The Smugglers (Moullet)

. . . 

. . .

o'brien

It was as if the fifties had been compelled to execute a tortuous slow-motion exposure of words and deeds and bodies, all snap and timing lost, every blow landing a bit more heavily than intended.  A ponderous heaving and flailing approximated passion. In the midst of the wide-screen carnival arose grotesque parodies of the body: Jayne Mansfield, whose figure cracked men's eyeglasses and made milk boil over, and Jerry Lewis, a demon of hyperactive self-abasement sprung from some terminally inarticulate and uncoordinated netherworld. In them the body became loud.  The movies in which they appeared - like the primary-colored sets that framed their gags - seemed to collapse around them.

growing up with the movies

memory is created by cinema
king kong, 1933
never sleep
matilda, 1996
regain childhood
scream, 1996
no sleep
mulholland dr, 2001
potential
teens: miike, korine, solondz
dissatisfaction through laughter and excess
later: godard, fassbinder, antonioni, herzog
foundation of language
afterwards: griffith, vigo, chaplin
politics: groupe dziga vertov, rocha, pasolini
liu, wu, wang: honesty
no hope: kramer, tati

Asylum: A Film by Peter Robinson

1972, r.d. laing
society has left them.
there is no hope.
community, no rules.
, insane, outcasts, helpers.
what is reality?
what is insanity?
who is who?

a sense of hypnotism takes over
approval, celebration,
no establishment.
winners.

ex:

FAITH-FULL
YET WITH
BEAST

YOUR DREAMS
THEY MELT
IN THE SUN

SIGN AND SYMBOL ALONE IS SANE

GOD IS
WITHIN ME
SO THERE-
FOR
I AM MY
OWN MASTER

Matthew Porterfield

This is today

georgraphy of the body / balázs

By means of the close-up the camera in the days of the silent film revealed also hidden mainsprings of a life which we had thought we already knew so well.

But a good film with its close-ups reveals the most hidden parts in our polyphonous life , and teaches us to see the intricate visual details of life...

those old hollywood films

The Way to Shadow Garden (Stan Brakhage, 1954)

The earliest Brakhage film I've seen and I was surprised by its sense of narrative/story as opposed to the rest of the Brakhage library I've been exposed to.  Treading the lines between avant-garde and narrative.  Yet the film feels just as personal as the rest of Brakhage's work. Someone losing touch with society, getting farther and farther away from normalcy.  No sense of reality. The sound design is incredible in portraying this decay of normality.  By the time we reach the negative images at the end, it's clear that our protagonist has lost all sense of reality. Stunning

Every Girl Should Be Married (1948, Don Hartman)

        and who made that rule? men, that's who!

pace;
magazine shop determination
from first point;
determination.
obstacle after, other.
no matter.
storytelling in reality.
feminine stronghold.















grant believes in real fiction.
(real marriage)

R.I.P. Andrew Sarris (1928 - 2012)

"The cinema of Griffith is no more outmoded, after all, than the drama of Aeschylus."
ANDREW SARRIS

Godard on Lewis

"Even when it's not funny, it's more funny because it's not funny."

apples

Fuller (Godard) by Farber

With its mangy, anonymous sets, lower-class heroes who treat themselves as sages, and the primitivism (the lack of cutting, rawness with actors, whole violent episodes shot in one take), Steel Helmet antedates Godard's equally propagandist work. From the bald and bereft sets to the ponderous, quirky messages that are written on small bits of paper and mailed out of the film like little newspapers (Please help Baldy to grow some Hair), his mangy characters are stubborn cousins to the similarly blocky ones that fight a war near Godard's Santa Cruz. The countries involved are just as unknown , and below both careers is this obsession with renegades, people straddling two worlds, the sane and insane (Shock Corridor), the bourgeois and the revolutionary (La Chinoise).

Manny Farber, Farber on Film (pg. 670)

past/present/future

cinema disappearing
neurology,
emptiness,
the end.
clouds, shadows.
memory.
flicker.
24 frames,
vision.
everything fades
no memory
no cinema
no life.

dying

That the process of showing movies was physical, controllable, and infinitely repeatable provided a definite sense of security: the strips of film wrapped around the reel, looped through the slot, guided by sprocket holes past the lightbeam. Dust glistened in the ray that bisected the room. The projector gave off a characteristic smell of heated metal which became the smell of resurrection, the odor of yards and bodies brought to life out of nothing.  The odor of mere blur: the shoulder hurtling beyond the camera range, the clump of red jacket blocking out light, the sloppily truncated grin, the unanticipitaed incursions of shadow and glare. The motion of the pictures was demonstrably organic by its jerkiness and chaos: an eerie alternate life form.

Geoffrey O'Brien, The Phantom Empire: Movies in the Mind of the 20th Century 

FORD BY TOURNEUR

. . .

OUT OF THE PAST, 1947

STAGECOACH, 1939

one of Ford's many crucial fence scenes

Alibi (Roland West, 1929)

the set-up

. . .

