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Well, if arsaib4 thinks the comparison is apt then it must be, uh? Unconvinced by such logic, and being quite familiar with Clean and that masterful achievement in film art that is Sansho the Bailiff, I taxed my brain trying to come up with a rationale for equating these films. There isn't anything remotely similar in the style of Assayas and Mizoguchi, so it has to be the theme of family separation. Except that in Clean, Cheung's junkie has no objection to her kid being raised by her in-laws and that's the family status from the start, whereas in Sansho a family is violently splintered by treachery, patriarchy, feudalism and slavery. Equating these films is unfair to Mizoguchi's legacy and unfair to Assayas because it creates viewer's expectations that Clean cannot begin to meet.
Saturday June 18th
The Middle of the World (Brazil, 2004) at Cosford Cinema
Unemployed truckdriver Romao uproots his wife and four kids from their home in Northeast Brazil to embark on a 2000-mile bike trip to Rio. Only a job paying enough to support his family (1000 reales monthly, he figures) would be sufficient to settle down. Morim's road movie provides a rare closeup look at the country's backroads, and at Brazilians who live outside the big urban centers_ perhaps the film's highest accomplishment and reason enough to recommend it. The challenge posed by the length of the trip and the less than ideal circumstances create familial tensions.
Dramatically, The Middle of the World is most interesting when dealing with 14 year-old Antonio's ambivalent bid for independence and separation from his parents. The acting is uniformly good and the film makes excellent use of its wide canvas. The last scene offers awesome aerial views of Rio from the hilltop Cristo Redentor statue.
Cafe Lumiere (Japan/Taiwan, 2004) on region#3 dvd
I hope the recent 10-day commercial run of Hou's film at the Anthology Film Archives was a hit so the film expands to other markets. A most unusual Hou film, one commissioned by Shochiku Studios as a tribute to Yasuyiro Ozu, shot entirely in Japan with a mixed Japanese/Taiwanese crew. More a sensitive outsider's take on Japan and a portrait of an independent woman than a narrative. More new millenium update of Ozu's state-of-the-Japanese-family theme than compelling drama. And both evocative of late-period Ozu and characteristically a Hou film.
Yoko (pop star Hitoto Yo's acting debut) has just returned to her Tokyo flat from Taiwan. Initially we learn via phone conversation that the 20-something writer was there to conduct research on Jiang Wen-ye, a famous composer and Ozu contemporary. But the following day, after train travel to her hometown, Yoko tells her mother that she's pregnant, that her Taiwanese boyfriend is the father, and that she has no intention to marry him. Back in Tokyo, Yoko conducts research on cafes frequented by Wen-Ye during his visits to Japan in the 30s and spends time with Hajime. He owns a small bookstore but spends his leisure time recording the sounds of trains and their riders. Their behavior towards each other is friendly and obsequious, but their feelings are never made apparent. Yoko's mother never judges her firm decision to raise the child alone and there's no ambivalence on Yoko's part. A scene in which Yoko, her curious mom, and distant father discuss her decision is conflict-free.
The detailed observations and renderings of Japanese public and domestic life, the portraiture of a modern Asian woman, and the aesthetic pleasures of Hou's images may not be compelling viewing for everyone. As a Hou and Ozu fan, I was delighted.
Note: Cafe Lumiere is scored judiciously with Jiang Wenye compositions for piano, but it closes with a pop song by Hitoto Yo. The lyrics to this song were not subtitled and I get the impression they are relevant to the film's content. But I have no way of knowing.
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Well, I guess the comparison isn't proper because Oscar Jubis doesn't believe so, at least that's what he's trying to convey -- unsuccessfully, of course. If one actually pays attention to the reference that was made by Kent Jones, and agreed upon by me, they'll realize that it referred to the framing of the final shot. Certainly other facets such as the concluding humanity and redemption also come into play. Just like Kent Jones, I also believe that in time Clean will have a place in history similar to Sansho the Bailiff but I guess since Jubis disagrees, it won't happen.
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Stop the presses!!
Fellow members and guests:
The mystery of the Kenji Mizoguchi reference has been revealed!! On the third try, we've been able to extricate something other than "It applies!" from Mr. arsaib4 and it turns out to be...(drum roll)..."THE FRAMING OF THE FINAL SHOT". Yes, you heard right. Maggie Cheung has a cathartic cry at the conclusion of her recording session, walks out of the studio onto a porch as the camera pans left, away from her, to reveal a wideshot of San Francisco Bay. Mizo in a nutshell!!
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Obviously, this matter is out of Jubis's comprehension so we had to deal with his idiocy above.
Just to remind everyone, this was what he said initially:
Just ignore the silly reference to Sansho the Bailiff attributed to the normally level-headed Kent Jones.
