1900 and
were never seen again, it would become apparent almost immediately that
this 1975 film was not going to end happily, or progress normally.
Director Peter Weir, working off a script by Cliff Green (adapted from
Joan Lindsay’s novel), presents Appleyard College in Victoria State,
Australia, and the nearby wildness, as otherworldly locales with an air
of haunting splendor. The first lines of the film, from Miranda (Anne
Lambert), not quite the lead, but an individual of focus more than the
others, hint at what’s to unfold: “What we see and what we seem are but a
dream, a dream within a dream.” And henceforth this surreal, stunningly
photographed picture proceeds as if indeed in a perpetual dream-state
plagued by melancholic doom.
By
way of a whimsical and deliberately hallucinatory technique, the
opening sequences at the college introduce the primary characters – the
girls as well as, most importantly, Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts) and
Miss McCraw (Vivean Gray). Weir and cinematographer Russell Boyd utilize
not only diffused illumination to create an impression of enigmatic
sensuality and mystery, but also slow motion and dissolves, resulting in
a spellbinding visual peculiarity. “Poetic” would also describe Picnic at Hanging Rock,
particularly early on and later during the more fantastic moments. But
it’s perhaps music that has the most in common with the film, notably in
terms of its atmosphere, the way it absorbs one into its creation.
Aided by the oftentimes blank and trancelike intensity of the girls, and
the evocative score by composer Bruce Smeaton and pan flute musician
Gheorghe Zamfir, this is a movie that truly gets under one’s skin.
Lest
it is shrouded by the ambiance, there is a story here. The girls travel
to the “geological miracle” that is Hanging Rock, a massive volcanic
formation that looms large over the neighboring woods. Of the students,
only Sara (Margaret Nelson), a troubled girl who bears a perhaps more
than friendly affection for Miranda, is left behind. Initially, the trip
is pure bliss, with the girls delighting in being able to remove their
gloves — once they’re appropriately distanced from town that is.
Clothing proves to be a recurring, if puzzling, feature of Picnic at Hanging Rock.
The incongruity of the girls’ formal wear in the wild is striking, out
of place and seemingly out of time, even despite the period setting; and
later, bits of clothing, either missing or remaining from the girls who
vanish, cause perplexed distress.
Also
picnicking in the forest is the Fitzhubert family. Son Michael (Dominic
Guard) and valet Albert (John Jarratt) see Miranda, Irma (Karen
Robson), Edith (Christine Schuler), and Marion (Jane Vallis) wander away
from the group and explore the rocks. The girls appear as majestic
visions to the two boys, and around this time, the film takes on a more
pronounced supernatural tenor as all wristwatches are discovered to have
suddenly stopped at exactly noon. It’s “something magnetic,” contends
Miss McCraw, but as the four girls go deeper into the labyrinthine
rocks, something further inexplicable transpires. Edith is ill and
repeatedly decries the area being “nasty.” She stays back, but the other
three venture further into a narrow crevasse, into, perhaps, another
dimension. They vanish and Edith screams and runs away. And so it
begins.
The
boys are questioned, as is Edith, who when fleeing down the hill saw a
red cloud overhead as she passed Miss McCraw running up the hill. Edith
reveals that Miss McCraw, who has also now disappeared, was no longer
wearing her dress. Michael is guilt-ridden for not having somehow
watched over the girls, and after days of searching bear no results, he
and Albert begin their own investigation. Michael tries to enter into
the fracture where the girls disappeared, but something prevents him
from moving forward. He succumbs to the pressure and the exertion and is
found by Albert, who discovers that the disturbed Michael is clutching a
piece of one of the girls’ dresses. As Albert goes back amongst the
rocks, he amazingly finds Irma, traumatized but still alive. She has
scratches to her hands and fingers, as if she clawed at something, and a
bruise on her head, as if she was struck, but the rest of her body is
unmarked. She has no shoes, socks, or corset, but rape is ruled out. She
has no memory of what happened.
