India: Matri Bhumi [1959)

This is a hard film to title.

India.

मातृ भूमि.

Matri Bhumi.

The Devanagari (मातृ भूमि) translates to “homeland”.

And this brings us full-circle to a subject which has preoccupied us off and on for a month or so.

But we shan’t get too far into that excursus.

Nay, ’tis better to attempt a bit of writing regarding the film at hand.

First, we are thankful.

That Roberto Rossellini made a film about India.

Now, why would he go and do something like that?

Well, we must remember that he was only married to Ingrid Bergman from 1950-1957.

In 1957, he married Sonali DasGupta. They were married until Rossellini’s death.

Without getting too lurid or tabloid, let’s just say that Jawaharlal Nehru invited Rossellini to India to help with the country’s film activities. It was then that he met Sonali.

The rest is beyond the scope of this review.

But what is germane is the screenwriter Fereydoon Hoveyda.

Mr. Hoveyda, an Iranian diplomat and author, helped stage this documentary in much the same way that a Robert Flaherty film might be put together.

Think Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931) on which F.W. Murnau collaborated with Flaherty. Or even Louisiana Story (1948) which was a Flaherty propaganda film for Standard Oil of New Jersey.

Hoveyda, being the Iranian Ambassador to the U.N., was ostensibly in New York when the Revolution happened in 1979. I’m guessing he stayed in America. Probably a pretty smart choice.

And he was a smart guy.

Indeed, some of the books he wrote seem very timely indeed:

-What do Arabs want? (in French) [Hoveyda assumedly being Persian, not Arab]

-The Hidden Meaning of Mass Communications (2000) [sounds like a particularly interesting application of linguistics and/or semiotics to ends similar to the agenda-setting theory]

-The Broken Crescent: The Threat of Militant Islamic Fundamentalism (2002) [a rather suspicious title released at a potentially opportunist time]

and finally

-The Shah and the Ayatollah: Islamic Revolution and Iranian Mythology (2003) [the year the US was steamrolling Iraq…perhaps with salivating neocons looking to quickly expand into Iran]

I wouldn’t be so suspicious, but I noticed where Mr. Hoveyda passed away: Clifton, Virginia.

Fairfax County. Vienna. Herndon. Definitely some DoD in there.

Furthermore, it is home to the CIA (yay!), the NGA, the NRO, and the DNI’s office.

So my guess is that Mr. Hoveyda probably worked for the US intelligence community.

This would probably be a good time to tell you that I am pro-Islam.

I am pro-CIA.

I’m pro-Palestine.

I’m pro-immigration.

Pro-Mexico. Pro-Russia.

But most of all I’m pro-America.

I hold no other citizenships.

Some of these revelations will be old hat.

Some new.

All probably confusing for one reason or another.

I’m pro-NSA. I’m pro 25 AF.

I’m even pro-FBI. [pro-DIA, pro-ONI, etc.]

Yes, I’m a 9/11 “truther”.

I want to know the truth.

Do I think Saudi Arabia did it?

It was impossible for any group to pull it off without state logistical support.

So it still points very much to an inside job.

The guilty state being the USA.

But maybe I’m wrong.

I do know one thing.

Mr. Trump has rightly noted that the WTC towers did not fall down by themselves.

Nor did they sustain enough damage to fall at near-freefall speeds.

So there was a team (a gargantuan effort) which wired those buildings to explode.

Who was that team?

What was their allegiance?

There were several big pieces to the attacks which needed substantial protection and handling once inside the U.S.

Ok, that’s about as open-minded as I can get regarding 9/11.

I just had to get that off my chest.

My assessments are fallible.

But I’ve seen an optimism in America in these past few days.

It’s not unlike the optimism which Rossellini captures in India: Matri Bhumi.

Buzzards always circling.

And you’ve let me write about film.

And haven’t begrudged my politics.

So this is for my friends. From many countries.

And every day I sit and try to think of the right thing to do.

Some things I know.

But there are many things I don’t know.

Many truths which are likely a combination of half-truths I never considered gluing together.

I wish all of you a happy day or night.

This is probably the worst review I ever wrote.

Because I’m better at insulting things.

I’m better at guessing.

But maybe I haven’t connected the dots?

It’s not my job.

But it’s been on my conscience since 9/11.

Who can we trust?

Why are there so many internally-incriminating anomalies?

And so many indications of a cover-up?

I welcome the Saudi lawsuits if only for the opportunity to learn who the REAL culprits were.

The Saudis were middlemen (if that).

They were central casting.

Until the remote flight plans took over.

God, what a daft war…

Based on nothing…and stirring up a continued mix of real and fake.

Impossible to discern anymore.

Maybe Trump has the guts to get some truth.

Obama squandered eight years without even a hint of curiosity.

Buzzards circling.

-PD

Viaggio in Italia [1954)

We push ourselves so hard.

