Smultronstället [1957)

At some point during the viewing of this film I turned 39 years old. That is significant because there is a moment in this masterpiece by Ingmar Bergman at which a character is described precisely as 38 years old.

And so a mostly unimportant question arises: was I 38 or 39 when I heard that line?

To be sure, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen Wild Strawberries, but seeing it on the cusp of my birthday as the world spits me back into the cosmic cuspidor makes a poignant movie absolutely devastating.

You must understand, by “devastating”…I don’t necessarily mean bad. In my film lexicon I reserve the word devastating for films which reduce me to a weeping mess. This, now, is one such film.

My memory of it was as a sweet film…wild strawberries…youthful love…summertime. And indeed, all of those things are there. But this film is more than just naïveté. This film is about aging. Old age.

I would never have made the connection, but Smultronstället bridges the gap (somewhat) between its comrades in simpatico: Umberto D. (1952) and The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu (2005). In the former, Carlo Battisti set the gold standard for this micro-genre. He was 69 when he portrayed the titular Umberto Domenico Ferrari. In the latter, Ioan Fiscuteanu brought a razor-sharp accuracy to the likewise titular character Dante Remus Lăzărescu while being, himself, 68 years old.

And that brings us to the famed silent-film director Victor Sjöström. For Bergman’s Smultronstället, Sjöström was invited aboard as an actor (in the lead role of Isak Borg). Sjöström was, almost exactly with the two previous actors mentioned, 68 years old when he assumed this immortal role.

But there is something which Ingmar Bergman did (thanks to the magic of Sjöström’s performance) which is unique in this film. Beyond the surrealism befitting of de Chirico, beyond the hint of road movie panache which predated À Bout de souffle, Bergman keyed in on an absolutely defining characteristic of old age (for many): loneliness.

I recognize it because it is an absolutely defining characteristic of my own life. Sometimes I wonder if anyone out there is as lonely as me. I send out my signal. I comb through the tags. “Lonely” is a young person’s emotion. “Loneliness” is a lifelong complex. An articulate, stark reality.

And how does it happen?

Well, you will just have to see this film. Really, there are few movies I could more strongly recommend than Wild Strawberries. Everyone will see it differently. For me it brings back memories of Sweden (and even Denmark [though I should probably wait for Dreyer before admitting that]). Girls named Kaaren and Anna and Saaarah (ok, maybe not that many As).

That is the route of this unlikely road movie. What could have been… What might have been~~

Sometimes a dream rights our ship. But these bad dreams…we are one credit hour short, she doesn’t remember us, we’ve forgotten the first rule of being a doctor…

In our wisdom we will think of the good times. For me, it is as hard as breathing. I don’t breathe well. I think too much. About it. Everything.

Wisdom lets us go back to our old neighborhood…our old play friends…some ball in the street. We must have some good memories somewhere. Psychology urges this. A safe place. A mental image. A way to calm down.

In the fray of life this often isn’t practical. Indeed, we forget everything. Is there or isn’t there a God? I would say yes, but I’m not going to arm-wrestle you over it.

That is a bit of wisdom. You can go home again.

-PD

9 Comments

Umberto D. [1952)

Unglamorous stories.

That is what Italy brought us in the post-war years.

And every “new wave” which has followed owes a debt to the masters like De Sica.

Perhaps you know Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves).

Don’t stop there, dear friend.

Because here we have the precursor to Dante Remus Lazarescu.

Sure. There is some humor in Umberto D. A very, very dark humor.

As with Moartea domnului Lăzărescu.

But mostly there is beauty.

Sadness.

Reality.

Cinema.

There is the little dog Flike. Not Flicka, but Flike (rhymes with psych). Or bike.

Flike. Like Céline’s cat Bebert.

And then there is the stunning (STUNNING) acting of Carlo Battisti as Umberto.

There are few performances which can equal it.

Ioan Fiscuteanu did it as Lazarescu.

And that’s about it.

Rarefied air…these two actors.

Let me put it another way. Umberto D. was Ingmar Bergman’s favorite film. Do you know what I mean?

The director of Smultronstället and Sommaren med Monika.

Picked one film. And this was it.

Appropriately, this was Carlo Battisti’s only film role ever.

As the star of Umberto D.

He wasn’t an actor. He was a linguist.