Nothing about this adds up, nothing ever will, and that’s the point. Picnic at Hanging Rock
exists simply and effectively as a work meant to confound, to
challenge, to perhaps even frustrate in its ambiguities and unsolved
mysteries. When Michael is stricken by whatever it is that befalls him,
over his anguished body Weir superimposes earlier scenes accompanied by
snippets of dialogue. This sequence coalesces times when what characters
said and did seem to clearly imply the mystery to come. We’ve seen
these instances since the beginning of the film. Before leaving the
school, Miranda knowingly says she won’t be around much longer. There’s
talk of the rock waiting a million years, just for the girls. “We shall
only be gone a little while,” cryptically says one student as she
leaves. “A surprising number of human beings are without purpose, though
it is probable that they are performing some function unknown to
themselves,” says another. Each time one of these phrases is uttered
(“Everything begins and ends at the exactly right time and place” is
another provocative line) the sense of impending doom is called to the
fore. The same goes for the expressions of somber reverie, the
tantalizing wave from Miranda as she and the other three walk off, the
exchanging of glances that suggest something between suspicion and
acknowledgement. From the start, these signifiers of ambiguity are
relentless. And when Weir includes the montage of these moments, with so
many seen all at once, overlapping, we expect them to present or at
least hint at a solution of sorts. This is the moment in a mystery where
the details of previous incidents are seen together and give rise to
apparent significance, meanings that weren’t necessarily clear when they
first occurred. This is how the viewer puts together the pieces and
solves the puzzle. But nothing of the sort happens with Picnic at Hanging Rock. We’re given the baffling ingredients, but a recipe for a simple explanation doesn’t exist.
There
are also times when symbolic imagery is explicit and seems to indicate
an overt connotation. From high above, Edith looks down at the other
picnickers and comments, “Except for those people down there, we might
be the only living creatures in the whole world.” Cut to a high angle
shot of the group of girls strewn against the rocks, laying every which
direction. Cut to ants likewise mingling randomly amongst grass and
discarded food. The associative montage suggests a related aimless
existence, but where that goes and just how it plays into the totality
of the film remains inconclusive.
As Vincent Canby notes in his review
of the film, the open ending is bound to aggravate a certain portion of
the audience (if the preceding events hadn’t already). “I can’t tell
you how the story is resolved,” he states, “though some people will feel
cheated.” So where does that leave a film like Picnic at Hanging Rock?
Canby suggests it’s a type of horror film. It’s eerie enough, its
haunting effect is indeed a lingering one, and with young girls
tormented and screaming, it at the very least contains those hallmarks
of the horror genre. However, to place this film into such a generic
category would be an injustice to a movie that so obviously seeks to be
something else all together, which it surely is. One of the great things
about this film is Weir’s audacious — and successful — choice to
intentionally present a mystery and make no attempt to solve it, to make
a movie that resists classification, with a narrative and a style that
defies convention and simplistic understanding or description. Its
riddles may frustrate, but they’re presented as if an answer were just
within reach, a solution so close that one wants to keep coming back to
the film to make sure something wasn’t missed, a key wasn’t overlooked.
And yet, even if no such solution is to be had, Picnic at Hanging Rock is such an extraordinary achievement that the ultimate uncertainty is worth the road it took to get there.
REVIEW from FILM INTERNATIONAL
Robert
Bresson’s is one of the great singular visions of the cinema. Like
Stanley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky, Bresson’s output was relatively
minimal — 13 features over the course of 40 years — but it is likewise
instantly recognizable. Though it’s something of an auteurist cliché to
say that one can identify a given director’s work by just a single scene
or even a single frame, in this case, the declaration holds true.
Bresson’s work is so distinct, so deceptively simple, so regimented in
its formal construction, that to see one of his films is to witness an
exceptional directorial style, one consistently employed throughout an
artist’s body of work. With this consistency comes the subsequent
creation of one extraordinary film after another, each similar to the
previous, with reoccurring imagery, themes, and performances, but each,
at the same time, notably unique. Bresson directed several films that
could be considered his greatest, and while Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) puts up the strongest fight, a good case could be made for Pickpocket, from 1959, as the inimitable filmmaker’s finest achievement.
Though
there are others in the film, Michel (Martin LaSalle) is the titular
thief of concern. Michel is, in James Quandt’s words, a “walking
semiotic system of alienation.” LaSalle’s blank slate of a face allows
the audience to project any number of emotions and thoughts onto this
young man, but such associative engagement is sheer speculation, for
rarely are we afforded any overt suggestion of true feeling. His
self-imposed isolationism keeps him at a distance from society, for
which he seems to care little, and from family and friends. Jeanne
(Marika Green), his teenage neighbor who cares for his ailing mother
(Michel would rather give his mother a wad of cash than visit with her),
and Jacques (Pierre Leymarie), his sole friend, offer a way out from
the solitary existence, a path of intimacy and amity, but Michel greets
this closeness with trepidation. Though the three do socialize on
occasion, Michel’s public presence is awkward to say the least.
