Tag Archives: Baudelaire

Pépé le Moko [1937)

I was alive.

Really alive.

I thought about one way, but took another.

Because the unpredictable had become routine.

We write until we die.

Romantic outlaws.

My crime?

Thirst.

It is a masterpiece from Julien Duvivier.

Jean Gabin is trapped in the Casbah.

Like the digital ghetto known as Facebook.

I didn’t coin the phrase.

But it is not my primary impetus.

It comes secondary.

Pépé from Toulon.  It’s been too long.

Not long enough.

Just as Yves Montand dreamed of Pigalle in Le salaire de la peur.

Here Jean Gabin dreams of Le Métro.

Like Baudelaire’s “La Chevelure”…

Gabin inhales the perfume of freedom.

Sick of his life.

Running.

Hiding.

Sick of life.

But Fréhel teaches the most poignant lesson.

“Où est-il mon moulin de la Place Blanche?
Mon tabac et mon bistrot du coin?
Tous les jours pour moi c’était dimanche!
Où sont-ils les amis, les copains?”

 

Where’s my tobacco shop and my corner bistro?

I dreamt of France for ten years.  Finally I made it there.

And Paris?  I was there for an hour or two.  In the back of a van.  Gazing out the windows.

And like Fréhel I had my day of glory.

The very name of this website.  Pauly Deathwish.  My stage name.

And so, for us, a picture from our youth becomes a mirror.

And we wind the phonograph like the engine of a Ford Model T (pre-1919).

But I have my memories of Doc.

Of the thatched roof.

I thought only Debussy hung the moon.

But it was also dear Ravel who made the birds sing and the flowers bloom.

And so perhaps Ravel’s Piano Concerto…middle movement…in the hands of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli.

Perhaps this is my “Où Est–il Donc?”

Algiers.  Alger.  Algeria.  Kabyle.

ⵟⴰⴳⴷⵓⴷⴰ ⵜⴰⵎⴻⴳⴷⴰⵢⵜ ⵜⴰⵖⴻⵔⴼⴰⵏⵜ ⵜⴰⵣⵣⴰⵢⵔⵉⵜ

Berber or Tamazight in the Maghreb.

Yes, there are no English words to sum up the emotion I have for this film.

The secret of the world can be found in French films.

 

-PD

 

 

8 Comments

Limelight [1952)

I didn’t know movies could be this good.

Where have they been keeping this all of our lives?

Us.

When I was young I stumbled into The Gold Rush.  25/52.

And I lived at the end of a flower in City Lights.

So I knew.

But I forgot.

That Charlie Chaplin was the most vivid outcast—the great romantic on rollerskates.

And the miracle?

Claire Bloom lives.

No Sylvia Plath ending.

And Charles Chaplin lives.

As much as Baudelaire’s vieux saltimbanque.

It was her first film.  Bloom.

Age 21.

And now she is 84 years young.

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No one told me films could be miracles.

It’s kinda like Thora Birch.

Buster Keaton.

People thought she stopped working.

But it wasn’t true.

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No greater love have I seen for an art.

Like Pierre-Auguste kissing the canvas…and then painting.

You can’t simply say Renoir in film and let it linger…

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Tell Tchaikovsky the news.

The first chord.  In Moscow perhaps.  And all 122 pages fall onto the keyboard.

A thunderous vibration like Chaliapin.

Фёдор Ива́нович Шаля́пин

Boris Godunov.

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A drinking problem.

Stage fright.

Torn and frayed.

At the edges.

In the wings.

Wings.

Ah yes…I haven’t heard that name in a long time.

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The piano was unprepared.

A cage of equal temperament.

And so we removed the great nest

of cosmic dissonance.

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Don’t get me wrong.

I love a good cluster chord.

An honest, flawed note.

Take your dissonance like a man…someone said…maybe Henry Cowell.

On second thought, ’twas Ives.

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I’ve spent my life in a drum.

Like Keith Moon.

A human projectile.

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88 ways to look at a blackbird.

I’ve never seen one person leave it all on the stage quite like that.

A lifetime’s work.  Painted.

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The film was in black and white?

I didn’t happen to notice.

Because behind my eyes the colours were bursting.

U.

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And so like those little speckles in the concrete which the moon caught.

As I dreamt of being a composer.

And I too dove headfirst into the void like Yves Klein.

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And for us it was no sleight of hand.

There was no airbrushed net.

And I landed hard.

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Gandhi is smiling and that’s all that matters.

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between yell and Yale

bell strut feet dill old pod loot.  Look!

88 ways to be a composer and an itch ain’t one (bite me!)

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Film is completely unimportant when writing about film.

Take Hubert’s Flea Circus on 42nd St.

