PARIS MOVIE REPORT (May 2011)

[Chris Knipp]

JIM JARMUSCH'S PERMANENT VACATION.

Have just seen Criterion's DVD of Jim Jarmusch's 1980 Permanent Vacation, his first, short feature (around 75 min) starring the young Chris Parker. I can do no better than to cite Vincent Canby's very sensitive assessment in the NYTimes in 1990 when the film was exhibited in an enlarged print at Anthology Film Archives. Canby writes:

It's a must-see for anyone who shares the belief that Mr. Jarmusch is the most arresting and original American film maker to come out of the 1980's.

''Permanent Vacation'' was made for something in the neighborhood of $12,000. It is not an unrecognized masterpiece, but it is clearly the forerunner of the eccentric comedies to come.

In Mr. Jarmusch's work, Aloysious Christopher Parker occupies the place that Stephen Dedalus holds in the work of James Joyce. Allie represents something of the film maker's sensibility, or something of what Mr. Jarmusch may sometimes see as his sensibility. It's necessary to be vague about such things since Mr. Jarmusch, after making ''Permanent Vacation,'' has kept his distance from his characters.

And:

In later films Mr. Jarmusch demonstrates a singular gift for the kind of narrative that, without the audience's awareness, builds to an inevitable pay-off. There are no such surprises in ''Permanent Vacation.'' Instead, there is a quantity of raw material that would later be refined into three of the funniest, wisest comedies of the last decade.

I love the "Stephen Daedalus" reference. Chris Parker, a tall, reedy, poetic young man, is indeed every inch the doomed wandering poet. Permanent Vacation indeed lacks the "surprises" and neat payoffs, but it has moments, many of which Canby lists. I highlight is when Parker puts on a disk and does a bebod dance as his dreamy girlfriend Leila (Leila Gastil) shits by, in a beautifully framed shot set in a loft or tenement with two big X-barred windows. The DVD has interesting ancillary material, including interviews done at the time of Stranger in Paradise, a silent Super 8 film by Tom Jarmusch made in Cleveland during Stranger's shoot, stills of location scouts for that film, and US and Japanese trailers.