Adding
to his social discomfort is his disconcerting worldview, his take of
what is right or wrong and his questioning of morality and appropriate
justice. With Jacques and the police officer who is suspiciously on his
trail at all times, Michel daringly lays out his philosophical stance
when it comes to the justification of certain crimes if committed by
gifted men, men better than others, men above the law, “supermen”
operating autonomously from societal structures. Such a duel (dis)regard
for certain people and not others is manifest in Michel’s visually
evident and even stated appreciation for his chosen craft and those
craftsmen who so expertly execute the crime. (Real-life pickpocket
Kassagi appears in the film and acted as a technical advisor for the
production, lending the criminal methodology shown considerable
authenticity.) The ambiguous awe with which Michel sometimes examines
the other pickpockets gives credence to some of the psychosexual
readings that have been assigned to the film; they’re perhaps not what
first comes to mind watching the movie, but once the suggestion has been
made, as Quandt does make, it’s hard to shake the theory.
Michel
meticulously practices his thieving routine, and once successfully put
into action, the anxiety gives way to euphoria; watching Michel enact
his felonies is truly a sensual experience. The same goes for when we
see Michel and his fellow pickpockets stage elaborately designed joint
thefts. The bravura sequence at the train station is a wonderfully shot
and arranged display of intricate collaboration. Such careful commitment
to a crime is, it must be admitted, rather admirable and impressive.
But of course, that doesn’t make it right, and on the flip side of this
is the omnipresent potential for apprehension. The police are also
competent figures in Pickpocket. There are officers doing their
own work, and frequently succeeding. What emerges is a sort of
professional tête-à-tête of contrasting and competing occupational
proficiency.
Known
for his austere and stripped down treatment of imagery, Bresson here
reveals a notable stylishness, with a smoothly flowing camera and
outstanding montage sequences — Pickpocket is also perhaps less
rigorous due to its rapid pace and its condensed runtime (about 75
minutes). While it is a brisk film, Bresson nevertheless allows for
certain formal features more synonymous with his cinema: extreme,
perfectly composed close-ups of small details and abstract body parts;
lingering shots of halls and doorways, transitional places maintained in
the frame before or after a character has moved through them; and the
integration of a complex soundtrack as a way to establish and enlarge
off-screen space. Paul Schrader, in his introduction to the film that
accompanies the recently released Criterion Collection Blu-ray,
discusses these and other unique Bresson approaches to filmic
guidelines. His decisions when it comes to editing tempo, genre
convention, shot size, and pacing are most unusual, and yet are highly
effective in terms of narrative progression and the general impression
of the film. This impression, as Quandt mentions in his commentary, is
one marked by the “everyday transfigured by Bresson’s strange
attentiveness.”
Schrader, who calls Pickpocket the most influential film on his own career (with allusions most clearly in Taxi Driver and American Gigolo),
considers Michel as a soul floating around. Much of this detached sense
is a result of Bresson’s use of actors (or, as he would sometime refer
to them, “interpreters” or “models”). Like automatons that have not yet
developed an emotive aptitude, the performers here and in other Bresson
films are in a perpetual state of lethargic restraint and sobriety, only
occasionally countered by outbursts of passion. Bresson cast
“non-actors who non-act,” as Schrader puts it, but interestingly, given
the director’s penchant when it comes to performances, their impact
operating in this unorthodox style is always a lasting one.
It
is stated at the film’s opening that this will not be a thriller, and
with regards to that designation’s standard definition, this is
obviously true. But Pickpocket is thrilling. Though we are
oftentimes left to infer as much as we are actually shown, this omission
of various elements is more captivating than it is distancing. And
despite the intentionally stilted performances, we are genuinely
concerned about these people and wonder how they will ultimately turn
out. When it’s revealed that the morally superior Jacques is not all he
seemed to be, the suggestion that perhaps Michel can also change gives
the film a previously lacking optimism. His respite from crime may be
short-lived, but there is still by film’s end a glimmer of hope. It was a
“strange path” Michel traveled, but the destination appears to have
been worth the trip. “Appears to” being the key here, for rarely in the
film are motivations and outcomes made unequivocal, which was always
part of Bresson’s intent. As he puts it, “I’d rather people feel a film
before understanding it.”
