Films seen in April

Great month, didn’t even run into any trash.

FIRST TIER

Film socialisme

Weekend

Sicilia!

The Story of a Cheat

Diary of a Suicide

Diary of a Lost Girl

Gold diggers of 1933

Dames

The Escapees

SECOND TIER

The Father of My Children

King of New York

Declaration of War

We Need to Talk About Kevin

Chico & Rita

The Seven Year Itch

Sleeping Beauty

Tillie’s Punctured Romance

Woman of the Year

Pina

Tales of the Night

White Zombie

Cold Weather

Footlight Parade

It

Adam’s Rib

THIRD TIER

         Don’t Torture a Duckling

Killer Cop

Psychopathia Sexualis

Enter the Dragon

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (David Gelb, 2011)

A sushi documentary that is also about Japanese culture, family hierarchy, aging, work ethics and most importantly art in general.  With an almost too overtly stylized form Jiro clearly trying, and achieving, to be something more than a mere talking-head documentary.  Through this form and Jiro's philosophy the film becomes this testament of the artistic process and the wholehearted devotion we put into our works.

ESSENTIAL READING: Beard on Eastwood

Beard breakdowns Gran Torino and its implications and those of the evolution of the Eastwood persona.  For someone who is not-so familiar with or even interested in Eastwood, it was still a fascinating read of this larger-than-life character/real person as well as American culture.

Excerpts:

But Walt's honourable military service to his country, whose flag hangs in front of his house and all around town, is not something he can be proud of. Patriotic pride keeps turning to acid in his mouth because his glorious wartime violence keeps presenting itself to him as a crime against humanity.

The symbolism of Walt's bequest of the Gran Torino to Thao, and the film's last shot of Thao behind its wheel driving away to the (truly regrettable) musical accompaniment of the director singing a sentimental song of his own composition, could hardly be clearer. Clint Eastwood has passed the best values of America to the Asian Other who embodies its best ideals. White America will just have to get over itself, although there remains the fact that its multicultural inheritors will take possession not through their own endeavours, but at the hands of Clint Eastwood, WASP Number One.

The nostalgia for a more stable and comforting time that's inscribed all over the incidentals of Walt Kowalski's life, habits, and environment is a nostalgia for something that never existed--a mythology cobbled together from shards and airbrushed stereotypes. Only in the ageing of his body has Walt's life experienced a real decline. His life always was fractured, conflicted and haunted. All of the supposed bellwethers of his existence--service in Korea, family, work, community--have transformed under examination into something bad. It's not so much that everything has turned to shit, it's that so much of everything was shit all along.

(Eastwood's evolution from Dirty Harry to Walt Kowalski)

This is what victory has come to in Eastwood's cinema. He still saves the community, but the film has traced his passage from the violent hero to the sacrificial one, from Achilles to Jesus Christ. The last image we see of Walt is an overhead crane shot of him stretched out dead on the ground, and his pose is unmistakeably that of a crucified man.

Full article, 'Clint Eastwood as Fallen Saviour' by William Beard, available in Issue 85 of CineAction

Persona of a lost girl...

PABST BERGMAN

Welles the Optimist

(from The Poetics of Cinema)

Orson Welles used to ask, "Why work so hard, if only to fabricate others' dreams?" He was an optimist and believed that the industry could dream.  Accepting his postulate would mean confusing dreams with calculated, profit-hungry mythomania. Let's be much more optimistic: even if the industry perfects itself (in its tendencies toward control), it will never be able to take over the space of uncertainty and polysemia that is essential to images - the possibility of transmitting a private world in a present time that is host to multiple pasts and futures.

Amos Vogel, R.I.P.

One of the few people that single handedly made sure the American avant-garde always had a home has passed away.  In 1947 he created the first venue for such films to be showcased: Cinema 16.  In the 1960s he founded the Lincoln Center Film Department and was co-founder of the New York Film Festival.  From there going on to write the highly important and radical book Film as Subversive Art.

MUBI round-up here

Excerpt:

In retrospect, it's clear that Vogel was at once programmer and pedagogue; Cinema 16 folded for many reasons, but one was a revolt sparked by Vogel's refusal to program or distribute works he considered inferior, even by filmmakers he had supported in the past. The abrasive approach reflected in the title of I-House's three-day tribute extended not just to Vogel's choice of films — which ran from the poetic slaughterhouse documentary Blood of the Beasts to the notorious Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew — but his programming style, which might find the latest in experimental film on a bill with a documentary about ants in equatorial South America. The idea was to produce conflict in the manner of Sergei Eisenstein's montage, forcing audiences to rethink their comfortable categorizations.