God damn…

It’s just unreal how good this film is!

But we must also give credit to the indispensable Maria-Pia Casilio.

It is through her eyes that we see the ants…formica in Italian.

In English, we think of a hard composite material. Formica. A table top.

But a sort of false cognate brings us back to the archetype which Dalí and Buñuel so evocatively exploited in Un Chien Andalou. That was 1929. A film. The famous eyeball which gets “edited”. And then the ants were back in La persistència de la memòria. A painting. Soft clocks. You know the one. And the only differences between Spanish and Catalan in this case are the diacritical marks.

But she burns paper. To chase the ants. And the stray cat prowls the roof at night soft as a snowflake. And the grated skylight is her canvas to dream stretched out in her bed. And nothing is more morose than a contemplative face at the window looking out on a dingy world.

We sense it did not go easily for Italy. After the war. Because when you choose the wrong side you will be punished.

And though Germany was divided and Berlin was the most surreal example of this (being wholly within East Germany…like a Teutonic Swaziland–a Lesotho leitmotiv), Italy still suffered. We see it in Rossellini. And we see it here.

Neorealism. A update on the operas of Mascagni and Leoncavallo. A continuation of Zola. A nod to Dostoyevsky.

Verismo.

The star is an old man. He is not really a hero. He doesn’t save the world. There aren’t explosions.

But (BUT)

he does something most extraordinary. He survives…for a time. What a miracle!

Ah! The miracle of everyday life. We have survived another year. Another day!

Do you think there will be a war?

[Shame. The shame of having to ask for help. Begging for the first time.]

When your bed is a joke. Newspapers and dust. And there is a goddamned hole in your wall. Perhaps.

A missile. Or The Landlord’s Game (which became Monopoly).

When you are cold with a fever. As an elderly person. All your glamorous days have passed.

And you need your coat just to provide a little more warmth. On top of the blanket. To make it through the night.

As long.

As long as this film survives, humanity has a chance.

Really.

-PD

5 Comments

Night on Earth [1991)

I’ve run out of witticisms.

Snappy beginnings.

Which is a shame. Because I really want you to know about this film.

If you don’t already.

This is called quantum writing.

It is the sentence fragment equivalent of liberal ellipses.

So tired.

The cities.

Los Angeles.

It is the first episode. Vignettes.

Seemed like a throwaway scene years ago.

Now. So prescient. Then.

So pertinent. Germane.

She’s not really interested in becoming a movie star.

People selling kidneys to get a real casting agent and she’s not interested…

Beautiful.

New York.

Lost in the world.

Pulling immigrants with the magnetism of illustrious decades.

East Germany. Dresden. Near Czechoslovakia. 1991.

My neighborhood. When I can pause for a moment and appreciate the diversity.

America. Amer-ica.

Paris.

Francophone magnet.

Another scene which ages well.

When I saw this I hadn’t been to France.

Hadn’t been to New York or L.A.

And you appreciate more. When you’ve been.

The loving portrayal. The in-between shots.

Maybe it’s the garbage can at Pink’s Hot Dogs.

A green trash bag. Liner. Someone sweeping up.

We’re blind to so many details.

And so Jim Jarmusch went and put ’em in a film.

They’re there.

The details.

Tom Waits soundtracking like Charles Ives with an accordion.

Why?

Why is it sad?

It should be funny. And sad.

It depends.

It depends on your life.

If you’ve ever had a brush with the entertainment industry, then that first scene might get you.

Might punch you right in the gut.

Not interested.

And the point is that as one girl throws it all away (from a perspective) a bloke on the east coast is just trying to get a cab.

Look.

I’ve got money.

It’s winter.

And home is Brooklyn.

It’s painful cold.

And as one family is dysfunctional in its uniquely Tolstoyvian way, another has no family at all.

None.

None left.

It was too cold to shave today.

Save the money.

Money is not important to me. I’m a clown. I just need the money. But it’s not important to me.

And there’s your artist.

A mechanic works the art of grease.

A clown suffers in the tumult.

Please. Come in. Welcome to my taxi. It is very important to me.

Long night. On Earth.

You hear about Africa every year. Annually. On average.

A famine. A plague. An outstanding war. Out standing in the rain.

We never know just how it feels to live in Nigeria.

It is furthest from our thoughts.