REVIEW from SOUND ON SIGHT
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
Written by Michelangelo Antonioni, Giorgio Bassani, Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Diego Fabbri, Roger Nimier, Turi Vasile
Italy/France, 1953
In 1953, Michelangelo Antonioni directed the episodic I vinti (The Vanquished),
quite possibly the least “Antonioni-esque” feature he ever made (the
roster of credited writers above is some indication of the impersonal
nature of the film). Comprised of three vignettes about troubled youth
in France, Italy, and England, the film at times comes across almost as a
moralizing after school special, whereby it attempts to draw attention
to the desperate and destructive state of young people during this
period. But while the film’s obvious didacticism is its least laudable
characteristic, I vinti is nevertheless a fascinating examination of this “burnt out generation.”
These
young people were just children during World War II. They’ve grown up
in a time of upheaval and violence, and now as society has progressed
and begun to stabilize, they vainly cope with a new post-war modernity.
They act out in this violent world by committing their own acts of
violence, sometimes for egotistical achievement, sometimes for ideology,
sometimes out of sheer greed or boredom. The youth are blinded by a
mentality of personal gain and selfishness, which is further blurred by
political and social conditioning. They paradoxically seek an adult form
of independence, but are in many ways reliant upon, and restrained by, a
familial and collective trust. The parents in the film, as well as the
film’s opening narration, seek to pin down the aggressive behavior,
attributing their misdeeds to factors ranging from gangster films to
“boogie-woogie” music.
The
three stories were ripped from the headlines, and their subsequent
adherence to what really happened was the cause of considerable acrimony
when the film came out, not only from the families of those involved,
but also from various sociopolitical factions. The Italian episode in
particular was subject to censorial demands and alterations. However, it
is presented uncut in the new Blu-ray of the film. This release also
includes interviews with actor Franco Interlenghi (from the Italian
segment) and writer/producer Turi Vasile, each sharing some background
on the production along with their personal recollections. There is also
Tentato Suicidio, Antonioni’s contribution to the omnibus feature Love in the City, which itself will be released on Blu-ray July 22.
The first segment of I vinti
is set in France and revolves around a group of young people who decide
to kill one of their supposed friends. The violent act is all part of
their general preoccupation with doing something simply for the hell of
it, ignorant of any potential repercussions. Many are only concerned
with good times and a worldly life of wealth. Their cruel ambitions lead
them to the countryside, an ironically idyllic backdrop for the murder.
The second portion of the film, the controversial Italian episode, has
its main protagonist acting out for ideological purposes, his confused
politics matching his youthful heedlessness. This segment seems
especially born of World War II’s aftermath, with a focus on the black
market that was then something of a necessity and is now a more
stringently patrolled offense. Finally, the English segment concerns a
young writer who for his own whimsy, and later publicity, kills an aged
prostitute and toys with the police as they conduct their investigation.
Widely considered the best of the three segments (Vasile says it also
illustrates “Antonioni’s Anglo-Saxon bent” that would emerge in Blow-Up), this story is the most enduringly relevant, with contemporary media more obsessed than ever over self-made stars and scandal.
While
Antonioni’s work frequently focuses on the role ambiguous emotions play
in defining characters and their actions, this is one of his few films
where motivation is derived more overtly from political and economic
foundations. I vinti expressly stresses the fluctuating times
as being a catalyst for these lives of misdirection. Similarly, the use
of location in this film, an otherwise key facet of Antonioni’s
methodology, serves essentially no more a purpose than being where the
action happens to take place, aesthetically reflecting or suggesting
little about the characters and their decisions.
Such a cinematic assessment of these troubling concerns was prevalent in Italy during this time (see Fellini’s I Vitelloni of the same year, with its assortment of aimless layabouts, or, later, Pasolini’s Accattone). But part of the point of I vinti,
with its Europe-spanning division, is the universality of these issues:
the inflated value of effortlessly earned money, the disdain for hard
work, the obsession over celebrity and sensationalism, and the complex
youthful desire for self-determination. Still, despite its diverse
settings, one can’t help but think of Italian cinema in particular while
watching the film, and not just because of its director. In many ways, I vinti represents what happened to characters like young Bruno in Bicycle Thieves or the world-weary children in Paisan, as they make their way to the self-indulgence of Marcello Rubini in La Dolce Vita. I vinti is perhaps what comes between.
