Vredens Dag [1943)

Quarante-et-un. Quarante-deux.

Quarante trois.

Goddamn, life is sad.

This is not a film to be watched once.

And not a film for young minds (though the pearly Lisbeth Movin gausses gossamer every vignette).

Form ever follows function. So sayeth Louis Sullivan.

Your gauss is as good as mien.

Meshes of the afternoon blur her tearstained smile.

Movin’ on up, now.

In evolution. Function ever following form.

Invocation vs. induction.

Carl Friedrich’s magnetic flux density.

88 miles-per-hour for all us schmucks out there.

Who is crazier:

the witches or the witch hunt?

The conspirators or the conspiracy theorists?

Myths overlaid like handiwork upon reality.

So that all of life is misunderstood.

Religion.

Not a theory, but a story.

A hall-of-mirrors lens.

Same.

17th century.

By my watch.

What century you got?

The witch craze.

The accusation frenzy.

Hysteria. Wisteria. Listeria.

Meanwhile, there was a fucking war going on.

Day of Wrath. Dies irae. Rachmaninov obsessed with the downward spiral.

Televised executions.

The Houellebecq method of citation.

Tag and seek.

Luddites invading Fort Meade.

Digital grinders. And grindermen.

That USJFCOM found an enemy at a propitious time.

Inviting Christensen down from Harvard Business School to disrupt.

From Häxan through the Swedish.

Most everything passes through Denmark here.

The last executioner.

The founder (with a Grinder man) of neuro-linguistic programming who was charged with murder.

Age differences in relationships. [Aha! A sesame seed!!]

Pagans. Odin. Wednesday.

Hair parted right down the middle like John Waters’ mustache migrated due north (prove that you’re not a robot).

Professional videogame player?!? Where’s the market for that…

And, of course, The Gambia. No industrial light nor magic there.

White white white.

White man say all good thing come from him.

White man invent every innovation.

White man naturally attracted to white woman.

A Victoria’s Secret Angel with leprosy. Yowzah!

Norwegian jazz. A bit like Utah jazz.

But, most of all, yodelers!

Which is how I got on this string.

The grave importance of string theory.

Because her needlepoint tells a story.

A mother walking hand-in-hand with a son.

But the mother is the younger one.

The two mothers.

One a goddess of archetype.

The other a bored housewife.

You actually have to go back to 1590 for this kind of boredom.

But it comes alive. Kiss.

Thanks to Dreyer. A true auteur. A true Danish genius.

Anna Svierkier acts her flabby behind off.

Thorkild Roose looks like Hume Cronyn in Brewster’s Millions (1985).

Such sad perfection from Sigrid Neiiendam.

It is not the hero role for Preben Lerdorff Rye.

No Ordet, this.

He might be stuck in the bog. Or he might have gone around the bog.

It’s like a bad porno.

But Movin is a star on the order of Adrianna Nicole.

The Blue Bunny.

Brown is the Warmest Color.

Somebody please cast Adrianna Suplick in something.

Suplick? Movin. [Golly.]

Which is to say that Lisbeth Movin fills up the screen like a supernova.

Collapsing. Prolapsing. Yikes…

Her husband cofounded the works at Hellerup.

Ketchup.

Godspeed you b!ack emperor tomato

Spells ALM. And nobody thought code.

Fearsome beauty of genius.

-PD

2 Comments

Viskningar och rop [1972)

Cris et Chuchotements.

…et Chuchotements.

This horribly powerful film.

No light reading.

From the lips.

Fumbling big-hand thoughts.

Like Brice Parain said, inseparable from language.

We can see this fount at which Godard drank.

We can see the borrowing of von Trier.

We can see the fealty of Wes Anderson.

It is Cries and Whispers of Ingmar Bergman.

Tired, aging Bergman.

Clear as a bell.

Static shots which must be achieved through moving pictures.

Just stop moving for a moment.

And be quiet.

That microphone.

Just out of sight.

No B-movie swoop-downs.

But absolute perfection throughout.

And yet the message is dark.

No hope.

Cathartic, maybe.

Always fade to red.

And reemerge through the color spectrum.

Yellow to white light.

Four women.

Three sisters and a zaftig maid.

Someone’s crying Lord…

Come by here. In a dream. See their lips move.

We should love the coquette. The redhead. Liv Ullmann.

She should dominate us like a Renoir painting.

A madder rose cinema has known not.

But is she not a fake, Maria?

Is she not just a color palette towards which we gravitate?

What worth in the façade when the heart is empty?

It had been a long time since Summer with Monika, but Harriet Andersson was here.

And yet, it is Liv Ullmann who gets the plastic surgeon insults of the doctor (Erland Josephson).

But Harriet Andersson has enough grief with which to deal.

No no, I have gotten mixed up with all these actresses of Bergman. And don’t even mention Ingrid!

We will come back to poor, sweet Harriet.

But we must first deal with the witch: Ingrid Thulin.

What kind of misery makes such a witch?

A tissue of lies (reads the subtitles).

I believe Thierry Meyssan had to deal with such proclamations (though I read them in translation).

What kind of lies here, though…specifically?

Loveless marriage.

Probably even more empty than simply.

Loveless.