So it is, too, with Film as a Subversive Art, which eschews standard taxonomies in favor of provocative thematic clusters: A still from Robert Bresson's Pickpocket shares a spread with Buñuel's Belle de Jour and a Mae West clinch from She Done Him Wrong, all grouped under the heading, "Erotic and Pornographic Cinema." The lavishly illustrated book, which is as much fun to browse as is it to read, consistently throws up such surprising comparisons: Turn the page from the eye-slicing scene in Un Chien Andalou and you'll find King Kong's head starting back at you.

(full article here by Sam Adams)

shot;reverse shot

WAKE UP

Le lit de la vierge

Notes on Carroll and Metz’s Theories of Spectatorship

In the mid 1970s a shift within film studies was beginning to take shape. Many theorists, most notably Christian Metz and Jean-Louis Baudry, involved with semiotics begin to stray away from their interest of film language and structure to the study of the spectator and the cinematic apparatus, creating a “second semiology." These theorists began using psychoanalysis, instead of linguistics, as the basis of their theoretical frameworks. Following this shift, in the 1980s and 1990s a new way of looking at films began to take shape yet again. The theorists involved in this new development, exemplified by Noël Carroll and David Bordwell, began what has come to be known as the cognitive theory movement. These theorists wanted to look at many of the same issues that the “second semiology” theorists dealt with but utilizing a cognitivist framework instead of a semiotic one.

Before analyzing each theorist’s notions of spectatorship, their basic theoretical frameworks need to be defined. Christian Metz based his spectator theories upon semiotics and psychoanalysis. Semiotics is concerned with the study of codes and signs. These codes and signs make up language systems, but they can also come together in a smaller scale to create a system or text, in this case a film. Cinematic codes could be anything from specific editing techniques to different lighting techniques. Metz also applied psychoanalysis, specifically Lacan’s notion of the mirror stage, to his theory on spectatorship. For Lacan, the mirror stage was the moment in a child’s development, usually between the age of six to eighteen months, when they finally recognize themselves as different from the world, i.e., the child recognizes that they are experiencing the world through their own subjectiveness. On the other side of the spectrum lies the cognitivist approach. Instead of understanding the world through the study of language and its signs and systems, cognitivists seek to understand the world through processes of mental representations. For cognitivists, there are certain “physiological and cognitive systems “hard-wired” into all human beings,” which come before any knowledge of history, culture or identity. Bordwell calls these systems “contingent universals” and they consist of simple assumptions ranging from the assumption that “natural light falls from above” to the understanding of a coherent space within a film. Cognitivists also want to stray away from the notion of applying a theoretical model and trying to prove it through interpretation.

Now that their basic theoretical frameworks have been explained, their respective notions of film spectatorship can be considered. Metz compared the spectator’s situation while watching a film with the mirror stage, acknowledging one difference: that with film the spectator does not get a reflection of himself. He claims that since the spectator has already experienced the “real” mirror stage, he “is thus able to constitute a world of objects without having to first recognize himself within it;” creating an “all-perceiving” spectator. The spectator is not only “all-perceiving” but has a dual knowledge as well: that what is being perceived is imaginary (the film) and that he himself (the spectator) is the one perceiving it. The spectator is also in the unique position of “receiving” and “releasing” the film. He receives the film, like the screen in the auditorium, but he also releases it, like the projector, “since it does not preexist my entering the auditorium and I only need close my eyes to suppress it." Metz states that the spectator identifies not only with “himself as look” but also with the camera since it looked at everything the spectator is now looking at first. Metz divides these cinematic forms of identification, which he distinguishes from regular identification, in two: primary identification with the camera and one’s own look and secondary identification with characters within the filmic world. In order to make sense of the film, the spectator must simultaneously put himself in the position of the character of the film so that he can accept and understand the filmic world, but at the same time reject himself from that position so that he can accept the fiction as symbolic.