REVIEW from SOUND ON SIGHT
Max Ophüls’ third feature in America, Caught,
from 1949, is an evocative amalgam of a domesticated melodramatic
tragedy and a dynamic film noir sensibility. The picture stars Barbara
Bel Geddes as Leonora Eames, a studious adherent to charm school
principles who dreams of becoming a glamorous model, or at least
marrying a young, handsome millionaire. She gets the latter when she
meets Smith Ohlrig (Robert Ryan), a wealthy “international something”
who gives her the superficial materials she desires but little else.
Their marriage is an arduous sham. He works late hours on unclear
projects while she is left to dwell uselessly in their extravagant
mansion. He’s cruel to her and careless. A way out of the stifling
relationship comes in the form of a job as a doctor’s receptionist.
Leonora leaves Ohlrig and moves into Manhattan, where she eventually
shows a knack for her newfound profession. There she also falls for
pediatrician Larry Quinada (James Mason, in his first Hollywood role).
As the film’s title suggests, Leonora finds herself emotionally and
ethically caught: caught between who she is and what she tried to be,
and what she’s become and what she now hopes for. A confrontation is
inevitable, but what isn’t expected is the shocking conclusion of the
film. A forbidding decision provocatively questions the morals of these
characters and our subsequent judgment of their actions, and the final
minutes of the film contains the makings of one of Hollywood’s most
bizarre “happy endings.”
The
Dorothy Dale School of Charm gives Leonora a superficial “social
education,” where she learns diction and posture and how to handle
herself when out and about with society’s elites. It’s on her way to a
swanky yacht party that she meets Ohlrig. He’s heard before he’s seen,
as he’s below the pier and out of her and our view. Such an introduction
foreshadows their marriage, itself marred by each of them being out of
sight and out of mind. She is suspicious about his invitation to ride
with him — men, after all, have only one idea — and he is vague about
who he is and where he’s going. After this first meeting, they continue
seeing each other, despite apparent coldness and tension. He thinks
she’s only after his money, but they marry anyway. (Admittedly, in the
beginning, though she doesn’t always have money for lunch, she does
dream of mink and chinchilla.)
With
the settings of their initial meeting being a foggy pier and outside a
dimly lit warehouse, our noir sixth sense tells us things are not going
to go well for this romance. Once married, Leonora clearly doesn’t fit
in her new life, and we never feel satisfied either. Her anxiety feeds
our own trepidation about what she’s gotten herself into. Ohlrig’s large
house feels paradoxically more claustrophobic than her old, cramped
apartment. It has an empty fullness, reminiscent of Charles Foster
Kane’s Xanadu. She complains she never sees her husband and he counters
with insinuations: “You got what you wanted,” he tells her, obviously
still under the impression she is after his wealth, “You’re wearing it.”
She’s a wreck, and he’s insecure, careless, and irrationally explosive.
Her charm school pretense couldn’t have prepared her for this.
When
she finally gets the nerve to leave and meets Larry, it’s a different
world. He and his partner are in over their heads with their busy
practice. It’s in a rather poor section of the city; it’s hectic and not
at all glamorous. But there’s life there, and indeed, life there soon
shall be. Larry initially criticizes Leonora for being too fancy, but
their mutual attraction grows more and more pronounced, just as she
discovers she’s pregnant … with Ohlrig’s child. She now faces compassion
or coldness, secrets or the truth, divorce or a child.
Romantic passions run high throughout Caught,
yet all three leads reign in any overtly theatrical excess, maintaining
a balanced degree of emotional expressiveness even in times of
scandalous behavior. There is also a significant level of socioeconomic
concern, which drives a considerable portion of the drama. The genuine
or perceived importance of money is related throughout, and the
placement of an individual comfortably into an appropriate class is but
one conveyed anxiety, at least for Leonora, with Ohlrig and Larry
representing opposite poles of economic standing.
Ophüls’
renowned camera work is on full display (it was while working on this
film that Mason penned an amusing poem regarding, “A shot that does not
call for tracks” being “agony for poor old Max”). Even in Leonora’s
constrictive apartment early on, or later in Larry’s office, the camera
glides in all directions, in continually impressive and original
patterns. One particularly striking shot has the two doctors talking to
each other from across the office. The camera establishes a central
focal point and as if a pendulum, it oscillates from side to side,
resting on either man in matching compositions. What also stands out
visually is the meticulousness of formal design in terms of
corresponding cuts, noirish illumination, deep focus compositions, and
the movement of characters in and out of frame, all of this lending
itself to a notable cinematic choreography beyond just moving the
camera.