And then we are reminded. That Africa exists.

The continent. Does not exert itself.

Comes down to capital. LLC. Land labor capital.

To LKM. labor Kapital material.

A lot has changed since Adam Smith.

Land disappeared.

And what makes the U.S. unique compared to Hong Kong or Tokyo? Land.

Room to sprawl. Endlessly.

But I digress. As a matter of course.

In the course of one speck of matter (Earth) running rings around the Sun.

Our sun. Not up yet.

The hour of the wolf.

Brings us to Rome. Ingmar not Ingrid.

It is comic blast #2.

We survived the sadness with laughter. In New York.

And now we book a room at the Hotel Genius. [Hotel Imbecile was full-up.]

Thank God for Charlie Parker!

I confess.

I was looking forward to this humor for days. I knew the ending.

But I didn’t know my own age. In the mirror of cinema.

But, dear friends, all good things must end (and bad things must start).

“They say the darkest hour/Is right before the dawn.”

That’s the hour of the wolf.

And instead of Max von Sydow we get Matti Pellonpää.

With his Grinderman mustache.

Walrus. Circles the statue. In front of parliament?

Helsinki. Like a sinkhole. Cold. Hell sinky.

It is the end of the earth. And I only have my memories of being drunk in Kiruna. Sweden. Never made it further east.

And for a moment he just sits behind the wheel and stares off into space.

After it’s all over. As if he can see the ice-trails of orbits.

We travel the spaceways.

Every humble step of our lives.

From bakery to grain field.

But mostly streets.

Taxis. The poetry of snaking asphalt.

Sing the songs of the pavement.

Every passenger a sad story.

Every driver a priest.

-PD

13 Comments

Passion [1982)

All you need is the first word. The first sentence to get you going.

You can meditate. Think too hard.

And now that it’s started it is gloriously ruined. Like Kind of Blue.

Miles Davis would tell his players…one take.

Perhaps there were caveats. But Bill Evans was ready. Coltrane…

It is the same with “Sister Ray” by The Velvet Underground.

One take. Make it count.

Everything proceeds from the first word. But don’t take it too seriously.

It is like many other first words. “Once upon a time…”

From a mist rises Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. Bruckner would use the same device many times (no doubt in honor of Ludwig van).

Yes. We say Ludwig Van in honor of Mauricio Kagel. And the entire spirit of everything here might be compared to Joseph Beuys.

And just like that <bam> we go over-budget.

Jerzy Radziwilowicz plays the Jean-Luc Godard character here (with the wardrobe ostensibly taken right off the back of Jacques Dutronc). Thus Godard still creates a distance between his story and THE story. The whole bit about Poland is made to throw us off the scent (a bit like the glorious obfuscation of Joyce in Finnegans Wake).

We find Godard to be right. The available forms are too mundane. The audience stops thinking when they are comfortable. So we must disorient them a bit–prod like a brainiac Hitchcock.

You see, the most important thing is not who acted in this film. Rather, the crucial component is the juxtaposition which allows for revelation.

We see the most perfectly-placed tableaux of human paintings. Come to life. The proper term is tableau vivant. Maybe you see them at Christmas. Perhaps a manger and the Christian genesis.

Ah, but with Godard it is Delacroix and Rubens and Rembrandt etc. I assume Ingmar Bergman missed this Godard film because the former had already made up his mind regarding the latter. And thus the admiration flowed in one direction alone. We see the delicacy of Bergman–that technique of the long shot (temporally speaking). You can almost imagine Godard telling his cast of thousands in this mini-epic to have no expression at all.

There is a connection to Stravinsky. Neoclassicism, but really a radical belief in the purity of music. To paraphrase Igor, “Music doesn’t have meaning. A note is a note.” Perhaps I have done the great composer an injustice with my memory. Yet, a paraphrase is a paraphrase.

We humans are not computers. No matter how many books we have. No matter how steel-trap our memory. No matter how fast our Internet.

And thus, that which is juxtaposed against the meticulous composition of the tableaux vivants? Everyday life. Careless shots. The beauty of the sky. The natural sway of a handheld camera. The sun as it burns up the lens upon peeking through the bare trees. Hanna Schygulla running through the snow with a lavender umbrella.