Instead of believing that the spectator makes meaning out of symbolism through an identification process with the film, Carroll believes that films are “emotively focused.” What he means is that filmmakers emotionally organize films in order to elicit different emotional states in the spectator throughout the film. The spectator is “encouraged to adopt pro attitudes to certain developments in the story” and where these “story developments mesh with those preferences, the response is likely to be euphoric; where they clash…dysphoric." The emotional response then leads to the emotive focus that guides our attention to the events in the film. In the process of eliciting this emotional response, the spectator’s “faculties of cognition and judgment are brought into play." In order to analyze films then, research should be focused on how films are “emotively focused” and if the emotion desired is pertinent with actions of the film. The cognitivist analysis disregards the positioning of the spectator by the camera, instead emphasizing an active spectator responding to the film emotionally.

These contrasting theories do share some similarities. Both theories apply a theoretical model to their approaches in analyzing the spectator, Metz with Lacan’s mirror stage and semiotics while Carroll creates his own theory based on emotions. Understanding Lacan’s notion of the mirror stage or how emotions work for Carroll is crucial to their perspective views on spectatorship. Both theorists also believe that films are constructed in a certain way as to create certain effects on the viewer. For Metz these effects are different stages of belief as for Carroll they are different emotions. They both believe that films are meticulously constructed to carry out these effects that keep audiences engaged. Even though they share some similarities in how they construct their theoretical arguments, the theories are opposed in the most fundamental aspect of how the mind works: for semioticians language systems come first and for cognitivists thinking comes first.

Both of these contrasting theories fall short in certain aspects when analyzing spectatorship. As mentioned before, both theorists set out a theoretical stage in which to analyze the spectator but Metz is applying a non-cinematic theory to film instead of creating a specifically cinematic one. Carroll creates his theory of how films are structured and their effects on spectators solely based on cinematic phenomena. Carroll’s account can also explain how and why certain emotions are elicited in the spectator within separate films and genres, while Metz’s seems to only account for our “passion for perceiving” films in general. The cognitivist approach also has its shares of fallbacks, for example, Carroll states that when “looking at a horror film like From Beyond from an analytic point of view requires dissecting, so to say, the way in which the monster has been designed to engender a horrified emotional response from audiences." This sort of dissection, by focusing solely on emotional responses, seems to restrict analysis. Metz’s theory of identification allows for a spectator to think of the filmic world as symbolic and not just as a phenomenon that produces certain emotions, arriving at more interesting theories behind films. Neither theory deals with what the spectator does while viewing avant-garde or experimental films. A film like Peter Kubelka’s Arnulf Rainer does not provide room for any sort of identification or emotional response.

Metz and Carroll’s theories on spectatorship provide different notions of how spectators experience a film. Metz provides an account of a passive spectator who is positioned by and identifies with the camera, while Carroll portrays the spectator as active and responding to the criterially prefocused filmic text. These scholars have provided their own accounts of the spectator with each one being more pertinent than the other in some aspect of film analysis.

Quotes and research from Robert Stam's Film Theory: An Introduction and Baudry/Cohen's Film Theory & Criticism

(first) Zombies

Zombie eyes

Environments

Hallucinations

White Zombie (Victor Halperin, 1932)

Bergson/Chaplin/Keaton

The first major claim that Bergson makes about the comic is that it springs forth from a “mechanical inelasticity” that is found in a human being. He uses the example of a man falling down to prove his point. If a spectator sees someone who has been walking correctly all of a sudden fall down, he will most likely find this funny. This becomes comic because the man was not able to adapt to his surroundings. Bergson calls this “mechanical inelasticity” because it is as if that man had turned mechanical and lost his human elasticity when he should have been able to adapt. Machines are inelastic in that they always perform the same task no matter what, they do not adapt to obstructions like human beings, therefore when human beings are unable to adapt the result is comic. Bergson also calls this rigidity, where a person’s rigidity keeps them moving in the same manner instead of taking action, e.g., stepped over the banana peel.

Chaplin's Modern Times seems to directly comment on this phenomenon. In one of the funniest scenes of the film Chaplin’s character is working at a factory when his boss suddenly picks him to be the test subject for a new machine that is supposed to feed workers in the most efficient way possible. Chaplin gets strapped to this massive feeding machine that tries to feed him as effectively as possible. The comic in this scene arises when the machine keeps repeating the same movements mechanically instead of adapting to the situation, e.g., the machine has a part that is suppose to wipe the person’s mouth after they have eaten something, but it repeatedly tries to wipe Chaplin’s mouth after every little bite even when it is obviously not needed. The comic results from the inability the machine has to adapt to the situation. This sort of mechanical inelasticity, or rigidity, resulting in the comic is very important for Bergson.