Caught’s screenplay is by Arthur Laurents, who had the year before written Hitchcock’s Rope and would go on to pen David Lean’s Summertime (1955) and Otto Preminger’s underrated Bonjour Tristesse (1958). As for Ophüls, as good as Caught is, his greatest work still lay ahead: La Ronde (1950), Le Plaisir (1952), The Earrings of Madame de… (1953) and Lola Montès (1955).
REVIEW from SOUND ON SIGHT
L’eclisse is the third film in Michelangelo Antonioni’s so-called “Trilogy of Alienation,” the preceding works having been L’avventura and La notte. (With justification, some would argue that Red Desert,
his next film, truly rounds out what would then be considered a
tetralogy). While the three films taken together do explore many of the
same themes relating to spiritual emptiness, the disbanding of
relationships, and a struggle to communicate in an increasingly modern
and alienating world, L’eclisse differs from the two earlier
works most notably in its increasingly experimental style and its
blatant departures from conventional storytelling and formal design.
A tumultuous relationship begins L’eclisse,
as we arrive in medias res, near the end of the rather unpleasantly
crumbling relationship between Riccardo (Francisco Rabal) and Vittoria
(Monica Vitti). Inside Riccardo’s claustrophobic home, Antonioni packs
the frame in a remarkable fashion, with furniture, accessories, and
pieces of miscellaneous bric-a-brac invading and protruding through
nearly every corner of any given composition. Coupled with a deafening
silence (“Many things can be said during silence,” Antonioni once said)
and a stifling atmosphere (an oscillating fan stresses the suffocating
warmth), this creates an intimately uncomfortable portrait of an affair
in ruins, of things clearly having taken a turn for the worse. Vittoria
fidgets around anxiously; Riccardo at times just sits and stares. While
he is persistent in his attempts at reconciliation, there seems to be no
hope. Whatever existed between these two has been sadly severed.
Isolation
is a key theme in Antonioni’s work, highlighted frequently through the
use of location. Here, after Vittoria leaves Riccardo’s home, she walks
along the desolate streets. It’s early and there is barely anyone else
around. In this setting, Vittoria’s solitude is underlined by her
isolated figure placed in these sterile surroundings. This would stand
in contrast to the next key location of the film, one unlike any other
previously approached by Antonioni in his films to this point — the
Italian stock exchange, where Piero (Alain Delon), who is soon to be
Vittoria’s new love, works. This is a hectic, crowded, and noisy
location, one of bustling energy that relates to, and feeds off of, the
individuals who make up this trade; as they yell and bid and curse, one
wonders if they are spurring on this confusion and chaos, or if it the
other way around. Either way, this particular locale is quite revealing,
not only as far as the characters are concerned, but here we also see
Antonioni making a larger commentary on this specific venue as part of
Italy as a whole. Men and women shout over each other and violence is
primed to erupt at any moment. There is much at stake here, and the
attempts to make deals and sell and buy stocks are complicated by all
the noise. The earlier silence between Riccardo and Vittoria, which
makes their dialogue strained, is paralleled here where the raucousness
makes attempts at communication also a struggle. This exchange of
currency and property seems utterly uncivilized, yet modern civilization
as these people know it is heavily dependent on what goes on in this
site. It’s a kind of post-war, consumerist, capitalistic paradox, where
big business and stock traders are made to appear unscrupulous and
overly aggressive, but are, in many ways, what makes the whole thing
move. In a strategy at this point rare in his career, Antonioni is using
the market location as instigation for a larger societal critique. When
Piero and his associates observe a moment of silence to remember a
recently deceased colleague, the anxiety of missing out on potential
money earned is excruciating. “One minute here costs billions,” Piero
tells Vittoria.
L’eclisse
would go on to make use of a location only existing in photographs to
further comment on the personal struggles of these characters in their
contemporary existence. Following the break up with Riccardo, Vittoria
later that evening finds herself in the home of a neighbor, essentially a
stranger. There, she marvels at the pictures and artifacts taken from
this neighbor’s time spent in Africa. Though never actually in this
geographic location, the way the images of the exotic land work on
Vittoria’s psyche is nevertheless revealing. She loosens up and becomes
uninhibited, going so far as to don blackface, wear a robe, and yell and
hop around in the apparent fashion of an “African savage.” What may
seem like blatant racism now (and the neighbor seems to view the
behavior as disrespectful at the very least), in the film it signals a
change in behavior and mentality that Vittoria otherwise never finds the
motivation for. The pictures of the African landscapes inform
considerably, even if briefly, a retreat from her suffocating, banal,
and, to her, difficult way of life. Kenya represents freedom, an escape
from modernity, a less difficult place where “things just unfold on
their own.”