While he's blaming others, he's the one who tried to sound like an expert.
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ok, ok its going in one of those directions...
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Not even great film scholars like Jones and Rosenbaum, or even Barthes and Bazin, are beyond scrutiny and criticism. There are no sacred cows, so to speak. It's apparent by his hurling insults ("his idiocy") that our colleague from Buffalo has exhausted his ability to debate the comparison between Clean and Sansho. I refuse to demean myself and degrade the forum by reciprocating. I'd rather tell you about the movies I watched yesterday :)
Sunday June 19th
Metro Lumiere (France, 2004) on region#3 dvd
One hour documentary directed by Harold Manning about Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien and Cafe Lumiere, a film tribute to Yasujiro Ozu commissioned by Shichiku Studios. The doc starts in Taipei with a brief discussion of Hou's filmography and its rootedness in Taiwanese history. Then, we are transported to Tokyo; shots from the city's train system are interspersed with interviews of Hou and his DP Lee Pingbin. They discuss their preparation for the project, the process of creating a fiction that pays homage to Ozu, and the experience of working with a crew of mixed nationality. Lee contrasts the diverging work ethics by referring to Hou as "Maoist" and the Japanese methods as "Neo-Confucian". I like how scenes from Cafe Lumiere were compared with scenes from Ozu's films, particularly Late Spring and Equinox Flower. Hou jokes that there are so many scenes at train stations and shots from metro trains that the film should have been called "Metro Lumiere", hence the doc's title.
The Killers (USA, 1964) on dvd
Ostensibly a remake of Robert Siodmark's The Killers (1946), which I watched last week, but director Don Siegel changed everything except the premise of a man not resisting or fleeing when two hired killers come to gun him down. Whereas Siodmark's film is a noir that's fairly faithful to Ernest Hemingway's source novel, Siegel's color film pumps up the action and crafts a narrative from the point of view of the hired guns. Not a single line of dialogue comes from Hemingway's book, according to Siegel. The Killers features Ronald Reagan's last perf and his first as an outright villain. Lee Marvin managed to stay sober long enough to complete the shoot, but barely, according to Siegel's journal. Angie Dickinson is the femme fatale. Don Siegel's The Killers was originally intended as the first feature made to be broadcasted on television, but it was deemed too violent and released in theatres instead. Both versions are fine, but I prefer Siodmark's for its noir styling, its sense of doom, and its literate script.
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Apparently, our colleague from Miami has forgotten the words "Just ignore the silly reference" and his attempt to "stop the presses." It's quite sad really.
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Monday June 20th
I'll split today's entry into two separate posts, one per film.
The Ladies Man (USA, 1961) on dvd
The second movie produced, directed, co-written and starring Jerry Lewis is an essay on the state of masculinity; a comedic, pre-feminism one, of course.
Lewis plays Herbert (pervert?), who witnesses his sweetheart making out with another on college graduation day. Lewis frames the kissing couple so that their heads are cut off. The betrayed Herbert vows to avoid women and remain a bachelor, regressing to a pre-teen stage of female aversion. He accepts a job as a jack-of-all-trades at a large manor run by two older matrons. Unbeknown to him, the manor is a residence for single women. And what a place it is! It took nine months to build the 4-story, plush dollhouse set, with fourth walls removed to allow for amazingly fluid dolly shots. The set design and the miking-for-sound used were considered quite innovative at the time. When he first sees the women, Hebert's panic attack is such that Lewis "splits" into four look-alike doubles as he runs frantically. Somehow Herbert is coaxed to stick it out after he finds out he will come into daily contact with 30 female archetypes and one "baby", a roaring, unidentified creature used to explore our token male's fear of fatherhood.
Lewis' films are characteristically fresh in their willingness to digress, to stop narrative thrust temporarily. There's a scene in which Herbert dances a tango with tough guy George Raft, and a loving, musical homage to Paris, for instance. Lamentably, there's also a completely superfluous flashback to the betrayal scene that adds nothing to the film. Towards the end, Herbert dares to enter the "forbidden room", which turns out to be a large all-white bedroom set where a black-clad woman in whiteface hangs from the ceiling. Herbert experiences obvious anxiety when the silent woman dances provocatively, whip in hand, before laying in bed invitingly.
I know folks who would never agree to watch a Jerry Lewis movie and I can provide quotes calling The Ladies Man a masterpiece. One thing I know for sure: the discussion cannot be limited to whether he makes you laugh or not. Even at his most slapstick or clownish, Lewis was experimenting with form and providing commentary on social issues.
Paramount has done an excellent job digitalizing Lewis's films. This dvd release is exemplary, and priced to buy.
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So now you will be able to understand that eternal question, what do the French see in Jerry Lewis movies? And this already is the beginning of an answer for me.