No creative punctuation. No flirtatious commas or semicolons.

But simply poetry written like a telegraph dispatch.

Full stop.

Desperate.

Depression unto madness. That is Ingrid Thulin here as Karin.

But then we must come back to our sickness.

A true physical ailment.

A patient.

Bedridden.

Patience.

It is Agnes. Painful. Wheezing. Horrible. Ghastly.

A high-water mark of art films.

Top that, motherfucker.

Jerry Lee to Chuck Berry. Worse than an expletive.

But what brings this whole film together? Who holds this house against her bosom?

It is none other than Kari Sylwan.

Yes, there are no important male characters within.

Georg Årlin chews his fish like someone in the diplomatic service should.

And expects “a little consensual rape in the evening” (to quote the Nick Cave of Grinderman).

But such petty existence boils the madness.

The glass.

Shards of light.

Smeared with lunacy.

Against all this is Kari Sylwan as Anna.

The maid.

The help.

Priceless.

Humanist.

A believer. As the sick believed more than the priest.

No real important male characters here.

But Anders Ek is the voice of reason. The voice of poetry. For a moment. Touching.

Don’t touch me.

Such damage in the world.

And Anna bears it all.

The only true hero.

Meek.

Equally tormented.

But strong.

Annas make the world go round. Deliver the medicine. Keep the world from splitting open. Make sure the trains are on time. Hugs.

The history of cinema is littered with sad brilliance.

Strewn with fictional corpses.

Troubled directors trying to come to terms with their own fears of death.

And in the end, such creations loom large because they closest resemble the art of the ancient world and the itch of the Renaissance.

Storm on! And write all night long!!

Someone has stolen my beard, but my mustache is plenty weird.

We shall live to see Nietzsche bitch-slap Hitler.

And Tarantino will again work at a video store. Where he belongs. A very able clerk. Like me.

-PD

Nuit et brouillard [1955)

A propaganda film by the very talented Alain Resnais.

I wonder, for instance, if Olga Wormser’s script can be tied to David Wurmser’s script?

Wormser and her husband Henri Michel were “historical advisors” for Nuit et brouillard.

“…elle a été conseillère historique”…a historical counselor.

Like Philip Zelikow, perhaps?

Or like Edward Bernays. The father of “public relations”…author of the 1928 book Propaganda.

But I have totally skipped over dear Mr. Wurmser. Nay, Dr. Wurmser. Mr. Dr. We’ll get to Ms. Dr. soon enough.

David Wurmser would seem related in spirit to Olga Wormser.

One of the principal authors of A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.

Such language…”the Realm”.

Only neoconservatives would dream up the projection of Israeli terror on neighboring countries (and Palestine) in terms fit for The Legend of Zelda.

But let’s not forget Ms. Dr. David’s wife, Meyrav Wurmser.

Also a Ph.D., she’s a doozy.

Why take this tack?

Me.

Because I know too much of Godard.

I know that the greatest film of all time (Histoire(s) du cinema) takes as its focus “the camps”, but also takes issue with history as it has been handed down.

And so let us turn to CODOH.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, CODOH is a “hate group” or some such term.

More terrifying is that, if the SPLC is to be believed, nearly everything is a hate group.

So thanks for nothing, you punks!

(See, now I’m marked too. It’s as easy as that.)

We must remember the yellow stars that the Jews were made to wear during deportation to the camps.

Resnais makes this all very clear.

But Resnais makes a disingenuous oopsy (in the spirit of faux documentarian Robert Flaherty): real color footage of the camps (circa 1955…sappy, but at least with no pretense) is intercut with footage which, in context, seems to be from inside the camps during the war.

Resnais can be slightly forgiven…because (supposedly) no such footage exists.

And so he cobbles together replacement footage.

It would, by necessity, largely be from after the liberation of the camps.

Some is perhaps prewar. Deportation.

Some appears “Hollywood” (i.e. the dramatized becomes real because real footage in this regard is absent).

Even though this film is a classic (a “chestnut”, so to speak), I take issue with the entire thing.

It is not a good film.

The film is neither less vague nor less misleading than my review.

I am vague only because I cannot tell you the exact Hollywood movie.

I cannot tell you exactly what Chris Marker did as an assistant director (though he be naturally drawn to still images [of which several figure prominently within]).

But I can tell you about a very strange and potentially important article on CODOH (that would be, Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust).

It is by a “Franco-British…holocaust denier” named Robert Faurisson (as if that is his profession).

“Hi, my name is Robert. Oh, what do I do for a living? Well, a little of this and a little of that. My real bread and butter is in my capacity as a professional holocaust denier, but I also make some dough on the side as an Egyptologist.”

Main point…being “Franco-” (French), his work would be banned in his home country. Yes, denying the Holocaust (which is not at all what he does) is a crime in France. Also in Switzerland too, I think. Surely in Germany, yes?

[N.B. Holocaust denial is illegal in 14 of the 28 EU member countries…plus Switzerland…and, of course, Israel. What a disgusting misuse of police power.]

Why criminalize a thought or opinion?

Because “denying” something as horrible as the Holocaust is somehow evil. However, in today’s legalistic nightmare world, “denial” IS (among other things) a river in Africa.