Real life. Labor. A factory. And who is the real star? Isabelle Huppert. Her character in Sauve qui peut (la vie) was not a sympathetic one. Can we say? WE had no sympathy for her. Very little. Not none.

Yet here…she is the lamb of God (of which she speaks). Huppert is the labor element. Workers’ rights. It is intimated that her monotonous job has caused her to stutter. Why? Because it is not easy to talk about the factory.

And why, she asks, are people in films never shown working? It is not allowed. Filming in factories. Indeed, I believe there is a specifically French meaning here. [And Swiss, as the film is shot in Switzerland.] But the real shocker? Work and sex (“pornography”) are equally prohibited on the screen.

Only Godard would find this fascinating link. And that is why we love him.

But mostly it is another thing.

Life is so much richer in the films of Godard. Sure, there are some exceptions, but the exceptions themselves are merely the process being revealed. It is “the thinking life” to paraphrase Henry Miller.

Once you have been there, you don’t want to go back. Or you can’t go back. But we do go back. Thinking is hard work.

And as the world bemoans what havoc Europe has wrought, let it be noted…the Beethovens, Mozarts, Dvoraks…

This is the humanism which little by little comes to occupy the mature films of Jean-Luc Godard.

Most importantly, he never stopped being a critic.

And his film reviews? They are his films themselves.

-PD

7 Comments

Tout va bien [1972)

This might be the most important film ever made.

You can’t start like that.

This whole “internal monolog” gets boring…

Illiterate Joyce fanatic.

After fucking around for four years, Godard and Gorin (like Marx and Engels) finally got the funding needed to deal a deathblow to bourgeois capitalism. Bourgeois? Monopoly. Monopoly?

I feel film review coming on…itching like a well-known wool blanket.

Jane Fonda is devastatingly good in this.

Yves Montand nails it.

Godard and Gorin fling a manifesto at the world. Hollywood has failed miserably in mustering a riposte.

Over 40 years ago.

Who speaks for Hollywood?

And who speaks for not Hollywood?

A state of mind more than a place.

New forms for new content.

Not Hollywood.

You know Jacques Tati and Jerry Lewis.

We get a hilarious choking performance from Vittorio Caprioli.

It’s not a thing to hide…the fact that one is marked for death.

But hidden it is.

A loudmouthed agitator who learned to unlearn. Through books.

A conundrum. No, there is no stopping being an intellectual.

If you don’t know the Dziga-Vertov Group’s work, you won’t realize that Tout va bien is actually reflective.

It is a perfect gentle art bomb.

No box office data.

Not what we meant anyway.

Must be a pain in the ass to parse these “reviews” on behalf of the control freaks.

A good psychologist would tell you to buy a mirror. Buy some time. Reflect.

But there are no good psychs…seems.

No, surely there are.

A lot (two words) of professions seem glutted with criminals.

And the psychs are there to define criminality.

Judges by the benison of nepotism.

By which we mean judges. [new subject]

By this time they broke the fourth wall so efficiently and effortlessly. With Jane Fonda.

The wrong woman.

Diegesis or die a Jesus?

Opacity of performance?

I think what they mean is, by being weird it causes the audience to ask, “Why are they being weird?”

Who cares.

Too beautiful to end there.

The most important. Perhaps.

Can’t this motherfucker complete a goddamned sentence?

New forms for new content. (2)

Seriously, the boss has to piss!

And is that the cock from Persona?

Cock. I never would’ve said it that way.

Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check.

She told me.

Double-spacing was an antiquated technique. Something about a journalism degree. I tried.

Obviously, people are watching.

Route me out of the main stream. Rout.

I know my true brothers and sisters, but they remain invisible.

Little signals over the ether and we take the helm.

Rub your jade.

Yes. Look look look.

Doesn’t matter. They want you to know that clearly.

The movies where the hero is a shitbag who finally does the right thing at the end…and utters one last dying quotable.

Karate for life. For instance.

Capitalize the first noun, and then shut the fuck up. It’s just a title.

What’s in a goddamned name?

Shaky sphere at the globe. On the shore. Of a ditch.

The borr(o)wed. Borr()wed.

Barred.

If there’s a right way to write about film, this ain’t it.

Unremitting self-referential showmanship.

Serves to defuse…de fuse.

Someday. Someday. A couple of holy grails will roll down the hill.

Goddamn.