René Clair/Sound

We Have a Pope (Nanni Moretti, 2011)

structure:
two-sides, vatican (institution) + pope (individual).
in-between.
no in-between,
too careful.
incredible last shot

lang/brecht

. . .

HANGMAN ALSO DIE (1943)

sternberg

Josef von Sternberg talks with Kevin Brownlow and sets up a shot with students:

http://youtu.be/6DX7sll9Gug

http://youtu.be/aRW5WPW0uqw

Quick Note: God Bless America (Bob Goldthwait, 2011)

While its satire is so explicit many might dismiss it right away; there's still plenty to admire in this micro-budget comedy. For example: in a crucial scene where our anti-hero Frank (Joel Murray) is about to kill a teenage girl after having seen her on an episode of a TV show very similar to MTV's My Super Sweet 16, where she complained about receiving a Lexus instead of her much wanted Escalade, he stuffs a rag into her gas tank and lights it up in hopes of blowing up the spoiled teenager a long with the hated Lexus.  Frank walks away happy and with a sense of proudness.  As soon as he turns around his hopes are shattered because the rag has flown away and he has to stomp out the flaming rage while the girl is heard by others screaming in the car.  In an act of desperation Frank runs towards the car and shoots her in the back of the head.  The best aspect of this scene is how it comments on independent filmmaking.  With a car explosion clearly out of budget Bob Goldthwait has to settle for blowing the girls brains out.

Still waiting for 4:44 to come to a cinema near here...

best vs most

What has happened is that our critical senses have been numbed by the stuff that we've been seeing and the concept that more is better. We give awards not to the best direction but the the most direction. We give awards not to the best acting but to the most acting. People think that if they don't "see" the acting, there must be something wrong with it. The performances in Road to Nowhere are the best in any movie I've made, and that's because, in the casting process, I didn't look at performances. I didn't go onto YouTube to look at Shannyn Sossamon, for instance. What I looked for was people talking on talk shows or, if those were not available, I met with them in person. I didn't ask for readings or anything like that. I wanted to capture the essence of these people as people. It's not about acting; in fact it's about not acting, and it's kind of a revolution. I'm not the only one who's into this obviously. Again, there's an assumption that because these are people who have never been seen before, they can't be any good. And it's just the reverse-they're better than most familiar actors.

Monte Hellman, Cineaste Interview (Vol. XXXVII, No.3)

Films Watched in May

FIRST TIER



Altair/Lulu/Pony Glass
The Astronauts
Duck Soup
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
Gold Diggers of 1935
A King in New York
The Lady Eve
The Last Laugh
The Magnificent Ambersons
Margaret
Moonfleet
The Road
Road to Nowhere
La terra trema
Uncle Kent
Vinyl
Where are Their Stories?

SECOND TIER



Alexander the Last
Ashes
Damsels in Distress
The Deep Blue Sea
Dogtooth
Footnote
Hammett
The Kid with a Bike
King of the Newsboys
Monsieur Lazhar
Snowballs


THIRD TIER



Fight For Your Right Revisited

TRASH

What to Expect When You're Expecting

notes on Rudolf Arnheim

Refute the idea that photography and film are only mechanical reproductions. In the difference between film + reality lies the art of film. You can’t just place objects in front of a camera. Visual reality has depth vs film. Sizes + shapes do not appear on the screen in their true proportions but distorted in perspective. Sounds not missed in film. Smell and touch are suggested indirectly through sight. An audience is forced to seek an explanation of why things are arranged the way they are. Lack of depth adds a playing field for artists. Chaplin shows emotion through gestures and actions, not words. By making something visual that isn’t (sound, feelings), if done well, it will strengthen the effect. Calls attention to the flatness and solidity of the cinema. The danger of cinema lies in the mere reproduction. The silent film as the definite form of the 7th art. The intro of sound film aborted the progress of film art by tempting filmmakers to submit to the inartistic demand for a superficial naturalness.
Examples:
 - Docks of New York, instead of a gun shot we see doves flying away, replacing the sound with something visual.
 - The Immigrant, because of the camera position the spectator thinks Charlie is puking but he is just catching a fish, using cinematic technique (camera placement) for a specific effect.
- The Gold Rush, instead of Charlie saying he loves the girl he gets super excited and tears up pillows and has a fantasy with a dinner and does the bun dance. Defamiliarize objects, using the rope as a belt. Time and space become fluid, when he shovels snow.

Stills from Josef von Sternberg's Docks of New York (1927)

Fuller hammett wenders

The Road, Darezhan Omirbaev, 2001

A
filmmaker
The shot
The one shot
Artistic merit
Giving up time
Actresses, editors
Women troubles
Unfulfilled desires, rain
Audience preference (action)
Defenseless dreams
Amir can't

Jacques

"I am not a Communist. I could have been if Communist history were not so sad. It makes me sound old-fashioned but I think I am an anarchist. Great things were done historically by anarchists."

                   Tati