Denial could be anything.

Five million Jews died instead of six million? Holocaust denier!

Seven million Jews died? Ok, we’ll give you a pass…because you have the right spirit. But remember: 6 million. Six, ok? Six!

And so Faurisson, a very articulate man, tipped many sacred cows in 1980 with his piece “The ‘Problem of the Gas Chambers'” (published in the Journal of Historical Review).

It might be said that Faurisson was the James Tracy of his time. For me, James Tracy is an American hero.

Faurisson, born in England, was an important part of French society and academia until a witch hunt occasioned by the repugnant Gayssot Act (Loi Gayssot).

Faurisson has his doctorate from the Sorbonne. He taught there and in Lyon for 21 years at the collegiate level. But the French are all anti-Semites, right? Dreyfus? Zola? Dream on!

Well, my friends…I’m afraid the “problem with the gas chambers” is also the problem with Resnais’ Nuit et brouillard.

You can judge for yourself here:

http://codoh.com/library/document/868/

Really, that’s what is at issue here. Read and study and judge for yourself.

The Holocaust was an immensely sad event.

But we must know it in detail.

My ignorance is inexcusable.

And, likewise, any misleading, cynical use of ANYONE’S death (from the Holocaust to 9/11) is the worst sin of all: knowingly cashing in…perhaps even for geopolitical chips.

Question what you’ve always known.

Learn everything again for the first time.

Be free to speak.

Exercise thought.

Be humble, but don’t grovel.

Do your best.

One of the few things I can be proud of in America today…Gayssot thoughtcrime is not quite here.

But Sandy Hook is censored by Amazon.com, Inc. (Nobody Died at Sandy Hook).

9/11 coverage was/is a joke in the USA (Public Enemy was right).

And with kudos to Mike Adams of Natural News for noticing, Amazon still sells Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

For the five Ph.D.s and one J.D./Ph.D. who contributed to Nobody Died at Sandy Hook, I salute you!

Allors…d’accord.

-PD

Monsieur Verdoux [1947)

Being unwanted is a powerful feeling.

A life devoted to a profession, and then (poof!)…

But aging is a powerful experience even when separated from an event of displacement.

Let me clarify:

Aging can make one vulnerable.

We are only all too aware that we aren’t as handsome or as beautiful as we once were.

We are made aware of this decline by way of “the spectacle” (to borrow an idea from Guy Debord).

Sure, we can read it in the glances of everyone we meet, but we must realize that those eyes have glanced upon the ideal. Those eyes are connected to minds. Those minds have been imprinted like microchips.

With what? “The tyranny of good looks…” to quote the brilliant Marilyn Yalom.

The quote comes from her excellent volume How the French Invented Love (2012). Yes, this nonfiction tome is only too relevant to the subject at hand: Charlie Chaplin’s bizarre Monsieur Verdoux.

This one won’t have you laughing yourself into the aisle. Not till the back nine (at the earliest).

Charles Chaplin was a rebel. When it worked, the world loved him. When it didn’t? Ah-la-la… No one can be completely spared the wrath of the public.

A quick glance at the ever-reliable Wikipedia [cough cough] tells us that Monsieur Verdoux fared better in Europe than in America.

Quickly perusing the section marked “Reception” we might come to the conclusion that audiences in the United States did not “get” this film.

So then did we merely have a cultural barrier (and its opposite) in operation as far as world reception?

I think not. I think that Europe’s humor was forever changed by the World Wars. Coming just two years after the second ended, this film was a litmus test. What could be found funny in this cruel new world?

The entire world had lost its innocence.

And so the comedian was forced to make do with the sordid rubble.

It is not spoiling much to tell you that in this film Chaplin plays a serial killer. The idea apparently originated with Orson Welles, but the treatment was no doubt a full Chaplin adaption.

Yes, it is shocking. A bit. Nowadays. But then?!? It must have been much more scandalous.

This was the first time Chaplin took to the screen in a feature film without relying to any extent upon the Little Tramp character. It was a brave departure!

What I find most fascinating about this film is that the fictional Verdoux, like the real-life Hitler, was a vegetarian and animal lover.

Ah! However…Verdoux was based on a real killer: Henri Désiré Landru.

They share the same first name (and a rhyming last):

Henri Verdoux?

Henri Landru.

They also share a profession: used furniture merchant.

It is not clear to me (without further research) whether the vegetarian/animal lover aspects were inventions of Chaplin or not.

I’m guessing they were.

In any case, they are effective reminders about the intricacy of human personalities.

Schindler’s List comes down to us as a hack film because it lacks life. That is the message I get from reading Godard’s critique of Spielberg. What is more, Godard seems to lament (mourn) the lack of video footage shot within German concentration camps during WWII.

Some have construed this as holocaust denial.

I don’t think that is the point.

However, Godard’s presentation of his argument brings with it a certain amount of skepticism. Put simply, his question seems to be (in my own words), “How could the Germans be so technologically advanced (particularly in film and motion picture equipment) yet fail to shoot any footage within the camps?”

What comes down to us today is footage of said camps’ “liberations”… Indeed, Hollywood directors were tasked with making propaganda of the hideous findings (George Stevens comes to mind) [not that they needed much help there].