I would never have known were it not for Nick Tosches.

And my favorite book:

Where Dead Voices Gather.

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Yeah, but it’s like Picasso’s musicians.

You think I’ve really cracked up.  Craquelure.

“Any fish bite if you got good bait.”

They tell us in economics there’s only one Mona Lisa.

Because the painter is dead.

Only one…

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Because he’s not alive to paint another.

Another Mona Lisa.

Unlimited supply.  EMI.

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You’re driving at something.

I just know it.

Because the film was too long.  And too good.

Not possible, Likert.

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Many aw-kward moments of perfection.

Where Chaplin hit too close to home.

Was it Dave Davies?

“Death of a Clown”

Yes, precisely.

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It can’t be described conventionally.

You can’t just go to the Grand Canyon and say, “Vast.”

Was ist das?

Ja!

That is what I’m trying to say.

-PD

4 Comments

Sauve qui peut /la vie/ [1980)

12 seconds.  5 minutes.  2 fortnights.  a jiffy.

Really, I shouldn’t have to comment on the commodification of time.  Is that not the essence of capitalism?

Into your busy lives cram another blog post.  Another sloppy film review.  A film.

A more professional critic would start by alluding to the copious literature which points to this film as Godard’s return to form.

A strange phrase.  Which form?

Because really, for me, Godard begins here.  The known Godard is Parisian Godard…la nouvelle vague.

The unknown Godard is everything else.  As an American consumer it is rather inconvenient to obtain all but the classic films from our auteur.  After Week-end (1967), the DVDs become exponentially harder to come by.

But, as a rule, I digress.  Liberally.  Often.  Without fail.

This, then, would seem to be Godard emerging from the black forest of political filmmaking and ethical soul-searching to find the inklings of his mature style.

It is not an original thought.  The English-language biographies cover this thoroughly.  The device in question is (for lack of a more exact term) slow-motion.

It is the playful wonder of a man who still has the curiosity of a boy.

Technology changing.  New idiosyncrasies to each bit of gear on the market.

It is the same now.  Stash your camera on the top shelf and soon you will not know how to make films.

Your equipment will be obsolete and your knowledge outdated.

But that is all tertiary (tertiary?) in importance.

To our film.

We have characters; plot.  A walk in the wilderness and Godard (with the indispensable Anne-Marie Miéville) returned to a somewhat recognizable form.  As always, however, the form is highly subverted.  One might even say perverted in this particular instance.  It is a strange beauty.  Incomparable.  A triumph.  A mere glimpse of things to come.

Always playing on archetypes, Godard casts singer Jacques Dutronc as Paul Godard.  There can be little doubt that this character is meant to represent the filmmaker himself.  Every marker is there:  the ubiquitous cigar, the glasses, the mannerisms, the disheveled college professor sartorial ensembles…

The stunning Nathalie Baye plays Denise Rimbaud.  Here is where the ark types.  Arc-en-ciel.  A panorama of wispy clouds.  Yes, Arthur is never far…nor Baudelaire…nor Sartre and Duras.  And Marguerite?  Faust.  Your soul for a job.

Yes, prostitution returns.  The grand Godardian theme.  Isabelle Huppert plays the role of the sex worker Isabelle Rivière.

The setting?  Switzerland.  We see the signs at the station.  Nyon.  Not Lyon, Nyon.  It brings us back to that area we visited in Godard’s second film (though it was banned and thus delayed in release) Le Petit Soldat.

The famous scenes are of Baye on a bicycle–of Dutronc in a classroom before a chalkboard reading “Cain et Abel” and “Film et video.”

Yes, the sexual aspects of this film are heavy.  This perhaps proves that Godard’s return to mainstream filmmaking was not the end of his rebellious period.

Though there is a plot and there are discernible characters, it is not always clear what is going on.  What cannot be disputed is the sadness which Godard brings to light with yet another exposé of whoring.  Likewise, it might be gathered that the filmmaker is commenting on the perception of rural Switzerland as pristine and bucolic.  The perverse element of our film echoes previous erotic episodes of Pasolini and Buñuel.

Finally, one can’t help wondering whether the film in question had a formative effect on the Iranian director Kiarostami.  As in the later Taste of Cherry, Godard has one last trick up his sleeve to end out Sauve qui peut (la vie).

Indeed, Jean-Luc Godard was starting to find his magic touch again with this film…and its traces attested to a talent which was richer and better than ever before.

-PD

5 Comments

Masculin feminin: 15 faits precis [1966)

I don’t write about the film, I write about me.  I don’t write about the film, I write about the world.  No.  I write about the film the best I can.  I am on a mission to start every sentence with I…from now to the end of eternity.  Not quite.