In
another example of an alternate environment playing a part in character
development, a major location for Piero also reveals a perhaps latent
desire for a return to a simpler existence, here a return to the past.
Despite his role in an ever enveloping and evolving contemporary
lifestyle, Piero lives in a house populated by antiques. Though he is in
no way old fashioned, and actually seems to revel in modern times with
the emphasis on prosperity, speed, and progress, these relics
surrounding him in this domestic setting hint at a man who once was, or
still is, a product of a totally different life than what he is leading.
Taking
these two locations together, they both demonstrate why Piero and
Vittoria may indeed make a suitable couple — neither are seemingly
content with where they are in life or in setting; both maybe even feel
more at home, literally and figuratively, in spaces not inundated by the
complexities, falsities, and artificialities of a modern reality. If
they are a good match, however, then how does one explain the film’s
famous final sequence, which amounts to, as Seymour Chatman has
described it, “a kind of disestablishing shot”?
Having
agreed to meet later one evening, neither character shows, and
Antonioni’s camera is left to comb the area and its animate and
inanimate occupiers. A sequence lasting nearly seven minutes provides
one of Antonioni’s most stunning moments of landscape examination and
ambiguous narrative provocation. Abstract compositions of spatial
elements — people, buildings, trees, debris, etc. — give a sense of
disturbing estrangement. We see people waiting, watching, walking … but
waiting for what, watching what, walking where? It’s an aimless, dreamy,
even haunting montage of incongruous features. In Elements of Landscape, a short documentary featured on the Criterion Collection disc, critic Adriano Aprà likens L’eclisse
to a science fiction film, particularly with its odd, ultramodern
architecture, and at one point, Piero states that he feels like he’s in a
foreign country. Throughout the entire film, there is a strong feeling
of strangeness, but never more so than in this final sequence. The
evocative imagery and Giovanni Fusco’s tremendously effective ambient
score suggests an alarming finality, but to what? A newspaper headline
mentions the nuclear arms race. A possible clue? Antonioni’s
compositions in and of themselves are normal enough (stunningly shot
though — Aprà calls the filmmaker a “photographer/director”), but taken
together like they are here, and juxtaposed in their content and form,
the result is quite unsettling.
And
what of Piero and Vittoria? Why are they together prior to this, and
where are they now? It’s clear when they first meet that there is an
attraction (it’s Monica Vitti and Alain Delon, how could there not be
attraction?), but their initial attempts at physical affection are
awkward at best. This improves some as the film goes on, but there is
never a hint of true devotion. Vittoria says at one point she wishes she
didn’t love him, but then she wonders if she wishes she loved him more.
Their union is half-hearted from the start. Neither is reliant on the
other for security, nor are they necessarily looking for commitment.
Unexpressed ambivalence is not unusual for Antonioni’s couples, but the
way their relationship concludes here, at least as far as what we
actually see in the film, is an innovative approach. By agreeing on the
meeting time and location, and neither showing, we are at once not
surprised (did they really care for each other anyway) and shocked
(because we stay in the area, without them, for so long).
There has been debate about what exactly L’eclisse is referring to. There is no actual eclipse in the picture, so like Red Desert,
which features nothing close to a desert, to say nothing of a red one,
one has to assume that the title is illusory or metaphoric. In this
case, it would seem that there is actually an eclipse of sorts, but it’s
one of the landscape over the characters. The setting in this film has
become so important that it now outweighs our protagonists. From
Riccardo’s home to the stock exchange to the austere streets,
Antonioni’s characters are never quite in a place where they seem fully
at ease. And by the end, why haven’t Piero and Vittoria met? Where could
they be? It’s ultimately inconsequential, because the surroundings have
taken center stage. In Antonioni’s work to this point, going as far
back as his first documentary, People of the Po, settings have
told a great deal about their inhabitants. But now, it seems people are
losing their relevance. This is just one facet of L’eclisse, a film that truly rewards, if not demands, multiple viewings.
REVIEW from SOUND ON SIGHT