And so why have I made this detour? Simply to illustrate that the human brain is smarter than Hollywood assumes it is.

Spielberg is not a great director. He’s merely a rich director.

Chaplin was a great director. Monsieur Verdoux was largely a failure in the United States.

To come back to Guy Debord (and I paraphrase heavily in translation from the French), “Reality has been turned on its head…”

The spectacle reigns supreme. Who cares if it’s true? Even better than the real thing. That is the message of Debord’s La Société du spectacle (published in 1967). And that message is relevant to Monsieur Verdoux.

Perhaps it was the Letterists (of which Debord was a member)…perhaps it was the Situationists (of which Debord was the guiding light)…one of these groups boycotted Chaplin when he arrived in France.

Ah, I have found it. Indeed. 1952. It was the Letterists. Their screed pamphlet called Chaplin a “con artist of sentiments”. [translation by Len Bracken]

Indeed, that is just the role Chaplin took up five years previous in our film Monsieur Verdoux. It is also part of the argument which Godard has made against Spielberg.

As much as I love Debord (one of my three favorite writers), I have to disagree with his early (pre-Situationist) position against Chaplin. Godard would likely disagree with Debord and the Letterists on this matter as well (judging from the abundance of Chaplin films referenced in his magnum opus Histoire(s) du cinema). But I must agree with Godard regarding Spielberg. It does no honor to the memory of Holocaust victims nor survivors to give the sad event the “Hollywood touch”.

Godard has (along with most of humanity) been called anti-Semitic. I don’t believe that to be the case regarding the most important director to have lived. A single glance is not enough to absorb what Jean-Luc is saying in any of his films (not to mention writings or interviews).

Ah, but now I am far off-track. I have left Verdoux in the dust.

But that is alright.

Perhaps the measure of a film’s greatness is how much it makes us think?

-PD

4 Comments

Pickpocket [1959)

Writing about film makes you appreciate the film.

You think.

What will I say about this picture?

This succession of pictures.

Sounds.

And so silently you ponder the ways to express true genius.

And how lucky we are to witness true genius.

It’s true.

The Criterion Collection has brought us many films which otherwise might have been forgotten.

Film didn’t begin with The Godfather.

It doesn’t end with Citizen Kane.

And so we need to see the other stuff.

We need to hear voices from outside of America.

Hollywood is international, to be sure, yet everything which enters there leaves marked.

It is a sentiment which Godard expressed in his magnum opus Histoire(s) du cinema.

And this is the other stuff.

Robert Bresson.

You might only know Henri-Cartier Bresson. Don’t stop there.

Robert Bresson was the master of taking non-actors and capturing their vitality on film.

Pickpocket does justice to Uruguay as much as did Isidore Ducasse (which is to say, completely).

Martin LaSalle, a young Urugayan-French actor in his film debut, plays the lead role here of the pickpocket Michel.

LaSalle’s eggshell acting is essential to this masterpiece.

Yet, it is director Bresson who brings the ballet of crime to life.

Yes, it is like Orson Wells doing his magic tricks in F for Fake (his magnum opus).

Indeed, everything has an art. Even crime.

And as paper currency disappears from the industrialized world we see the migration of subway thieves to the ether in an attempt to pilfer Apple Pay “money”.

Yes, I’m afraid that soon everything will need quotes around it.

Perhaps I just don’t understand.

But, there is an art to everything.

Take accounting, for instance: the most boring subject invented by human beings.

And yet, there is an “art” to it…I’m sure…somewhere…deep, deep down inside.

But Pickpocket is of a different era.

Perhaps computer hacking and financial calculator operations require a certain finger dexterity, but nothing like the prestidigitation which Bresson brings to life in this film.

It is a noiseless ballet of lifts, drops, catches, exchanges, etc. Buttons flicked. Buckles finessed in one motion.

It reminds me of the one true line in Goldfinger…perhaps the only genuinely cinematic moment in that film (though I love the other 99% pulp)…

Delivered by the title character, as played by Gert Fröbe, it goes a little something like this:

“Man has climbed Mount Everest, gone to the bottom of the ocean. He’s fired rockets at the Moon, split the atom, achieved miracles in every field of human endeavor… except crime!”

Ahhh…the rolled Rrrrs of that final word. Like H.W.’s brief year at Langley. Like Kissinger at Iron Mountain. Ah! But here we run into a problem.

Hoaxes. Like Sandy Hook. Like Hani Hanjour.

And will Donald Trump have the balls to read a book? Perhaps Webster Griffin Tarpley’s 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA?

I doubt it.

Is Trump a provocateur or merely provocative?

Because if he shot his mouth off a little more pointedly he’d have my vote.

And I would stand with my immigrant brothers and sisters every day to see Dick Cheney take the stand. Under oath.

And Philip Zelikow. Under oath.

And Donald Rumsfeld. Under oath.

And Larry Silverstein. And Rudy Giuliani. And Richard Myers.

Somebody else did it? Then you got nothing to worry about.

Unravel unravel unravel.

Because Trump is wrong about immigration.

And Bernie Sanders is right about Snowden.

And I don’t like Trump or Sanders.