For what?

So that we may see beauty.

For me, it’s this.

Though I can barely hold my eyes open, I see it.

I see what Godard saw when he was just a lad.

A very mature film from Roberto Rossellini.

But by mature, we don’t mean sexual.

Actually, more nuanced than that.

A celebration of woman as human being.

A celebration of Ingrid Bergman as auteur.

Just as much as her husband, the director.

It’s there.

The collaboration.

And it’s unlike any other film I’ve ever seen.

Perhaps…

she fell in love with his genius.

The war trilogy.

We have talked about the great films.

Just after WWII.

Rome, Open City.

Germany, Year Zero.

And enfin…

Paisan.

[in not quite that order]

These are our English names.

But Journey to Italy is a weird feast of linguistic absurdity.

“…you shameless hussy”.

It’s like this, see…

George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman are British,

but they’re speaking Italian.

This was so the Italians didn’t have to read subtitles.

But then George says to a prosititute,

“I don’t speak Italian” (or something)

in English…WHEN HE’S BEEN SPEAKING ITALIAN FOR THE FIRST HOUR OF THE FILM!

And then there’s the Italian tradition of postproduction.

No live sound.

In this film, no ambient noises.

It’s like George and Ingrid are touring Italy in a fucking Tesla Model S!!

And a bit of dialogue.

And a clip-clop and a cloche.

Get out of the way, donkey cart!

Such that at a certain point, we wonder whether Roberto was exploding not only genre (to reference James Monaco), but the Italian version of “the tradition of quality” against which the French New Wave set themselves so polemically.

🙂

It’s possible.

“Do you think I’m insane,” asked Elon Musk.

No, of course not.

You’re South African like me.

But at the heart of this film (this is a film review, right?) are the same marital arts (!) which made Benatar sing love is a battlespace. What?

Before Godard and Karina, it was Roberto and Ingrid.

And the tension rubs.

Gimme friction, said Tom Verlaine.

And Paul Verlaine said some stuff which was ignored.

And Rimbaud shot his hand. Or ran guns.

Back when Abyssinia.

Main point is this is beautiful film.

Plain simple.

And it’s no accident Mr. and Ms. Joyce.

-PD

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Stromboli, terra di Dio [1950)

Trying to get over that mountain.

A volcano.

Stumble, fall.

Not meant to be.

In this place.

A sadness of place.

But I’m just a simple fisherman now.

Pulling in tunas.

Folkways.

She’s had it.

Ingrid in her plain pattern dress.

The wind never stops messing with her hair.

And it’s painful just to look around.

Out to sea.

Mario Vitale. Takes a simple job.

But the town surveils.

So that the empty winds blow like in L‘Avventura.

On an island.

Ingrid from Sweden playing Karin from Lithuania.

Argentina does not accept her.

And so she marries.

The best option of no options.

But she has her spirit broken.

By tradition.

By dumb muscle.

She’s a little flower crushed by the rock.

But it’s true.

She’s a mean melancholic. A flailing tuna with one last whip of the tail.

Hoping to return to the ocean.

And she is pricked on all sides.

Hoisted.

And piled with the other creatures lengthwise.

My heart breaks for Ingrid.

Because of Roberto Rossellini.

A new style of filmmaking here.

Similar to his other film of 1950: Francesco, giullare di Dio.

The flowers of introspection.

Existentialism.

Italy.

And now in Ginostra you might find Jacopo Fedi catching octopi or Marco Nicolosi relaxing.

In real life (away from celebrities), it is hard to make friends.

What Žižek might call “the desert of the real”.

Some turnovers you can eat, others you just have to live with.

-PD

Elèna et les hommes [1956)

Sometimes we are emptied of our emotions from exhaustion.

We can’t fail at love any more than we have.

Valentine’s Day is but a mockery.

And so why does Miss Lonelyhearts push on?

And Sgt. Pepper?

Some of us have immense reservoirs of confidence.

Some of us have a penchant for risk.

But not I.

If we treat love as an investment (bear with me),

then every risk has its flipside: the potential for reward.

In love, we weigh the possibilities.

What will she say? How will he respond?

But our world has degenerated into a soulless masquerade.

Do anything…but never show your true feelings.

If we are circumspect in our psychology, we realize that many times we don’t know our own minds.

I am not a meditating ninja. I do not balance, poised to act with clarity.

No, I am clumsy.

In love, I am particularly clumsy.

To speak of such things in America…it just isn’t done.

Love is more taboo than sex.

Sex is ubiquitous, but love is vulnerability.

An American can never show vulnerability.

This is the great archetypal travesty of the film Patton.

And perhaps no greater dichotomy could exist than from that film to our film Elèna et les hommes.

It is Jean Renoir again. It is Ingrid Bergman. It is Jean Marais.

And to a very surprising extent, it is Juliette Gréco.