I don’t know what pops up in your reader.  You know about the reader?  Tell me about the reader, Charles…  Yes?  And???  Right.  The reader writes.  Correct!

We are some macro-blogging mofos.  Four times I wrote it and four times it autocorrected to micro.  And so the stupid hyphen.  Just like the titles.  Diacritical marks are the first to go in totalitarian societies.  Then the dollar words.  Soon, all words which might express inefficient, ineffective concepts such as tenderness.

Now we are rolling.  Give the anarchist a cigarette!

D’accord…

Allors…

Jean-Pierre Léaud was the Jason Schwartzman of the 60s…or vice versa.  And while we might think primarily of Truffaut, here we see Léaud in a truly penetrating role.

Chantal Goya.  She plays the ice-cold bitch pretty well…completely meretricious, vacuous, etc.

And then we run into red hypertext “links” for Catherine-Isabelle Duport and Michel Debord.

Yeah, we all know:  the children of Marx and Coca-Cola.  Could have been.  Tarzan vs. IBM.  Could have been.  The ape and the onion.  Mercury Rev.

Well, yes:  it could have been.  Today.  Particularly dreary.  All week.  Usually I embrace it.  Pretend like I’m Liam Gallagher in Manchester.  But not today.  Not this week.  Only shadows in the night gets it right.

It’s a bummer.  I’m too old to be young.  Too perverted to be romantic.  Too romantic to live.  Etc. Etc. Etc.

And yes:  I catch the aspect ratio.  I yell Trotskyite.  Not really, but parallel.  I detest the cowardice…when I myself am a basket-case.  It’s ok.  We are human.

We remember Marx and Coca-Cola, but we forget James Bond and Vietnam.  We forget the military-industrial complex.

Let me tell you how it happened.  I lay down as always with my sea-foam-green (eau-de-nil) headphones ready to continue my reflection on the great oeuvre.  And my computer doesn’t cooperate.  It’s as if I have conjured the spirit of JLG.  The sound outraces the picture.  Chaplin-fast to Notre Musique-slow.  The waves come crashing in.  Ingmar is hijacked and ridiculized.

Translation:  my computer won’t play the disc.  After 15 minutes of relatively good play, it jerks and stops and pauses and reloads in an endless loop.  It’s like as a kid with that De La Soul CD…I’d physically pick up the player an inch and let it drop down.  Somehow it would catch.  It was just that disc.  No, not this time.

I have cared for this film like a child.  It is one of many baby Jesuses in my Jodorowsky stable.  Manger.

And so I traveled far to rewatch this.  Fifteen paces maybe.  15.  So what?

Et allors?

Pauvre Wikipedia.  Lion-wannabe.  Quick!  Call Tim Rice and Elton John.  Pathetic.

Yes, she keeps abreast of the pop charts.  Cashbox.  And he likes her type of breasts.  Why not say it?

And isn’t there anything else you like about me?  Well, Miss 19, there’s not much more to like.  A Big Mac and a pair of Nikes and you’re happy.

Yes, Seymour Glass.  I’m sure he just backed up too far on the balcony…trying to get all two of them in the picture…in Florida…like Richard Manuel.

Duport eats a bananafish.  Marquis de Sade.  Such a perfect day.  Cassis and mineral water.  And Orangina for Marlène Jobert.  Perhaps.  Who cares.

You can tell a redhead even in black and white.  She should have been more famous.  Eva Green’s mom.

yé-yé all day long

Mozart

the orchestra is fantastic

clarinet concerto

middle movement

Paul.  Again with the Paul.  It started tentatively in Vivre sa vie.  And then Paul Javal.  Contempt.  In the name of the father.  And now again without Christian name like Le Chiffre.  James Bond and Vietnam.  Same complex.  Inferiority.  Military-industrial.

With that I am at 666 words.  Ed Sanders decides to consult Harry Smith on how to levitate the Pentagon.  Exercise the demons.  Nothing like a demon with love handles. Give ’em a good workout.

B-A-C-H.  Psychotic fugue on the Mashed Potato.  Dee Dee Sharp.

What other kind of fugue is there?!?  Jonny Greenwood would surely tell you it’s reversible.  Amnesiac.

ménage à quatre

bullshit

intellectual parlor games

Wikipedia

I know.  I know.  Hawaiian.  Quick!  Vite!

caméra-couteau

probing, probing

like Tony Parker

pass the goddamn ball

I’m not sure you want to know.  I am a lip-reader.  Baudelaire.  Au lecteur.  Samuel Fuller.  Les Fleurs du mal.  No one under 18 admitted.  Strictly no admittance.  778 words and I haven’t gotten to the film.

-PD

11 Comments