But Trump is the only one even tangentially touching on the real issue: truth.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Off the rails. Film review.

C’est la vie.

Conspiracy.

Don’t mind me.

I will just go back to watching films.

Go back to sleep.

Nothing to see here.

-PD

4 Comments

Mulholland Dr. [2001)

How not to start a symphony. With a rest. #5 (7)j j-j o ^ (7)j j-j o

Beethoven started with a pause. A pause, in this case, is unheard. Felt.

No hay banda.

Il y a n’est pas d’orchestre.

I wish I was more confident in my French memory.

The Spanish is simpler.

[silencio]

It could be Roberto Benigni in La vita è bella reeling off a priceless punchline.

[silencio]

It could be John Cage forcing us to listen in 4’33”.

Painfully good. A perfect film. Mulholland Drive. Dr. Mulholland.

I’ve either gained you or lost you by this point.

Dr. Benway.

You will excuse the word virus at work.

Perhaps the word bacteria predates Burroughs.

Always a cut-up in class.

And those classy suits.

It’s a talent to be weird, though Charles Mingus would argue otherwise.

A talent to be simple.

You have to stay with me like Lord Buckley or Lester Bangs.

I got yer Oxford comma right here.

, and don’t I know it!

She takes Hayworth’s name from Gilda.

Rita.

Laura Elena Harring. Laura Harring if you’re into the whole brevity thing. Concision of expression. Bthvn.

If you really wanna impress the familia, it’s Laura Elena Martínez Herring. Miss USA 1985. Just missed 1984.

Or well, Wilbur…

Mr. Ed. Paging Mr….

Herring. Pink. She is a living Modigliani onscreen for a brief moment on a couch. A stippled nipple in deep focus.

But this is not her film. She is a MacGuffin in heels.

No. This is Naomi Watts’ film. Boy is it ever!

But let us pop this balloon before it goes all Vivre sa vie on us.

Is this the best Amer-ican film ever made? Probably.

Dog Star Man has a steep mountain to climb without a soundtrack to blow Sisyphus to his zenith.

F for Fake is to American cinema what Histoire(s) du cinema is to the French pantheon.

The only real challenger, then, might be Gummo.

But let us return to Maestro Lynch. David Lynch. Montana Dave. The Cowboy…

This is, to reiterate, a perfect film. Such creations do not come along often.

As such, we should savor each morsel of finesse embodied in this feast for eyes and mind.

And don’t forget the ears. Badalamenti. Badda bing, badda boom.

What would Chico Marx have made of this film???

Who cares… It’s Chico stuffed into a dough ball suitcase with $50k and Groucho and Harpo mashed up

with even a good portion of Zeppo as Little Mr. Sunshine in Naomi Watts’ first character Betty Elms.

Nightmare on Elms’ street.

Mulholland Dr.

Great minds think alike. Cannes premier of this film May 16, 2001. Radiohead’s Amnesiac album? June 5, 2001.

Rita. Camille. Diane Selwyn.

Kryptos. Jim Sanborn. Mengenlehreuhr.

Set theory.

(0,2,3,5) Le Sacre du printemps.

Spitting espresso into a napkin, strikes fear in the hearts of the most hardened capitalists.

Fear.

The Flower That Drank the Moon. Not a real film.

The Big Sleep. She. H. Rider Haggard. Angel-A.

Finnegans, upon waking, diapasoned Wachet auf.

Just call me Death. Everyone else does.

We don’t stop here.

We push on. Like Gene Wilder on a magical fucking river of chocolate.

You can’t split the existential atom any further. Kubrick tried in 2001. And now Lynch had arrived at the same year.

If you open a MacGuffin, you will find nothing.

I have a bag full of money and I can’t remember my name. That is Hollywood.

This is the girl.

And the gun.

24x per second.

Truth before the big lie even sprouted wings. L’Effroyable imposture. Vérités et Mensonges.

It’s like the old Edison tone tests. Hit the lights. Who’s playing? The phonograph or the violinist?

Like looking at L.A. through Roy Orbison’s glasses. A blur…a haze.

No one has split the literary atom any further than Louis-Ferdinand Céline.

[…]

Those three little dots.

The rhythm of speech. From Modest Mussorgsky to Harry Partch.

Boris Godunov was lousy so we had to shave his armpits.

We would have never gotten to know each other so well, Boris and I. Henry. Mr. Bones.

Yeah, I keep on sloggin’ and get diminishing marginal returns.

Just a fancy way of saying less and less. Nothing (more or less).

And then nothing turns itself inside out.

Naomi Watts goes from gee swell to Valerie Solanas.

The key. CERN. When they rev it up.

What does it open?

Möbius (stripped bare by his bachelorettes), even

[The Large Hadron Collider]

Mimesis. Die a Jesus.

Greatest goal in life?

To achieve immortality and then die.

J. Hoberman. J. Mascis. J. Spaceman.

Putrefaction is merely Der Untergang des Abendlandes. The decline of the evening lands.

Rises east, sets The West.

Civility.

L’Usine de rêves.

That killer blonde that we all want. From Kim Novak to Daniel Craig.

Monty Montgomery. Hope you only see him once more.