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Well, I've been hearing for decades about how the French love Lewis, but I've never read or heard any first-person accounts or figures comparing box office tallies in America and France. I am simply assuming there's some truth to it. It's also hard to find reviews written during the 60s, considered the classic Lewis decade, when The Nutty Professor and The Ladies Man. Dave Kehr wrote about the former "one of the most intense investigations of self ever put on film, a technically impeccable work of inspired megalomania". My take on Lewis is far from definite. I know he makes me laugh and I'm increasingly aware that his films are very personal and that, at least the ones released in the 60s were quite innovative. I have a lot to learn about his work. I look forward to the upcoming book on Lewis by Boston-based critic Chris Fujiwara. You can find his essay on Lewis here: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/conten.../03/Lewis.html
I also know that Americans my age and younger prefer Woody Allen even though few have actually seen Lewis's films. That was my own position back in the 70s and 80s, but in the past 15 years or so my take on Allen has depreciated quite a bit while Lewis's filmography keeps growing in stature. I'm not ready to call Lewis a genius like Chaplin, Keaton or Tati, but I don't rule it out either.
Melo (France, 1986) on PAL dvd (French)
An abbreviation of melodrama, derived from the Greek "melos" for music and the French "drame" for drama. Not the common usage: a sensational piece that appeals violently to one's emotions. Melo was directed by Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad, Hiroshima Mon Amour), my favorite living French director. Melo is set in 1926 Paris, a faithful but condensed adaptation of a play written by Henry Bernstein (1876-1953), a highly successful author who called Melo "the most complete expression of my thought and sensibility". A romantic triangle involving neurotic classical musicians: Pierre (Pierre Arditi), his wife Romaine (Sabine Azema), and their mutual friend Marcel (Andre Dussollier). Lurking around to pick up the pieces, Romaine's cousin Christiane (Fanny Ardant). I have never encountered fictional characters more complex and fascinating. Every aspects of Melo, from the dialogue and its delivery, the gestures and body language of the performers, the music they play to and with each other, to the camera angles and movements, the lighting, and the art direction, express character traits and comment on the nature of the relationships between the principals. These are flawed, ambivalent beings that inspire extreme empathy and curiosity. During the first of back-to-back home viewings, I resisted using the pause button to use the bathroom. I didn't want to interrupt my visit to Melo's world. A thoroughly engaging, easily accesible, rarefied environment. Melo is perfect.
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I don't think it's a question of box office tallies for Jerry Lewis in France but old critical admiration, probably in Cahiers du Cinéma in the Fifties. I think it's an additional factor in any assessment
of Jerry Lewis that he taught filmmaking for many years. So he may have had an influence that way. How can you compare Woody Allen? That's apples and oranges for sure. I think Allen has spread himself too thin by a wide margin, and except for his brilliant early films, his style has always seemed rather derivative
and it never had much of a link with classic early comedy like Lewis' does. But he too has his admirers in France I suppose.
It's partly just that the French care more passionately about film than Americans do, hence they appreciate Jerry Lewis as an artist.If I'm not mistaken the best and most complete or at least the most lavish book on Buster Keaton is by a Frenchman. I read it in the early Eighties but unfortunately I don't have a copy and forget the name.
Resnais' Mélo: In my review of Clean I noted that the French paper Le Monde called the film "un grand mélo, version rock." I'm sorry to say I have not seen this film of Resnais'. Congratulations on not hitting the pause button to go to the bathroom. Don't break the mood.
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Now I remember: the book about Keaton is Le regard de Buster Keaton, the Look of Buster Keaton, by Robert Benayoun, 1982, and the original French edition I read is selling in this country for $150 now http://www.tomfolio.com/bookdetailsfg.asp?b=10502&m=521
I tried to get a small San Francisco publisher which seemed to be rather generously funded at the time to translate and issue it but no dice.
St. Martins press published a translation in 1984; it's cited in a Senses of Cinema article on Keaton. And that will cost you $85 today.
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It's perhaps indicative of the neglect of Jerry Lewis, auteur, by the American critical establishment that none of Kael's three books about 60s films mentions him. A book I have that compiles essays from 1950s Cahiers issues also doesn't mention him but I am convinced that, when Lewis turned to directing in the 60s, the venerable mag played plenty of attention.
The Keaton book you mention looks fantastic. I learned a lot about Keaton from a doc shown every so often on TCM. I have his The General on my home viewing "schedule" for summer or fall.
Tuesday June 21st
I have seen The Battle orf Algiers at the theatre several times, including last year's re-release. So today I watched two documentaries about the film and its director found on disc 2 of the Criterion edition of the film.