-PD

6 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

Une Femme mariee [1964)

I want to write about the weirdest scene in Godard’s filmography up till this point, but I don’t. It’s not a pleasant scene. It is uncomfortable. Unnerving. I want to write about the pointy bras which figure visually into so much of this film, but I feel silly. Pointy bras.

I want to talk about Macha Méril‘s hair and how once again Godard evokes Louise Brooks, but I…what?

The title. It had to get more vague. No.

There’s really no way of talking about this movie other than in its own language. I often do that. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But many times it is the only way. Here.

It slips through the fingers so quickly. If you do not write immediately, it is gone. I take a break. I charge my computer. It has escaped.

Truth be told, I never had that good a grasp on it.

I have to get worked up to talk about a film like this. I can’t check the news headlines for ten minutes on waynemadsenreport.com and then come back to it.

She is married. Unhappy. Every day she pretends. She is an actor dating an actor. Not the same. The theater and its double.

Artaud is on the tip of his tongue. Godard. What is he driving at?

This is elusive film. A cubist film. Fragments. If I stop to pause, it leaves me again.

I cannot give this treatise any ground. Yes, a treatise like Debord. In little mini-paragraphs. Theses. Something. I don’t know. Je’n s’pas.

It’s quick. Before she’s said it [bam!] it’s gone. He cuts. Montage. Gone.

Roger Leenhardt. I did not know. We don’t know. Barnes & Ignoble. Ig Nobel. Banana peels. Friction. Slippery slip slopery. Splits.

Does she say Thalidomide? It moves so fast. You are not French. You have audible French, visual wordplay, puns everywhere…unfunny puns on soul, angel, sea. Words in the middle of words. Treatise. trEATise. Focus on a part. How does the part tell a different story than the whole? Passage. Pas sage. Unwise. Not wise. No sagacity.

You have to be on your toes with Godard…even to this day. His mind is the quickest, slickest, oiled mechanism. The actor…just a mechanism. Is that a good translation? It matters. Are you reading the subtitles?

Some nights maybe you don’t feel like subtitles. You want to watch National Lampoon’s Vacation…

My queue. It is the same. Juxtaposition. Beethoven. No accident. Accidentals. We reach like bad Joyces. James…

The Holocaust comes into the oeuvre. Why the barbers? Indeed, she says…

Memory. For him, integral. For her, rien. Give me ten more pointy bras. Let me measure my breasts…nipple to nipple. The world turns on the tips of tits. No truer words ever spoken. Into the arms of Venus de Milo.

Her laughing is like a rodent…a squirrel perhaps. And then a woodpecker. It is almost indistinguishable from sobbing. Laugh tears. Oh James…

Ingmar got nothing out of it, he says. Godard took the long shot (extended take) and perverted it. Torture. Orgasmic laughs meant to liven up a marriage. The couple sit and fidget. Will they put on the Cal Tjader?

And then the husband threatens to rape his own wife. Is that translation correct? A significant line. Vital. Play acting? I don’t think so.

Truth in jokes. Expressed nowhere else. Why the barbers?

If you sought an insular review, you have found it. Only a cryptologist would claim spoilers. And thus we can justify that this is indeed film criticism. Mere reviews…

If you could double the size of your breasts with a Peruvian serum, would your husband blue you and make you Jell-O-sated?

All the brunettes are neutron blondes in the negative print. Hitchcock has sensors under your seats to know when your butt has arisen. Orly.

And the doctor cannot explain love. Where does sex end and love begin, or vice versa? Science still compares. Love is neurochemically like OCD. Quitting Facebook brings on symptoms akin to drug withdrawal. Which drug? How addictive?

It’s over.

-PD

2 Comments

Casablanca [1942)

Time goes by. Time goes by. Sitting in his own gin joint…stinking drunk. It’s like Pythagoras is hammering on Bogie’s heart…searching for a certain ratio. Left to die in Casablanca. The money is good, sure! But the heart is broken.

The heart that loves and the heart that fights…these are the same heart. If she can take it, so can I. And Dooley Wilson strides into the song. It was in the piano all along.

The piano…that musical typewriter…where Beethoven wrote novels as much as chiseled sonorities. Truth is, nobody is listening. There are those in this world we trust. At present we wait.