Good v. Bad, 410 U.S. 113 (2001)

The abortion of Newtonian physics.

Twice.

Thrice.

Michael J. Anderson as Larry Silverstein.

We don’t stop here.

This is the girl.

Maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.

And we watched the building collapse.

That would be the shadow government.

An accident is a terrible event—notice the location of the accident.

Who gives a key, and why?

-PD

5 Comments

Comment ca va? [1976)

Ça va. From the year I was born.

If you search Google for “comment ca va godard,” you might get 83,000 results in 0.42 seconds. Google tacks on the time to remind us of its power.

Well, I must admit I was a bit powerless in slogging through this film. Keep in mind, the first time I saw Pierrot le fou I thought it was overrated. Also keep in mind, by that point Godard was already my favorite director (by a long shot).

I came to regard Pierrot le fou as one of Godard’s best films, but it had to grow on me.

Perhaps Comment ça va will also grow on me.

What must be remembered is that Godard loves games. For me, the end of this film is easily the most brilliant part.

Godard (or his collaborator Anne-Marie Miéville) plays with the editing program like it is Pac-Man. There is something very ATARI about the whole affair–that green console font and the playful symbolism of a wandering cursor.

But admissions on my part should be more specific here: I was really tired.

So perhaps I did not give this film a fair shake.

It should be no surprise to viewers of Godard’s mid-seventies oeuvre that this film makes little to no effort to entertain. It is, as are many of his films of this era, an investigation. In this case, the investigation is filmmaking itself. It is, in that sense, a bit like his earlier masterpiece Le Gai savoir. The role of Anne-Marie Miéville should not be underestimated here. It is as if Godard and Miéville were recalibrating their artistic sensitivities with this film. While many (most?) filmmakers would leave such a “product” on the shelf and chalk it up to practice or research, Godard had been in the habit of releasing these “attempts at film” for some time. As I have mentioned in previous articles, there is a particular connection between the French word essai (a test, an attempt) and the English usage of essay (particularly, for our purposes, the genre known as film essay).

And so this is very much a film essay which we are dealing with. As such, I feel like a teacher compelled to “grade” said essay. This is the traditional job of critics: to assess value. It is, perhaps, a far more subjective form of the S & P, Moody’s, Fitch gambit.

So yes, I dozed off briefly at a few points. I feel bad about this. One school of thought says that it was Godard’s job to entertain me, but I do not entirely subscribe to that way of thinking.

But let us consult Italian Wikipedia (the English site is slacking) to jog our memory…

It does indeed feel to be shot in Grenoble (certainly not Paris)… I could verify this, but I am very lazy on such points.

The contributors to Italian Wikipedia make a very good point in comparing the film under consideration to Godard’s earlier Letter to Jane. Indeed, the director once again fixates on a particular photo and what it means. We, as the audience, spend a great deal of time staring along with the creators at a picture from a protest in Portugal. 1976.

What is new here is that Godard employs his editing equipment in a novel way. A photo from a French protest three years previous (1973) is superimposed upon the Portuguese picture. It is a similar methodology as found in Letter to Jane when Jane Fonda’s facial expression was compared to other Hollywood actors (including her father Henry).

The story (if it can be called that) involves esoteric distinctions between “the left” and communism. Exactly.

What is not at all clear is that Odette (played by the very, very beautiful Anne-Marie Miéville) is the lady helping with the editing of a film. We see Odette’s face in her interaction with her young worker boyfriend, but we only see her hands (unless I dozed off one too many times) on the typewriter in her directorial capacity. What is significant is that her collaborator is her boyfriend’s father. We see his face. Boy do we see it. Over and over and over again. It should be noted that the typewriter is a motif in Godard’s work stretching all the way back to the machine-gun edit in Vivre sa vie and culminating is Godard’s magnum opus Histoire(s) du cinema.

In our film, the typewriter and the eyes of the dictator (as in dictation…taking dictation) frame a philosophical investigation of language. We might call it “lost in transmission.”

What is at stake are the alienated products of journalists. The father (head of a newspaper) deprives his staff of true journalistic activity when they become merely glorified secretaries. There is no time to think. Deadlines deadlines. And, as such, dead text. An anonymous caption for a photo (no byline) is the sole work of the editor. A journalist merely types. No time for discussion.

And thus the extension: why should a picture need a caption at all? Shouldn’t a picture tell a story and thereby eliminate the need for text? Is a complex picture which requires explanation inferior? And why not let the picture speak for itself in such a case? Why always explain what the reader is to feel???

A dictatorship falls. Strikes ensue. We hear a radio tell us Franco is dead. A subtle touch. From Portugal to Spain.

Carnation Revolution. Yes, I thought of Angola, but not Mozambique. And it makes sense. Mozambique. The only Marxist Western (as in horses and cowboys)…Vent d’est (1969).

Saint-Brieuc. It was a factory strike in ’72. We are one year off. 1975. Deadline deadline. Go to press.

Now television has completely won. Your show. Shows. On demand. One senses that the battle of art films vs. mass communication was [for Godard] not about format (film vs. video), but rather a question of diffusion and delivery.

The speed of news. The news cycle. “Information cascade” and Operation Mockingbird.