Gillo Pontecorvo: The Dictatorship of Truth (1992)
Gilberto Pontecorvo was an apolitical middle class Italian Jew who developed a political conciousness during travel to Paris to participate in tennis tournaments in the 30s. Upon his return to his native Italy, he joined the anti-fascist resistance. After the war, he cultivated an interest in photography and realized later cinema was a perfect conduit for his political activism. Pontecorvo refers to his approach as "the dictatorship of truth". This doc is narrated by Arab-American literary critic Ed Said and includes interviews with many of his collaborators. It concentrates on his four major features: Kapo (one of the first fiction films about the holocaust), Battle of Algiers, Queimada (about a slave rebellion in the Caribbean), and Ogro (1979), his little seen last feature, about a terrorist attack perpetrated by ETA during the Franco dictatorship in Spain.
Dictatorship of Truth examines the multiple reasons why Pontecorvo directed only shorts and commercials after '79. Pontecorvo states that the public is less interested in political themes, that producers are less inclined to finance the films he wants to make, that producers insists on casting actors that often don't "look the part", and that he is highly indecisive and too much of a perfectionist (he seems to regret having rejected certain projects offered to him). Two projects that came closest to being realized: one on the 1980 murder of Archbishop Romero in El Salvador, and a film on the Palestinian resistance to Israel's occupation.
Marxist Poetry (2004)
This doc packs a great deal of information in 38 minutes duration. All about the pre-production, making of, and reception to Battle of Algiers. The title is a reference to Pauline Kael's comment that "GP is the most dangerous type of Marxist, a Marxist poet". Extremely informative short includes an interview with Algerian activist Saadi Yacef whose journal was the genesis of the film.
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I thought that by the early Sixties the high regard in which Jerry Lewis was held in France was already a subject of jokes here. I wonder, then, where that came from, if he isn't even mentioned in Cahiers du Cinéma in the Fifties. I suppose maybe my chronology is just a bit off. The mysteries of Jerry Lewis's reputation are a topic worth an article by somebody in Sense of Cinema or somewhere like that, hopefully somebody with not too pompous a style.
Sounds like great material on Pontecorvo. Never heard the late Edward Said referred to as "Ed" before, but then, I didn't know him. In speeches and writing he seemed a rather formal man. Whether you liked him or not, he was the great articulate voice of the Palestinians in this country, and now that he's gone, there's nobody to replace him. His sweeping book about western cultural co-opting of the East, Orientalism, has had a wide influence, or at least I'd assume so.
As you can probably see from catalogue descriptions, what makes Robert Benayoun's book Le regard de Buster Keaton/The Look of Buster Keaton remarkable is that it's not only a lavishly illustrated coffee-table book but a thorough, interesting, even profound text.
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No disrespect to Edward Said intended; never had the pleasure myself...
Wed. June 22nd
A Talking Picture (Portugal, 2003) on dvd
It's likely that, if this film directed by 96 year old Manoel de Oliveira played at a theatre near you during its very limited Dec. 2004 release, it had a short run. The dvd has been available for two months. Heed my advice: rent it now! Stop reading this entry and watch it ASAP. Not that I'd reveal what Rosenbaum called "the Bunuelian stinger in its tail".
A girl of about 8 named Maria Joana travels, accompanied by her historian mother, from Lisbon to Bombay to meet her father. The trip will afford Rosa the opportunity to witness the sites she always talks about in her lectures, as the ship will make stops in France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, etc. Think of it as a Homeric reversal; instead of Odysseus traveling west to return to his wife and child, a wife and child travel east to meet the father. Three prominent women board the ship in its first three stops: entrepeneur Delphine (Catherine Deneuve), model Francesca (stefania Sandrelli) and singer/actress Helen (Irene Papas). Making the introductions is the man-in-charge, an American of course, played by John Malkovich. You're probably getting the idea that, even though the characters behave realistically, they are also representative, perhaps even symbolic. If you are familiar to the events that led to the Trojan War, you'll see that the "little game of denouncing ourselves" played by the Cap. and the three women echoes Paris' fateful choice among Hera, Aphrodite and Athena.
A Talking Picture is little Maria Joana's film, and like many of us, she knows little about history. We have a great teacher along, Rosa, who through conversations with locals and Maria Joana brings forth the long legacy of violent conflict between East and West, and more specifically, between Islam and Christianity. That's the central conflict within the narrative. A most compelling, ancient and contemporary struggle.
But even those who care little about history can enjoy this magnificent picture, if only as an expertly shot travelogue through some of the wonderful sites in the world: St. Sophia Cathedral in Istanbul, the Acropolis in Greece, the ruins of Pompeii, the Great Pyramids of Gyza, among others. After two viewings, I'm ready to make some changes on my list of favorites of 2004.