In a similar manner, Bergson goes to claim that when the body’s movement collides with the soul’s line of thought, the result is comical. He uses facial expressions and caricatures as examples to develop his argument. A facial expression is laughable when it recalls something rigid in the usual mobility of the face. It becomes comic because it imitates a stereotypical face. This becomes even more comical when it is connected to a deeper cause, as if “the soul had allowed itself to be fascinated and hypnotized by the materiality of a simple action." For example, one of the funniest aspects of Buster Keaton was his facial expression. No matter what situation he found himself in, he always wore the same deadpan facial expression. This facial expression becomes comical because it imitates the "stoneface" stereotype of someone who is unhappy. This never changing expression becomes even funnier because of the inability of his body to adapt to his soul when he keeps that expression even in situations where it does not seem to fit.

All quotes from Bergson's Laughter

Let's Talk 1950s Hollywood

• House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings: leftists in compromising positions, stars, directors, producers, screenwriters, all being forced to name communists or people with communist affiliations.
• “Hollywood Ten”, one director, one producer, and 8 screenwriters, all blacklisted due to communist ties
• HUAC hearings left a legacy of distrust and wasted talent
• “The Paramount Decision” in ’48 the U.S. supreme court declares that the 8 companies (big 5, little 3) are guilty of monopolistic practices, ban on block booking, Majors have to divest of their theater chains; despite this distribution remained dominated by the dominant studios
• The decline of the Hollywood studio system
• Runaway productions – Spending “frozen funds” (money in other countries that they have to spend in that country from the profit of Hollywood imports into that country) shooting films abroad. These productions also avoided the high cost of US labor
• After 1946 Hollywood domestic’s fortune begins to sag, mostly due to people spending their leisure time differently (since a lot of them live by the suburbs not in the actual cities where the theaters are) and most of all spending more time watching TV instead of going to the theater
• The fight against television (widescreen, color, etc.): 1950 - Eastman introduces monopack, a single strip color film making it much easier and cheaper to shoot in color (than Technicolor). Cinerama – 1952, widescreen format that used 3 projectors that created a multipaneled image, in 1953 with The Robe CinemaScope displayed their widescreen alternative and became the most popular because it used conventional 35mm film and fairly simple optics. Paramount clung to its own system, VistaVision
• New twists on old genres, upscaling genres (the Western, Melodrama, Historical epics)
• The rise of other leisure activities made studios create more “important” and films that would cater to the selective moviegoers since people were going to be more selective now.
• Due to elimination of block booking a new power of the individual film comes along, each individual film becomes more important instead of companies being able to slip bad films into bundles for block booking
• Art cinemas and drive-ins: by the mid-1960s there are over 600 art cinemas around the country in cities and college towns. Drive-ins were cheap to set-up and attacked clients that didn’t want to go in the city since they were mostly on farmland, also teens liked them for passion pits
• In the mid 1950s teenpics market opens
• Rise of the Independents: Lew Wasserman – giving stars more money and more power to be able to pick roles, etc. made Hitchcock the richest director in Hollywood when he negotiated a deal that said Hitchcock would get 60% of profits and help finance the film. Exploitation films – gain new prominence in the 1950s (Corman’s Poe cycle with Vincent Price)
• Major directors, many veterans, e.g. John Ford, Raoul Walsh, William Wyler, King Vidor all continue to work. Émigrés stayed on: Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger. Orson wells becomes a vagabond director, made films for Columbia, Republic, and Universal as wells as producing other films on shoestring budgets from European backers and his film performances

AVATAR

An old Avatar review I made around the time the film came out; specifically for its fans.

Film ou Visa de censure numéro X

Godard x2: Weekend & Film Socialisme at Belcourt Theater (Nashville, TN)

A Sunday afternoon spent with Godard at the Belcourt Theater. Weekend playing at 3:15pm followed by Film Socialisme at 5:30pm on April 15.

Weekend (Top) Film Socialisme (Bottom)

Weekend (Top) Film Socialisme (Bottom)

Weekend (Top) Film Socialisme (Bottom)

Weekend (Top) Film Socialisme (Bottom)