-PD

5 Comments

Letter to Jane [1972)

Fucking goddamned brilliant.

It is not surprise. An exclamation without an exclamation point.

It is a reaffirmation.

That Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin, in 1972, could dismantle the entire system imposing ill upon the world.

If their critique was not inclusive enough to include the shortcomings of communism, we must forgive them somewhat.

It really doesn’t matter that this film operates in a Chris Marker manner.

It was the right form to address a picture. In fact, the spirit is much more akin to Antonioni’s Blow-Up.

The ontology of the image.

André Bazin.

This is the world from which Godard and Gorin emerge.

But the key touchstone may indeed be, as the filmmakers say, Uncle Bertolt.

Brecht.

Truth simple. Telling the truth difficult.

Dziga Vertov.

Lenin.

It is a revelation to hear Godard speaking English.

Yes, there are no subtitles here (unless, perhaps, you are French and don’t understand English).

That makes this an especially important film for the English-speaking world. Like British Sounds.

But most importantly this film encourages intellectual scrutiny of mass media.

Scrutiny of photographs. Scrutiny of captions. Scrutiny of context.

I think, therefore I am.

This is the acting default which we are told emerged (with sound) in the 1930s of Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Beware of pity (advises Stefan Zweig).

A town without pity. Gene Pitney. Pithy.

No filmmaker has been more bold, in every way, than Jean-Luc Godard.

But his collaborators deserve their due for standing by him.

Gorin. Anne-Marie Miéville.

So many ways to be bold…

To show the futility of 3-D. Actually, to show how mundane superheroes are.

Just one aspect in the latest installment of brilliance (Adieu au langage).

His latest, Letter to Jane, Histoire(s) du cinema…

They all smash to bits flailing failures like San Andreas.

It’s as if the master is saying, “Just think for a minute.”

But the master, JLG, dove into thought and grabbed handfuls of paradoxes.

That is the true artist.

That is the eternal man.

It makes me a bit emotional.

What dedication!

From Roxy the dog all the way back to Michel Poiccard.

It is hard to focus on just one episode in this immense body of work.

That said, the true message of Godard is elusive because his fame (and infamy) overshadow the meaning conveyed.

But his work says…carry on.

-PD

10 Comments

Le Gai savoir [1969)

Words: 0

Publish. 1:09 AM. Enter your categories below. Bellow. Saul. HTML. HoT MeaL.

Words: 12

The Grand Budapest Hote…

I cannot express this pictogram. CATEGORIES. We must categorize.

Juliet Berto. I’m just warming up. Preview.

Words: 33

1:12 AM. FEATURED IMAGE. Visual. Yes, a film by Jean-Luc Godard.

This DVD could feed a village for a week.

No food on the table. No table.

The plot is one-sentence long (!) on Wikipedia. The Joy of learning.

71 :Words

Trash. Keep on goin’!

Au lecteur:

Current Staus: Saved Draft. Le Gai savoir [1969).

1:15 AM.

How long is a second? Krypton? Cesium?

paulydeathwish

Moi.

Preview Post. Not coming to a theater near you (and certainly not near me).

4/16/2015

My Site. W.

LBJ. Vietnam. Dropping white phosphorus bombs on the silk factories of Hanoi.

Enter your tags below.

Toe.

This film has been a favorite of mine since I first saw it. Like a Bible in the dark. Smirking at how clever.

152 :sdroW

Publish Immediately.

CHANGE STATUS. It’s complicated. In that it’s not complicated. Painfully single.

File Edit View Favorites Tools Help

Windows on the World. Risk Waters.

You ask who died. And who didn’t. Warren Buffett. Charity golf and tennis tournament. Offutt AFB. Morning of 9/11. Nerve center of American nuclear deterrent. We know one WTC CEO who didn’t die because she was invited. Who else was on that list???

I hear the whispers of a young, balding man. Torn in half by war. Risking it all. To edit a film about the Palestinians. And the film lab is bombed. A scare tactic. How dare you support those Muselmanns? Muselmensch.

Disproportionate riposte. Flip script. ~~ABC~~

sWords: 265

1:27 AM

Louis Le Prince – Wikipedi…

Add Media.

Two sentences. I overlooked a period.

Lumumba and Rousseau.

Freud is the head and Marx is the sex. Theory and practice.

Give him enough rope. …

Derrida sideways.

It is the brilliance of the little boy–the touching presence of the crusty old beggar.

In school we learned about Nietzsche, but no one ever told me about Jack Nitzsche.

iPhone. Pronounced “ee-fone” in French. ePhone.

This iswas unknown territory. 1969. 1:36 AM. You’re late. You’re really not taking this very seriously.

Bob Dylan. Jean-Pierre Léaud.

My love is smiling by the sea. She has gone away. Cruel.

She stares at me from a different time.

He is an old man now. Wild Strawberries.

Shall we try again?? D’accord…

Batman. The Incredible Hulk. Spiderman.

She keeps dozing off. Tap tap. Perks up. Dozes. Again prodded. But when she slumps left (her left)…a caress. It works the same. She opens her eyes. More painful-eyes studying. Some sleep with one eye open. I read until only one eye cooperates. And then no eyes. Off to processing sleep.