And then she arrives. And we blow it. All of that crestfallen love transformed into angst. She was the most beautiful woman we ever saw. When Belmondo and Seberg joyride around Paris, it is in tribute to them. And perhaps Héloïse and Abelard really are buried at Père Lachaise. Maybe, maybe not.

But when she hummed that tune in the noir shadows…then the piano started to play. It’s no use. She’ll never come. Oh, but she does come. And then she leaves again. We begin to wonder whether she ever existed at all…whether Pythagoras ever passed a blacksmith and heard an anvil chorus. Anytime’s a good time to be born…and anytime is a good time to die. Harry Partch said that. And Casablanca’s as good a place for it as any. Bogie said that.

Ten thousand dollars/at the drop of a hat/I’d give it all gladly/if our lives could be like that. Bob Dylan said that. There’s blood on the tracks…greasing the rails…from the concentration camps to North Africa. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world… And now Bogie has to think for all of us. And he does.

Laszlo had to go all Charles Ives and instead of the Fourth of July, it’s the 14th and “La Marseillaise” is drowning out “Die Wacht am Rhein”…tentatively at first, but ultimately in a rousing rout.

I lost my place…my train of thought. Rick lost his place…the train from Oran. It must have been that song…Herman Hupfeld. Humbert Humbert? No, that’s more Claude Rains’ department. Have you tried 22 tonight? Leave it there.

It’s more Schindler than Schindler…because it’s cinema. Mostly because it’s Bogart. The harder they fall…in love. And so now the piano is silent. Another proprietor has taken over. I was always on the side of the underdog…an expensive habit. Was never much of a business man.

And she flies away. He remembers the day…the last time. For me, it was Messiaen. Turangalîla. An airport in New Orleans. I’m not qualified to shine Faulkner’s shoes, but here I am…none the less.

Deep underground is the resistance. Love. Maybe. For now we have cinema…when we can allow ourselves to indulge in such. We burn in darkened halls…or simply darkened bedrooms on a laptop. Maybe she has come and gone. Ingrid, painted so lovingly by Curtiz as she first hears the song again…like the other Bergman…like the overture to The Magic Flute.

I coulda been someone. I coulda been a contenda. No, another film. We merely have our thoughts to cache until the library disappears like mandala sand. Back to the bottle. Scorsese gets it!

A lovely day and a lovely actress and Deserter’s Songs by Mercury Rev with the windows down. Honey. He did the right thing. The hard path. The road less-traveled. The true saint. The golden agitator. Some say the French invented love.

We’ll always have Paris. That hour in a van…stuck in traffic. How very Tati! There’s Sacré-Cœur…and the Arc de Triomphe from the side.

And then…getting on that plane. The hardest part. Like seeing the Eiffel Tower…only on departure.

-PD

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The Manxman [1929)

The Isle of Man has two movie theaters as of 2014. Alfred Hitchcock’s last silent film was set on this little island between Great Britain and Ireland (though it was actually filmed in Cornwall). It’s amazing how much a director can improve in one year. The previous year had seen the release of Hitchcock’s dull “rom-com” The Farmer’s Wife. Truth be told: The Manxman is just a much better story.

In simplest terms, it is the drama of two men (best friends) in love with the same girl. She’s in love with one of them, but unfortunately not the one she ends up marrying. The whole thing bears a striking resemblance in tone to Ingmar Bergman’s Summer with Monika (1953). In fact, the more general mood of the film might be successfully compared to Bergman and Dreyer (a Swede and Dane respectively). This is not going against the history of The Isle of Man. The Norse began settling on the isle in the 9th century. The island’s history is tied not only to Norway, but also the Hebrides civilization.

More importantly, the dramatic material is simply much more suited to what would become Hitchcock’s signature style. The girl (played by Anny Ondra) throws herself off the quayside in a suicide attempt. She is not successful. The viewer familiar with Vertigo might rightly snap to Kim Novak plunging into San Francisco Bay (and warming herself in Jimmy Stewart’s apartment after failing to drown herself).

The dénouement comes when Ondra stands before a deemster (name for judge on Isle of Man) for the crime of attempted suicide. The judge just so happens to be the man she loves (and it’s his first day on the job!). The courtroom drama nicely anticipates an underappreciated Hitchcock gem starring Alida Valli called The Paradine Case (1947). Our film ends up in a bizarre admission by the deemster that he is not fit for the bench owing to his surreptitious dealings with Ondra.