It must have been this film to which Godard fell in love.

More interested in Gréco than El Greco at this time. More interested in Juliette than his schoolwork.

Those dreams which would be realized in Anna Karina.

But things fall apart.

How hard to know the soul of a man or woman.

Ingrid plays the role of a Polish princess.

On Bastille Day with Mel Ferrer there is a Rabelaisian warmth to the festivities.

From one Renoir to another, there are the pinks in the cheeks. Red wine. A weak drink. Compared to Polish vodka.

And then there are the daisies. A marguerite here and there. Gounod’s Faust would have such as the leading soprano.

A grand opera in five acts is about what Elèna et les hommes feels like. There are similarities in tone and mise-en-scène to Max Ophüls’ Lola Montès, but the best comparison is to Renoir’s own The Golden Coach.

What may not be evident (due to the visual disparity between the vibrant, saturated colors of Elèna et les hommes and the black and white of Renoir’s early films) is that our film is very similar to the Renoir classic La Règle du jeu. Both share traits with the elusive Hollywood genre known as “screwball comedy”. There is a general ruckus of celebration…a confusion of who loves whom…indeed, about who should love whom…mixed emotions…missed connections…conflicted hearts.

There are the base buffoons who live out our easiest desires. They just chase. So what if they lose? Well, it makes a big difference…from the bathos of Schumacher to the stoogery of Eugène.

But these references aside, it is the others who make us believe. The hesitating class of Ingrid Bergman and Nora Gregor…these parallel characters. And the luckless chaps who may or may not prevail in the end…Mel Ferrer and, indeed, Jean Renoir himself as Octave in La Règle du jeu.

It must have been a revelation for Godard to see this film. It was the French film industry asserting itself. And yet, it was the spectacle against which Debord would rail a mere 11 years later.

Even so, Elèna et les hommes is (at the very least) a beautiful echo of the French film tradition which preceded it. In a sense, it was Jean Renoir retelling that old story of La Règle du jeu one more time.

Life is a strange party in which Saint-Saëns’ Danse macabre is liable to be conjured from the ghostly ivories of a player piano at any moment.

-PD

4 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

4 Comments

Notorious [1946)

The key in Ingrid’s hand. The ring on Grace’s finger. It’s not her key. It’s not her ring.

Rio is beautiful…even in black and white. Only Hitchcock could make it so. Christ of the Andes. The greatest creator of forms of the 20th century.

Icy. Pithy. Notorious is stoic Cary Grant. And this shall be a terse dispatch.

It’s a very fine vintage…1946…1940…1934. I pity the sommelier assigned to this house of horrors. God forbid he pick the 1934. You can tell, old man, when a seemingly-polished chap makes a completely inappropriate choice of wines. Strangers on a train bound for Zagreb. Yes, a keen eye for detail is certainly not to be underestimated.

T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant) knows every trick in the book. When to bluff. When to kiss.

It is only when matters of the heart come into play that the C.I.A. has no official manual. It will never be declassified. Because it doesn’t exist. The manual is Petrarch. Shakespeare’s sonnets. The manual was written long ago. It is no secret. Only a mystery.

We will kill her off slowly, they say…on the installment plan. She will gargle in the rat-race choir. Until Devlin comes with his pointed threats to bluff with scorn and Claude Rains is left like a groom standing at the altar…except it’s not his wedding, it’s his funeral.

It’s the way they killed Sindona in Voghera. Poison in the coffee. C.A.B.A.L. It’s not a Fleming invention. Far older than that. And I.G. Farben…not a fanciful name plucked from Hitchcock’s imagination.

Mata Hari. Theda Bara. Arab Death.

MacGuffin. Mackintosh. Scotland Yard.

This was the first time Hitchcock was really in charge. Byb-bye David O. Selznick.

Ben Hecht. Clifford Odets.

This is really loose crap.

That’s a quote. ” ”

This is a puzzle, dear friends. This is your dossier. Jigsaw. Fragmented.

It is Vivre sa vie. The back of a head only. Cary Grant’s black hair. A man, as yet, with no name.

Susan Sontag was on a different mission. We defer to Cahiers du Cinéma. To Henri Langlois.

These are our agents. Our “Wild Bill” Donovans. Our O.S.S.

She may not sniff it through a cane on a supersonic train, but it still makes me laugh. Murnau more now than ever.

A full 360°. The subjective, drunken camera. We have suspicion of Grant from the start–is that fizzy aspirin or a glowing glass of milk?

The con man exploits your trust. What was the bait?

It is like Dostoyevsky. We feel sympathy for Norman Bates just as we do Raskolnikov.

Yes, sometimes…Mother Sebastian, we are protected by the enormity of our stupidity. Forrest Gumption.

The key was stolen. The key brought such luck. The key was passed on. And now, Mr. Hitchcock, the key has been returned.

Thank you.

-PD

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