Mao was still prominent. But this is where the great art of montage was first born…continued and epitomized in Histoire(s) du cinema. 3.8/5. My ass. Rotten tomatoes…Léolo.

Ou Ou Ou

So what you’re saying is that this review is a failure.

Three moles on left side of face.

No one in their right mind is asking.

Mon martyre. Montmartre.

Jean of Ork. nanu nanu

Tannu Tuva.

What ever happened to Richard Feynman?

Don’t call me Shirley. Andrew Card.

To enjoy a cigar by the water.

Une poignée de gens

Words: 538.

Attack on language. Send reinforcements.

2:05 AM

ending transmission

-PD

9 Comments

Dirty Harry [1971)

Cops get a bad rap. It’s only fitting that Kinney National Company, by way of their 1969 purchase of Warner Bros.-Seven Arts film company, should bring you this message. Kinney National Services, Inc. was the product of a 1966 merger between Kinney Parking (as in, parking lots) Company and National Cleaning Company. The former, a New Jersey operation, was owned by three gentlemen…at least one of which was a mobster: Abner Zwillman. But wait, it gets richer…

Before Kinney Parking Company was publicly listed in 1960, it merged with the funeral home (!) company Riverside.

Ah yes…Abner Zwillman. Newark. Cut numbers… Tosches.

Zwillman did alright for himself… Dated Jean Harlow…

Along with Al Capone, Zwillman controlled the movie projectionist union. Histoire(s) du cinema.

Funny that an extortionist should start a company which would eventually make a film about an extortionist.

Zwillman died an untimely death by hanging…just before he was to appear before a U.S. Senate committee organized crime hearing. 1959.

Another chthonic founder of Kinney Parking Company was Manny (Emmanuel) Kimmel. Keep in mind, folks–this developed into Time Warner! Yeah.

Along with the racketeer/bootlegger Zwillman, Kimmel used his garages to store the liquor which the former was smuggling into the U.S. from Canada in armored WW I trucks during Prohibition. The FBI “compelled” him to testify in two notable mafia trials (including Zwillman’s).

Kimmel…legendary New York horseracing bookie, blackjack card-counter, “compelled” witness.

Kimmel and Zwillman (to say nothing of Sigmund Dornbusch) circuitously brought you the film Dirty Harry. Oh, the irony!

And thus it starts: perhaps the most quintessential American movie. No, dear friends, you cannot watch this with commercial interruptions on AMC…no way.

And TCM has been slow to “get it”…though their screening format is superior.

Don Siegel hits a vein–a gusher–with this one!

From that first rifle scope focus…that first glamorous victim…that icy blue summer swimming pool atop the roof suddenly tinged with blood…

We could have mentioned Vito Genovese. Meyer Lansky. Bugsy Siegel…

But we will focus on the immensely talented Don Siegel.

In Don Siegel we encounter the difference between American montage and French montage: not at all the same thing.

We find Peckinpah as an assistant.

Friends…

Hell, Siegel even directed Baby Face Nelson in 1957 (a couple years before Zwillman was suicided).

But the big story? The big scoop??? Clint Eastwood.

Eastwood was born in San Francisco (the setting of Dirty Harry). 11 pounds and 6 ounces.

The mid-60s were good to Eastwood…three spaghetti westerns helmed by Sergio Leone with Clint in the lead. All three were financial successes…low-budget and high box office return.

By 1971 Eastwood had just completed his directorial debut: Play Misty for Me.

But let’s not forget the Finks who wrote Dirty Harry’s script: Harry Julian Fink and R.M. Fink!

The Finks were joined by Dean Riesner and John Milius.

Now they just needed a villain. A mashup of the Zodiac Killer and actor Andy Robinson provided just the right level of disgust for audiences to swallow the vigilante Harry Callahan.

Yeah, a butcher knife and a hard-on is probably probable cause…though D.A. Rothko would likely disagree.

The Smith & Wesson Model 29…we’re talking about a handgun that approaches three pounds (depending on barrel length).

I know what you’re thinking. Did he just put two unrelated phrases ass-to-ass on purpose or on accident?

Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself.

Scorpio…

Signed crosshairs. Benicia. Vallejo. Lake Berryessa. Presidio Heights.

This was real.

Well, Harry’s usual hot dogs had not kept him in the greatest cardio shape, though he admirably runs from payphone to payphone. It’s a pretty ingenious plot device. The thrilling uncertainty would do Hitchcock proud. Yes, Hitch would direct two more films after Harry Callahan hit the world’s stage. One can’t help wondering if he saw this masterpiece.

When Eastwood stabs Scorpio in the leg…that is cinema. It’s not far from the iconography of Kubrick’s The Shining or Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre (though it predates both).

When Eastwood steps into the arena (sand) of Kezar Stadium, we know there will be blood. Would you torture a psychopath to save an innocent teenage girl? These are the types of questions which came to dominate Clint Eastwood’s amazing career.

Even smalltime shits like Scorpio understand the concept of the good old false flag, but it doesn’t work.

And then like Superman with no name…sun at his back on the railroad trestle…Eastwood hops the short bus.

“But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?”

It’s too long to be a haiku, but it floats…

-PD

14 Comments