The Manxman in question (played by Carl Brisson) is left to deal with the heartbreak of having been tricked from marriage to fatherhood and beyond. We end up feeling pity for him, but for most of the film we sympathize with the star-crossed lovers (Ondra and Malcolm Keen). Keen’s surname in the film is Christian (Philip Christian) and we see him struggle with his situation in a way that today might be termed quaint. Max Weber might call it the Protestant love ethic.

In closing, this film is definitely worth watching. There is particular anguish and tension (artfully conveyed) in the child custody scene. Hitchcock’s ingenuity starts coming to the fore in his final experiment with silence.

-PD

The Lovely Bones [2009)

Somehow, at some point…people forgot how to make films. This would be considered cinema in today’s Hollywood (which is to say, a great film). Sadly, this is barely a good film.

Once upon a time there were masters like Murnau and Lang and Dreyer. They worked in an age before sound. They had less variables to ponder. And yet, they managed to tell stories in elegant, sophisticated ways. There was no CGI.

Cut to the present film. Saoirse Ronan is truly lovely, yet not even she can salvage this schmaltz. To be sure, this is not a happy story. I would like to congratulate director Peter Jackson, but I cannot do so without a plethora of caveats.

Let me start by saying that Mark Wahlberg, at least, does an excellent acting job. I can’t help thinking of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch every time I see his name. That was the age I was raised in: ridiculous, posturing hip-hop. Don’t get me wrong…some of it was good. I even remember having a fondness for Wahlberg’s group, but suffice it to say that their oeuvre has not aged particularly well. I fear the same might be the case with this film.

Stanley Tucci is excellent and creepy as hell as the serial killer George Harvey. Susan Sarandon, on the other hand, is a caricature of herself…completely ridiculous and superfluous to any of the aims which this film should have had. Rose McIver is actually quite good as Susie’s younger sister (though the film seems to suggest she is the older sister in the beginning…just one loose end among many, many others).

There are moments when this film touches on the sublime, but they may not be the ones of which you’re thinking. When director Jackson approaches the realm of Hitchcock, he does so quite capably. One even gets the sense that a Silence of the Lambs might be developing on screen. Sadly, we seem to slip into What Dreams May Come. Much better to emulate Alfred than Vincent Ward. Yikes!

About these dream sequences–this “In-Between”…it is as if Salvador Dalí’s superb imagination was being hijacked by a third-rate M.C. Escher reproductionist. It is as if we were watching the music video to Seal’s “Crazy.” It is horrible.

Nikki SooHoo’s acting is really, really bad. Poor girl. She is the Jar Jar Binks of this ill-fated venture.

After all this CGI tomfoolery we finally have another shard of cinema when McIver find’s the murderer’s sketchbook. The close-ups of her fingernails trying to silently lower the loose floorboard back into place have a gripping suspense worthy of Hitch. Jackson at least does a good job of making fingernails (you heard me) a significant motif throughout the picture. Tucci’s neatly manicured nails are pictured in close-up as he disgustingly fondles the dead Susie’s house charm which he ripped off her bracelet.

The story is not bad, but Jackson has not inspired me to read the book any time soon. The motif of the kiss is a sweet sentiment and it is just one of many touching moments in this train-wreck of a film. Susie is supposed to be the amateur photographer. Jackson directs like a 14-year-old. The film would doubtless have been better had he 1/100th the budget.

The overall narrative (with voiceover by Ronan) is a formulaic, staid, pale imitation of American Beauty.

One last thought: I can’t believe Brian Eno did the music. Sadly, the only musical moments which are transcendent come at the hands of Dave Edmunds and The Hollies (though the latter’s is ruined by a Sarandon montage). Nay, I shan’t be running out to see any Lord of the Rings movies anytime soon. This is a stinker which won’t soon enough evaporate from my memory. Jackson could really use a good night in with TCM for starters (and then, perhaps, God forbid…an Ingmar Bergman movie). Harmony Korine’s Julien Donkey-Boy obliterates The Lovely Bones in every aspect. Google Dogme 95, Mr. Jackson. Learning is fun.

-PD

paulydeathwish

musician and film critic

Tag Archives: Ingmar Bergman